6 ms·

stop calling yourself a junior developer, you are selling yourself short.

whamlastxmas 10y ago
I don't, but I also don't call myself a senior developer. I'm just a "developer", middle level. I don't have a CS degree and I'm not algorithm or software patterns expert. I do web development and don't have experience with stuff outside of Laravel/PHP/Node.js/RoR and a myriad of front end technology. And no experience with very large scale applications that have millions of users. I say all this to make the point that I'm definitely not competitive with the type of people working at Google, but I have plenty enough experience making great sites from start to finish with a variety of tools.
- noonespecial 10y ago
  >Laravel/PHP/Node.js/RoR That's senior to most of the people posting the jobs. You passed junior with PHP.
  - whamlastxmas 10y ago
    It's more my lack of depth with any of those aside from maybe Laravel that I would feel dishonest calling myself senior. I've made CRUD apps until my eyes bleed, but not a whole lot else. I don't have a lot of experience writing tests. I don't really have any open source code to show employers, only past projects that I've made as a side project or for an employer. It's rare that I have to write anything original that isn't already covered by the existing conventions of whatever framework I'm using. It just feels like a few years experience isn't "senior" when you look at the candidate market in general. I am probably well below the average numbers of years experience.
    - Phlarp 10y ago
      Stop over-analyzing this, and quit feeling "dishonest" calling yourself senior. Just do it. Start referring to yourself and seeing yourself as a senior software engineer and the paycheck is likely to follow-- regardless of your technical merits or lack there of. Far less qualified individuals than yourself successfully bill themselves as senior engineers or solutions consultants, and make several whole multiples of your pay doing so.
    - hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago
      My two cents: you should apply for some senior developer positions. You should be honest about your skills, but also you should be confident and not sell yourself short. What's the worst that can happen? You are already not getting callbacks.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- emeraldd 10y ago
  My suggestion, branch out and learn some of the other tools, even if you have to do it in a non-professional environment. For building sites, you're competing with things like Site Slinger or various similar services. To be competitive in that kind of a market you'll need to have a different kind of value add (i.e. look like something more than a developer) to make your resume look more interesting. Some of it also depends on where you're looking for work and if you're looking for local or remote work. I had to jump cities to get a foot in the door (East Texas to Austin). YMV and good luck!
  - whamlastxmas 10y ago
    Unfortunately despite being in a big city, it's one of the worst big cities for tech jobs in the country (hence low salary). And moving isn't an option for another 4 years. I apply mostly to remote jobs because of this and I am sure those are more competitive. Do you have any examples of other tools that would be valuable? I honestly think I'd be pretty unhappy with iOS/Android development due to the nature of most companies that focus in that area, and I assume that'd probably be an option you'd recommend. I have an interest in security and penetration testing, but it's such a horrendously complicated and difficult expertise to attain and I have no realistic expectations I would ever get a good job doing that. Working with C/C++ or other less-web focused technology is an option obviously, but agains no CS background and it just seems like such an uphill battle to learn what I need and then convince someone to hire me for it.
    - baudehlo 10y ago
      Having an interest in security is a huge win for you. Hiring people into that field is impossibly hard because there are a tiny number of people employed in that area (I came from that field and it's very hard to find people to hire). That doesn't mean you're guaranteed a job, but if you want to be in that field, seek the jobs out. They exist.
      - whamlastxmas 10y ago
        Can I email you some questions about the field? Mostly surrounding what I should aim for as a base knowledge level before I'm employable and which topics are best for that while coinciding with my interests.
- djb_hackernews 10y ago
  The point is to let them make the decision that there is a poor fit. Be confident in your abilities and your capabilities.
- up_and_up 10y ago
  Being Senior mostly has nothing to do with the technologies per se. Its about being responsible enough, mindful enough, communicative enough, thoughtful enough, and patient enough to lead large features/projects/directives. Its about seeing the potential problems/opportunities with something and speaking up. I have seen interns who can behave like senior engineers because they know how to take responsibility, talk with non-technical people, and tackle tough problems with confidence etc.
  - whamlastxmas 10y ago
    I feel confident I have the maturity/mindset for all of that, but I don't have the technical experience or breadth to confidently say "We should use this tool for this purpose". My input for "How would you select the technology this project?" would be to evaluate the available skillsets of my coworkers and pick the most appropriate framework and libraries accordingly. This might mean making an API with Rails, a front end with React, and use Google's mapping API if it was some sort of mapping application. That's about the limit of my confidence in tech decision making. How much should we be writing tests? How much should those tests cover? What type of tests? Should we use Agile/Waterfall/etc? Do we need code reviews? Pair programming? Continuous integration? What should the deployment be like? What's the most appropriate database to use for this? How can we help ensure absolute security? What can we do to shave milliseconds from load time? How would we make ____ more distributed to handle high peak loads? Those are all things that seem pretty relevant to being senior, and I don't have answers for them based on personal experience.
    - quantumhobbit 10y ago
      Just asking those questions makes you more thoughtful than most senior developers. The next step is knowing that you don't need the perfect answer, just something good enough.
    - hluska 10y ago
      >My input for "How would you select the technology this project?" would be to evaluate the available skillsets of my coworkers and pick the most appropriate framework and libraries accordingly. This might mean making an API with Rails, a front end with React, and use Google's mapping API if it was some sort of mapping application. That's about the limit of my confidence in tech decision making. That's one hell of a good answer! Nice work!!

