Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Unemployable Programmer

unemployable.pen.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 464 posts

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#301

Post by doktrin »

jimbobimbo wrote: post #218
vonmoltke wrote: post #136

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. 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 t…

> I keep reading horror stories about multi-day interviews with "take home tests" and other insanity

2 actual interviews that were offered to me early in my career :

1. The weekend hackathon (which actually ran from Friday until Monday)

2. The full-week trial

I took #1, but not #2. I was working at the time, and in no way could justify taking a week of vacation just to work for free for someone else.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#302

Post by derekp7 »

thekingofspain wrote: post #244
nordic_nomad wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm self taught, no degree, and I get job offers and headhunters out of the blue from all over the central US. Denver, Kansas City, Omaha, Des Moines, Chicago, and small cities I've never heard of. The best thing I ever did was look at my friends early on who were getting found on linked in and organized my linkedin profile to look as similar as theirs as I could truthfully. The next best thing was taking 6 months…

Um, whatever key you used instead of 'u' in 'fucked' made almost your entire message italicized.

As I was reading the post, I couldn't wait for him to swear again so the italics would be turned off.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#303

Post by zanek »

bitshepherd wrote: post #220
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.

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.

I put my resume online 10 days ago (I live in Austin). I've had over 200 companies/recruiters call me. There are a ton of software engineering jobs in Austin and all over. I've gotten over 30 calls for jobs in Dallas, San Antonio, Plano, etc.

Anyone saying there are no jobs in this area has a crappy resume or no skills

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#304

Post by [deleted] »

philbarr wrote: post #247
nordic_nomad wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm self taught, no degree, and I get job offers and headhunters out of the blue from all over the central US. Denver, Kansas City, Omaha, Des Moines, Chicago, and small cities I've never heard of. The best thing I ever did was look at my friends early on who were getting found on linked in and organized my linkedin profile to look as similar as theirs as I could truthfully. The next best thing was taking 6 months…

Lessons from this post: 1. If you're going to swear, don't use an asterisk to try and make it look good. We can take it, honest. 2. Something in between two asterisks on HN gets shown in italics .

[deleted]

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#305

Post by javajosh »

wiz21 wrote: post #293
vonmoltke wrote: post #136

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. What is baffling is this Valley-centric, web and mobile development-centric line being repeated c…

Agreed. We're pickier. I work on application that ditributes about 1E9 euros a year (so it's smaller than a bank but that's not exactly a small application either). We're maintenance-mode now. When I hire, I need : some who : - can actually code (many of the applicants can write code, but they don't know important things like : how does a hashtable work, recursivity, etc) - can write reliable code (i.e. ability to te…

>where you don't have luch room to learn from mistakes

I enjoyed that.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#306

Post by doktrin »

logfromblammo wrote: post #159
jcadam wrote: post #69

Hmm... I'm a 35 year old programmer and I work in Defense/Aerospace. If you think finding a good developer is hard, try finding a good developer who also holds a security clearance. If you're any good at all, you will always be employed and well compensated. The work can be dull, with Vogon-esque processes and procedures, but I have side projects to keep me sane :) Every couple of years (ok, at least every year) I'll…

The shortage of developers with clearance is exacerbated by the number of people with clearance who want to exit the defense contractor ecosystem, because it's a military-industrial clusterfuck from top to bottom. They hire us for our brains, and then tell us not to use them. Except we can't get out because of two factors: 1. The non-defense ecosystem won't fix their insane hiring processes. 2. If you do actually get…

This is fascinating. I work for a research lab and have a clearance, but we all make below private sector industry standard. I've never actually looked at defense contractors and thus had no idea what the pay scale was like.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#307

Post by Futurebot »

Merovius wrote: post #215
strathmeyer wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not everyone can. Here in the US, doing so without family support / fallback if you fail out makes it extremely risky. If you're supporting yourself completely, having to work gets in the way of going to school (immersion while working full-time, especially at workplaces that demand all your time is basically impossible.) Others succeed in a work setting, but struggle in school. Still others don't want to deal with mounds of debt, and have no college fund/trust fund/aren't good enough to get scholarships. There are lots of reasons.

https://medium.com/@opirmusic/why-software-developers-should...

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#308

Post by Retric »

jcadam wrote: post #103
mgkimsal wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem there is you can't just go get a security clearance - you have to be ... sponsored(?) - is that the word - by a company already. At least, that was my reading of the situation a few years back. I gave up applying to defense positions years ago because every one required existing security clearance. It's the defense industry version of "you have to have experience before we'll hire you to get the experience".

Right after I graduated with my BSCS in 2002, I went into the Army for four years (which is how I got my clearance). The only employers willing to even look at me ("if you love programming so much, why haven't you been doing it for the past four years?") were defense companies, and only because I already had a clearance. :) We sometimes hire fresh grads without a clearance, but experienced hires are generally expecte…

Out of curiosity what's your take on people who had a clearance and then let it expire? They go inactive after 2 years so getting back seems like an issue.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#309

Post by canadiancreed »

jcadam wrote: post #69

Hmm... I'm a 35 year old programmer and I work in Defense/Aerospace. If you think finding a good developer is hard, try finding a good developer who also holds a security clearance. If you're any good at all, you will always be employed and well compensated. The work can be dull, with Vogon-esque processes and procedures, but I have side projects to keep me sane :) Every couple of years (ok, at least every year) I'll…

> If you think finding a good developer is hard, try finding a good developer who also holds a security clearance.

Maybe it's harder to find in the States. I had a Canadian clearance for ten years (it wasn't a low level one either), and could never get a job, even with experience in whatever stack they were utilizing. The reason? Couldn't speak french. Even thought the coding language is all either English or math, and from contacts I have in the industry it's completely English, no dice.

Then again I can't get work for any defense company in the states because I'm not American so that's always fun too.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#310

Post by nordic_nomad »

doktrin wrote: post #300
nordic_nomad wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. Yep, all I did was use the asterixesses. Clearly the site was offended by my attempt at modesty.

You can edit it. It's a weird nitpick, but it actually detracts from the legibility.

Done, sorry for the eye strain.
Post reply on HN