111–120 of 326 posts
I would like either one of those jobs but I would rather take the seat on the management board to be honest for the influence it would give me.
Writing good software starts with a business decision and the Suits people are notoriously bad at making good calls in that department.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lawyers and doctors are not too different.The premise is true for most of white collar jobs, if not all.
Yep. Most of the folks who are only doing it for the money fall into that 75% group. If you don't have passion for something you'll never be truly good at it.
Sure they may not have the "passion" but it also doesn't mean they're grinding away through their days. As I said in another comment, your priorities change and your perception/measure of job satisfaction changes as you get older. Mine certainly has despite being a techy and developer to my core.
37 years old, studied computer science at university, and have worked in the software industry since graduation. Currently at a mid-size/large, multinational software company. We have a large number of developers with 20+ years experience. You aren't seeing their resumes because they're here and don't have a reason to leave. I've been here 12 years now, and if you can't match the 25 days vacation, 10 sick, 12 holiday…
Haha, I see this a lot. Banks who pay mediocre developers $150k a year plus crazy benefits to write entry-level reports because fuck it; the salary for the entire IT department is a rounding error on the bonus pool for the traders so who gives a shit? Good luck getting those guys out of a job like that. Not saying you're mediocre; but a job like that leads to mediocrity and complacency because the work is often uncha…
It's a different challenge. At a bank, you manage a system based on boring, mature technology, that processes billions worth of transactions every day. Or a server park of 20,000 machines. It's not mobile game development, but on the other hand at least it's not mobile game development.
I do agree that there is a lack of a long term non-management career arc. I worked at a large mechanical engineering company and the titles were Engineer, Senior Engineer, Engineering Specialist, Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer. Once you made it to Senior engineer you could split off in a management track that went Supervisor, Manager, VP. It worked out fairly well, because the higher level engineers (Principal, and certainly Staff), made well more than the early management track. Going into management was not the only way to get a raise. Obviously this made the engineers better, but it also made management better, because it seems there are a lot of reluctant managers out there that just want to get paid more.
edit: I found a blog post by Bob Martin that describes this in writing: http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/06/20/MyLawn.html
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure that's a totally valid sentiment. For starters, top-notch developers in the US earn salaries that approach CEO-level pay (ok, maybe not quite, but certainly top-5% salaries nationally). Even as a mid-level developer, my salary matched that of experienced project managers in my wife's previous line of work (large insurance company). And CEOs generally lead a very different lifestyle than a good developer.…
I did my mechanical engineering and having a pain in finding a job. I'm planning to get into programming. What do I need to do to become a decent developer who is in demand and can earn decent money?
- I was formally educated in FORTRAN up 'til the 95 spec. Many engineering codes still exist in it, so I've since rounded out OO Fortran. It helps me read legacy code, talk to the older engineers, and maintain it if need be.
- I built a computer with a nVidia GPU chip: It helped me appreciate the hardware side of things and enabled me to write and run CUDA (CPU/GPU) programs, which offers a window into high performance computing (HPC).
- I learned as much about the OSI stack as possible (I had the fortunate opportunity to take a week-long CCNA bootcamp training class) so I could have a rough mental model how networking works, which helps in distributed computing or HPC scenarios.
- I already knew C, so I spent time spinning up on C++ and its ecosystem, as it can be popular in engineering contexts.
If you are wanting to go the pure developer route then there are plenty of others who can provide better advice. I have come to enjoy the inter-discipline of CS and engineering.
His company is unusual in that way: Average age of the devs is around 55. He currently writes test software and technical manuals for advanced control systems. They're hiring, if anyone is interested.
I'm 53 with an EE degree, went to programming because it so happened that there was a telecommunications research center close by the school. And programming looked cooler and easier than EE. I compare programming to writing, more than engineering. There is no engineering in programming. No matter how many "methodologies" are created, writing good programs and good systems is akin to writing a good story or a good bo…
It is also (always?) storytelling, I agree.
We hired one former consultant recently who basically told us, that at his age, nobody wanted to hire him for consulting jobs anymore. He took a (presumably) big pay cut to work for us, but at least it's a steady job as he approaches retirement.
That's because programming is an entry level job. No, I'm not trolling: I'm quite serious about that. Engineering has almost always been an entry level job; computers or not. You start as an engineer; and as you get better, the number of engineering management jobs is pretty limited, so there's nowhere to go for the vast majority of people. But you get pulled into enough internal projects you start to develop a bit o…
What did you jump into afterward?
But of course it isn't purely a meritocracy, because social factors matter, too.
And of course careers and office politics matter, too.
And of course there are biological considerations, like family and energy and health.
And of course it is exhausting to frantically keep up with the bleeding edge of the technology du jour.
And of course deep, long-lived knowledge matters just as much as coding ability sometimes.
And on and on and on....