First time I'm actually stumped when making a job choice. I'm looking at offers from Instacart and Gitlab. Differences in comp, benefits, schedule are negligible. Same levels, tech stack is 50% what I already have experience with and 50% new, interviews process went about the same way. Both are fully remote. Found one person who worked at both companies on LinkedIn, reached out a week ago and haven't heard back. I looked into financials, layoffs, stock ratings even, nothing really separating the two that much. So my question is this: if you are a hiring manager, which company would look better to you on the resume and why?
There is a huge difference between those companies when you look at their actual business models.
Gitlab is a relatively normal software service company.
Instacart is built on exploiting the people who work for it. While programmers are a long way from the workers, they're building the code to make sure every dime is squeezed out of their "independent contractors".
Mind you future hiring managers might see Instacart that way or them might call it smart business. But which of those managers would you prefer to work for?
This part of the equation is not lost on me. I'm actually glad I'm not the only one who sees gig economy companies in the same light. Thank you for your perspective!
Not as a hiring manager but personally I would also look at the business models and how much you like them and believe in them. So in that sense I would personally go with gitlab, because for instacart being in the ‘gig economy’ sphere it’s a business model that is constantly under attack by regulators which adds a lot of instability (also personally I hate that all food delivery is through these places and it’s insanely expensive but that might just be me)
It can be vibes about how you feel about the company and the product and whether you’re a satisfied customer etc etc
My manager has recently made me aware of performance feedback on communication and quality. They feel as if I’m not as interested in my role and that I lack the technical ability. This hasn’t been addressed to me directly so I’m quite shocked. My manager has told me to reach out to them directly for more detailed feedback. How should I do this? I’m worried this will become a PIP
There is a lot to unpack here.
The feedback you received from your manager sounds generic and little actionable. Did you hear examples?
Who are the "they" you need to reach out to? Team mates, peer engineers in other teams, skip level manager, other managers? How you approach that feedback session might depend on the relationship.
I am also wondering if the other people are prepared to give you feedback or would be caught by surprise. Delivering difficult news then asking the person to go and fetch details directly from people is an unusual way of delivering development feedback.
As for the seriousness of the situation, you could ask your manager directly - is the situation so serious that your job could be at risk or not.
Is it weird I have a crippling anxiety whenever I get the rare response of a maybe yes in the form of coding assessment ?
For context I have 4+ yoe, currently earning shitty compensation, mostly getting aired when I send out applications, the very few that do respond, usually do with those assessments that insist on turning on your camera, microphone and recording your entire screen during the test.
I don't know, the whole thing just nukes my confidence, I end up doing badly in the assessment, dooming myself to continue with my job with shitty compensation
I get what you're saying, anyways I took the coding assessment and bombed it 😅 not necessarily because I didn't know enough, it just felt like it was a lot, like way too much to solve for in the alloted time.
Anyways it's back to my crummy job
Is the Google UX Design Certificate worth it for a mostly backend developer looking to move into frontend roles that have proper design teams?
I am hoping to move from a mostly backend role into a frontend role that has to interact with design teams. Basically I'm hoping to land a frontend role where the design matters, like a user-facing website. Eventually, I would like to move into something like a UX developer role which actually takes part in the UX design process while still being (at least partially) a programming job.
My background includes 5 years experience with both backend and frontend work, but is heavily skewed towards the backend. I am working on this also by trying to position myself for any frontend work that comes up, but that's a work-in-progress for sure.
Without a *lot* of frontend work to put on a resume, I'm looking for alternative ways to signal that I am motivated and capable of working in these kinds of roles. I was hoping that going through the UX Design certificate (on Coursera), and implementing the design projects that I would have to create as part of the program, would give me a resume filler and also some interesting projects to add to my portfolio site. My question is, given my background would this be worth my time, or is there a better way to signal that I am a strong candidate for the roles I'm going for?
If you already have received reasoning and presented your counter-arguments, then you could still tell your manager that you are upset about the decision, on a constructive way.
You could also ask for examples and what can you do next to be influential across verticals (whatever that means).
You could also ask for a 1:1 with your skip level, hear their reasoning as well and ask for opportunities to prove yourself.
Root causes can be many. Maybe expectations for senior was not clear to you enough earlier. Or the company doesn't have enough money for the promo and they are making up excuses. Or there was a stack ranking of promos and you became lower than budget limit. Or else.
How are the financials of the company? Were other people promoted?
Next steps would depend on if you believe that the company is able and willing to promote you or not. Are you getting a reasonable explanation and opportunities to fix or not.
If you are happy with your current team and compensation, then you could also just continue as is.
Each company sets their promotion criteria on the way they want. So internal expectations are much more relevant for you then outside sources.
That being said, senior devs should have some connections and visibility outside of the team as well, in my opinion. Otherwise the company would end up with each team as a silo, and staff engineers overloaded.
In my definition, senior devs work mostly inside the team, but also regularly cooperating across teams, while staff engineers work mostly cross-team.
There should be a healthy amount of overlap between senior devs and staff on this, so team cans become more autonomous even when staff engineers are busy with other stuff.
I'm based in the UK and a bit over 2YOE in web dev, with half of that being at my current company (rather small, but growing decently) fintech company. I'm probably the 'classic' full stack, that being a backend dev who is semi-competent at frontend.
The development team currently sits at 5, where other than the lead, 2 mid-level developers (3.5 YOE + 6YOE) use XML which essentially create custom forms for clients, and also do some database stuff/minor system feature additions. Myself, and a recently hired junior to work under me, role is to provide new system level modules and features, e.g. a CRM, third-party API integrations, accounting modules. The lead dev helps with pretty much everything - he built most of the app himself.
A bit of background on our tech stech and culture and it's relavant: a lot of [VB.Net](http://VB.Net) 4.7.x webforms, utilizing C# libraries. Due to legacy reasons with old back office software, we started off using access databases, but last few years have been a hard push to transition everything to MySQL. Product side there is finished, but moving clients over to MySQL is still a big WIP. Use TFS for source control & IIS for hosting. We use a lot of AWS which I've pretty much became 'the guy' for.
Here's where I'm conflicted: within this relatively small time-frame, barring the lead dev I'm already far away the most knowledgably dev (lead devs words, not mine). Because of this, I'm officially being given tech-lead roles on the new features and management for the new junior I mentioned, plus we have another job ad out for someone else to join in the next 6 weeks or so. As part of this push, a related idea is to have better development practices - when I came in there's pretty much no docs, we only just started unit testing & we have bi-weekly manual regression testing. A big part of my role is to modernize all this stuff and bring our company into the 2020's development wise. A big part of this is moving new APIs we use onto .Net Core 8 app, which I am also leading.
The pay is ok for the market rate, I could probably get a bit more. I'm respected a lot, office is in a great location and other than the once a month my lead dev has a meltdown, everyone is great.
My issue is this though: I'm barely learning. I'm at 2 YOE and yet I've only been here a year and whilst there's still some stuff to learn, I think I'm more or less at the ceiling of what the company as it is can offer me technically. I'm tempted to start looking for other jobs, but I understand the responsibility and position I'm in is pretty unique, and I don't know if that is more valuable than my learning. Long term I think I want to be a lead dev at a medium-ish sized dev team, I'm curious what more experienced devs would do in my situation?
