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Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

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Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#471

Post by sly010 »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #310

> “if they ask about time off in the first interview then they are never going to be there!” The fact that this attitude is common scares me when I'm doing interviews. Time off is incredibly important to me. What's the use of making a great income if you can't get the time off to enjoy it? The culture about the use of PTO varies wildly between companies. A friend of mine worked somewhere that supposedly gave 20 days…

Think about it the other way, if they reject a candidate for asking, it's their way of saying "The PTO situation is terrible here".

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#472

Post by rnotaro »

xwolfi wrote: post #377
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #310

> “if they ask about time off in the first interview then they are never going to be there!” The fact that this attitude is common scares me when I'm doing interviews. Time off is incredibly important to me. What's the use of making a great income if you can't get the time off to enjoy it? The culture about the use of PTO varies wildly between companies. A friend of mine worked somewhere that supposedly gave 20 days…

The problem is not what's important to you when you do an interview. It's not a friendly club, it's the guys who will pay your rent for a while, just act like you pretend to understand this, and ask by side channel, out of sheer strategy. You CAN refuse once the contract arrives for signature, the interview is a lot also for the company to have argument to sell you to management as a worthy investment. I admit I neve…

Sounds like a toxic workplace environnement. I'm grateful that my bank/employer cares about our work/life balance. A burnout employee is not a productive employee.

I've stopped applying to place where they are not upfront with their PTO / Salary brackets. It sounds like you don't want people to take their PTO.

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#473

Post by aosmond »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #310

> “if they ask about time off in the first interview then they are never going to be there!” The fact that this attitude is common scares me when I'm doing interviews. Time off is incredibly important to me. What's the use of making a great income if you can't get the time off to enjoy it? The culture about the use of PTO varies wildly between companies. A friend of mine worked somewhere that supposedly gave 20 days…

As I once told a boss who tried to cancel my already approved vacation in a former job/company, you can't stop me from going. You can only stop me from coming back. Let me know which you prefer. (I really needed that vacation and I was done with bullshit.)

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#474

Post by chown »

> No one is going to tell you in an interview that they are going to be unreliable, abusive, pompous, or never show up to meetings on time. People might claim they have “signals” for these things…

I had a great interview with one of the FAANG companies. The technical interviews, 6 of them in a row!, felt more like they were wanting to see me fail spectacularly rather than focus on my approach of solving whiteboard problems. Still, I did more than average to get "pass" from them. But HR dropped me because she didn't like the answer to "what's your weakness?" question along the lines of - "I focus too much on job at hand to an extent that I struggle with work-life-balance and working on it. If I can overcome that and learn how to take breaks timely I might be more productive.". HR didn't like it because it was not one of the canned responses she was expecting ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#475

Post by charlieflowers »

austincheney wrote: post #127
gavinray wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I don't know why the industry (or people?) in general have a problem with accepting this abilities gap. It's as if the notion of people being arbitrarily born more or less with a knack for something is evil. Let me tell you the story of when I realized I was (at best), a "not-mediocre" dev: 1. I've been programming for fun even as a kid. That's what got me into it: If you count kid-programming as "programming…

> Agreed, I don't know why the industry (or people?) in general have a problem with accepting this abilities gap. Bias and poor processes. When people become reliant upon a technique or process to attain viability that means of execution becomes more important than the thing you are producing. As a result people will defend slow unproductive means of execution to the death. This is also a socially reinforced phenomen…

Yeah, 10x is really fast. Lots of companies couldn’t bear to go that fast … the rate of change scares them.

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#476

Post by eloff »

aosmond wrote: post #473
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #310

> “if they ask about time off in the first interview then they are never going to be there!” The fact that this attitude is common scares me when I'm doing interviews. Time off is incredibly important to me. What's the use of making a great income if you can't get the time off to enjoy it? The culture about the use of PTO varies wildly between companies. A friend of mine worked somewhere that supposedly gave 20 days…

As I once told a boss who tried to cancel my already approved vacation in a former job/company, you can't stop me from going. You can only stop me from coming back. Let me know which you prefer. (I really needed that vacation and I was done with bullshit.)

Well put. I'm guessing there were no consequences, other than to lower your already low opinion of the company?

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#477

Post by marcosdumay »

goodpoint wrote: post #302
marcosdumay wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best code is no code; the second best code is high quality third party code; the third best code is your code; the worst code is low quality third party code, and that one is by a huge margin.

Nicely put. Yet I would add that your code is preferable to third party code if you can solve the same problem with 10x less SLOCs or complexity.

To change a completely misunderstood citation into a new one that nobody will understand either:

> Unnecessary flexibility is the source of all evil

Just as with the original "premature", the word "unnecessary"is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and there's no way to state that rule that saves people from thinking before applying. Some times those 10x SLOC are really important and will save you; most times it's just a 90% waste ratio multiplied over your previous one.

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#479

Post by aosmond »

eloff wrote: post #476
aosmond wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I once told a boss who tried to cancel my already approved vacation in a former job/company, you can't stop me from going. You can only stop me from coming back. Let me know which you prefer. (I really needed that vacation and I was done with bullshit.)

Well put. I'm guessing there were no consequences, other than to lower your already low opinion of the company?

No consequences. I think my opinion truly hit the gutter when I got that boss from hell :).

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#480

Post by 908B64B197 »

quadcore wrote: post #96

The 10x programmer is a silly myth. The idea that someone can produce in 1 day what another competent, hard working, similarly experienced programmer can produce in 2 weeks is silly. You know, 10x is an optimistic number here. Some programmers will do in 1 day what you wont achieve in a life time. And not understanding that makes you a bad programmer by my book simply because this is the foundation of the job. So let…

I think the fundamental issue with 10x is that a lot of people simply never met one. These guys tend to fly under the radar quite a bit. If you are in a tier 2 market or company, your chances of attracting one are close to nil. Because they are extremely valuable, they don't interview a lot and tend to hop between companies where they know people (or get fast tracked internally).

I remember someone laughing at the idea of 10x programmers. I asked him where he hired from and what's the compensation like. Turns out two high performers I had recently hired were from the same college he was trying to hire from. Of course, he had no chances of attracting anyone since my offer was ~3x what he was offering!

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