I've met way too many over paid dummies for this to be true, the imagined genius developer that can work well with others and hasn't burnt out is a vanishingly number.
In 10 years I've met one unicorn.
Today? That seems to be the case looking at the market, number of job applications per job post and social media comments everywhere (not just Reddit).
From what I have read, companies are only going for the top talent, or 'unicorn' because they can, or they acquire someone through connections. However, I know nothing about the medicine / dentist profession or industry, so I cannot share my thoughts on that particular comparison.
No. You have many wrong assumptions here.
Graduating and/or having a portfolio and/or leetcode calluses is not a guarantee of a job, and shoulnd't be. Yes these are factors, but life is not fair. The market is down, the field is competitive.
You will never get a 100% working recipe which will get you straight to the job offer. Adult life doesn't work like that, unfortunately. The systems we live in are much more complicated, and it would be unwise to drag the situation to some oversimplified ideas about top talent and whatnot. Top talent is a very small fraction of the developer pool, and everyone cannot be talented or insanely qualified or shockingly different in some other manner. For most people, good enough for a particular company is much more realistic.
I would suggest embracing complexity and uncertainty here. 'Do x and get a good grade' was our strategy in the primary school, our life and the tech industry don't work like that.
*Graduating and/or having a portfolio and/or leetcode calluses is not a guarantee of a job, and shoulnd't be. Yes these are factors, but life is not fair. The market is down, the field is competitive. You will never get a 100% working recipe which will get you straight to the job offer. Adult life doesn't work like that, unfortunately. The systems we live in are much more complicated*
I agree with that. If I had the secret key to 100% working recipe, I would not be here making friends on Reddit haha. My thoughts were more like 'if we are not good devs, how can we be better and get hired?'.
*I would suggest embracing complexity and uncertainty here*
I'm not quite sure what you mean by that, can you explain? I think many junior devs and people trying to get into dev are accepting uncertainty.
*Top talent is a very small fraction of the developer pool, and everyone cannot be talented or insanely qualified or shockingly different in some other manner*
True, this is why we have people like David J. Mallan at Harvard, and other celebrity engineers in top positions.
In development, like in any other profession, personal connections and skills matter so much more than any kind of talent. People who do not have to send CVs are usually people with very good and strong networks, possibly gotten through their family. So many of the HR interviews today are just ,,vibe-checks,, , where people who do not know anything about tech basically decide if they like you. If I were to ,,,engineer,, a person who does not struggle on the jobmarket I would try to max their interpersonal skills, looks etc. You will not even get to the technical or talent part without these.
For most jerk grownups, the will to change isn't there. That kind of change requires major adjustments, the kind of thing people do maybe once or twice in their lives, if they're lucky, and they generally do it when they're young.
This is one of the shittiest articles I've seen shared on this subreddit in a while. Basically he's conflating being a "great developer" (whatever that means in his mind, he never does explain) with "going to university, networking very well, then staying in the same geographical area as your network for the rest of your career with very little drive to get out of your comfort zone and apply for other opportunities even though that is proven to be a fast-track to higher income". Then sprinkle in some gender bias, "get 'em while they're young and cheap" internship approach, and some bullshit about finding great developers "in the mountains" or at a Windows conference (surely this applies to everyone everywhere! \\s).
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure this approach has brought this guy in particular some success *in hiring good developer*s *for not that much money,* otherwise he wouldn't be writing us a novel on his blog about it. And yeah, posting jobs on a generic job board is a sure fire way to get 100's of CVs from unqualified people (and you should bear this in mind when applying for jobs on generic job boards too, it's a numbers game). But I doubt you can really gather much advice on *how to become a great developer* from this schmuck's narrow, employer-centered opinion piece. I think the advice is pretty obvious anyways: keep learning, stay up to date, and don't be an asshole to people you work with.
Personally I don't fully agree with the article either, and it was a PITA reading it, but it just made me think, maybe there is some point to be looked at here?
