7 ms·

Yes. Don't forget "CV-first" development is a thing.

by brango 9y ago

maxxxxx 9y ago
The sad thing is that resume driven development seems to be one of the best strategies for developers these days.
- 8ytecoder 9y ago
  Anecdote: At the startup (now acquired) that I work for, we simplified the architecture so much that we spend under $3k a month in infra for tens of millions in revenues a year while having 99.9% availability for 5+ years now. I don't have any big name tech to add to my resume. The fact that we ran a e-commerce site with a low budget and few engineers was never recognized by recruiters. They called me based on my experience with "distributed systems" 8 years ago. All recruiters (well, most of them at least) can look for is keywords. On the other hand, we also had difficulties hiring "good" engineers. People chose either a company with a brand name recognition or one that's working on "exciting" technology. As engineers, we fail to appreciate that we are there to serve business first and foremost. As leaders, we fail to put our companies first. This is an industry wide problem. If past trends of other major industries are any indicator, the whole "meritocracy" of tech industry will disappear within the next decade.
  - guelo 9y ago
    > As engineers, we fail to appreciate that we are there to serve business first and foremost The company has zero loyalty to you and will screw you over if it makes business sense to do so. There is absolutely no reason to put the company above your career interests.
    - ralmeida 9y ago
      This only holds if you believe that deliberately making decisions that will cost the company more than they should is in your career interests. As said in this topic - it's true that in some places, resume-driven development pays off for the developers. It's not the same everywhere and to me it looks more like a symptom of a dysfunctional structure than par for the course in business. This means it is in your career interests to increase company revenue and/or reduce costs, because this will make you more attractive to many companies (the ones we would likely want to work on) when you move on.
      - 8ytecoder 9y ago
        Exactly. It's in my best interest to make sure the business is doing well and I don't do things that jeopardize that. And no, it doesn't have to come at the cost of taking a hit to my career either. This is not a fine line balance I'm talking about - doing things with the main goal of boosting my career will sooner or later ruin it.
      - maxxxxx 9y ago
        I am not sure how much it is in the interest of a developer to help the business to increase revenue or reduce cost. It's certainly good to come from a successful company but if you haven't worked on the latest cool tech you still don't look good. Even if that decision was 100% the right thing to do. That's just my personal impression but I believe you have better chances coming from an unsuccessful company with all the right buzzwords than from a successful company with old tech. You will quickly be labelled as "dinosaur". The real winner is to use cool stuff AND come from a successful/known company.
        ralmeida 9y ago
        Can't say I'm 100% sure either. Certainly having nice buzzwords in the CV can be beneficial, but I would guess would be more common in certain corporate structures/areas/sizes. I have no experience in being labelled a 'dinosaur', but I'm sure there are jobs where being practical and generating actual results will matter. In ideal conditions, these are the jobs which are desirable to work at, so I don't like the idea of optimizing for hotness in itself (at least for my own career decisions).
      - jrs95 9y ago
        Given that changing jobs every 1-2 years is common now, I don't think actually trying to act in the interest of the company is a good strategy. By the time anyone really notices that you have, you'll probably already have another job. So perhaps the cure for resume driven development is fixing the constant job hopping problem.
        jowiar 9y ago
  - timClicks 9y ago
    On the recruiting standpoint, I would aim to attract older applicants. People established in their career don't need buzzword bingo resumes. Stability is important because you can leave the job at the door. Other things are more important, such as paying the mortgage, taking kids to the park on the weekends and not working all hours with a fragile stack.
    - deepsun 9y ago
      Unfortunately, my friends on management positions say that they favor youth. Young devs lack experience and foresight, so ran into a lot of problems, but they cover all of that by working 18/7 and bringing sleeping bags to office.
