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Senior developers are leading the great resignation movement

327 points by kiyanwang 5y ago

ausudhz 5y ago
I don't know honestly, but the reasons to me are just a subjective view of the writer. Some people find it comfortable working at big tech firm or enterprise and move around their layers or so. Ageism could be a thing but so there are lots of companies that pay seniors dev very well. I think the only reason why some of these folks are leaving is because after earning more than 250k a year for many years (plus stocks) they've realized that there's not much value on working
- gitfan86 5y ago
  Once I hit 4M net worth, I really lost the desire to continue to work at the stressful enterprise analytics startup I was at.
  - square_usual 5y ago
    Congrats on the milestone. Did you aim for it, like with FI/RE, or did it just happen some day and you quit?
    - gitfan86 5y ago
      I didn't have a goal, I had a low cost of living and high income and a big interest in technology. So I invested a good bit of my income into GOOG, and then into TSLA. Over the years those have turned into a lot of money. I quit when we hit a 2 year mark without any new customers.
  - notacoward 5y ago
    Exactly right. The numbers might vary, but the basic principle is that the reward for staying goes down[1] and the feasibility of getting out goes up and at some point the lines cross. For me it was just over one year ago, at 55. For someone else it might be at 40, or 70. And good for anyone who gets there. [1] For most people. There are a few "plum" roles where it keeps going up, but I honestly don't think that's the norm.
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brianmcc 5y ago
I agree this is a phenomenon right now, but I feel that article is vastly overcomplicating it, and not necessarily accurately. I'd suggest simply: - software engineers are hugely in demand - software engineers have worked out they can work well remotely, and often prefer it for a combination of productivity and work/life balance reasons - software engineers are voting with their feet and finding work that suits their needs - and many firms are losing talent accordingly due to not meeting the needs of those staff
- rlayton2 5y ago
  Don't forget that it's easier to get a raise by changing jobs than asking your boss.
  - brianmcc 5y ago
    Totally! We are perhaps in the midst of a great levelling-up game of musical chairs too!
- hihihihi1234 5y ago
  Also: more and more job interviews are happening via Zoom. It's far easier to find a new job when you can do it without booking a day off from your current job.
  - aweiland 5y ago
    This isn't true for everyone. I'm on site every day and Zoom is a hassle compared to a phone call I can do from my car.
    - noirbot 5y ago
      Sure, but how many companies were hiring Senior Engineers with just a phone call? Zoom is definitely less disruptive than having to sneakily drive across town, let alone fly across the country on a weekday or two for in-person interviews.
- 5y ago
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
I feel as if the article is a bit of “tea leaf reading,” but it does make sense. > A verifiable track record is overlooked, while CVs filled with adjectives top the stack. This is not new, but I do believe it has reached a crisis point, in tech. I’ve often posted about my own travails with this. The most annoying thing, to me, is, despite all the hoopla about “disruption,” companies hire for conformity. They always have, but the screeching about being “disruptive” is fairly recent. Protip: you won’t “disrupt,” if you hire people that “won’t rock the boat.” Truly innovative workplaces aren’t necessarily comfortable (especially for management). It’s like classic waterfall companies that claim to be “agile,” because they have daily meetings. I thought this linked article was interesting: https://betterprogramming.pub/why-software-companies-often-reject-awesome-programmers-38bea2ca3cc7 https://betterprogramming.pub/why-software-companies-often-r...
le-mark 5y ago
I’m beginning to think of this era as the arrival of Fred Brooks formulation of the highly productive or surgeon like developer; someone who is highly trained and can be highly productive. And “senior” developer is a proxy for that; highly trained and experience with the myriad of tech and mountain of knowledge software development requires today. And as such, truly “senior” developers are highly desirable and relatively rare. Hence rising demand and salaries. Spurring many to job hop and maximize their salary. Note I didn’t use the loaded “10x” or “rockstar” monicker intentionally, to avoid the incessant argument whether they actually exist or not. I submit the current trend as evidence they do, and are often “senior” developers. Title inflation is in fact a thing and not all seniors are equal. And of course the typical HN reader is near the top of the curve, so maybe we don’t realize just how much truly arcane knowledge is required to do this job.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  > And of course the typical HN reader is near the top of the curve I feel as if it is not necessarily "senior," as much as "on the bleeding edge." Lots of smart folks here, with a lot of "exploratory" energy, but as far as highly experienced, seasoned, folks; maybe it's not such a huge demographic. I know we're here, but we're not always welcome.
  - JohnFen 5y ago
    This rings true to me. > I know we're here, but we're not always welcome. Us graybeards are working in an industry that generally doesn't value experience (mysteriously, it seems to equate "experienced" with "not capable with modern technologies"), so there's the baseline. And the HN demographic appears to be a particular subset of the young, which tends to amplify that.
- _moof 5y ago
  > the typical HN reader is near the top of the curve For seniority? Not a chance. The last time there was a poll (admittedly a long time ago), two thirds of HN's users were under 30.
peter_l_downs 5y ago
If this hypothesis (they’re starting companies of their own) is true, why not show any data on new incorporations or number of new startups? Very doubtful of this. Funding amounts could be increasing because of more capital; valuations could be increasing due to that capital chasing fewer opportunities.
- superdeeda 5y ago
  100% with you on this. Where are all these new companies, who are investing in all these one-dev startups, how did all these devs suddenly discover product market fits, ...?
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    A lot of seniors also realize that once you build a large enough network of former bosses and colleagues you can actually just open a consultancy shop and contract for larger companies. My point being that just because they are not founding "one-dev startups", senior devs are much more commonly transitioning to self-employed/contracting arragements where they are setting their rates.
  - JohnFen 5y ago
    Most of the new companies that I'm personally familiar with are intentionally avoiding investment money and are bootstrapping up. And the devs starting them did not suddenly discover product market fits, they're finally pulling the trigger on things that have been percolating for a long time.
austincheney 5y ago
The rapid increases in compensation right now isn’t even the primary motivator. That’s the icing on the cake in case you weren’t sure. In the big companies senior developers are tired of the failed institutionalism. Most large companies I have worked at are Java shops and do everything the same way. They move so astonishingly slowly and spend a lot of time convincing themselves otherwise with agile. It’s not hard to feel like a 100x developer when working on an open source project that does 10x your corporate equivalent in a fraction of the time. What I have learned from interviewing: * front end skills are dead. If you are a startup use react for everything, otherwise you can dick around with Angular or some custom jQuery looking mistake. It doesn’t matter. Its all unimportant MVP that just needs to look good and will get fixed after business exit or lawsuit. * for backend don’t worry about inverting binary trees. That’s so last generation. Now the interview process is to build an entire tech stack in 3 hours or play in a software toy box of a trillion dependencies or service tools. Good systems automation skills or just services are too boring. * Open source contributions are resume line items, like education. If you want people to take that serious be very explicit about the value of your open source contributions on your resume. Even then be prepared to treat open source as a new business pitch deck if asked. * If you are a non-management developer don’t bother with things of social value. These are commonly viewed as a harmful distractions. This includes professional certifications, social organizations, accreditation’s, security clearances, and so forth.
- amcoastal 5y ago
  You're the first person to tell me accreditation or clearances are a negative, but maybe we apply for different jobs. I'm going to continue to believe the opposite until you show some evidence.
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    They're very important in any company that has a partnership, like with AWS or Microsoft Azure. They have to maintain a certain number of people with certs to keep their partnership, so they push for their employees to get it. Seems very common in consulting, for example. Hiring someone that already has those certs makes things easier. Also for the companies that need security clearances, I've seen plenty of job postings that have security clearances are required (or the job is contingent on your ability to get one). I'd be surprised if that wasn't still valued.
nickjj 5y ago