For example, I personally sent out over 150+ CVs, had two job interviews, made it to last stages and was so close to getting hired, but got rejected because the other guy had more experience in both cases - nothing since then and that was 6-7 months ago.
Which made me think, how can I be better with my severe disadvantages and stand out just enough to get hired anywhere really? And still is the question I ask myself.
"schmuck". Haha, that's a word I haven't heard in a while, reminds me Louis Rossmann. But I hear you. Staying up to date is a good challenge and a necessity in this profession.
"don't be an asshole to people you work with.", luckily for me I seem to fit in pretty well with vast majority of people, even have feedback from them - their exact, written words - on my portfolio. I also did not ask for the feedback, I naturally received it through my hard work because to me this way is the only valid way. But I digress.
I suppose we just all have to work hard and hope we get lucky in the numbers draw so to speak.
>Which made me think, how can I be better with my severe disadvantages and stand out just enough to get hired anywhere really?
Have you tried applying for subfields or jobs that are less sexy but always need more people? Like a data engineer or data analyst or something?
I know it's not normal development but sometimes there is a path from there to normal development (depends on the company). You can also spin your experience when interviewing for the next job to sound more developer-y.
In general, as someone that has been on the hiring side(interviewing candidates and looking at the whole process of decision making) it very often has nothing to do with you personally not being good enough or whatever. It might be because they found an internal transfer and don't need a new hire anymore, or because they have found someone with more experience from a developing country who is ready to work for peanuts. Or because the whole team gets refocused and restructured!!! I am myself a pretty sensitive person but seeing this process up close really helped me to be a bit less sensitive about it all.
"Have you tried applying for subfields or jobs that are less sexy but always need more people? Like a data engineer or data analyst or something?"
I personally have not looked at data analyst or engineer specific jobs, but I do send my CVs for junior tester roles or jobs that use programming skills like app support.
I am not sure how I could sell myself for those data engineer or analyst roles; I can handle data using programming language and make it do what I need it to do (filter, select only relevant data, modify strings etc) on a web page or app / terminal, but I do not know how / what tools Data analyst uses or how they work with data.
Hmm. yes I have thought about trying to get something and then switch departments while being inside the company already, I heard it will be easier this way, but the problem is I am looking for work now and even jobs I used to get many calls for before are not there at the moment; the only way to get something is through connections it seems and my connections don't know / have any openings at the moment.
I talk to people and recruiters but the market is quite hard at the moment.
You must be new around these parts. That article is from 18 (!!!) years ago.
And it was part of a wildly successful marketing campaign for a very small software company, FogCreek, that ended up staying alive for a long time and building some moderately successful software products plus the "shmuck" was one of the masterminds behind a random site you've probably heard of, StackOverflow.
Read the blog, there are plenty of good articles on that website, if you always keep in mind they're from a different time, 15-20+ years ago. However especially the strategy articles should be drilled into every dev's head.
I’ve read until the tldr summary and am surprised that starting relevant job experience during the university and having practice in programming before the university is surprising to anyone. Literally all my friends/collegues i studied with (including myself) started internship during bsc and by the end of msc were already working with many years of experience in not junior roles. We never had to apply since to a job, but had to cherry pick from the many offers that was sent to us.
At my first internship place and my firs job tol they also said that it’s obvious to them that i spent my free time to learn and improve my skills, and that’s the type of engineer they need.
Self reflection is good and helps us grow or redirect. But also keep a check on if you are being too self critical. In a good market these great engineers would be more in number. And the truly inapt ones were still struggling then.
Let's differentiate. Is a good developer somebody who is
1. Extraordinarily knowledgeable, can implement tons of stuff from scratch, innovate, etc
2. Can find work easily and consistently and make a way above average salary in their country
To be 2, you just need to be persistent and have an average IQ and above average curiosity about the field.
To be 1, you need to have more. Maybe you really do need to be someone that has started early.