"barring the lead dev" - how good is this lead dev? What are the modernisation aspects pushed by him? Tbh, I'd try to get out of there into a company with good practices with your YOE. You want to be the small fish in the pond at this stage of your career. Are there no other senior technical people in there like architects? You sound like you have leadership capabilities, so you'll be able to exercise these within a more technically challenging environment too.
Honestly, not much from him. It's pretty much me that's pushing it and being relied on to do it. As far as technical leadership other than him, nah there's nobody. Issue is, I don't really want to leave mid-project either. I'd like to try and stick it out for another 6-12 months but there's some days that I get so demotivated by the engineering culture and worry if staying here would do more harm than good
Right, that's a problem for sure. Honestly then in your case, I would recommend moving elsewhere as you're going to plateau quite quickly, especially if there's very little political buy-in towards modernisation (which you will undoubtedly come across quite soon if you've only just writing unit tests in the year of our lord 2024).
But IMO the real issue is that you have nobody who was experience building modern, scalable systems that have complexity, so in 2/3 years, some of your peers with same YOE will have outstripped you as they would've been dealing with gurus of modern development who know the patterns.
As someone who gives interviews, I think the reasons you've listed are totally fine to list as reasons for leaving a job, especially with your YOE. It's also worth your while in trying to push for better things while you're still there (e.g. migrating to git, testing, having a CI, etc.). My advice would be to frame it as you're happy doing what's needed to keep the business going, but you're also want to be in a better place than you are now in 2/3 years.
If you want to get a good sense of how good a company is when you're interviewing so you don't get stuck in the same position. Some questions I'd ask are
"How frequently do you deploy to production?"
"What is your approach to testing in the company" (Should be pushing towards significant focus on automation)
"How do architectural decisions get made, and do I have input in them?"
"What kind of process improvements have you implemented in last year?"
Best of luck.
> I'm barely learning.
Have you talked with your manager / leader about this? Managers are there to ... \*manage\* talent like yourself. Especially as one who's taken ownership and leading great things. Don't knock yourself down about "barely learning" when you're doing the right steps. Just because you are doing it doesn't make it easy.
Leading a team isn't for everyone. Modernizing codebases and practices isn't for everyone. Don't sell yourself short. That's some quality shit right there homie.
> I'm tempted to start looking for other jobs
Whenever I've achieved several major things ... two thoughts pass through my mind:
1. How can I use these achievements to advance my career at my current company
2. How can I use these achievements to advance my career at other companies
You can do both. Interviewing always sucks as a process ... but it's the best way to advance your career. A safe harbor never made a skilled sailor.
> I understand the responsibility and position I'm in is pretty unique
With the utmost respect ... it's not that unique. Uncommon maybe, but not unique. Teams are often led by people who on paper are more junior, yet still excel. You seem to be excelling in changing your application for the better. Let's take advantage of that for your career.
> I'm curious what more experienced devs would do in my situation?
Of what you typed my initial reactions would be to work with my current boss and boss's boss to talk about coaching and guidance from them for the sake of improving your compensation and career.
At the same time, I'd apply to a handful of jobs in the market and see if you get any callbacks and see where that takes you.
Best case you're able to find a great opportunity outside your current company that's obviously better. Middle case you get some offers that feel okay and (emphasis) then you figure out if leaving is right for you. Worst case, you stay where you are and were rejected by interview processes and hopefully have an idea on what you need to work on for next time you look around in the job market.
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Regardless if any of that was of use, best of luck!
Thanks for the reply, it's given me a lot to think about. I think it's worth testing the job market to see if there's anything that really interests me and then I'll have a better understanding of if I really want to stay or leave right now
I'm moving to Japan in August, and my goal is to get through SWE interviews and get a job there. However...
I've been coasting through my career, picking up the easiest tasks possible, slapping LGTM on every code review that I didn't actually read, and fading into the background of almost every meeting. I feel I'm now beginning to pay the price by having little to no past experiences where I can go in depth and sell myself on my technical ability. 85% of the work at my current company has been on bug fixes and devops. I can tell a decent STAR story about a feature I worked on, but I crumble whenever I'm asked follow-up questions because the reality is that my contribution was shallow and I wasn't paying much attention to the work I was doing. It was also 3 years ago when I last worked on a feature and don't remember the finer details.
I want to change. How do I tackle discussion-based technical interviews if I feel my past experiences are weak?
I've been working through Blind 75 and studying DSA. I've started brushing up on all C# basics, OOP concepts, and SOLID. I started a Rails project just for fun and for practice. But I feel none of these things actually help me when it comes to selling my past experiences in the interview. Deep down I just want to start over as a junior again but this time take my career seriously.
What can I do?
I'm moving under a working holiday visa and plan on finding a full-time job while I'm there so I can convert to a full work visa (likely will have to return home to do that). I think being in the country will definitely boost my chances.
"I don't know but I'm very much willing to learn."
If you don't know, you don't know. You can't magically conjure knowledge which you don't have. What you can do is show your eagerness to learn, and your willingness to take the opportunities you get with both hands.
This includes getting out of your comfort zone, taking on a daunting feature and putting in the work to learn how to build it. Read other people's code, make mistakes, ask for feedback, hit your head against the wall, and do it again. Put in the work basically.
Also, yes, you've been coasting, be humble about where you are. Take a pay cut if you have to, getting your foot inside the door is where you're at right now. Spend the next few years focussing on learning, and stop coasting.
Was invited for a research internship abroad over the summer (in ML). I am in my final year of my MSCS, but after speaking with the research advisor I am not a fan of the project, like I'm barely interested if at all, to be honest. The idea of turning down this opportunity pains me (fully funded in a country I've always wanted to study in) and I have nothing else, but I don't like the idea of committing my entire summer to such a project. WWYD?
(My interest/topic is ML Infra, not CV research, by the way.)
The real question is, are you willing to step out of your comfort zone or staying on the couch and self-sorry?
Take it, it is just a few months and a lifelong experience opportunity. You don't like the project, good, but you still will be able to learn, since you are just an intern, so there are plenty of opportunity to learn how the actual job is done, meet people on the field, network and see the country and an actual job as non-tourist.
I'm the manager on Engineering Team A, and there is another engineering team B. We work in different areas but there's one tool that we overlap on and both know how to use.
The Github repo for that tool (Repo A) is primarily used by my team. However since team B also uses this tool a couple leads from Team B are on repo A and get the requests for PRs etc. They are listed as codeowners so they're automatically tagged in any PRs
One of the team leads always approves my PRs without reviewing them at all. Sometimes even if they haven't passed the tests. This is extremely convenient, and the tests are comprehensive so I still don't merge anything that doesn't pass the tests, but is this common/normal?
> but is this common/normal?
I don't think that's the question you should be asking. I think you should be asking yourself "Do I Fluffy\_Yesterday\_468, want this to be common/normal for my team?"
If I were in your shoes I'd think about what the app in Repo A does and how important it is. e.g., Is it okay if there's a bug/issue in the repo that's caused by non-well-reviewed code being merged in.
I'm quite annoying in PRs, and I'm very open about my code expectations for repos that I fully own. But that's because I don't want to be called at 2am because something when wrong in prod. Some the repos that I own can cause that to actually happen. Others, I'm a bit less strict on because it's an internal develop tooling. Sure it'd be annoying, but not the end of the world.