From the article: > All companies (regardless of size and paycheck) make competent developers go through grueling 4–7 rounds of interviews. It's possible to get hired with zero interviews, you need to put yourself into a position where this is the norm. Every single contract / freelance job I've ever taken happened without a formal interview. I never had to do a whiteboard test or explain an algorithm to someone. I never had to write 1 line of code or even talk about lower level programming things specifically for the sake of getting a job for a specific company. All I did was talk to them over email or Zoom while we discussed what they wanted me to do for the job. Then it went straight to a statement of work / contract and that's it. Most of these happened where the person hiring reached out to me directly. I don't use any freelance platforms or marketplaces. Now, the debatable part here is "competent developer". I won't make any claims that I'm competent but I have done a ton of assorted gigs over the years and lots of them lasted for multiple years (and still do). For context I sent out 47 invoices in 2020. If you hate the idea of parading around interviews and working in an office please understand you have options. Besides part time high school jobs I never worked in a non-remote position in my life.
- mattmanser 5y ago
  This doesn't magically happen, a new developer can sit in their room all year and won't get a single lead unless they do something to get them. You haven't said how, but given you've got an extensive blog and several courses, is that how you're getting your leads? And publically demonstrating your competence? And you shouldn't forget that writing blogs and teaching courses is a whole different set of skills to programming, that have to be learnt and worked on.
  - k__ 5y ago
    "writing blogs and teaching courses is a whole different set of skills to programming" True. I'm a tech blogger and teacher and I sometimes get offered development and management jobs.
  - nickjj 5y ago
    I didn't have a blog until about 2015. Most of the work I've gotten happened before I had a site or created courses. Prior to that I had no background in writing or making videos. I decided to try those approaches on a whim. It literally started with "I wonder what would happen if...", and then I started working on it the next day but neither are necessary to find leads. I've outlined how I started freelancing (pre-blog / courses) here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-freelance-business-as-a-software-developer https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-fre... Everything there still applies today except for going to physical meetups because of Covid. You are right tho, you won't be able to sit in a locked room because no one will find you. You need to do something to make businesses aware of you and there's lots of options based on what you're comfortable doing. Eventually you can get to a "in Soviet Russia, job finds you" world where you sit back while picking and choosing the contracts you want to take on but it will take a good amount of effort to get there, but you can still be successful doing freelance work waaaay before that happens.
2sk21 5y ago
I quit last year because I was financially independent (actually way past the point of financial independence). There was no financial motive to keep working and the work itself felt like drudgery, no matter how much I was paid. I'll bet a lot of people quit for similar reasons.
- deathanatos 5y ago
  > I'll bet a lot of people quit for similar reasons. Most of us on HN are not multi-millionaires, or even millionaires.
  - burlesona 5y ago
    But to be fair, if you’re willing to live in cheap places, you don’t nearly need to be a millionaire to be financially independent.
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twobitshifter 5y ago
I know that resignations are up but is there the corresponding jump in startups or sole proprietorships that the author claims? In other words are people striking out on their own or are they just jumping to another company?
Daniel_sk 5y ago
Stop using Medium. I am getting a HTTP 500 and page reload every 10 seconds on both desktop and mobile Safari. It could be due to ad blocking, I am not the only one.
vladimirralev 5y ago
I think this article is overlooking the most important reason for this. Most senior developers have plenty of assets and are retiring or taking a long vacation with stock/crypto/real-estate gains from the past year. Some are rolling out their own businesses sure, but it's a terrible time to start a business now. Wages are skyrocketing, supply chains are overbooked, inflation makes it impossible to secure long contracts on predictable terms, and the passive income mania fuelled by the banks makes working on fixed income unappealing.
- JohnFen 5y ago
  > it's a terrible time to start a business now Hard disagree. I think this is one of those moments it's an unusually good time to start a business. It has challenges to be sure, but they're manageable, and I see more opportunity around me than I've seen in decades.
  - gitfan86 5y ago
    If your business plan includes shipments from China at specific costs or times, or if your business plan needs reliable workers at $18/hour, you may run into trouble. Otherwise, yes
- notacoward 5y ago
  That's exactly what happened with me. When people ask why I retired "so early" (I'm 56) my first answer is always that I did it because I could. I was fortunate to have accrued enough that I didn't have to keep doing something that had become more burdensome than satisfying, so I stopped. As to why it had become more burdensome, some of the OP's points ring pretty true. Software development is much more rushed than it used to be, which is not at all to say it's more efficient or productive. Everybody wants to rush into coding without having a real anchored discussion about approaches and pitfalls, then rush into coding the next thing before all the really "interesting" bugs that live in the interstices between unit-testable components are dealt with. Yeah, I know the excuses, and I'm sure they'll be repeated in replies here. Basically they all come down to "don't worry we'll rewrite it next year anyway" which is not entirely wrong but I got tired of being disparaged for wanting to be even a tiny bit further on the "get it right the first time" side. And then there's the ageism. Like other -isms it's never as simple as "I hate X" but more about failing to consider X. Open-plan offices are more problematic for older people because of hearing and personal-comfort issues. Mandatory oncall shifts are more burdensome for people with kids than those without. A senior developer trying to apply an idea learned on other systems will often be blocked because those systems are assumed to be irrelevant, but a junior developer reinventing the exact same idea in the context of the current system will get a bonus or promotion. To some extent it's just good old NIH, but when it consistently gives one group an advantage over another it's discrimination. "Only people who grew up in this environment can add value to it" is ageism. A lot of these issues are much more prevalent at certain companies, notably FAANG, so arguably they could be improved by going elsewhere. Which would have meant going through another one or more BS interview processes for what was likely to be a slight improvement because everybody imitates FAANG. "I prefer not to" as Bartleby the scrivener famously said, and I suspect that's the same conclusion many other senior developers reach. We've made it so that development usually becomes more and more of a chore as people become more senior (no it didn't used to be that way), so we shouldn't be surprised when they take the earliest exit.
blinkingled 5y ago
> Supervisory managers brandishing Agile + endless meetings Personally for me - this led to burnout and I have quit last two jobs that used Agile faster than I have the 2 before that didn't use Agile. Agile is very clearly being misused to turn developers into factory line workers whose productivity can be measured by number of commits, reviews and docs they put out every two weeks. And the meetings it takes to do Sprint planning, stand-ups, reviews, demos, retros are really killing any possibility of developers having a flow of uninterrupted time to do what they need to. And the burnout article linked in the OP makes a great point about inputs to development teams not being measured. At some places developers are left to spec out stories and others have Architects / Tech Leads do it - in either case that in itself is a large chunk of work that takes up huge amount of time that no one is rewarded for in any way! Mostly though keeping the churn going is what gets really tiring - do most orgs have work that a) needs to be done every two weeks and b) can be done in two weeks perpetually? The pressure leads to manufacturing bite sized requirements that can be demoed in two weeks - the real impact of that work is almost always never evaluated. Combine this pressure with time crunch that prevents people from spending quality time together to ponder bigger, high impact problems and collaborate on solving those within the meeting heavy Agile process and you are never going to get anything meaningful done. This is not to say Agile itself is bad - it takes effort and skill to use it effectively but managers seem to be taking the easy way out to create a factory line kind of setup where random requirements keep getting thrown and every two weeks you are supposed to roll out _a_ solution. The trouble is software / IT is not at all like rolling cars out on a factory line so it all falls apart. Edit: By Agile I meant Scrum really.
- DougBTX 5y ago
  > This is not to say Agile itself is bad - it takes effort and skill to use it effectively but managers seem to be taking the easy way out to create a factory line kind of setup where random requirements keep getting thrown and every two weeks you are supposed to roll out _a_ solution. Scrum has outmarketed "Agile", and swallowed it up wholesale. Agile was about putting people before process, Scrum is all process, no-wonder the people feel downtrodden.
  - 5y ago
wrren 5y ago
I appreciate the effort that goes into articles like this, but they always seem to be based on the unproven hypotheses of the author. I'd appreciate more it if authors would reach out to the community via, say, LinkedIn and survey developers on their seniority and reasons for resigning, then building an article around those results.
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chovybizzass 5y ago
we aren't resigning willingly, nobody will hire us because experience is no longer valued.
