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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?

#311

Post by kfcm »

MrDom wrote: post #201
shanemhansen wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lea…

Generally true. But I spend some time now and then in a small/mid-sized Midwestern city where going through a recruiter is a requirement. A very high percentage of the businesses are in the same economic sector, and they use the recruiters as the first line of HR, in order to keep their hands as legally "clean" as possible.

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

#312

Post by logfromblammo »

brational wrote: post #283
logfromblammo wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending in the laws of your locale, an employer may be required to pay for an employee's vacation balance. PTO was formulated primarily to evade this restriction and to provide the means to reduce the company's accounting liabilities. While it was sold to you on the basis of flexibility, it really is a significant reduction in your benefits. Think about how salary works. If you work as an exempt salaried employee e…

I see. I was previously at a company with PTO and when I left I was paid the balance. At my new company I have both, but unless I use sick time basically as '2nd vacation pool' (potential ethical issues etc) I actually end up with less time off.

Your company was not legally obligated to pay you the PTO balance. It may be written in to the company handbook that they will, provided that you give sufficient notice, but they did not have to pay. Disposition of PTO is not covered by the same laws as vacation or sick leave benefits, so the company can basically do whatever it wants with it. If it were a mass layoff rather than one guy leaving, they wouldn't pay. In that case, they wouldn't have to worry about the remaining employees complaining or using their PTO as they accumulate it, rather than risk leaving value on the table.

As a corollary, if you have PTO and intend to leave a company, use it up before giving notice.

And we haven't even touched on other issues. People with PTO may be less likely to stay home when they are sick, because it reduces the amount of planned leave they can take. This results in more contagion in the workforce.

There are very good reasons for paid vacation and paid sick leave to be different classes of benefit. But in this case, it is simply a coal miner's canary. A company transitioning to PTO is reducing their labor costs by reducing the benefits of their productive employees. Look carefully to determine whether any effort has been made to reduce overhead. PTO by itself is not an unambiguous signal. If execs are still giving themselves bonuses while your earned leave becomes PTO, they probably just reassigned the value of your benefit to themselves, and it's time to look for a new employer before they come up with another bright idea, like stack ranking.

This criticism also applies to some extent to "we don't worry about leave" companies. I haven't ever worked for one, so I can't say for certain.

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

#313

Post by seestheday »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #106
michaelochurch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical about dual-track organizations (read my other post in this thread, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8481680 ). I agree that it's a good idea, but they tend to make it astronomically harder to be a Director-equivalent engineer than a Director. Ultimately, the management ladder is easier to scale and therefore "better", insofar as you can be a Director and still code (if you want). I look at it…

The tech world is going flat, which has a lot to do with the experiences of your former employer. In this new (but not really that new) model, the hierarchy is flatter, people managers are fewer and have lots of reports, while experienced/skilled individual contributors (ICs) are expected to provide more of the leadership missing from the fewer managers (who are better at providing that anyways). When each manager ha…

Look at how many distinguished engineers, or other very high level individual contributors who have actual real power there are compared to Directors and VP's who manage large groups of people.

The individual contributor path is exponentially more difficult to climb. I argue that you both have to win the lottery with the right projects and get in early at a company, and have all of the necessary skills.

I believe it is a story that is told to individual contributors by people with real power to keep them motivated.

The only theory that I've heard of where a flat org could be actually beneficial to individual contributors is the parents theory on open allocation. Otherwise it's just management kicking out the ladder once they've climbed it.

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

#314

Post by seestheday »

exelius wrote: post #110
goatforce5 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I know someone who used to work in IT for a bank whose yearly bonus was bigger than my (decent) wage as a programmer at a startup during the Dotcom 1.0 boom. I guess they had to trickle-down some bonuses to the IT guys so they didn't get jealous when the traders were getting their 6 or 7 figure bonuses at the end of the year. He worked in networking. I guess it was one of the largest private networks in the worl…

Yeah, banks are the epitome of just throwing money all over the place. You're right though; core systems work at banks is often super-interesting because the total amount they spend on IT systems in a year is so small compared to the amount of business that they do, they go all-out. I'm speaking more of the peripheral IT functions - the one-off business apps and reporting solutions that departments within banks will…

Big investment banks pay well. Big consumer banks, not so much, at least in Canada. I was shocked at how low some of the laughable salary offers I received were.

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

#315

Post by seestheday »

mattfrommars wrote: post #264
bglazer wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm mostly self-trained. That's probably a part of the problem. The utterly broken way that my team decided to build the reports probably doesn't help either. Sorry, no suggestions for books. Do you know if you'll be working with Crystal Reports? Or directly with the Business Objects API? Either way they're both very, very poorly designed and implemented. Good luck I hope you're getting paid well.

