Attention Software Devs/ IT Nerds

[Dan Druff]

Congrats on your job.

You're absolutely correct that each programming language becomes easier to learn as you have more of them under your belt. The very first programming language you learn is always the hardest one, as you're completely new to all of the coding concepts.

Very interesting how you said that learning software development helped you learn to take on tasks in steps. I had the same experience. There was a BBS door (onlline game) I wanted to write at age 15, but the whole task just seemed monumental and impossible to manage, especially with school going on at the same time. I then thought of it differently and broke it down to all the parts of the game I needed to write -- doing the easiest stuff first, and going from there. Made it a lot less intimidating, and I not only finished it, but I basically copied it a few months later and made a better theme for the game, which then caught on and was a minor success at the time. Fun experience for a kid so young.

Just to expand on my previous advice last year, project the image at your company as a hard worker who also has a life outside of the office. If you appear to be lazy and undedicated, you will be the first one laid off, and often resented by co-workers. If you appear to have little going on outside of the workplace, they will pile additional hours onto you (maybe unpaid, not sure how it works in your country), and figure you have nothing better to do anyway.

And if you see a better way of doing things, always speak up. Sometimes that will impress your bosses. Good luck!

BTW, how old are you?

[Starbucks Spunk Bucket]

Thanks guys!

Fortunately I have a bit of work & life experience under my belt; I am now in my mid-30s and most of my career has been in management (IT Sales / Customer Success) roles. Networking and discreetly setting boundaries etc. is almost second nature at this point. I have plenty of examples at hand for use in interviews so I was confident that compared to younger grads I had an edge. Interestingly a lot of people on my MSc are older than me.

I took your advice on board and did my research (Glassdoor reviews, asking people who worked at the companies, etc) before applying for jobs- especially as relates to overtime expectations. In fact I only applied to a handful of places; where I live is a bit of a tech hub so that's been an advantage in a number of ways.

The roles themselves have Hybrid working models, 2 or 3 days a week in the office at most. Suits me perfectly and I don't have a long commute anyway. Best of both worlds but yeah I am especially aware of the importance of face time given this is a new career.

Funny you say about speaking up Druff (great point): this has always been one of my strong suits. In one of my interviews we had a group task under supervision and I found myself having to indirectly /respectfully disagree with a team member and softly find a way to move the team in the direction I thought was best. I knew that was make or break for me as far as being passed on to the next stage. The guy wanted to start down a path of designing more web pages when we had about 5 minutes before having to deliver a presentation, which we hadn't yet organised ourselves for- lol. The funny thing was everyone else in the team seemed like they were ready to sheepishly go along with him!

San, I have no tattoos, piercings or dreadlocks. Just a raging hard-on for Jannick Sinner

[Dan Druff]

Ok, very nice. Sounds like you did a lot of research and approached all of this in the best way possible.

Mid-30s still gives you plenty of time to move forward with this career. I asked because a lot of us here are old (including me), and at a certain point it's really too late to start a new career direction, unless it involves starting your own business and/or investing. In fact, once you are around my age, it becomes difficult to move up from where you presently are, when working for a corporation. Basically nobody is looking to promote someone who will be already thinking of retirement soon. But you're very far from that point.

Good luck with it all, and keep us updated. Master Scalir will be glad to know that the guy whose screen name came from his bathroom antics has had a successful career change.

[Starbucks Spunk Bucket]

Well friends- it's time for an update after a year lol! Hope you're all doing well

I finished the MSc over summer 2024; it was intense as it involved fast-tracking a year's worth of work into 12 weeks, but fortunately I survived and got a good final grade (in the end I opted for the final year project "mini" modules: cloud computing, data analysis & visualisation, and UX).

The new job started in November but the first 3 months were a bit of a write-off; slow and refreshing us with basics for the most part. Turns out I was very lucky to get in, as they reduced grad intake massively compared to previous years, eventually hiring only 5% of applicants. And now they don't seem to be hiring at all for grads. The market sucks right now, as you all know.

In any case, after doing well in an internal remote pairing interview (RPI), I fortunately got placed onto one of the better teams in the more knowledgeable and respected area of the company, working on a critical legacy product involving a number of apps. We do XP so it's all TDD and Pair Programming. The Pair Programming aspect has many advantages for someone cutting their teeth in the industry, but it does mean you are kind of handcuffed to your partner's pace. But the team has plenty of experienced engineers and just as importantly everyone is very nice, and tolerate my endless barrage of questions. I landed on my feet honestly. And I only have to go into the office once or twice a month.

