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Web Development as a career – the realities

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Re: Web Development as a career – the realities

#61

Post by ssully »

bsdpython wrote: post #26
thaumasiotes wrote: post #11

> Some people love to cook in their spare time. Would these people be as enthusiastic about cooking if they were doing it for 40+ hours a week every week and there was a superior telling them what and how to cook? > The honest answer for most people is no! I find this weird. I advertised for calculator program requests in high school because I wanted someone to tell me what to code. (There were no takers. One guy wan…

You can literally work on software for any industry, company or government in the world. I would think you would have some sort of preference. At the least you should be interested enough in the place your are interviewing at to find out what they do and and then tell them you are interested in working on that. Otherwise you just come off as a mercenary or desperate.

The thing is some people really don't care what they work on. As long as the pay is good and they are getting to program(or whatever other task they enjoy doing), the actual application doesn't matter.

Re: Web Development as a career – the realities

#62

Post by WalterSear »

aswanson wrote: post #60
gaius wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 years! A career these days is 40-45 years. If you are "senior" in only 5 then where do you expect to go from there? 20 years experience, on a wide range of technologies, in a variety of roles, then we'll talk senior. Until then calling yourself "senior" just invites people not to take you seriously.

20 years in this industry invites people to treat you as a fossil and not even hire. Technology moves too fast, nobody cares what you did in 1995 anywhere near as much as what you did in 2013.

I'm a somewhat older programmer, and fwiw, I've met as many genuinely unhireable fossils as I've heard this complaint.

I've heard it from people who've been programming for 30+ years, whose idea of code versioning is the 'Save As' button. I've heard it from people whose entry to technology development was coding websites in HTML 1.0, who've learned very little else since.

Many people, at least from the previous generations of programmers, either don't appreciate or aren't able to manage the lifelong learning required by this profession.

Re: Web Development as a career – the realities

#63

Post by marvin »

tbrownaw wrote: post #48
marvin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only ageist. As long as developers keep accepting that they have to spend 15 hours a month on their own dime just to keep up, it's outright exploitative. Developers are generally expected to keep current in the breakneck technology rat race with no support from their employing organization. This could (maybe) be considered reasonable if technology moved more slowly, but not the way the world of computer soft…

As long as developers keep accepting that they have to spend 15 hours a month on their own dime just to keep up, it's outright exploitative. Why? How is this any different from working an extra... 4 hours a week? It sounds like long hours are fairly common, and we tend to be on salary and not get paid extra for that either.

I think the US system of salaried employees and no overtime restrictions (or even pay) encourages exploitation in the first place, so that is my background for making this statement. I live and work in Europe, and I will never work for any US-based company that does not place firm restrictions on how overtime is managed. Most US companies simply have the wrong incentives in place.

But yes, having the legal right to take 4 hours a week out of your schedule to stay up-to-date would go a long way towards alleviating the problem.

Re: Web Development as a career – the realities

#65

Post by bbody »

michaelchisari wrote: post #57
philipn wrote: post #31

I like pretty much everything someone takes the time to write about development, but this rubbed me the wrong way. I'm not sure what it is exactly the author is trying to express here: that engineers need to stay current on new, hot technologies? Everyone knows that. But then he seems to deride people who, based on his interviewing, haven't used a in production / in a new project. You can't have it both ways. You nee…

If you immediately write someone off because they work with technologies you don't work with[1] then you're doing it wrong. I've had a hell of a time interviewing for just this reason. For the first set of interviews, I was emphasizing my experience with patterns as opposed to technologies . That didn't work. I was routinely dismissed, despite decades of industry experience. When I decided to grind through the latest…

The obsession with experience in Technology X always reminds me of the story recruiter who turned down someone for not having 10+ years of Rails experience (http://www.strategic-options.com/insight/you-cant-have-more-...).

Re: Web Development as a career – the realities

#66

Post by graycat »

My take is different:

For "Web development as a career", the OP seems mostly to mean as an employee. Then I'd say, go down that road if you have to, but ASAP learn the business side, get your own software development environment (likely you already have it) in your own room at home, and then just be a sole proprietor in business much as a guy who owns and runs, say, a pizza shop, is a CPA, mows grass and plows snow, is a plumber or electrician, a car repair guy, an auto body guy, etc.

Then you get some big advantages:

(1) You are the one who gets the revenue and, thus, keeps the earnings.

