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This is true of the software engineering profession in general. I think there's a quote somewhere stating "the half-life of a software engineer is 2-5 years." T

This is true of the software engineering profession in general. I think there's a quote somewhere stating "the half-life of a software engineer is 2-5 years." There's constantly new programming languages, new frameworks, new platforms, new tools, new paradigms etc. It becomes harder and harder to keep up with all that as you age and have more responsibilities and require more stability having a mortgage and offspring (although there's certainly individuals that can keep up with it). Those who are still in school or fresh out of it will be up-to-date with the latest theory and trends. And they will be eager to pour hours of overtime into their new career. Sure, they will have years of practical experience to gain, but that's not usually what they will be interviewed on (from my experience). They will be interviewed on the latest tech and the algorithms and theory they learned in school. Their whiteboard interviews will be another day from class. Given the influx of fresh blood, I view the software engineering profession as a entry-level type of job, regardless of the varying levels of seniority titles available. The only way to escape the constant churn is move to other roles, such as architect, management, executive or to start a business such as in niche consulting or a startup, etc. Or you can eschew the typical life of mortgage + kids and dedicate it to keeping up with every latest trend, hopping jobs to stay current and hoping you never slow down.

geebee 9y ago
Yeah, sadly, that's a common problem in software development. People often use technologies on projects because their resume needs them, not because the project benefits from them. I wonder what our technology choices would look like if this weren't the case. In other words, suppose someone said to you "you'll be responsible for these software applications for the next 10 years" vs "you'll need to find a new job every 2-3 years for the next 10 years." Would we adopt and apply new technologies this aggressively? Would we be changing javascript frameworks constantly? Would we necessarily be using them at all, vs a wait and see approach? (btw, yes, depending on the project sometimes we would use them, but my guess is that we would far less often). It's happened a bunch of times in my career by now. Currently, I think our huge over-application of technology is in the realm of constantly evolving front end javascript frameworks. I still believe, firmly, that most smallish apps would be better handled through an integrated framework like rails or Django, with a bit of judiciously applied javascript when necessary. Or, perhaps, even no framework at all. But unfortunately, that doesn't get you jobs. Almost all the rails jobs out there now require expertise in Ember, React, etc. So the truth is, it's rational to add these things to your current rails project even if you don't think the trade-off is quite worth it. Just to be clear, yeah, sometimes it is worth it. I look at it this way - for a while there, most land animals had exoskeletons, even some fairly large ones. Then, endoskeletons came along, and it turned out that to scale up to be a giant land animal, you needed an endoskeleton. Some of the larger animals with exoskeletons started to go extinct, as the more scalable endoskeletons drove them out of their ecological niches. Here's the part that they don't cover on the nature channel - recruiters started to ask giant centipedes if they had any experience with endoskeleton. Senior architects and technology directs started insisting that fleas, ticks, and flying gnats have endoskeletons, because they attended a conference that told them that if you want to to wooly mammoth size, you need endoskeleton. Meanwhile, the creators of endoskeleton frameworks are (rightly) all like, "Don't put this on me, I never said a gnat should have an endoskeleton". Oh as for machine learning... yeah, I suppose there may be some use of spark, map reduce, Hadoop, and so forth that exists to gain experience with these technologies rather than because they're needed. That definitely happened with some of the noSql stuff. But honestly, the unnecessary churn on the back end/data science side pales in comparison to what happens out there in the web world.
sjg007 9y ago
"Those who are still in school or fresh out of it will be up-to-date with the latest theory and trends. " The theory doesn't change that fast... also trends? Maybe in terms of a new JS library.. but I think it's more of new grads will work for cheap and will take more bullshit. They also are more likely to move to/for the job.

geebee 9y ago

Yeah, sadly, that's a common problem in software development. People often use technologies on projects because their resume needs them, not because the project benefits from them. I wonder what our technology choices would look like if this weren't the case. In other words, suppose someone said to you "you'll be responsible for these software applications for the next 10 years" vs "you'll need to find a new job every 2-3 years for the next 10 years." Would we adopt and apply new technologies this aggressively? Would we be changing javascript frameworks constantly? Would we necessarily be using them at all, vs a wait and see approach? (btw, yes, depending on the project sometimes we would use them, but my guess is that we would far less often). It's happened a bunch of times in my career by now. Currently, I think our huge over-application of technology is in the realm of constantly evolving front end javascript frameworks. I still believe, firmly, that most smallish apps would be better handled through an integrated framework like rails or Django, with a bit of judiciously applied javascript when necessary. Or, perhaps, even no framework at all. But unfortunately, that doesn't get you jobs. Almost all the rails jobs out there now require expertise in Ember, React, etc. So the truth is, it's rational to add these things to your current rails project even if you don't think the trade-off is quite worth it. Just to be clear, yeah, sometimes it is worth it. I look at it this way - for a while there, most land animals had exoskeletons, even some fairly large ones. Then, endoskeletons came along, and it turned out that to scale up to be a giant land animal, you needed an endoskeleton. Some of the larger animals with exoskeletons started to go extinct, as the more scalable endoskeletons drove them out of their ecological niches. Here's the part that they don't cover on the nature channel - recruiters started to ask giant centipedes if they had any experience with endoskeleton. Senior architects and technology directs started insisting that fleas, ticks, and flying gnats have endoskeletons, because they attended a conference that told them that if you want to to wooly mammoth size, you need endoskeleton. Meanwhile, the creators of endoskeleton frameworks are (rightly) all like, "Don't put this on me, I never said a gnat should have an endoskeleton". Oh as for machine learning... yeah, I suppose there may be some use of spark, map reduce, Hadoop, and so forth that exists to gain experience with these technologies rather than because they're needed. That definitely happened with some of the noSql stuff. But honestly, the unnecessary churn on the back end/data science side pales in comparison to what happens out there in the web world.

sjg007 9y ago

"Those who are still in school or fresh out of it will be up-to-date with the latest theory and trends. " The theory doesn't change that fast... also trends? Maybe in terms of a new JS library.. but I think it's more of new grads will work for cheap and will take more bullshit. They also are more likely to move to/for the job.