How long will it take to become proficient enough in SAP Business Objects which can get you hired? If entirely self taught

Honestly, it wouldn't take you long to get the skills if you could get access and were a decent programmer already. One of the problems with these sorts of systems though is that it's not like they're open source and easily available outside of the enterprise.

Want to set up a testing instance and just play around or build something? They're either not available or horribly crippled. If you can get into a company that is doing it already and you can get access, you will have an easy time learning it (but it's not exactly fun).

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

#316

Post by collyw »

frozenport wrote: post #302
unoti wrote: post #236

I'm 46, I programmed a computer for the first time when I was 10, back when Pong was starting to wane and the Atari 2600 was starting to get big. I've been programming continuously since then for 36 years. It's been challenging me to stay with it that long, and most people I've known have dropped out for these reasons: 1.) Developers get comfortable with a given technology, and eventually stop learning. And the longe…

I'm confused by your reluctance to move up the corporate ladder. Why do you want to do the grunt work?

I have been promised a promotion. So far it means attending far more meetings, and never getting much code written. I much preferred doing the "grunt work".

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

#317

Post by kfcm »

dba7dba wrote: post #300
MrDom wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lea…

"I have never once had a recruiter lead actually result in a job offer." I once had a recruiter (he had my resume) contact me for a Novell admin position. And there was nothing related to Novell on my resume. Then I knew not to waste time with 'recruiters'.

I've landed two excellent positions through outside (not in-house) recruiters. Though the first was 20 years ago; the last, 14. They were respectful, didn't waste my time or the company's, knowledgeable, and selected people based upon experience or qualified reference (the first position, they contacted the head of a user group who knew me well and referred me; then experience counted).

The experience I've had with outside recruiters in the past 10 years is atrocious, though. All they're looking for is warm bodies to toss at a company, and hope one of them sticks. No or limited experience--they still want to present you...after modifying the resume you've sent them in Word.

Today's outside recruiters are inexperienced in and ignorant of the field ("Your last job was a fitness trainer??"), and borderline unethical.

I'm still surprised so many of them are in business.

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

#318

Post by kfcm »

From 1990 until 2006, almost every one of my colleagues/co-workers (dev, infrastructure, management) was at least 10-15 years older than me. Some were my age. Rarely was anyone younger.

When I emerged from a deep stint with a company (2000-06), the age distribution had shifted dramatically to people in their 20s. Not only were many of the old timers gone, I was finding myself to be the old timer.

What had happened to all my old timers? Many didn't survive the dot-com bust or recession of 01-02. They either outright retired or moved to different careers; some survived, but moved on anyway. Some had died.

Those that remained in technology went three different routes. Management, consulting, found a place in a company they like and haven't budged.

Personally, I started my own consulting business which I enjoy. Although nearing 50, I do feel some envy for the guys who've found a nice small/mid-sized company to settle down in. They may not be as well compensated, but they are often "IT Director/VP" (where IT is 3-8 guys), are still hands-on, get to have fun, and not have as much stress.

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

#319

Post by [deleted] »

Wintamute wrote: post #19

I'd say it's an interplay between the following issues, 1 - Writing code is a young man's game. Older devs get one too many platform/language iterations behind the curve so can't apply for as many jobs - obviously not true for everyone, but could account for something 2 - Older devs are tempted into management, and so write emails for a living instead of code 3 - Older devs may have more commitments outside of work,…

[deleted]

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

#320

Post by Wintamute »

protonfish wrote: post #37
Wintamute wrote: post #19

I'd say it's an interplay between the following issues, 1 - Writing code is a young man's game. Older devs get one too many platform/language iterations behind the curve so can't apply for as many jobs - obviously not true for everyone, but could account for something 2 - Older devs are tempted into management, and so write emails for a living instead of code 3 - Older devs may have more commitments outside of work,…

2 - 4 agree with my experience, but you could not be more wrong about #1. The developers that I see with problems adapting to new developments tools and paradigms are younger people who only know 1 framework. Us old timers who are solid in the basics can pick up a new language fast and easy.

I did qualify #1 with "obviously not true for everyone, but could account for something". And I speak from some experience too. I'm 34 and have lived through the platform I was invested in disappearing almost over night and having to quickly get up to speed on some new platforms and languages over the course of about 6 months while I supported myself. It was quite exciting, but also quite stressful and tiring. If I was faced with the same event again I think I might opt for defaulting to a more managerial position rather than try to become expert in a new area again. Everyone's different of course, but I didn't make the point lightly or naively.
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