6 ms·

If you work for an actual software company that actually sells software as their primary business this advise is not for you. Corporate software completely suc

If you work for an actual software company that actually sells software as their primary business this advise is not for you. Corporate software completely sucks. There is a greater than 70% chance you support some side of a crud app and most of your peers have some level of imposter syndrome but mask their obvious insecurity with aggressive or vanity nonsense. The best thing that ever happened to me was getting laid off from the nonsense. Now I am a defense contractor. My peers are much older. There is an explicit path, for the most part, to release software. People are well trained and actually do real work instead of praying they can pretend to be relevant behind some framework. Now my advice to everyone is the same: find the jobs with the highest barrier of entry. This is completely orthogonal to compensation. High barriers of entry drastically reduce the signal to noise ration in hiring.

Poomba 1y ago
What would those jobs be for him? If he’s developing CRUD apps, there really arent many jobs with high barriers of entry…
- austin-cheney 1y ago
  He would have to pivot or extend. Suggestions to extend on paper: * graduate degree * PMP and/or CISSP * federal security clearance * foreign language * certs for AWS/Google/Azure Technical pivots: * operations (PMP would be helpful) * management. I have pivoted to management and operations but am still required to ship software as a developer * cloud infrastructure * enterprise API management (MuleSoft is a proprietary solution that seems to be the growing industry solution) * network management - routers and switches (get a CCNA and then work towards a CCNP) --- The best part about getting into a high barrier of entry job is the people. Everybody is generally confident about their ability to execute. That means people are more honest about technical concerns, less focused on how to do their jobs (literacy), less focused on the vanity of the technical work, and are generally more pleasant to be around.
  - Poomba 1y ago
    All of those don’t sound like they have a high barriers of entry. Maybe a bit higher relatively speaking, but people with a CCNA or an AWS certification are plentiful in today’s market.
  - temp090255436 1y ago
    > The best part about getting into a high barrier of entry job is the people. Nope. It's exactly the same people as before plus some paper certs. Also a lot of them are generally incompetent which makes the imposter syndrome there as real as everywhere else. E.g. the hotshot guy with the AWS Architect cert that could not solve a simple permissions problem to save his life.
VirusNewbie 1y ago
> This is completely orthogonal to compensation You think high compensation jobs don't have a high barrier of entry???

Poomba 1y ago

What would those jobs be for him? If he’s developing CRUD apps, there really arent many jobs with high barriers of entry…

austin-cheney 1y ago
He would have to pivot or extend. Suggestions to extend on paper: * graduate degree * PMP and/or CISSP * federal security clearance * foreign language * certs for AWS/Google/Azure Technical pivots: * operations (PMP would be helpful) * management. I have pivoted to management and operations but am still required to ship software as a developer * cloud infrastructure * enterprise API management (MuleSoft is a proprietary solution that seems to be the growing industry solution) * network management - routers and switches (get a CCNA and then work towards a CCNP) --- The best part about getting into a high barrier of entry job is the people. Everybody is generally confident about their ability to execute. That means people are more honest about technical concerns, less focused on how to do their jobs (literacy), less focused on the vanity of the technical work, and are generally more pleasant to be around.
- Poomba 1y ago
  All of those don’t sound like they have a high barriers of entry. Maybe a bit higher relatively speaking, but people with a CCNA or an AWS certification are plentiful in today’s market.
- temp090255436 1y ago
  > The best part about getting into a high barrier of entry job is the people. Nope. It's exactly the same people as before plus some paper certs. Also a lot of them are generally incompetent which makes the imposter syndrome there as real as everywhere else. E.g. the hotshot guy with the AWS Architect cert that could not solve a simple permissions problem to save his life.

VirusNewbie 1y ago

> This is completely orthogonal to compensation You think high compensation jobs don't have a high barrier of entry???