10 ms·

A somewhat related, but distinct question is: how do you get the skills to make those high salaries? I don't care about salaries persay, but I do care about be

by tabeth 10y ago

A somewhat related, but distinct question is: how do you get the skills to make those high salaries? I don't care about salaries persay, but I do care about being valuable. Of course, the two things are very related. Here are some things I've heard people mention that are chicken-and-egg kind of answers: - Get a great mentor - Work at a great company - Work on a high performing team - Work on a difficult product Unfortunately, all of these presuppose greatness to begin with, and only help to become even more great. Which is nice, but not useful for someone trying to get there to begin with. I'm in my 2nd year of being a "professional", and I worry if I'm on the right trajectory, or not. By the way, if someone is reading and is willing to spare 15 minutes of their time I'd love to get your advice, email in profile. Moreso if you're based in the east.

Retric 10y ago
The #1 most important thing for these salary's is to signal competence. Actual competence is far less important.
- tabeth 10y ago
  How do you "signal competence?"
  - freyr 10y ago
    The easiest (or most common) way is to start young: go to a top university. This makes it far easier to jump into a top company. Then you're mostly there, without even necessarily programming anything exceptional. Otherwise, you could get really good at interviewing, write publicly (book, popular blog, etc.), give talks at conferences, create popular open source software, etc.
    - Retric 10y ago
      That's the first level, obvious credentials. Don't forget that legwork like SAT prep classes, or presentations which don't teach you useful skills can still open doors. Next is networks of people that will vouch for you. This does not necessarily take a lot of effort, but being the only resume someone is looking means you just skipped a lot of pre-filters. "I was thinking about possibly jumping ship. O your looking for someone? How about we do lunch and talk about a possible fit." Now add presentation; speech patterns, dress, non verbal indicators, but also what subjects to bring up in conversation. Pull this off and people will often skip the need for in depth evaluation based on assumptions.
      - ryandrake 10y ago
        This is [sadly] the accurate advice. While "love what you do" and "learn a lot" and "improve your skills" sound nice, the reality is that success more often than not comes from pedigree (what school you went to, who your parents are), people (who you know) and polish (how smoothly you talk/dress, how you carry yourself, confidence, ability to make small talk, etc.). EDIT: I'll also add "self-promotion". So, the four P's: Pedigree, People, Polish, and Promotion.
potatolicious 10y ago
A few quick thoughts: > "I don't care about salaries persay, but I do care about being valuable." You should care about salaries, even if you don't care about salaries. Yeah that sounds insane, but salary is a signal for ability. It probably shouldn't be, but hey, I didn't make these crazy rules. Having a high salary opens doors to many interesting jobs doing really interesting work. For a long list of (very unfair) reasons, someone making $300k gets taken more seriously than someone making $100k (even at companies that can't afford you!). So yes, you're right about working with great mentors, at great companies, and with great teams - but you should also focus on getting paid more. They're all tied up together and each contributes to the others. As to how to break into the cycle of high salaries -> high impact work -> higher salaries -> higher impact work... That's a good question. Joining one of the AppAmaGooFaceSoft big corps is one way about it - the hiring processes at these companies are less network-reliant than many other jobs, and all are famous enough that it massively opens the door to further work. I had the good luck of starting my career at Amazon, which opened many doors. (I also had the great luck of not staying at Amazon)
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  Right on. I had this cycle as freelancer. Higher rates resulted in higher quality work which resulted in higher rates. People will respect you less if you tell you don't care about money. Unless you are superstar who makes $1000/hr while saying that money is not important.
alaaibrahim 10y ago
Here is my recipe (YMMV) - Love what you do, this is extremely important, although you have goals in mind, you should enjoy the process to reach your goals, this would make you work harder, and failure wouldn't be a big deal, as you enjoy it. - Practice, solve useless problems for fun, sharpen your skills, until you become really good at what you do. - Really know what you are good at, and what you are not, and don't be afraid of pointing out what you don't know, even to someone who is interviewing you, and always know why you don't know, and if you need to know what you have to do. - At this point, have the mentality whenever you go to an interview, that they would gain more from hiring you, that you would gain from being hired by them. - Profit!!!. Edit: formatting
HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
If you want to be successful, the single most important skill you can probably cultivate is the ability to communicate well and get along with people. All else is secondary at best. Most people in any job are at least competent. It's not that hard to rise above "merely competent" and you get many extra points if you're personable and can explain what you're doing to management. Quietly sitting in a corner, coding away, isn't going to get you anything other than average results. Most of your list is luck, or chance. However, you can choose to work at a great company by only researching and applying to, great companies. The interview is where your interaction skills will prove useful.
- MuppetMaster42 10y ago
  This is what I've noticed as well. Most devs can't communicate for shit. Being able to just talk is often enough to get your foot in the door. It also has the added bonus of giving you more power in the workplace. If you can communicate well, you can get more ideas on the table and implemented. The more ideas you implement, the higher your worth clearly is. The other thing I'd note is that your raw dev skills are a product of how much effort you put in. If you do dev purely as a job (minimal pre-job training and relying solely on on-the-job training and experience to keep up) you're going to be stuck as a mediocre dev. To be truly successful you need to be seeking and actively consuming knowledge all the time (at least in your early career). This means keeping up with your chosen dev scene and languages, and actually playing with them and learning them in your own time. Companies value someone who knows their shit, knows it well, and can communicate how to apply that shit to their product. I think being a dev is a unique career because unlike most, there aren't just a few advancements every year to care about, there's several every month. And those advancements aren't just something you can maybe do in the future once a paper is vetted and reviewed, they're things you can read about, toy with and probably apply to your product straight away.