It's a full stack role using Java (Spring Boot) / React / MySQL / Jenkins etc. I'm getting great experience and it offers plenty of growth for the moment (certainly scale, large codebase, CICD, OOP, working with a number of different services, logs/ troubleshooting etc), but I am feeling like this kind of work is unlikely to be my preferred path long term. Setting up endpoints and react components seems like it could get repetitive at some point. I'm also not sure the chaos of Agile/ daily standups etc really suits my learning style, which is more hands on and in depth.

I don't consider myself someone who catches on to abstract concepts fast; I need to invest time and come up with my own clear mental models of things. At the start I found the sheer amount of concepts and terms being thrown around (including corporate abbreviations nobody seems to know the real meaning of) exhausting- but I am getting used to it now. I am sure there are a lot of areas where best practices aren't being followed, however. Examples include bad branch management and confusing naming vs the clean code we are supposed to be striving towards. Despite being a noob, I feel like I have been able to add value on many occasions, spotting things others don't: I feel I'm slowly growing into the role.

In my downtime I'm investing in learning computing foundations properly, as they were kind of glossed over in the MSc, with it being a conversion masters rather than a Computer Science Bachelor's. I'm working through the exercises in Computing Systems: A Programmer's Perspective. It's tough but I'm enjoying it and it's giving me confidence that I can tackle difficult systems problems.

I plan on working towards a Cloud Solutions Architect certification after this, as this seems to be where all the jobs are. But for the moment I am enjoying the low level concepts and experimenting with C etc, hoping this pays off as an investment for my career as a whole. At the moment, if I had to bet, I'd say I'll likely end up in some kind of DevOps role.

Lastly, upon rereading this thread, I do wonder if I will get the chance to work on a product that interests me... I'm not sure I have that passion for anything yet. I'm hoping by continuing to plough through and working on various projects of my own I will create that fire for myself based on the tech alone...

I would be delighted to hear any thoughts you guys have to offer on any of the above. At the moment I guess I still don't know where I want to end up, so this might seem a bit scattered, but I feel like the more I experiment the more likely I will find my way. Despite the short-term dramatic pay cut, I am pleased to report that I am much happier in the day job than I was in my previous career. Playing with code and solving problems is much better than doing sales forecasts week after week

[sonatine]

great TR, youre killing it.


cant wait for the most unemployable dirt poor cult of retard npcs on IPV4 to chime in with their career advice which probably starts with a 12 year subprime auto loan to get a Ford F150.

[Dan Druff]

The pair programming thing would drive me nuts, aside from those times when I'm stuck on something -- often a dumb or careless mistake. In those cases, or where I am missing some necessary knowledge, the pair programming be useful. But I always have wanted to be able to concentrate and think to myself while coding, so having some dude over my shoulder would be infuriating, and being the guy over the shoulder would be boring.

But that's just me. I know it's somewhat of the rage these days, and I'm admittedly old and long out of the industry.

Anyway, it's good that you are feeling your way through and getting an idea of what you like and don't like. In general, you sound like you're on the right track.

[Starbucks Spunk Bucket]

Thanks for the encouragement guys. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve obviously got a hell of a long way to go, but I am choosing to celebrate those small wins I have obtained as proof that I can absolutely get good at this. A recent example was pointing out to the team that a push to production of a new feature had no frontend validation on the form, lol. I know that I have learned a ton so far, even if it often feels like 2 steps forward and 1 step back.

Now that I think of it, some of my team mates have complemented me on getting up to speed faster than usual for grads. I do put this down to simply having had the luxury of being able to quit my job and fully commit to the masters.

I know what you mean about Pair Programming Druff, it must be pretty frustrating for a senior watching us grads struggle with basic things. But as part of their growth they are expected to coach juniors, and you see that kind of thing emphasised all the time in job descriptions for more senior roles. It also helps cement their own understanding or highlight knowledge gaps, so it’s to their benefit as well.

In any case if something is more time sensitive the Senior usually drives, and as a grad you try to keep your questions to a minimum during those times. In general, as a newbie it is quite intimidating to speak up about things, or ask questions, in wider team ceremonies- as you feel you could easily say something daft. I guess that confidence will come over time by paying as much attention as possible to what others are saying in those types of calls, and asking follow up questions in a safer 1:1 setting afterwards.

As I hinted at above, especially early on, the sheer amount of unknown terms being thrown about was draining for me, and I’d find myself switching off during ceremonies. I try to pay attention as much as possible now though, and it of course gets easier as you get familiar with the concepts. For example, at the start I had a tough time getting my head around all the branches and environments used, whereas now it comes naturally. I guess all this is just the process you have to go through when you come in, but your growth really is in your own hands. Nobody is stopping to explain stuff; asking the questions and learning is totally on you. This is very different from the structured learning environment provided by the Masters, but in many ways better.

