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These sound more like a list of things you figure out in your 20s so that you can successfully work them to your advantage in your 30s. Also, if you embrace th

These sound more like a list of things you figure out in your 20s so that you can successfully work them to your advantage in your 30s. Also, if you embrace the "no job security" part above and don't sweat your "career" at any given shop, the rest of them stop being things you need to worry about. Let the other guys stress office politics and fear for their job if they take vacation. You're the guy who knows what this job market is like, and that you have options.

sbarre 8y ago
Spoken like an HNer who is incredibly lucky to be working in a field that has never-ending demand, and is probably good at their job. Just a heads up that the majority of people are not in your/our situation with regards to their employment.
- jasonkester 8y ago
  Indeed. But we're discussing this here, with the audience you describe making up nearly all of us, so I didn't feel the need to add that caveat. So yeah, go us. Our gig gets better over time, while it appears that others don't.
  - xevb3k 8y ago
    The employment bubble you describe really only exists in the Bay Area. The majority of users on HN are not in the Bay Area: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3298905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3298905 People 35 and over, are somewhat likely to have families and find it difficult to relocate.
    - hobofan 8y ago
      > The employment bubble you describe really only exists in the Bay Area. There are a lot of places where you get a job in this industry faster than you can say "Software Engineer", so it's definitely not only a Bay Area thing. NY/Berlin/London are just as bad from personal experience and as a rough estimate every city above 1mil population, is probably not too different.
      - xevb3k 8y ago
        The largest group in the poll was US (not including SF/NY) followed by Europe (not including UK). From your list that leaves Berlin. Few other towns have the density and variety of startups that the Bay Area has to be honest.
        hobofan 8y ago
        > Few other towns have the density and variety of startups that the Bay Area has to be honest. This is about ease of finding a job in the field, and startups are not the only employers there.
      - ryandrake 8y ago
        For now. This site is also full of 20-something’s who were never in the workforce during a bear market. As someone who has lived through two, I can tell you that the demand for software engineers is not permanently robust. When the next tech downturn happens you will be grateful to have any job whatsoever. It truly sucks.
        slededit 8y ago
        A lot of us were around for '08, and while more rare there are still some holdovers from the original .com bust. The exponential growth of the field makes it skew young but you shouldn't assume HN has no wisdom at all on it.
    - FlipperBucket 8y ago
      Seattle and almost anywhere in Southern California are also fantastic areas.
  - sbarre 8y ago
    For sure, I wasn't saying you were wrong in your statement, just pointing out that we are the exception, not the rule, when it comes to the employment landscape right now. Saying things like "embrace no job security" is something most people simply cannot afford to do.
- pc86 8y ago
  Yes, being in an in-demand field makes work life easier. Being good at your job makes work life easier. Typing and drawing on a whiteboard is easier than mopping floors and cleaning toilets. I don't know why every time a discussion about work or employment comes up we feel the need to have these tautological discussions about how some people have it easier than others. It's only a matter of time until we get a sub-thread of Europeans discussing how insane it is that Americans don't get 65 days of vacation every year, and a few off-topic healthcare rants then I think the cycle will be complete for this thread.
  - skgoa 8y ago
    Maybe the reason these topics keep coming up is that a lot of people feel that they are important aspects of employment.
  - mlevental 8y ago
    >I don't know why every time a discussion about work or employment comes up we feel the need to have these tautological discussions about how some people have it easier than others. the same reason that this thread is posted and re-posted at all. both of these things are cultural memes: the people complaining about work and the people relishing work. nothing in any of these threads is ever novel.
nikofeyn 8y ago
> Let the other guys stress office politics and fear for their job if they take vacation. You're the guy who knows what this job market is like, and that you have options. as someone currently job hunting, i feel this is overly optimistic. the job market is extremely conservative, so if you have a strange background, be prepared for the long haul. this is extremely stressful as no one seems to care where you have worked or what you have done. they care about what little specific subset of things they care about in a single interview, and have no conception of “can this person learn what we need them to learn” or how to understand what a person already knows. it’s almost as if they treat your resume as some base gpa requirement and throw it out once you pass, because they feel asking silly little one-sided questions to gauge your aptitude in a couple of hours is better than an actual conversation about things. the way interviewing is done in the software industry is infuriating and makes me want to leave it at times. the cliquish culture is suffocating.
- Radim 8y ago
  Try walking in the employer's shoes: "can this person learn what we need them to learn?" is notoriously difficult to assess. While the risk of making a bad hire is tremendous (deadly for smaller companies), the upside's lukewarm (hypothetical loyalty). The only safe way to see if a person can do the job, is for them to do the job, pretty much. I'm speaking from painful experience: we also used to hire based on potential. Bad idea (or we just couldn't make it work). Our hiring process is now very close to the actual job, whether the position is junior or senior, and although it can take weeks (a test project), "I could learn this later" doesn't cut it. Too many scars, not enough resources.
  - Humdeee 8y ago
    A multiple week long project as part of your interview process for assessing candidates? Genuinely curious, what makes this a better process than others? I don't have a solution, but I imagine the majority top half of applicants will not even bother applying.
  - nikofeyn 8y ago
    i am not advocating hiring purely on potential. and of course i view it from the employer's point of view as well. you simply can't hire well if you ask what amounts to puzzle questions in interviews. it doesn't address what a person does know. so in my opinion, an interview should be about finding out what a person knows, and in the event that it doesn't overlap with what the employer true needs, then some extrapolation or further digging is needed. however, even when a person's skills do overlap with the needs (whether the employer knows or it or not), it is my opinion that much of the overlap is often ignored (architecture, organization, perspective, personality, design skills, api philosophy) in favor of the more "hardcore" stuff (algorithms, data structures). we all know that even in the with the most efficient algorithms, software can be a mess if employees lack the former qualities. but software that is well designed can get away with less efficient algorithms except in extreme cases and niche contexts. tbe problems faced in a software company are rarely of the form "tell me the big-O behavior of this algorithm". rather, it's much more about how to manage large amounts of complexity, reducing complexity, designing flexible architectures, well-defined APIs, etc.

