16 ms·

There were never any junior dev jobs. You have always had to lie, cheat, and steal your way into the field. I have a buddy who legit cheated his way to the top

There were never any junior dev jobs. You have always had to lie, cheat, and steal your way into the field. I have a buddy who legit cheated his way to the top Magento certification and now cycles through $150k+ jobs where they keep him on long enough to realize he doesn't have any coding skills then they fire him. Reason is software is always an ancillary concern to the business. You see this in other fields, like say accounting, but the difference is that accountants leave school fully capable of employment. HR understands how to hire and manage accountants. But programming is this black box in the corporate world that no one knows how to understand, value, or hire for. This is why every company wants rockstars, they're hoping that someone whose at least confident to present themselves as a rockstar won't be a net negative to the company. Eventually they'll figure it out, took them a decade to figure out how to manage IT. Then companies will learn that they can't skimp on middle management for software developers. Some companies will need to give software a legit seat at the table and hire upper management. The political cover will allow shops to stabilize and with stabilization, you'll finally start seeing small and midsize organizations open up positions for juniors. But it'll never happen so long as companies don't take software development seriously by giving them political cover. If you are a software developer nearing the middle or end of your career, you're pulling the ladder up behind you if you don't seriously consider moving into management. It's too important a job to ignore to go chase your dreams.