      - sheeshkebab 9y ago
        Not sure where you work - but not anymore... most kids out of college willing to work for places with "management" pay attention to 9 to 5 thing much more these days. And they'd be stupid if they didn't.
      - secretsinger 9y ago
        I remember Joel saying something about "smart AND gets things done" back in '06. But I guess the youth of today are too busy working 18/7 and learning the latest, hippest Javascript meta-framework to read such outdated doggerel. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guide-to-interviewing-version-30/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guid...
    - cookiecaper 9y ago
      I would say that "buzzword bingo" is even more important for older candidates. The younger candidates will be perceived as more current, so the older ones will need to make clear that they are not "dinosaurs" stuck on 20 year old tech.
      - maxxxxx 9y ago
        Agreed
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    There has never been a meritocracy in tech, only the illusion of it. 80%+ of any job is about being well-liked, by peers but especially by the upper echelons. 20% is the upper limit of actual job function expected to be performed. If you're faking it well enough to pass the surface inspection and you're well-liked, your job is very secure. The issue is that, compared to other industries, it's really hard to find people with that 20% in tech, so business people are forced to let political and image ignoramuses (sometimes ignorant to the point of failing to perform basic hygiene) into the club, and forced to try to stuff them in the attic or some other dark corner of the office where they won't ugly things up too much. Many developers naively interpret this as a ruling meritocracy. The reality is that the business types resent having to do this, and a horrible technology worker with some image consciousness will easily destroy his better-qualified peers. I'm familiar with a case of a person who can't even code getting himself elevated to a technical directorship with architectural and high-level direction responsibilities through such tactics. He appears to code by merging branches in the GitHub interface, by making vacuous technical-sounding comments in meetings with executives, by occasionally having someone come "pair" with him and committing the changes they make together at his workstation, etc., but if you locked him alone in a room with a blank text editor and said "Write something that does this", he wouldn't be able to do it. And the executives believe in him wholeheartedly and are currently working to install him as the company's sole technical authority. All significant decisions would have to get his approval, despite his being literally the worst technician in the company. All of his decisions up to this point have been politically motivated, aimed at coalescing power within his group and blocking outsiders who may want to contribute. He was able to get there because he dresses well, he adopted the executive's interests and chitchats with them about these, he walks around the office telling jokes and smiling at people, and generally being what would be considered personable and diplomatic, whereas the other technical people go to their desks, hunker down, and spend their day trying to get some real work done. Which strategy wins in the long run?
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      I have seen similar guys as "senior architect". They speak well, are nice, sit in a lot of meetings, make nice Visio charts, use words like "integration pattern" but you never get anything real out of them.
  - sopooneo 9y ago
    Is there a win-win here if we want to strike out on our own as "consultants"? What if we charge exorbitant sums for simple robust solutions, but provide the execs with needlessly technical descriptions of what we've done so they can show it off? Big budget, sounds impressive, works consistently, and we get paid. Or is that plausible?
hinkley 9y ago
As a lead dev, I recognize that if I want the early- or mid-career guys to stick around and keep working on this boring project, I have to throw them a bone from time to time. Not everything should build their resume, but some of it has to. It's one of my arguments for buy over build.
- jdavis703 9y ago
  What about the senior folks? Do they not need any bones because they're given challenging projects routinely, or because they're content doing a job for a check because they've got the spouse, house and kids to deal with?