by tabeth 10y ago

Retric 10y ago

The #1 most important thing for these salary's is to signal competence. Actual competence is far less important.

tabeth 10y ago
How do you "signal competence?"
- freyr 10y ago
  The easiest (or most common) way is to start young: go to a top university. This makes it far easier to jump into a top company. Then you're mostly there, without even necessarily programming anything exceptional. Otherwise, you could get really good at interviewing, write publicly (book, popular blog, etc.), give talks at conferences, create popular open source software, etc.
  - Retric 10y ago
    That's the first level, obvious credentials. Don't forget that legwork like SAT prep classes, or presentations which don't teach you useful skills can still open doors. Next is networks of people that will vouch for you. This does not necessarily take a lot of effort, but being the only resume someone is looking means you just skipped a lot of pre-filters. "I was thinking about possibly jumping ship. O your looking for someone? How about we do lunch and talk about a possible fit." Now add presentation; speech patterns, dress, non verbal indicators, but also what subjects to bring up in conversation. Pull this off and people will often skip the need for in depth evaluation based on assumptions.
    - ryandrake 10y ago
      This is [sadly] the accurate advice. While "love what you do" and "learn a lot" and "improve your skills" sound nice, the reality is that success more often than not comes from pedigree (what school you went to, who your parents are), people (who you know) and polish (how smoothly you talk/dress, how you carry yourself, confidence, ability to make small talk, etc.). EDIT: I'll also add "self-promotion". So, the four P's: Pedigree, People, Polish, and Promotion.

potatolicious 10y ago

A few quick thoughts: > "I don't care about salaries persay, but I do care about being valuable." You should care about salaries, even if you don't care about salaries. Yeah that sounds insane, but salary is a signal for ability. It probably shouldn't be, but hey, I didn't make these crazy rules. Having a high salary opens doors to many interesting jobs doing really interesting work. For a long list of (very unfair) reasons, someone making $300k gets taken more seriously than someone making $100k (even at companies that can't afford you!). So yes, you're right about working with great mentors, at great companies, and with great teams - but you should also focus on getting paid more. They're all tied up together and each contributes to the others. As to how to break into the cycle of high salaries -> high impact work -> higher salaries -> higher impact work... That's a good question. Joining one of the AppAmaGooFaceSoft big corps is one way about it - the hiring processes at these companies are less network-reliant than many other jobs, and all are famous enough that it massively opens the door to further work. I had the good luck of starting my career at Amazon, which opened many doors. (I also had the great luck of not staying at Amazon)

maxxxxx 10y ago
Right on. I had this cycle as freelancer. Higher rates resulted in higher quality work which resulted in higher rates. People will respect you less if you tell you don't care about money. Unless you are superstar who makes $1000/hr while saying that money is not important.

alaaibrahim 10y ago

Here is my recipe (YMMV) - Love what you do, this is extremely important, although you have goals in mind, you should enjoy the process to reach your goals, this would make you work harder, and failure wouldn't be a big deal, as you enjoy it. - Practice, solve useless problems for fun, sharpen your skills, until you become really good at what you do. - Really know what you are good at, and what you are not, and don't be afraid of pointing out what you don't know, even to someone who is interviewing you, and always know why you don't know, and if you need to know what you have to do. - At this point, have the mentality whenever you go to an interview, that they would gain more from hiring you, that you would gain from being hired by them. - Profit!!!. Edit: formatting

HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago

If you want to be successful, the single most important skill you can probably cultivate is the ability to communicate well and get along with people. All else is secondary at best. Most people in any job are at least competent. It's not that hard to rise above "merely competent" and you get many extra points if you're personable and can explain what you're doing to management. Quietly sitting in a corner, coding away, isn't going to get you anything other than average results. Most of your list is luck, or chance. However, you can choose to work at a great company by only researching and applying to, great companies. The interview is where your interaction skills will prove useful.

MuppetMaster42 10y ago
This is what I've noticed as well. Most devs can't communicate for shit. Being able to just talk is often enough to get your foot in the door. It also has the added bonus of giving you more power in the workplace. If you can communicate well, you can get more ideas on the table and implemented. The more ideas you implement, the higher your worth clearly is. The other thing I'd note is that your raw dev skills are a product of how much effort you put in. If you do dev purely as a job (minimal pre-job training and relying solely on on-the-job training and experience to keep up) you're going to be stuck as a mediocre dev. To be truly successful you need to be seeking and actively consuming knowledge all the time (at least in your early career). This means keeping up with your chosen dev scene and languages, and actually playing with them and learning them in your own time. Companies value someone who knows their shit, knows it well, and can communicate how to apply that shit to their product. I think being a dev is a unique career because unlike most, there aren't just a few advancements every year to care about, there's several every month. And those advancements aren't just something you can maybe do in the future once a paper is vetted and reviewed, they're things you can read about, toy with and probably apply to your product straight away.