4 ms·

I feel the same way about coding. I teach coding courses but I feel like a hypocrite. The great irony is that there are so few jobs for competent, experienced c

I feel the same way about coding. I teach coding courses but I feel like a hypocrite. The great irony is that there are so few jobs for competent, experienced coders that I can't find a job coding myself so I have to teach it instead. Though I guess maybe the market for junior coders may be OK? I feel like the last thing companies want are jaded senior engineers. They don't seem to care about security vulnerabilities and such. I feel like one of the people selling shovels at the end of the gold rush. Though I guess coding is a good supplementary skill to have. A lot of my students are from other industries. Once you've seen how the sausage is made in this industry, nobody wants you as a coder. They must assume that you're going to be a bitter old fart and cannot be relied on... I'm not even 40. It's particularly ironic since I have a perfect record in terms of integrity. There are millions of dollars of crypto relying on my open source software... The founders of the project are basically my enemies (treated me very badly for no good reason). I've been trusted with millions of dollars of crypto for half a decade in spite of personal financial struggles, being out of a job and having multiple citizenships with non-extradition policies. I'm the embodiment of perfect integrity in the face of adversity, yet seemingly cannot be relied on? That's why I sometimes entertain conspiracy theories about people in high positions being controlled via blackmail... If the system doesn't rely on (and doesn't value) individuals with proven high integrity, it must surely rely on (and value) compromised individuals acting purely in their self-interest.

falcor84 2y ago
> Though I guess maybe the market for junior coders may be OK From my limited point of view, it seems that there's a real market only for devs with about 4-6 years of experience - i.e. when one's proven themselves sufficiently to be called a "senior" but isn't yet fully jaded.
- jongjong 2y ago
  That would correspond. I think it was similar when I myself had 4 to 6 years of experience. There was a stigma that senior devs were slow and didn't adapt well to new tech. Like it was seen as if they had 1 year of experience 20 times instead of 20 years of experience. I feel horrible for ever having bought that.
duped 2y ago
I think the discrepency is that the market isn't for people who can code, it's for people that can think like engineers. Coding is the easiest part of the job. Developing tools and products that are a force multiplier for the business is what people get hired to do, not write code. That's not to say that there shouldn't be a division of labor between software engineers and techs. The analog I like to draw is that mechanical engineering has many skilled labors involved with distinct roles in an organization/market (mechanics, machinists, maintenance for both, as well as the engineers). But the software industry is so young that we haven't figured out what those verticals are for developers, and the bean counters(\s) all view us as coders because we type at a keyboard.
- jongjong 2y ago
  This is ironic given that I've worked on many complex projects that were technically successful. Distributed systems, blockchains/p2p systems, front end, back end... I was always one of the top engineers in every company I worked. My code is closer to bug free than I've seen from anyone else. I've built a deterministic chain-to-chain decentralized exchange from scratch. I've built a real time system that scaled horizontally to support tens of thousands of concurrent users in high-frequency scenarios. I work very well in a team. So many narratives that exist in this industry seems to gaslight me. "Coding is not about coding, it's about intangible attribute X." "There are no 10x engineers" "There is no such thing as good architecture" "Most very senior devs don't have 20 years of experience. What they have is 1 year of experience, 20 times over." Exhausting nonsense!
  - financltravsty 2y ago
    Take crypto off your resume -- it's a scarlet mark.
    - jongjong 2y ago
      Thanks for the advice. I sense that there has been dirty politics going on behind the scenes. I quit a few years ago after the leaders of the project I worked for basically stopped caring. It was a relatively sudden change, as though they had been corrupted to run their own project into the ground. My sense of the space was that it was mostly honest, well-meaning people who were forced to discredit themselves and turn into scams as part of some coercive deal with various powerful entities. I can only speculate as to which entities might be at the root of the corruption but it's unfortunate that the entire space couldn't stop itself from becoming a scam.
glimshe 2y ago
Crypto is basically seen as a scam by most employers. You may be a perfectly honest person, but you unfortunately associated yourself with some of the biggest scammers of our times. I think it must be a bit like having had a position at Enron after its fall.

falcor84 2y ago

> Though I guess maybe the market for junior coders may be OK From my limited point of view, it seems that there's a real market only for devs with about 4-6 years of experience - i.e. when one's proven themselves sufficiently to be called a "senior" but isn't yet fully jaded.

jongjong 2y ago
That would correspond. I think it was similar when I myself had 4 to 6 years of experience. There was a stigma that senior devs were slow and didn't adapt well to new tech. Like it was seen as if they had 1 year of experience 20 times instead of 20 years of experience. I feel horrible for ever having bought that.

duped 2y ago

I think the discrepency is that the market isn't for people who can code, it's for people that can think like engineers. Coding is the easiest part of the job. Developing tools and products that are a force multiplier for the business is what people get hired to do, not write code. That's not to say that there shouldn't be a division of labor between software engineers and techs. The analog I like to draw is that mechanical engineering has many skilled labors involved with distinct roles in an organization/market (mechanics, machinists, maintenance for both, as well as the engineers). But the software industry is so young that we haven't figured out what those verticals are for developers, and the bean counters(\s) all view us as coders because we type at a keyboard.

jongjong 2y ago
This is ironic given that I've worked on many complex projects that were technically successful. Distributed systems, blockchains/p2p systems, front end, back end... I was always one of the top engineers in every company I worked. My code is closer to bug free than I've seen from anyone else. I've built a deterministic chain-to-chain decentralized exchange from scratch. I've built a real time system that scaled horizontally to support tens of thousands of concurrent users in high-frequency scenarios. I work very well in a team. So many narratives that exist in this industry seems to gaslight me. "Coding is not about coding, it's about intangible attribute X." "There are no 10x engineers" "There is no such thing as good architecture" "Most very senior devs don't have 20 years of experience. What they have is 1 year of experience, 20 times over." Exhausting nonsense!
- financltravsty 2y ago
  Take crypto off your resume -- it's a scarlet mark.
  - jongjong 2y ago
    Thanks for the advice. I sense that there has been dirty politics going on behind the scenes. I quit a few years ago after the leaders of the project I worked for basically stopped caring. It was a relatively sudden change, as though they had been corrupted to run their own project into the ground. My sense of the space was that it was mostly honest, well-meaning people who were forced to discredit themselves and turn into scams as part of some coercive deal with various powerful entities. I can only speculate as to which entities might be at the root of the corruption but it's unfortunate that the entire space couldn't stop itself from becoming a scam.

glimshe 2y ago

Crypto is basically seen as a scam by most employers. You may be a perfectly honest person, but you unfortunately associated yourself with some of the biggest scammers of our times. I think it must be a bit like having had a position at Enron after its fall.