hacker_9 9y ago
Depends on the business of course. Try getting interviewed by competent developers, they'll quickly find the holes.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  I used to believe this, now I'm skeptical. Even if they find holes in the developer's competence, interviewing is not a task, it's a business process orchestrated and controlled by middle management. Say the competent developer finds holes in the interviewee's knowledge and skills, his findings become a line item in the report passed up to said middle management. The middle manager, hopefully not in HR, has to weigh all the items in the report, and as a result the actual skill level of the developer gets buried deep, under cultural factors and attitude. There's also the human aspect, does Jimmy Mid-Level know how to raise issues with an interviewee's competence convincingly? If he doesn't, his concerns are likely to get written off. This all ties back to the lack of political cover that software development shops in non-technically oriented organizations usually exhibit. Developers need to be in those middle management positions if they want their concerns to be taken seriously.
  - dkarl 9y ago
    This is a symptom of managers not understanding the jobs of the people they're managing. I don't know if that kind of management works under any circumstances, but it definitely can't work if people who don't understand programming (and I specifically mean programming, no matter how well they understand the rest of a developer's job) are managing junior developers.
    - vinceguidry 9y ago
      Of course it is. But in most organizations, managers do not understand software development. That competence is extremely hard to hire.
      - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
        I'm fortunate to work for a manager who is a half-time developer. He's really good at interviewing people, and finding out if they're what we want.
    - bitwize 9y ago
      This is why it's imperative that software devs get on the management track.
padobson 9y ago
I love that you pointed out the need for political strength within organizations. I agree, and I think it directly conflicts with this line from the post: Yeah, I’m gonna bring gender into it, because I’m a woman and when women take on roles like this they often get pigeonholed into “den mother” stereotypes. That means less prestige and less prestige usually means less pay. Having the admiration and respect of the next generation of developers at your company offers far more leverage than the nebulous prestige. If you mentor three engineers, that's three warm bodies at your company who will have good things to say when asked about you. If you do a good job, you now have a team of four capable engineers who can get things done. What could provide more organizational political power than building a hierarchy of capable engineers that consistently come to you when they need help?
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  Don't see anything said that's incompatible with the 'Den mother' stigma. If its about pay and promotion, not about being friendly with Engineers, then you want to avoid the role that won't be respected. You can't imagine all the ways management can dismiss women's actions - "she's a great connector in that department. Let's leave her there, that's working great." or "sure she's got all the guys eating out of her hand. But lets talk leadership - Bob has got everybody afraid of him! Lets promote Bob"
  - padobson 9y ago
    If its about pay and promotion Pay and promotion is about making yourself valuable. If you mentor engineers and gain a reputation for doing so, you're effectively shaping the culture of the organization, not to mention gives you a ton of leverage with the productive employees you taught to be productive. It makes you far less disposable. When mixed with even amateur negotiating skills, that leads to promotion and better pay.
    - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
      If you ignore the part about stigmatizing, which happens to women by default, then sure. An objective management team would act as described. But the 'den mother' comment comes out of a real issue, of womens roles being sidelined. One pragmatic response is to avoid roles that feed into the stereotype. In a better world, this would not be a thing. But here we are.
tboyd47 9y ago
Ok, the first part of your comment makes no sense to me. How do you lie your way into a certification? An interview I can understand, but don't you have to take a test to get a cert? From the second paragraph down, you're absolutely right for non-software companies. They still don't have an understanding of how to build software development into their business model. They don't realize that the low barrier entry to building software does not mean it is a low-cost, low-risk endeavor, nor do they understand how to extract value from a completed software project. They go straight from "Bob the executive has a cool idea," to, "Let's hire 3 full-time devs."
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  I should have said cheated, he got a copy of the first part of the test and memorized it. The second part of it which requires actual coding he barely passed.
  - risotto_groupon 9y ago
    1) The test itself is randomly generated from a huge set of master questions many of which are actually IN the study materials. Everyone studies "from a copy of the test". Its like saying you cheated at a spelling bee because you memorized the dictionary. 2) There are several parts to the exam but none of them involve an evaluation of how you write code, its all multiple choice. 3) The cert itself and studying for it doesn't prepare you for actually building a Magento site in any way. The Magento certification program is really just a way for businesses to get access to "leads" and get free advertising from Magento. Having more certs just helps a company look good. 4) If your buddy is experiencing a lot turnover my experience of the eCommerce industry and Magento shops specifically is that they are more inclined to put a heavy emphasis on "culture fit" and be high stress environments. They say, "If you see assholes everywhere, maybe you should look in mirror..." but it might just be your friend is experiencing the reality that eCommerce development is NOT the same environment as the Wordpress chop shops he may have started in.
- Raphmedia 9y ago
  You can get through a Magento certification by memorizing the answers that are all over the internet, http://magecert.com http://magecert.com ect.
jmvoodoo 9y ago
My "standard" team typically has two jr engineers, and two Sr engineers. When we hire Sr engineers we hire people that like to mentor others and see it as part of being Sr. Jr engineers know that in order to become Sr one of the skills they need to master is mentoring. This is 100% a management issue, and it starts at the hiring filter. Hiring Jrs btw is its own skill as you are filtering for potential not skill or knowledge. Identifying the person who is passionate about learning, has dedication to the craft and pride in their work, and has a natural talent for software is hard. Figure it out though and you have a competitive advantage for life as a manager. Also, half of the Jrs we hire are women. We could never do that if we only hired experienced talent. Not enough women even apply for those roles.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  I'll see your management issue and raise you a leadership one. At my last job, a $40MM cosmetics and skincare company, the CEO had a great deal of trouble figuring out how to get his e-commerce department properly managed. I was willing to step up, and for a brief time they allowed me to bring in candidates for a position that would report to me, but I didn't have enough political cover over me so that fizzled out. I cycled through 3 managers in 2 1/2 years at that job, 2 in the "Director of E-Commerce" role, and one in the "VP of E-Commerce" role. All three left for more sane roles. It's hard to fix management problems at your company when leadership is so confused.
  - jmvoodoo 9y ago
    This is absolutely true. Ive been lucky that the last 17 years of my career have been spent reporting to the CEO and have had a large amount of leeway in my position. That's not always the case and a bad leadership team can't create a good culture.
    - vinceguidry 9y ago
      I should have made a case for reporting to the CEO myself. None of the three managers could figure out how to do it, and I spent more time than I should have trying to coach them on how to handle him. But I wanted to be comfortable and reporting to the CEO would have been the opposite of that.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
runedog 9y ago
What do you suggest for those of us who believe we would be terrible at management? Add to that, I also think I would be miserable doing it.
- WalterSear 9y ago
