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Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

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Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#201

Post by enfilade »

xenithorb wrote: post #92

I'm a 25 year-old former Marine who thought he could take a shot at being a programmer when he exited the military. I never had any background in programming other than being interested in UNIX and Linux at a young age, so CS seemed like the logical choice for someone who had a GI bill to burn. 2 years and a lot of classes later, I'm realizing I'm too old to compete at this gig, and I should have started when I was 1…

Former Marine infantry corporal here -- I think lbo's advice to you is outstanding. He/she wrote:

"Anyway, don't defeat yourself and don't underestimate how critical this knowledge will be in 10, 15, 25 years when the world will be a whole new place filled with much much more software."

Maintaining a long term perspective is key. The skills you are seeking will only rise in value in the coming years as computing becomes more and more ubiquitous and distributed. Maintain the mindset you have at the beginning of a 20k hike with crew-serve weapons and full packs.

You are 25, technically oriented/interested, and you're a former grunt NCO. As long as you stay healthy and avoid stepping in front of a bus you will be working for decades to come. You may feel old, but in the big scheme of things you are not.

I understand your problem is short term money. Have you considered working for a year with DynCorp or Xe as a security contractor? You could have 125,000 after a year and could keep coding when you're inside the wire. With that financial cushion things could be smoother.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#202

Post by doktrin »

xenithorb wrote: post #92

I'm a 25 year-old former Marine who thought he could take a shot at being a programmer when he exited the military. I never had any background in programming other than being interested in UNIX and Linux at a young age, so CS seemed like the logical choice for someone who had a GI bill to burn. 2 years and a lot of classes later, I'm realizing I'm too old to compete at this gig, and I should have started when I was 1…

Build something. You are not too old. Ignore your own negativity.

I'm not writing this not as someone who's "made it", but as someone who will.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#203

Post by DennisP »

rayiner wrote: post #177
nirvana wrote: post #8

He seems to have missed making the point in the title. Why would software engineers work for english majors? He thinks that a 20 something english major is a better manager for a software engineer than a 40 something software engineer? Plus he seems to completely miss a separate alternative for software engineers over 35-- start their own businesses. I think the perception that 40 year olds are not up to date on tech…

> Plus he seems to completely miss a separate alternative for software engineers over 35-- start their own businesses. That's not a super practical option for most people. Not in a country where giving up your job means giving up your health insurance. Not when you have a wife and kids.

The first problem will go away on Jan. 1, 2014, if healthcare reform doesn't get repealed or overturned by the Supreme Court.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#204

Post by chris_wot »

lucisferre wrote: post #193
chris_wot wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure I can agree that .NET isn't leading edge. For instance, it's been implementing dynamic language support, LINQ, and ASP.NET MVC is no slouch either. As a framework, I'd say that it's actually pretty advanced.

What I mean is that .NET as a culture and ecosystem is not full of people who embrace leading edge. Though, since you bring it up, as far as features it still isn't leading anything, just following reasonably close to a lot of others.

Again, I disagree. It is full of people who embrace the leading edge. Just look at the IronRuby early adopters, or the folks who embraced WCF and WPF. This seems like your perception of thingS, not reality.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#205

Post by patio11 »

edanm wrote: post #194
patio11 wrote: post #33

How many English majors are still in "English" at age 40? Many of them will have exited the workforce , started their own business, changed careers, or leveled up high enough that their occupational classification the government uses changes. Programmers do all these things, too. I love programming. I didn't even make it to thirty as a "programmer"! (P.S. There exist lots of benefits to not calling yourself a program…

I know that "don't call yourself a programmer" is advice you often give. So let me ask you a question - I'm now starting a freelance company. We are 3 programmers. Right now, we build web and mobile applications for hire. What should we be doing to "rebrand" ourselves in a way that will get us more money? I ask this here and not in email in the hopes that your answer will help other people as well.

What should we be doing to "rebrand" ourselves in a way that will get us more money?

We solve businesses problems and, in the process, make them gobsmacking amounts of money by increasing revenue and cutting costs.

Computers and telephones are sometimes involved.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#206

Post by patio11 »

over40guy4 wrote: post #145
patio11 wrote: post #33

How many English majors are still in "English" at age 40? Many of them will have exited the workforce , started their own business, changed careers, or leveled up high enough that their occupational classification the government uses changes. Programmers do all these things, too. I love programming. I didn't even make it to thirty as a "programmer"! (P.S. There exist lots of benefits to not calling yourself a program…

I doubt many 40+ programmers are going to come out in support of this article. In cases of discrimination, you are labeled a crybaby so it's better to just stay quite. HN is mostly young and the only 40+ ones here are the type who like puzzles or in top 1 percentile of programming (e.g. patio11). For a vast majority of 40+ programmers, the reality is as grim as painted in this article. If you are not in top 1 percent…

While I appreciate the praise, I am likely not in the top 1% of programming ability. (People often say that I am, because I'm pretty good at written and oral communication. Take note, young impressionable HNers, because this strongly suggests reprioritizing which trees to put your talent points into.)

As to your own circumstances: there exist many clueful companies which would hire you. Find my email if you want to talk specifics. This is not a market where anyone skilled should be hurting for offers.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#207

Post by lucisferre »

chris_wot wrote: post #204
lucisferre wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean is that .NET as a culture and ecosystem is not full of people who embrace leading edge. Though, since you bring it up, as far as features it still isn't leading anything, just following reasonably close to a lot of others.

