Programming as a career

Well, I got laid off today. Have to remember how to update my resume.

Ugh, sorry.

sorry to hear that, Lee

Sorry to hear that, man

Sorry Lee. I'm trying to return to software after a ten-year absence and it seems my timing couldn't be worse

Welcome to the party, Leee! :/

ooof

Thanks everyone, this is the first time I've gotten caught up in mass layoffs, so I'm trying to figure out what I should be doing, aside from stuffing my face with comfort food.

Nah you're doing it right

I've got a couple Udemy courses that I've let lapse -- React and Docker -- and so I'm getting back on that to see if that'll help me in my upcoming round of applications (I see a LOT of positions that are looking for fullstack). But of course, it's one thing to follow along with the lectures, and another thing when you need to do something in a real-world environment (I have managed to create Redis and Elasticsearch containers, but fully dockerized web apps have been beyond my grasp).

All the positions right now seem to be looking for Senior devs.

I dunno if this reflects any larger trends in the industry, but in my last round of interviewing (around 2021), I don't remember doing many/any take-home assignments, with I think 2-3 rounds of technical challenges, most of which focused on design questions (as opposed to "manipulate strings, arrays, or data structures").

This time, I've been interviewing for about 3 weeks, and I've already done one take-home with another one that I have to reserve time for, I've done two technical challenges, both of which have involved string/array manipulation. And, although I haven't gotten that far yet, there seems to be closer to 4-5 rounds of interviews for any given position.

I love take-homes. I am not great at recalling terminology, even for concepts I understand well, so I've flubbed some of those answers in past interviews. Take-home is more similar to the real work and I'm much better at that, even under time pressure

Like you Leee, I've been at my search for three weeks now. Out of 40ish applications, only one response, but thankfully it led to an interview and a soon-to-be second interview and seems promising. Just rejections or silence otherwise. I do think I need to change up a few things with the way I'm searching though. And I feel like every listing I see wants experience with Docker so I'll be heading to Udemy for a course soon too

docker is just a fancy vm, right? so that's like asking 'are you good with installing / configuring computers?' does it even say what is running within docker?

the whole dev-ops thing annoys me. used to be two separate jobs taking 100% of someone's expertise. now someone who can code a bit is expected to also know, for example, how to secure a webserver for a national company or how to tune a filesystem for many small files.

Vinnie, I dread take homes, because for me they take a lot of time and energy. That said, I've actually been making a dent in my Udemy course on Docker and Kubernetes!

And yes, Docker is a modern version of a VM, which, even though I'm not good at it, is a lot easier and faster to set up than whatever Oracle's solution is, namely because Docker containers are usually built on a pared down Linux image.

(Of the job listings that I'm seeing that I have to pass on applying for because I lack the qualifications, it feels like they're usually full stack, and looking specifically for React on the front end.)

I haven't been getting callbacks

:( Whiney. Spray and pray is unfortunately/probably the most reliable method -- it's a number's game -- unless you're willing to hit up former colleagues and ask them, which I haven't done ~yet~ because that seems overly mercenary and transactional. But if this drags out I'm more than willing to swallow my pride.

I just finished a 2-hour take-home, and my brain is totally exhausted. I have another phone screen in a couple hours, yippee. :\

:( Whiney. Spray and pray is unfortunately/probably the most reliable method -- it's a number's game -- unless you're willing to hit up former colleagues and ask them, which I haven't done ~yet~ because that seems overly mercenary and transactional. But if this drags out I'm more than willing to swallow my pride.

Why? I always like helping former co-workers.

Because it feels nakedly self-serving to me! I know, I should get over that feeling.

you should!

FWIW, my best jobs have been found via former co-workers. And I definitely try to help folks who are good and reach out.

xpost I feel compelled to speak up for devops. My experience is that for services you either need to do a devops model (end to end ownership) or a SRE model (professionalized ownership with a seat at the table). In the late 90s and early 2000s, I saw many shops that had a clear distinction between development engineers and "ops" folks. The situation often devolved because the ops folks were not empowered to request the things they needed to make the software operate reliably, so they always got blamed and couldn't do anything about it. Meanwhile, the development engineers just looked down on the ops folks. If you want stuff to work, you just can't do that.

Now, as you grow as a company, it really does make sense to have oncall be split to teams that can handle it during their working hours for the most valuable services, and so that ends up being separate teams from the development team. But these oncall teams basically need the ability to have input into the system design and the roadmap in order to be effective. They need to be able to tell the development team "no".

So yeah these days that probably means you need to know k8 or some basic AWS stuff. That's OK, there's lots of resources on that and I've found it really enlightening and challenging.

Yeah talking to friends/former coworkers for referrals often gets you past the automated resume screening stage, which can filter out even highly qualified applicants. Actually every software job I've had has started out that way, and in one of them, the hiring manager specifically told me "if <my friend> thinks you're good, we trust him". One of the things I mentioned above that I need to change with my job search is do exactly that: more reaching out for referrals, less applying on Indeed or company websites. It's a little less awkward for me to do it this way:

1) stalk them on LinkedIn, see where they work
2) look for suitable positions at their current company
3) msg and say "hey x, noticed you work at y now and I was looking at positions on their website. How is it working there? Mind referring me?"

