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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?

#251

Post by ska »

danielweber wrote: post #168
ska wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this stated this as another occurrence of the 80/20 rule, which close enough to 75/25. It doesn't really have anything to do with after a certain age, either. Some percentage %x of your 5 year experience programmers haven't really moved much past their first year at all. To be fair, I think of it really as a series of plateaus, not a hard and fast rule. People get stuck at a level of professional developmen…

Lots of employers want to pigeonhole you in the "same year of experience, 30 times" group. You can sometimes tell this during the interview; one warning sign is that they want someone with their exact technology stack experience they are using right now. But I've always thought a team of generalists beats a team of specialists, which is swimming against the current tide.

I don't think this is as simple as specialization vs. generalization.

Considering nearly any situation your team encounters, junior people, experienced people, and very senior people are likely to take different lessons for it, because they have different perspectives on what happened and what could have/should have happened.

To me, a "same year of experience, 30 times" person is someone who runs into similar situations over and over, but fails to grow in how they understand and react to them. This is true of architectural issues, interpersonal issues, schedule management issues, ... everything really.

Technology stack isn't so important here. If anything I expect the experienced people to pick up a new stack faster, if they've done this before, all else being equal.

I'd expect insight and ideas from a 20+ year developer I'd never dream of asking a junior (< 5 years), and if you don't get them - you're probably looking at someone who has repeated many of those 20 years.

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

#252

Post by vonmoltke »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #222
vonmoltke wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Quit overthinking it an go for coffee already! They know people; they hear about projects you don't; pick their brains. They will be glad to help, because they obviously are NOT interested in leaving their current job so you're no competition.

That might work if my former employer was not a defense contractor. Unfortunately, I left in large part because my co-workers seemed to have little clue as to what was going on outside their own little bubble and little interest in correcting that.

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

#253

Post by FD3SA »

simplemath wrote: post #232
FD3SA wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, prog…

How did you get "other programmers" as the villain in Aleynikov's disgusting tale? Just wondering.

Actually in his case, his worst enemy was himself. He did not accurately value himself within the organization either politically or economically [1]. He thus paid the price.

The programmer types were different from the trader types. The trader types were far more alive to the bigger picture, to their context. They knew their worth in the marketplace down to the last penny. They understood the connection between what they did and how much money was made , and they were good at exaggerating the importance of the link. Serge wasn’t like that. He was a little-picture person, a narrow problem solver. “I think he didn’t know his own value,” says the recruiter. [2]

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7577872

2. http://cryptome.org/2014/04/goldman-sachs-code-thief.htm

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

#254

Post by githulhu »

My anecdata: a former colleague of mine, over 50, just left his enterprise IT development job to make a ton more money with a Salesforce consulting firm. He didn't go to Stanford, he never studied computer science, he didn't start coding until he was in his 30s, and he's only been developing Salesforce for maybe 2 years. He also doesn't have the benefit of a large network or a reputation that preceeds him, but he tells me that he's still getting offers even a week after he accepted his new job. So I'm not sure the picture is so bleak - as long as you're good and you put in a minimum amount of time learning a relevant technology.

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

#255

Post by vonmoltke »

MrDom wrote: post #224
vonmoltke wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Fair enough. You could go to meetups, go to conferences, engage other devs on social media. Send thoughtful emails to people who know people. Ramit Sethi has a couple of blog posts showing email scripts for getting busy people to say yes to coffee[1][2]. A longer term alternative is to make cool things and tell people about them. Write some open source or a side project and post it to HN. Lather, rinse, repeat until…

That is what I am working on, and it is clearly on me that I have not accomplished anything along those lines yet. I have made a few good contacts this way, but nothing has panned out from it.

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

#256

Post by brandonmenc »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #177
hcho wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am finding a bit difficult to understand the "I am not good at networking" angle. Assuming a job change every 3 years, and 2 people to vouch for you at each, one would have a 10 people "marketing team" after 15 years. I am not talking about schmoozing with higher ups here; just impressing peers with the quality of work. Am I missing something?

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)

Hanging out with salespeople is the best way to learn how to network.

Something you notice immediately is that they never feel like they're being used when someone wants to "meet for coffee" as transparent cover for getting something out of them.

They realize that someday they'll need their back scratched, and there's always the possibility that they'll get something (a tip, a lead, etc.) out of an unexpected meeting.

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

#257

Post by vonmoltke »

MrDom wrote: post #226
vonmoltke wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, if you were any good an shining in an interview, you wouldn't need the recruiter in the first place. If you need the recruiter in order to get the interview in the first place, it doesn't matter how well you shine in the interview.

Yet more catch-22. Just out of curiosity, have you had success using recruiters to find jobs?

I have gotten a few potentially good leads from third-party, but the vast majority don't seem to even read my resume. In-house recruiters generally go better, though Google's seem to misread my experience often and approach me for roles I am not really qualified for.

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

#258

Post by [deleted] »

matwood wrote: post #55
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…

one year's experience 30 times, not 30 years experience. This exactly and it happens at all ages. I interviewed someone not long ago who had 5 years experience. It turned out they learned their job in 3-6 mos. and just repeated that same job for 5 years. I was amazed how little else they knew.

[deleted]

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

#260

Post by scribu »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #220
zeratul wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think no one is like Ed. There maybe be 25% of programmers that have a long standing experience, even with the new tools, but they don't share wisdom like Ed does. Ed why can't you have your own company? Why can't you be the one who is hiring or at least teach others how to hire. I bet you can smell a talent from 1000 miles away - even if someone did not finish a good school; the world of software engineering would…

I'm like Ed! Except I do engines, libraries, network and backend code, including embedded stuff. But I don't have a resume; don't apply for jobs; don't need to look for work because it looks for me. I've owned a company but its lonely, so now I earn less but work as a peer in somebody else's company.

Upvoted because I never heard anyone until now say that owning a company is lonely. Food for thought...
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