  That the system is stacked against us.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  Subscribe to Rands' blog, read through his archives, and get on his Slack. http://randsinrepose.com/ http://randsinrepose.com/ https://rands-leadership.slack.com/?redir=%2Fmessages%2Fgeneral%2F https://rands-leadership.slack.com/?redir=%2Fmessages%2Fgene...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- rapfaria 9y ago
  I've come to terms that I want to be a developer for as long as possible. This thread can also help: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372997
- alistairSH 9y ago
  Find an employer that values career programmers? We have a "Technical Fellow" career path for devs/engineers/architects who want to remain in a technical role beyond the typical "tech lead" or "principle whatever" roles.
- adventured 9y ago
  Open your own consulting firm. The people you contract with, generally will not care if you're a 55 year old programmer so long as you can get the job done on time and on budget. Further, as you grow the business, you create your own security, as you can eventually turn yourself into more of a business owner/operator/manager, than only a programmer. This is one of the better ways to beat ageism in tech.
ams6110 9y ago
> accountants leave school fully capable of employment Well, fully capable of entry-level employment. Anyone who graduates from a reputable school with a Comp. Sci. or InfoSys type of major is also fully capable of entry-level employment. Accountants aren't really capable of anything but grunt work until they pass the CPA which normally is after several years of grunt work and additional learning and study. Programmers aren't much good in a business until after several years of actually programming business systems. It doesn't seem to hard to understand to me, in fact they seem quite similar.
- megaman22 9y ago
  > Anyone who graduates from a reputable school with a Comp. Sci. or InfoSys type of major is also fully capable of entry-level employment. No, they're really not, for at least a year. It takes at least that long for most new graduates to get over the hump and learn enough of the practical skills and industry practices that their university left them woefully ignorant of, so that they can start being marginally useful. Once in a while you find somebody who has been doing real work on the side for years during or before college, and thus has a clue how things work, but that's a diamond in the rough, usually. And unfortunately, many of them just can't hack being a professional programmer, and they never get to the point where they become a net positive, in which case you just hope they leave of their own volition or you can silo them off in some area of little importance that won't cause you problems down the road.
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    Code schools try to solve this problem. But they need to become an actual structural part of the industry before companies can really start to rely on them.
    - thesimon 9y ago
      They seem to be on the other side of the extreme though.
  - shrimp_emoji 9y ago
ad-hominem 9y ago
> There were never any junior dev jobs Going to co-op and internship fairs at local colleges, and then hiring those co-ops and interns is a great way to get junior devs. My company even classifies applicants for positions as junior / intermediate / senior as a part of deciding to interview. I realize you are being hyperbolic, but there certainly are paths for junior developers, even though they may be lacking. At least at many places in my city. > Then companies will learn that they can't skimp on middle management for software developers. Some companies will need to give software a legit seat at the table and hire upper management. You mean, like CTO? This is what the CTO is supposed to be, right? And you see in startups, usually it's two major players, the "business / sales guy" and the programmer: i.e. the CEO and the CTO. Maybe in finance or other industries I'm not as familiar with, it's totally different. But most tech places that employ programmers I know of have at least a CTO that is a prior programmer, if not a VP of software engineering. > If you are a software developer nearing the middle or end of your career, you're pulling the ladder up behind you if you don't seriously consider moving into management. It's too important a job to ignore to go chase your dreams. Are you taking the piss mate? I understand your sentiment but this overbearing mother guilt-trip isn't going to change anybody's mind.
commandlinefan 9y ago
> always had to lie, cheat, and steal your way into the field Back in the 90's, when I wanted to move up to working with C++ (the hip, new, "in" thing at the time), I bought a book about C++, read through it, worked the examples, and then started interviewing. The interviewers asked all sorts of arcane questions that I hadn't come across in my few months of study, so I was tanking the interviews. The trick I figured out back then, though, was that the interviewers all tended to ask the same sorts of questions - so after getting my rejection, I'd go look up what the answers to all their questions were so that the next time I was asked the same question, I'd know the answer. I did eventually get a job doing C++ (and did well at it), but... yeah, looking back it was maybe a little bit dishonest.
- shoover 9y ago
  Eh, sounds like smart preparation to play the game on its terms. Did those questions end up being seriously relevant to the work? If so, then you prepared yourself better for the job by learning the answers. If not, well, then maybe it's the interviewers who weren't so honest.
  - commandlinefan 9y ago
    > Did those questions end up being seriously relevant to the work? Oh, God no. I've never been asked a question in a job interview that was in any way relevant to the work I actually ended up doing.
    - retbull 9y ago
      Only one question has ever been relevant for me. It was about map reduce for locations and the job was using map reduce on location data...
      - commandlinefan 9y ago
        At the job I have now, they spent the whole interview session asking about Python, Scala, machine learning, natural language processing, Spark and Hadoop clustering. I've been doing Angular 2 front-end work since I started.
blablabla123 9y ago
So true! My first (student) job..10 years ago... I landed because of personal recommendation through a friend and yeah, for the rest I built on that. Confirming what you say about politics, all following jobs there was a lot of of it involved rendering the jobs eventually mechanic/boring. Especially the non-technical people at the places had really unrealistic understandings of IT and DEV in particular to a degree that tech colleagues thought everybody in MGMT must be completely stupid or insane. After having left these places after some time it's just funny. And yes, for many non-tech people hiring Junior devs is no option in my experience. No idea what these people think, but maybe this is then changing as tech becomes more relevant.. ;)
ChicagoDave 9y ago
Nah this is not true. I started out as a junior dev and remained a junior dev for many years. I've progressed through the ranks over time by continuing to learn new concepts and tools, to observe my mentors and managers, and to adapt. There may be environments like Silicon Valley where companies lean towards experience, but I can tell you in the Chicago areas University of Illinois and other comp-sci graduates get hired consistently. It's too complex of an issue to throw a blanket over it. The market matters, the person matters, and the hiring team matters. I don't believe there's any inherent bias against hiring junior developers. It all depends on a company's needs.
closeparen 9y ago
This might be a tech company vs. IT cost center in a traditional business thing. What major tech companies don’t have internship and new grad recruiting operations? Netflix is the only one I can think of.
fouc 9y ago
It seems to me that it's not uncommon for upper management to try to goad developers (and others) into becoming managers.. The catch is that it involves lots of free work by taking on increased responsibility with no increased pay. So I suspect most developers will think that it's not worth the hassle.
drdeadringer 9y ago
> You have always had to lie, cheat, and steal your way into the field. This terrifies me in terms of my rewriting my resume for my next job cycle. Is any minuscule semblance of honesty on a resume completely dead as a zombie shot through the brain? I'm serious here. If I have never used XYZ tech, should I list that as a matter of course now should the position require it, and then fudge the results with a few searches and try-out "tests"? In "current year": "I know what color it is" truly makes me an expert if I can snake-oil my way into it?
- alchemism 9y ago
  "Fake it 'till you make it," is a statement of pure wisdom, at least with regards to success in America. Especially in IT.