I also feel guilty asking people for help but this approach means they don't have to do much. Sometimes they get a referral bonus which is nice for both of you

I'm renovating the format of my resume and one of the things that I've been told is to move my skills section up nearer the top. That being said, how should I organize the skills? I'm torn between doing a flat list in descending order of industry significance, or sectioning things according to languages, databases, frameworks, etc.?

I do a Programming list (languages, frameworks) and a Technologies list (applications, standards). Seen some resumes with it broken into like five lists, which seems like overkill. Lately I've been doing the thing of tailoring the resume for every position, so I'll include all the skills I have that are on the listing and I'll drop some other skills to keep each list to one line

I've signed an offer!

Cool!

Wooooo

Awesome Leee! I also got an offer contingent on the company winning a contract, desperately hoping that comes through because I got nothing else

Good luck Vinnie!

Damn, I hope I never lose my job. They make you do take-home tests now? And along with all the extra studying for all the certifications you need these days. And of course you need to contribute to some open source projects to make your GitHub profile look good, how does anybody find time to do all that?

Yep take-home tests, leetcode/hackerrank, fundamentals you learnt in college but never use on the job... there's a lot to prepare for! I did put a couple projects on my github but I think that's more important for entry-level or people like me who've been out of the field sometime. I've read most hiring people don't bother to look

Btw I didn't get the job I mentioned upthread so I'm back to the grind. Have a second-round interview next week though

Is it worth (re)learning front end development in 2023 or will it all be replaced AI soon?

Take home challenges have always been a part of some interviews as long as I've been in the field.

Sorry to hear that Vinnie!

I had an actual post apocalyptic nightmare last night where Javascript stopped working.

Front End development involves knowing what users and business analysts want when they can't tell themselves - it'll be the last thing to go!

This dropped on the AI thread, but certainly pertains to this one. If anything, more so. Worth watching even if just the first 15 min.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhCl-GeT4jw

i'm glad he likes nick bostrom because it means i don't need to take him 100% seriously.

I think he's clearly right about the general trend and mostly right about the speed at which programming norms will change to have AI do the heavy lifting. The offsetting trend will be how many more lines of code will be incorporated into every day real world processes.

I thought it nice of him to start (with uncommented code samples) by making sure that we know he's a bad programmer - the "the tests are easier to write than the programs" is a similarly brave declaration that he should be let nowhere near CS students.

It sounds like his vision is that software development will go through the following phases:

1) AI writes the code, humans still read it

2) AI writes the code, humans can no longer understand it

3) There is no more coding as such. The AI is the only program you need. It does it all.

who codes the coder?

Yes, that's a simplification. There will still be people coding the AI. But will be a tiny, very specialized workforce. Much smaller than the current legions of software developers. Roughly the size of the workforce that designs CPUs nowadays.

In line with that, a lot of this handwringing and prognostication over AI seems to be an inversion of the enthusiasm people had for increasingly higher-level languages allowing civilians to not deal with lower-level code but... C and assembler are still being taught decades later--we still use Fortran!

but that'll free us to use our time for art etc.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67302048

"Elon Musk tells Rishi Sunak AI will put an end to work"

future be like the Federation in Star Trek

yeah, I tend to think of this as just another iteration of making an even higher-level language, albeit this one is probably going to end up being a higher step than in previous instances. I think there will continue to be cases where a very specific and detailed logic will be required and this will still have to be written in detail one way or another by a human, even if it's just very specific English language sentences, but that's still programming.

xp

Are C and Assembler still being taught, or is it just that there's still jobs in those skills because of legacy codebases? I mean, you can still learn C on Pluralsight, I suppose...

I spoke with someone who graduated university a couple years ago and they did an assembly class, but it was more to learn how the processing works at the most basic level rather than anything intended for some kind of practical application (which was already the case 20+ years ago when I was in school).

I don't know if C is still taught by itself, but C++ is still taught and you kind of get the basics of C with it.

I assume that you'd need C if you wanted to get into OS/Unix stuff? I also heard that NASA uses C? And lots of embedded devices?

As for assembly, doesn't that get used in heavy duty graphics programming (i.e. video games)?

Not as much anymore. It's all fairly abstracted down to frameworks and licensed engines. And a lot of the GPU stuff is via both frameworks and drivers.

So there's some low-level programming being done but it's being broadly reused because very few studios will build their own engine from scratch rather than licensing Unreal or Unity.

i don't think many large engineering orgs are writing new userland code in C proper.

os/device level is another matter.

but C++ will never die, partly through legacy systems, but partly because it's what e.g. pytorch and tensorflow are implemented in. and C is a prereq for most C++ dev work.