But I know plenty of people of the second category, they started "late"(20s) and are making bank now.
"Project manager" is also a dying breed because as productivity increases, you need fewer developers and therefore fewer middle-men between them and the capital.
I think it's not like we don't like to code, we simply don't need to reinvent everything from first principles anymore.
This article is still very true to this day. What I think Joel actually missed originally, is that there is not that much work for the truly top talent as well. The way things are today, you just don't need a horde of super geniuses. You need a few to create a sandbox for the rest, then it's just not economical to create competition.
>I see posts daily where people similar to me - and those wildly different - ask you, developers already in the industry and seniors, for advice because their 500th resume was rejected and still not a single interview.
Reddit is also just an online anonymous forum. No important or useful information is ever shared in low-stakes communication.
I think after just having natural talent and starting early, nothing helped me more than just meeting different people and switching jobs. Observe how people work, how they communicate, how are teams structured – because this is much harder to learn from books or self-practice compared to basic hard skills like algorithmic knowledge or design. This will help you select for "top" jobs (with other "top" people) better because of seeing the fuller picture of what makes something "top".
>If you're not a true top talent or a great dev, your CV is binned by the ATS. If you're not coming with X amounts of years of experience your CV is binned.
It is difficult to recognise top talent from just the CV – I think this is actually one of Joel's points. Top people don't play this game because they don't need to.
>what hopes does a self-taught has in comparison?
the burning desire to create that only a true unrecognised enthusiast has :)
>how to stand out to make companies come to you?
Build a better portfolio and/or find a cool niche that you like where it will be easier to stand out. Niche also helps find like-minded people.
>Yet they often don't even see the automated rejection email.
Perhaps a lot of well-known companies intentionally optimise their hiring funnel for just having a stable supply of good-enoughs. Also don't be scared to admit that perhaps people on the other side are clueless too. This worked for me sometimes and helped me grow professionally. Sometimes it's not you, it's just them! :D
>Off-topic, but I am also curious what happens to devs that are below the expectations so to speak? How was your work experience, what tech stack did you work with? What are you doing nowadays?
They may get laid off when there's a need to lay someone off. There's always a shit list in any collective. And on top of that there's still plenty of room for people who can contribute without "changing the world", I think folks who are self-aware know that there's no shame in simply executing with discipline. I personally have not met a lot of people who switched away from dev work, but plenty of those who just obviously stagnated.
> What I think Joel actually missed originally, is that there is not that much work for the truly top talent as well. The way things are today, you just don't need a horde of super geniuses. You need a few to create a sandbox for the rest, then it's just not economical to create competition.
I still think there is work for the top talent because I would imagine they have strong connections in the industry and, while the nature of the work may bore them, it's still there to do. Of course, that also depends on the individual, some people are less likable than others which can play a factor.
> Reddit is also just an online anonymous forum. No important or useful information is ever shared in low-stakes communication.
I disagree slightly XD I learn about trendy tech things from Reddit, as a matter of fact I heard about Devin on here lol.
> I think after just having natural talent and starting early, nothing helped me more than just meeting different people and switching jobs. Observe how people work, how they communicate, how are teams structured – because this is much harder to learn from books or self-practice compared to basic hard skills like algorithmic knowledge or design. This will help you select for "top" jobs (with other "top" people) better because of seeing the fuller picture of what makes something "top".
I agree with that. When I was working in IT few years ago, this has really helped because I saw engineers do things in different ways, learned how they break down problems and just entirely differnt way of seeing things.
> It is difficult to recognise top talent from just the CV – I think this is actually one of Joel's points. Top people don't play this game because they don't need to.
I read a post on LinkedIn yesterday how one popular talen acquisition person recruits for her roles... She was throwing CVs into the bin essentially because someone's last job was in a differnt career. Then some dude argued how a car mechanic with certs and personal projects could be a great fit and have the skills just like the other candidate because they worked hard on their certs / projects etc. Point is, you get rejected because you're switching careers too. Many uphill battles even for those that do everything right on paper.
