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I don't understand why as a developer I'd want to use LinkedIn. I have StackOverflow and GitHub which a lot of relevant leads come from. When I buy a used car

by inglor 6y ago

I don't understand why as a developer I'd want to use LinkedIn. I have StackOverflow and GitHub which a lot of relevant leads come from. When I buy a used car - I don't publish a "I'm looking for a used car" post and wait for car salespeople to approach me. I go and charactarize what I'm looking for and then go car-shopping. When I look for a job - I don't publish a "I'm looking for a job". Talking to the recruiters (HR people) is very boring and often counterproductive. Contributing to open source and meeting and talking to engineers and building things is a lot more fun and rewarding. That's why I don't have a linkedin (well, only an account for the API). It always seemed like "opting in to a lot of spam" without getting any value as a developer. I don't even think I'm particularly good - but great developers probably have this x100. Of course if I was not a developer but a sales person my situation would be completely different.

namdnay 6y ago
Even within a developer role, there is also the business knowledge aspect. Imagine my company is looking to expand into the widget market, and I'm going to lead the IT for the new widget division. I need a team of 10 engineers. Obviously I can look for strong open source developers, mix it up with some promising graduates too, but I'm going to want at least one or two developers who have already worked in the widget space. So what do it do? I go to LinkedIn and look at profiles from the main widget companies, and reach out to some of them
scarface74 6y ago
Contributing to open source and meeting and talking to engineers and building things is a lot more fun and rewarding. I personally get no enjoyment out of development besides it being a way to support my addiction to food and shelter. I don’t dislike development, but it is just a job. When I am actively looking, it’s so much easier to send messages to local recruiters with my resume and wait for them to call me (pre-Covid they always did).
- inglor 6y ago
  Maybe a dumb question - but what are you passionate about? What do you find fun and rewarding? I genuinely enjoy building software. For the first ~10 years as a software developer I was genuinely surprised I was getting paid.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    By the time I got my first real job as a developer in the mid 90s, I had already spent a decade doing hobby projects in assembly on 8 bit computers and later C on Macs. It had really just become a method to enjoy the big city life in my 20s to mid 30s (including a brief bad marriage). During that time I dabbled in real estate, was a part time fitness instructor and personal trainer. In my 40s, I enjoy just working out (home gym), traveling (pre-Covid), hanging out with my wife and friends (again pre-Covid). I have spent a lot of time over the past four years working my butt off at work and after work learning and gaining experience to prepare for (relatively) high paying consulting roles. Now that is done and I landed a job at $major_cloud_provider, until Covid dies down, I have no idea what life looks like for us on the other side.
    - inglor 6y ago
      Thanks for taking the time to respond. The transition I've seen people who enjoy traveling and hanging out with friends a lot is to developer advocate roles where they travel a lot to conferences. I actually did that quite a bit last year (14 conferences which is hardly a lot but then again I'm not a devrel). Now I'm stuck with the boring parts (making the talks) and none of the interesting ones (traveling, meeting people and tech). If you spent a decade doing hobby projects - what happened that made that "just a job"?
      - scarface74 6y ago
        That decade was from the time I was 12 until I was 22. I was a short fat kid with a computer - what else was I going to do? By the time I got to college, I started having a social life. I got into exercise and fitness after college and my circle started consisting of non-geek professionals who were active. That became my hobby. Once I had to look at a computer all day, I wanted to do anything else besides looking at a computer after work. You can’t imagine how much fun it was to transform from “computer geek” during the day to “outgoing drill sergeant fitness instructor” in the evening. I have turned down two or three decent paying ($120/hr+) side contracting opportunities because I would rather just spend time doing anything else when I get off of work. As far as travel, post-Covid, my job will require extensive travel. I should be able to get frequent flier miles for my personal use.
jlokier 6y ago
> Contributing to open source and meeting and talking to engineers and building things is a lot more fun and rewarding. I completely agree and I do both of those. I used to do a lot more in open source, but had other life priorities take over. Meeting and talking to engineers, though, I liked that so much that I ran a physical space dedicated to it, and will likely do something like it again. (Aside: The rapid shift to online meetups has been great lately - I've been to a number of meetings and even conferences with fellow engineers in countries I would not have realistically travelled to.) However in my experience, and I know it's not the same for everyone, "contributing to open source and meeting and talking to engineers and building things", fun and rewarding as it is, has not tended to be a good route to paid work. If anything it's been a significant net expense! The point of my comment is that, unfortunately, even for developers the "fun" approach doesn't work out everywhere.

