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A young engineer must know that getting stuck on a legacy project is a career-limiting move. Happened to me when I got stuck on a old Ada codebase for a legacy
by jcadam 3y ago
A young engineer must know that getting stuck on a legacy project is a career-limiting move. Happened to me when I got stuck on a old Ada codebase for a legacy aerospace system (unemployed in 2008, you take whatever job you can get), and it took years, and a good chunk of my spare time doing projects/studying, to find a company willing to give me a chance working on something modern again.
Now, someday when I'm in my 60s/70s, and you have some legacy system written in some defunct language nobody under the age of 50 has any experience with, sure, I'll do it. But it'll cost you.
- trealira 3y agoWhy do companies do that? Shouldn't it be enough that you have experience contributing to a large project long-term and you can program decently? Is it that modern programming just requires different/additional programming skills compared to most old codebases, like writing asynchronous code?
- jcadam 3y ago> Why do companies do that? Sane hiring practices are inversely proportional to company size.
- robocat 3y agoI don't hire, but that story would make me want to hire you. It takes certain skills and pig-headedness to successfully work on old software! I once asked a company to rehire me saying that I only wanted to do software maintenance work (I wanted low stress). I am good at it, and it's hard to find people that want to do that work. They didn't rehire because although the manager really wanted me back, his idiot boss had taken it personally when I had quit. Idiot boss later got ousted to their dismay: I shouldn't enjoy that but I did!