Again, I disagree. It is full of people who embrace the leading edge. Just look at the IronRuby early adopters, or the folks who embraced WCF and WPF. This seems like your perception of thingS, not reality.

A vast, vast minority of the whole are early adopters. How many .NET shops actually use IronRuby or even F#.

Besides, I'm not sure what's so leading edge about bringing Ruby to .NET. Ruby is 10 years old and Java has had an implementation for much longer. I also have no idea what is leading edge about WCF (or WPF for that matter) though I really like the work Glenn Block has done recently for WCF and much of it is arguably very cutting edge REST stuff, so there are certainly exceptions, but they are just that exceptions.

If you're point is that MS shops are quick to embrace MS christened technologies, well that is relatively speaking true. However MS is often well behind the technology curve of even the .NET open source community (monorail predates MVC significantly) and generally speaking even further behind the ecosystems outside of .NET.

Bottom line, I see no evidence to support a claim that .NET development supports a significant culture of early adopters.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#208

Post by chris_wot »

lucisferre wrote: post #207
chris_wot wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I disagree. It is full of people who embrace the leading edge. Just look at the IronRuby early adopters, or the folks who embraced WCF and WPF. This seems like your perception of thingS, not reality.

A vast, vast minority of the whole are early adopters. How many .NET shops actually use IronRuby or even F#. Besides, I'm not sure what's so leading edge about bringing Ruby to .NET. Ruby is 10 years old and Java has had an implementation for much longer. I also have no idea what is leading edge about WCF (or WPF for that matter) though I really like the work Glenn Block has done recently for WCF and much of it is ar…

That's OK, because I don't see any evidence to support a claim that .NET development does not support a significant culture of early adopters :-)

My point wasn't actually that Microsoft shops embrace Microsoft products quickly. You said that .NET doesn't have a vibrant ecosystem, but in the same breath mentioned that Monorail was implemented well before Microsoft created ASP.NET MVC. Ecosystem does not necessarily mean "vendor supplied", if anything a healthy software development ecosystem allows for alternative modules and frameworks. You have sort of proven my point :-)

As for IronRuby and F#, you seem to be asking a question to prove your point that very few people have adopted these technologies. For myself, I guess I'm not sure either - I would be curious to see if these technologies have been adopted by many .NET developers.

Also, you are contradicting yourself a little about the WCF technology. You can't say that there is no real cutting edge stuff being done, but then state that there is cutting edge work being done on REST, but that it's just an exception. "Cutting edge", by definition, is exceptional...

As to whether there are many early adopters: I guess we'll agree to disagree!

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#209

Post by lucisferre »

chris_wot wrote: post #208
lucisferre wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A vast, vast minority of the whole are early adopters. How many .NET shops actually use IronRuby or even F#. Besides, I'm not sure what's so leading edge about bringing Ruby to .NET. Ruby is 10 years old and Java has had an implementation for much longer. I also have no idea what is leading edge about WCF (or WPF for that matter) though I really like the work Glenn Block has done recently for WCF and much of it is ar…

That's OK, because I don't see any evidence to support a claim that .NET development does not support a significant culture of early adopters :-) My point wasn't actually that Microsoft shops embrace Microsoft products quickly. You said that .NET doesn't have a vibrant ecosystem, but in the same breath mentioned that Monorail was implemented well before Microsoft created ASP.NET MVC. Ecosystem does not necessarily me…

I'm contradicting nothing. Saying that .NET is largely a culture of old-school thinking, isn't the same is saying it's all that way. Relative to the overall software development community it has always been a good few steps behind and lacked in true support and adoption of open source culture and the benefits it brings. While more recently this has started to change for Microsoft, many have seen moves like Nuget as undermining open source through taking over fledgling projects rather than simply supporting them.

While the .NET open source eco-system is arguably decent, you've completely ignored two implied, but obvious points. The open source eco-systems outside of .NET are much, much stronger and people outside of .NET embrace open source, and leading edge far more easily.

That's really the whole argument and you've said nothing to contradict it, but feel free to ignore it. As a former contributor to Nancy and one of the rare .NET devs who's contributed a patch or two to almost every .NET project on Github I've used, I feel pretty comfortable making these observations.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#210

Post by kamaal »

Well why is this surprising?

A lot of people working in factories, plants and other shops undergo the same treatment with time. The issue isn't exactly with software professionals but with any job. Young blood is preferred, because they push longer for lesser money. They don't have families, they can take failure gracefully, they have tons of time to fail and recover.

As we age, we get families, we have kids, we need insurances for ourselves and family. We need to pay college fees, We need a home to settle in, we have mortgages, And then of course we always have bills to pay, food and clothes to buy. All this means everyone tries to settle down at some time. Instead of running a marathon at the speed of a sprint, we just like to push things as they are. This means we get held back, we play safe, we like to have permanent jobs.

This is what millions of people go though. They hit dead ends by 40. Because the expenses keep rising, and the corporate pay structures seem to reward only promotions on managerial levels. And if you don't get to be a manager you are basically done for! That's with every one, not just software professionals. And what remains after that is struggling to be employed based on skills which are very commonly available else where especially in a pool of people who are younger.

Clever people make their financial planning while they in 20-30. Get themselves enough cash to give themselves enough freedom to not worry about getting fired, non getting employed, being replaced, old age or never ever going to work again.

Get yourself enough money to not worry about money. Regardless of what ever profession you are in.

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