lordnacho 5y ago
Economic version: Devs are the specialists least dependent on capital. If you're a surgeon, you need a hospital, if you're a windmill engineer, you need the windmill factory. Dev can work with all his own tools, it's so cheap you can have your own workbench (eg on Hetzner) for almost nothing. The range of firms with dev-relevant capital is very wide. Capital is cheap, too, thanks to the times we live in (let's not go there). Senior devs who don't need hand-holding are a rare form of labor. It's free to everyone to learn how to be a coder, it's all out there on the internet in a way that is unparalleled across subjects and in history. But we are not flooded with competent devs. It would appear the bottleneck isn't in educating people. Finally, the WFH revelation means markets are a lot less local. It only makes sense to look for a new job when you know all this. ---- BTW, it really is a dev's market right now. It's white hot, it's been white hot for at least half a year, and nobody knows when it ends. I encourage anyone who feels even a tiny bit inclined to have a look around. Even if you don't, try to finagle a day at home each week, because the recruitment game has been turned on its head by the ability of people to chat during work hours.
- itronitron 5y ago
  Yeah, I could apply to a job listing but I haven't found one in a while that seemed like it would be a good use of my time.
thornygreb 5y ago
I resigned yesterday, and with 20 years experience I guess I'm a senior dev. It was many factors, but management and the amount of process and the banality of the work finally did me in. Maybe management is dysfunctional everywhere, I don't know, about to find out but mine literally just copied the email (headers and all!) from the client into the ticketing system and assigned it. Most of management has been there for decades and it has been their only job ever. I spent more time tracking my time spent in the various systems and monthly reports than actual dev work. And the work was so mind numbingly boring. I took the plunge and applied to half a dozen interesting job posts and that was it. I was worried about ageism, being an imposter, having to leet code, endless rounds, etc. But it wasn't that bad at all, a small take-home and a few rounds of talking about experience and now a nice pay bump and new problems to solve.
- hsuduebc2 5y ago
  What kind of work you were doing? I'm working in bank and most of my work is finding a bug in tens of thousands lines of logs and then fixing it. It's really slow not because it's hard to solve but because literally everything there is slow. New features consist mostly of integrations on systems so rest call and them data process. It was similarly dumb?
  - shimonabi 5y ago
    I used to do a similar job a few years back. Reading logs upon logs and reading code I didn't write. I was so depressed I eventually got fired. Now I earn a third less, but I design and code my systems from start to finish. It really makes a difference if you have a feeling that you did something of value at the end of the day.
- thefourthchime 5y ago
  I'm right with you. 20 years experience, I guess I'm a senior dev. I'm worried about ageism, being an imposter, having to leet code, endless rounds, etc. How was it out there? I haven't been getting the recruiters hitting me up on linkedin as much, I wasn't sure how hot or cool the market is.
arthur_sav 5y ago
I feel like the article talks about me. Early 30s dev, quit during the pandemic to start my own company (manylogs.com) Not gonna lie, we have it pretty good. Great salary, flexible working hours, bonuses, job prospects etc... but it's kinda sad seeing your employer riding the internet wave while you're stuck on a leash. If you're a senior dev, you probably can build something useful for people and make a great living out of it. The only thing you need is a laptop and some creativity.
RamblingCTO 5y ago
It's very worrying to me that (especially US-inspired developers) people only think of a job as doing something for someone else. I guess it's pretty different in Germany, but a company is also a community, you spent a lot of time with these people. Sure, there are some folks who like to stay at home at all times, but I feel like that's not a majority. Humans are social animals at core, so I don't understand this one-sided discussion at all. Of course the article shits on management. Management enables you to do the work you came in for. I don't know how someone doesn't understand this. It helps you focus more on the stuff you like. Sounds like your management/company culture is shit.
- kharak 5y ago
  Are you sure this is a Germany vs US thing? I'm originally from Germany and now live in Switzerland. I also think I'm doing something for someone else, no matter that my current project has public utility. I've also never cared about my company for socialization purposes. We'd need some data about this question to see whether it is a cultural or individual thing.
  - donquichotte 5y ago
    I agree. I enjoy socializing, but it never even crossed my mind that my job isn't doing something for someone else. This hypothesis is quite easy to verify: the sets of activities that I perform at work and in the time I have full control over are strictly disjoint.
- deleted 5y ago
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- MattGaiser 5y ago
  At least in the USA/Canada, the community element is heavily manufactured. Sure, you talk to your co-workers but you won’t speak to 90% of them again after you leave.
- jandrewrogers 5y ago
  In the US, or at least the west coast, the developer community is tied to the broader ecosystem and not the particular company where you work. When I worked in Silicon Valley, there was a saying that you don't work for "the company", you work for "the Valley". And it very much felt that way. Companies were ad hoc gatherings of talent within a larger close-knit software community. The tech companies generally understood this. This dynamic lead to rich cross-fertilization of ideas and talent between companies. Socialization happened at the ecosystem level, not the company level, and I think it is probably a healthier than tightly coupling professional socialization with a company.
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bartwe 5y ago
Also office environments have degraded, open offices, yuck.
dadoge 5y ago
No upward financial mobility for developers? Developers are rushing to start new companies? Seems bogus to me. Tech workers are doing quite well financially speaking, and anecdotally I know no one (I’m 37 in medium/big tech) who started a new business the past year. The data from VC funding of companies is hardly a good measure of devs in their 30s/40s leaving their jobs to start new companies. Also angst against capitalism is being addressed by…checks notes…starting your own company?! Seems like such an endless spew of one false narrative after another
nine_zeros 5y ago
I know the reasons for me (mid 30s). I just don't have patience for artificial hoops and barriers to career growth set by management. I don't want to "write more docs" or "be visible on slack" or "join some engineer guilds" or "give demos" or "mentor juniors" just for a promotion. Just look at what I produce, is it valuable for the company? If yes, extra curriculars don't matter. It is these bullshit hoops that make me wonder - why should I listen to anyone in management? I have only one life and I have to dance to this fools tunes? Leading me to switch jobs for a higher pay. I know I will still have to report to a manager at the new job, but by switching, I get the promotion, I get more money and don't need to jump through artificial hoops set by a middle manager, who doesn't want me to rise as fast as I can.
- backoncemore 5y ago
  > I don't want to "write more docs" or "be visible on slack" or "join some engineer guilds" or "give demos" or "mentor juniors" just for a promotion. That hit close to home. Such a depressing reality.
  - mercutio2 5y ago
    I can't fathom why this would be depressing. Senior developers aren't paid to write code. They're paid to cause good outcomes. Sometimes writing code is helpful for that. If the team needs more documentation, more demos, or more mentoring, and you don't want to do it, you don't sound like you're behaving like a senior dev to me.
    - nine_zeros 5y ago
      > If the team needs more documentation, more demos, or more mentoring, and you don't want to do it, you don't sound like you're behaving like a senior dev to me. That's a big "if". Sometimes those things are just not needed by the team. But management is imposing it on you because they want to make you jumpy through hoops. You could invent a new kind of desalination plant, bringing in millions for the company but the manager still wants you to first spend a year through bullshit hoops.
lettergram 5y ago
So many people I know resigned because they were disgusted with the racism and medical tyranny. I don’t think 4% of medical professionals left from burn out, when the pandemic was at a lull. Similarly for tech people. Once a company makes it clear they will require you to have a gene therapy, some people will leave. Once a company broadcasts they’ll promote based on race, some people are going to leave. Once it becomes clear the office you went to will not reopen, people move to be more free. It’s why Texas, Florida, Tennessee, etc are growing. While places like Illinois, California and New York are shuttering businesses. It’s amazing to drive from Illinois to Tennessee (I travel between both states regularly). In Illinois there are just empty malls, entire streets with 40-60% shuttered businesses. In Tennessee, every storefront is open, construction everywhere. The resignations are really people saying “I’m done”. Why senior devs? Because they have families and they’ll do what’s best for their kids. It’s very much a “who is John Galt?” Moment.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I don’t think 4% of medical professionals left from burn out, when the pandemic was at a lull. Taking action based on burnout just after the crunch passes when you are able to reassess is...not at all an unusual pattern.
- merrywhether 5y ago