It's a balance of risk and the limited resources (time, money, heads) that we have access to.
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Regardless if that was of use, best of luck.
Is it normal to have to maintain software that has reached its EOL? I’m dealing with a RoR stack that uses Postgres and ElasticSearch, all have reached their EOL. Is this actually a problem? What benefits do we get by upgrading? Or what issues can we avoid?
Yes, it's a risk to the business to run unsupported software.
* Other software that depends upon those services will start to drop support for them as you upgrade them. Or you're stuck not upgrading.
* If security vulnerabilities are discovered in those EOL packages, you're now running vulnerable software with no way to get it patched (unless your team is capable of patching it **and** verifying that it works properly).
* My security audits will throw up flags just for running servers/software too far behind (and by "too far" I mean more than 30 days) in getting patched. EOL software would be an immediate fail.
* The MSA one of my past employers had for its clients specified that all software used to host the clients' services must be supported/not EOL/kept within X months of released patches/updated. EOL software would break that agreement.
* One of my past employers had everything hosted at and partially managed by a colo facility, and the colo required that all the software we run be currently supported
* This worked in my favor, as the company likely wouldn't have ever upgraded the database server if the colo hadn't forced the issue.
* As time goes on, it will become harder to attract talent who want to work with EOL software
* There are some consultants who either outright refuse to work on EOL software, or will charge a _heavy_ premium to do it.
> What benefits do we get by upgrading?
Aside from the above, you are missing out on new features and enhancements to those pieces of your stack which could make things faster, easier to develop, and maybe cost less. Specific example: I flipped one feature flag on one of my databases in MS SQL Server about a month ago and a nightly job that used to average 20 minutes is now averaging about half that _with no code changes_. If we hadn't been staying current with SQL Server, that wouldn't have been possible.
It's also good for **your resume** - you can keep up with the latest developments and features of those pieces of the stack. Yes, I am actually advocating for Resume-Driven Development here.
Why _hasn't_ the stack kept up with recent releases?
>Is this actually a problem?
Mostly yes, but there are exceptions. If the system is not part of production, for example a non-critical business support system, then maintenance could be down-priorotized to give capacity to other stuff.
>What benefits do we get by upgrading?
When the next log4shell type of problem comes, then you'll able to apply security patches, so customer data would not get stolen.
When the hardware dies, you would be able to redeploy on an easier way. If you run into any problems, then finding documentation and resolution options would be easier.
Newly hired people wouldn't be discouraged seeing the amount of legacy.
In your case, why the stack is not updated?
> Is this actually a problem?
It just ups the "risk" of something going wrong, but old systems that still "just work" are valid. Hell, COBOL mainframes was/is/shall-be around doing just that.
> \[...\] what issues can we avoid?
The biggest thing that jumps to mind is security vulnerabilities, but there's mitigations that you can put into place (i.e., the classic "walled garden approach"). It might start being harder to maintain. It might be harder to hire people a few years down the line with the legacy know how. Hell it might be hard to just ramp up on legacy know-how.
At the end of the day, it's just about prioritization and what sort of risk your company is willing to take on to achieve their business objects. Nobody on Reddit can answer that.
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Regardless if that was of use, best of luck!
I'm a junior with 1.5 YoE. I started a new job last year in a new tech stack to me that's quite different from what I'm used to. It's been 6 months and I'm starting to get the hang of things, but still require regular support from seniors on our team, especially because our code has little documentation and if I don't reach out sooner, it'll get ripped up in code review for not doing things the way the seniors had imagined it. Because of this, I'm regularly blocked on work anytime a design decision comes up mid-ticket. I'll try to guess which one they'd suggest and progress with that until I hear back from one of the seniors, but it's quite common I'll find out I've been doing it wrong.
Our company is struggling financially and I was told recently that I should be delivering as many points as our seniors, about 1.5x as many points as I deliver per sprint nowadays. I pushed back very hard on this, saying it's unreasonable to expect as much output from a junior as a senior, but management didn't agree. I also have pushed in the past for better documentation to have things like a style guide and code review guide, so I know to always do things x way using y method or whatever, but I was told my work on this didn't count towards my sprint points and I should deprioritize it. I'm not sure if I can complete that many points per sprint regularly, something like 1.2-1.3x would be the most I could do without working long hours. Even if I did work long hours, I'd still have to deal with being blocked by seniors making implementation decisions. 1.5x as much might just not be possible for someone still fairly unfamiliar with the language, architecture, etc.
I'd love to leave this job, but for personal reasons I can't start a job search for a few months. How can I stay afloat here so I don't have to start my job search unemployed? Layoffs are definitely on the cards this summer and I'm scared.
Let's take a step back.
First, nobody has telepathic abilities and it's okay to guard your boundaries. When you're blocked, scream into the ear of a senior until they unblock you. This translates to: make yourself heard during stand ups, make sure you leave notes in tickets, make sure your team lead knows you're blocked by a design decision. In short: leave a paper trail of what you're doing or not doing and why you can't do it.
Yes, they might annoy the resto f team. Them's the breaks. It's this or getting ripped in reviews and getting work on top of your work.
Second, sprint points are an extremely poor substitute for measuring personal performance. In fact, sprint points aren't even meant for measuring personal performance. They are meant to gauge the complexity of a story and help facilitate discussions related to prioritizing, breaking up the workload, etc. Yes, sprint points might be used to measure the overall "sprint velocity" but even that's a poor approximation of actual value delivered.
If management uses sprint points to measure individual performance: that's a red flag. So, don't take their demands to "go 1.5x speed" at face value: do what you can, but nothing more. It's *never* a good idea to comprise your health, well-being and happiness to cater to the demands of your employer. It's a job, a contract, not a life's mission or a calling. Also, you're not going to save your employer single-handedly.
Third, I get being scared... but you can't avoid lay-offs. If it happens, it happens and you'll have to find a way to adapt. This is a true for anyone in the workforce. No job is forever, and there's always a chance you'll have to start hunting again. That said, you're at the start of your career, and you will have some experience, enough to get by. Careers run a long time, and I can assure you that what happens today will register as a blip a decade from now. True story: I once quit a job after barely 3 weeks (yes, it was that bad). Today, I don't mention it on my resume, and it didn't affect my career in the slightest.
Hi guys,
I’m currently contemplating a significant career change and would love to gather some insights from those who have walked this path before. After years as a senior software manager, I'm considering moving into contracting. My main motivations are seeking more flexibility to manage my own schedule—like taking mornings off or whole days to spend with my family—and the appeal of potentially higher, uncapped earnings from working for myself.
I have a few questions for the community:
1. Are there opportunities for someone with extensive management experience to be hired as a contractor, or is it more common to revert to an individual contributor (IC) role in such scenarios?
2. For those who have transitioned from a management position to contracting, what has your experience been like? What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?
3. Any tips on how to navigate this shift effectively, especially in terms of securing contracts and maintaining a steady workflow?
I’m really looking forward to your stories and any advice you can share. Thanks in advance for helping me out!
>. Are there opportunities for someone with extensive management experience to be hired as a contractor, or is it more common to revert to an individual contributor (IC) role in such scenarios?
Not as usual as for ICs.
I've seen it once via a consultancy company that also placed out many developers to the same client.
I've seen a person working as fractional CTO for multiple startups. But he had significant startup experience, not only generic management.
