MagicShel

I’ve got enough years in that it’s getting harder to remember exactly what year I started professionally, but somewhere a bit north of 25 years. I still spend some time on personal interest coding projects. I’m working with a friend on a Discord roleplaying bot that integrates with various AI providers. But we sort of hit proof of concept and it’s been a real slog to iterate and turn it into something worth sharing with others.

If I’m honest, my coding partner has been carrying it and I’ve mostly been in a “consulting” role. I also have a wife and five kids (two at home) and I rarely have time to myself to just sit down and code. I have a lot of house projects that are much more critical.

The experience you get in open source and being able to talk about it in interviews can really help once you get there, but it doesn’t help get the interview and you have to really apply yourself to get something valuable out of it. My GitHub CV is full of a bunch of bullshit I started and spent at most a month on before abandoning. Of course I’ve worked on a project for two years now and I wasn’t even allowed to include it because there’s no boss or company or address - just me and another guy from Europe I met online working on a passion project that probably neither of us have the drive to turn into a business.

I don’t disagree, but depending on where you’re at career-wise, a few 15% raises can make a huge difference come retirement. There’s always more factors than just money, but money is a significant factor. Remote work is frankly huge when you look at the money not having to commute is worth in unpaid hours and transit costs. I wouldn’t go back to the office for a fifteen percent raise because I’d be losing money.

Appreciate your thoughts, though. The grass is definitely not always greener on the other side.

First programming job I got laid off after ten years. Next longest was around 5 years, which I quit to move back near home. Everything else has been probably two years or so. It was all contract work except a two year stint working for a steel company. That was a good job but COVID.

Working one place is nice if you’re getting good raises and there is upward mobility. Moving around a lot I’ve learned quite a lot from how different places do things, and my skills would’ve really stagnated in one place. These days I’d be worried about keeping those skills up to date if the team is small and insular, but otherwise I’d probably stay if you’ve got a good thing. I’d still look around from time to time to make sure you aren’t getting underpaid, but if you’re happy I’d not consider leaving for less than a fifteen percent raise.

Happy at work is good, but it’s not your life and a big raise can make a big difference in everything else.

Reduce exclamation marks!? Great Scott!!! Is there a shortage of punctuation in the future!?

I was just exploring All to find some new communities to sub to and I ran into the same thing. First thing, I have a domain block in Voyager so that might be something your client can do if you’re on mobile. Second, if you block the user bot@zerobytes.monster, I think that clears all the automatic Reddit cross posted garbage (if that instance even has actual users, they are buried too deep to find).

I was trying to avoid sounding condescending and privileged, but I think you’re right. My first ten years were spent in very niche programming (Lotus Notes) without any mentors. It nearly sank my career and ultimately took me about another five years to rebrand myself as a full stack Java/JavaScript developer and now I’m strictly back-end/leadership. It took a lot of effort to pull myself out of that rut including carving out leadership roles for myself and other tasks above my expected duties. This guy might have to similarly do a lot of work to catch up with market demands.

I’m a fifty year old tech lead without a degree or high profile companies on my resume, and I can’t relate to this blog at all and I’m wondering what the difference is. I switch jobs every few years. I’ve been doing mostly contract work. Last straight job I had, I lost after two years when COVID hit, and I had another job lined up in three weeks.

I’m not saying this guy’s experience isn’t valid, just that there is something else going on here whether it’s a changing job market that hasn’t caught up with me yet or soft skills or that market or outdated skill set or what.

Note: I know things are shit for Juniors and mid-level devs, but this guy sounds like a fairly senior level guy, which is why I think my experience is relevant.

Math is less important than logical thinking which often, but not always, goes with math skills. More important still is intellectual curiosity. Do you like solving puzzles? Do you like the feeling of breakthrough after a frustrating struggle figuring out how something works? Those will take you a long way.

I completely agree. The experience sucks. I almost think programming would be better to follow a skilled trade path like electricians or something with apprenticeships and the like. The current system isn’t working for anyone, really. I mean I suppose it works for people like me but that’s not sustainable.