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Is it boring working in Web Development startups?

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Re: Is it boring working in Web Development startups?

#21

Post by balabaster »

eropple wrote: post #19
balabaster wrote: post #15

In my experience, working in startups is anything but boring. You have to wear all hats and solve all problems. You have to be ready to think on your feet. You've gotta be able to think fast and act and be able to deal with the consequences of your actions on the fly. This is start up life. It's exciting, but it's stressful. Some might call it a baptism of fire. Working in startups - especially if they have funding,…

> If you're thinking about a startup, you need to be comfortable doing ... This list is good advice for anyone, not just startup employees. It's also really optimistic as pertains to startups, and comes off as some myth-making stuff. (Startups don't deserve myth-making and they definitely aren't glamorous. If it isn't your baby , then it's a job . Woe betide you if you don't keep that in mind.) I agree that anybody s…

Yep, eventually you become sufficiently skilled at enough of those disciplines as to be able to call yourself a specialist in many/most of them. At which point, you're either in high enough demand that only those that are desperate for you are willing to pay, or you're priced out of the market... or you still just do it for fun.

And yes, in a startup you will learn these things, whether you want to or not... and that growth curve will be painful. And you'll either thrive, or you'll die.

Re: Is it boring working in Web Development startups?

#22

Post by eropple »

balabaster wrote: post #21
eropple wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're thinking about a startup, you need to be comfortable doing ... This list is good advice for anyone, not just startup employees. It's also really optimistic as pertains to startups, and comes off as some myth-making stuff. (Startups don't deserve myth-making and they definitely aren't glamorous. If it isn't your baby , then it's a job . Woe betide you if you don't keep that in mind.) I agree that anybody s…

Yep, eventually you become sufficiently skilled at enough of those disciplines as to be able to call yourself a specialist in many/most of them. At which point, you're either in high enough demand that only those that are desperate for you are willing to pay, or you're priced out of the market... or you still just do it for fun. And yes, in a startup you will learn these things, whether you want to or not... and that…

Doing it for the love of the game is certainly an option, I don't mean to exclude that. I'm going to my next gig for something a little under-market because I think they're good people and I like the vibe there. (It helps that there's a big video component to what they do, and I do a lot of video stuff for fun already and want to learn and contribute there in addition to my usual infra/mobile/frontend/backend nonsense.)

Just saying that most people coming in the door, the sorts of folks who are going to be asking this sort of question, are just not in the same position as you or I are. ;)

Re: Is it boring working in Web Development startups?

#23

Post by travisl12 »

This article seems to be saying that getting the data infrastructure built (i.e. backend) is the exciting part, but when it's time to build the front end it becomes boring.

Is that because it's boring, or is it because people think front end is easy/straightforward and then realize it's not? I'd argue that the front end is a much more difficult task than the backend in the beginning of a startup.

Re: Is it boring working in Web Development startups?

#24

Post by balabaster »

eropple wrote: post #22
balabaster wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, eventually you become sufficiently skilled at enough of those disciplines as to be able to call yourself a specialist in many/most of them. At which point, you're either in high enough demand that only those that are desperate for you are willing to pay, or you're priced out of the market... or you still just do it for fun. And yes, in a startup you will learn these things, whether you want to or not... and that…

Doing it for the love of the game is certainly an option, I don't mean to exclude that. I'm going to my next gig for something a little under-market because I think they're good people and I like the vibe there. (It helps that there's a big video component to what they do, and I do a lot of video stuff for fun already and want to learn and contribute there in addition to my usual infra/mobile/frontend/backend nonsens…

I went from corporate to startup... and now I just don't seem to be able to go back to corporate. Once you've had that baptism, if it didn't kill you, it's part of you. There's no going back to sitting in a cubicle after that kind of excitement.

Re: Is it boring working in Web Development startups?

#25

Post by rossenberg79 »

Raidion wrote: post #6

This is such a click bait headline I don't even want to comment. Web Development is boring if you think it's boring. A lot of people don't. If you do think it's boring, there are a lot of industries that need programmers to solve different problems in different ways. If you don't think it's boring, hey that's awesome, you keep on making cool stuff. If you're bored, it's probably time to start job hunting.

I would like to pose an alternative conclusion: if you aren’t bored by web development you likely haven’t discovered far more interesting opportunities.

Web development deals with mostly solved problems and best practices to be followed for nearly everything. It’s not very intellectually stimulating, especially if it’s just typical CRUD stuff.

More exciting work can be done in writing device drivers for custom hardware, working on cutting edge AI, factory automation, reverse engineering, or even doing high performance game development.

