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A career ending mistake

bitfieldconsulting.com

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Re: A career ending mistake

#81

Post by giantg2 »

zabzonk wrote: post #32
giantg2 wrote: post #5

"It's not surprising, then, that many of us find ourselves in less than fully satisfying jobs, with doubtful or non-existent prospects for advancement." Very true. I can't wait for my career to be over. I don't think I'll ever find the position where I feel I belong, so I'll just be miserable anywhere now that I know how broken the system really is.

So change careers. I spent the first 6 years of my working life as a medical microbiologist, and was miserable for almost all of it. Then I gradually got into programming, and things looked up. I was still miserable for some bits of it though - such is the nature of things.

There aren't any good career changes that I've found so far. I'm looking though. I think it's easier to get into tech than most other decent paying jobs. So if we reversed the direction of your change, I assume it would be much more difficult to go from programming to medical microbiologist.

Re: A career ending mistake

#82

Post by zeroonetwothree »

kosievdmerwe wrote: post #30
tdumitrescu wrote: post #27

Feels like the "senior IC" role described in this article corresponds mainly to today's "3-5 years of experience 'senior' engineer" roles. The reality that I've seen and experienced is that advancing beyond that on an IC track means a lot more people/political work, rather than constant "hands on keyboard" coding as described in the article. It's not the same as management, but it's inevitably more meetings and evang…

This is something people seem hesitant to realize: that after a certain point you can only grow your career by "managing" other people. This is true in a lot of (most?) fields. At some point you cannot become more productive as an individual and you need to start coordinating the work of many people if you want to increase your productivity. This can of course take many forms, but the essence is inescapable.

Software is clearly an exception to this because you can leverage your work to an arbitrary degree. One person can write software that benefits hundreds/thousands/millions/billions of people.

The junior engineer solves an immediate problem. The senior engineer realizes it’s generalisable to similar problems of their team and solves them all at once. The principal engineer realizes it’s generalisable to their entire company (or broader industry) and solves it for everyone.

Re: A career ending mistake

#83

Post by hinkley »

giantg2 wrote: post #11
_abox wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to hear that. I've had many positions where I felt like I belonged including my current. The ones where I didn't were very depressing and stressful. I hope you will find more fulfillment in the future! By the way I never planned anything. I don't think more than a week ahead. Somehow I have fallen into the right places anyhow. I tend to get really bored once I've totally mastered a job so I change a lot. I…

It felt great at first. Once you realize that the company - respected/known as a place that does the right thing - doesn't follow its own policies and screws people over, you realize that every company/job sucks. It won't be better anywhere else. And you wasted your youth on obscure and obsolete tech because the company needed it and you wrongly believed their promises that they would take care of you (retraining, ca…

I don't know what sort of alternate reality bubble I exist in but I've found that I often get more opportunity to learn new technology when working as a contractor or consultant than as a FTE.

You would think that they would want to hire people who already knew the domain, but apparently that is often not the case.

Re: A career ending mistake

#84

Post by hinkley »

giantg2 wrote: post #22
GekkePrutser wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is totally different. The company I've worked for for the last 20 years has always done the right thing by me. They allowed me to work from my home country for half a year when I needed to be with my family, they paid to move me to yet another country when my team was made redundant so I could do the job I really wanted. And I really love learning obscure tech :) always have. Some companies really are b…

I would like obscure tech if it had a future - like when I thought the company would do the right thing. I do think some companies are better than others, but I don't think any company is really good. They all lie. My company has a reputation for being great and caring. On paper it's true. For over 90% of people, that might be true. But they don't follow their own policies, screwing over a small percentage. So I thin…

I recall thinking that my friend who had decided to gamble on Objective-C as his specialization in '95 was being foolish, because NeXT wasn't doing that well, and the hazard pay for being one of the last N experts was probably fraught.

Less than 2 years later NeXT merges with Apple, and Steve Jobs has begun the biggest comeback in tech history, including switching Apple to Objective-C. Well then...

This sort of thing is a lottery ticket. You likely will not win, but if you do it could just make a couple extra car payments, or you could be set for life.

Re: A career ending mistake

#85

Post by kosievdmerwe »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #82
kosievdmerwe wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something people seem hesitant to realize: that after a certain point you can only grow your career by "managing" other people. This is true in a lot of (most?) fields. At some point you cannot become more productive as an individual and you need to start coordinating the work of many people if you want to increase your productivity. This can of course take many forms, but the essence is inescapable.

