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The surreal experience of my first developer job

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Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#171

Post by conjectures »

mmarq wrote: post #158
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by Europe you mean only the super expensive cities like Paris, Amsterdam or Munich, then yeah salaries maybe have increased, but to what good when property price increases have far outpaces whatever salary increases the industry may have seen. And most who stayed at one job haven't gotten any significant salary increases unless they job hopped often which brings it's own problems later in ones career. Edit: Had a…

A senior dev in London makes 60-80K, so it’s almost the same without cost of life adjustments. Outside of London, economy-wise, you are likely to find places more similar to eastern Europe than to Bavaria. 80K€ in Munich is a good salary, considering that you don’t have to pay for private healthcare (in the UK you have to), education is free (in the UK it costs a fortune, either in private school fees or in housing p…

> A senior dev in London makes 60-80K

This is just not true. Senior dev at non FAANG could well add 50% to those numbers.

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#172

Post by munk-a »

JohnBooty wrote: post #130
mrweasel wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a Canadian mafia?

If you think the idea of a Canadian mafia is funny... You may be positively tickled by the fact that the maple syrup industry is controlled by a cartel like group that may be mafia-adjacent and there have been high-stakes maple syrup heists. https://www.google.com/search?&q=mafia+maple+syrup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Syrup_Hei... It's no joke, of course. That's precious stuff. And where there…

If you think the syrup cartel is impressive - you should see the Dairy Farmers of Canada (also mostly based out of Quebec - most suffocating organizations up here in Canada end up being QC based).

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#173

Post by munk-a »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #111
karmicthreat wrote: post #99

My first paid developer job was writing backend code for what I would later learn was the Canadian mafia. I was doing some backend and embedded work to build super shitty gambling kiosks for them. They already had some person "managing" project and the Indian contract house that was building flash games for the kiosk. He was useless, so I was stuck figuring everything out. Including getting things running on a then o…

Working for the mob can be a good deal. Basically no oversight into what you are doing because they don't have the technical knowledge to judge your work. Overpay (if sometimes irregular), and easy hours. As long as you don't "know" they are doing anything illegal with your work, and no one can prove that you know what they are doing. It can work out. The worst part about it is they try to make up for their lack of t…

I've heard surprisingly good things in general about working for shady organizations. Usually they treat you splendidly and go out of their way to make sure you're happy with your work. However, the techy dude who actually built the system that lets a bunch of folks rip off ATMs quite often ends up being the fall guy and losing all of their accumulated wealth. It is a gamble that can and usually does pay off but one where the expected gain is still much lower than just working in a legitimate field.

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#174

Post by mrmuagi »

petercooper wrote: post #78

I know many will disagree, but working a few jobs like this seems to be a rite of passage in some industries. I had some similar jobs back when I had the spare energy and lack of responsibilities to tolerate it and I look back on the time more fondly than I should. I made some friends, learnt how (not) to treat and tolerate certain types of people, and seat-of-the-pants developing has its educational moments.

It's also something valuable to learn that naivety is something you can possess and be abused. Some of my friends in high school shared the awful jobs they had, and I realized very early on (thanks to runescape), there is a predatory force that could leave someone worse of than they started. Luckily there were no real established MLM or such, the worst was an eldery lady recruiting teenagers to "bulk buy" merchandise and sell it themselves in some god forsaken way to cut out the middle man and strike gold. Our friend group tried to dissuade him to the obvious scam, but he took his uncle's advice to heart rather than ours, the same uncle who professed the largest provincial university in our province was a scam. The company you keep is important for sure.

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#175

Post by suction »

Aeolun wrote: post #55

Contrary to most of the posts I read here, my first developer job was actually amazing. I just learned a bit of webdevelopment during my studies and liked it, then managed to get a part-time job while still at university. The company was started a few years before by 3 friends that studied physics and astronomy, but pivoted to software development for reasons I’m not sure about any more. Literally every employee ther…

In Japan, the chance of working for a Yakuza front company are extremely high, unless it's really a multi-billion big corporation, organised crime is involved everywhere.

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#176

Post by mrmuagi »

SolubleSnake wrote: post #141

This rings true for me too (Also UK dev). I once worked for half a year at a company that was this bizarre. For example, we had several people come in - and leave - within a day. As soon as they saw how we were working they just left. I kind of found it funny only because the lead developer (now a very close friend) basically onboarded me with the company ethos after I'd been looking through my desk drawer and notice…

> to the point where we suspected he'd 'developed a taste for them' and was secretly snacking on these keycards.

Perhaps the UK Office show was a documentary after all.

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#177

Post by mmarq »

objclxt wrote: post #164
mmarq wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A senior dev in London makes 60-80K, so it’s almost the same without cost of life adjustments. Outside of London, economy-wise, you are likely to find places more similar to eastern Europe than to Bavaria. 80K€ in Munich is a good salary, considering that you don’t have to pay for private healthcare (in the UK you have to), education is free (in the UK it costs a fortune, either in private school fees or in housing p…

Healthcare is free in the UK. I don’t know where you’re getting the idea you need to spend “£5-6k” on it. A lot of employers in the UK offer additional health insurance as a benefit, but that’s on top of - not instead of - what the NHS offers you.

The quality of service of the NHS is extremely low compared to its European counterparts. It’s not my problem, because I have a very comprehensive healthcare insurance from my employer, which costs more than 300£ per month per person.

Just to give a practical example, you can go through an entire pregnancy without ever seeing an NHS gynaecologist (I know because it’s my experience), and if you go to private doctors, which you should, 3 visits plus some ultrasound scans and tests may cost in excess of 3000£. Also GPs have a tendency to prescribe (random) medicines without referring patients to specialists, which is simply not civilised, and so you end up going to a private doctor and paying 2-300£ per visit.

A family of 3 can easily spend 5-6K£ per annum in healthcare, especially during the first years of the child.

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#179

Post by mmarq »

conjectures wrote: post #171
mmarq wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A senior dev in London makes 60-80K, so it’s almost the same without cost of life adjustments. Outside of London, economy-wise, you are likely to find places more similar to eastern Europe than to Bavaria. 80K€ in Munich is a good salary, considering that you don’t have to pay for private healthcare (in the UK you have to), education is free (in the UK it costs a fortune, either in private school fees or in housing p…

> A senior dev in London makes 60-80K This is just not true. Senior dev at non FAANG could well add 50% to those numbers.

A senior dev in a hedge fund may make more than 200K£ and I was well into 6 digits before becoming a manager, but a senior dev at non-FAANG wouldn’t usually make more than 80K and I know several good senior devs who make less than 70K£.

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#180

Post by wpietri »

gkwelding wrote: post #32

This literally could have been written by any developer in the UK. I think most of us start out like this! I think the best one was a company I worked for in Leeds, it was building a secure learning platform for schools which ultimately fell flat on it's arse. The company was run by a self-made millionaire who was notorious for scamming people. He'd randomly lay off huge numbers of the sales team, and the first anyon…

Whoa. Just yesterday I was talking with a friend who years ago was sent to London to deal with a UK custom software vendor. He had a Friday meeting to talk with the CEO and lay down the law: they had to show my friend the software they were building right away or the deal was off.

He showed up for the meeting; the CEO was called away urgently. My friend was taken out for a very boozy lunch and given many excuses and platitudes. He held firm, though. Demo or trouble. They rebooked his meeting for Monday.

Arriving at their office on Monday, he found that the place had been totally cleared out. The only thing left was a photocopier that had been smashed. The CEO had, in the British phrasing, done a runner, leaving the employees suddenly out of work.

The good news is that my friend ended up hiring one of the employees, who turned out great.

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