Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

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I think about 5% of all developers out there nowadays are actually good developers. IME, most would have no idea what to do if you took away stackoverflow or their abstractions that make their day manageable.

I'm a bit twiddler from way back - my first love was 65C02 assembly language in the mid 80s and my 2nd love as a professional was C for 12 years - but until I stopped considering myself as just someone concerned about code and learning how to efficiently deliver business value, my career suffered.

I take advantage of as many third party libraries and abstractions as possible. I try to use cloud solutions as much as possible (Lambda, RDS, SQS, etc.). In the market where I live, React/Angular + NodeJS jobs are a lot more plentiful and pay more than C jobs. Also, being able to leverage "abstractions" like AWS/Azure functionality is a lot more marketable than knowing how to setup everything yourself.

I'm the type of person that likes to learn deeply about my chosen platforms (C#, JavaScript, AWS,Mongo, SQL Server) just because I'm a geek, but the money comes from knowing high level architectural concepts.

I've had 5 jobs since 2012 and only once did I have a coding test (pair programming on a computer).

If you were any good you wouldn’t have 5 jobs in 5 years!

Since when changing jobs is an indicator of anything? This is not the time to spend 40 years in one company. So many people jump from company to company to feel the thrill and challenges which they currently do not have it does not mean that they burn bridges behind themselves or are bad at what they do. It's like climbing... but differently.

Exactly. I can get positive references from all of my past managers since 2008. Except for the Fortune 10 Company. I was just a number there.

Well, considering that one startup completely went out of business in 2011, let's say 4 by choice.

So 4 jobs since 2012. I was off by one. I make 45K more now than I made in 2012. Because salary compression is real, the easiest way to make substantially more is by job hopping.

I wasn't early in my career - but in 2008, I had stayed at a company too long and between measly raises and bonuses being cut, my salary was barely keeping up with cost of living.

I pivoted more to being a C# "Enterprise Developer", got a job paying a little more in 2008 as a junior C# developer. Learned a lot, that company folded at the end of 2011.

Next job was as a Mid level c#,web developer at major at the time Fortune 10 Company, learned how big companies worked and learned how large projects were managed.

Three years later, companies were offering 25K more for "senior developers" than I was making in 2012. With the combination of new skills and having a big company on my resume, it was fairly easy.

Two years later, I was applying for a job as an "architect" making another 13K more than I made in 2015.

Now startups are recruiting me, because I both have the experience and the technical knowledge as both a hands on coder and leading team.

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