Same, I noticed my decline about two years before I got covid (2019). Getting covid def didn't help. I've managed to work a pretty simple software dev job mostly fixing bugs and not under any time constraints. I think that helped, but then I just now got laid off because the company realized that they could outsource most of the software work to china and/or Philippines. That and the notion that along with AI, I don't think the American based software developer will ever be a thing again. Which that is making me depressed again...
Readit Newspy_or_dy commented on Tell HN: Burnout is bad to your brain, take care · Posted by u/tuyguntn
py_or_dy commented on Tell HN: Interview take home assessments without feedback are frustrating · Posted by u/shakes_mcjunkie
I did over 120 combined interviews/phone screens/take home tests,etc for about 55 different companies between 2020-2022. Imo, unless it is for a big tech company, interviewing is just not worth it. Sadly I get too nervous to even try out for any of the big tech companies. Plus I'm white and in my 40's. Companies now really want people out of high school/code camp that can program in python or javascript and pay $25 an hour. If a smallish company is handing out take home tests they are only to waste your time. Most of the companies I interviewed for were looking for 3-5 new devs. In some extreme cases I was told they were looking for 10-30 devs in the next 3 months. Here we are nearly 2 years later and I browse the company linkedin page and the employees listed are still the same ones. They never hired anyone. I depleted my $60k life savings in my 18 months of unemployment. If it wasn't for my faith in a "God" and my family, I would have just killed myself via a stent of extreme drug use and homelessness. I haven't drank or smoked since high school. I did get a couple of brief contract jobs but was quickly fired/laid off. But that little bit of money on top of the stimulus payments are what got me into 2023. Then found a backend dev job for a porn site. There was no interview, I was the only one that applied. I now work with the worst code and the laziest people. But it is the coolest team. There are no "PC' police or HR nazis here. Money pours in. I work like 10 hours a week and feel like I'm in heaven.
Oh, but onto your questions. So yes it is frustrating. And as far as feedback. I stopped asking for feedback because it was always maligned. Nobody will really know why you didn't get hired, remember, these companies aren't really hiring unless you are young and cheap. In most cases my feedback sounded like it was almost for someone else. Like "needed more linux experience (I haven't touched a windows or mac OS since 2005). Or my favorite, after talking about a data warehouse I built to house 5TB of data and 15 billion rows, and all the different schemas I migrated through, their reason was they wanted someone with "more database experience".
py_or_dy commented on Ask HN: How would you rate your happiness on a scale of 1 to 5 at the moment? · Posted by u/Victerius
2
py_or_dy commented on Ask HN: Has anyone here worked on the Windows kernel? · Posted by u/maybekerneldev
I'm pretty burned out too with my work (mostly web dev stuff). I've been meaning to get "AWS certified" or learn Kubernetes, but like you, it all seems so crazy to me. I used to love old school "linux administration", but this new wave of tech gives me no interest.
Curious how you get an offer such as this? I've thought about changing job roles, but I really suck at leet coding so I've never really bothered. I figured that as a 40 year old male, no one would hire me for a role unless I was already experienced. Is that not the case?
py_or_dy commented on A new career in software development: advice for non-youngsters shape-of-code.com/2022/05... · Posted by u/jvilalta
Have you been a developer the whole time? ~16-18 YOE with no lead experience could be [incorrectly] taken as a red flag.
I will say we've been trying to hire two seniors for the better part of 6 months and most of the people we end up on the phone with either end up going somewhere (presumably for more $ but it's rare to get a reason), or they do so poorly on the technical screen it makes you wonder if they just used someone else's resume. Nothing in between the two - I've been in my current EM role for probably 3 months, have done maybe 20-25 interviews, and we've extended 4 offers. One accepted then took a different job two days before his start date, one accepted, two declined.
I've been doing some form of development since the age of 28. I look young for my age so I could probably pass for 35. I've made sure nothing giving my true age away is online or on my resume. I think the biggest issue is I have mostly been in the Perl ecosystem and most of those companies are self hosted, not using docker, etc. I do have requirements of only being remote, this worked fine in the perl world. But those jobs are mostly non-existent now and plus I was tired of the mindset that perl software stacks seem to harbor (never updating software, why use a framework when you can cowboy code your own, etc). Spent 2 years playing around with Django, figured it would be an easy transition. Hard to say why I don't get hired. I even did 7 interviews with one company. Several occasions I even celebrated early (buying stuff I didn't need with my dwindling savings account, going out to eat at fancy places with the family, etc) because I had 2 or 3 interviews ongoing and they were going so good and I was such a good match that I just knew I'd get an offer from one. But no... Slowly went from asking $130k per year to $120k, $110k, $90k.. That didn't help, the companies got crappier, the interviews just got longer and harder (the opposite of what I was wanting because I was so burned out by this time). Had a couple of perl companies reach out to me, but they are old legacy code and part time 1099. I can barely make myself put in over 15 hours combined per week with them though. Just feels like I am poisoning myself by going with them and want to do more interviewing but then the voice telling me it is pointless comes back so I just end up sitting in my home office for 12+ hours a day staring out the window.
py_or_dy commented on A new career in software development: advice for non-youngsters shape-of-code.com/2022/05... · Posted by u/jvilalta
How come most people say software devs are in demand and then there is this comment saying he receives 4000+ applications on a job and nobody in Europe should consider this career?
