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Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

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Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#201

Post by MrDom »

shanemhansen wrote: post #154
edw519 wrote: post #23

59, programming for 42 years, the last 35 professionally. Here on HN for 7.5 years. I've always been very busy (one of the main reasons I don't post on HN as much any more). I don't have a resume. I'm not on LinkedIn. If I ever ran low on work, it would probably take me a day or two and a few phone calls to find something. I don't work on anything unless I find it incredibly compelling. I write applications. I've see…

Right now there is a firehouse of job offers from recruiters on linkedin, and all a good developer has to do to find work is take a drink from that firehose. While I enjoy the current situation, it's unlikely to last. Sometimes we forget that there's plenty of people who have simply built up a clientele and a repuation through plain old networking. These jobs tend to be more lucrative and probably don't require you t…

Having tried to drink from the firehose in the past, I can say that I have never once had a recruiter lead actually result in a job offer. It's one gigantic catch-22. The companies themselves aren't great at hiring, or they wouldn't need to use recruiters doing semi-random searches on linkedin. If you yourself were any good at interviewing, you wouldn't need to rely on the recruiters either. You're an unqualified lead that can't get a job on his own, which to a hiring manager screams "high risk hire." So you start the interview process in the negative column and have to really shine to get a job offer. But, if you were any good an shining in an interview, you wouldn't need the recruiter in the first place. The whole thing becomes a high stress waste of time.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#202

Post by zwieback »

We have the opposite problem where I work: everyone is in their 40s, kids, mortgage, etc. We cannot get kids to stay here even though we recruit them, they leave after a short while.

There's good and bad, of course, we have an exceptionally experienced staff but eventually we'll all retire. There may be a problem where we don't get fresh perspectives on our work but I'm not really convinced that's true. Maybe more of a problem in social/mobile/web but in product development it's probably not as much of an issue.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#203

Post by kalkin »

mattfrommars wrote: post #73
exelius wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Any tips on getting those entry level reporting job at banks who pay 150,000 USD? I'm 23 so I'm willing to leearn.

I knew a very smart guy who got a job like this. After a couple of years he threw it away and moved to Brazil, after teaching himself Portuguese by hanging out in soccer forums and IRC channels. He teaches English now.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#204

Post by alistairSH »

wastedhours wrote: post #109
alistairSH wrote: post #33

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…

They put a limit on the number of sick days per year?

Yes, America has pretty horrifying* leave policies. Most professional jobs in the DC area start with 15-18 days of personal leave (vacation and sick are treated the same) and around 10 national holidays. Jobs that pay hourly frequently don't have any leave at all - if you take a day off, you don't get paid anything.

And maternity/paternity leave is almost non-existent.

All of which leads to people coming to work sick, spreading disease, being miserable, burning out, and spending a fortune paying strangers to watch their babies.

* Horrifying by Western European standards.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#205

Post by InclinedPlane »

exelius wrote: post #42

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…

There is a common trope floating around which says that some developers are 10x more productive than others. This has led to a lot of questioning of whether or not that is actually true in practice, what it means, whether it's possible to become a "10x" developer, and so on. The truth is that it's looking at the problem in the wrong way because it relies on the underlying assumption that development is like factory work, and somehow cranking out more code, or whatever measure you want for productivity, is more valuable.

The truth is actually far more extreme. Some developers are orders of magnitude more productive than others. The work they do is simply that much better and more valuable. This should be unquestionably true as there are several examples of very, very small development teams (sub 5 person sized) who have churned out incredibly valuable products. You can chalk some of that up to luck, especially in the case of games, but not all of it. The fact is, building software well, building software that works, that does something valuable for users, that is free of major defects, that is designed in a way so that it can be maintained and extended easily, and so on, those things are not just about how many lines or function points a developer creates. But those things can add millions or even billions to the value of the end-product, and they can be done just by one person.

Software is not factory work, nor is it strictly just engineering. The most important part of software development is a creative, artistic endeavor. And like all works of creativity the end result has an enormously wide variation in quality and value.

If you're doing very "shallow" software development (e.g. pumping out CRUD apps or CMS backed sites or what-have-you) then years of experience may not do a whole lot for you. If you have the opportunity to take on meatier dev work then experience is more than just learning some tricks and being knowledgeable in the frameworks and toolsets of the day, it's about deep skills. About how build things well, and right. How to communicate effectively. How to write truly self-documenting code. How to wrangle the complexity of the problem space and the implementation space while mediating for the user in a way that makes sense to them. And so on. Some devs in some jobs just keep adding to their skilsets as time goes on.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#206

Post by ThomaszKrueger »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #173
ThomaszKrueger wrote: post #92

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…

"There is no engineering in programming." It really depends on the industry and context. Part of me really envies you if you can say that much and that reflects your experience. I spent most of today making sure that my SPMP, SQAP, SCMP, SRS, etc... documents conform to the relevant IEEE standard. If none of these acronyms means anything to you, again, I envy you.