  > require you to have a gene therapy Would you prefer they require basic science education instead so that you can be less misinformed? In my observation, so many engineers think that because they get paid a lot for being smart developers they are actually just smarter than everyone, and that other fields are simple things that they can master from a weekend of web surfing. It’s probably an extension of the general American puritanical belief that the rich are rich because they are simply better people who have been rewarded by grace. In this demographic, the senior engineers have simply had more time to build themselves up in their own minds.
  - lettergram 5y ago
    I have a degree in CS and minored in BioEngineering. I’ve also kept up with the field and regularly drop in on classes. Finally, this isn’t some conspiracy idea. Here’s from Cornell https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/12/yes-some-covid-vaccines-use-genetic-engineering-get-over-it/ https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/12/yes-some... They’re using genetic material to have your body create proteins. Some people like to argue it’s not “gene therapy” because it doesn’t make lasting gene edits. But (1) the definition is disputed and (2) that’s also not clear because we haven’t studied if it changes gene expression. We also don’t know how long the mRNA lasts, so it can keep generating the cytotoxic spike proteins for an unknown length of time. You’re the only arrogant one here.
burlesona 5y ago
This reads to me as yet another screed by someone who has never worked outside the tech industry. Software Engineering is IMO the best, most privileged job available in the US, and I suspect in much of the world. Life-long tech workers have no idea how much worse conditions are even for “knowledge workers” in other fields. Case in point, when we get a tired of the office grind we can publish a manifesto that slams tons of people we’ve worked with in the past (with no fear of consequences from those burned bridges), move to a resort wherever we want, and still expect to either make great pay with benefits while fully remote, or realistically start our own business with a great chance of success (and can easily raise funding to defray the risk if we want to). I’m grateful to work in software. It’s a wonderful thing that we have so much privilege. And so of course, at a time when the world has been quite stirred up and most of our lives affected, it’s great to see many engineers have the freedom to change jobs to fit their lives better, and that they’re exercising that freedom. But could we observe and write about all that without the anger and entitlement? For anyone who has worked in other fields, or even less in-demand jobs in tech, it just comes across as whiny and out of touch.
- twofornone 5y ago
  >Case in point, when we get a tired of the office grind we can publish a manifesto that slams tons of people we’ve worked with in the past (with no fear of consequences from those burned bridges), move to a resort wherever we want, and still expect to either make great pay with benefits while fully remote, or realistically start our own business with a great chance of success (and can easily raise funding to defray the risk if we want to). It's not that I disagree in principle with what you're saying, but I think you're describing the top 10% range of programmers. Edit: and herein lies the danger in dismissing the complaints of entire swaths of people with concepts lile "privilege". It's just a socially acceptable form of prejudice that never applies to all people from the group.
  - joedirt8383 5y ago
    more like 0.1%
- diehunde 5y ago
mabbo 5y ago
I left Amazon a couple of weeks ago after nearly a decade. And the answer to "why" is pretty straightforward. 1- I couldn't get that SDE3 promo. If my clone had interviewed, he'd have been given an sde3 offer easily. But being on the inside requires a long checklist of requirements that I could never quite hit all of. Two other companies offered me the equivalent role immediately. With a nice pay bump. 2- Amazon won't commit to remote. It's all "between you and your manager" and "with your VPs approval", which is to say: subjet to change any time the person in that role does. Want to change teams? Best make sure that other manager and his VP will support you first. So can I really move four hours away from the office? Not really. My new employment contract has "remote" in it. 3- a growing sense that this isn't the right company for me. Too many controversies that I can't really see "our" side of. The leadership principles that I used to teach to new hires sound more and more hollow. And when I looked at all that, and realized how good the job market is, it became a question of why would I stay?
- masterof0 5y ago
  I feel you, was in the same boat, although I spent way less time there. Too many LPs, too little time.
lbrito 5y ago
>The verbal interviews (+personality tests) are formulaic, and one can rarely get past them without lying about their careers. At least in my experience, this is ridiculously overblown. I'm far from a fluffy personality, but to me the "culture fit" interviews are by far the easiest of the pipeline. I was never tempted to lie, nor can I see how that could possibly benefit the application.
Wavelets 5y ago
I don't know that I've ever been part of a "movement" until now. I joined the great resignation and went out into business for myself about four months ago. Just could not stand horrible management, HR, and weirdly empowered project managers at my megacorp any longer. Best decision I ever made.
sys_64738 5y ago
OK a senior developer resigns. Often that creates opportunities for other less senior whose ideas have been repressed due to some senior developers' personalities or reputations. Don't always see such folk who quit as a negative.
asmithmd1 5y ago
The author did not mention another contributing factor that let people quit jobs - the Affordable Care Act. Before it was passed you could not buy health insurance at any price if you had a pre-existing condition. Even with good health, insurance was prohibitively expense if you were not in some kind of group.
brundolf 5y ago
> Supervisory managers brandishing Agile + endless meetings I've never understood why programmers in these kinds of environments don't shop around. (Acknowledgement that in our industry we're immensely privileged to be able to do this, but emphasizing that it is very doable) I've had four different tech jobs, and none of them have been like the one described here. At most of them we've done "casual agile" where we do standup and tickets and sometimes a retro or planning meeting, but we don't take any of it too seriously. At my current job (and my previous two) my product manager acts as a filter from upper management, negotiating and processing requirements into a form that we can handle and work with. My engineering manager (and my previous one) checks in on my mental health and makes sure I'm neither under- nor over- utilized. At one point I tried to work late on something and they gently asked me not to. I've been asked at several junctures whether I'm happy with what I'm working on or would be more happy doing a different kind of task (happy == motivated == productive and not burning out). All of my engineering managers have also previously been engineers. Both my prod and engineering managers (and again, my previous ones) act as team members who have their own responsibilities; there is no hubris or lording around or micro-managing. The only time I've experienced that was at a past job when I temporarily didn't have any managers and reported directly to the CEO. Now, none of these have been FAANGs. All but one were two digits of employees; the current one is by far the biggest at ~200. Despite that they've all paid quite well. Probably not on the same level as FAANG, but enough for a very good quality of living with plenty left over even in a skyrocketing tech hub. I guess my point is: it can be so much better. As a developer today you're in a hyper-privileged position. Take advantage of it and find somewhere you can be happy. You probably don't have to burn it all down to do so.
president 5y ago
The tech industry is so effective at optimizing that they've managed to turn engineers into factory robots. Maybe it's just my experience but the tech industry in the late 2000s were so much more fun compared to the last 5 years.
bigbillheck 5y ago
The author claims that one reason people are quitting is because of terrible interview processes. This doesn't make much sense to me because if they we working there they would necessarily have had to pass some kind of process in the first place. They also point to agism in tech -- which certainly exists and it's not great -- but suggest it applies to people as young as 30, and that's not particularly plausible. (We're not 1960s hippies anymore)
zoomablemind 5y ago
Most of the pathologies that get associated with Agile or Scrum in particular are in fact the manifestations of Managed implementation of Agile/Scrum. In my view, a perfect litmus test is the primary qualifications of a Scrum Master - if it's a PM, then it's rather a Scrum Manager, a chimera of the corporate existential doom. Ideally, in my opinion, it's a rotating role among the team members. This may simply be impossible read unallowable in many organisations due to hierarchies, chain of command and payscale restrictions. Stale organizations have underlying reasons to be so wasteful yet to live on. I often wonder how some visibly and practically crappy restaurants or stores could stay in business for many decades without much change. Perhaps change has a different meaning and value for different organizations.
joelbondurant 5y ago
FUCK working with diaper face communists, the desert has more to offer.
bhk 5y ago
Given the stunning financial asset price appreciation over the last decade and widespread confidence that traditional portfolio returns will continue, I'm surprised that the wave of retirement is not bigger than indicated by the numbers cited in this article. I remember telling people in late 1999 that these stock prices can't be long-lived because we can't all retire rich.
devlife 5y ago
How come there is no objection to the word master in the scrum master?
bob229 5y ago
Trash article

