Non-linear career paths are the future
forbes.com
forbes.com
Now I'm at Shopify, where it feels like a complete 180. More than half my team took non-traditional paths- former dietician, government clerk, logger (like with a chainsaw). My team doesn't even seem like an outlier.
One thing I've noticed: the women I work with now are far more likely to have taken a non-linear path to get here. They weren't encouraged to go into that career when they were in high school, but later in life realized it was a good choice. One really great staff dev I've worked with told me how she was encouraged to be a tech recruiter (and did), then slowly realized she could be the one making the huge salaries she was offering people.
Amazon would never have given them a chance. And funny enough, Amazon struggles to hire women in dev roles.
1. Undergrad CS -> FAANG 2. (International) Undergrad {CS, Math, Computer Engineering} -> Masters {CS, Math, Computer Engineering} -> FAANG
Awesome to hear (at Shopify) that the company welcomes more diverse (technical/academic) backgrounds.
A good chunk of folks (among whom exist great developers) are those that are focused on working a job while graduating, and getting to a point where they have stable finances. Then they focus on things like "what kind of job" do I want, and "where do I want to work". That could be years and years down the line though.
So it enforces an aristocracy / pedigree of sorts, but folks are hesitant to admit as such.
Many Canadians who got computer science degrees left to work for American companies for 2x-3x more money.
Anecdotally, I know a senior dev who moved back to Canada from SF to work for Shopify.
They have a San Francisco office, and they employ people in the US.
They can also pay US level wages in Canada.
Amazon Toronto doesn't pay much better than Shopify- I can say first hand.
"After-housing" doesn't really mean anything: buying a house means you build equity into the house which you can later sell (and pocket the appreciation).
They most likely didn't.
Often, businesses don't realize how much they are missing until they bite the bullet and hire SV caliber engineers.
Seems every time I'm pitched something about "finding unconventional IT talent" it's about hiring cheaper programmers. There's a whole industry built around paying less for programmers. With questionable results. Hell, Canadian politicians pitched Vancouver as an ideal HQ2 location to Amazon since tech workers are worth ~50K less than in America[0]
[0] https://www.vancouvereconomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02...
There are some very talented recruiters that are very well-connected, very good at what they do, and very hard working, and they can make quite a bit of money.
But most recruiters are working for one company or one agency on a salary or hourly basis and it's not much money.
I don't really know about the background of the (few) women I know in my industry now though, except for the Indian ones who do seem to have a higher represenation and do I think seem to have engineering/cs degrees.
It sounds like the incentivization in the west is not working then, it is not getting to the right people or not going about things the right way. It actually doesn't surprise me if it does become a disincentivization for many women. It does seem pretty patronizing, shallow, and tone-deaf IMO, more likely designed by and for the political and grievance industries rather than actually being honest about women in technology and working to remove real barriers they face.
Also, I have been an artist and a musician, in that time (neither professionally).
We'll see what the future holds. It's been an interesting ride, so far...
The biggest extracurricular project that I did, was first released in early 2009, and is still picking up traction, this very day...
Depends on what you want. Some stuff should not be designed for the long haul, but some, definitely should.
Just reading some of these comments, makes me happy I have made the choices that I have made.
They are willing to pay to avoid old.
The underlying reason is that young fresh grads are running circles around old timers.
I hate to say this, but in quite a lot of circumstances, ageism is very well justified for these reasons:
1. IT/CompSci is constantly changing and high growth area, any engineer worth his/her salt will grow rapidly.
2. High performance old-timers have either retired (earning their $$$) or moved up the ladder to manager/director/VP/Founder levels.
3. Regular IC old-timers who have not progressed in their career - companies don't want them, because old-timer who has not grown in his level - is a red flag for companies.
4. There are some old-timers who prefer part-time/consulting type gigs, but I put them in Founder category, all of them have their own LLC/S-corp and run one man consulting/entrepreneurship shop
Everyone knows that old dudes can’t code.
Humanity will only ever play the “don’t say these words or you’re ageist.” as reality will always force elders on the young and force the young to shut them out to define their own social value stores.
There is evidence in neuroscience by 13-14 kids brains “switch off” to their mothers voice, favoring new emotional information. Does not seem unreasonable then that even as adults we need to “switch off” and experience new modals: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mom-voice-kid-brain-teen...
Individuals need to accept their mortality, not just literally but figuratively.
> These young frontend js developers can't even...
I hope you can see the irony in your post.
It comes down to what motivates you.
You're out of touch if you think that architecture is what anyone cares about these days. It's about getting PMF and first to ship. Everything else is not even secondary but completely forgotten. If you can manage to make good architectural decisions while shipping incredibly fast - hey, congrats, you got lucky on this project. But I've worked with plenty of devs with 20+ years of experience and what holds them back is their reluctance to just ship shit code real fast.
This ultimately makes them less usable for management because we're not focused on sustainable and clean code - we're focused on getting that next round of funding, beating the competitor to the market, and pivoting wildly to get PMF. (or just more plainly - appeasing our bosses - whether that's the VC, the CEO, the CTO, a VP, a director, or another manager or some customer who gives us money)
You might think your practice is what matters but what you forgot is that no one gives a shit what you think. The employer gives a shit what you'll do and if you'll do what they want. You don't do what they want? HIT THE BRICKS JACK! Go retire.