hacker_9 9y ago

Depends on the business of course. Try getting interviewed by competent developers, they'll quickly find the holes.

vinceguidry 9y ago
I used to believe this, now I'm skeptical. Even if they find holes in the developer's competence, interviewing is not a task, it's a business process orchestrated and controlled by middle management. Say the competent developer finds holes in the interviewee's knowledge and skills, his findings become a line item in the report passed up to said middle management. The middle manager, hopefully not in HR, has to weigh all the items in the report, and as a result the actual skill level of the developer gets buried deep, under cultural factors and attitude. There's also the human aspect, does Jimmy Mid-Level know how to raise issues with an interviewee's competence convincingly? If he doesn't, his concerns are likely to get written off. This all ties back to the lack of political cover that software development shops in non-technically oriented organizations usually exhibit. Developers need to be in those middle management positions if they want their concerns to be taken seriously.
- dkarl 9y ago
  This is a symptom of managers not understanding the jobs of the people they're managing. I don't know if that kind of management works under any circumstances, but it definitely can't work if people who don't understand programming (and I specifically mean programming, no matter how well they understand the rest of a developer's job) are managing junior developers.
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    Of course it is. But in most organizations, managers do not understand software development. That competence is extremely hard to hire.
    - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
      I'm fortunate to work for a manager who is a half-time developer. He's really good at interviewing people, and finding out if they're what we want.
  - bitwize 9y ago
    This is why it's imperative that software devs get on the management track.