327 points by kiyanwang 5y ago

I don't know honestly, but the reasons to me are just a subjective view of the writer. Some people find it comfortable working at big tech firm or enterprise and move around their layers or so. Ageism could be a thing but so there are lots of companies that pay seniors dev very well. I think the only reason why some of these folks are leaving is because after earning more than 250k a year for many years (plus stocks) they've realized that there's not much value on working

gitfan86 5y ago
Once I hit 4M net worth, I really lost the desire to continue to work at the stressful enterprise analytics startup I was at.
- square_usual 5y ago
  Congrats on the milestone. Did you aim for it, like with FI/RE, or did it just happen some day and you quit?
  - gitfan86 5y ago
    I didn't have a goal, I had a low cost of living and high income and a big interest in technology. So I invested a good bit of my income into GOOG, and then into TSLA. Over the years those have turned into a lot of money. I quit when we hit a 2 year mark without any new customers.
- notacoward 5y ago
  Exactly right. The numbers might vary, but the basic principle is that the reward for staying goes down[1] and the feasibility of getting out goes up and at some point the lines cross. For me it was just over one year ago, at 55. For someone else it might be at 40, or 70. And good for anyone who gets there. [1] For most people. There are a few "plum" roles where it keeps going up, but I honestly don't think that's the norm.

deleted 5y ago

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brianmcc 5y ago

I agree this is a phenomenon right now, but I feel that article is vastly overcomplicating it, and not necessarily accurately. I'd suggest simply: - software engineers are hugely in demand - software engineers have worked out they can work well remotely, and often prefer it for a combination of productivity and work/life balance reasons - software engineers are voting with their feet and finding work that suits their needs - and many firms are losing talent accordingly due to not meeting the needs of those staff

rlayton2 5y ago
Don't forget that it's easier to get a raise by changing jobs than asking your boss.
- brianmcc 5y ago
  Totally! We are perhaps in the midst of a great levelling-up game of musical chairs too!
hihihihi1234 5y ago
Also: more and more job interviews are happening via Zoom. It's far easier to find a new job when you can do it without booking a day off from your current job.
- aweiland 5y ago
  This isn't true for everyone. I'm on site every day and Zoom is a hassle compared to a phone call I can do from my car.
  - noirbot 5y ago
    Sure, but how many companies were hiring Senior Engineers with just a phone call? Zoom is definitely less disruptive than having to sneakily drive across town, let alone fly across the country on a weekday or two for in-person interviews.
5y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

I feel as if the article is a bit of “tea leaf reading,” but it does make sense. > A verifiable track record is overlooked, while CVs filled with adjectives top the stack. This is not new, but I do believe it has reached a crisis point, in tech. I’ve often posted about my own travails with this. The most annoying thing, to me, is, despite all the hoopla about “disruption,” companies hire for conformity. They always have, but the screeching about being “disruptive” is fairly recent. Protip: you won’t “disrupt,” if you hire people that “won’t rock the boat.” Truly innovative workplaces aren’t necessarily comfortable (especially for management). It’s like classic waterfall companies that claim to be “agile,” because they have daily meetings. I thought this linked article was interesting: https://betterprogramming.pub/why-software-companies-often-reject-awesome-programmers-38bea2ca3cc7 https://betterprogramming.pub/why-software-companies-often-r...

le-mark 5y ago

I’m beginning to think of this era as the arrival of Fred Brooks formulation of the highly productive or surgeon like developer; someone who is highly trained and can be highly productive. And “senior” developer is a proxy for that; highly trained and experience with the myriad of tech and mountain of knowledge software development requires today. And as such, truly “senior” developers are highly desirable and relatively rare. Hence rising demand and salaries. Spurring many to job hop and maximize their salary. Note I didn’t use the loaded “10x” or “rockstar” monicker intentionally, to avoid the incessant argument whether they actually exist or not. I submit the current trend as evidence they do, and are often “senior” developers. Title inflation is in fact a thing and not all seniors are equal. And of course the typical HN reader is near the top of the curve, so maybe we don’t realize just how much truly arcane knowledge is required to do this job.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
> And of course the typical HN reader is near the top of the curve I feel as if it is not necessarily "senior," as much as "on the bleeding edge." Lots of smart folks here, with a lot of "exploratory" energy, but as far as highly experienced, seasoned, folks; maybe it's not such a huge demographic. I know we're here, but we're not always welcome.
- JohnFen 5y ago
  This rings true to me. > I know we're here, but we're not always welcome. Us graybeards are working in an industry that generally doesn't value experience (mysteriously, it seems to equate "experienced" with "not capable with modern technologies"), so there's the baseline. And the HN demographic appears to be a particular subset of the young, which tends to amplify that.
_moof 5y ago
> the typical HN reader is near the top of the curve For seniority? Not a chance. The last time there was a poll (admittedly a long time ago), two thirds of HN's users were under 30.

peter_l_downs 5y ago

If this hypothesis (they’re starting companies of their own) is true, why not show any data on new incorporations or number of new startups? Very doubtful of this. Funding amounts could be increasing because of more capital; valuations could be increasing due to that capital chasing fewer opportunities.

superdeeda 5y ago
100% with you on this. Where are all these new companies, who are investing in all these one-dev startups, how did all these devs suddenly discover product market fits, ...?
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  A lot of seniors also realize that once you build a large enough network of former bosses and colleagues you can actually just open a consultancy shop and contract for larger companies. My point being that just because they are not founding "one-dev startups", senior devs are much more commonly transitioning to self-employed/contracting arragements where they are setting their rates.
- JohnFen 5y ago
  Most of the new companies that I'm personally familiar with are intentionally avoiding investment money and are bootstrapping up. And the devs starting them did not suddenly discover product market fits, they're finally pulling the trigger on things that have been percolating for a long time.

austincheney 5y ago

The rapid increases in compensation right now isn’t even the primary motivator. That’s the icing on the cake in case you weren’t sure. In the big companies senior developers are tired of the failed institutionalism. Most large companies I have worked at are Java shops and do everything the same way. They move so astonishingly slowly and spend a lot of time convincing themselves otherwise with agile. It’s not hard to feel like a 100x developer when working on an open source project that does 10x your corporate equivalent in a fraction of the time. What I have learned from interviewing: * front end skills are dead. If you are a startup use react for everything, otherwise you can dick around with Angular or some custom jQuery looking mistake. It doesn’t matter. Its all unimportant MVP that just needs to look good and will get fixed after business exit or lawsuit. * for backend don’t worry about inverting binary trees. That’s so last generation. Now the interview process is to build an entire tech stack in 3 hours or play in a software toy box of a trillion dependencies or service tools. Good systems automation skills or just services are too boring. * Open source contributions are resume line items, like education. If you want people to take that serious be very explicit about the value of your open source contributions on your resume. Even then be prepared to treat open source as a new business pitch deck if asked. * If you are a non-management developer don’t bother with things of social value. These are commonly viewed as a harmful distractions. This includes professional certifications, social organizations, accreditation’s, security clearances, and so forth.

amcoastal 5y ago
You're the first person to tell me accreditation or clearances are a negative, but maybe we apply for different jobs. I'm going to continue to believe the opposite until you show some evidence.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  They're very important in any company that has a partnership, like with AWS or Microsoft Azure. They have to maintain a certain number of people with certs to keep their partnership, so they push for their employees to get it. Seems very common in consulting, for example. Hiring someone that already has those certs makes things easier. Also for the companies that need security clearances, I've seen plenty of job postings that have security clearances are required (or the job is contingent on your ability to get one). I'd be surprised if that wasn't still valued.

