> I would use a microservice when I have a relatively small and simple chunk of code that needs to run every once in a while.
Is this a joke? Why write such nonsense when you must know you don't know anything about the subject?
Rules of thumb for a 1x developer
271–280 of 505 posts
Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer
#272I used to get called a 10x developer, I was also called a rockstar and a ninja and a 100x dev and every other compliment that was hip. Then I hit 30. That type of talk stopped. Then I hit 40. Now I will not be considered for any entry level, mid level, or senior level software dev job anywhere in the United States, despite being very desperate and willing to relocate for anything. Doesn't matter. Too old. I'm suppose…
Embedded development is safe from the young turks in the US. Nobody is being taught how to competently develop in C and work with hardware. There is no apparent ageism where I work because older devs are in demand for skills that aren't available in a younger cohort.
I worked in embedded (mobile phone OS) about 8 years ago (UK). The pay was appalling for such a high-skilled job. I could have doubled my salary if I changed to flinging out JS for some website.
Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
A startup CTO role might work for you if you can build the product grounds all alone (frontend, backend, DevOps).
Forget CTO. I'm in the exact same boat as the OP, (20 years experience, over 40 years old) and I can't even get an interview for a manager position. I've been trying to move out of an individual contributor role for a while, but it's always the same story: 1) We need you to build this super-important thing; you're too valuable as a developer right now 2) We're growing fast, we need experienced managers right now (or…
Don't interview for a manager. pick a growing startup, ask in the interview about developer career paths, and if management is a separate, lateral, or heirarachical stack (correct answers is "lateral track devs can switch into")
Get good at your job. Get good at the company. Learn the domain and drink the koolaid. And, when the team grows, and they're looking for managers, nominate yourself to begin transitioning. You'll do both jobs and straddle the line for a while but eventually you'll have job experience managing a team.
Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm 40 and I don't suppose anyone has ever called me a 10x developer or a rockstar or a ninja, though I was recently described as having "a superpower to crush tickets." I have a feeling you have not applied "everywhere" in the United States, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I've never left my home state, and the deluge of recruiter spam on LinkedIn hasn't slowed down yet. And no I'm not an architect or team lead…
> the deluge of recruiter spam on LinkedIn hasn't slowed down yet Recruiters spamming you is not a correlative metric for companies hiring you. SV is worse than other locations, but even the midwest company I work for (I'm also over 40) much prefers to hire people straight out of college. They're cheaper, willing to work longer hours, and easily molded into an image the company wants. EDIT: To provide a small anecdot…
Anybody know if it's possible to block Amazon recruiters on Linkedin?
If not, I'm going to ask the next one to flag me in their system, if that's possible.
Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m 45, and was last in the job market in 2018 and before that in 2016. I’m in Atlanta. The last two times I looked for your standard senior/lead enterprise dev roles it took less than two weeks to get an offer just by using local recruiters. Edit: There is a huge difference between random spam from recruiters who throw a big net and working with local boutique recruiters who have relationships with local firms. I ig…
I'm in my 40s in the SF Bay Area and recently landed a new software development job. The process took several months. My initial interviews were disastrous; it had been many years since my last job search and I didn't know I wasn't prepared for the "leetcode era". Drilling on "leetcode medium" problems with a time limit got me to the point where I was at least in the game that's being played nowadays. It wasn't prett…
No appreciable percentage of employers outside of SV, and maybe NYC, give a shit about LeetCode or probably even know what it is.
SV is an outlier among outliers in almost every respect, even among other large metro areas with big tech industries like NYC, Chicago, or Austin. To the point where advice should always clarify whether it pertains to SV or non-SV, because it's usually one or the other.
Edit: typo
Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
Embedded development is safe from the young turks in the US. Nobody is being taught how to competently develop in C and work with hardware. There is no apparent ageism where I work because older devs are in demand for skills that aren't available in a younger cohort.
I worked in embedded (mobile phone OS) about 8 years ago (UK). The pay was appalling for such a high-skilled job. I could have doubled my salary if I changed to flinging out JS for some website.
The pay is appalling in the UK. The "problem" with businesses that build hardware is that there is a lot of additional work that needs to be done to make something physical. The extra headcount means that developers can't demand prima donna compensation. If the base compensation for pure software devs is already low in a country, then it will not be able to sustain a domestic electronics industry.
Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm 40 and I don't suppose anyone has ever called me a 10x developer or a rockstar or a ninja, though I was recently described as having "a superpower to crush tickets." I have a feeling you have not applied "everywhere" in the United States, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I've never left my home state, and the deluge of recruiter spam on LinkedIn hasn't slowed down yet. And no I'm not an architect or team lead…
Have you been programming your whole life? Have you ever been tempted to move into architect role?
My whole life? Interesting question... since I was 7, so pretty much yes! (And since before I dropped out of college, I've been doing this professionally, except for one summer early on where I drove a truck around delivering hoagies to businesses!)
And certainly. A lot of projects were small enough where I did everything from set up the hosting environment and domain names, build the database, write the application and maybe even do front-end development. But I don't usually have the confidence to be the final point person on larger projects. I suspect I'm getting there. You can only stand to do things that you know won't turn out well at someone else's direction, only to soon watch them turn out poorly... so many times before you start to believe in yourself a little.
Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer
#278> PHP is banned at Amazon due to security reasons, but its successor, Hack, runs a lot of.. Just to be clear, Hack is not PHP's successor. Hack is a fork of PHP developed by Facebook. Hack will not overtake PHP any time soon. PHP has had security issues in the past. Sure you can do stupid things with it if you want, but modern PHP is security conscious out of the box. Frameworks like Laravel make great default choice…
I'm very surprised they banned PHP but not C. In PHP, if you make unsafe code, it's your fault. In C, well, it's still your fault because you could theoretically write secure software in C, but professionals with a decade of coding experience still have memory corruption vulnerabilities in their code. Those bugs just can't exist in PHP and so, after you learn some patterns (such as parameterized queries), the number of serious vulnerabilities one typically finds goes down very significantly. The most serious bug you'll typically find (when written by someone with experience of course) is "I can get application admin" and not "I get server shell access", which is still very bad but not as bad. (Source: am pentester and at work we also do code reviews.)
Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer
#279I used to get called a 10x developer, I was also called a rockstar and a ninja and a 100x dev and every other compliment that was hip. Then I hit 30. That type of talk stopped. Then I hit 40. Now I will not be considered for any entry level, mid level, or senior level software dev job anywhere in the United States, despite being very desperate and willing to relocate for anything. Doesn't matter. Too old. I'm suppose…
I'm 38. I know 40 seems to be the cut off, but in the Boston area no problems finding a job.
I will say that I interview devs at my current position. I have noticed that a lot of the older people who come in and have years and years of experience at one place don't seem to have the breadth of knowledge we are looking for.
For example, recently before the lockdown I interviewed a guy with over 20 years experience, most mainly at one company for a .net role. He didn't know any of the latest features of the language, including Linq and async/await, never used .net core, no NoSQL experience at all.
We didn't hire him and it's not because of his age. We have several "older" new hires in my engineering department, but it seems like a lot of the "older" people have lots of experience, but at the same company where they fall into complacency and don't keep up with what is happening in the industry.
Not saying this is the case here, but when interviewing this guy I mentioned, this site popped into my head because this is not the first time I've heard people complain about age discrimination in tech here. I have to say from my personal experience, I haven't seen it. Not once has anyone on our interview team said anything about an interviewees age, only the amount of experience someone has. And even that is treated as a positive as we just assume they know their stuff if they've been around for 20+ years.
Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forget CTO. I'm in the exact same boat as the OP, (20 years experience, over 40 years old) and I can't even get an interview for a manager position. I've been trying to move out of an individual contributor role for a while, but it's always the same story: 1) We need you to build this super-important thing; you're too valuable as a developer right now 2) We're growing fast, we need experienced managers right now (or…
Don't interview for a manager. pick a growing startup, ask in the interview about developer career paths, and if management is a separate, lateral, or heirarachical stack (correct answers is "lateral track devs can switch into") Get good at your job. Get good at the company. Learn the domain and drink the koolaid. And, when the team grows, and they're looking for managers, nominate yourself to begin transitioning. Yo…
I think you missed my point entirely. I did those things for 10-15 years, and they led nowhere. Either it's one reason or another from a current employer, or none of it counts with prospective employers all because I didn't already have a manager title.