OP : that was jarring, and I feel for you. I'm sure others in this thread have already offered much more salient and actionable advice than I can, but I do hope you find a resolution to your unpleasant situation.
The Unemployable Programmer
181–190 of 464 posts
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#182This is an absolutely baffling article. The job market for developers is not glutted by over-supply, it's one where marginally-qualified people get hired for salaries well above the national average because companies need SOMEONE to do the job. And virtually nowhere cares about degrees, especially for experienced devs. And having a single development job at a big company for a decade isn't some kind of career-killing…
Developers should realise that when you come to an interview the interviewer isn't looking to dismiss you because you can't recite Knuth. For the vast majority of jobs they are desperate for you to be competent having just interviewed 5 incompetent people. I've worked as a programmer for 3 very good paying companies over 15 years and none of them could get enough good developers.
I must be incompetent because I'm having a hard time finding a position and I have over 15 years of development experience most of it in .net and have worked on everything from my own mobile application for small businesses and worked and learned a new platform for a $20 million enterprise project.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#183I once found myself unemployable as well, maybe what I did can help someone. This was quite a few years ago when the ColdFusion job I had just ended and the job I had before that was in Visual FoxPro (and a few other even less known technologies). Talk about unemployable. Also I am not in a major city, so I was getting pretty much no responses to my resume. After a few months I realized I was unemployable and set out…
I was in a similar position with classic ASP/Coldfusion and VB6.
What I did was rewrite my resume to target the things I did like build reporting engines and dynamic web pages. I mentioned more of my impact on my job and accomplishments over what technologies I knew.
I highlighted more general skills like SQL programming and downplayed other language specific references like VB5/6.
I landed a job no problem. I spent the week leading up to the job studying up on the tech they used and was ready enough.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is an absolutely baffling article. The job market for developers is not glutted by over-supply, it's one where marginally-qualified people get hired for salaries well above the national average because companies need SOMEONE to do the job. And virtually nowhere cares about degrees, especially for experienced devs. What is baffling is this Valley-centric, web and mobile development-centric line being repeated c…
I have friends who are devs and hiring managers (several of whom have no degrees, even) in many cities -- Detroit, Columbus, Portland, Chicago, SF -- and the same thing is true in all those places. If you live in a small town, I can believe that the opportunities are limited, but in basically any metro area of any size, it's a developers' market.
same thing in Ohio.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#185To me it sounds like someone "good with computers" but doesn't really know how to program. All that stuff about "commodore 64" and "garage startup" sounds a bit like a smokescreen. OK, you liked playing around with computers as kid. Great, most of us did. And that made you good enough with computers that you got a job at BigCo. Then you got a little lazy and stopped learning new stuff. It happens. This isn't a condemnation.
I don't think BS is going to help. So here are a couple of options. If you really want to do startups and glam and make hundreds of thousands... you'll have to learn how to program in modern ways. It's going to take some time and effort. And you will have to build some real stuff. You might not have the time.. you are in your 40's, and you might not have the real desire to put in the effort. It's not you can't do this, you probably can but it's going to be difficult and take some real desire and most important some time and a lot of effort.
Here is another option that might be a better one. Go back to a BigCo. You have a history of job stability. You know about BigCo ways of doing things. You are good with computers. Get a certificate or two if you need to. It's not a million dollars but given the required effort, the pay is pretty decent for sitting at a desk. Forget about the 100K+ salaries you see bandied around. That's for something else.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#186I got a degree but am still unemployable because I didn't have a job when I graduated and apparently nobody hires unemployed people. It's like there's just some tiny step I need to get over. Recently a recruiters said all I needed was a little Java experience and I could be making a lot of money. But I have plenty of Java experience, why can't I find a job anywhere? The worst thing about all of this is how harsh and…
Programming Java in school is not really what they mean by "Java experience". They mean personal projects, freelance projects, etc.
> The worst thing about all of this is how harsh and degrading everyone is when you want to get into the industry. Questions are met with disgust derision, as if you are spoiling everyone's worldview. But I am just trying to describe my experience for survival reasons.
I have no idea what this super vague paragraph means.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is an absolutely baffling article. The job market for developers is not glutted by over-supply, it's one where marginally-qualified people get hired for salaries well above the national average because companies need SOMEONE to do the job. And virtually nowhere cares about degrees, especially for experienced devs. What is baffling is this Valley-centric, web and mobile development-centric line being repeated c…
Agreed, sometimes people aren't aware that HN is its own little echo chamber. I was talking to a recruiter recently for a managerial job and somehow got onto the topic of hiring. I asked him what's the hardest jobs for him to fill right now. He told me he's dying for entry level .NET/ASP and Java developers. Corporations have built their castles on these technologies, not FOSS/Mobile and need staff. Degrees were an i…
> He told me he's dying for entry level .NET/ASP and Java developers
Why does he need so many entry level programmers?
> We talked about pay, and it wasn't terrible impressive
Is the recruiter trying to staff a company with mostly entry-level programmers, paying low wages? I've seen plenty of companies like that, including those who used mostly trainees. Usually, the work environment was the crappiest possible, and word gets around.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#188I do a lot of interviews, and I interview plenty of programmers who have 10+ years experience or so they say. Knowledge of Java, C#, C++, Python, etc in their resume. Most cannot tell the difference between private and protected. Most have no idea what an abstract class is or a static variable. Let's not even talk about an interface. The vast majority have no idea what transactions are. These are stupid basic things.…
I have done a lot of interviews where I was told that I was the single strongest candidate on the tech screen. I would be told, in the interview, that I correctly answered questions that no other previous candidate could, often prefaced with "I don't know exactly, but if I had to guess..."
And then I never hear from them again.
I am not making this up. And this has happened on multiple occasions. I get strong positive feedback during an interview, then the company falls into a black hole. They don't contact me. They don't return phone calls or email. Ever.
It happens at least once a month, whenever I start looking for new jobs.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Once you've removed the rubbish developers there are indeed far more jobs than developers. Agree. And once you add in the big companies like FB, Google, etc... picking up a huge lot of the good+ developers, everyone else is scrambling to find someone who can at a minimum do FizzBuzz.
I don't know, I am certain that the big co's miss a LOT of good developers who just don't fit their interview process. I went through Google's once and got cut off pretty early in the process, and never attempted a large Co's interview process again after that.
I didn't say they got all of the good developers, but they definitely pull a lot of them. For a really good developer it makes sense to at least try to work at one of the companies for awhile. The money is good, and it ends up being a great resume builder. Are there great devs who are passed over or who do not want to work at the big companies? Sure, but the big companies do suck a lot of the talent out of the pool.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, sometimes people aren't aware that HN is its own little echo chamber. I was talking to a recruiter recently for a managerial job and somehow got onto the topic of hiring. I asked him what's the hardest jobs for him to fill right now. He told me he's dying for entry level .NET/ASP and Java developers. Corporations have built their castles on these technologies, not FOSS/Mobile and need staff. Degrees were an i…
HN may be an echo chamber, but look what you're saying: Employers are desperate for developers, including entry level ones, mostly using older tech stacks, and they'll pay solid money for them. It doesn't sound like you're describing a world in which someone with 10+ years of solid experience with techs is going to be struggling to find a job, right?
> It doesn't sound like you're describing a world in which someone with 10+ years of solid experience with techs is going to be struggling to find a job, right?
Overqualification (or the perception thereof) happens. The development world, like most others, is a bit of a pyramid. More experience doesn't necessarily translate to more positions being available. Some (many, even) are specifically targeted at young, entry level devs.