by inglor 6y ago

namdnay 6y ago

Even within a developer role, there is also the business knowledge aspect. Imagine my company is looking to expand into the widget market, and I'm going to lead the IT for the new widget division. I need a team of 10 engineers. Obviously I can look for strong open source developers, mix it up with some promising graduates too, but I'm going to want at least one or two developers who have already worked in the widget space. So what do it do? I go to LinkedIn and look at profiles from the main widget companies, and reach out to some of them

scarface74 6y ago

Contributing to open source and meeting and talking to engineers and building things is a lot more fun and rewarding. I personally get no enjoyment out of development besides it being a way to support my addiction to food and shelter. I don’t dislike development, but it is just a job. When I am actively looking, it’s so much easier to send messages to local recruiters with my resume and wait for them to call me (pre-Covid they always did).

inglor 6y ago
Maybe a dumb question - but what are you passionate about? What do you find fun and rewarding? I genuinely enjoy building software. For the first ~10 years as a software developer I was genuinely surprised I was getting paid.
- scarface74 6y ago
  By the time I got my first real job as a developer in the mid 90s, I had already spent a decade doing hobby projects in assembly on 8 bit computers and later C on Macs. It had really just become a method to enjoy the big city life in my 20s to mid 30s (including a brief bad marriage). During that time I dabbled in real estate, was a part time fitness instructor and personal trainer. In my 40s, I enjoy just working out (home gym), traveling (pre-Covid), hanging out with my wife and friends (again pre-Covid). I have spent a lot of time over the past four years working my butt off at work and after work learning and gaining experience to prepare for (relatively) high paying consulting roles. Now that is done and I landed a job at $major_cloud_provider, until Covid dies down, I have no idea what life looks like for us on the other side.
  - inglor 6y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to respond. The transition I've seen people who enjoy traveling and hanging out with friends a lot is to developer advocate roles where they travel a lot to conferences. I actually did that quite a bit last year (14 conferences which is hardly a lot but then again I'm not a devrel). Now I'm stuck with the boring parts (making the talks) and none of the interesting ones (traveling, meeting people and tech). If you spent a decade doing hobby projects - what happened that made that "just a job"?
    - scarface74 6y ago
      That decade was from the time I was 12 until I was 22. I was a short fat kid with a computer - what else was I going to do? By the time I got to college, I started having a social life. I got into exercise and fitness after college and my circle started consisting of non-geek professionals who were active. That became my hobby. Once I had to look at a computer all day, I wanted to do anything else besides looking at a computer after work. You can’t imagine how much fun it was to transform from “computer geek” during the day to “outgoing drill sergeant fitness instructor” in the evening. I have turned down two or three decent paying ($120/hr+) side contracting opportunities because I would rather just spend time doing anything else when I get off of work. As far as travel, post-Covid, my job will require extensive travel. I should be able to get frequent flier miles for my personal use.

jlokier 6y ago

> Contributing to open source and meeting and talking to engineers and building things is a lot more fun and rewarding. I completely agree and I do both of those. I used to do a lot more in open source, but had other life priorities take over. Meeting and talking to engineers, though, I liked that so much that I ran a physical space dedicated to it, and will likely do something like it again. (Aside: The rapid shift to online meetups has been great lately - I've been to a number of meetings and even conferences with fellow engineers in countries I would not have realistically travelled to.) However in my experience, and I know it's not the same for everyone, "contributing to open source and meeting and talking to engineers and building things", fun and rewarding as it is, has not tended to be a good route to paid work. If anything it's been a significant net expense! The point of my comment is that, unfortunately, even for developers the "fun" approach doesn't work out everywhere.