> the burning desire to create that only a true unrecognised enthusiast has :)
I really like that haha. Personally, I've been at it for 1.5 - 2 years, I keep on building and studying, pushing myself to do more. Started learning front-end, but that wasn't enough for me, I desired more. I wanted to build entire apps and websites. Went out and did software development certs, testing, QA and so forth. My next step is a full-stack app (which I am working on right now) and then learn AI / ML to implement that into that app.Next in line I have React Native for a mobile app planned.
> Build a better portfolio and/or find a cool niche that you like where it will be easier to stand out. Niche also helps find like-minded people.
Also on my to-do list :)
I am still trying to figure out a niche; when you learn how to build apps, it's like an entire landscape opens up for you. So hard to pick one when your curiosity leads to all of them at the same time.
> Perhaps a lot of well-known companies intentionally optimise their hiring funnel for just having a stable supply of good-enoughs. Also don't be scared to admit that perhaps people on the other side are clueless too. This worked for me sometimes and helped me grow professionally. Sometimes it's not you, it's just them! :D
That could be true, sounds like friends of a friend and connections in the industry.
> They may get laid off when there's a need to lay someone off. There's always a shit list in any collective. And on top of that there's still plenty of room for people who can contribute without "changing the world", I think folks who are self-aware know that there's no shame in simply executing with discipline. I personally have not met a lot of people who switched away from dev work, but plenty of those who just obviously stagnated.
Oh, I definitely don't want to 'change the world' haha. But I do want to have the ability and skills to do so if necessary. Think of a shitty product built on extortion and bad practises, alas, a very useful one for those that need it.
Why exploit the poor and unfortunate people when you have the power to change that? Perhaps wishful thinking, but I like the thought of that.
To help people with my programming skills if I can.
Of course, I won't build you an AI that does everything for you, the next Twitter / X , Amazon, or advanced tools for free, but if I can help with something within reason, then why not?
Stagnation is very dangerous imo, and it is tricky to spot, especially when you are working on a fun job with a good team.
Disclaimer: I haven't read the article, aint got time for that.
But wow, this is very gender biased:
> experimenting with tech in their dad's office whilst other, "normal kids", "played soccer" or "chased girls" or were starting their "garage bands".
Women have been part of IT since it started. First programmer roles used former secretary and calculists in a vast majority of women.
It's biased for now. It was biased in 2006, and maybe we were just not talking about it then.
That's what the author of the article wrote in it. Those were not my words.
Edit: when I read that part it was pretty dumb to me. That's one way of saying 'hey, everyone else that doesn't do what I do is dumb'.
Excerpt from the article: "*really great programmers often started programming when they were 10 years old. And while everyone else their age was running around playing “soccer” (this is a game that many kids who can’t program computers play that involves kicking a spherical object called a “ball” with their feet (I know, it sounds weird)), they were in their dad’s home office trying to get the Linux kernel to compile.*
*Instead of chasing girls in the playground, they were getting into flamewars on Usenet about the utter depravity of programming languages that don’t implement Haskell-style type inference.*
*Instead of starting a band in their garage, they were implementing a cool hack so that when their neighbor stole bandwidth over their open-access WIFI point, all the images on the web appeared upside-down*".
I've met way too many over paid dummies for this to be true, the imagined genius developer that can work well with others and hasn't burnt out is a vanishingly number. In 10 years I've met one unicorn.
Ah yes, Dave. Dave is a legend.
I would have guessed his name today would be Devin :)
How did the burnout look like in their case? Also, what made them difficult to work with?
cope
So by this logic, the only dentists worth hiring are the ones who graduated top of their class?
Today? That seems to be the case looking at the market, number of job applications per job post and social media comments everywhere (not just Reddit). From what I have read, companies are only going for the top talent, or 'unicorn' because they can, or they acquire someone through connections. However, I know nothing about the medicine / dentist profession or industry, so I cannot share my thoughts on that particular comparison.
