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Comment by thornygreb | Hacker News Reader

I resigned yesterday, and with 20 years experience I guess I'm a senior dev. It was many factors, but management and the amount of process and the banality of the work finally did me in.

Maybe management is dysfunctional everywhere, I don't know, about to find out but mine literally just copied the email (headers and all!) from the client into the ticketing system and assigned it. Most of management has been there for decades and it has been their only job ever.

I spent more time tracking my time spent in the various systems and monthly reports than actual dev work. And the work was so mind numbingly boring.

I took the plunge and applied to half a dozen interesting job posts and that was it. I was worried about ageism, being an imposter, having to leet code, endless rounds, etc. But it wasn't that bad at all, a small take-home and a few rounds of talking about experience and now a nice pay bump and new problems to solve.

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What kind of work you were doing? I'm working in bank and most of my work is finding a bug in tens of thousands lines of logs and then fixing it. It's really slow not because it's hard to solve but because literally everything there is slow. New features consist mostly of integrations on systems so rest call and them data process. It was similarly dumb?

I used to do a similar job a few years back. Reading logs upon logs and reading code I didn't write. I was so depressed I eventually got fired. Now I earn a third less, but I design and code my systems from start to finish. It really makes a difference if you have a feeling that you did something of value at the end of the day.

Instead of quitting I retired this year after 40 years as a programmer. I was much in demand since I could do with fewer people and deliver things no one else could do, yet my team was taken advantage of repeatedly and given no thanks for anything. In the end it simply wasn't worth the long hours any more. I didn't work in a FAANG company but a huge non tech company that used a lot of tech to support the business. Now I make art using my programming experience and life is much more pleasant. But my former team (younger than I was) still suffers and likely each will move on soon as well.

Programming as a profession has always been a blend of amazing and fun, and stupid and sucky for 4 decades. Still better than lots of things you could have to do instead. I never got rich or anything, but still have enough for a decent life.

In my experience it's rare for a company whose core product is not technology to realize the ROI they're getting is completely worth is and to continue investing in tech and appreciate their tech staff.

I'm right with you. 20 years experience, I guess I'm a senior dev. I'm worried about ageism, being an imposter, having to leet code, endless rounds, etc.

How was it out there? I haven't been getting the recruiters hitting me up on linkedin as much, I wasn't sure how hot or cool the market is.

> How was it out there? I haven't been getting the recruiters hitting me up on linkedin as much

Not nearly as much experience, but I had the same issue. I was expecting once I opened up, I’d have a flood of messages in my inbox, given how everyone is saying how hot the market is. However, I feel like I’ve seen less than previous job searches, and filtering out irrelevant, low paying, shit jobs from those the number is even more disappointing.

Are you trying to only find remote work? What area do you live in?

Yeah only remote right now. Normally I’m open to relocate, but I recently had to renew a lease that’s not breakable.

I’m in central FL and I’ve been generally disappointed in this state from a job market perspective. Most of the recruiters I’ve spoken to are recruiting for roles within the state, regardless if they’re fully remote or not.

how do you ensure that new company isn't the same or just slightly better than older company. Everyone seems to promise rainbows and ponies in the interview.

You don't really, that is why I consider the pay bump what I call 'grass is not greener' insurance. I'd rather get paid more for the same thing wouldn't you? And I can't imagine it much worse really. But you won't know without trying.

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