Comment by vp8989 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vp8989 | Hacker News Reader

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That isn't really how anyone worth impressing judges work experience.

Those kind of resumes where you have like 18 years of work experience in 9 different language, but you were essentially not much more than a junior dev in any one of them, are very unimpressive.

That is the typical career story and that's why a lot of people struggle to find dev jobs when they get older because they weren't managing their career and were just riding the technology churn with all the other 23 year olds.

You should think of your career progression as every couple of years you are making a jump up to either more responsibility, or a more difficult domain, or working on systems with more load etc ...

If you don't make these forward progressions you will be judged harshly as an older person, because it's very difficult for people to NOT think, "well why didn't this person make any progress in their career? They must suck."

The technologies used is a side detail, it's never the "meat" of your work experience.

You make it sound trivial but the fact is that you're hired to do a job. Most likely if you don't go find another job every 2 years then you will not be progressing because many companies will not give you more responsibility or more difficult things to do. And then if you jump ship every two years they judge you for not sticking around and you will be docked for that. In the end I have seen plenty of companies hire older workers as just developers. If you want something higher then you have to be an expert in a domain... this again limits the number of jobs available to you.

> go find another job every 2 years

this actually isn't bad advice

> companies will not give you more responsibility or more difficult things to do

i find this is true only in large corporate enterprises. or a lack of initiative on the employee themself. you won't find this in startups / younger / tech focused companies

> If you want something higher then you have to be an expert in a domain

yes generally if you want higher responsibility you need to be able to execute on those responsibilities...

> many companies will not give you more responsibility

You don't get responsibility. You take responsibility.

Of course this is harder in large companies, but it's equally important.

>You don't get responsibility. You take responsibility.

Underrated advice, right here. It's not always easy or gratifying, but it's served me well over the past 20 years.

I agree with this, I guess. But I've always thought of it as "assuming" more responsibility. Subtle difference.

I think you're misinterpreting what he means. Every couple years you should be just evaluating whether you're taking on more responsibilities or you're working on genuinely more difficult/complex problems. If you're not, you need to show aptitude at your current company so you get placed to do it, or if it's the case that the company is the issue and not you, then you should consider moving on.

If there is a path of progression for you in terms of responsibility and difficulty of work, then by all means stay at a company for several years.

Within this framework it doesn't mean you'll necessarily be moving companies every 2 years.

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