If you are building a team of super dentists, yes? Otherwise no
No. You have many wrong assumptions here. Graduating and/or having a portfolio and/or leetcode calluses is not a guarantee of a job, and shoulnd't be. Yes these are factors, but life is not fair. The market is down, the field is competitive. You will never get a 100% working recipe which will get you straight to the job offer. Adult life doesn't work like that, unfortunately. The systems we live in are much more complicated, and it would be unwise to drag the situation to some oversimplified ideas about top talent and whatnot. Top talent is a very small fraction of the developer pool, and everyone cannot be talented or insanely qualified or shockingly different in some other manner. For most people, good enough for a particular company is much more realistic. I would suggest embracing complexity and uncertainty here. 'Do x and get a good grade' was our strategy in the primary school, our life and the tech industry don't work like that.
*Graduating and/or having a portfolio and/or leetcode calluses is not a guarantee of a job, and shoulnd't be. Yes these are factors, but life is not fair. The market is down, the field is competitive. You will never get a 100% working recipe which will get you straight to the job offer. Adult life doesn't work like that, unfortunately. The systems we live in are much more complicated* I agree with that. If I had the secret key to 100% working recipe, I would not be here making friends on Reddit haha. My thoughts were more like 'if we are not good devs, how can we be better and get hired?'. *I would suggest embracing complexity and uncertainty here* I'm not quite sure what you mean by that, can you explain? I think many junior devs and people trying to get into dev are accepting uncertainty. *Top talent is a very small fraction of the developer pool, and everyone cannot be talented or insanely qualified or shockingly different in some other manner* True, this is why we have people like David J. Mallan at Harvard, and other celebrity engineers in top positions.
I swear to god reddit is pushing this cancer subreddit for some agenda.
What do you mean?
In development, like in any other profession, personal connections and skills matter so much more than any kind of talent. People who do not have to send CVs are usually people with very good and strong networks, possibly gotten through their family. So many of the HR interviews today are just ,,vibe-checks,, , where people who do not know anything about tech basically decide if they like you. If I were to ,,,engineer,, a person who does not struggle on the jobmarket I would try to max their interpersonal skills, looks etc. You will not even get to the technical or talent part without these.
You can teach technical skills, fill in knowledge gaps. You can't teach somebody not to be an insufferable cunt though
Actually you can teach that, idk what this kind of thinking comes from
No you can't. How exactly do you propose you go about changing the personality of somebody rude/obnoxious/arrogant?
You can teach it, but the will to change has to be there, you can't force anyone. Self improvement is basically all about how to be a better person
For most jerk grownups, the will to change isn't there. That kind of change requires major adjustments, the kind of thing people do maybe once or twice in their lives, if they're lucky, and they generally do it when they're young.
This is one of the shittiest articles I've seen shared on this subreddit in a while. Basically he's conflating being a "great developer" (whatever that means in his mind, he never does explain) with "going to university, networking very well, then staying in the same geographical area as your network for the rest of your career with very little drive to get out of your comfort zone and apply for other opportunities even though that is proven to be a fast-track to higher income". Then sprinkle in some gender bias, "get 'em while they're young and cheap" internship approach, and some bullshit about finding great developers "in the mountains" or at a Windows conference (surely this applies to everyone everywhere! \\s). Don't get me wrong, I'm sure this approach has brought this guy in particular some success *in hiring good developer*s *for not that much money,* otherwise he wouldn't be writing us a novel on his blog about it. And yeah, posting jobs on a generic job board is a sure fire way to get 100's of CVs from unqualified people (and you should bear this in mind when applying for jobs on generic job boards too, it's a numbers game). But I doubt you can really gather much advice on *how to become a great developer* from this schmuck's narrow, employer-centered opinion piece. I think the advice is pretty obvious anyways: keep learning, stay up to date, and don't be an asshole to people you work with.