padobson 9y ago

I love that you pointed out the need for political strength within organizations. I agree, and I think it directly conflicts with this line from the post: Yeah, I’m gonna bring gender into it, because I’m a woman and when women take on roles like this they often get pigeonholed into “den mother” stereotypes. That means less prestige and less prestige usually means less pay. Having the admiration and respect of the next generation of developers at your company offers far more leverage than the nebulous prestige. If you mentor three engineers, that's three warm bodies at your company who will have good things to say when asked about you. If you do a good job, you now have a team of four capable engineers who can get things done. What could provide more organizational political power than building a hierarchy of capable engineers that consistently come to you when they need help?

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
Don't see anything said that's incompatible with the 'Den mother' stigma. If its about pay and promotion, not about being friendly with Engineers, then you want to avoid the role that won't be respected. You can't imagine all the ways management can dismiss women's actions - "she's a great connector in that department. Let's leave her there, that's working great." or "sure she's got all the guys eating out of her hand. But lets talk leadership - Bob has got everybody afraid of him! Lets promote Bob"
- padobson 9y ago
  If its about pay and promotion Pay and promotion is about making yourself valuable. If you mentor engineers and gain a reputation for doing so, you're effectively shaping the culture of the organization, not to mention gives you a ton of leverage with the productive employees you taught to be productive. It makes you far less disposable. When mixed with even amateur negotiating skills, that leads to promotion and better pay.
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    If you ignore the part about stigmatizing, which happens to women by default, then sure. An objective management team would act as described. But the 'den mother' comment comes out of a real issue, of womens roles being sidelined. One pragmatic response is to avoid roles that feed into the stereotype. In a better world, this would not be a thing. But here we are.

tboyd47 9y ago

Ok, the first part of your comment makes no sense to me. How do you lie your way into a certification? An interview I can understand, but don't you have to take a test to get a cert? From the second paragraph down, you're absolutely right for non-software companies. They still don't have an understanding of how to build software development into their business model. They don't realize that the low barrier entry to building software does not mean it is a low-cost, low-risk endeavor, nor do they understand how to extract value from a completed software project. They go straight from "Bob the executive has a cool idea," to, "Let's hire 3 full-time devs."

vinceguidry 9y ago
I should have said cheated, he got a copy of the first part of the test and memorized it. The second part of it which requires actual coding he barely passed.
- risotto_groupon 9y ago
  1) The test itself is randomly generated from a huge set of master questions many of which are actually IN the study materials. Everyone studies "from a copy of the test". Its like saying you cheated at a spelling bee because you memorized the dictionary. 2) There are several parts to the exam but none of them involve an evaluation of how you write code, its all multiple choice. 3) The cert itself and studying for it doesn't prepare you for actually building a Magento site in any way. The Magento certification program is really just a way for businesses to get access to "leads" and get free advertising from Magento. Having more certs just helps a company look good. 4) If your buddy is experiencing a lot turnover my experience of the eCommerce industry and Magento shops specifically is that they are more inclined to put a heavy emphasis on "culture fit" and be high stress environments. They say, "If you see assholes everywhere, maybe you should look in mirror..." but it might just be your friend is experiencing the reality that eCommerce development is NOT the same environment as the Wordpress chop shops he may have started in.
Raphmedia 9y ago
You can get through a Magento certification by memorizing the answers that are all over the internet, http://magecert.com http://magecert.com ect.

jmvoodoo 9y ago

My "standard" team typically has two jr engineers, and two Sr engineers. When we hire Sr engineers we hire people that like to mentor others and see it as part of being Sr. Jr engineers know that in order to become Sr one of the skills they need to master is mentoring. This is 100% a management issue, and it starts at the hiring filter. Hiring Jrs btw is its own skill as you are filtering for potential not skill or knowledge. Identifying the person who is passionate about learning, has dedication to the craft and pride in their work, and has a natural talent for software is hard. Figure it out though and you have a competitive advantage for life as a manager. Also, half of the Jrs we hire are women. We could never do that if we only hired experienced talent. Not enough women even apply for those roles.

