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How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

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Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#21

Post by sidewndr46 »

__s wrote: post #12
ktbwrestler wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

genuinely curious what your take is here, I have been in security engineering for 5-6 years, then most recently a startup that's using rails. It honestly does not seem that bad even though we're using an ember frontend. What is your thought process here? Is it the notion that you can ship as fast as possible, and that creates a shitty environment given that you're a hamster on a wheel getting measured by output since…

I've worked with Ruby. It was a delight. But it has to be maintained, dynamic typing loses upfront safety & allows for a mess where you have to analyse the whole program to have any idea what some function is expected to take in & put out I'm glad static typing came back

Analyze the whole program? I steadfastly refused to ever attempt do that. "method(:foo).source_location" from the Rails console and I've got the only answer that matters. Most functions were monkey patched at least once anyways, so you'd never know by searching for the implementation where it was.

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#23

Post by throwanem »

gleenn wrote: post #18
throwanem wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean about Rails specifically, it's that the total lack of discipline in both language and framework makes it impossible to build a product maintainable by more than one person, so every "successful" project has one or a few covert empire builders running it, usually with more political than technical success. That's not a kind of project that pays enough to be worth the trouble, even before we talk about oppo…

Strongly disagree. I've seen bad code or maintenance in all the languages. Sure, some ecosystems seem to attract worse practices, but the absolute best software engineering principles I ever learned in my multi-decade career were at a Rails shop. Everything was extremely well maintained, tested, CI/CD were great even before that was a thing. Not to start flame wars about refactoring or what it means to maintain code…

Which shop? When? Who with?

It matters, far more in this ecosystem than others. If today there seems to be a history of pervasive testing culture in the Rails ecosystem, I can only assume there must exist some quiet mutual agreement to keep some history swept under what must be quite a large rug. Oh, I remember the same enormous amount of lip service about testing that you do! And I also remember what it was like to try to integrate a dependency into a Rails project in 2012, because that was a fair bit of what swore me off the platform. Rails was famously the home of dogshit engineering practice in its day, every bit as much as PHP, excepting only among the coterie of too-good-for-finance Boston hipsters who invented the thing, and benefited from all the same traditional software engineering training and practice they built a culture (and, coincidentally, a reputedly quite lucrative consulting practice) around decrying. Just saying "I saw good Rails back in the day" thus really isn't dispositive.

They were young, so was I, we all make some bad decisions at that age, it's fine, I don't care. But none of us is young any more, and as an aging hipster once said, there's nothing more contemptible than an aging hipster.

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#24

Post by mdaniel »

__s wrote: post #12
ktbwrestler wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

genuinely curious what your take is here, I have been in security engineering for 5-6 years, then most recently a startup that's using rails. It honestly does not seem that bad even though we're using an ember frontend. What is your thought process here? Is it the notion that you can ship as fast as possible, and that creates a shitty environment given that you're a hamster on a wheel getting measured by output since…

I've worked with Ruby. It was a delight. But it has to be maintained, dynamic typing loses upfront safety & allows for a mess where you have to analyse the whole program to have any idea what some function is expected to take in & put out I'm glad static typing came back

Came back? Everyone and their cousin is falling over themselves to get on the AI train[1], and spending incomprehensible amounts of energy trying to "lint" their way to sanity as if the python ecosystem isn't fighting tooth and nail to "be dynamic"

So, yeah, I look forward to the cycle tacking in the other direction but today ain't it

1: to say nothing of the fact that model servers exist so why the fuck are you writing business logic in a language that DGAF just because your data scientists have a hard-on for pytorch

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#25

Post by throwanem »

danaris wrote: post #20
throwanem wrote: post #7

> That job turned out to be shoddy, ancient, flaky tech all the way down, with comfortable, long-tenured staff who didn’t know (and did NOT want to hear) how out of date their tech had become. Every time. I don't care about your stack; obviously I have taste and preferences but I'm a professional, I'll work with whatever, as long as it isn't Rails. (Because there is no good work in that world.) But it will not take m…

I dunno; maybe I'm hopelessly naïve or out of touch, but I'd pay attention to the compensation, benefits, work environment, and colleagues to know whether this is a place I'd actually like working at long before I pay attention to whether this is a job that always uses the latest cutting-edge tech so I can make sure my resume has the best words in it for the next job I look for...

Unless desperate, why would I have accepted an offer or taken a contract if all of those didn't already seem in line? Why would you have?

The thing is, people can lie about all of those, but whatever social problems exist in the environment will invariably be evident in the code.

What's the old saw about how if you have four teams working on a compiler, you'll get a four-pass compiler? Conway's law [1], that's the one. That one works in both directions. When you're reading code that seems like it would be 0.1x as complicated if any of the people involved in writing it ever spoke to one another, the wise engineer new to this environment begins asking, why do these people never speak to one another? But not too loud!

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#26

Post by MrDarcy »

throwanem wrote: post #11
ktbwrestler wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

genuinely curious what your take is here, I have been in security engineering for 5-6 years, then most recently a startup that's using rails. It honestly does not seem that bad even though we're using an ember frontend. What is your thought process here? Is it the notion that you can ship as fast as possible, and that creates a shitty environment given that you're a hamster on a wheel getting measured by output since…

If you mean about Rails specifically, it's that the total lack of discipline in both language and framework makes it impossible to build a product maintainable by more than one person, so every "successful" project has one or a few covert empire builders running it, usually with more political than technical success. That's not a kind of project that pays enough to be worth the trouble, even before we talk about oppo…

First, props for your candor. It’s refreshing.

I do wonder if Rails is so bad compared to other frameworks that it deserves such a distinct treatment.

Over the decades I’ve worked with at least half a dozen popular frameworks that fit this description, is the same for you or is Rails truly unique in this regard?

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#28

Post by throwanem »

MrDarcy wrote: post #26
throwanem wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean about Rails specifically, it's that the total lack of discipline in both language and framework makes it impossible to build a product maintainable by more than one person, so every "successful" project has one or a few covert empire builders running it, usually with more political than technical success. That's not a kind of project that pays enough to be worth the trouble, even before we talk about oppo…

First, props for your candor. It’s refreshing. I do wonder if Rails is so bad compared to other frameworks that it deserves such a distinct treatment. Over the decades I’ve worked with at least half a dozen popular frameworks that fit this description, is the same for you or is Rails truly unique in this regard?

Rails is uniquely compromised by its history and by its language of implementation. Ruby is good for many things. Writing maintainable software in the absence of conventions enforced by shotgun is none of them. And Ruby's American fanbase gets off way too much on holding the shotgun.

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#30

Post by parpfish »

i worry that i've job hopped a bit too much and have a series of 2-3yr gigs on my resume.

part of my problem is that I get unhappy (or bored) with a job but sit in denial for too long. so by the time I start looking for a new position, I'll desperately jump headfirst into a new gig instead of lining up the perfect gig.

Or maybe not. maybe it's impossible to tell if a place is a good fit from the interview.

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