nickjj 5y ago

From the article: > All companies (regardless of size and paycheck) make competent developers go through grueling 4–7 rounds of interviews. It's possible to get hired with zero interviews, you need to put yourself into a position where this is the norm. Every single contract / freelance job I've ever taken happened without a formal interview. I never had to do a whiteboard test or explain an algorithm to someone. I never had to write 1 line of code or even talk about lower level programming things specifically for the sake of getting a job for a specific company. All I did was talk to them over email or Zoom while we discussed what they wanted me to do for the job. Then it went straight to a statement of work / contract and that's it. Most of these happened where the person hiring reached out to me directly. I don't use any freelance platforms or marketplaces. Now, the debatable part here is "competent developer". I won't make any claims that I'm competent but I have done a ton of assorted gigs over the years and lots of them lasted for multiple years (and still do). For context I sent out 47 invoices in 2020. If you hate the idea of parading around interviews and working in an office please understand you have options. Besides part time high school jobs I never worked in a non-remote position in my life.

mattmanser 5y ago
This doesn't magically happen, a new developer can sit in their room all year and won't get a single lead unless they do something to get them. You haven't said how, but given you've got an extensive blog and several courses, is that how you're getting your leads? And publically demonstrating your competence? And you shouldn't forget that writing blogs and teaching courses is a whole different set of skills to programming, that have to be learnt and worked on.
- k__ 5y ago
  "writing blogs and teaching courses is a whole different set of skills to programming" True. I'm a tech blogger and teacher and I sometimes get offered development and management jobs.
- nickjj 5y ago
  I didn't have a blog until about 2015. Most of the work I've gotten happened before I had a site or created courses. Prior to that I had no background in writing or making videos. I decided to try those approaches on a whim. It literally started with "I wonder what would happen if...", and then I started working on it the next day but neither are necessary to find leads. I've outlined how I started freelancing (pre-blog / courses) here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-freelance-business-as-a-software-developer https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-fre... Everything there still applies today except for going to physical meetups because of Covid. You are right tho, you won't be able to sit in a locked room because no one will find you. You need to do something to make businesses aware of you and there's lots of options based on what you're comfortable doing. Eventually you can get to a "in Soviet Russia, job finds you" world where you sit back while picking and choosing the contracts you want to take on but it will take a good amount of effort to get there, but you can still be successful doing freelance work waaaay before that happens.

2sk21 5y ago

I quit last year because I was financially independent (actually way past the point of financial independence). There was no financial motive to keep working and the work itself felt like drudgery, no matter how much I was paid. I'll bet a lot of people quit for similar reasons.

deathanatos 5y ago
> I'll bet a lot of people quit for similar reasons. Most of us on HN are not multi-millionaires, or even millionaires.
- burlesona 5y ago
  But to be fair, if you’re willing to live in cheap places, you don’t nearly need to be a millionaire to be financially independent.

deleted 5y ago

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twobitshifter 5y ago

I know that resignations are up but is there the corresponding jump in startups or sole proprietorships that the author claims? In other words are people striking out on their own or are they just jumping to another company?

Daniel_sk 5y ago

Stop using Medium. I am getting a HTTP 500 and page reload every 10 seconds on both desktop and mobile Safari. It could be due to ad blocking, I am not the only one.

vladimirralev 5y ago

I think this article is overlooking the most important reason for this. Most senior developers have plenty of assets and are retiring or taking a long vacation with stock/crypto/real-estate gains from the past year. Some are rolling out their own businesses sure, but it's a terrible time to start a business now. Wages are skyrocketing, supply chains are overbooked, inflation makes it impossible to secure long contracts on predictable terms, and the passive income mania fuelled by the banks makes working on fixed income unappealing.

JohnFen 5y ago
> it's a terrible time to start a business now Hard disagree. I think this is one of those moments it's an unusually good time to start a business. It has challenges to be sure, but they're manageable, and I see more opportunity around me than I've seen in decades.
- gitfan86 5y ago
  If your business plan includes shipments from China at specific costs or times, or if your business plan needs reliable workers at $18/hour, you may run into trouble. Otherwise, yes
notacoward 5y ago
That's exactly what happened with me. When people ask why I retired "so early" (I'm 56) my first answer is always that I did it because I could. I was fortunate to have accrued enough that I didn't have to keep doing something that had become more burdensome than satisfying, so I stopped. As to why it had become more burdensome, some of the OP's points ring pretty true. Software development is much more rushed than it used to be, which is not at all to say it's more efficient or productive. Everybody wants to rush into coding without having a real anchored discussion about approaches and pitfalls, then rush into coding the next thing before all the really "interesting" bugs that live in the interstices between unit-testable components are dealt with. Yeah, I know the excuses, and I'm sure they'll be repeated in replies here. Basically they all come down to "don't worry we'll rewrite it next year anyway" which is not entirely wrong but I got tired of being disparaged for wanting to be even a tiny bit further on the "get it right the first time" side. And then there's the ageism. Like other -isms it's never as simple as "I hate X" but more about failing to consider X. Open-plan offices are more problematic for older people because of hearing and personal-comfort issues. Mandatory oncall shifts are more burdensome for people with kids than those without. A senior developer trying to apply an idea learned on other systems will often be blocked because those systems are assumed to be irrelevant, but a junior developer reinventing the exact same idea in the context of the current system will get a bonus or promotion. To some extent it's just good old NIH, but when it consistently gives one group an advantage over another it's discrimination. "Only people who grew up in this environment can add value to it" is ageism. A lot of these issues are much more prevalent at certain companies, notably FAANG, so arguably they could be improved by going elsewhere. Which would have meant going through another one or more BS interview processes for what was likely to be a slight improvement because everybody imitates FAANG. "I prefer not to" as Bartleby the scrivener famously said, and I suspect that's the same conclusion many other senior developers reach. We've made it so that development usually becomes more and more of a chore as people become more senior (no it didn't used to be that way), so we shouldn't be surprised when they take the earliest exit.

blinkingled 5y ago

> Supervisory managers brandishing Agile + endless meetings Personally for me - this led to burnout and I have quit last two jobs that used Agile faster than I have the 2 before that didn't use Agile. Agile is very clearly being misused to turn developers into factory line workers whose productivity can be measured by number of commits, reviews and docs they put out every two weeks. And the meetings it takes to do Sprint planning, stand-ups, reviews, demos, retros are really killing any possibility of developers having a flow of uninterrupted time to do what they need to. And the burnout article linked in the OP makes a great point about inputs to development teams not being measured. At some places developers are left to spec out stories and others have Architects / Tech Leads do it - in either case that in itself is a large chunk of work that takes up huge amount of time that no one is rewarded for in any way! Mostly though keeping the churn going is what gets really tiring - do most orgs have work that a) needs to be done every two weeks and b) can be done in two weeks perpetually? The pressure leads to manufacturing bite sized requirements that can be demoed in two weeks - the real impact of that work is almost always never evaluated. Combine this pressure with time crunch that prevents people from spending quality time together to ponder bigger, high impact problems and collaborate on solving those within the meeting heavy Agile process and you are never going to get anything meaningful done. This is not to say Agile itself is bad - it takes effort and skill to use it effectively but managers seem to be taking the easy way out to create a factory line kind of setup where random requirements keep getting thrown and every two weeks you are supposed to roll out _a_ solution. The trouble is software / IT is not at all like rolling cars out on a factory line so it all falls apart. Edit: By Agile I meant Scrum really.

