Comment by turk73 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by turk73 | Hacker News Reader

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Going on about 17 years here.

It's not looking great for the future in terms of staying a developer. It's getting harder to find reasonable jobs anymore. My current one and the last one are/were disappointments.

I think the best words of advice are: Devise a career backup plan. I don't currently have one even though I have exerted effort in that direction. Probably end up a stocker at Home Depot or something. Hope not.

At some point, knowing another language or framework may be interesting to you, but it is pretty much immaterial unless you are going to use it on that job. For instance, I love Kotlin, but there's no Kotlin developer roles in my market hardly. Waste of time. Same thing happened with Clojure. I never learn.

You will be too expensive: I recently went after a Kafka Architect role which I should have been a slam dunk for but when it got to price the other side suddenly got all wobbly, excuses appeared, and poof, it disappeared.

Companies want cheap, throw away talent. I will say it again: Companies want cheap, throw away talent.

Seven different organizations have been paying me (in part) to write code since 1993.

> Companies want cheap, throw away talent.

I've read and heard about this, and I think it's probably true in many or most cases, but I haven't had this problem in my career.

I'm better compensated now than I ever have been, and when I want to move, it's easier than ever to get a good position.

A little bit of context: most of my professional career was in the south and midwestern US, but the last decade has been in the San Francisco bay area. Also, while I've always been a software engineer, I've always worked more on the 'operational' side, often called 'devops', 'SRE' or 'production engineer' these days.

I wish you the best going forward.

Would you comment on what made your current and last jobs disappointments?

I don't even know what the baseline is for satisfying programming jobs. All my jobs have been similar in terms of points of frustration.[0] I've just kind of accepted it as normal.

[0] I would elaborate but don't have time right now. At work.

> I don't even know what the baseline is for satisfying programming jobs.

For myself, it's always been about the team I was a part of. When you are part of a team that takes pride in their work, and they perform well together, supporting each other, learning from each other, etc - no "prima donnas", and they all have fun doing it - it leads to a good day of work.

I'm lucky in that for most places I have worked - from the first shop that took me in, to my current employer - this has been the case. I can only think of a couple of places I worked where that wasn't entirely the case; both came with excess politics, and other stress that I just didn't (and still don't) understand. I stuck out with it at both, but I'm glad I'm no longer a part of either.

One thing I do know and understand - this comes from someone who started their software engineering career when they were 18 years old, and now I'm pushing 50 - every place I have worked that I have had this "good team quality" has been a small employer, usually with fewer than 50 employees. My current position, there are fewer than 20 employees.

No - I don't make, have never made, and likely never will make "FAANG" money - but I'm not stressed either, and I make enough to keep a roof over my family's head, the lights on, and food in the pantry. I'm content, and if an opportunity comes up for a FAANG-money type position - I will have to look long and hard at it, before making that leap - because I feel that it might come with costs that just don't make sense to me any longer. I'd rather have a more "basic" salary and little stress, than a lot of money but stress out the door due to a myriad of reasons in such a workplace. That isn't to say that's inevitable, but I've just found that as the employers I've worked for were larger, the less my satisfaction with going in and the job overall.

Can you be certain FANG jobs have more stress? Some rules inarguably would, but I hear of more people doing the standard 9-5 at FANGs than anything else. They do quality work, they do it in a reasonable amount of time, and they spend the rest of their non-working hours on other things in life.

I'm just entering the field (19-yo), and I don't have an particular experience in the field yet. From people I've talked to, jobs that you describe are the best options. I'm particularly interested in government jobs for these reasons.

At 19 work everywhere. Startups can offer so much value at your stage with freedom if you choose right.

I wonder if there's space for some boutique shops that specialize in sobriety.

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