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The amazing programmer at xyz company on abc project may have a lot of infrastructure and support teams boosting their stats. Start ups can't afford the overhea

by jyu 7y ago

The amazing programmer at xyz company on abc project may have a lot of infrastructure and support teams boosting their stats. Start ups can't afford the overhead that makes a programmer amazing. Visa versa, a start up programmer may languish in xyz company.

s1k3s 7y ago
On the contrary, the amazing programmer at xyz company may have a lot of skills that they developed from working on a large number of different projects, systems, teams and so on, because the large company has provided them with the chances to practice all those skills.
- barrkel 7y ago
  Roles at large established companies are not normally like those at startups. They tend to be on smaller areas of functionality, more specialized, and with little variety unless you swap teams (and that's almost like getting a new job). Starting something new is quite rare, and if it's done, it needs to integrate into a whole bunch of existing stuff one way or another; whether it's builds, deployment, auth, database, payments, UI stack, whatever - large chunks of the design space have been explored before and are pretty much set in stone unless you have a lot of political capital to spike something new, or the company is dysfunctional and doesn't standardize on anything, so that it doesn't present consistently to its users and its developers are less swappable between projects.
  - s1k3s 7y ago
    I'll have to disagree. Having worked at a "large established company" during my career, I'd say that I've been given the chance to experiment with plenty of new things and projects are also started more often than you'd think, even though not all of them make it to a release. I understand your point, that just because you've worked at a large company it doesn't mean you have the right skills for a startup, however I will still hold my point: it highly depends and I wouldn't discard the opposite situation.
    - barrkel 7y ago
      I've worked at both. I agree I wouldn't discard.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      I’ve never worked in a large company where I would be doing everything from front end, middle tier, databases, CI/CD design, creating cloud networking infrastructure, dealing with vendors, designing operations, and talking with customers in the course of a month. This was me last month. Admittedly front end design is a major weakness of mine even though I do know JS well.
  - nine_k 7y ago
    In a startup, you have to make things quickly, and not necessarily well. What you are building today may need to be retired in 3 months, if not earlier. In a startup, you usually don't have the time or resources to play with tech and learn cool new things. Instead, you're hastily producing another simplest thing that could possibly work, using predictable tools you already know in and out. You're lucky if it's RoR or Node; you could be stuck with Go or PHP. In an early-stage startup you work long hours, and are preoccupied with two things: how to divinate what the users actually want (usually nebulous and contradictory), and how to quickly make it work this way. You can easily lose track of what's interesting in the broader landscape, instead of enjoying new hotness as it gets released. If you want some leisure, join a large established company, work efficiently, and you'll have plenty of paid time to fiddle with the cool stuff developed inside it, and elsewhere. Or become so advanced that a large company will task you with solving something actually novel, not amenable to off-the-shelf solutions.
    - sk5t 7y ago
      > You're lucky if it's RoR or Node; you could be stuck with Go or PHP What the heck? My strong sense nowadays is that most junior-mid engineers would be excited to use Go and disappointed to touch Rails.
      - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
        It's about using the simplest thing that could possibly work, not about excitement. PHP is pathologically uncool, but it does work and it is fast for building new stuff. (God forbid you get stuck maintaining it though...)
      - nine_k 7y ago
        The problem is that Go makes you write about 5x as much as Rails would, and much of it by copy-pasting.
- spottybanana 7y ago
  Might or might not, in my experience in about any team it is usually some of the people really understand the system, can develop etc. Then there are couple ones that mostly just slack off and enjoy the salary and benefits. Maybe even smart but just not willing to put in the effort. For outside interviewer it might be very difficult to tell which one the interviewer is talking to, both might have very similar CV.

by jyu 7y ago

s1k3s 7y ago

On the contrary, the amazing programmer at xyz company may have a lot of skills that they developed from working on a large number of different projects, systems, teams and so on, because the large company has provided them with the chances to practice all those skills.

barrkel 7y ago
Roles at large established companies are not normally like those at startups. They tend to be on smaller areas of functionality, more specialized, and with little variety unless you swap teams (and that's almost like getting a new job). Starting something new is quite rare, and if it's done, it needs to integrate into a whole bunch of existing stuff one way or another; whether it's builds, deployment, auth, database, payments, UI stack, whatever - large chunks of the design space have been explored before and are pretty much set in stone unless you have a lot of political capital to spike something new, or the company is dysfunctional and doesn't standardize on anything, so that it doesn't present consistently to its users and its developers are less swappable between projects.
- s1k3s 7y ago
  I'll have to disagree. Having worked at a "large established company" during my career, I'd say that I've been given the chance to experiment with plenty of new things and projects are also started more often than you'd think, even though not all of them make it to a release. I understand your point, that just because you've worked at a large company it doesn't mean you have the right skills for a startup, however I will still hold my point: it highly depends and I wouldn't discard the opposite situation.
  - barrkel 7y ago
    I've worked at both. I agree I wouldn't discard.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I’ve never worked in a large company where I would be doing everything from front end, middle tier, databases, CI/CD design, creating cloud networking infrastructure, dealing with vendors, designing operations, and talking with customers in the course of a month. This was me last month. Admittedly front end design is a major weakness of mine even though I do know JS well.
- nine_k 7y ago
  In a startup, you have to make things quickly, and not necessarily well. What you are building today may need to be retired in 3 months, if not earlier. In a startup, you usually don't have the time or resources to play with tech and learn cool new things. Instead, you're hastily producing another simplest thing that could possibly work, using predictable tools you already know in and out. You're lucky if it's RoR or Node; you could be stuck with Go or PHP. In an early-stage startup you work long hours, and are preoccupied with two things: how to divinate what the users actually want (usually nebulous and contradictory), and how to quickly make it work this way. You can easily lose track of what's interesting in the broader landscape, instead of enjoying new hotness as it gets released. If you want some leisure, join a large established company, work efficiently, and you'll have plenty of paid time to fiddle with the cool stuff developed inside it, and elsewhere. Or become so advanced that a large company will task you with solving something actually novel, not amenable to off-the-shelf solutions.
  - sk5t 7y ago
    > You're lucky if it's RoR or Node; you could be stuck with Go or PHP What the heck? My strong sense nowadays is that most junior-mid engineers would be excited to use Go and disappointed to touch Rails.
    - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
      It's about using the simplest thing that could possibly work, not about excitement. PHP is pathologically uncool, but it does work and it is fast for building new stuff. (God forbid you get stuck maintaining it though...)
    - nine_k 7y ago
      The problem is that Go makes you write about 5x as much as Rails would, and much of it by copy-pasting.
spottybanana 7y ago
Might or might not, in my experience in about any team it is usually some of the people really understand the system, can develop etc. Then there are couple ones that mostly just slack off and enjoy the salary and benefits. Maybe even smart but just not willing to put in the effort. For outside interviewer it might be very difficult to tell which one the interviewer is talking to, both might have very similar CV.