DougBTX 5y ago
> This is not to say Agile itself is bad - it takes effort and skill to use it effectively but managers seem to be taking the easy way out to create a factory line kind of setup where random requirements keep getting thrown and every two weeks you are supposed to roll out _a_ solution. Scrum has outmarketed "Agile", and swallowed it up wholesale. Agile was about putting people before process, Scrum is all process, no-wonder the people feel downtrodden.
- 5y ago

wrren 5y ago

I appreciate the effort that goes into articles like this, but they always seem to be based on the unproven hypotheses of the author. I'd appreciate more it if authors would reach out to the community via, say, LinkedIn and survey developers on their seniority and reasons for resigning, then building an article around those results.

deleted 5y ago

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chovybizzass 5y ago

we aren't resigning willingly, nobody will hire us because experience is no longer valued.

lordnacho 5y ago

Economic version: Devs are the specialists least dependent on capital. If you're a surgeon, you need a hospital, if you're a windmill engineer, you need the windmill factory. Dev can work with all his own tools, it's so cheap you can have your own workbench (eg on Hetzner) for almost nothing. The range of firms with dev-relevant capital is very wide. Capital is cheap, too, thanks to the times we live in (let's not go there). Senior devs who don't need hand-holding are a rare form of labor. It's free to everyone to learn how to be a coder, it's all out there on the internet in a way that is unparalleled across subjects and in history. But we are not flooded with competent devs. It would appear the bottleneck isn't in educating people. Finally, the WFH revelation means markets are a lot less local. It only makes sense to look for a new job when you know all this. ---- BTW, it really is a dev's market right now. It's white hot, it's been white hot for at least half a year, and nobody knows when it ends. I encourage anyone who feels even a tiny bit inclined to have a look around. Even if you don't, try to finagle a day at home each week, because the recruitment game has been turned on its head by the ability of people to chat during work hours.

itronitron 5y ago
Yeah, I could apply to a job listing but I haven't found one in a while that seemed like it would be a good use of my time.

thornygreb 5y ago

I resigned yesterday, and with 20 years experience I guess I'm a senior dev. It was many factors, but management and the amount of process and the banality of the work finally did me in. Maybe management is dysfunctional everywhere, I don't know, about to find out but mine literally just copied the email (headers and all!) from the client into the ticketing system and assigned it. Most of management has been there for decades and it has been their only job ever. I spent more time tracking my time spent in the various systems and monthly reports than actual dev work. And the work was so mind numbingly boring. I took the plunge and applied to half a dozen interesting job posts and that was it. I was worried about ageism, being an imposter, having to leet code, endless rounds, etc. But it wasn't that bad at all, a small take-home and a few rounds of talking about experience and now a nice pay bump and new problems to solve.

hsuduebc2 5y ago
What kind of work you were doing? I'm working in bank and most of my work is finding a bug in tens of thousands lines of logs and then fixing it. It's really slow not because it's hard to solve but because literally everything there is slow. New features consist mostly of integrations on systems so rest call and them data process. It was similarly dumb?
- shimonabi 5y ago
  I used to do a similar job a few years back. Reading logs upon logs and reading code I didn't write. I was so depressed I eventually got fired. Now I earn a third less, but I design and code my systems from start to finish. It really makes a difference if you have a feeling that you did something of value at the end of the day.
thefourthchime 5y ago
I'm right with you. 20 years experience, I guess I'm a senior dev. I'm worried about ageism, being an imposter, having to leet code, endless rounds, etc. How was it out there? I haven't been getting the recruiters hitting me up on linkedin as much, I wasn't sure how hot or cool the market is.

arthur_sav 5y ago

I feel like the article talks about me. Early 30s dev, quit during the pandemic to start my own company (manylogs.com) Not gonna lie, we have it pretty good. Great salary, flexible working hours, bonuses, job prospects etc... but it's kinda sad seeing your employer riding the internet wave while you're stuck on a leash. If you're a senior dev, you probably can build something useful for people and make a great living out of it. The only thing you need is a laptop and some creativity.

RamblingCTO 5y ago

It's very worrying to me that (especially US-inspired developers) people only think of a job as doing something for someone else. I guess it's pretty different in Germany, but a company is also a community, you spent a lot of time with these people. Sure, there are some folks who like to stay at home at all times, but I feel like that's not a majority. Humans are social animals at core, so I don't understand this one-sided discussion at all. Of course the article shits on management. Management enables you to do the work you came in for. I don't know how someone doesn't understand this. It helps you focus more on the stuff you like. Sounds like your management/company culture is shit.

kharak 5y ago
Are you sure this is a Germany vs US thing? I'm originally from Germany and now live in Switzerland. I also think I'm doing something for someone else, no matter that my current project has public utility. I've also never cared about my company for socialization purposes. We'd need some data about this question to see whether it is a cultural or individual thing.
- donquichotte 5y ago
  I agree. I enjoy socializing, but it never even crossed my mind that my job isn't doing something for someone else. This hypothesis is quite easy to verify: the sets of activities that I perform at work and in the time I have full control over are strictly disjoint.
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MattGaiser 5y ago
At least in the USA/Canada, the community element is heavily manufactured. Sure, you talk to your co-workers but you won’t speak to 90% of them again after you leave.
jandrewrogers 5y ago
In the US, or at least the west coast, the developer community is tied to the broader ecosystem and not the particular company where you work. When I worked in Silicon Valley, there was a saying that you don't work for "the company", you work for "the Valley". And it very much felt that way. Companies were ad hoc gatherings of talent within a larger close-knit software community. The tech companies generally understood this. This dynamic lead to rich cross-fertilization of ideas and talent between companies. Socialization happened at the ecosystem level, not the company level, and I think it is probably a healthier than tightly coupling professional socialization with a company.

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bartwe 5y ago

Also office environments have degraded, open offices, yuck.

dadoge 5y ago

No upward financial mobility for developers? Developers are rushing to start new companies? Seems bogus to me. Tech workers are doing quite well financially speaking, and anecdotally I know no one (I’m 37 in medium/big tech) who started a new business the past year. The data from VC funding of companies is hardly a good measure of devs in their 30s/40s leaving their jobs to start new companies. Also angst against capitalism is being addressed by…checks notes…starting your own company?! Seems like such an endless spew of one false narrative after another

nine_zeros 5y ago

I know the reasons for me (mid 30s). I just don't have patience for artificial hoops and barriers to career growth set by management. I don't want to "write more docs" or "be visible on slack" or "join some engineer guilds" or "give demos" or "mentor juniors" just for a promotion. Just look at what I produce, is it valuable for the company? If yes, extra curriculars don't matter. It is these bullshit hoops that make me wonder - why should I listen to anyone in management? I have only one life and I have to dance to this fools tunes? Leading me to switch jobs for a higher pay. I know I will still have to report to a manager at the new job, but by switching, I get the promotion, I get more money and don't need to jump through artificial hoops set by a middle manager, who doesn't want me to rise as fast as I can.

backoncemore 5y ago
> I don't want to "write more docs" or "be visible on slack" or "join some engineer guilds" or "give demos" or "mentor juniors" just for a promotion. That hit close to home. Such a depressing reality.
- mercutio2 5y ago
  I can't fathom why this would be depressing. Senior developers aren't paid to write code. They're paid to cause good outcomes. Sometimes writing code is helpful for that. If the team needs more documentation, more demos, or more mentoring, and you don't want to do it, you don't sound like you're behaving like a senior dev to me.
  - nine_zeros 5y ago
    > If the team needs more documentation, more demos, or more mentoring, and you don't want to do it, you don't sound like you're behaving like a senior dev to me. That's a big "if". Sometimes those things are just not needed by the team. But management is imposing it on you because they want to make you jumpy through hoops. You could invent a new kind of desalination plant, bringing in millions for the company but the manager still wants you to first spend a year through bullshit hoops.

