Engineers suck at finding the right jobs

There are fundamental issues here.

For a sales guy, you can say he brought in $X in revenue that led to $Y in profits, so the value he creates is visible. It's a lot more complex than that, but at least there is a theoretical basis to value his work.

I spent five years working on a non-profit web site that was used by more than 80k people a day. We estimated the site produced $250M a year in value for end users. We also had no real plan for capturing that value or funding it so there wasn't a pie I could claim a piece of at all, just what they said they could pay me.

I've worked at a number of places where the model was spend $X to develop something with Y developers over Z months and maybe we can sell it. These often are fun jobs. This includes a lot of Y Combinator kind of companies but also stodgy companies you'll find in midwestern towns.

I think the median project of this type either (i) doesn't ship a product in the end or (ii) gets revenue that is a small fraction of $X. Again, there's no pie to split.

This of course begs the question. Does working on a project like Colors make you a negative net productivity programmer whatever you do?

I guess in theory a place like this could pay you heavily in equity or bonuses, but with the odds of getting no payout that's really not fair if you have to develop your skills, be highly responsible in so many ways and maybe even support a family.

The companies where the revenue is more obvious are job shops, but these tend to be horrible places to work. Of 5 that I had some involvement with, 4 of them were outright failing businesses because the business plan made no sense or they spent 12 years building web sites with an obscure language that is now eol. The last one is profitable and growing but they had no benefits, low base pay, but they might pay a bonus into your 401k at the end of the year based on "the value of your contributions to the company." Well, the principles of the company never got tried of yakking about the high value of the sales work they do so you know who is #1 and #2 when bonus time comes around at the end of the year.

So in all my years as a pro programmer, I can say I only worked for three months at a place where my work had a clear connection to revenue it was creating and compensation wise it was the worst job I've ever had.

On the other hand how I can differentiate myself without using "senior" from others developers of my age, who took this job as a result of additional course during their college time and who as result produce quite ad-hoc code without any interest in technology and what lies below job they do?

That's the only reason I am using senior in title. Because I do not agree that all 20-something devs bring same value to the team.

It really is an exciting time for software engineers. I'm a soon-to-graduate student and have gotten so many job offers that I had to pretty much stop talking about it with friends/family. Does anyone else feel awkward admitting how easy we have it in tech right now when there are so many people struggling to find jobs?

I appreciated this post, and it's good timing considering I've felt lost in my career for at least a year. I switched jobs 6 months ago, and am already considering changing again. I've had several interviews, and in spite of the fact that everyone I work with tell me what an asset I am and how talented I am, I can't seem to find a good fit.

I'm a .NET developer, and am considering changing to Rails, just to see if that opens up better/different opportunities. But that's a big time investment for me -- having a family leaves me with little time as it is -- and I'm not even sure that will leave me much better off than I am now.

I really could use some direction, but have not been able to nail down a way to find direction. Matt, I may take you up on your offer.

I would also welcome and general thoughts from the HN community.

As a soon-to-graduate student as well, I am having the same issue. It is a blessing but also a curse, having to figure out what direction to take from so many options.