Can perspectives on reality be this far apart, or is he trolling?
Stuff is screwed up. I applied at over 80 companies last year, got interviews with about 60 of them, did about 110 individual phone screens/interviews. Got no offers. It seems the management paradigm right now for small shops or startups is to dedicate $350k or so per year for developer salaries. A single principle or staff engineer is hired. Takes $150k per year. And they in turn try to shove 4 juniors into the remaining $200k. I'm 40 years old with no lead experience and I'm not a junior. So I fit none of these roles.
Disclaimer: I own a boring consultancy.
Boring, however, is contextual. We have flex hours. We have unlimited PTO (and frequent reminders to take personal time - I already know the data related to offering unlim PTO and how often people then take PTO, thank you very much). We make over $1 million in revenue a year with 6 people and no plans to have exponential growth, coupled with high margins so that we aren't rugpulled by a rainy day (and to take appropriate profits of course). My employees report high levels of job satisfaction and happiness.
Our focus? Maintaining boring legacy software for low-risk clients. We also do some greenfield work, but we like the stability that comes with working on older cash cow software.
The jobs are out there. We're just not super flashy about it.
EDIT: I appreciate everyone who commented :) if this wasn't a burner I'd totally reach out to some of you!
uh, you got a careers page? :)
py_or_dy commented on Walmart truckers to start at $95k a year axios.com/walmart-trucker... · Posted by u/cwwc
I wonder how come I was lucky enough to get a high paying job at a FAANG company when other people struggle for years and do tons of interviews and got nothing. Are you stuck in a state with not many jobs? Is it because FAANG companies only hire people who went to really good schools? Maybe the commenter above is actually not very good at interviewing and doesn't realize it? Something else?
I'm not moving, I've been working remote only since 2015. That is the biggest factor to going to a FAANG. I am near Austin, TX, there are many SaaS startups there but the dev teams are always people under the age of 30 for the most part. They live in small apartments, not married, no kids, some didn't even have a car. I'm 40 and live on 20 acres of land and even though I personally live and breath code, it is clear I would never "fit" on any of the Austin teams even though I am perfectly fine being around modern yuppie types.
py_or_dy commented on Walmart truckers to start at $95k a year axios.com/walmart-trucker... · Posted by u/cwwc
How does this have anything to do with the article? Sounds like a long rant about how you can't get a job in a thriving tech industry where salaries are actually going up by a lot.
> Sounds like a long rant about how you can't get a job in a thriving tech industry where salaries are actually going up by a lot.
You say it is thriving, I say it is not. So who is correct? Every job I applied for was django development with a remote team. Once I'd get rejected, I'd keep an eye on the company's linkedin page and see who got the position instead of me. In two cases it ended up being someone much more senior than I (like 10 years experience in pure django), and in 3 other cases it was someone with less than two years of experience and who recently graduated from a coding bootcamp (and I guarantee they are paid no where near $100k). And in about 10 other cases, the linkedin page has stayed the same, so not sure if they hired anyone at all or what. But I've only really been paying attention to the pages for about 15 different companies versus the 60 or so I interviewed for.
Edit: Oh and about the wage thing... forgot to mention for many of these smaller software shops they are now doing most of their hiring out of South America. Fullstack labs, consumer affairs, just to name a few but the list goes on.
py_or_dy commented on Walmart truckers to start at $95k a year axios.com/walmart-trucker... · Posted by u/cwwc
I can't help but feel like the "software industry" is in a slow decline (or race to the bottom). Back in 2007 before I even knew how to "program", I was a linux admin at a small start up. We found someone that we trusted enough to build us a basic webpage. But he wanted $75 per hour. Couldn't find anyone else so bit the bullet. It was written in php, took the guy a few weeks to do, and we paid him somewhere between $3k and $5k for the work. For the other side of our business (our actual product, taking GPS coordinates via SMS and displaying on top of a google maps like interface), same thing, we could only find one other person that we actually trusted to build our actual product. But he wanted $75 an hour. We bit the bullet. Two weeks go by and and he shows us a mostly working demo. A back end Ruby script writing the SMS to a mysql DB, and a Rails app displaying the coordinates with mapnik. Another week later and he is finished and invoices us for $16,000.
I was in college at the time and couldn't wait to graduate and start rolling in money. I mean, these two programmers didn't even have degrees and I was about to have one. That meant I could do the same thing only charge $100 an hour right?
My first "IT" job out of college I made $54k a year. After three years I got my first promotion to $64k but quit a few months later. Did a couple of 1099 contracts at $50 an hour over a year. Got hired by Apex and sent to AT&T for $35 an hour. Did that for a year and then back to 1099 contracts again. This time at $55 an hour. Moving on up! After 4 years of that, quit cold turkey and figured with 10 years of experience now under my belt that I could easily find some better contracts or full time work.
22 months and 110 interviews later, still nothing.