sbarre 8y ago

Spoken like an HNer who is incredibly lucky to be working in a field that has never-ending demand, and is probably good at their job. Just a heads up that the majority of people are not in your/our situation with regards to their employment.

jasonkester 8y ago
Indeed. But we're discussing this here, with the audience you describe making up nearly all of us, so I didn't feel the need to add that caveat. So yeah, go us. Our gig gets better over time, while it appears that others don't.
- xevb3k 8y ago
  The employment bubble you describe really only exists in the Bay Area. The majority of users on HN are not in the Bay Area: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3298905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3298905 People 35 and over, are somewhat likely to have families and find it difficult to relocate.
  - hobofan 8y ago
    > The employment bubble you describe really only exists in the Bay Area. There are a lot of places where you get a job in this industry faster than you can say "Software Engineer", so it's definitely not only a Bay Area thing. NY/Berlin/London are just as bad from personal experience and as a rough estimate every city above 1mil population, is probably not too different.
    - xevb3k 8y ago
      The largest group in the poll was US (not including SF/NY) followed by Europe (not including UK). From your list that leaves Berlin. Few other towns have the density and variety of startups that the Bay Area has to be honest.
      - hobofan 8y ago
        > Few other towns have the density and variety of startups that the Bay Area has to be honest. This is about ease of finding a job in the field, and startups are not the only employers there.
    - ryandrake 8y ago
      For now. This site is also full of 20-something’s who were never in the workforce during a bear market. As someone who has lived through two, I can tell you that the demand for software engineers is not permanently robust. When the next tech downturn happens you will be grateful to have any job whatsoever. It truly sucks.
      - slededit 8y ago
        A lot of us were around for '08, and while more rare there are still some holdovers from the original .com bust. The exponential growth of the field makes it skew young but you shouldn't assume HN has no wisdom at all on it.
  - FlipperBucket 8y ago
    Seattle and almost anywhere in Southern California are also fantastic areas.
- sbarre 8y ago
  For sure, I wasn't saying you were wrong in your statement, just pointing out that we are the exception, not the rule, when it comes to the employment landscape right now. Saying things like "embrace no job security" is something most people simply cannot afford to do.
pc86 8y ago
Yes, being in an in-demand field makes work life easier. Being good at your job makes work life easier. Typing and drawing on a whiteboard is easier than mopping floors and cleaning toilets. I don't know why every time a discussion about work or employment comes up we feel the need to have these tautological discussions about how some people have it easier than others. It's only a matter of time until we get a sub-thread of Europeans discussing how insane it is that Americans don't get 65 days of vacation every year, and a few off-topic healthcare rants then I think the cycle will be complete for this thread.
- skgoa 8y ago
  Maybe the reason these topics keep coming up is that a lot of people feel that they are important aspects of employment.
- mlevental 8y ago
  >I don't know why every time a discussion about work or employment comes up we feel the need to have these tautological discussions about how some people have it easier than others. the same reason that this thread is posted and re-posted at all. both of these things are cultural memes: the people complaining about work and the people relishing work. nothing in any of these threads is ever novel.