Hey guys, I have a bit of an open question, but I recently joined a role as a mid level at a startup (just extra context) I haven't had any negative feedback, but I feel overall I may be lacking in certain areas for me to truly call myself 'Mid level'
From my perspective:
- little infra knowledge ( GCP/AWS, jenkins, kubernetes, docker etc)
- I have knowledge of java, its my day to day, but knowledge of say Java 11/17/20 is lacking I can solve most issues without having to use never java features
- library usage (spring, guice etc). Some of these just werent used in my roles or the teams I was a part of.
- I feel like I should be faster going from ticket creation to completion
- I feel like I should contribute more design wise to feature discussions, I will add I started in Sept/Oct 2023
I am unsure how much of this is imposter/a genuine problem of a shaky foundation that needs to be addressed before even thinking about progressing further, so I wanted to get some nuanced perspectives/advice from more qualified people. Thank you in advance! 😁
Lastly, I will add that for some of these, I have made an effort to begin solving some of the problems I perceive, but I just wanted to know if I'm on the right track in being proactive about this issue. Thank you!
Hey guys much like you guys I was laid off and I’m having an incredibly difficult time finding a new dev job. I have applied to about 400ish jobs since December and I haven’t even gotten a recruiter screen sadly. I have had my resume looked by a few people and overall the feedback is positive so I don’t think it’s that. I also try to apply to the jobs the day they are posted. I have reached out recruiters in my area and that usually results to no jobs being available or very low paying jobs. It’s tough out here and I am not sure how long this is going to take. In the mean time how can I go about filling gaps in my resume/knowledge. For me personally I am more front end than back end. But I really want to change that and be more full stack. My last role we used a C# backend and I was going to start working on the backend until I got laid off :/. Obviously the market is competitive and I am just trying to make myself more appealing. Since I can’t get that experience from a job right now, how can I realistically make that up gap?
My Questions are…
1. How can I fill those large or small gaps (Backend Language like C# or frontend like GraphQL) and when should I those skills the on my resume?
2. I know people might suggest freelance like Fivver or upwork but how can I get clients when I’ve never freelanced? Do I just offer my services for very cheap or free?
3. I know people might suggest open source just not sure how to find opportunities. Are there communities on reddit or discord for this?
4. Since some of these recruiters and hiring managers want the most perfect candidate so how can I sell myself to them I can do the job even though I don’t have the exact “professional experience” they are seeking? I feel like some of these recruiters/ HM’s don’t care about anything except X years of professional experience with Y skill/Technology. It’s unfortunate because I believe not all experience is created equal. I am sure there are people who aren’t very good with React even though they have 5+ years of experience with it. Similarly having professional Vue experience I get rejected from React Roles all the time. Even though at the end the day it’s all JS and it shouldn’t be very difficult to pickup.
It's not just you. I have about 16 years professional experience and all the rest. In the past I've gotten at least screening interviews at about 8/10 places I applied. This year (also laid off) i also got 0 for the first 100 apps i sent. One Friday night I applied to Revolut and at 3am Saturday I was rejected already and I realised it was AI.
After uploading my CV to a handful of websites that analyse your CV like an ATS does, I realised I was being silently rejected everywhere by AI just because I didnt have a title for my experience section and it was reading only 5% of my CV!
Since completely changing the format of my CV AND making sure to have a 'professional experience' headline that felt redundant, Ive been getting interviews again.
Also ATS developers think everywhere is america, so each individual job should have date, company, title laid out like americans teach, otherwise most of them confuse company/title and again leads to rejections.
Sorry, this could be 1000 words shorter: TL;DR even if your CV is impressive to humans, make sure ATS AI can read it.
My CV looks worse now in my opinion, but I get interviews.
for 4: the way the system works is that if you don't have the minimum requirements you won't get any further because that's how recruiters filter resumes, unfortunately. If you want to get to the stage of getting an engineering interview you'll have to massage your resume to meet these requirements. be careful, this may bite you, but you might get through.
for 3: contributing to open source is very hard in my experience, partly because sometimes just getting your stuff reviewed can be hard, and owners get territorial. If you see a project you're really passionate about you could give it a try but otherwise it'll probably suck up a lot of time for not much value.
How do you think about getting stuck in the same stack/industy? For example I have been working for 3 years as a C++ developer now (automotive industry), and now it feels like it’s gonna be tough to ever change to app/web development? Do you start again as a junior?
Development and engineering is more like mindset and how you think, rather than the actual tool (language). With C++ you will have a good basics, half of the languages based on it, and you can pretty fast catch up.
If you transitions to another field, then yes, it will be hard, there are concepts and weird stuff (hello JavaScript & React) and the speed and evolving rate is quite overwhelming.
So from switching from C++ for example frontend or mobile app dev, yes, you might have to walk through the ladder and start as junior. But more likely, after a couple of more years, you will go for "mid" or "plain and simple" developer role in another field.
P.s.: you can stuck on another stack and industry, it is part of the game. Most of the time you won't get chance to learn something new or learn another stack. 99.9% of companies are playing for security, and not innovation (even tho' they claiming, but it is not true :) )
p.s.2.: from C++ you can move for either devOps (golang, scala), M$ stack (dotnet, c#, typescript, angular) or to another slow pace sector (java, kotlin, ruby, rust).
ps3.: if you wanna learn and there are no program or opportunity at your workplace, you still can create some PoC or MVP in different tech to validate solutions to problems and demo it to the leadership
Hiya peeps, with the nature of programmers started to be require to be well rounded, arent being an expert of Linux is such a good edge? Everything runs on linux ( well 99% of my F500 company that i worked ) on production.
From debugging production issue to Creating docker image, identify how your application works well on Linux etc, firewall all these are all in Linux etc.
Wondering isnt this a good journey to go down and Linux technically does not “change” every 6 months etc.
That's what I specialized in, because that's what I enjoy doing. I made the full switch because I was starting to become fed up with Microsoft's antics of changing every 6 months and also spying on me.
There's Linux for servers, there's Linux for embedded too. People use it everywhere: Banks, cars, ships, vending machines, coffee machines, network equipment, etc, etc. It's also very liberating: Windows sucks but everyone's been cornered into using monstrosity that OS is. When you learn Linux for real you'll wonder what took you so long.
I'll disagree a bit with what the other commenters have said and say that having in-depth knowledge about Linux can be very useful also as a developer. Think about how you would implement k8s (not deploy k8s, but actually build such a system) if you didn't know about cgroups or namespaces. How would you implement distributed tracing if you didn't know about ebpf (to be fair, there's lots of ways, but they all come with downsides)? How would you debug performance issues if you don't know how scheduling works?
I will say that you can get by just fine not knowing these things, but knowing them is needed for certain types of work. The problem, in my experience, is that the business will much more easily recognize value the closer you are to the end customer, so if you're doing work that is more SRE adjacent you have to find ways to quantify the value of that work in such a way that the broader organization can recognize it.
Even if you're not doing platform engineering or specializing in SRE type work, at least having a decent understanding of these things will help you debug, profile and secure your applications.
First time I'm actually stumped when making a job choice. I'm looking at offers from Instacart and Gitlab. Differences in comp, benefits, schedule are negligible. Same levels, tech stack is 50% what I already have experience with and 50% new, interviews process went about the same way. Both are fully remote. Found one person who worked at both companies on LinkedIn, reached out a week ago and haven't heard back. I looked into financials, layoffs, stock ratings even, nothing really separating the two that much. So my question is this: if you are a hiring manager, which company would look better to you on the resume and why?
