Hacker News Reader

Comment by shittyadmin | Hacker News Reader

I feel like I may have wound up on this path... I'm working in a government role where I've been put as the lead developer on some major pieces of software despite only being 5 or so years into my career because the people I'm surrounded with seem to have some significant competency issues.

Not sure what I can do but quit and I just don't want to give up on the stuff I'm working on yet and I'm relied upon quite a bit... but I'm almost completely stagnating. Worst part is, I can probably just keep doing it for another 20 years and retire, it's almost too easy to just go that route.

View on HN

>Not sure what I can do but quit and I just don't want to give up on the stuff I'm working on yet and I'm relied upon quite a bit... but I'm almost completely stagnating.

Don’t quit your job. The article is elitist nonsense. The reality is that most of us are just plumbers, we’ll always be just plumbers, and that’s ok. You’ll probably never do anything world changing or cutting edge in your career. But you are among the most blessed human beings on the face of the earth to be getting paid triple the median salary to sit in a chair typing on a keyboard. Keep that in perspective and focus on pursuing meaning in your life that doesn’t involve a manic drive to sacrifice more time for more money.

It’s not about doing anything world changing. There are a few dangers in burying your head in the sand and not keeping your skills in sync with the market.

- lack of optionality: If for some reason you don’t like your job, you’re stuck because it’s harder to find a job if you don’t check at least some of the boxes.

- alternatively, your job lays you off after you’ve been at a company for 15 years doing ASP.NET Web Forms and you start looking for a job and you find that you aren’t hireable. Then you start screaming “ageism” (I’m 45).

But you are among the most blessed human beings on the face of the earth to be getting paid triple the median salary to sit in a chair typing on a keyboard.

The median salary in the US is $56515 (https://wallethacks.com/average-median-income-in-america/). The median salary for a software developer is $100,690 (https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-develope...)

Also the best way to even get that is statistically to job hop at least early in your career.

$56k is the median household income, according to your source. The median salary in this country is $31k [0]

I also assumed most people here are bay area, where $100k is intern pay. That means your average software developer out of college is earning more than twice the median income of two working adults.

[0] https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/central.html

HN ranks as the 955th most popular site in the US, that’s not because of just the Bay Area...

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ycombinator.com

> I feel like I may have wound up on this path... I'm working in a government role where I've been put as the lead developer on some major pieces of software despite only being 5 or so years into my career because the people I'm surrounded with seem to have some significant competency issues.

Please don't quit yet. Please work on some pet project or something in your free time if you'd like. As you saw, we need people who care in government IT projects. We won't magically find people who care. We are the people who care.

I’ve been in a similar organization and have been put in charge of projects that I’ve been under qualified for, too, but I pressed on with good intentions and an “I care!” attitude. The problem is that at these organizations there’s often no one more competent to turn to for help. If you fail (like I did) you get the sense that there’s a class of people who can do things rigorously and well and then there’s the class that includes you. It’s an experience that can easily leave you worse off.

It would be noble to stick around, but maybe a person owes it to him or herself to find an organization already doing things the right way that is willing to hire and train eager inexperienced team members.

>Worst part is, I can probably just keep doing it for another 20 years and retire, it's almost too easy to just go that route.

As long as you can keep your current job, that is.

I'm in a unionized position, the least competent people on my team are people who were basically dumped on us from other groups who had to get rid of people and of course, sent off the worst... suffice to say I'm not too concerned about keeping a job somewhere around there.

So basically the article is saying if you wound up on this path, it means you're an incompetent programmer. Why would people rely on you if you're incompetent.

I guess, being an incompetent programmer is better than no programmer.

I worked with many who had a 10-20 years career, but only 2-4 years "experience"

Strange. That's contradictory. You think you're incompetent yet people rely on you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com