[Dan Druff]

One other issue with the pair programming, if the one doing the programming is the more experienced one and the one behind is more of the noob, is that many coders/computer scientists just suck at explaining things and/or teaching.

This is because the ability to do and the ability to teach are often two different things.

Anyway it's nice to see someone your age starting life over in this field, and having the excitement to learn and move forward. You kinda got it just in time, because had you started a little bit later, you'd already be bordering on too old to have the time to establish yourself and for companies to want to take the chance on you.

That's one of many things which is kinda depressing about being my age. While I'm not yet a senior citizen, I'm knocking on that door, and basically locked out of trying anything new which would take substantial time to learn and get established.

I would consider venturing off to other areas of interest if I were, say, 30 right now. For example, starting from about 2013, I had a few offers to be one of the programmers of various poker sites. I turned them all down because I felt I was already past that stage of my life. These all ended up being failsites anyway, but even putting that aside, I wasn't looking to be a coder anymore. Yet if I was given this chance in 2004, I probably would have jumped at it. In each case, I gave them a polite answer of, "Actually if I'm going to work for a site, I'd like it to be in some form of management", and they would respond, "Yeah, sorry, we have all of those positions filled already", and I'd tell them I understood, and that's it. I didn't seek out any of this stuff... it kinda found me on a few occasions.

Anyway enough about me. Keep us updated.

[Sanlmar]

Ignore the age discussion here @starbucks. Carry yourself with confidence amongst the kids.

I’m a huge believer in the theory of odd combinations of skill sets.

MSc’s might be somewhat common but an MSc with sales experience. Well, let’s get together

Lawyers are common but a lawyer with an engineering degree is quite a find.

Now get some neck tattoos and knock ‘em dead.

[Starbucks Spunk Bucket]

UPDATE

Well guys, my early enthusiasm for the team I was placed in was soon dampened when I realised that my Managing Engineer couldn’t give less of a fuck about Managing. The way he speaks to people is completely unacceptable. He is like an insolent toddler throwing a tantrum when people don’t respond to his questions in the exact form he likes or expects. I’m not the only one who feels like this. The problem is he has tenure because he knows the systems and clearly this situation has arisen because nobody has ever taken exception. I seriously considered doing so at one point a couple of months ago but after much consideration decided against it.

Furthermore, there is no retrospection on the team. The ceremonies are a joke, everyone does their own thing and there is no will to improve as a team or individuals. No such thing as best practices, everyone has different opinions and does their own thing. A terrible environment for grads to come into. Again- a management issue.

My team members are generally nice people but turns out they are also lazy as fuck. Some of them think nothing of going off with no warning for hours at a time to do household chores or answer personal phone calls or anything else. Bluffers who take advantage. Couple that with pair programming and it’s a disaster. Clearly, management is at fault again here.

Good, hard work never gets praised, and generally this is a workplace where ambition goes to die. I suspected as much from reading online before joining, but obviously I needed to get my foot in the door somewhere. For someone who went through the huge sacrifice of changing career in his mid 30s, this is not good. I’ve quit jobs that paid 3x the amount I’m on now because I was bored.

Fortunately, I was recently headhunted by a head in-house recruiter for a start up, who saw my resume and realised I looked like a bargain. He was interested in seeing if I might like to try professional services or presales, but as part of local expansion they also had software engineer jobs going. After some consideration I said I wanted to stay in Engineering for the time being as it would be easier to pivot later, versus pivot now and making it much harder to get back in to the engineering type roles. (I also sold it as I would remain open to those paths in the future, and that “I’m aware in a start up you have to wear different hats, so I would still be happy to help out with customer calls or presentations” )

The company is very exciting, it’s cybersecurity, cloud, networking, and AI. I now have my final stage interview with them, which should be pretty much a formality at this point. I had to pass through 2 technical interviews and 2 behavioural competency type interviews. I have asked for a 38% salary increase.

More importantly, the people seem extremely nice; and the culture, type of work and pace seem to be much more like what I’m looking for. Another consideration is that more hands on work individually without pairing/blockers will mean I will learn much more, faster. And it will be proper learning, because it’s not the same when someone explains things versus figuring it out on your own and going through painful teachable moments. Not to mention the confidence boost that comes with all that.

If I get the offer I expect, I’d be somewhat disappointed to be leaving Java behind, but that’s literally a footnote at this point. On the plus side it looks like I’d be working more with Python and even Rust! I’m very excited at the chance to slowly work my way into Cybersecurity and Networking.

Fingers crossed I’ll have the contract soon.

