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The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

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Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#401

Post by conductr »

dennis_jeeves1 wrote: post #321
klyrs wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're focused on the language. The language isn't the problem. Of the people I've met in finance, there are some really strong and offputting trends: they're uniformly dismissive of work/life balance, they're almost uniformly the worst stereotype of tech-bro, and aside from the rampant cocaine use, they're hugely socially conservative, and every single one values profit over ethics. It's not the language, it's the…

> Any programmer worth their salt can march into a nasty codebase of whatever language, Correct, I wonder why people both technical and non-technical focus on this aspect a lot. ( my guess is that they are incompetent themselves). Agreed, if you want someone for two or three months you probably want someone who knows the language and it's ecosystem pretty well. Any work that is more than six months should be nearly l…

> Any work that is more than six months should be nearly language independent.

I'm not sure this is true in finance. Speed matters. A lot. It's called high frequency trading for a reason. These firms will spend a million bucks just to make their fiber optic cables 1 foot shorter.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#402

Post by logicchains »

spoiler wrote: post #75
photochemsyn wrote: post #31

Writing new C++ code with all the modern approaches and tooling doesn't sound so bad. Troubleshooting a big legacy C++ codebase is probably something that Dante would have included in his Inferno as a punishment for pride and hubris.

> Writing new C++ code with all the modern approaches and tooling doesn't sound so bad. Uh, but it still kinda sucks, if only because the nice way that looks idiomatic is usually the incorrect way for either performance (anything newly added like std::variant or std::optional) or safety (operator[]). The correct way is usual the ugly way, because it seems like the committee puts C++ arcanum knowledge above all else,…

> the incorrect way for either performance (anything newly added like std::variant or std::optional) or safety

I don't know where you got that idea from, but with an up-to-date compiler variants are safer and more performant than the traditional approach (classes hierarchies), and std::optional is safer and 99.9% as performant as a nullable pointer.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#403

Post by zerr »

jedberg wrote: post #316
zerr wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you use that 700K offer for increasing the salary at Netflix? I've heard about the culture of fear at Netflix - was this your experience as well? Who decides whether you are a top performer or not - only the manager, or the peers as well? Do they use stack ranking? How is the performance deduced, e.g. by nbr of commits? Thanks!

I took the offer to them and got a nice raise, but not to $700k. :) In part because the offers weren't comparable. Finance is usually a modest base and a huge bonus, Netflix is straight cash. > I've heard about the culture of fear at Netflix - was this your experience as well? At first yes. But you quickly realize that in most cases only the underperformers were let go. In cases where good performers were let go, it…

> In cases where good performers were let go, it was usually by a bad manager, and then that manager would get let go

I guess this is rare - the detection of such cases, since the bad manager's manager has to be aware. Also, the holistic evaluation makes things hard to argue - subjective opinions prevail.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#404

Post by userbinator »

jedberg wrote: post #363
tropicalbeach wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah for real, I there is so many tech people are sheltered now days that if anything difficult comes there way they can't handle it. 700k for an 8 hour a day job and claiming to be abused is ridiculous. It's fine for someone to say they don't want the job but claiming abused is something else. People work months away from there families to provide for them and make 10% of that wage.

It's not an eight hour job, you're completely misreading it. It's eight hours required plus another eight each day of overtime. Which is abusive for a software engineer. And those people that work months away from their families -- they're being abused too. You'll notice that the owners of oil rigs aren't out there with them, for example.

you're completely misreading it

Re-read your original description again. Nowhere did you say you had to work 16h a day.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#405

Post by lelanthran »

francisofascii wrote: post #138
klaussilveira wrote: post #19

Heh. I'm pretty proficient in modern C++, and it is my favorite tool for a lot of things, but my PHP job pays way more than any C++ position available. Did an interview once for Senior C++ Engineer, embedded software in the medical device space. All went good, until the offer: $100k. Articles like this are nothing more than a desperate attempt at getting younger generations to learn said topic, so companies can pay t…

Which makes no sense to me. Isn't C++ harder and demand better programming chops?

> Which makes no sense to me. Isn't C++ harder and demand better programming chops?

Sure, and a scalpel is a lot sharper and more precise than a lawnmower.

Which one do you think will result in more expensive lawn maintenance?

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#406

Post by aliswe »

none_to_remain wrote: post #349

Some years back I was interviewing and some recruiter or HR says to me "so from your resume it looks like you're a C++ expert, right" and I was able to control myself and say something like "I definitely have C++ experience" rather than "listen buddy, does it say 'Stroustrup' or 'Sutter' on top of my resume?"

So what was the answer?

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#407

Post by conductr »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #370
95014_refugee wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FoH = Front of House, i.e. directly supporting customer activity.

just a side note: long before a small part of the programming world took over this acronym, it used to mean the sound engineer (and sometimes other staff) that were in the venue, embedded in the crowd, working on live sound while the talent was up on stage. "back of house" was behind the stage, "front of house" was the room/venue itself, and the people working in it.

It's also from the restaurant industry. Dining room vs kitchen staff. I think "the house" part comes from hospitality in general.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#408

Post by lelanthran »

TillE wrote: post #111
photochemsyn wrote: post #31

Writing new C++ code with all the modern approaches and tooling doesn't sound so bad. Troubleshooting a big legacy C++ codebase is probably something that Dante would have included in his Inferno as a punishment for pride and hubris.

Speaking as a professional C++ developer for the past 20 years, I think this sums it up well. A modern project should be able to use most of C++17 at least. Even if you still need to target some ancient garbage like Windows XP, you can use an MSVC toolchain that supports C++17. That's a good basis to work from. So your real concern is the moldy old code that's written for C++03, that's still not using std::unique_ptr…

> If you're given license to finally rewrite that [C++03] code to modern standards

Then you aren't choosing C++20-something, you're choosing a new language altogether.

This is why the demand for C++ devs is dropping - if you're going to bite the bullet and rewrite, why not choose a better language, preferably with GC?

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#409

Post by lelanthran »

jokoon wrote: post #179
photochemsyn wrote: post #31

Writing new C++ code with all the modern approaches and tooling doesn't sound so bad. Troubleshooting a big legacy C++ codebase is probably something that Dante would have included in his Inferno as a punishment for pride and hubris.

My first real C++ job involved a bug in a largely technical indebted codebase, lines of code in the millions. I spent two months asking one guy who knew about it for help. I really understood the concept of "hostage taker" in a software team. It's the guy you cannot fire and will constantly arm-wrestle everybody where there is a problem, never really helping, and continuing to write bad code that allows him to keep h…

> Fortunately they did not hire me.

I don't understand this, where you working for free?

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#410

Post by GoToRO »

Pelayu wrote: post #399

From my personal experience it seems that companies looking for C++ devs are far too picky. I have a few years professional experience in C for embedded systems and have written personal projects in C++ but have been rejected from every C++ position I applied for. It seems that companies only want someone with 5+ years experience and are unwilling to take less experienced people on.

Putting 5 years of C++ in your last position on your resume will fix it. HR people have no clue about programming and they don't want to risk recommending somebody who is not a perfect fit. So you take that responsability on yourself. The time when qualified people did the hiring is long gone.
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