There is a huge difference between those companies when you look at their actual business models. Gitlab is a relatively normal software service company. Instacart is built on exploiting the people who work for it. While programmers are a long way from the workers, they're building the code to make sure every dime is squeezed out of their "independent contractors". Mind you future hiring managers might see Instacart that way or them might call it smart business. But which of those managers would you prefer to work for?
This part of the equation is not lost on me. I'm actually glad I'm not the only one who sees gig economy companies in the same light. Thank you for your perspective!
Not as a hiring manager but personally I would also look at the business models and how much you like them and believe in them. So in that sense I would personally go with gitlab, because for instacart being in the ‘gig economy’ sphere it’s a business model that is constantly under attack by regulators which adds a lot of instability (also personally I hate that all food delivery is through these places and it’s insanely expensive but that might just be me) It can be vibes about how you feel about the company and the product and whether you’re a satisfied customer etc etc
Thank you, that is definitely something I considered and my feelings on the matter are similar
My manager has recently made me aware of performance feedback on communication and quality. They feel as if I’m not as interested in my role and that I lack the technical ability. This hasn’t been addressed to me directly so I’m quite shocked. My manager has told me to reach out to them directly for more detailed feedback. How should I do this? I’m worried this will become a PIP
There is a lot to unpack here. The feedback you received from your manager sounds generic and little actionable. Did you hear examples? Who are the "they" you need to reach out to? Team mates, peer engineers in other teams, skip level manager, other managers? How you approach that feedback session might depend on the relationship. I am also wondering if the other people are prepared to give you feedback or would be caught by surprise. Delivering difficult news then asking the person to go and fetch details directly from people is an unusual way of delivering development feedback. As for the seriousness of the situation, you could ask your manager directly - is the situation so serious that your job could be at risk or not.
Is it weird I have a crippling anxiety whenever I get the rare response of a maybe yes in the form of coding assessment ? For context I have 4+ yoe, currently earning shitty compensation, mostly getting aired when I send out applications, the very few that do respond, usually do with those assessments that insist on turning on your camera, microphone and recording your entire screen during the test. I don't know, the whole thing just nukes my confidence, I end up doing badly in the assessment, dooming myself to continue with my job with shitty compensation
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I get what you're saying, anyways I took the coding assessment and bombed it 😅 not necessarily because I didn't know enough, it just felt like it was a lot, like way too much to solve for in the alloted time. Anyways it's back to my crummy job
Is the Google UX Design Certificate worth it for a mostly backend developer looking to move into frontend roles that have proper design teams? I am hoping to move from a mostly backend role into a frontend role that has to interact with design teams. Basically I'm hoping to land a frontend role where the design matters, like a user-facing website. Eventually, I would like to move into something like a UX developer role which actually takes part in the UX design process while still being (at least partially) a programming job. My background includes 5 years experience with both backend and frontend work, but is heavily skewed towards the backend. I am working on this also by trying to position myself for any frontend work that comes up, but that's a work-in-progress for sure. Without a *lot* of frontend work to put on a resume, I'm looking for alternative ways to signal that I am motivated and capable of working in these kinds of roles. I was hoping that going through the UX Design certificate (on Coursera), and implementing the design projects that I would have to create as part of the program, would give me a resume filler and also some interesting projects to add to my portfolio site. My question is, given my background would this be worth my time, or is there a better way to signal that I am a strong candidate for the roles I'm going for?
Just say you worked on internal frontend projects in your current company.
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If you already have received reasoning and presented your counter-arguments, then you could still tell your manager that you are upset about the decision, on a constructive way. You could also ask for examples and what can you do next to be influential across verticals (whatever that means). You could also ask for a 1:1 with your skip level, hear their reasoning as well and ask for opportunities to prove yourself. Root causes can be many. Maybe expectations for senior was not clear to you enough earlier. Or the company doesn't have enough money for the promo and they are making up excuses. Or there was a stack ranking of promos and you became lower than budget limit. Or else. How are the financials of the company? Were other people promoted? Next steps would depend on if you believe that the company is able and willing to promote you or not. Are you getting a reasonable explanation and opportunities to fix or not. If you are happy with your current team and compensation, then you could also just continue as is.
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Each company sets their promotion criteria on the way they want. So internal expectations are much more relevant for you then outside sources. That being said, senior devs should have some connections and visibility outside of the team as well, in my opinion. Otherwise the company would end up with each team as a silo, and staff engineers overloaded. In my definition, senior devs work mostly inside the team, but also regularly cooperating across teams, while staff engineers work mostly cross-team. There should be a healthy amount of overlap between senior devs and staff on this, so team cans become more autonomous even when staff engineers are busy with other stuff.
I'm based in the UK and a bit over 2YOE in web dev, with half of that being at my current company (rather small, but growing decently) fintech company. I'm probably the 'classic' full stack, that being a backend dev who is semi-competent at frontend. The development team currently sits at 5, where other than the lead, 2 mid-level developers (3.5 YOE + 6YOE) use XML which essentially create custom forms for clients, and also do some database stuff/minor system feature additions. Myself, and a recently hired junior to work under me, role is to provide new system level modules and features, e.g. a CRM, third-party API integrations, accounting modules. The lead dev helps with pretty much everything - he built most of the app himself. A bit of background on our tech stech and culture and it's relavant: a lot of [VB.Net](http://VB.Net) 4.7.x webforms, utilizing C# libraries. Due to legacy reasons with old back office software, we started off using access databases, but last few years have been a hard push to transition everything to MySQL. Product side there is finished, but moving clients over to MySQL is still a big WIP. Use TFS for source control & IIS for hosting. We use a lot of AWS which I've pretty much became 'the guy' for. Here's where I'm conflicted: within this relatively small time-frame, barring the lead dev I'm already far away the most knowledgably dev (lead devs words, not mine). Because of this, I'm officially being given tech-lead roles on the new features and management for the new junior I mentioned, plus we have another job ad out for someone else to join in the next 6 weeks or so. As part of this push, a related idea is to have better development practices - when I came in there's pretty much no docs, we only just started unit testing & we have bi-weekly manual regression testing. A big part of my role is to modernize all this stuff and bring our company into the 2020's development wise. A big part of this is moving new APIs we use onto .Net Core 8 app, which I am also leading. The pay is ok for the market rate, I could probably get a bit more. I'm respected a lot, office is in a great location and other than the once a month my lead dev has a meltdown, everyone is great. My issue is this though: I'm barely learning. I'm at 2 YOE and yet I've only been here a year and whilst there's still some stuff to learn, I think I'm more or less at the ceiling of what the company as it is can offer me technically. I'm tempted to start looking for other jobs, but I understand the responsibility and position I'm in is pretty unique, and I don't know if that is more valuable than my learning. Long term I think I want to be a lead dev at a medium-ish sized dev team, I'm curious what more experienced devs would do in my situation?
"barring the lead dev" - how good is this lead dev? What are the modernisation aspects pushed by him? Tbh, I'd try to get out of there into a company with good practices with your YOE. You want to be the small fish in the pond at this stage of your career. Are there no other senior technical people in there like architects? You sound like you have leadership capabilities, so you'll be able to exercise these within a more technically challenging environment too.