[sonatine]

Rust!

i bet they have an extremely generous policy regarding reimbursing you for estrogen during your gender reassignment.



seriously tho congrats on your success. also everything is awful in this industry all the time and we are all going to be looking for work soon, which we will not find.

[Starbucks Spunk Bucket]

Haha I know what you mean about Rust but I am interested to keep exploring low level or in fact anything off the beaten track that could be more AI “resistant”…

Yep, market is completely fucked here too, between AI & outsourcing jobs there’s serious talent jobless right now. The competition is so fierce for any role. Pretty depressing but I guess all we can do is… keep adapting?!

[sonatine]

Haha I know what you mean about Rust but I am interested to keep exploring low level or in fact anything off the beaten track that could be more AI “resistant”…

Yep, market is completely fucked here too, between AI & outsourcing jobs there’s serious talent jobless right now. The competition is so fierce for any role. Pretty depressing but I guess all we can do is… keep adapting?!

yeah its a very 'it is what it is' flavored situation.

what little can be done to navigate it, youre already doing.

[Sanlmar]

Dev productivity has gone parabolic and the means to track it with a 8 hours and Cursor gives even non technical people granular HR detail.

Scary from a headcount perspective

EQ more valuable than IQ so don’t sleep on your greatest asset Starbucks. Sales > Tool user. Try to steal a set early

[Starbucks Spunk Bucket]

EQ more valuable than IQ so don’t sleep on your greatest asset Starbucks. Sales > Tool user. Try to steal a set early

Indeed. I have been thinking about this a lot recently, particularly as I’ve realised what a huge advantage I have in interviews.

For a while there it felt like I was restarting from net zero career wise, because to be honest that’s how I’m being treated in my current workplace- as “just a grad”.

But during interviews I was able to force calm under pressure, and draw upon experience in giving examples and answering questions. Fortunately, people skills are only going to grow in importance in the marketplace.

I always loved people management, but grew tired of the stress and politics bullshit of corporate B2B sales. When you experience things like I am in my current team, you can’t help be reminded that everything will turn out ok.

The ironic thing is I was so close to studying Software Development as my original undergrad, but instead eventually defaulted into IT sales because of my language skills (I too was a lazy fucker in my youth, too fond of the party life).

But now, I couldn’t be happier that I went down that path. I have a lot of credit built up with people in high positions too, that I’d like to think I could cash in if shit hit the fan. The temptation has been high at times especially when you’re unhappy and know you could massively increase your salary at the drop of a hat, but I’m determined not to waste all the sacrifice and get something out of the tech path.

For now, I’m very excited by this opportunity, and will be sure to let you all know how it turns out!

[Dan Druff]

Well, at least now you got the "shit company" experience under your belt, and fortunately you are almost out of there.

The absolute worst is when you are trapped in a shit job or company, and the job market is keeping you from going elsewhere.

The only thing I would have suggested you do differently is not specify the increase in salary you want. The rule of thumb in salary negotiation is that the one who throws out the first number loses. I was far from perfect in the management of my '90s/early '00s career, but one thing I did right was the salary matter. Instead of saying what I was looking for, I gave them an answer such as, "I'd have to think about it more, but I would want something fair by industry standards". This put the ball back in their court to make me an offer, rather than my asking for too much (and probably passed on for that reason) or too little (and leaving money on the table).

So if you haven't asked for the 38% extra yet, I would rephrase it as, "I feel that this company is underpaying me, so if I do leave, I would like to go somewhere I'm fairly compensated", and see what they throw out. Resist any attempts to get you to specify a number. But if you already said it, it's too late. At least if they give it to you, you'll be getting 38% more than before, and in a better position.

BTW, while I have zero experience competing in this industry against AI, my suggestion there would be to highlight the limitations you've noticed regarding AI. If you say something like, "I know AI has done wonders for coding speed and efficiency, and it's a great tool, but boy it makes a lot of mistakes! When I go through AI code, I'm often surprised at how many places it could be improved." This would give the hiring manager the impression that you'll use AI as a tool you closely supervise, rather than something you just let do your work.

Anyway, good luck. I hope this all works out.

[Starbucks Spunk Bucket]

Good advice Druff, thanks.

I didn’t want to waste my time with further interviews so in the initial one with the recruiter I asked what salary they had budgeted for the role.

They gave me a range and I said I would be looking for a specific figure close to the top of that range. I also exaggerated my current salary slightly.

The roles are for early career/ Junior devs, but the range was for up to 2 years of experience. I made a quick calculation and as I only have one year’s experience I felt I couldn’t ask for any more, and didn’t want to appear unreasonable or price myself out at the first impression. The grad salaries that different companies pay where I live are kind of well known so I couldn’t bluff too much.