(2) Likely for each dollar of revenue, you have lower overhead than any employer and, thus, get more money. In particular, you get to cut out the fraction of the revenue going to the owners, managers, marketing guys, lawyers, HR, landlords, business insurance agencies, etc.

(3) You have some tax advantages, often well known to sole proprietors.

(4) For your technical qualifications, you only have to learn and use what you actually need and find useful. So, you don't have to play buzz word ice hockey with some HR clown who doesn't know fixed from float but has a checklist of C++, Python, Ruby, MongoDB, Jason, HTML5, ....

Point (4) is crucial: Likely your customers just want their Web site developed, running, and occasionally revised. Okay, that's what you need to be able to do. But, you get to select the framework, languages, libraries, development environment, etc. If you need a new tool, then, sure get, learn, and use it. But you don't have to spend a lot of time learning, say, HTML5 or SVG if you don't need to use them yet.

"The business of America is business", and in practice from crossroads up to the largest cities a lot of sole proprietor small businesses.

Re: Web Development as a career – the realities

#67

Post by gaius »

aswanson wrote: post #60
gaius wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 years! A career these days is 40-45 years. If you are "senior" in only 5 then where do you expect to go from there? 20 years experience, on a wide range of technologies, in a variety of roles, then we'll talk senior. Until then calling yourself "senior" just invites people not to take you seriously.

20 years in this industry invites people to treat you as a fossil and not even hire. Technology moves too fast, nobody cares what you did in 1995 anywhere near as much as what you did in 2013.

As I said on another thread, 2010's MongoDB is just 1970's MUMPS. Once you have been through a few cycles, you see that actually technology comes round and round again. Centralize, distribute, centralize again, just one repeating pattern. Thick clients, thin clients, thick again. Compile, interpret, compile again. Just the buzzwords and the syntax changes.

Re: Web Development as a career – the realities

#68

Post by gaius »

UK-AL wrote: post #17

This is why development is ageist. Keeping programming skills up to date after work, and spending hours after work trying different languages and libraries is fine when your young. Its not so fine, when you have kids and a wife to look after. Probably have about an hour to myself everyday.

It's pointless too. Every new language that comes out, everyone reinvents the wheel in it. You see it here on HN, on the front page[1] every day now rewritten in and everyone cheers, but is this program doing anything that it didn't do before? Is it faster, better, more reliable? Generally no, and this happens in the workplace too, just reinventing the wheel over and over and over again.

We could have stuck with C, and concentrated on developing new things, but the programming community is like Hollywood remaking the same film over and over with different stars.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9203045 [2]

[2] That was easy to find...

Re: Web Development as a career – the realities

#69

Post by aswanson »

gaius wrote: post #67
aswanson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years in this industry invites people to treat you as a fossil and not even hire. Technology moves too fast, nobody cares what you did in 1995 anywhere near as much as what you did in 2013.

As I said on another thread, 2010's MongoDB is just 1970's MUMPS. Once you have been through a few cycles, you see that actually technology comes round and round again. Centralize, distribute, centralize again, just one repeating pattern. Thick clients, thin clients, thick again. Compile, interpret, compile again. Just the buzzwords and the syntax changes.

All that is probably true, but what we are discussing here is perceived value to an employer. Its rather obvious in software that perceived value does not accrue with experience as it does in fields like law or medicine. Even though data shows doctors get worse over time, a 25 year veteran is held in much higher regard than a 5 year practicioner. In software circles, you are far more likely to be looked at as old and out of date, regardless of the skills you have amassed.

Re: Web Development as a career – the realities

#70

Post by gaius »

marvin wrote: post #27
UK-AL wrote: post #17

This is why development is ageist. Keeping programming skills up to date after work, and spending hours after work trying different languages and libraries is fine when your young. Its not so fine, when you have kids and a wife to look after. Probably have about an hour to myself everyday.

It's not only ageist. As long as developers keep accepting that they have to spend 15 hours a month on their own dime just to keep up, it's outright exploitative. Developers are generally expected to keep current in the breakneck technology rat race with no support from their employing organization. This could (maybe) be considered reasonable if technology moved more slowly, but not the way the world of computer soft…

If you've done C++ or DB2 or something for 5 years or 10 years or 20 years you will have no trouble finding the next gig. Because these skills genuinely do take time to develop, and people with the tenacity to do it are rare.
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