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Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

dariusforoux.com

61–70 of 104 posts

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I restarted my software development career around 2009 after being at one company too long and after 8 years and 4 job changes, I went from being what for all intents and purposes a junior .Net developer to the dev team lead based solely on knowing the Microsoft stack really well. At the company where I was the dev lead, I first encountered outside consultants who were there to “help” us transform the company and “mo…

That’s interesting, the career steps you took. May I ask how much is the general pay in those “high paying jobs”?

I hate to mention salaries ranges on HN because of the HN/Silicon Valley bubble where people seem amazed that not only does every developer not live on the West Coast they also don’t make half a million dollars and are not all bumming it in a trailer park.

But, outside the west coast and New York City. In most major cities in the US, a semi hands on software architect can make between around $125K - $150K. A consultant can make from $140K to $200K.

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#62
post #19

I don't find these sorts of articles valuable. The template is simple: Write generic advice that sounds nice, and is never controversial. Make sure it's super vague so you don't have to take any accountability for it, you can move the goalposts of what you're saying. If we remove all the filler in this article (more or less the entire article), it amounts to "be okay at multiple things rather than trying to be good a…

> For example, I don't want someone who can write "Hello, World!" in 30 programming languages.

Would anyone consider this being "ok" at 30 different things? That is just reductive to the point of not making any sense. In the scope the post is talking about "programming" would be one thing. So 30 different languages would be irrelevant. And being able to write only "hello world" would not even qualify as being "ok" at a programming language.

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#63
post #8

When I rode my bicycle across the USA from LA to NYC I met a dude named Ryan through WarmShowers. Over pizza and beers at a local joint in Tempe, AZ, Ryan told me about this blog called _Semi-Rad_ - "you don't need to be a rockstar in something, you just need to be semi-rad. Semi-rad people have the most fun, they achieve the most, they experience the spice of life. They're not so caught up in perfection, but they st…

In several fields, people at the top 1% of skill level earn many times those at top 10% and the mediocre ones may barely get by. This phenomenon is spreading because better technologies enable top performers to serve more people. (See: the Superstar effect for the most extreme examples. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Superstar_Effect ) How would the average workers or even ‘semi-rads’ in generally less lucrative…

How sustainable is that model going to be? It's mathematically impossible for everyone to be in the top 1%.

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#64
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I restarted my software development career around 2009 after being at one company too long and after 8 years and 4 job changes, I went from being what for all intents and purposes a junior .Net developer to the dev team lead based solely on knowing the Microsoft stack really well. At the company where I was the dev lead, I first encountered outside consultants who were there to “help” us transform the company and “mo…

Are you sure you need certifications? Not skeptical, just curious. And what would certifications be?

Yes.

In particular, to be an “Amazon Partner” your company has to have a certain number of certifications. It also helps to have some type of project management certification.

Your skepticism of certifications is well founded, I’ve come across many “paper tigers” who had certifications up the wazoo but couldn’t code/architect thier way out of a wet paper bag.

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#65
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In several fields, people at the top 1% of skill level earn many times those at top 10% and the mediocre ones may barely get by. This phenomenon is spreading because better technologies enable top performers to serve more people. (See: the Superstar effect for the most extreme examples. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Superstar_Effect ) How would the average workers or even ‘semi-rads’ in generally less lucrative…

How sustainable is that model going to be? It's mathematically impossible for everyone to be in the top 1%.

Not if we create 10 billion different specialties.

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#67
post #19

I don't find these sorts of articles valuable. The template is simple: Write generic advice that sounds nice, and is never controversial. Make sure it's super vague so you don't have to take any accountability for it, you can move the goalposts of what you're saying. If we remove all the filler in this article (more or less the entire article), it amounts to "be okay at multiple things rather than trying to be good a…

>The template is simple: Write generic advice that sounds nice, and is never controversial. Make sure it's super vague so you don't have to take any accountability for it, you can move the goalposts of what you're saying In technical terms, what you are suggesting is that the article is making a claim which is unfalsifiable. But actually it is falsifiable. All you have to do is find a person who has diverse skills bu…

> All you have to do is find a person who has diverse skills but is unsuccessful

I know many people like this, but I suspect the No True Scotsman fallacy would get invoked.

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#68

I disagree with this. In my experience as a generalist, most hirers are like customers in a tool store. They're looking for a tool to do a thing. Trying to interest them in a Swiss Army Knife is a waste of time. If they're shopping for skill x, they'll look for the best specialist. Hirers who are metaphorically stocking up for an expedition in the unknown, or who will admit to themselves that they are already lost in…

Whether you choose to specialise or generalise I think should be influenced by the kind of job you're looking for. In the corporate world being a specialist will get you in the door for well defined job roles, whereas early stage startups are more interested in someone who can do a bit of everything well enough.

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#69
This is article is really good. It could have been better if it was in a little detail.

In short people skills, money/investing skills and work skills. You can't go wrong and the author is largely right.

Its always a mistake to assume that merely your programming skills will take you places, well may be if you are Jeff Dean.

If you are anybody else, people skills matter way above anything you can contribute anywhere. Corporations are large places, where your growth and development largely lie with the people you work with. Influencing, persuasion and in general a myriad of people skills are always what's going to make it rain. In most places what work you do is largely irrelevant to your bosses/stakeholders, in fact you could build the best possible software on earth, but their(bosses) salaries or careers aren't going to see much change because of that- There fore they largely don't care. You have to get them to like you, that's how career progress is going to come. On the same lines they can award you a good raise, a bonus or a promotion, nothing much is going to change in company financials. At their unit levels, the things they give you will largely vanish without a trace because they look at reports by a GROUP BY statement. So what does this mean? It means, while paying you great rewards they can hide you, however if you want these rewards you have to be visible to them in a good way.

There fore influencing, persuasion, psychology and range of people skills like Charisma play a huge role in career growth. No mater where you are. This is a whole different skill set which unfortunately most don't even know exists.

The other ones are obvious. It always helps if you have good skills in the work you do. Always read books on the state of the art, do projects which are in trend etc etc.

And personal finance, of course. Because the money you earn has to be useful to you.

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#70

I disagree with this. In my experience as a generalist, most hirers are like customers in a tool store. They're looking for a tool to do a thing. Trying to interest them in a Swiss Army Knife is a waste of time. If they're shopping for skill x, they'll look for the best specialist. Hirers who are metaphorically stocking up for an expedition in the unknown, or who will admit to themselves that they are already lost in…

While I mostly agree with you, I am a generalist who has gone deep in a few things (old fashioned symbolic AI, deep learning, and NLP). But, I have lots of experience in many other areas. I have mostly worked as a consultant for the last 25 years, and remotely, and having a lot of breadth has helped a lot. I have different resumes that stress different types of experience and when someone would contact me to possibly do work, I would give them the resume matching what they needed at the time. From my web site anyone hiring me would see the broad range of things I am interested in so I was never trying to misrepresent myself - I just wanted to give the person contacting me the right material to help them get me approved for a project.
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