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Career Advice in 2025

lethain.com

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Re: Career Advice in 2025

#141

Post by yolovoe »

margalabargala wrote: post #36
yolovoe wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They really don’t require you to know the latest frameworks, databases, Kubernetes, etc The latest "framework, databases" are constantly changing. Being good at leetcode and system design is a better signal (ofcourse, not perfect) than knowing specific tools. Being good at system design implies you are aware of tradeoffs across various systems, and that coupled with willingness to grind means you can at pick up new…

System design yes, leetcode no. Leetcode is only a useful problem to ask if the candidate has not encountered that problem before and has not practiced leetcode. Otherwise it is exactly as good a signal as knowing some arbitrary framework or database.

Leetcode shows candidates willingness to grind.

Re: Career Advice in 2025

#142

Post by stogot »

kunley wrote: post #84
zeckalpha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's describing the current market, not speaking about how the market should be.

No one knows what the "current market" thing really is, people are making wild guesses looking at the hands of other people who also make wild guesses.

Is it statistically possible that one guess will approximate reality?

Re: Career Advice in 2025

#143

Post by stogot »

acheron wrote: post #123
greymalik wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An excerpt of the author’s bio: > I’m a software engineering leader and writer, currently serving as Carta’s CTO. I’ve worked at Calm, Stripe, Uber, Digg, a few other places, and cofounded a defunct iOS gaming startup

Is this supposed to be an endorsement or an indictment?

Why would it be an indictment?

Re: Career Advice in 2025

#144

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Aeolun wrote: post #89
Zee2 wrote: post #6

The statement >The current market doesn’t value those skills particularly highly, but instead prioritizes a different set of skills: working in the details, pushing pace, and navigating the technology transition to foundational models / LLMs. depends on the assumption that technology must "transition" to "foundational models / LLMs". The author doesn't seem to interrogate this assumption. In fact, most of the career…

> The author doesn't seem to interrogate this assumption. Neither do my senior leaders, so it might as well be true.

Only in the short term. In the medium to long term, false assumptions will kill a company. As an employee, you would be better off recognizing it before the crunch hits.

Re: Career Advice in 2025

#145

Post by stogot »

leetrout wrote: post #5
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #4

I started my own business last year that has happened to go quite well. As I’ve watched the software industry over the last year, all I can think is… “damn, what lucky timing.”

I keep looking for what you claim to be doing. I feel like reality continues to smack me in the face with “no one cares about quality”. I have tried big enterprises. I have tried 8 startups in 18 years. I watch the leaders / founders make the same mistakes over and over. Anyway - your profile resonates with me. Would love to grab a virtual coffee if you are up for it.

Could you share the mistakes they are making repeatedly?

Re: Career Advice in 2025

#146

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tibbar wrote: post #7

Some more free advice, in no particular order: * Try to get at least one job offer every year, even if you don't accept it. * Look at the requirements for your dream job and figure out what you need to learn to qualify. * Pick one skill and get very good at it. Spend an hour a day on it for a year. * Steer away from skills like web development that are clearly getting eaten by LLMs. * Look for work in major U.S. tech…

Ask yourself: "What do I need to learn now for the next five years of my career?" Learn that.

Five years from now, ask yourself the same question.

Re: Career Advice in 2025

#147

Post by Workaccount2 »

bayarearefugee wrote: post #22
__loam wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about what you're asking when you tell these people to interrogate the assumption that LLM based AIs are going to be the dominant technology going forward. Hundreds of billions, the growth of the technology industry, the entire US stock market, and the global economy has been wagered on this technology. Imagine the turmoil when those in power realize the reality of what they're betting the farm on.

The next time I am angrily typing to claude 3.7 in all caps because he overengineered a bunch of code I didn't even ask him to write in the first place, I'll be sure to let him know his continued failures are risking the entire world economy.

I think SWE's have a serious blind spot here. I use the (rough) analogy of bowling to help illustrate this.

People need to knock over pins in the bowling lane. SWE's are the pro bowlers who can (usually) throw pretty cleans shots to knock over pins. Now bumpers have been invented (LLMs) and regular folks who only have the faintest idea of how to roll a ball are knocking over pins. To the pro's these bumpers are all manner of bad and useless. To the laymen, they are an absolute revolution.

I can tell you, with a straight face, the my (non-tech) company has already forgone hiring a pro bowler in at least four instances now because of these bumpers. Just last week we skipped on a $1k/mo CAD SaaS because Claude was able to build the needed narrow-scope tooling in 10 minutes.

I'm sure a pro could come in and make that python program 3x as fast and use 60% less memory. But the fact of the matter is that we paid Anthropic $20, and spent 10 minutes to get a working niche manufacturing file interpreter/editor/converter.

LLM's are finally bridging the language barrier between computers and humans. Right now the tech exists to make this even more widespread, it's just a matter of time before someone creates a tech-illiterate IDE that users can paste AI generated code into and functioning programs come out the other side. No need to ever even see a terminal or command line. I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't already in the works.

"Hey Google, create an app that allows me to take a picture of a house plant, and then allows me to verbally make entries into a diary about that plant" Sure thing! Give me 3 minutes and the app will be on your homescreen and shareable .apk in your documents folder! I'll also cancel the $9.99/mo app that does the same thing for you. (ok probably not this part but you get the idea.)

Re: Career Advice in 2025

#148

Post by Jaygles »

dingnuts wrote: post #130
randomNumber7 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same holds true for software developers imo. If you can't figure out how to use LLMs to improve efficiency, your likely a dinosaur of the past soon (unless you work on somethink __very__ specific where LLMs dont help much).

I can barely think of any real application where they would help. I have a weekend project that's already too much context -- I asked Claude to change some Tailwind styles for me and it just shat up the whole file. and that was a toy! even if allowed, how is Claude going to help my at work where a single file in a large project, one of many, is tens of thousands of lines long? guess I'm a dinosaur

The best use I've gotten out of LLMs is as an autocomplete. I use Cursor at work, and it's pretty good at consistently calculating the next 10-20 characters I want to type out. Anything longer, save for some situations where the changes I'm making are super repetitive, the quality dives off a cliff.

I've yet to coax out good/working code of significant complexity from these models without putting an amount of effort into prompting that would be greater than just working it through myself without any LLM assistance.

The use I do get out of Cursor can save a lot of time for me, so I do think it's a productivity boost as is.

Re: Career Advice in 2025

#149

Post by thor_molecules »

> Many people who first entered senior roles in 2010-2020 are finding current roles a lot less fun.

This resonates with me.

I find that the current crop of new tech (AI) produces a lot of cognitive dissonance for me in my day-to-day work.

Most initiatives/projects/whatever around AI seems to be of the "digging your own grave" variety - making tools to replace software engineers.

Definitely not fun.

Re: Career Advice in 2025

#150

Post by kyleee »

apwell23 wrote: post #117
greymalik wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An excerpt of the author’s bio: > I’m a software engineering leader and writer, currently serving as Carta’s CTO. I’ve worked at Calm, Stripe, Uber, Digg, a few other places, and cofounded a defunct iOS gaming startup

oh look another out of touch 'leader' . So sick of these ppl. His career advice should be how to get your work done while appeasing "leaders" like him at work. my company now has mandate that 'all coding work must be done by AI' and only manually if its not possible. They bought licenses to all AI coding tools. Which would've been great if these things actually work. I've never felt more like a stupid cog in my whole…

How are they checking if you are using AI enough?
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