vinceguidry 9y ago
I'll see your management issue and raise you a leadership one. At my last job, a $40MM cosmetics and skincare company, the CEO had a great deal of trouble figuring out how to get his e-commerce department properly managed. I was willing to step up, and for a brief time they allowed me to bring in candidates for a position that would report to me, but I didn't have enough political cover over me so that fizzled out. I cycled through 3 managers in 2 1/2 years at that job, 2 in the "Director of E-Commerce" role, and one in the "VP of E-Commerce" role. All three left for more sane roles. It's hard to fix management problems at your company when leadership is so confused.
- jmvoodoo 9y ago
  This is absolutely true. Ive been lucky that the last 17 years of my career have been spent reporting to the CEO and have had a large amount of leeway in my position. That's not always the case and a bad leadership team can't create a good culture.
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    I should have made a case for reporting to the CEO myself. None of the three managers could figure out how to do it, and I spent more time than I should have trying to coach them on how to handle him. But I wanted to be comfortable and reporting to the CEO would have been the opposite of that.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

runedog 9y ago

What do you suggest for those of us who believe we would be terrible at management? Add to that, I also think I would be miserable doing it.

WalterSear 9y ago
That the system is stacked against us.
vinceguidry 9y ago
Subscribe to Rands' blog, read through his archives, and get on his Slack. http://randsinrepose.com/ http://randsinrepose.com/ https://rands-leadership.slack.com/?redir=%2Fmessages%2Fgeneral%2F https://rands-leadership.slack.com/?redir=%2Fmessages%2Fgene...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rapfaria 9y ago
I've come to terms that I want to be a developer for as long as possible. This thread can also help: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372997
alistairSH 9y ago
Find an employer that values career programmers? We have a "Technical Fellow" career path for devs/engineers/architects who want to remain in a technical role beyond the typical "tech lead" or "principle whatever" roles.
adventured 9y ago
Open your own consulting firm. The people you contract with, generally will not care if you're a 55 year old programmer so long as you can get the job done on time and on budget. Further, as you grow the business, you create your own security, as you can eventually turn yourself into more of a business owner/operator/manager, than only a programmer. This is one of the better ways to beat ageism in tech.

ams6110 9y ago

> accountants leave school fully capable of employment Well, fully capable of entry-level employment. Anyone who graduates from a reputable school with a Comp. Sci. or InfoSys type of major is also fully capable of entry-level employment. Accountants aren't really capable of anything but grunt work until they pass the CPA which normally is after several years of grunt work and additional learning and study. Programmers aren't much good in a business until after several years of actually programming business systems. It doesn't seem to hard to understand to me, in fact they seem quite similar.

megaman22 9y ago
> Anyone who graduates from a reputable school with a Comp. Sci. or InfoSys type of major is also fully capable of entry-level employment. No, they're really not, for at least a year. It takes at least that long for most new graduates to get over the hump and learn enough of the practical skills and industry practices that their university left them woefully ignorant of, so that they can start being marginally useful. Once in a while you find somebody who has been doing real work on the side for years during or before college, and thus has a clue how things work, but that's a diamond in the rough, usually. And unfortunately, many of them just can't hack being a professional programmer, and they never get to the point where they become a net positive, in which case you just hope they leave of their own volition or you can silo them off in some area of little importance that won't cause you problems down the road.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  Code schools try to solve this problem. But they need to become an actual structural part of the industry before companies can really start to rely on them.
  - thesimon 9y ago
    They seem to be on the other side of the extreme though.
- shrimp_emoji 9y ago

ad-hominem 9y ago

> There were never any junior dev jobs Going to co-op and internship fairs at local colleges, and then hiring those co-ops and interns is a great way to get junior devs. My company even classifies applicants for positions as junior / intermediate / senior as a part of deciding to interview. I realize you are being hyperbolic, but there certainly are paths for junior developers, even though they may be lacking. At least at many places in my city. > Then companies will learn that they can't skimp on middle management for software developers. Some companies will need to give software a legit seat at the table and hire upper management. You mean, like CTO? This is what the CTO is supposed to be, right? And you see in startups, usually it's two major players, the "business / sales guy" and the programmer: i.e. the CEO and the CTO. Maybe in finance or other industries I'm not as familiar with, it's totally different. But most tech places that employ programmers I know of have at least a CTO that is a prior programmer, if not a VP of software engineering. > If you are a software developer nearing the middle or end of your career, you're pulling the ladder up behind you if you don't seriously consider moving into management. It's too important a job to ignore to go chase your dreams. Are you taking the piss mate? I understand your sentiment but this overbearing mother guilt-trip isn't going to change anybody's mind.

