4 ms·

The most dreadful thing in this industry to me is this: how many years of experience do you have? 1 2 3 4 5+ That's it. Fin. More than 5 doesn't mat

by mojuba 6y ago

The most dreadful thing in this industry to me is this: how many years of experience do you have? 1 2 3 4 5+ That's it. Fin. More than 5 doesn't matter. The truth is that the difference between 30 years and 5 years of experience in a particular field can be as big as between 1 and 5. I just want to ask, does anyone in the industry really care about this fact? Does it matter to any company out there? Have you ever seen a job posting that has say 20+ years of experience as a minimum? As someone with 30+ years in the industry I'm constantly worried that nobody really really needs a coder with so much under their belt anymore. That nobody sees the value in a smaller codebase with fewer bugs and more minimalist and robust architectural solutions. Dear industry (apart from some maybe very specific niches such as OS kernels, compilers and such), do you really care about the old experienced devs?

trevyn 6y ago
If you have more than 5 years of experience, you should know the industry and not be paying much attention to formal job postings. Similarly, companies do not typically hire for those positions through public job postings.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Wow, no bites in 13 hours, so I'll bite: If not job postings, where are these mystical jobs offered? And, don't just say "networking" as if that completely describes the process. I've been in the business for over 20 years and have always gotten my jobs from public postings or recruiters reaching out, who inevitably point me to the public posting as part of the process. I'm unaware of these other Secret Squirrel channels for getting jobs, despite people always telling me they totally definitely exist!
barry-cotter 6y ago
Nobody really needs someone with 30 years of general experience because each such person is unique, impossible to completely replace. If you have the level of expertise that comes from real understanding of six different fields attained from five years of good work in them you might literally be the only person with that combination of skills. There are definitely under a 1,000 of you. If you have 30 years of experience but maybe five of real learning then you’re presumably competent but you’re not super special, just competent and known to be competent. After 30 years in the same field you could be one of those people with serious deep expertise. Those people are valuable but the market is thin. You need to make your skills known so work finds you through your network, or you need to become a consultant in spirit if not fact and sell. Loudly trumpet your expertise.
- user5994461 6y ago
  I don't think there's many technologies that are 30 years old that are still relevant today. Most programming languages themselves are younger than that: Python 1991, Java 1996, C# 2002, go 2012. C++ and COBOL are ancient enough but niche. If we look at tools/frameworks, the story is even worse because they were obviously created later (plus some time to gain traction). I think the industry will slow down and stabilize over the next 20 years. It will be fragmented in different area of expertise, but there won't be another 10 new languages or another internet revolution.

by mojuba 6y ago

trevyn 6y ago

If you have more than 5 years of experience, you should know the industry and not be paying much attention to formal job postings. Similarly, companies do not typically hire for those positions through public job postings.

ryandrake 6y ago
Wow, no bites in 13 hours, so I'll bite: If not job postings, where are these mystical jobs offered? And, don't just say "networking" as if that completely describes the process. I've been in the business for over 20 years and have always gotten my jobs from public postings or recruiters reaching out, who inevitably point me to the public posting as part of the process. I'm unaware of these other Secret Squirrel channels for getting jobs, despite people always telling me they totally definitely exist!

barry-cotter 6y ago

Nobody really needs someone with 30 years of general experience because each such person is unique, impossible to completely replace. If you have the level of expertise that comes from real understanding of six different fields attained from five years of good work in them you might literally be the only person with that combination of skills. There are definitely under a 1,000 of you. If you have 30 years of experience but maybe five of real learning then you’re presumably competent but you’re not super special, just competent and known to be competent. After 30 years in the same field you could be one of those people with serious deep expertise. Those people are valuable but the market is thin. You need to make your skills known so work finds you through your network, or you need to become a consultant in spirit if not fact and sell. Loudly trumpet your expertise.

user5994461 6y ago
I don't think there's many technologies that are 30 years old that are still relevant today. Most programming languages themselves are younger than that: Python 1991, Java 1996, C# 2002, go 2012. C++ and COBOL are ancient enough but niche. If we look at tools/frameworks, the story is even worse because they were obviously created later (plus some time to gain traction). I think the industry will slow down and stabilize over the next 20 years. It will be fragmented in different area of expertise, but there won't be another 10 new languages or another internet revolution.