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Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

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Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#111

Post by hirundo »

noad wrote: post #21

I used to get called a 10x developer, I was also called a rockstar and a ninja and a 100x dev and every other compliment that was hip. Then I hit 30. That type of talk stopped. Then I hit 40. Now I will not be considered for any entry level, mid level, or senior level software dev job anywhere in the United States, despite being very desperate and willing to relocate for anything. Doesn't matter. Too old. I'm suppose…

I got a remote coding job at an outfit advertising for "young developers". I just severely abbreviated my resume and didn't mention my age until well after I was hired. (The benefits paperwork went through a third party.) It's now years later and they still haven't seen my grey beard, which doesn't matter any more.

And I really like working remotely. If I lose this job for whatever reason that's Plan A, not the backup.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#112

Post by wonderwonder »

ScottFree wrote: post #95
ptero wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience being under 40 is not a prerequisite for being hired in software. A suggestion: two of the biggest turnoffs that I personally see and would work hard to avoid (not saying you have either of those): 1. Sounding desperate. Do not cast a very wide net at one company -- you can apply to mid level and principal level positions at different companies, but do not blanket all job postings at one company. Cho…

> Sounding desperate. Why is that a negative signal? The company has the opportunity to get top talent temporarily down on his/her luck for a reduced rate.

Unfortunately in all parts of life confidence sells. If he gets an interview and gives off the signal that he will take anything, odds are they will pass figuring there is a reason he will do so. Same concept unfortunately goes for looks a lot of the time. If you walk into an interview not well put together its going to work against you. This can be mitigated by youth but when you get older you no longer have this luxury. I'm early 40's and I make sure that a couple months before I start thinking about changing jobs I up my workouts, change my diet etc to appear in shape and more energetic. It has zero reflection of my true abilities but people are judged by their looks and unfortunately older people are double so.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#113

Post by golergka »

ScottFree wrote: post #95
ptero wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience being under 40 is not a prerequisite for being hired in software. A suggestion: two of the biggest turnoffs that I personally see and would work hard to avoid (not saying you have either of those): 1. Sounding desperate. Do not cast a very wide net at one company -- you can apply to mid level and principal level positions at different companies, but do not blanket all job postings at one company. Cho…

> Sounding desperate. Why is that a negative signal? The company has the opportunity to get top talent temporarily down on his/her luck for a reduced rate.

Becuase top talent usually don't get desperate. It's a bad way to judge someone, of course, but there aren't many good ways, and when hiring, you want to play it safe: not hiring a good candidate is way better than hiring someone who turns out to be bad. So, if you notice something that looks like it might have been a red flag, you take notice.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#114

Post by aazaa »

> And what I have found is that most – say, 90%, of what I learn at one job is completely useless for the next one.

Then the problem isn't with what's being learned. The problem is that the author lacks a framework for generalizing and internalizing the lessons learned.

Letting 90% of lessons learned on the job go to waste later in life is going to lead to a very difficult career path.

Later...

> Compounding is a pretty important concept that shows up in compound interest, in Moore’s Law, all over the place. It’s about virtuous cycles. And so in the limited flexible time that I have, I think the rule of thumb is to focus on things that could trigger a virtuous cycle.

In other words, focus on activities that can capture more value from the 90% of wasted lessons.

Writing, both publicly and privately, is an excellent way to do that. It seems the author may have an inkling but isn't saying it. Given there are only two posts on the blog, this could be the author's attempt to test the idea.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#115

Post by wikwocket »

ScottFree wrote: post #95
ptero wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience being under 40 is not a prerequisite for being hired in software. A suggestion: two of the biggest turnoffs that I personally see and would work hard to avoid (not saying you have either of those): 1. Sounding desperate. Do not cast a very wide net at one company -- you can apply to mid level and principal level positions at different companies, but do not blanket all job postings at one company. Cho…

> Sounding desperate. Why is that a negative signal? The company has the opportunity to get top talent temporarily down on his/her luck for a reduced rate.

Would you want to date someone who seemed desperate to get into a relationship? Who seemed like they were having trouble getting a relationship at all, let alone a good healthy one? Same principle.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#116

Post by skywhopper »

I'm somewhat perturbed that the entirety of the "DevOps" section is advice to get an SRE on your team because an SRE's job is to "be online after hours".

That's an incredibly dismissive and reductive perspective on the expertise and insight that an SRE (or any ops staff) could bring to a project, and it sounds like this person--or maybe their entire team--is doing a really bad job of owning their own junk.

I'll make a note to be extra wary of looking into any SRE jobs at Amazon if this is how they treat those positions.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#117

Post by MattGaiser »

klohto wrote: post #40
cellularmitosis wrote: post #23

"To replace out MediaWiki with a Java-based alternative (XWiki) ended up taking a total fo 24 dev-years over 4+ calendar years for the team, not counting the interruptions to pretty much every other team at Amazon as their pages were getting constantly migrated and un-migrated" I would love to hear more about this. I'm guessing that's a cost of at least $4M? How was this approved? How did they allow it to continue fo…

I don't understand why are corporations obsessed with decommissioning wikis. When I was at Red Hat, they tried to decommission local country wiki in favor of their company-wide wiki (Mojo, absolute shit by the way). They tried for about 2 years, then finally somebody said "what the fuck are we doing" and the migration was stopped. I believe the banner "Decommissioning soon" still hangs there.

Usually, someone saw a cool feature they wanted and everything moved to that. So often the main purpose of storing information gets lost to flashy new graphics.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#118

Post by [deleted] »

kumarvvr wrote: post #63
deweller wrote: post #44

> PHP is banned at Amazon due to security reasons, but its successor, Hack, runs a lot of.. Just to be clear, Hack is not PHP's successor. Hack is a fork of PHP developed by Facebook. Hack will not overtake PHP any time soon. PHP has had security issues in the past. Sure you can do stupid things with it if you want, but modern PHP is security conscious out of the box. Frameworks like Laravel make great default choice…

A small question. Is PHP still a preferred platform for any sort of complex web development? I have never even looked at the php site or docs, but I am curious. In this day and age, is there a subset of Apps that PHP is suited for?

[deleted]

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#120

Post by hoorayimhelping »

ScottFree wrote: post #95
ptero wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience being under 40 is not a prerequisite for being hired in software. A suggestion: two of the biggest turnoffs that I personally see and would work hard to avoid (not saying you have either of those): 1. Sounding desperate. Do not cast a very wide net at one company -- you can apply to mid level and principal level positions at different companies, but do not blanket all job postings at one company. Cho…

> Sounding desperate. Why is that a negative signal? The company has the opportunity to get top talent temporarily down on his/her luck for a reduced rate.

Confidence and desperation hardly ever align. Confident people who plan don't get desperate. Desperate people don't make good decisions. People who let themselves reach levels of desperation are either extremely unlucky (unlikely, but not someone you want on your team regardless) or chronically make bad decisions. At the worst, they're a person who chronically makes bad decisions and thinks they're unlucky.

Standard: not saying it's fair or endorsing this, explaining how people think and feel about it.

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