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I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

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Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#261

Post by austincheney »

bsanr wrote: post #201
austincheney wrote: post #119

Programming for the web is my primary career. I first got into it late 1997. I am astonished at how incompetent it is. The fact the OP made a career out of it and made some money is hardly amazing. For the level of talent required contrasted against the average compensation I am surprised not everybody is trying it. You too could be earning 6 figures in a low cost of living economy after completing a boot camp and 2…

The tech industry is a class-, gender-, and race-biased inter-generational wealth transfer scheme masquerading as an industry. Past a post of base-level competency, and excluding strategy-level technical roles, employment and compensation is based on identity and not proficiency. It's the same as with industry labor in the last half of the 20th century. Every person who retired with a pension was not an unequivocal v…

While that could be a factor I think the situation is primarily the result of simple economic considerations. Companies compete for employees, which drives platform commonalities and group think across business lines. It is cheaper to hire a ready to work developer from a competing employer than it is train an employee over time regardless of the fact that incoming employee still has to relearn the new company's business and internal processes. So, there are financial incentives to be impatient and make bad decisions even though there is ramp up time regardless. Even though finding qualified employment candidates generally costs as much as training somebody to be qualified it is generally preferred for its lower overhead and convenience.

In many other white-color industries employees are accountable for their work. A substantial enough violation of that accountability can result in loss of career (from any employer), fines, and even prison time depending on the violation of negligence. Because of that there are conventions in place to define qualification:

* An agent/broker relationship ensures that all employees are essentially practicing interns operating under the guidance of a broker. The poor performance of an agent negatively influences the reputation of the broker so guidance and mentoring are provided as a required effect. Very few employers in software provide anything close to that. If you want that you have to go get it on your own outside of work, which is why so many excellent developers are largely self-taught and have some time in on some sort of extraordinary product before it became well known.

* Licensing ensures that candidates meet some minimal, uniform, standard level of qualification. Usually licensing standards are run as industry specific charities to influence the standards of practice and ethical norms. Software doesn't have this either. Nobody can provide a standard definition of competence in software. In most other industries this one factor drives the direction of education and training more than just about everything else combined.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#263

Post by Ididntdothis »

DmitryOlshansky wrote: post #246
andreilys wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ I intuit that if you are insanely dedicated enough the universe has a weird appreciation for that kind of thing, and eventually throws you a bone. I know it's wrong and irrational but everytime I've tried that it's worked” Also known as survivorship bias.

Or rather the old adege of: “The luck favors the prepared”

People just remember that there are no guarantees. Dedication and hard work help a lot but you may still fail.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#264

Post by filoleg »

bsanr wrote: post #201
austincheney wrote: post #119

Programming for the web is my primary career. I first got into it late 1997. I am astonished at how incompetent it is. The fact the OP made a career out of it and made some money is hardly amazing. For the level of talent required contrasted against the average compensation I am surprised not everybody is trying it. You too could be earning 6 figures in a low cost of living economy after completing a boot camp and 2…

The tech industry is a class-, gender-, and race-biased inter-generational wealth transfer scheme masquerading as an industry. Past a post of base-level competency, and excluding strategy-level technical roles, employment and compensation is based on identity and not proficiency. It's the same as with industry labor in the last half of the 20th century. Every person who retired with a pension was not an unequivocal v…

>ask how much your colleagues in India make

My colleagues in India, on average, make less than me. My Indian colleagues in the US (who grew up and went to school in India) make about the same as me.

I dont see what point this thought exercise was supposed to illustrate, aside from demonstrating that labor markets in different countries are different, and so is the cost of living.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#266

Post by seisvelas »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #253
seisvelas wrote: post #207

I started during the 2008 recession. I think the people who hurt the most back then were the people who'd just attended 6 week Ruby on Rails bootcamps and gotten 70k/year jobs (which was a cliche at the time). Suddenly, that was no longer realistic. And even among them, the passionate people found a way. I got into tech with no education during the recession just on psychotic passion alone. I was working at but hacki…

> I intuit that if you are insanely dedicated enough the universe has a weird appreciation for that kind of thing, and eventually throws you a bone. I know it's wrong and irrational but everytime I've tried that it's worked, so there's some anecdotal personal truth. This is an unfalsifiable assertion. It also implies that if you failed, you just didn't want it hard enough. That's not a message that people who are hav…

Yeah that's why I said 'I know it's wrong and irrational', haha. It helped me when I had trouble finding a job. Maybe different people need different messages. Like the OSCP motto, 'when the going gets tough, try harder'. For some people that would be demotivating, whereas for others it has the opposite effect.

Perhaps people have 'motivational styles' and the best approach is to learn what kind of message works best for one's personal styles.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#267

Post by seisvelas »

seattle_spring wrote: post #247
seisvelas wrote: post #207

I started during the 2008 recession. I think the people who hurt the most back then were the people who'd just attended 6 week Ruby on Rails bootcamps and gotten 70k/year jobs (which was a cliche at the time). Suddenly, that was no longer realistic. And even among them, the passionate people found a way. I got into tech with no education during the recession just on psychotic passion alone. I was working at but hacki…

Dev Bootcamp popularized rails bootcamps, and they weren't even founded until 2012. The bootcamp "scene" definitely wasn't around in 2008.

Woops, you're right, I mixed up my eras.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#268

Post by Clubber »

andreilys wrote: post #234
seisvelas wrote: post #207

I started during the 2008 recession. I think the people who hurt the most back then were the people who'd just attended 6 week Ruby on Rails bootcamps and gotten 70k/year jobs (which was a cliche at the time). Suddenly, that was no longer realistic. And even among them, the passionate people found a way. I got into tech with no education during the recession just on psychotic passion alone. I was working at but hacki…

“ I intuit that if you are insanely dedicated enough the universe has a weird appreciation for that kind of thing, and eventually throws you a bone. I know it's wrong and irrational but everytime I've tried that it's worked” Also known as survivorship bias.

"The harder you work, the luckier you get."

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#269

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

varjag wrote: post #148
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fields that will be hit: anything that relies on ad revenue, international or trans-national tourism and travel (badly), b&m retail (badly), online retail [1], entertainment [also 1], web support services, corporate web dev, real estate, fintech. Fields that may grow: medical services and support, small-scale short-distance tourism (after 6-12 months), small scale web dev, military spending, government support and co…

Tourism and travel will resurge in 2021, when people who missed this year's vacation (i.e. everyone) will book for the next summer.

Not me. I'm bracing for my own expected layoff and I imagine a lot of HNers are as well.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#270

Post by [deleted] »

adtac wrote: post #2

In the age of RSUs, graduating in the middle of a recession is financially incredible IF you managed to get the job before all the hiring freezes AND it is at one of the publicly traded big N companies with good trade volume. Your RSU price is lower, you get more stock units for the same dollar amount at the time of joining in your initial grant (arguably much more important than refreshers). I have a friend who rece…

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