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The Unemployable Programmer

unemployable.pen.io

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Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#361

Post by s73v3r »

woah wrote: post #251
vonmoltke wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd say it goes deeper than this: there's a greater emphasis today on the candidate being productive from day one. Which drives me crazy. Nobody can be truly productive on day one. You have processes to learn, even if it is just an informal "way we do things". You have existing code to become familiar with. You have team dynamics to work into. It takes time. Personally, I cringe whenever I read a job advert mention…

I think that you don't get it about pushing to production on day one. These companies do that to because they have resilient systems, tests, and tooling, and they push to production all the time. Pushing to production on day one is a way to introduce new hires to the continuous deployment methodology. If you're afraid of pushing to production, there's a problem.

I believe they think that. I don't really believe that they do.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#362

Post by phlandis »

balozi wrote: post #341

Reading this thread, I get the sense that most comments are from twenty-something guys. There is no way they would understand what the 40-something rusty programmer is talking about. It's call the invincibility of naive youth. You will be him in a few years.

start up and pump in those 100 hr weeks

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#363

Post by amyjess »

kodablah wrote: post #290
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 am a dev in Dallas and I am constantly inundated w/ recruiters to the point of annoyance. Based on my friends' anecdotal management/employer-side stories across several Dallas companies, it is definitely an employee market right now. Many companies are paying hefty salaries/bonuses to move people in from out of state.

During my unemployment spell in 2010-2012, I got lots of recruiters talking to me, and I even had some interviews come out of that.

Guess what? The employers were pickier than the recruiters.

I've learned to deeply distrust recruiters: they are known to make up lie after lie just to throw as many names in front of an employer as possible on the off chance one of us gets hired so they can grab their commission. They'll ask employers to interview blatantly incompetent candidates (including myself: I was absolutely not competent for some of the positions recruiters tried to get me) just because they're that desperate.

Then, when I was looking for a new job in 2014 (employed, but unhappy at my then-current position), I got innundated with so many recruiters lobbing utter shit at me. This time, I could afford to be picky, and I wasn't afraid to say to some of the shadier ones, "never contact me again". I had multiple recruiters try to offer me a six-month contract in another state, despite my profile on every job site saying both "unwilling to relocate" and "full-time only, no contracts". I had recruiters try to get me positions that required twice the amount of experience I had in technologies I've never touched. I had one recruiter repeatedly send me calls and emails for a position I explicitly told them I wanted no part of the first time he contacted me, and he didn't stop until I sent an email saying "please cease and desist from contacting me again, or I will take legal action against both you and your firm" (I should've also called his firm's HR department, but c'est la vie...).

Oh, and now that I'm happily employed at my current employer, I still get frequent calls from recruiters. I legally changed my name (first, middle, and last) in June 2014, but most of the recruiters calling me ask for me by my old name, and I'm at a point in my life where even hearing my old name causes me emotional distress.

In short: recruiters are sleazy, and being contacted by recruiters has no bearing on whether or not you'll actually get a job.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#364

Post by s73v3r »

ryandrake wrote: post #223
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…

If there is really an under-supply of (or over-demand for) developers, why aren't developer salaries skyrocketing? Something doesn't add up.

Companies are cheap, and lots of hiring managers believe they can get lucky and find that one guy that is a rockstar programmer but doesn't know it, and thus can be had for cheap.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#365

Post by alistproducer2 »

I took my linkedin profile down b/c I was tired of dealing with recruiters. I work for a top 5 Fortune 500 company making ~70k 1.5 years out of college in ATL.

I've interviewed with a couple companies just to see what it's like out there. I usually ask for some ridiculous salary b/c that's the only way I would leave my current job.

I find the interviewing process stupid. I had one company ask me to code up a fully functioning Angular site from scratch in some jsfiddle clone that I had never seen in 1 hour. It took me around 5-7 minutes just figuring how to work with the fiddle clone.

All the while I went in there as a guy who had written a pretty good Angular JS clone from scratch - recursive compiler and all. You would think that would be proof enough that I am pretty good at JS/front end dev. I just laugh at these interviews.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#366

Post by alistproducer2 »

magicbuzz wrote: post #42

The whole 'do an open source' project is a crock. I single-handedly wrote a large Javascript module for a well-known editor. It's used by hundreds of people around the world but all the folks employing 'front-end' programmers seem to bin my CV as my current fulltime job is 100% Python.

Similar boat. I wrote an Angular JS clone (TemplarJS) but they seem more concerned about whether I can verticle center a div. As if a guy who can write a compiler from scratch in JS is going to have trouble building UIs. I don't get it, but I already have a good job so F it.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#367

Post by Merovius »

Futurebot wrote: post #307
Merovius wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

The more I learn about the US educational system, the more I consider it sucking majorly. I don't know how you can put up with that stuff. I already consider it a source of major social injustice, that here in GER you will only receive state-help for the first 5 years of your studies. But it's at least still possible for everyone who wants to get a degree, if they are willing to exit with something like 10K€ of interest-free debt, payable over 8 years (and have something like a 10h/week job on the side, which is incredibly easy to get as a CS-major).

I guess I'm just overly priviledged by the german educational system… :-/

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#368

Post by dummy7953 »

Jesus, what a whiner. When has it not been about more than the ability to do the basic work? Also, his concerns about weirdos from some high-falutin' Ivy league school shouldn't matter none to you 'cause you weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth. So keep it in your pants until the revolution comes and they can be the first one up against the wall, or, in the US, it can be the blacks as per usual.

So anyhoo, capitalism makes a meal out of everyone. Why the continued neruoticism about it? Fuck it, you're just animated matter making its way to the grave. I mean, unless you decide to care about something. But please, for once, can you make that thing not be you, and your career, and what people with power & money think of you? 'Cause all those things suck - especially you.

This endless navel-gazing over your career is nauseating. Look, let me clue you in, you need to be the same religion and political party as your boss, so be a Republican Born Again Christian or else learn to keep your mouth shut and quit complaining. The notion that you have full control over your destiny or career or where you live or in what cardboard box you live in - it's all bullshit. Just ride that shit out and eventually you'll be dead, and then you won't have to worry so much. You big dumb baby.

Re: The Unemployable Programmer

#370

Post by s73v3r »

georgerobinson wrote: post #104
fringedgentian wrote: post #37

I once found myself unemployable as well, maybe what I did can help someone. This was quite a few years ago when the ColdFusion job I had just ended and the job I had before that was in Visual FoxPro (and a few other even less known technologies). Talk about unemployable. Also I am not in a major city, so I was getting pretty much no responses to my resume. After a few months I realized I was unemployable and set out…

> After a few months I realized I was unemployable and set out to change it. First, as 20 something I can't imagine how hard it must be to wake up with the realization that you no longer have a job. Second, I think you deserve some real credit for 1. identifying that you were unemployable and 2. fixing it. However, the real trick is identifying when you're unemployable (or even starting to get close to it) before you…

"I want to stop you right there. I think your objective from here out is to make sure you never find yourself unemployable again - rather than waiting and/or hoping it doesn't happen."

I think that's kinda like saying, "I want to stop you right there. Instead of buying auto insurance, your objective should be to not get into a car accident again." It's a nice goal, but you're gonna need a backup plan for if something goes wrong.

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