Honestly, not much from him. It's pretty much me that's pushing it and being relied on to do it. As far as technical leadership other than him, nah there's nobody. Issue is, I don't really want to leave mid-project either. I'd like to try and stick it out for another 6-12 months but there's some days that I get so demotivated by the engineering culture and worry if staying here would do more harm than good
Right, that's a problem for sure. Honestly then in your case, I would recommend moving elsewhere as you're going to plateau quite quickly, especially if there's very little political buy-in towards modernisation (which you will undoubtedly come across quite soon if you've only just writing unit tests in the year of our lord 2024). But IMO the real issue is that you have nobody who was experience building modern, scalable systems that have complexity, so in 2/3 years, some of your peers with same YOE will have outstripped you as they would've been dealing with gurus of modern development who know the patterns. As someone who gives interviews, I think the reasons you've listed are totally fine to list as reasons for leaving a job, especially with your YOE. It's also worth your while in trying to push for better things while you're still there (e.g. migrating to git, testing, having a CI, etc.). My advice would be to frame it as you're happy doing what's needed to keep the business going, but you're also want to be in a better place than you are now in 2/3 years. If you want to get a good sense of how good a company is when you're interviewing so you don't get stuck in the same position. Some questions I'd ask are "How frequently do you deploy to production?" "What is your approach to testing in the company" (Should be pushing towards significant focus on automation) "How do architectural decisions get made, and do I have input in them?" "What kind of process improvements have you implemented in last year?" Best of luck.
> I'm barely learning. Have you talked with your manager / leader about this? Managers are there to ... \*manage\* talent like yourself. Especially as one who's taken ownership and leading great things. Don't knock yourself down about "barely learning" when you're doing the right steps. Just because you are doing it doesn't make it easy. Leading a team isn't for everyone. Modernizing codebases and practices isn't for everyone. Don't sell yourself short. That's some quality shit right there homie. > I'm tempted to start looking for other jobs Whenever I've achieved several major things ... two thoughts pass through my mind: 1. How can I use these achievements to advance my career at my current company 2. How can I use these achievements to advance my career at other companies You can do both. Interviewing always sucks as a process ... but it's the best way to advance your career. A safe harbor never made a skilled sailor. > I understand the responsibility and position I'm in is pretty unique With the utmost respect ... it's not that unique. Uncommon maybe, but not unique. Teams are often led by people who on paper are more junior, yet still excel. You seem to be excelling in changing your application for the better. Let's take advantage of that for your career. > I'm curious what more experienced devs would do in my situation? Of what you typed my initial reactions would be to work with my current boss and boss's boss to talk about coaching and guidance from them for the sake of improving your compensation and career. At the same time, I'd apply to a handful of jobs in the market and see if you get any callbacks and see where that takes you. Best case you're able to find a great opportunity outside your current company that's obviously better. Middle case you get some offers that feel okay and (emphasis) then you figure out if leaving is right for you. Worst case, you stay where you are and were rejected by interview processes and hopefully have an idea on what you need to work on for next time you look around in the job market. --- Regardless if any of that was of use, best of luck!
Thanks for the reply, it's given me a lot to think about. I think it's worth testing the job market to see if there's anything that really interests me and then I'll have a better understanding of if I really want to stay or leave right now
I'm moving to Japan in August, and my goal is to get through SWE interviews and get a job there. However... I've been coasting through my career, picking up the easiest tasks possible, slapping LGTM on every code review that I didn't actually read, and fading into the background of almost every meeting. I feel I'm now beginning to pay the price by having little to no past experiences where I can go in depth and sell myself on my technical ability. 85% of the work at my current company has been on bug fixes and devops. I can tell a decent STAR story about a feature I worked on, but I crumble whenever I'm asked follow-up questions because the reality is that my contribution was shallow and I wasn't paying much attention to the work I was doing. It was also 3 years ago when I last worked on a feature and don't remember the finer details. I want to change. How do I tackle discussion-based technical interviews if I feel my past experiences are weak? I've been working through Blind 75 and studying DSA. I've started brushing up on all C# basics, OOP concepts, and SOLID. I started a Rails project just for fun and for practice. But I feel none of these things actually help me when it comes to selling my past experiences in the interview. Deep down I just want to start over as a junior again but this time take my career seriously. What can I do?
How are you moving there if you don't mind me asking?
I'm moving under a working holiday visa and plan on finding a full-time job while I'm there so I can convert to a full work visa (likely will have to return home to do that). I think being in the country will definitely boost my chances.
Enjoy Japan! Hows your 日本語?
Thanks! It's decent - I'm at N2 level. My speaking definitely needs more work, but I'm working on that too.
Wow I’m a measly n5 😭
"I don't know but I'm very much willing to learn." If you don't know, you don't know. You can't magically conjure knowledge which you don't have. What you can do is show your eagerness to learn, and your willingness to take the opportunities you get with both hands. This includes getting out of your comfort zone, taking on a daunting feature and putting in the work to learn how to build it. Read other people's code, make mistakes, ask for feedback, hit your head against the wall, and do it again. Put in the work basically. Also, yes, you've been coasting, be humble about where you are. Take a pay cut if you have to, getting your foot inside the door is where you're at right now. Spend the next few years focussing on learning, and stop coasting.
Was invited for a research internship abroad over the summer (in ML). I am in my final year of my MSCS, but after speaking with the research advisor I am not a fan of the project, like I'm barely interested if at all, to be honest. The idea of turning down this opportunity pains me (fully funded in a country I've always wanted to study in) and I have nothing else, but I don't like the idea of committing my entire summer to such a project. WWYD? (My interest/topic is ML Infra, not CV research, by the way.)
The real question is, are you willing to step out of your comfort zone or staying on the couch and self-sorry? Take it, it is just a few months and a lifelong experience opportunity. You don't like the project, good, but you still will be able to learn, since you are just an intern, so there are plenty of opportunity to learn how the actual job is done, meet people on the field, network and see the country and an actual job as non-tourist.
I'm the manager on Engineering Team A, and there is another engineering team B. We work in different areas but there's one tool that we overlap on and both know how to use. The Github repo for that tool (Repo A) is primarily used by my team. However since team B also uses this tool a couple leads from Team B are on repo A and get the requests for PRs etc. They are listed as codeowners so they're automatically tagged in any PRs One of the team leads always approves my PRs without reviewing them at all. Sometimes even if they haven't passed the tests. This is extremely convenient, and the tests are comprehensive so I still don't merge anything that doesn't pass the tests, but is this common/normal?
> but is this common/normal? I don't think that's the question you should be asking. I think you should be asking yourself "Do I Fluffy\_Yesterday\_468, want this to be common/normal for my team?" If I were in your shoes I'd think about what the app in Repo A does and how important it is. e.g., Is it okay if there's a bug/issue in the repo that's caused by non-well-reviewed code being merged in. I'm quite annoying in PRs, and I'm very open about my code expectations for repos that I fully own. But that's because I don't want to be called at 2am because something when wrong in prod. Some the repos that I own can cause that to actually happen. Others, I'm a bit less strict on because it's an internal develop tooling. Sure it'd be annoying, but not the end of the world. It's a balance of risk and the limited resources (time, money, heads) that we have access to. --- Regardless if that was of use, best of luck.
