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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

#571

Post by lazide »

thomasahle wrote: post #341
mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who replies with that kind of hyperbole is just saying they don’t want anyone who is going to take more than a bare minimum of PTO. If you’re dealing with a reasonable person, you should be able to preface the question by explaining how having sufficient time off helps you do your best work and avoid burnout, and that you want to clarify expectations up front to make sure that you and the company are an ideal…

> If you’re dealing with a reasonable person, you should be able to preface the question by explaining how having sufficient time off helps you do your best work and avoid burnout If you are dealing with a reasonable person, hopefully you want have to explain any of that.

Have you ever had a date where the first thing someone talks about is something like having babies, or going on and on about their ex, or they want to know how much you make in the first 15 minutes? It is not a pleasant feeling, and makes it pretty clear what their priorities are (and aren’t). Namely that having some idea who YOU are and if they like you doesn’t really matter much.

If someone starts the interview process talking about about the vacation amounts (and not much else), that isn’t that different. Chances are at that point they don’t know folks on the team, and vice versa, they don’t know about the company (much), or what the job would likely look like, it may entail, or really much of anything.

It’s just weird, and a bit concerning, in the same way that someone might ask about perks and pay without even trying to understand any of those factors too. Because those factors matter too, a lot.

I’m not saying asking about vacation is a round file thing - rather I have seen, and can definitely imagine, scenarios where it is or would be a pretty major red flag.

If part of the general background comp discussion after someone has spent some effort figuring things out, or as part of the initial listing? Of course, that’s not weird at all. And giving a pay range for a role is of course necessary to avoid people wasting their time.

So ‘it depends’

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

#572

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#573

Post by rsj_hn »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #558
rsj_hn wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people understand that "unlimited" does not mean you can take half the year off. It means there is no hard limit and it is up to a discussion between you and your manager. 8 weeks is pretty generous.

I imagine it's really hard for employers to balance that, though. A good employer wants employees to take the time off they need without worrying about running out of PTO to do the stuff they want. They don't want an employee to ever have to think "Shit, if I take that day off for a dentist appointment, then I won't have enough PTO for that weeklong trip to Hawaii!" But if you try to avoid this scenario by being extr…

Yes, at my work the manager made it clear he expects people to take time off -- often getting then to take the minimum is a struggle.

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

#574

Post by lazide »

redisman wrote: post #488
Cyph0n wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need to clarify intent for something as fundamental as work/life balance, wouldn’t that be (at best) a yellow flag?

This needs to not be a taboo. It’s very important how many days I get off, how many hours I’m expected to work and if I’m expected to work nights and weekends. Those are like my top 3 concerns, I don’t really care about your snacks or vision or stack to be honest.

But they do care about those things - a lot. And since being employed requires both parties are happy with the deal, it is something worth considering that obviously not caring about the things they care about could cause them concern.

It goes both ways of course - them not caring about your well-being is obviously just a big a red flag for a candidate.

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

#575

Post by njbooher »

svelle wrote: post #569
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was not my intention. I was operating under the assumption that anybody in the comment section had read the article first, since then it would have been known that I wasn't quoting the author, I was quoting something the author quoted.

It's the correct assumption to be made for the comments section to the article you quoted from.

Reading the comments to decide if you want to read the article is also a valid workflow. Although anyone doing that (me included) isn't entitled to complain about quotes not having enough context.

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

#576

Post by quickthrower2 »

chaps wrote: post #184
boffinAudio wrote: post #7

40+ years of experience here, and I'll tell you the #1 thing I've learned: * Software is a social service. Its for other humans. Incredibly, it doesn't matter how educated the developer, they still seem to have to learn this lesson themselves, over and over, until it sinks in...

I do a lot of dev work with non-profits and such. About a year ago I was working on an extremely difficult project as a volunteer where I was insistent that a specific part was vitally important to getting the project to move forward (generalizing tables extraction from scanned OCR docs) and I was spending a lot of time on it. One of the devs I worked with, with 40+ years of experience, basically told me this exact t…

Predicting the future is hard. You were both right. You only have the outcome to judge the decision, not the full probability distribution.

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

#577

Post by quickthrower2 »

faizshah wrote: post #236
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…

This is the opposite of how you should want any knowledge worker to think. If you believe that there’s some innate ability that makes people 10x better at a skill than you rather than hours of practice and study then you are much less likely to acquire that skill or learn those skills efficiently. You need to have a growth mindset to be an effective knowledge worker not a fixed mindset. This is discussed in the book…

You can be both. I can get better at programming and enjoy beating my personal best but acknowledge some people may be genetically disposed to be better at it even when not trying.

Same reason there is a gaggle of personal trainers at the park near me every morning but none of those working out are thinking they’ll compete in the Olympics

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

#579

Post by quickthrower2 »

The main thing I’ve learned is there is a glass ceiling of pay as a SWE and although it seems to pay well, once you have a family to support its pretty much working class. Trying to make money in side hustle is futile for most (You are the commodity compliment to FAANG etc.). Investments are the way to go to increase comfort of living.

Why all the money focus and not about craft and blah blah? Because you are a worker for a business. You will unlikely get to build your magnum opus at work and probably won’t have the energy to do that at the weekend (for most of us). So programming as a job is heavily about earning a living. Work hard, do a great job. If you are 10x then what are you doing working for someone else anyway? Are they paying you 1M a year?

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

#580

Post by shoo »

RNCTX wrote: post #420

Speaking of iteration, iterating over the most popular replies to this tells me that the points which hit home enough to drive engagement are replies to the effect of: 1) "No, my 37 day interview process is good, actually." 2) "Rails sucks" 3) "Making a thing people would want to use is a bad idea." 4) (two long threads) "The 10x programmer exists, I saw him once at a con." 5) "No one cares what anyone else thinks."…

There's also a path-dependent local optimisation aspect to HN comment threads. All things equal, threads that are higher up the page during the right time window get more eyeballs and more engagement, which might encourage people to hang their replies off the currently-popular thread. If we reran the "experiment" under essentially the same conditions we might find that a different bunch of responses get the most engagement.
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