Comment by simpleguitar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simpleguitar | Hacker News Reader

At least in the Bay Area, there are plenty of jobs like this, even outside banks and such.

Many companies that's been around for 20 years have bazillion pieces of unexciting software they need to support and maintain. They still need full time employees to keep them running.

Want an example? Adobe Sign. Here is a product that they can never stop supporting. The software doesn't need more features, but they still need security updates and maintenance.

Just pick a big, old technology company and browse the job listings. Look for "old school tech", like Java EE. Just add it on your resume and say you worked with it a long time ago. Boom, an interview.

edit: Scripting languages like PHP or Ruby will also have lots of legacy software around them. But Java software being "enterprise-y", tend to die off less frequently, and people there seem treated better than legacy PHP programmers.

edit2: In a large company, there will be boring, maintenance areas, and exciting areas. Try to interview with boring teams, since that is your goal.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Adobe in any way. It's just an example I know outside of my own work. We have examples too, but that would be too revealing.

Hmmm, I kept reading your comment multiple times and could not put a finger on what bothered me.

> Want an example? Adobe Sign. Here is a product that they can never stop supporting. The software doesn't need more features, but they still need security updates and maintenance.

I do work at Adobe but not on Sign, and I think it just ruffled my feathers to see an offhand comment putting down some great work.

Please do check out https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/sign/features.html

You will be utterly surprised how many FAANG level salary companies use Java EE :)

Disclaimer: I do hate Java with a passion

Not sure I am seeing the put down, what was negative about the comment?

Probably an overreaction on my part, but the comment made it seem like Adobe was a boring existence and not much happens.

Looking from the outside in, that’s definitely how it appears.

Perspective is important :)

Agreed. Perspective is important :+1 In hindsight, should not have commented and brushed it off :)

Which is why it's fine to challenge the comment. The commenter is implying a lot considering he doesn't have any inside knowledge of Adobe Sign.

And even if you look at public data--esignatures being relatively new, Covid moving more things to digital, DocuSign's share price up 5x since their 2018 IPO, Dropbox acquiring HelloSign for $230M, Adobe's own share price up 15x in the last 10 years--there's not much to indicate that Adobe Sign is a legacy app that could just survive in maintenance mode.

There's also a tendency for people to underestimate the size and complexity of applications because they only use a fraction of the features.

> I think it just ruffled my feathers to see an offhand comment putting down some great work.

Adobe is a big place with many great products. No offense intended.

> You will be utterly surprised how many FAANG level salary companies use Java EE :)

I very much doubt the engineers working on Adobe Sign are making FAANG salaries. Maybe your team does. Adobe is a big place.

This is good advice. Postings with Java, Ruby, and PHP will almost certainly be a huge mess and will have lots of room for "coasting"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com