nikofeyn 8y ago

> Let the other guys stress office politics and fear for their job if they take vacation. You're the guy who knows what this job market is like, and that you have options. as someone currently job hunting, i feel this is overly optimistic. the job market is extremely conservative, so if you have a strange background, be prepared for the long haul. this is extremely stressful as no one seems to care where you have worked or what you have done. they care about what little specific subset of things they care about in a single interview, and have no conception of “can this person learn what we need them to learn” or how to understand what a person already knows. it’s almost as if they treat your resume as some base gpa requirement and throw it out once you pass, because they feel asking silly little one-sided questions to gauge your aptitude in a couple of hours is better than an actual conversation about things. the way interviewing is done in the software industry is infuriating and makes me want to leave it at times. the cliquish culture is suffocating.

Radim 8y ago
Try walking in the employer's shoes: "can this person learn what we need them to learn?" is notoriously difficult to assess. While the risk of making a bad hire is tremendous (deadly for smaller companies), the upside's lukewarm (hypothetical loyalty). The only safe way to see if a person can do the job, is for them to do the job, pretty much. I'm speaking from painful experience: we also used to hire based on potential. Bad idea (or we just couldn't make it work). Our hiring process is now very close to the actual job, whether the position is junior or senior, and although it can take weeks (a test project), "I could learn this later" doesn't cut it. Too many scars, not enough resources.
- Humdeee 8y ago
  A multiple week long project as part of your interview process for assessing candidates? Genuinely curious, what makes this a better process than others? I don't have a solution, but I imagine the majority top half of applicants will not even bother applying.
- nikofeyn 8y ago
  i am not advocating hiring purely on potential. and of course i view it from the employer's point of view as well. you simply can't hire well if you ask what amounts to puzzle questions in interviews. it doesn't address what a person does know. so in my opinion, an interview should be about finding out what a person knows, and in the event that it doesn't overlap with what the employer true needs, then some extrapolation or further digging is needed. however, even when a person's skills do overlap with the needs (whether the employer knows or it or not), it is my opinion that much of the overlap is often ignored (architecture, organization, perspective, personality, design skills, api philosophy) in favor of the more "hardcore" stuff (algorithms, data structures). we all know that even in the with the most efficient algorithms, software can be a mess if employees lack the former qualities. but software that is well designed can get away with less efficient algorithms except in extreme cases and niche contexts. tbe problems faced in a software company are rarely of the form "tell me the big-O behavior of this algorithm". rather, it's much more about how to manage large amounts of complexity, reducing complexity, designing flexible architectures, well-defined APIs, etc.