commandlinefan 9y ago

> always had to lie, cheat, and steal your way into the field Back in the 90's, when I wanted to move up to working with C++ (the hip, new, "in" thing at the time), I bought a book about C++, read through it, worked the examples, and then started interviewing. The interviewers asked all sorts of arcane questions that I hadn't come across in my few months of study, so I was tanking the interviews. The trick I figured out back then, though, was that the interviewers all tended to ask the same sorts of questions - so after getting my rejection, I'd go look up what the answers to all their questions were so that the next time I was asked the same question, I'd know the answer. I did eventually get a job doing C++ (and did well at it), but... yeah, looking back it was maybe a little bit dishonest.

shoover 9y ago
Eh, sounds like smart preparation to play the game on its terms. Did those questions end up being seriously relevant to the work? If so, then you prepared yourself better for the job by learning the answers. If not, well, then maybe it's the interviewers who weren't so honest.
- commandlinefan 9y ago
  > Did those questions end up being seriously relevant to the work? Oh, God no. I've never been asked a question in a job interview that was in any way relevant to the work I actually ended up doing.
  - retbull 9y ago
    Only one question has ever been relevant for me. It was about map reduce for locations and the job was using map reduce on location data...
    - commandlinefan 9y ago
      At the job I have now, they spent the whole interview session asking about Python, Scala, machine learning, natural language processing, Spark and Hadoop clustering. I've been doing Angular 2 front-end work since I started.

blablabla123 9y ago

So true! My first (student) job..10 years ago... I landed because of personal recommendation through a friend and yeah, for the rest I built on that. Confirming what you say about politics, all following jobs there was a lot of of it involved rendering the jobs eventually mechanic/boring. Especially the non-technical people at the places had really unrealistic understandings of IT and DEV in particular to a degree that tech colleagues thought everybody in MGMT must be completely stupid or insane. After having left these places after some time it's just funny. And yes, for many non-tech people hiring Junior devs is no option in my experience. No idea what these people think, but maybe this is then changing as tech becomes more relevant.. ;)

ChicagoDave 9y ago

Nah this is not true. I started out as a junior dev and remained a junior dev for many years. I've progressed through the ranks over time by continuing to learn new concepts and tools, to observe my mentors and managers, and to adapt. There may be environments like Silicon Valley where companies lean towards experience, but I can tell you in the Chicago areas University of Illinois and other comp-sci graduates get hired consistently. It's too complex of an issue to throw a blanket over it. The market matters, the person matters, and the hiring team matters. I don't believe there's any inherent bias against hiring junior developers. It all depends on a company's needs.

closeparen 9y ago

This might be a tech company vs. IT cost center in a traditional business thing. What major tech companies don’t have internship and new grad recruiting operations? Netflix is the only one I can think of.

fouc 9y ago

It seems to me that it's not uncommon for upper management to try to goad developers (and others) into becoming managers.. The catch is that it involves lots of free work by taking on increased responsibility with no increased pay. So I suspect most developers will think that it's not worth the hassle.

drdeadringer 9y ago

> You have always had to lie, cheat, and steal your way into the field. This terrifies me in terms of my rewriting my resume for my next job cycle. Is any minuscule semblance of honesty on a resume completely dead as a zombie shot through the brain? I'm serious here. If I have never used XYZ tech, should I list that as a matter of course now should the position require it, and then fudge the results with a few searches and try-out "tests"? In "current year": "I know what color it is" truly makes me an expert if I can snake-oil my way into it?

alchemism 9y ago
"Fake it 'till you make it," is a statement of pure wisdom, at least with regards to success in America. Especially in IT.