lettergram 5y ago

So many people I know resigned because they were disgusted with the racism and medical tyranny. I don’t think 4% of medical professionals left from burn out, when the pandemic was at a lull. Similarly for tech people. Once a company makes it clear they will require you to have a gene therapy, some people will leave. Once a company broadcasts they’ll promote based on race, some people are going to leave. Once it becomes clear the office you went to will not reopen, people move to be more free. It’s why Texas, Florida, Tennessee, etc are growing. While places like Illinois, California and New York are shuttering businesses. It’s amazing to drive from Illinois to Tennessee (I travel between both states regularly). In Illinois there are just empty malls, entire streets with 40-60% shuttered businesses. In Tennessee, every storefront is open, construction everywhere. The resignations are really people saying “I’m done”. Why senior devs? Because they have families and they’ll do what’s best for their kids. It’s very much a “who is John Galt?” Moment.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> I don’t think 4% of medical professionals left from burn out, when the pandemic was at a lull. Taking action based on burnout just after the crunch passes when you are able to reassess is...not at all an unusual pattern.
merrywhether 5y ago
> require you to have a gene therapy Would you prefer they require basic science education instead so that you can be less misinformed? In my observation, so many engineers think that because they get paid a lot for being smart developers they are actually just smarter than everyone, and that other fields are simple things that they can master from a weekend of web surfing. It’s probably an extension of the general American puritanical belief that the rich are rich because they are simply better people who have been rewarded by grace. In this demographic, the senior engineers have simply had more time to build themselves up in their own minds.
- lettergram 5y ago
  I have a degree in CS and minored in BioEngineering. I’ve also kept up with the field and regularly drop in on classes. Finally, this isn’t some conspiracy idea. Here’s from Cornell https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/12/yes-some-covid-vaccines-use-genetic-engineering-get-over-it/ https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/12/yes-some... They’re using genetic material to have your body create proteins. Some people like to argue it’s not “gene therapy” because it doesn’t make lasting gene edits. But (1) the definition is disputed and (2) that’s also not clear because we haven’t studied if it changes gene expression. We also don’t know how long the mRNA lasts, so it can keep generating the cytotoxic spike proteins for an unknown length of time. You’re the only arrogant one here.

burlesona 5y ago

This reads to me as yet another screed by someone who has never worked outside the tech industry. Software Engineering is IMO the best, most privileged job available in the US, and I suspect in much of the world. Life-long tech workers have no idea how much worse conditions are even for “knowledge workers” in other fields. Case in point, when we get a tired of the office grind we can publish a manifesto that slams tons of people we’ve worked with in the past (with no fear of consequences from those burned bridges), move to a resort wherever we want, and still expect to either make great pay with benefits while fully remote, or realistically start our own business with a great chance of success (and can easily raise funding to defray the risk if we want to). I’m grateful to work in software. It’s a wonderful thing that we have so much privilege. And so of course, at a time when the world has been quite stirred up and most of our lives affected, it’s great to see many engineers have the freedom to change jobs to fit their lives better, and that they’re exercising that freedom. But could we observe and write about all that without the anger and entitlement? For anyone who has worked in other fields, or even less in-demand jobs in tech, it just comes across as whiny and out of touch.

twofornone 5y ago
>Case in point, when we get a tired of the office grind we can publish a manifesto that slams tons of people we’ve worked with in the past (with no fear of consequences from those burned bridges), move to a resort wherever we want, and still expect to either make great pay with benefits while fully remote, or realistically start our own business with a great chance of success (and can easily raise funding to defray the risk if we want to). It's not that I disagree in principle with what you're saying, but I think you're describing the top 10% range of programmers. Edit: and herein lies the danger in dismissing the complaints of entire swaths of people with concepts lile "privilege". It's just a socially acceptable form of prejudice that never applies to all people from the group.
- joedirt8383 5y ago
  more like 0.1%
diehunde 5y ago

mabbo 5y ago

I left Amazon a couple of weeks ago after nearly a decade. And the answer to "why" is pretty straightforward. 1- I couldn't get that SDE3 promo. If my clone had interviewed, he'd have been given an sde3 offer easily. But being on the inside requires a long checklist of requirements that I could never quite hit all of. Two other companies offered me the equivalent role immediately. With a nice pay bump. 2- Amazon won't commit to remote. It's all "between you and your manager" and "with your VPs approval", which is to say: subjet to change any time the person in that role does. Want to change teams? Best make sure that other manager and his VP will support you first. So can I really move four hours away from the office? Not really. My new employment contract has "remote" in it. 3- a growing sense that this isn't the right company for me. Too many controversies that I can't really see "our" side of. The leadership principles that I used to teach to new hires sound more and more hollow. And when I looked at all that, and realized how good the job market is, it became a question of why would I stay?

masterof0 5y ago
I feel you, was in the same boat, although I spent way less time there. Too many LPs, too little time.

lbrito 5y ago

>The verbal interviews (+personality tests) are formulaic, and one can rarely get past them without lying about their careers. At least in my experience, this is ridiculously overblown. I'm far from a fluffy personality, but to me the "culture fit" interviews are by far the easiest of the pipeline. I was never tempted to lie, nor can I see how that could possibly benefit the application.

Wavelets 5y ago

I don't know that I've ever been part of a "movement" until now. I joined the great resignation and went out into business for myself about four months ago. Just could not stand horrible management, HR, and weirdly empowered project managers at my megacorp any longer. Best decision I ever made.

sys_64738 5y ago

OK a senior developer resigns. Often that creates opportunities for other less senior whose ideas have been repressed due to some senior developers' personalities or reputations. Don't always see such folk who quit as a negative.

asmithmd1 5y ago

The author did not mention another contributing factor that let people quit jobs - the Affordable Care Act. Before it was passed you could not buy health insurance at any price if you had a pre-existing condition. Even with good health, insurance was prohibitively expense if you were not in some kind of group.

brundolf 5y ago

> Supervisory managers brandishing Agile + endless meetings I've never understood why programmers in these kinds of environments don't shop around. (Acknowledgement that in our industry we're immensely privileged to be able to do this, but emphasizing that it is very doable) I've had four different tech jobs, and none of them have been like the one described here. At most of them we've done "casual agile" where we do standup and tickets and sometimes a retro or planning meeting, but we don't take any of it too seriously. At my current job (and my previous two) my product manager acts as a filter from upper management, negotiating and processing requirements into a form that we can handle and work with. My engineering manager (and my previous one) checks in on my mental health and makes sure I'm neither under- nor over- utilized. At one point I tried to work late on something and they gently asked me not to. I've been asked at several junctures whether I'm happy with what I'm working on or would be more happy doing a different kind of task (happy == motivated == productive and not burning out). All of my engineering managers have also previously been engineers. Both my prod and engineering managers (and again, my previous ones) act as team members who have their own responsibilities; there is no hubris or lording around or micro-managing. The only time I've experienced that was at a past job when I temporarily didn't have any managers and reported directly to the CEO. Now, none of these have been FAANGs. All but one were two digits of employees; the current one is by far the biggest at ~200. Despite that they've all paid quite well. Probably not on the same level as FAANG, but enough for a very good quality of living with plenty left over even in a skyrocketing tech hub. I guess my point is: it can be so much better. As a developer today you're in a hyper-privileged position. Take advantage of it and find somewhere you can be happy. You probably don't have to burn it all down to do so.

president 5y ago

The tech industry is so effective at optimizing that they've managed to turn engineers into factory robots. Maybe it's just my experience but the tech industry in the late 2000s were so much more fun compared to the last 5 years.

bigbillheck 5y ago

The author claims that one reason people are quitting is because of terrible interview processes. This doesn't make much sense to me because if they we working there they would necessarily have had to pass some kind of process in the first place. They also point to agism in tech -- which certainly exists and it's not great -- but suggest it applies to people as young as 30, and that's not particularly plausible. (We're not 1960s hippies anymore)

zoomablemind 5y ago

Most of the pathologies that get associated with Agile or Scrum in particular are in fact the manifestations of Managed implementation of Agile/Scrum. In my view, a perfect litmus test is the primary qualifications of a Scrum Master - if it's a PM, then it's rather a Scrum Manager, a chimera of the corporate existential doom. Ideally, in my opinion, it's a rotating role among the team members. This may simply be impossible read unallowable in many organisations due to hierarchies, chain of command and payscale restrictions. Stale organizations have underlying reasons to be so wasteful yet to live on. I often wonder how some visibly and practically crappy restaurants or stores could stay in business for many decades without much change. Perhaps change has a different meaning and value for different organizations.

joelbondurant 5y ago

FUCK working with diaper face communists, the desert has more to offer.

bhk 5y ago

Given the stunning financial asset price appreciation over the last decade and widespread confidence that traditional portfolio returns will continue, I'm surprised that the wave of retirement is not bigger than indicated by the numbers cited in this article. I remember telling people in late 1999 that these stock prices can't be long-lived because we can't all retire rich.

devlife 5y ago

How come there is no objection to the word master in the scrum master?

bob229 5y ago

Trash article