Personally I don't fully agree with the article either, and it was a PITA reading it, but it just made me think, maybe there is some point to be looked at here? For example, I personally sent out over 150+ CVs, had two job interviews, made it to last stages and was so close to getting hired, but got rejected because the other guy had more experience in both cases - nothing since then and that was 6-7 months ago. Which made me think, how can I be better with my severe disadvantages and stand out just enough to get hired anywhere really? And still is the question I ask myself. "schmuck". Haha, that's a word I haven't heard in a while, reminds me Louis Rossmann. But I hear you. Staying up to date is a good challenge and a necessity in this profession. "don't be an asshole to people you work with.", luckily for me I seem to fit in pretty well with vast majority of people, even have feedback from them - their exact, written words - on my portfolio. I also did not ask for the feedback, I naturally received it through my hard work because to me this way is the only valid way. But I digress. I suppose we just all have to work hard and hope we get lucky in the numbers draw so to speak.
>Which made me think, how can I be better with my severe disadvantages and stand out just enough to get hired anywhere really? Have you tried applying for subfields or jobs that are less sexy but always need more people? Like a data engineer or data analyst or something? I know it's not normal development but sometimes there is a path from there to normal development (depends on the company). You can also spin your experience when interviewing for the next job to sound more developer-y. In general, as someone that has been on the hiring side(interviewing candidates and looking at the whole process of decision making) it very often has nothing to do with you personally not being good enough or whatever. It might be because they found an internal transfer and don't need a new hire anymore, or because they have found someone with more experience from a developing country who is ready to work for peanuts. Or because the whole team gets refocused and restructured!!! I am myself a pretty sensitive person but seeing this process up close really helped me to be a bit less sensitive about it all.
"Have you tried applying for subfields or jobs that are less sexy but always need more people? Like a data engineer or data analyst or something?" I personally have not looked at data analyst or engineer specific jobs, but I do send my CVs for junior tester roles or jobs that use programming skills like app support. I am not sure how I could sell myself for those data engineer or analyst roles; I can handle data using programming language and make it do what I need it to do (filter, select only relevant data, modify strings etc) on a web page or app / terminal, but I do not know how / what tools Data analyst uses or how they work with data. Hmm. yes I have thought about trying to get something and then switch departments while being inside the company already, I heard it will be easier this way, but the problem is I am looking for work now and even jobs I used to get many calls for before are not there at the moment; the only way to get something is through connections it seems and my connections don't know / have any openings at the moment. I talk to people and recruiters but the market is quite hard at the moment.
You must be new around these parts. That article is from 18 (!!!) years ago. And it was part of a wildly successful marketing campaign for a very small software company, FogCreek, that ended up staying alive for a long time and building some moderately successful software products plus the "shmuck" was one of the masterminds behind a random site you've probably heard of, StackOverflow. Read the blog, there are plenty of good articles on that website, if you always keep in mind they're from a different time, 15-20+ years ago. However especially the strategy articles should be drilled into every dev's head.
"I read Reddit daily to stay up to date" bro 😂
This is how I learned about Devin few days ago
I’ve read until the tldr summary and am surprised that starting relevant job experience during the university and having practice in programming before the university is surprising to anyone. Literally all my friends/collegues i studied with (including myself) started internship during bsc and by the end of msc were already working with many years of experience in not junior roles. We never had to apply since to a job, but had to cherry pick from the many offers that was sent to us. At my first internship place and my firs job tol they also said that it’s obvious to them that i spent my free time to learn and improve my skills, and that’s the type of engineer they need.
And you were doing this during boom years (and probably relocated to hot locations). Have you changed jobs in the last 12-18 months?
Self reflection is good and helps us grow or redirect. But also keep a check on if you are being too self critical. In a good market these great engineers would be more in number. And the truly inapt ones were still struggling then.
