As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

> I found great difficulty finding a mid-career developer for the 130-150k range that it started making an "investment hire" feel like a viable alternative.

Wow, are talented developer really that hard to find? (Especially, considering you're offering 130-150k.)

Are you insistent on a developer being "mid-career" (I interpret that as having "years of experience") -- or would you accept a highly talented who has just begun career (e.g. a recent CS grad)?

Stanford isn't an Ivy. ;)

There's nothing special about programming. Everyone wanted to be a trader and banker until 2008. Everyone also wanted to buy a house or be a real estate agent until 2008 too. And everyone wanted to be a web developer until 1999. People follow the money signal that an economy broadcasts. You can't blame individuals who want to better their prospects.

What we can do is blame the following:

1. Predatory schools (not all) with big price tags producing ill equipped developers

2. Greedy herd like VC's making bad investments that society has to pay for

3. And finally often overlooked, shoddy and uncritical journalism like this article that fail to provide context and attempt at finding the deeper real story

I actually went through a similar track to what the people you were trying to hire did. I graduated with a minor in CS and a major in Aerospace Engineering. I got screwed on the "Systems Engineering" job I got straight out of school. So after a while started learn to code on my own for a few months then I started applying for jobs. I was actually offered multiple jobs as QA, but I ended up taking the first one that offered me a dev job for around 50k. This was because I knew I wanted to program, and not to be QA.

I was lucky. I ended up working at a CRUD factory, where they were using .NET Webforms to create the same thing 100 times in a row. I learned a ton in the 2 years I worked there, enough to realize they were doing things in a way I just didn't like. They produced slow code quickly, which is what they were paid to do.

Those two years worked for me to fill in some of the gap I have from not majoring in CS. Now I think I fall in the better than average .NET developer, but I also didn't expect 75k right away. Anyway, I didn't go the route of a code camp, but I did have a CS minor.

One note is that many people I worked with had CS degrees and were unmotivated to learn new coding techniques (patterns or even methods within the same language). I'd say they were bad programmers, but they weren't they were just happy with turning the same thing out over and over again. They were smart, good, wrote bug lite code, and it deployed well. They just didn't care to innovate. They were SOLID work horses, and I have nothing against that. It just isn't the environment I like to be in.

After 3 years of experience I feel that I can now drop in just about anywhere and be productive, but I definitely couldn't back when I started.

Funny thing, the 2 best novice programmers at that place were self taught, one a CS minor and another completely self taught through a PHP side project. These two are still my go to guys for coming up with complex solutions.

75k in NY for an inexperienced developer isn't all that high.

My first full time tech gig was for 37.5k at a shady-as-hell direct marketing company. HTML and CSS, a very little bit of javascript for form validation that I learned at my desk. They let me go about eight months in (thank god).

I failed a phone interview with NYT because I didn't know edge side includes.

I was devastated. Prepared to move back in with my dad with hat in hand, the literal prodigal son.

I passed a phone interview a week later with an ad company. After a three hour on-site interview, they offered me a job on the spot as a front-end developer - at 70k/year.

This was in '07.

I would definitely say that I qualified as inexperienced. I knew enough CSS to take just about any design and slice it into something that worked, and I knew enough HTML to lay it out. I knew a smattering of JS, but the language frustrated me. I had probably about a sophomore level understanding of computer science. I was an academic failure and community college dropout. They took a huge gamble on me. (edit: since this is getting a couple upvotes, PSA: I was undiagnosed/treated ADHD until I was nearly 30. If you think you might have it, talk to a professional. I thought I was strong enough to cope without help, and I was wrong)

I came out of that job knowing ASP.net, some C#, and a lot more Javascript.

But 75k for an inexperienced developer in NYC? Not that high at all. I was probably making only a little more than half of what the other developers on the team were. But damn it felt good to have a career.