Software is clearly an exception to this because you can leverage your work to an arbitrary degree. One person can write software that benefits hundreds/thousands/millions/billions of people. The junior engineer solves an immediate problem. The senior engineer realizes it’s generalisable to similar problems of their team and solves them all at once. The principal engineer realizes it’s generalisable to their entire c…

Not really, you can leverage your work very widely, but your rate of change to the program is limited.

Re: A career ending mistake

#86

Post by giantg2 »

krageon wrote: post #46
giantg2 wrote: post #5

"It's not surprising, then, that many of us find ourselves in less than fully satisfying jobs, with doubtful or non-existent prospects for advancement." Very true. I can't wait for my career to be over. I don't think I'll ever find the position where I feel I belong, so I'll just be miserable anywhere now that I know how broken the system really is.

> I don't think I'll ever find the position where I feel I belong I had this same feeling (including the despairing tone), until I changed where I work. Perhaps you can find a job in a meaningful industry (public transport, charity, a utility, etc) so that you can be certain you have a material positive impact on other people's lives. This impression helps a lot with work enjoyment.

I interviewed for a place called Nava. Seemed like interesting work and a company that cared. When using dig deeper, there seem to be some issues. There are definitely some in the Glassdoor reviews. Others are evident in the policies or the answers in interview.

For example, medical has great coverage for the employee, but only 50% coverage for dependents. It seems they're selecting for single people, and indirectly young people as they're less likely to have a family (the people I remember in their videos and media are mostly very young). Then there the whole "billable hours" switcheroo - making you think extra hours are rare, but really you're expected to work extra on non-billable projects (internal company work).

Re: A career ending mistake

#87

Post by danity »

A long time ago, after interviewing for months, I finally landed my first job as a developer. It was VERY hard to get your foot in the door back then. On my first day, I was given someone's old computer that had a bunch of junk on it. While cleaning it up, I accidentally deleted all files on the company's file share. Shortly after, I started hearing murmurs of missing files and then, panicking inside, realized what I had done.

The IT guy came by and asked me if I had done it, but I played dumb. He knew it was me but he couldn't prove it, so I survived that one. He gave me dirty looks from that point forward though. I surely would have been fired on the spot if the truth were uncovered.

Re: A career ending mistake

#88

Post by AlbertCory »

I came to realize the wisdom of a quote from a truly bad movie:

“Everything ends badly, otherwise, it wouldn’t end.” ---Bryan Flanagan from “Cocktail”. [1]

I had to look that up as part of my due diligence for this post. The more you know.

Occasionally a sports career ends with hitting a homer in Game Seven of the World Series (David Ross of the 2016 Cubs). Most of the time, not.

You want to have the sweet we'll-still-be-friends breakup with your spouse, but it really ends in divorce court with you hating each other.

So don't feel remorse that it ends badly. That's life.

[1] https://www.capegazette.com/blog-entry/everything-ends-badly...

Re: A career ending mistake

#89

Post by qzw »

sixdimensional wrote: post #29
tdumitrescu wrote: post #27

Feels like the "senior IC" role described in this article corresponds mainly to today's "3-5 years of experience 'senior' engineer" roles. The reality that I've seen and experienced is that advancing beyond that on an IC track means a lot more people/political work, rather than constant "hands on keyboard" coding as described in the article. It's not the same as management, but it's inevitably more meetings and evang…

The fact that we work in an industry where 3-5 years is considered senior still boggles me sometimes.

My personal theory is that this is a side effect of startup/SV culture trying to make work seem like an extension of college. The office is a “campus”, where you get fed, socialize, and sometimes sleep/crash on a couch or the floor. College students go from freshmen to seniors in four years. So now the work titles also do the same.

Re: A career ending mistake

#90

Post by hinkley »

znq wrote: post #14
giantg2 wrote: post #5

"It's not surprising, then, that many of us find ourselves in less than fully satisfying jobs, with doubtful or non-existent prospects for advancement." Very true. I can't wait for my career to be over. I don't think I'll ever find the position where I feel I belong, so I'll just be miserable anywhere now that I know how broken the system really is.

I hope people don't see this as spam (especially since in the past I've talked a lot about this), but I've started Mobile Jazz (my first company) specifically because I wanted to created a place where I and others feel happy. A place where increasing revenue and profit to the extreme is not the focus, but employee happiness is. We call it "Optimizing for Happiness". We've written a lot about it in our company handboo…

You have to be careful here because you're trying to make sure that people are happy, not fat and happy. Complacency eventually threatens the livelihood of your employees, and that is stressful at any company, but the magnitude of that change is greater when everyone has been bopping along without a care in the world.

Being happy is not a capitalistic goal and the capitalists will eat your lunch. Being happy and kicking ass is close enough to be harder to sabotage.

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