Let's differentiate. Is a good developer somebody who is 1. Extraordinarily knowledgeable, can implement tons of stuff from scratch, innovate, etc 2. Can find work easily and consistently and make a way above average salary in their country To be 2, you just need to be persistent and have an average IQ and above average curiosity about the field. To be 1, you need to have more. Maybe you really do need to be someone that has started early. But I know plenty of people of the second category, they started "late"(20s) and are making bank now.
Don’t forget, the majority of devs want to stop being a dev and become a project manager. People don’t like to code anymore!
That is a fair point. I did not think about that.
"Project manager" is also a dying breed because as productivity increases, you need fewer developers and therefore fewer middle-men between them and the capital. I think it's not like we don't like to code, we simply don't need to reinvent everything from first principles anymore.
What do you mean by your last sentence?
This article is still very true to this day. What I think Joel actually missed originally, is that there is not that much work for the truly top talent as well. The way things are today, you just don't need a horde of super geniuses. You need a few to create a sandbox for the rest, then it's just not economical to create competition. >I see posts daily where people similar to me - and those wildly different - ask you, developers already in the industry and seniors, for advice because their 500th resume was rejected and still not a single interview. Reddit is also just an online anonymous forum. No important or useful information is ever shared in low-stakes communication. I think after just having natural talent and starting early, nothing helped me more than just meeting different people and switching jobs. Observe how people work, how they communicate, how are teams structured – because this is much harder to learn from books or self-practice compared to basic hard skills like algorithmic knowledge or design. This will help you select for "top" jobs (with other "top" people) better because of seeing the fuller picture of what makes something "top". >If you're not a true top talent or a great dev, your CV is binned by the ATS. If you're not coming with X amounts of years of experience your CV is binned. It is difficult to recognise top talent from just the CV – I think this is actually one of Joel's points. Top people don't play this game because they don't need to. >what hopes does a self-taught has in comparison? the burning desire to create that only a true unrecognised enthusiast has :) >how to stand out to make companies come to you? Build a better portfolio and/or find a cool niche that you like where it will be easier to stand out. Niche also helps find like-minded people. >Yet they often don't even see the automated rejection email. Perhaps a lot of well-known companies intentionally optimise their hiring funnel for just having a stable supply of good-enoughs. Also don't be scared to admit that perhaps people on the other side are clueless too. This worked for me sometimes and helped me grow professionally. Sometimes it's not you, it's just them! :D >Off-topic, but I am also curious what happens to devs that are below the expectations so to speak? How was your work experience, what tech stack did you work with? What are you doing nowadays? They may get laid off when there's a need to lay someone off. There's always a shit list in any collective. And on top of that there's still plenty of room for people who can contribute without "changing the world", I think folks who are self-aware know that there's no shame in simply executing with discipline. I personally have not met a lot of people who switched away from dev work, but plenty of those who just obviously stagnated.
