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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Frameworks aren't necessarily a bad thing if you can critical think - why reinvent the wheel from scratch everytime when you're trying to make a newer version of a car? But if you're only a framework monkey who cannot communicate design decisions, architecture, and/or design you're definetly screwed in the job market.

A lot of people (especially newer profiles I've seen on HN) think just being able to glue libraries together is enough to justify being a developer with a 6 fig salary, when in reality the actual value add is the architecture, design, and other critical thinking actions.

Hiring managers do try to hire the archetype developer who is both eloquent and a critical thinker, but it's hard and those who can do both know their value.

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Then again, just being able to glue libraries together ought to be enough to justify a 6 fig salary, because inflation adjusted that's potentially less than the 5 fig salaries I was offered last century, fresh out of school and still wet behind the ears.

And the only reason (I assume) you're still in the tech industry despite the dot com bust and the Great Recession is because you can at least show value to employers, and you most likely have some communication and critical thinking skills, not just gluing stuff together.

Plenty of code monkey types flamed out or remained underemployed.

> the 5 fig salaries I was offered last century, fresh out of school and still wet behind the ears

And there were also fewer developers in the 1990s/2000s than in the 2020s, and the hiring market was not yet fully globalized and async compared to the post-COVID WFH/Remote market.

Most companies don't offer WFH/remote though.

WFH/remote during the pandemic normalized the opening of foreign offices, because it successfully proved the operations can continue in an async model.

by any measure you contributed a lot more value than that, though

I've always heard that tech employers value all the things you'd expect them to value, but I've only ever seen them value LeetCode.

The worst thing about frameworks is that they are an excuse to qualify cowardice, people scared shitless to write original software. There are multiple second order consequences and ethical dilemmas that come from that.

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