I don't, but I also don't call myself a senior developer. I'm just a "developer", middle level. I don't have a CS degree and I'm not algorithm or software patterns expert. I do web development and don't have experience with stuff outside of Laravel/PHP/Node.js/RoR and a myriad of front end technology. And no experience with very large scale applications that have millions of users. I say all this to make the point that I'm definitely not competitive with the type of people working at Google, but I have plenty enough experience making great sites from start to finish with a variety of tools.

noonespecial 10y ago
>Laravel/PHP/Node.js/RoR That's senior to most of the people posting the jobs. You passed junior with PHP.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  It's more my lack of depth with any of those aside from maybe Laravel that I would feel dishonest calling myself senior. I've made CRUD apps until my eyes bleed, but not a whole lot else. I don't have a lot of experience writing tests. I don't really have any open source code to show employers, only past projects that I've made as a side project or for an employer. It's rare that I have to write anything original that isn't already covered by the existing conventions of whatever framework I'm using. It just feels like a few years experience isn't "senior" when you look at the candidate market in general. I am probably well below the average numbers of years experience.
  - Phlarp 10y ago
    Stop over-analyzing this, and quit feeling "dishonest" calling yourself senior. Just do it. Start referring to yourself and seeing yourself as a senior software engineer and the paycheck is likely to follow-- regardless of your technical merits or lack there of. Far less qualified individuals than yourself successfully bill themselves as senior engineers or solutions consultants, and make several whole multiples of your pay doing so.
  - hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago
    My two cents: you should apply for some senior developer positions. You should be honest about your skills, but also you should be confident and not sell yourself short. What's the worst that can happen? You are already not getting callbacks.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
emeraldd 10y ago
My suggestion, branch out and learn some of the other tools, even if you have to do it in a non-professional environment. For building sites, you're competing with things like Site Slinger or various similar services. To be competitive in that kind of a market you'll need to have a different kind of value add (i.e. look like something more than a developer) to make your resume look more interesting. Some of it also depends on where you're looking for work and if you're looking for local or remote work. I had to jump cities to get a foot in the door (East Texas to Austin). YMV and good luck!
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  Unfortunately despite being in a big city, it's one of the worst big cities for tech jobs in the country (hence low salary). And moving isn't an option for another 4 years. I apply mostly to remote jobs because of this and I am sure those are more competitive. Do you have any examples of other tools that would be valuable? I honestly think I'd be pretty unhappy with iOS/Android development due to the nature of most companies that focus in that area, and I assume that'd probably be an option you'd recommend. I have an interest in security and penetration testing, but it's such a horrendously complicated and difficult expertise to attain and I have no realistic expectations I would ever get a good job doing that. Working with C/C++ or other less-web focused technology is an option obviously, but agains no CS background and it just seems like such an uphill battle to learn what I need and then convince someone to hire me for it.
  - baudehlo 10y ago
    Having an interest in security is a huge win for you. Hiring people into that field is impossibly hard because there are a tiny number of people employed in that area (I came from that field and it's very hard to find people to hire). That doesn't mean you're guaranteed a job, but if you want to be in that field, seek the jobs out. They exist.
    - whamlastxmas 10y ago
      Can I email you some questions about the field? Mostly surrounding what I should aim for as a base knowledge level before I'm employable and which topics are best for that while coinciding with my interests.
djb_hackernews 10y ago
The point is to let them make the decision that there is a poor fit. Be confident in your abilities and your capabilities.
up_and_up 10y ago
Being Senior mostly has nothing to do with the technologies per se. Its about being responsible enough, mindful enough, communicative enough, thoughtful enough, and patient enough to lead large features/projects/directives. Its about seeing the potential problems/opportunities with something and speaking up. I have seen interns who can behave like senior engineers because they know how to take responsibility, talk with non-technical people, and tackle tough problems with confidence etc.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  I feel confident I have the maturity/mindset for all of that, but I don't have the technical experience or breadth to confidently say "We should use this tool for this purpose". My input for "How would you select the technology this project?" would be to evaluate the available skillsets of my coworkers and pick the most appropriate framework and libraries accordingly. This might mean making an API with Rails, a front end with React, and use Google's mapping API if it was some sort of mapping application. That's about the limit of my confidence in tech decision making. How much should we be writing tests? How much should those tests cover? What type of tests? Should we use Agile/Waterfall/etc? Do we need code reviews? Pair programming? Continuous integration? What should the deployment be like? What's the most appropriate database to use for this? How can we help ensure absolute security? What can we do to shave milliseconds from load time? How would we make ____ more distributed to handle high peak loads? Those are all things that seem pretty relevant to being senior, and I don't have answers for them based on personal experience.
  - quantumhobbit 10y ago
    Just asking those questions makes you more thoughtful than most senior developers. The next step is knowing that you don't need the perfect answer, just something good enough.
  - hluska 10y ago
    >My input for "How would you select the technology this project?" would be to evaluate the available skillsets of my coworkers and pick the most appropriate framework and libraries accordingly. This might mean making an API with Rails, a front end with React, and use Google's mapping API if it was some sort of mapping application. That's about the limit of my confidence in tech decision making. That's one hell of a good answer! Nice work!!