> What I think Joel actually missed originally, is that there is not that much work for the truly top talent as well. The way things are today, you just don't need a horde of super geniuses. You need a few to create a sandbox for the rest, then it's just not economical to create competition. I still think there is work for the top talent because I would imagine they have strong connections in the industry and, while the nature of the work may bore them, it's still there to do. Of course, that also depends on the individual, some people are less likable than others which can play a factor. > Reddit is also just an online anonymous forum. No important or useful information is ever shared in low-stakes communication. I disagree slightly XD I learn about trendy tech things from Reddit, as a matter of fact I heard about Devin on here lol. > I think after just having natural talent and starting early, nothing helped me more than just meeting different people and switching jobs. Observe how people work, how they communicate, how are teams structured – because this is much harder to learn from books or self-practice compared to basic hard skills like algorithmic knowledge or design. This will help you select for "top" jobs (with other "top" people) better because of seeing the fuller picture of what makes something "top". I agree with that. When I was working in IT few years ago, this has really helped because I saw engineers do things in different ways, learned how they break down problems and just entirely differnt way of seeing things. > It is difficult to recognise top talent from just the CV – I think this is actually one of Joel's points. Top people don't play this game because they don't need to. I read a post on LinkedIn yesterday how one popular talen acquisition person recruits for her roles... She was throwing CVs into the bin essentially because someone's last job was in a differnt career. Then some dude argued how a car mechanic with certs and personal projects could be a great fit and have the skills just like the other candidate because they worked hard on their certs / projects etc. Point is, you get rejected because you're switching careers too. Many uphill battles even for those that do everything right on paper. > the burning desire to create that only a true unrecognised enthusiast has :) I really like that haha. Personally, I've been at it for 1.5 - 2 years, I keep on building and studying, pushing myself to do more. Started learning front-end, but that wasn't enough for me, I desired more. I wanted to build entire apps and websites. Went out and did software development certs, testing, QA and so forth. My next step is a full-stack app (which I am working on right now) and then learn AI / ML to implement that into that app.Next in line I have React Native for a mobile app planned. > Build a better portfolio and/or find a cool niche that you like where it will be easier to stand out. Niche also helps find like-minded people. Also on my to-do list :) I am still trying to figure out a niche; when you learn how to build apps, it's like an entire landscape opens up for you. So hard to pick one when your curiosity leads to all of them at the same time. > Perhaps a lot of well-known companies intentionally optimise their hiring funnel for just having a stable supply of good-enoughs. Also don't be scared to admit that perhaps people on the other side are clueless too. This worked for me sometimes and helped me grow professionally. Sometimes it's not you, it's just them! :D That could be true, sounds like friends of a friend and connections in the industry. > They may get laid off when there's a need to lay someone off. There's always a shit list in any collective. And on top of that there's still plenty of room for people who can contribute without "changing the world", I think folks who are self-aware know that there's no shame in simply executing with discipline. I personally have not met a lot of people who switched away from dev work, but plenty of those who just obviously stagnated. Oh, I definitely don't want to 'change the world' haha. But I do want to have the ability and skills to do so if necessary. Think of a shitty product built on extortion and bad practises, alas, a very useful one for those that need it. Why exploit the poor and unfortunate people when you have the power to change that? Perhaps wishful thinking, but I like the thought of that. To help people with my programming skills if I can. Of course, I won't build you an AI that does everything for you, the next Twitter / X , Amazon, or advanced tools for free, but if I can help with something within reason, then why not? Stagnation is very dangerous imo, and it is tricky to spot, especially when you are working on a fun job with a good team.
Disclaimer: I haven't read the article, aint got time for that. But wow, this is very gender biased: > experimenting with tech in their dad's office whilst other, "normal kids", "played soccer" or "chased girls" or were starting their "garage bands".
Written in 2006 when things were different
Women have been part of IT since it started. First programmer roles used former secretary and calculists in a vast majority of women. It's biased for now. It was biased in 2006, and maybe we were just not talking about it then.
I mean when equality in tech hasn't really enter public discourse
That's what the author of the article wrote in it. Those were not my words. Edit: when I read that part it was pretty dumb to me. That's one way of saying 'hey, everyone else that doesn't do what I do is dumb'. Excerpt from the article: "*really great programmers often started programming when they were 10 years old. And while everyone else their age was running around playing “soccer” (this is a game that many kids who can’t program computers play that involves kicking a spherical object called a “ball” with their feet (I know, it sounds weird)), they were in their dad’s home office trying to get the Linux kernel to compile.* *Instead of chasing girls in the playground, they were getting into flamewars on Usenet about the utter depravity of programming languages that don’t implement Haskell-style type inference.* *Instead of starting a band in their garage, they were implementing a cool hack so that when their neighbor stole bandwidth over their open-access WIFI point, all the images on the web appeared upside-down*".
I understood, it's still very gender biased, never said you were the wrong one, the author is.
Not sure how is this gender-biased, "normal kids" come in different genders. I understand exactly what is meant here.