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And then they get laid off and when it comes time for the behavioral interviews at their next company, they can’t discuss anything they did significant in STAR

And then they get laid off and when it comes time for the behavioral interviews at their next company, they can’t discuss anything they did significant in STAR format. And their skills are too rusty to pass the DS&A section of the interview and they didn’t do anything significant to show off their system design skills. I work at $BigTech in the cloud consulting department (cloud app dev/“application modernization”) and the equivalent of “doing tickets” is being put on a project where you aren’t actually doing “consulting”, you’re doing “staff augmentation”. I avoid those like the plague. Even though I’m not chasing after a promotion, I want to have something to show for the time I spent here when it comes to my next job either inside the company or outside.

saurik 4y ago
That's the same problem, though, isn't it? Like, you are clearly not one of those people (based on your response there). And that's great: Google probably needs as lot of people like you to care to come up with new features and products. But the vast majority of jobs in this world--including ones that pay quite well, such as "doctor"--are not activities that are going to involve "scope and impact": they involve doing maintenance work using the established protocol--preferably with careful, predictable performance--on an existing system that someone designed or scoped potentially a long long time ago... one would expect most of software engineering would be the same way.
- scarface74 4y ago
  I guess the point I’m trying to make is that a lot of people make “enough” so that they feel like the extra stress of worrying about getting ahead isn’t important as long as they keep up with inflation. I’m at that point. But, I’m not at the point where I can quit working. I’ve been around long enough to know that you always need to be interview ready when it’s time to look for your next job. Being a “maintenance developer” is a sure fire way to get caught up in the “expert beginner” trap - “1 year of experience 10 times” and make yourself unemployable .

saurik 4y ago

That's the same problem, though, isn't it? Like, you are clearly not one of those people (based on your response there). And that's great: Google probably needs as lot of people like you to care to come up with new features and products. But the vast majority of jobs in this world--including ones that pay quite well, such as "doctor"--are not activities that are going to involve "scope and impact": they involve doing maintenance work using the established protocol--preferably with careful, predictable performance--on an existing system that someone designed or scoped potentially a long long time ago... one would expect most of software engineering would be the same way.

scarface74 4y ago
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that a lot of people make “enough” so that they feel like the extra stress of worrying about getting ahead isn’t important as long as they keep up with inflation. I’m at that point. But, I’m not at the point where I can quit working. I’ve been around long enough to know that you always need to be interview ready when it’s time to look for your next job. Being a “maintenance developer” is a sure fire way to get caught up in the “expert beginner” trap - “1 year of experience 10 times” and make yourself unemployable .