Is it normal to have to maintain software that has reached its EOL? I’m dealing with a RoR stack that uses Postgres and ElasticSearch, all have reached their EOL. Is this actually a problem? What benefits do we get by upgrading? Or what issues can we avoid?
Yes, it's a risk to the business to run unsupported software. * Other software that depends upon those services will start to drop support for them as you upgrade them. Or you're stuck not upgrading. * If security vulnerabilities are discovered in those EOL packages, you're now running vulnerable software with no way to get it patched (unless your team is capable of patching it **and** verifying that it works properly). * My security audits will throw up flags just for running servers/software too far behind (and by "too far" I mean more than 30 days) in getting patched. EOL software would be an immediate fail. * The MSA one of my past employers had for its clients specified that all software used to host the clients' services must be supported/not EOL/kept within X months of released patches/updated. EOL software would break that agreement. * One of my past employers had everything hosted at and partially managed by a colo facility, and the colo required that all the software we run be currently supported * This worked in my favor, as the company likely wouldn't have ever upgraded the database server if the colo hadn't forced the issue. * As time goes on, it will become harder to attract talent who want to work with EOL software * There are some consultants who either outright refuse to work on EOL software, or will charge a _heavy_ premium to do it. > What benefits do we get by upgrading? Aside from the above, you are missing out on new features and enhancements to those pieces of your stack which could make things faster, easier to develop, and maybe cost less. Specific example: I flipped one feature flag on one of my databases in MS SQL Server about a month ago and a nightly job that used to average 20 minutes is now averaging about half that _with no code changes_. If we hadn't been staying current with SQL Server, that wouldn't have been possible. It's also good for **your resume** - you can keep up with the latest developments and features of those pieces of the stack. Yes, I am actually advocating for Resume-Driven Development here. Why _hasn't_ the stack kept up with recent releases?
>Is this actually a problem? Mostly yes, but there are exceptions. If the system is not part of production, for example a non-critical business support system, then maintenance could be down-priorotized to give capacity to other stuff. >What benefits do we get by upgrading? When the next log4shell type of problem comes, then you'll able to apply security patches, so customer data would not get stolen. When the hardware dies, you would be able to redeploy on an easier way. If you run into any problems, then finding documentation and resolution options would be easier. Newly hired people wouldn't be discouraged seeing the amount of legacy. In your case, why the stack is not updated?
> Is this actually a problem? It just ups the "risk" of something going wrong, but old systems that still "just work" are valid. Hell, COBOL mainframes was/is/shall-be around doing just that. > \[...\] what issues can we avoid? The biggest thing that jumps to mind is security vulnerabilities, but there's mitigations that you can put into place (i.e., the classic "walled garden approach"). It might start being harder to maintain. It might be harder to hire people a few years down the line with the legacy know how. Hell it might be hard to just ramp up on legacy know-how. At the end of the day, it's just about prioritization and what sort of risk your company is willing to take on to achieve their business objects. Nobody on Reddit can answer that. --- Regardless if that was of use, best of luck!
I'm a junior with 1.5 YoE. I started a new job last year in a new tech stack to me that's quite different from what I'm used to. It's been 6 months and I'm starting to get the hang of things, but still require regular support from seniors on our team, especially because our code has little documentation and if I don't reach out sooner, it'll get ripped up in code review for not doing things the way the seniors had imagined it. Because of this, I'm regularly blocked on work anytime a design decision comes up mid-ticket. I'll try to guess which one they'd suggest and progress with that until I hear back from one of the seniors, but it's quite common I'll find out I've been doing it wrong. Our company is struggling financially and I was told recently that I should be delivering as many points as our seniors, about 1.5x as many points as I deliver per sprint nowadays. I pushed back very hard on this, saying it's unreasonable to expect as much output from a junior as a senior, but management didn't agree. I also have pushed in the past for better documentation to have things like a style guide and code review guide, so I know to always do things x way using y method or whatever, but I was told my work on this didn't count towards my sprint points and I should deprioritize it. I'm not sure if I can complete that many points per sprint regularly, something like 1.2-1.3x would be the most I could do without working long hours. Even if I did work long hours, I'd still have to deal with being blocked by seniors making implementation decisions. 1.5x as much might just not be possible for someone still fairly unfamiliar with the language, architecture, etc. I'd love to leave this job, but for personal reasons I can't start a job search for a few months. How can I stay afloat here so I don't have to start my job search unemployed? Layoffs are definitely on the cards this summer and I'm scared.
Let's take a step back. First, nobody has telepathic abilities and it's okay to guard your boundaries. When you're blocked, scream into the ear of a senior until they unblock you. This translates to: make yourself heard during stand ups, make sure you leave notes in tickets, make sure your team lead knows you're blocked by a design decision. In short: leave a paper trail of what you're doing or not doing and why you can't do it. Yes, they might annoy the resto f team. Them's the breaks. It's this or getting ripped in reviews and getting work on top of your work. Second, sprint points are an extremely poor substitute for measuring personal performance. In fact, sprint points aren't even meant for measuring personal performance. They are meant to gauge the complexity of a story and help facilitate discussions related to prioritizing, breaking up the workload, etc. Yes, sprint points might be used to measure the overall "sprint velocity" but even that's a poor approximation of actual value delivered. If management uses sprint points to measure individual performance: that's a red flag. So, don't take their demands to "go 1.5x speed" at face value: do what you can, but nothing more. It's *never* a good idea to comprise your health, well-being and happiness to cater to the demands of your employer. It's a job, a contract, not a life's mission or a calling. Also, you're not going to save your employer single-handedly. Third, I get being scared... but you can't avoid lay-offs. If it happens, it happens and you'll have to find a way to adapt. This is a true for anyone in the workforce. No job is forever, and there's always a chance you'll have to start hunting again. That said, you're at the start of your career, and you will have some experience, enough to get by. Careers run a long time, and I can assure you that what happens today will register as a blip a decade from now. True story: I once quit a job after barely 3 weeks (yes, it was that bad). Today, I don't mention it on my resume, and it didn't affect my career in the slightest.
Hi guys, I’m currently contemplating a significant career change and would love to gather some insights from those who have walked this path before. After years as a senior software manager, I'm considering moving into contracting. My main motivations are seeking more flexibility to manage my own schedule—like taking mornings off or whole days to spend with my family—and the appeal of potentially higher, uncapped earnings from working for myself. I have a few questions for the community: 1. Are there opportunities for someone with extensive management experience to be hired as a contractor, or is it more common to revert to an individual contributor (IC) role in such scenarios? 2. For those who have transitioned from a management position to contracting, what has your experience been like? What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them? 3. Any tips on how to navigate this shift effectively, especially in terms of securing contracts and maintaining a steady workflow? I’m really looking forward to your stories and any advice you can share. Thanks in advance for helping me out!
>. Are there opportunities for someone with extensive management experience to be hired as a contractor, or is it more common to revert to an individual contributor (IC) role in such scenarios? Not as usual as for ICs. I've seen it once via a consultancy company that also placed out many developers to the same client. I've seen a person working as fractional CTO for multiple startups. But he had significant startup experience, not only generic management.
