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Jobs and Software Is Fucked

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41–50 of 333 posts

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#41
post #13

[flagged]

Finally, someone talking sense! Personally I first evaluate all of my potential employees by how clean they can lick my boots.

They are saying a very different, obvious thing if you don't want to be cynical. And I say this as someone with some very strong opinions about many things.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#43
post #7

Curious about the perspective from anyone who has a skill set / reputation where finding jobs is easy right now. I imagine people in ML or who've found a good way to demonstrate prowess with agentic systems may be highly in demand right now(?)

I feel like any advice you get from someone would be as useful as "how to be a good coin flipper" advice from the 1 person in 1024 who flipped heads 10 times in a row. In other words it would be purely survivorship bias.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#44

[flagged]

> If I'm the owner of a business and I have hundreds of applicants for every job, I'm picking the one who looks least likely to cause trouble outside of work, assuming everything else is equivalent. Interesting. If _I_ was the owner of a business, I would try to find the people, who have ideals, dedication, like understanding what they deliver, being thorough in their work, like to learn, etc.. Well rounded persons.…

As a small business owner, I look for people who can walk the line. Who understand that there's a bottom line, but also that we are not machine men with machine hearts.

I respect the candidates who stand for something and can pragmatically navigate the social space of work at the same time. I find that people who just want to shut up and lick boot don't end up being very creative problem solvers. It's easy to say for me as a small biz; different atmosphere in larger corps, but I can't subscribe to the reality presented by the cynical grandparent post here. I think we can be better than this.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#47
post #7

Curious about the perspective from anyone who has a skill set / reputation where finding jobs is easy right now. I imagine people in ML or who've found a good way to demonstrate prowess with agentic systems may be highly in demand right now(?)

My perspective is it is impossible to cut through the three layers of bullshit between you and anyone who knows what they are talking about. The only way to do this is with brand-name qualifications, like "MIT graduate", not things that are actually impressive. This is also why you see senior developers saying, "the offers I'm getting are bigger and bigger," meanwhile skilled younger developers need to become a marketing professional just to get an interview.

Recruiters have utterly given up on being efficient in the market. I do not know why, but there is something very wrong given "spamming the same brand-name fish all the other recruiters are spamming" is their only strategy. My guess is there is a combination of bad (or an entire lack of) hygienic data filtering and a disconnect between compensation and terminal goals (hiring the best candidates).

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#48

[flagged]

It's important to point out that this advice can exist alongside the fact that it is OK (necessary to civilization, even) to criticize anything hellish in one's society (e.g. the very article this comment is responding to). The advice in this comment is not a counterpoint to the article.

We can do the miserable things that are necessary to secure our lives while also fighting to stop the people who are forcing us to do those miserable things.

Unrelated: When you say, "No him/her", I honestly can not tell what you are saying. I'm not being sly - I really can't tell if you're saying:

1. People should pretend to not be trans (scary, but a very common form of hatred).

2. Don't mention your pronouns even if you're not trans (which, ok, so maybe you roll your eyes when people do that, I don't even think that's insane - but what on earth does that have to do with having a bad "attitude"?).

3. A 3rd thing I can't think of?

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#50
The first place to look for jobs should be in your network, people that worked with you, teachers, ex-managers.

Applying for jobs out of the blue usually sucks. In the ideal world, you want recruiters calling out to you.

Don't assume you can't do proper software engineering using AI. You can. The people that want to create loops are not the only ones delivering with acceptable productivity. Lot's of us still write code, at least interfaces, traits, modules or whatever, and just use the AI to fill the blanks on the really tedious code.

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