Rules of thumb for a 1x developer • Hacker News Board

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#281

Post by dionian » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #212

scarface74 wrote: post #158

Earlier 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 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. I think I should have tried the local recruiter approach back when I was in Dallas and getting bupkis for hits. Unfortunately, I bought too heavily into the "lol recruiters r…

recruiters may suck but they're also free (for you) and have contacts. fortunately or not, most of my gigs came from them... especially when I was hoping to work on short notice

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#282

Post by cjohnson318 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

spicymaki wrote: post #123

noad wrote: post #21

I 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 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. The 10x developer talk is just hype by unscrupulous employers to entice young engineers to have an unhealthy work life balance. Of course they don't tell that to older developers because they would call you on their bullshit. I know a lot of professional developers that are in their…

> 2) There are a shit-ton more well paying technical jobs that need coders than just software developer roles, expand your horizons.

For sure, I was a "GeoData Manager" at an oil company for a year. The job didn't have programming as a requirement, but I used Python to do my job, and I became super, super productive. After learning a lot about geometry and mapping, I could do a day's work in under an hour. It paid alright for the area, and I didn't have any other experience. I think there's a lot of analyst roles out there that someone with some programming experience could knock out of the park if they don't mind writing a lot of code to read/write Excel spreadsheets, or scrape data from the web, or do any number tasks like that.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#283

Post by solidasparagus » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #133

> I think of Go, Rust, Haskell, Erlang, Clojure, Kotlin, Scala as more hardcore languages. I can tell about Scala: it can be insane hardcore if you want, but it can also be just "a much better Java" as easily - the weird parts are easy to avoid and the normal parts work better. Unless you are a Java veteran and also plan to hire more developers, using Scala instead of Java will save you much time and effort. And Kotl…

The problem with Scala is the same as the problem with Lisp. It's too flexible and it ends up having a bunch of dialects. Sure you can only use a subset, but that doesn't fix the problem that the fragmentation makes it hard to find libraries and code examples that only use the subset of Scala you're comfortable with.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#284

Post by jiveturkey » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

noad wrote: post #21

I 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 55 and am constantly turning down jobs. That said, agism is rampant in this industry. After working with some turtles and fossils I can't say I disagree with it. People become calcified.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#285

Post by Osiris » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

throwphoton wrote: post #218

scarface74 wrote: post #158

Earlier 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…

I'm 40 and a developer for 15 years and didn't make it past Amazon's initial code assessment. One of the problems was a floodfill algorithm, which I've never used before. Couldn't quite figure it out on my own, but found the answer in Google in about 5 minutes, which is what I would do in real life faced with this problem. I don't understand the purpose of asking people to memorize a bunch of algorithms they will probably never use in the job and could research if needed. I don't see it as any reasonable evaluation of my engineering skill.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#286

Post by bcrosby95 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #210

mgkimsal wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Learn what problems the company is solving and help them within their constraints, including using their tools and languages even if they look suboptimal. within reason and 'on day one', yes, agreed. However, if you're hired in because of your skills/accomplishments, but you don't measure up, and it's because their tools/process/code is demonstrably bad, those are constraints that should be on the table for discuss…

Bad ways to point a problem that will make me think you are a 40 years junior with 20 times of 1 year of experience: - Your stack is bad. - You should use X. - Your process is wrong. A sure way to sound like an experienced senior developer: - Your stack has this flaw; we can live with it by doing X but that is at the expense of Y1. A migration to Z will cost Y2, that is much cheaper on the long run. But you'll probab…

> ... that is much cheaper on the long run.

> If it's that case that it is cheaper, and even then people above you do not want the change, then you do have a real problem.

Not necessarily so. This assumes the long run is ever reached. I've seen a lot of developers that do this analysis still hop from tech to tech as the best in "the long run", and if you ever listened to them you would never actually reach that long run benefit.

Regardless, a lot probably depends upon the current state of your company.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#287

Post by technofiend » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

Maybe I'm being naive but I'm privately nursing this hope that at least for devops / SRE roles people do want folks with plenty of operational experience? I mean I still expect they'd want to see someone keeping up with tech stacks and facile in a modern language or two so the interviewee can fix issues and contribute enhancements but still is a depth of experience at some point really a hindrance rather than a help?

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#288

Post by NotATroll » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

kumarvvr wrote: post #63

deweller wrote: post #44

> 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…

A small question. Is PHP still a preferred platform for any sort of complex web development? I have never even looked at the php site or docs, but I am curious. In this day and age, is there a subset of Apps that PHP is suited for?

> Is PHP still a preferred platform for any sort of complex web development?

It's "preferred" as in tons of people get a lot of good work done with it quickly, but wouldn't go out and proselytize how "great" it is or isn't.

PHP is just a tool. A fairly old one at this point. But it still holds up to most of today's standards and is a constantly evolving language.

It's not the hipster language of choice though.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#289

Post by mypalmike » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

dleslie wrote: post #201

mypalmike wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not legal for prospective employers to ask you these kinds of questions. If you're talking about your wife and kids during the interview process, you're doing it wrong. My last round of interviews was at age 46. Went from being (voluntarily) unemployed to a FAANG job. I had to do the same stuff the 20-somethings do: practiced hackerrank, answered stupid whiteboard dynamic programming questions that have nothing…

They can ask related questions which might reveal this information. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23031508

Do people really ask about hobbies? In actual professional job interviews?

The other questions only lead to answers that involve your personal life if you choose to talk about your personal life. Job interviews are professional negotiation, not chats with friends. Where do you see yourself professionally in 5 years? Why would you mention your family?

Asking if you're willing to put in lots of overtime should be a red flag for a job at any age, and answering it shouldn't involve mentioning your kids.

Can you work in the US? Maybe there's issues where the answer varies based on marital status...

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#290

Post by war1025 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

TheRealPomax wrote: post #259

joelbluminator wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well in your 50s your kids are grown, in your 30s they were just born. So companies are better hiring 50 year olds?

That's quite an assumption to make about when someone had kids.

It's ballpark accurate though, right?