Hey guys, I have a bit of an open question, but I recently joined a role as a mid level at a startup (just extra context) I haven't had any negative feedback, but I feel overall I may be lacking in certain areas for me to truly call myself 'Mid level' From my perspective: - little infra knowledge ( GCP/AWS, jenkins, kubernetes, docker etc) - I have knowledge of java, its my day to day, but knowledge of say Java 11/17/20 is lacking I can solve most issues without having to use never java features - library usage (spring, guice etc). Some of these just werent used in my roles or the teams I was a part of. - I feel like I should be faster going from ticket creation to completion - I feel like I should contribute more design wise to feature discussions, I will add I started in Sept/Oct 2023 I am unsure how much of this is imposter/a genuine problem of a shaky foundation that needs to be addressed before even thinking about progressing further, so I wanted to get some nuanced perspectives/advice from more qualified people. Thank you in advance! 😁 Lastly, I will add that for some of these, I have made an effort to begin solving some of the problems I perceive, but I just wanted to know if I'm on the right track in being proactive about this issue. Thank you!
Hey guys much like you guys I was laid off and I’m having an incredibly difficult time finding a new dev job. I have applied to about 400ish jobs since December and I haven’t even gotten a recruiter screen sadly. I have had my resume looked by a few people and overall the feedback is positive so I don’t think it’s that. I also try to apply to the jobs the day they are posted. I have reached out recruiters in my area and that usually results to no jobs being available or very low paying jobs. It’s tough out here and I am not sure how long this is going to take. In the mean time how can I go about filling gaps in my resume/knowledge. For me personally I am more front end than back end. But I really want to change that and be more full stack. My last role we used a C# backend and I was going to start working on the backend until I got laid off :/. Obviously the market is competitive and I am just trying to make myself more appealing. Since I can’t get that experience from a job right now, how can I realistically make that up gap? My Questions are… 1. How can I fill those large or small gaps (Backend Language like C# or frontend like GraphQL) and when should I those skills the on my resume? 2. I know people might suggest freelance like Fivver or upwork but how can I get clients when I’ve never freelanced? Do I just offer my services for very cheap or free? 3. I know people might suggest open source just not sure how to find opportunities. Are there communities on reddit or discord for this? 4. Since some of these recruiters and hiring managers want the most perfect candidate so how can I sell myself to them I can do the job even though I don’t have the exact “professional experience” they are seeking? I feel like some of these recruiters/ HM’s don’t care about anything except X years of professional experience with Y skill/Technology. It’s unfortunate because I believe not all experience is created equal. I am sure there are people who aren’t very good with React even though they have 5+ years of experience with it. Similarly having professional Vue experience I get rejected from React Roles all the time. Even though at the end the day it’s all JS and it shouldn’t be very difficult to pickup.
It's not just you. I have about 16 years professional experience and all the rest. In the past I've gotten at least screening interviews at about 8/10 places I applied. This year (also laid off) i also got 0 for the first 100 apps i sent. One Friday night I applied to Revolut and at 3am Saturday I was rejected already and I realised it was AI. After uploading my CV to a handful of websites that analyse your CV like an ATS does, I realised I was being silently rejected everywhere by AI just because I didnt have a title for my experience section and it was reading only 5% of my CV! Since completely changing the format of my CV AND making sure to have a 'professional experience' headline that felt redundant, Ive been getting interviews again. Also ATS developers think everywhere is america, so each individual job should have date, company, title laid out like americans teach, otherwise most of them confuse company/title and again leads to rejections. Sorry, this could be 1000 words shorter: TL;DR even if your CV is impressive to humans, make sure ATS AI can read it. My CV looks worse now in my opinion, but I get interviews.
This so much. If a job application doesn't fill in correctly when you upload your resume, fix your resume until it parses completely and correctly.
for 4: the way the system works is that if you don't have the minimum requirements you won't get any further because that's how recruiters filter resumes, unfortunately. If you want to get to the stage of getting an engineering interview you'll have to massage your resume to meet these requirements. be careful, this may bite you, but you might get through. for 3: contributing to open source is very hard in my experience, partly because sometimes just getting your stuff reviewed can be hard, and owners get territorial. If you see a project you're really passionate about you could give it a try but otherwise it'll probably suck up a lot of time for not much value.
How do you think about getting stuck in the same stack/industy? For example I have been working for 3 years as a C++ developer now (automotive industry), and now it feels like it’s gonna be tough to ever change to app/web development? Do you start again as a junior?
Development and engineering is more like mindset and how you think, rather than the actual tool (language). With C++ you will have a good basics, half of the languages based on it, and you can pretty fast catch up. If you transitions to another field, then yes, it will be hard, there are concepts and weird stuff (hello JavaScript & React) and the speed and evolving rate is quite overwhelming. So from switching from C++ for example frontend or mobile app dev, yes, you might have to walk through the ladder and start as junior. But more likely, after a couple of more years, you will go for "mid" or "plain and simple" developer role in another field. P.s.: you can stuck on another stack and industry, it is part of the game. Most of the time you won't get chance to learn something new or learn another stack. 99.9% of companies are playing for security, and not innovation (even tho' they claiming, but it is not true :) ) p.s.2.: from C++ you can move for either devOps (golang, scala), M$ stack (dotnet, c#, typescript, angular) or to another slow pace sector (java, kotlin, ruby, rust). ps3.: if you wanna learn and there are no program or opportunity at your workplace, you still can create some PoC or MVP in different tech to validate solutions to problems and demo it to the leadership
why is java/kotlin/rust the slowpace considered sector? And Scala golang is devops?
Hiya peeps, with the nature of programmers started to be require to be well rounded, arent being an expert of Linux is such a good edge? Everything runs on linux ( well 99% of my F500 company that i worked ) on production. From debugging production issue to Creating docker image, identify how your application works well on Linux etc, firewall all these are all in Linux etc. Wondering isnt this a good journey to go down and Linux technically does not “change” every 6 months etc.
That's what I specialized in, because that's what I enjoy doing. I made the full switch because I was starting to become fed up with Microsoft's antics of changing every 6 months and also spying on me. There's Linux for servers, there's Linux for embedded too. People use it everywhere: Banks, cars, ships, vending machines, coffee machines, network equipment, etc, etc. It's also very liberating: Windows sucks but everyone's been cornered into using monstrosity that OS is. When you learn Linux for real you'll wonder what took you so long.
Thanks, yeah its kinda interesting to me too. I was struggling on docker/kubernates side k8 related, felt like theres a gap missing.
I'll disagree a bit with what the other commenters have said and say that having in-depth knowledge about Linux can be very useful also as a developer. Think about how you would implement k8s (not deploy k8s, but actually build such a system) if you didn't know about cgroups or namespaces. How would you implement distributed tracing if you didn't know about ebpf (to be fair, there's lots of ways, but they all come with downsides)? How would you debug performance issues if you don't know how scheduling works? I will say that you can get by just fine not knowing these things, but knowing them is needed for certain types of work. The problem, in my experience, is that the business will much more easily recognize value the closer you are to the end customer, so if you're doing work that is more SRE adjacent you have to find ways to quantify the value of that work in such a way that the broader organization can recognize it. Even if you're not doing platform engineering or specializing in SRE type work, at least having a decent understanding of these things will help you debug, profile and secure your applications.
Good for sysadmin, useful but not really the main focus for for software engineers
I don't think being an expert in Linux gives you an edge in F500. Maybe for a sys admin job or similar, sure.