There’s a big world out there, and web development is the least interesting and the lowest tier. Exciting if you’ve never done anything yet in your career (which makes it perfect for newly graduated young students), but very pedestrian if you’ve already been in the trenches for a while.

Re: Is it boring working in Web Development startups?

#26

Post by eropple »

balabaster wrote: post #24
eropple wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing it for the love of the game is certainly an option, I don't mean to exclude that. I'm going to my next gig for something a little under-market because I think they're good people and I like the vibe there. (It helps that there's a big video component to what they do, and I do a lot of video stuff for fun already and want to learn and contribute there in addition to my usual infra/mobile/frontend/backend nonsens…

I went from corporate to startup... and now I just don't seem to be able to go back to corporate. Once you've had that baptism, if it didn't kill you, it's part of you. There's no going back to sitting in a cubicle after that kind of excitement.

The heroification and myth-making is, again, I think a little much. It's a job, it's working to make somebody else wealthy. It's not "a part of you" any more than any other job; it just becomes what you're used to.

Frankly I think most people who have taken a few turns in startup-land should try freelance consulting on for size. I'm explicitly not doing it right now for other, personal reasons, but I'll go back to it eventually; it's the arena in which your skills are really as-fairly-as-possible valued and where you can realize some really outlandishly-sized gains for a lot of organizations if you hustle.

And, having spent time in startups, you've already internalized that your job might disappear tomorrow. ;) Consulting at least lets you spread out that risk both in terms of clients and in terms of billing.

Re: Is it boring working in Web Development startups?

#27

Post by Raidion »

rat9988 wrote: post #17
Raidion wrote: post #6

This is such a click bait headline I don't even want to comment. Web Development is boring if you think it's boring. A lot of people don't. If you do think it's boring, there are a lot of industries that need programmers to solve different problems in different ways. If you don't think it's boring, hey that's awesome, you keep on making cool stuff. If you're bored, it's probably time to start job hunting.

> If you do think it's boring, there are a lot of industries that need programmers to solve different problems in different ways. My experience is a bit more mitigated here as a junior dev. No one wants to recruit a software dev who has only webdev experience somewhere else. Unless I have some serious open source contributions to prove myself I guess, but my point is it's not as straightforward or easy as I felt it i…

Web dev is a fairly broad term. If you only know Angular/CSS/Typescript, you're kinda out of luck unless you start brushing up on your Node chops. If you're writing web APIs, it's a much smaller jump. Embedded systems are a whole different ballgame though.

Re: Is it boring working in Web Development startups?

#28

Post by rat9988 »

Raidion wrote: post #27
rat9988 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you do think it's boring, there are a lot of industries that need programmers to solve different problems in different ways. My experience is a bit more mitigated here as a junior dev. No one wants to recruit a software dev who has only webdev experience somewhere else. Unless I have some serious open source contributions to prove myself I guess, but my point is it's not as straightforward or easy as I felt it i…

Web dev is a fairly broad term. If you only know Angular/CSS/Typescript, you're kinda out of luck unless you start brushing up on your Node chops. If you're writing web APIs, it's a much smaller jump. Embedded systems are a whole different ballgame though.

I'm full stack, react/redux/typescript front end, and restful api in go/python for the back end. So I presume the jump is not that high in theory, but there are always better fitting candidates.

I'm not saying you are wrong though. Just trying to tell the other new grads that switching might not be straightforward and might require some effort on their part.

Re: Is it boring working in Web Development startups?

#30

Post by raviojha »

Raidion wrote: post #6

This is such a click bait headline I don't even want to comment. Web Development is boring if you think it's boring. A lot of people don't. If you do think it's boring, there are a lot of industries that need programmers to solve different problems in different ways. If you don't think it's boring, hey that's awesome, you keep on making cool stuff. If you're bored, it's probably time to start job hunting.

Hiya! Author here. I can't comment on why you felt this was clickbaity. The intention was to give a third-person perspective of the life of an engineer as a webdev at a startup, emphasis on _startup_.

The post is largely targeted at beginners. I think giving this perspective to fresh grads can help them take a decision to atleast clear up the dilemma when they have to choose to work at a startup/corporate during internships or right after college.

The reason I wrote it was because during my four years at college, we had this perception that webdev was boring and nobody used to opt to interview for companies which were into it. And the joke was, "All you do is change the colors every 6 months". I had the chance to intern at a SaaS startup and then worked there for more than 2 years and then figured students back at college needs to know more about this experience.

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