It seems to me that in your case the relevant part is engineering, the standards are the real thing and programming is there to support them. This is not the case in my experience, where programming involves creating a new web site, a new database schema, a new game. There is little to no engineering on these fields, every day you see a newfangled "architecture" or "framework" or "API". EE is a much more standards driven arena, CS is not, IMO.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#207

Post by jeffreyrogers »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #94
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEO's and managers get a lot of shit on HN, but there is a reason they make more money (in general, obviously there are exceptions, especially at tech companies). The main reason is that what they do is more valuable. At most companies the coding required is easy and doesn't require much thought, low-skill = low-pay. The job of allocating capital and people to the highest ROI areas is much more significant to most co…

"The main reason is that what they do is more valuable." Personally I would have said a big part of it is that they control payroll.

Yeah, I probably should't have said more valuable. It's more accurate to say that there a lots of people who can program poorly and for most jobs that's all that's needed. Far fewer people can manage others well or effectively allocate resources.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#208

Post by vonmoltke »

MrDom wrote: post #188
shawabawa3 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What am I supposed to do exactly? Call up some co-worker from 3+ years ago and say "hi, remember me? Can you get me a job?" I don't have a network. I have friends and I have colleagues, but I don't really have anyone that could get me job leads (maybe a couple of my friends)

Or you could call them up, ask them how they're doing, meet them for a coffee, then ask if their company is hiring for X and if they could refer you. At the very least this gets your resume put in front of the hiring manager and lets you bypass the HR nonsense. At the very worst, they say no and you go back to talking about his dog or whatever. Keep in mind that most companies offer referral bonuses and programmers l…

> Or you could call them up, ask them how they're doing, meet them for a coffee, then ask if their company is hiring for X and if they could refer you.

Every single one of my former coworkers, managers, and other people I dealt with on a regular basis is still at my former employer or retired. How do those contacts help me?

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#209

Post by FD3SA »

mattmanser wrote: post #146
edw519 wrote: post #23

59, programming for 42 years, the last 35 professionally. Here on HN for 7.5 years. I've always been very busy (one of the main reasons I don't post on HN as much any more). I don't have a resume. I'm not on LinkedIn. If I ever ran low on work, it would probably take me a day or two and a few phone calls to find something. I don't work on anything unless I find it incredibly compelling. I write applications. I've see…

Why is this comment getting upvoted? It's pretty insulting and arrogant to paint a massive swathe of our community as stupid, unambitious people who never progressed past hello world. Let's remember that in those 42 years the number of BASIC, FORTRAN, or COBOL jobs has diminished through to almost nothing. The last person I met who described themselves as a COBOL programmer was about 10 years ago, and even they said…

I felt the same, but I've come to realize that the comment you take issue with perfectly encapsulates the tech industry. A no holds barred race to the bottom. That's why work conditions, salary, stability and prestige are nowhere near comparable industries such as finance, heavy engineering, medicine, law, etc.

Something about programmers makes them think they are all the destined one true hero, and as a result, programmers tend to disparage and disrespect their own peers, at great cost to themselves.

My favorite is this guy [1], who was literally adding billions of dollars of revenue for Goldman Sachs, but was getting paid peanuts. When he left to pursue more interesting work (not for salary!), they brought the FBI down on him.

I don't call myself a programmer, computer scientist, or any such low class term anymore. I'm a consultant, and I don't associate with self-deprecating professionals who denigrate their own fields.

Humans are primates, and we form status hierarchies. Proudly exclaiming that your tribe is at the very bottom is the definition of stupidity. Good luck to those that do, I sincerely wish you the best. But when your salary stagnates, you're asked to work 80hr weeks without overtime, and you get no respect from management, maybe its time for a little self-reflection.

There is a reason software dev is such a low status profession, and it's not because we're "nerds". It's because we self-denigrate and self-deprecate like no other profession on earth.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov

EDIT: It is worth reading this article if you'd like some more details on this problem, from a fellow HN member who has dedicated a lot of time to thinking about it [2].

2. http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/how-the-other...

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