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Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

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Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#11

Post by mironathetin »

dschiptsov wrote: post #7

Oh, that's simple - you are 9-to-5 coder in a language which name begins with J or ends with #.

In what kind of mind distortion field are you living? I used to write code in Java and Jython for a big science project. Now I switched (avoid the word advanced) to a new big science project, where we use c, c++ and python.

This is a nightmare compared to everything we did before. I always liked to work in Java, but I never realized how powerful it is compared to the other stuff. We as a team are close to switching languages and starting from scratch, its so bad.

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#12

Post by wheaties »

gedrap wrote: post #9

I've found myself recently in that situation. That's what I am going to do about it: 1) I've been reading about startups and etc for ~2 years but have never did my own project ("but well there is XYZ which is perfect..."). At the moment, I have tabs open and looking for ideas for MVPs home page's design. The experience will be extremely valuable for the future. 2) I felt like I have something to say, but kept in my m…

You're still a student? The first year at a full time gig is going to feel a bit overwhelming. You'll have so much you have to catch up on, either technology wise, development practices with a larger team-wise, or just design-wise. This type of thing will sink in once you've been somewhere at least 2 years. Then you'll understand.

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#13

Post by Kiro »

rwmj wrote: post #3
rjprins wrote: post #2

For software developers, I feel this career thing works a bit differently. Going up the ladder means managing people or projects, but that is not necessarily more fun than writing code. I don't know where I see myself in 5 years, but it might actually be still just coding, no actual change in title or function. It's fun and challenging and I imagine it can be like that for a long time. Instead, a dead end job for me…

I read that first paragraph "Are you sitting at the same desk, working for the same manager, doing the same work, and earning the same salary as you are right now?" and thought, if I've still got all of this in 5 years time, I'm going to count myself very fortunate.

Same here. I feel sorry for people feeling like that but I can still relate since I've had soul destroying jobs before (non-programming ones).

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#14

Post by dustinupdyke »

t2d2 wrote: post #8

I'm in a job a bit like that, not much room for advancement. Not much of a challenge, but the pay is about double what most other places in my town are paying because it's a small location of a much bigger company. my family is here and we have no intention of leaving so for now it's a very comfy dead end job with good benefits etc.

Golden handcuffs.

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#15

Post by mathattack »

IvyMike wrote: post #10
rjprins wrote: post #2

For software developers, I feel this career thing works a bit differently. Going up the ladder means managing people or projects, but that is not necessarily more fun than writing code. I don't know where I see myself in 5 years, but it might actually be still just coding, no actual change in title or function. It's fun and challenging and I imagine it can be like that for a long time. Instead, a dead end job for me…

My previous company had a "technical ladder" for promotion of engineers without making them into managers. The general idea was that as you progressed through your technical career, you would be making more and more important technical decisions, measured by the impact to the company. A junior engineer would be making technical choices that affected one subsystem, a principal engineer might define a protocol between…

It's good that it's a real ladder. My first employer made a great show of having a dual career latter, but in reality there were very few people getting promoted on the technical side. The end of year performance reviews devolved into, "How many reports do they have?" This is ruinous. Software firms are (or at least should be) better at this.

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#16

Post by mironathetin »

dustinupdyke wrote: post #14
t2d2 wrote: post #8

I'm in a job a bit like that, not much room for advancement. Not much of a challenge, but the pay is about double what most other places in my town are paying because it's a small location of a much bigger company. my family is here and we have no intention of leaving so for now it's a very comfy dead end job with good benefits etc.

Golden handcuffs.

Yes I agree. My brother works in a bank and I think he complains since 25+ years. The only problem: he earns so much, where ever he'll go, it will be significantly less.

In an interview many years ago, an HR monkey told him, he'll just hire 3 young people for the money. One of them will certainly make it.

Golden handcuffs indeed. So the point with the missing raise is not necessarily a good point.

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#17

Post by vonmoltke »

mironathetin wrote: post #11
dschiptsov wrote: post #7

Oh, that's simple - you are 9-to-5 coder in a language which name begins with J or ends with #.

In what kind of mind distortion field are you living? I used to write code in Java and Jython for a big science project. Now I switched (avoid the word advanced) to a new big science project, where we use c, c++ and python. This is a nightmare compared to everything we did before. I always liked to work in Java, but I never realized how powerful it is compared to the other stuff. We as a team are close to switching l…

A significant portion of the ML/NLP world runs on Java. Its the worst language for the job, except for all the others.

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#18

Post by Roboprog »

mironathetin wrote: post #11
dschiptsov wrote: post #7

Oh, that's simple - you are 9-to-5 coder in a language which name begins with J or ends with #.

In what kind of mind distortion field are you living? I used to write code in Java and Jython for a big science project. Now I switched (avoid the word advanced) to a new big science project, where we use c, c++ and python. This is a nightmare compared to everything we did before. I always liked to work in Java, but I never realized how powerful it is compared to the other stuff. We as a team are close to switching l…

Of those 3 languages, I would blame C++ for laying out a minefield.

Considered FreePascal or Go, maybe? Pascal doesn't have a garbage collecter, but it's not "pointers everywhere" like C, and string values are reference counted. Having done a lot of C, I really miss function pointers when working in Java. (Pascal calls them procedural types instead of func ptrs)

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#19

Post by incision »

t2d2 wrote: post #8

I'm in a job a bit like that, not much room for advancement. Not much of a challenge, but the pay is about double what most other places in my town are paying because it's a small location of a much bigger company. my family is here and we have no intention of leaving so for now it's a very comfy dead end job with good benefits etc.

I'm in a similar situation, very good pay, comfortable, family. No room to advance in anything but pay, the job is rarely interesting with a very high level of frustration due to ever present politics.

I've basically given up on fighting the politics and instea focus on working on self-starting things that can't be derailed while studying for a career realignment.

My biggest fear is staying to so long that I atrophy and/or find myself molded by the culture such that I'm unhirable.

I'm hoping to move on without taking too dramatic a pay cut (<25%).

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#20

Post by gedrap »

wheaties wrote: post #12
gedrap wrote: post #9

I've found myself recently in that situation. That's what I am going to do about it: 1) I've been reading about startups and etc for ~2 years but have never did my own project ("but well there is XYZ which is perfect..."). At the moment, I have tabs open and looking for ideas for MVPs home page's design. The experience will be extremely valuable for the future. 2) I felt like I have something to say, but kept in my m…

You're still a student? The first year at a full time gig is going to feel a bit overwhelming. You'll have so much you have to catch up on, either technology wise, development practices with a larger team-wise, or just design-wise. This type of thing will sink in once you've been somewhere at least 2 years. Then you'll understand.

I know what you mean :)

For the last nearly 2 years I make living from doing part-time gigs. At one gig I was lucky to have a rather experienced manager and he taught me about OOP design, a bit on Agile practices and testing. That was an eye opener and put me on the right track for other gigs.

When my class mates talk 'oh man that agile thing is such shit, I just wanna write some code' I tried to convince them at first, now I just smile :)

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