4 ms·
> Every place is the same this is false. look into smaller businesses who only need 1-5 coders. you will get paid well, do interesting stuff and have a lot of
by leeoniya 7y ago
> Every place is the same
this is false.
look into smaller businesses who only need 1-5 coders. you will get paid well, do interesting stuff and have a lot of say in your stack and tools. usually these companies do not produce software as their deliverable but need good internal software.
e.g. i work for < 50M/yr e-commerce company that manufactures in the DIY/home remodeling industry. i report directly to the CEO, code our full stack and admin our VPS linode server. we have internal voip systems that get integrated, physical production hardware (scales, scanners, etc), inventory tracking, fulfillment, amazon integration and a whole lot more. i get to touch it all.
- ianlevesque 7y agoor at the opposite extreme the FAANG companies have a ton of opportunities for this
- ChuckNorris89 7y agoI live in Europe, there not much FANG here apart from maybe Lindon or Berlin but anyway, at this point of my life, the relationships I have with the people around me are more valuable than chasing some FAANG job or hip startup in some other country, hoping that would give me more satisfaction. At the end of the day it's just a salary I need to support my other hobbies. After 7 years in the trenches I lost hope in the do what you love coding for fun mantra as I never found it and i feel that chasing it any longer will waste precious years of our limited time on this Earth I could use enjoying other things life has to offer or new experiences.
- gniv 7y ago> not much FANG here apart from maybe Lindon or Berlin Zürich and Munich as well.
- leeoniya 7y agoplus a ton of corporate bullshit & politics. i can count on 0 hands thr number of times someone at a large corp felt they were special and uniquely valuable to the company as a whole. invariably they're just replaceable cogs that have a very narrow set of responsibilities. of course they don't always see it that way ;) stockholm syndrome, perhaps.
- ChuckNorris89 7y agoEvery coder likes to think they're the next Jeff Dean but there's only one Jeff Dean and his job is taken. The truth is most of us are replaceable cogs regardless of our titles and salaries if we're willing to look past our egos.
- leeoniya 7y agoif that's the only position you're willing to settle for, then i'm afraid your concerns are well-founded D:
- cerberusss 7y agoIt seems he really did lose hope. Perhaps stuck in a lousy job for too long. Over the course of my life, I've changed jobs whenever I felt I needed a change. I've done databases, Java, embedded, mobile, etc. It kept me happy.
- 0x8BADF00D 7y agoYou don’t need hope if you are pragmatic. Know your own weaknesses, and have a system for failing. It seems like that guy is maybe going through something in a shitty career, but it becomes a vicious cycle. You end up traumatized and gravitate toward similar abusive workplaces. Have seen that happen to many friends in this industry. Everyone has an upper limit of the political bs they can take at their workplace. That’s why I personally refuse to work at a place with too many h1b. IME management tend to be literal slavedrivers and suck all the fun out of SWE in those places.
- cerberusss 7y agoMy system for failing is currently pretty one-dimensional; i.e. fall back on considerable savings. Good advice about spotting slavedriver management.
- manigandham 7y ago
- ChuckNorris89 7y agoWhere I live(Germany), the business who only need 2 developers already have them. All the job ads are only from big/medium companies and it's not worth working for the medium sized ones as you have all the downside of the big corps with none of the perks.
- leeoniya 7y ago> business who only need 2 developers already have them it takes time, but you have to search continuously. people leave and get replaced all the time.
- gnrl 7y agoWell job ads are already the wrong approach. Go meet your local business in meetups, social gatherings, etc.
- ChuckNorris89 7y agoThis is a medium sized EU city, not SV. There are no tech meetups here. Those may be a thing in big metro areas.
- Aeolun 7y agoStart a tech meetup? That’s hard, but it’s also incredibly good for your visibility. Even a medium size EU city should have a critical mass of developers by now. Of course, it would be nicer if we just had decent employers in the first place.
- lowercased 7y agoagreed. I was visiting Bucharest last November and was surprised that there were multiple tech meetups on meetup.com. Perhaps I shouldn't have been, but ... I was just... pleasantly surprised. I wasn't there for work, but found a couple evenings where I ended up having the night to myself and stumbled on the idea of checking my meetup app and... bam - multiple places to go meet up with tech folks. More than I had time for actually... Bucharest is capital, not 'just' an EU city, but it's by no means the largest nor would I think it has the most tech folks compared to other areas. (maybe that's wrong assumption though?)
- bitcoinmoney 7y agoWhat’s paid well in your case? And how do you handle going to vacation? Who takes over your responsibility.
- leeoniya 7y agowithout getting too specific, 100k-250k. a bit less than i'd expect to make at FAANG but i live in a chicago suburb where the buying power more than offsets the difference. my drive to work is a traffic-free 10min, as is my wife's. there's another dev that can handle any emergencies or critical bug fixes while i'm out. still i have to be available by phone in case there are questions, but even then it rarely requires more than a lazy login/check at the end of the day.