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The Unemployable Programmer

unemployable.pen.io

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Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#211

Post by chii »

phamilton wrote: post #176
mkozlows wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three points to that: 1. This differs more from workplace to workplace than industry to industry. Many dev workplaces will give developers a week or two of official "training time." Many other industries have workplaces that don't do that. 2. The reality is, training on new technologies has more value to you than it does to your employer. If your employer uses J2EE, Subversion, and Oracle, there's little benefit to t…

2. The same could be said about any compensation. It generally benefits you, not your employer. That doesn't mean there's no incentive to pay you. Training should be seen as a part of compensation. While there's some alignment with the employers needs, giving employees a training budget shoulder be seen as a cheap way to provide more compensation and they should be able to use it to hone their skills in whatever area…

the question isn't whether a training budget is bad, but whether the company accounted for it when they computed your salary. Would you have swapped a training budget in lieu of some of your current salary? I think most people would say no to that.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#212

Post by imauld »

amm wrote: post #40

Degrees only matter for "serious companies" and are used as a filter by often clueless HR employees without technical background. As long as you can prove practical experience, you should be fine. Your network, on the other hand, becomes more important as you get older. Hiring an unknown person in his/her 40s or 50s has a much lower risk/reward ratio than hiring a random developer in his 20s who will a) do whatever y…

I'm surprised I got this far down the page before someone mentioned going to meetup's.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#213

Post by obstacle1 »

octo_t wrote: post #129
fweespeech wrote: post #109

Earlier 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. I've had about 40-50% of places reject me due to a lack of degree. A couple even sent me hopeful…

40%-50% rejection is really amazing, I don't think you quite realise how tough the job market is right now. I have a friend with chemistry PhD who has - with no exaggeration here - applied for at least 300 jobs with varying levels of success.

A chemistry PhD qualifies you to do advanced research in chemistry -- nothing more. If anything a PhD will work against a candidate in a general industry tech role, because the assumption is they either a) failed in the academic job market for whatever reason, or b) will get bored in a non-research role and split early.

Personally I'm biased against chem/bio/physics etc. PhDs who come in for development jobs because the ones I've known have had terrible, mind-blowingly bad coding practices drilled into them since undergrad and are strangely more resistant to learning best practices than those from more tech-related fields.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#214

Post by ryandrake »

segmondy wrote: post #149

I 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.…

What salary range do you offer (or is you company known for offering)? There might be something you're doing that pre-selects the good developers out, or pre-selects the crappy ones in.

Hint: If you are offering "market rate" or "competitive" salaries, you're probably going to get mostly dog applicants.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#215

Post by Merovius »

strathmeyer wrote: post #142
mkozlows wrote: post #82

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. And having a single development job at a big company for a decade isn't some kind of career-killing…

What's baffling is people in denial blaming the victims. We admit it is our fault for thinking a Computer Science degree had any value. We weren't fooled, we were just dumb. But we still want to survive, that doesn't make us bad people just because we enjoy programming.

What I don't understand is, why aren't you getting a degree? If you acknowledge a degree is important to get hired, why not just get one? At least here in germany it takes you three years to get a degree -- if you can actually code I would claim you even have more than enough time to work on the side to finance it. Given that you'll probably get a good job with six figures right of the bat if you are even borderline competent, that sounds like a better investment of time to me, than trying to do crappy freelance work on the side. Even if we assume that a degree is just a piece of paper that doesn't mean anytheng except getting your foot into the door and even if we add horrendous US enrollment fees (which, btw, the USA should finally do something about) it would still be a very good investment that pays for itself after a couple of years at the most.

I just don't get, why it seems so much easier, to fight the system without a degree, than just giving up the fight and get one?

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#216

Post by chii »

Khao wrote: post #161
MagicWishMonkey wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Sounds like there's something else at play with this guys inability to find work. Maybe he doesn't interview very well?

Some people are terrible at interviews. A few months ago I interviewed a developer in his thirties who had a great looking resume. Worked on lots of big projects in positions of both making decisions about software architecture, technology to use, etc.. and also being a programmer doing the actual work. His resume was really awesome. When we received him in our interview, we asked him to tell us a bit about his past…

> developer was good when he's working alone on a project with no one to talk to

or he/she could have faked the resume, or dressed it in a good way. I find that excellent programmers tend to be good communicators, because good, clean programming is about communicating with future programmers (which could be yourself in 5 yrs time). Having clarity in thought and being able to express ideas to other people is so crucial that i would rank that above experience with a certain stack/tech.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#217

Post by chii »

doktrin wrote: post #165
Mikushi wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's old (early 40'). Taboo subject in the sector.

This is something being glossed over by most of the responses. Age discrimination (or rather, age preconception, if that's a less loaded term) is frighteningly real.

i would expect that an older person with more battle tested experience ought to fair better tbh, so i don't get it with the agism. Unless the position is meant for a high strung startup where you're expected to basically live there, with no dependents to look after etc.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#218

Post by jimbobimbo »

vonmoltke wrote: post #136
mkozlows wrote: post #82

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. And having a single development job at a big company for a decade isn't some kind of career-killing…

> 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'd say, it's opposite of (2). I keep reading horror stories about multi-day interviews with "take home tests" and other insanity, here on HN - and these are usually traits of the interviewing processes of newly minted startups. I had a bunch of interviews with "regular" companies on the East Coast and the process is way more sane and much less grueling.

My advice to the OP would be to find and get in touch some of the older recruiting companies, the ones that exist more than 10 years on the market, and work with them. Steer clear from the startup scene. Normal companies still need the job to be done - why not by you?

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#219

Post by eropple »

manyxcxi wrote: post #197
vonmoltke wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I live in Dallas. I have been fishing in Dallas and Austin over the past several months and can't get any interviews. I would like to know where all these "desperate" companies are and what domains they are in.

I'm in Seattle and am getting lots of contact from recruiters in DFW and Austin, and not just the usual LinkedIn spam BS. My background is heavy on DevOps and I've got about a 50/50 split on .NET and Java.

I can corroborate this, though more from the LinkedIn side of things. Out of every twenty LinkedIn messages I get, probably six are SF, four are Boston (I'm local), two each are NYC and DC, and two or three are between DFW and Austin.

(The last couple are usually Idaho or Nebraska or one of the other corporate-fief states.)

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#220

Post by bitshepherd »

vonmoltke wrote: post #168
mkozlows wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, I live in Dallas. I have been fishing in Dallas and Austin over the past several months and can't get any interviews. I would like to know where all these "desperate" companies are and what domains they are in.

My experience with fishing in Austin is that they love you when you're not in Texas. If you're in Texas, you don't exist to them, so you don't get an interview.
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