Yes. Don't forget "CV-first" development is a thing.

by brango 9y ago

Yes. Don't forget "CV-first" development is a thing.

maxxxxx 9y ago

The sad thing is that resume driven development seems to be one of the best strategies for developers these days.

8ytecoder 9y ago
Anecdote: At the startup (now acquired) that I work for, we simplified the architecture so much that we spend under $3k a month in infra for tens of millions in revenues a year while having 99.9% availability for 5+ years now. I don't have any big name tech to add to my resume. The fact that we ran a e-commerce site with a low budget and few engineers was never recognized by recruiters. They called me based on my experience with "distributed systems" 8 years ago. All recruiters (well, most of them at least) can look for is keywords. On the other hand, we also had difficulties hiring "good" engineers. People chose either a company with a brand name recognition or one that's working on "exciting" technology. As engineers, we fail to appreciate that we are there to serve business first and foremost. As leaders, we fail to put our companies first. This is an industry wide problem. If past trends of other major industries are any indicator, the whole "meritocracy" of tech industry will disappear within the next decade.
- guelo 9y ago
  > As engineers, we fail to appreciate that we are there to serve business first and foremost The company has zero loyalty to you and will screw you over if it makes business sense to do so. There is absolutely no reason to put the company above your career interests.
  - ralmeida 9y ago
    This only holds if you believe that deliberately making decisions that will cost the company more than they should is in your career interests. As said in this topic - it's true that in some places, resume-driven development pays off for the developers. It's not the same everywhere and to me it looks more like a symptom of a dysfunctional structure than par for the course in business. This means it is in your career interests to increase company revenue and/or reduce costs, because this will make you more attractive to many companies (the ones we would likely want to work on) when you move on.
    - 8ytecoder 9y ago
      Exactly. It's in my best interest to make sure the business is doing well and I don't do things that jeopardize that. And no, it doesn't have to come at the cost of taking a hit to my career either. This is not a fine line balance I'm talking about - doing things with the main goal of boosting my career will sooner or later ruin it.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      I am not sure how much it is in the interest of a developer to help the business to increase revenue or reduce cost. It's certainly good to come from a successful company but if you haven't worked on the latest cool tech you still don't look good. Even if that decision was 100% the right thing to do. That's just my personal impression but I believe you have better chances coming from an unsuccessful company with all the right buzzwords than from a successful company with old tech. You will quickly be labelled as "dinosaur". The real winner is to use cool stuff AND come from a successful/known company.
      - ralmeida 9y ago
        Can't say I'm 100% sure either. Certainly having nice buzzwords in the CV can be beneficial, but I would guess would be more common in certain corporate structures/areas/sizes. I have no experience in being labelled a 'dinosaur', but I'm sure there are jobs where being practical and generating actual results will matter. In ideal conditions, these are the jobs which are desirable to work at, so I don't like the idea of optimizing for hotness in itself (at least for my own career decisions).
    - jrs95 9y ago
      Given that changing jobs every 1-2 years is common now, I don't think actually trying to act in the interest of the company is a good strategy. By the time anyone really notices that you have, you'll probably already have another job. So perhaps the cure for resume driven development is fixing the constant job hopping problem.
      - jowiar 9y ago
- timClicks 9y ago
  On the recruiting standpoint, I would aim to attract older applicants. People established in their career don't need buzzword bingo resumes. Stability is important because you can leave the job at the door. Other things are more important, such as paying the mortgage, taking kids to the park on the weekends and not working all hours with a fragile stack.
  - deepsun 9y ago
    Unfortunately, my friends on management positions say that they favor youth. Young devs lack experience and foresight, so ran into a lot of problems, but they cover all of that by working 18/7 and bringing sleeping bags to office.
    - sheeshkebab 9y ago
      Not sure where you work - but not anymore... most kids out of college willing to work for places with "management" pay attention to 9 to 5 thing much more these days. And they'd be stupid if they didn't.
    - secretsinger 9y ago
      I remember Joel saying something about "smart AND gets things done" back in '06. But I guess the youth of today are too busy working 18/7 and learning the latest, hippest Javascript meta-framework to read such outdated doggerel. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guide-to-interviewing-version-30/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guid...
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    I would say that "buzzword bingo" is even more important for older candidates. The younger candidates will be perceived as more current, so the older ones will need to make clear that they are not "dinosaurs" stuck on 20 year old tech.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      Agreed
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  There has never been a meritocracy in tech, only the illusion of it. 80%+ of any job is about being well-liked, by peers but especially by the upper echelons. 20% is the upper limit of actual job function expected to be performed. If you're faking it well enough to pass the surface inspection and you're well-liked, your job is very secure. The issue is that, compared to other industries, it's really hard to find people with that 20% in tech, so business people are forced to let political and image ignoramuses (sometimes ignorant to the point of failing to perform basic hygiene) into the club, and forced to try to stuff them in the attic or some other dark corner of the office where they won't ugly things up too much. Many developers naively interpret this as a ruling meritocracy. The reality is that the business types resent having to do this, and a horrible technology worker with some image consciousness will easily destroy his better-qualified peers. I'm familiar with a case of a person who can't even code getting himself elevated to a technical directorship with architectural and high-level direction responsibilities through such tactics. He appears to code by merging branches in the GitHub interface, by making vacuous technical-sounding comments in meetings with executives, by occasionally having someone come "pair" with him and committing the changes they make together at his workstation, etc., but if you locked him alone in a room with a blank text editor and said "Write something that does this", he wouldn't be able to do it. And the executives believe in him wholeheartedly and are currently working to install him as the company's sole technical authority. All significant decisions would have to get his approval, despite his being literally the worst technician in the company. All of his decisions up to this point have been politically motivated, aimed at coalescing power within his group and blocking outsiders who may want to contribute. He was able to get there because he dresses well, he adopted the executive's interests and chitchats with them about these, he walks around the office telling jokes and smiling at people, and generally being what would be considered personable and diplomatic, whereas the other technical people go to their desks, hunker down, and spend their day trying to get some real work done. Which strategy wins in the long run?
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    I have seen similar guys as "senior architect". They speak well, are nice, sit in a lot of meetings, make nice Visio charts, use words like "integration pattern" but you never get anything real out of them.
- sopooneo 9y ago
  Is there a win-win here if we want to strike out on our own as "consultants"? What if we charge exorbitant sums for simple robust solutions, but provide the execs with needlessly technical descriptions of what we've done so they can show it off? Big budget, sounds impressive, works consistently, and we get paid. Or is that plausible?

hinkley 9y ago

As a lead dev, I recognize that if I want the early- or mid-career guys to stick around and keep working on this boring project, I have to throw them a bone from time to time. Not everything should build their resume, but some of it has to. It's one of my arguments for buy over build.

jdavis703 9y ago
What about the senior folks? Do they not need any bones because they're given challenging projects routinely, or because they're content doing a job for a check because they've got the spouse, house and kids to deal with?