Employment is for serfs. You want to dictate the rules? Start your own company.
Sadly, I find that I have the heart of a craftsman, so I won’t compromise my own Principles.
True, some (a lot, maybe) folks will sneer at me as a “poor,” and look down on me, for not being willing to compromise my personal Integrity for money, but I learned to ignore that, a long time ago. I’m not competitive, and I don’t care about dying with the most toys.
I like making stuff that will improve lives, and make the world a better place. I’d much rather do free work that benefits a destitute, homeless, recovering drug addict, or a re-entering felon, than be paid for work that is really about entertaining some wealthy, bored, tech bro.
I know that is a minority stance, in this community. I don’t feel (or want to feel) as if I’m better than anyone here, but I also know that I’ll be vigorously attacked, just for saying things like “I want to care about the people that use my work.”
However, if you disclose this, expect large companies to demand your prompts as their work product, which will diminish the moat that you, as a craftsman, have created.
Unless you intend to do so, don’t accidentally turn your craft into a mass manufacturing template, that’s all I’m saying.
Prompt Engineering will probably become a thing.
I mean its more like a $40,000/yr job or an odd gig job here and there
If you want to capitalize on AI prompts you have to do it now in a venture
Now, he'd talk about principles and being a craftsman and doing things the right way. I'd say, sure, but I'd quietly wonder if he's procrastinating, being stubborn, being slow, prioritising the wrong things. My own foibles lead me to make similar mistakes, so I assume it's true for many others also.
If you have the means, or a market for attention to detail, then you absolutely can do things your way. Like you implied, you can get a lot of satisfaction out of simple things and meaningful things. But if, like 50+ friend, someone has bills to pay and desperately needs work, at what point are they making excuses when they should be recognising that many employers don't want stubborn employees prioritising what to them are the wrong things.
I worked for a company that actually had values similar to mine. It had lots of problems, but, in the aggregate, I ended up staying for a long time.
Could I have made a lot more, somewhere else? Absolutely. But that’s never been what I wanted. As it has turned out, I was able to leave the workforce at 55 (like I had a choice). I live humbly, but I also write code I want to write, the way I want to write it, for whom I want to write it, and I learn new stuff, every single day, without having anyone insisting that I compromise my Integrity, so they can make money.
I won’t lie. I was really pissed off (and still find it infuriating), when I realized what was happening.
In many ways, what I find most offensive, is the willful self-destruction, implicit in ignoring experience. It’s really no fun, watching companies, with so much talent and potential, implode, when they could have been so much better.
One of the characteristics of that company I worked for, was their frugality. They were (and still are) absolute tightwads. I got used to making do with limited resources, and figuring out how to motivate and reward employees, when I didn’t have the traditional leverage at my disposal.
It taught me a lot, but was also never comfortable. I would have loved the bucketfuls of money that so many companies seem to have, these days.
But maybe that whole gravy train is suffering a derailment.
I do very good code, based on excellent architectures, very quickly.
I do it for free, because no one thinks that’s worth paying for, and that suits me just fine. The last thing that I want, is some money-crazed manager, insisting that I ship crap, so they can get rich. The poor folks that use my software will get a Quality level that far surpasses much of the commercial stuff out there.
I actually find that thought rather satisfying.
> For the stranger there among them had a big iron on his hip
I had an employee (software engineer) that was a serious woodworker. Did nice stuff.
I think the problem is career paths, as though a working life must optimise for linearity to achieve success, when instead those individuals who explore breadth and depth and fun are both most productive and creative.
Anyone who can see a problem and potential solution through more than one prism of learning is nearly always better able to communicate their insight and share their joy of thought. They tend to be more patient of failure, happier to be corrected, and fresher when returning to the problem again.
Also, more money demonstrating multi-disciplinary competence when moving jobs is definitely a thing. Good managers are rare
I once applied to a game development company. I have something like 20 years experience in systems programming. The problem is that my CV doesn't have any game development experience on it... But when I was about 20, I programmed my own 3D engine, and my own raytracer with soft shadows. A few years ago, I've worked with GLSL as well. I'm familiar with concepts like perspective projection, backface culling, scene graphs, shaders, 3D models, etc. and I'm sure that I could figure out how to work on a 3D game and produce useful work fairly quickly, but these people quickly tossed my CV into the "no" pile because I've never worked at a game development company before.
At the end of the day, I'm doing very well at a different company doing systems programming, but my point is, people look for boxes to check on your CV. This is especially bad if you have to go through non-technical recruiters. Your best bet if you want to get into a programming job IMO is to try to speak directly to developers who work at the company. If you can show them you know your stuff, they might just give you a chance.
Because that's when there was an inflection point in specialization.
There are many polymaths other than DaVinci.
Like Feynman, he refused to specialize so much as everyone else of his time. And, like Feynman, he was kind of a jerk, so he got his way.
But back to the point: we don't need to be non-linear so much as not overspecialized. What we usually see as "genius" is often expertise in multiple fields and the cross-pollination of ideas from that (Da Vinci and Feynman, for sure!). So I agree with you on that point.
I never became a mechanical engineer because my understanding of math at the time was poor. Instead I've jumped around from job to job or gig to gig, learning everything from woodworking and joinery to programming and electrical engineering. Each bit of work I did after the first dozen or so has supplemented or reinforced knowledge from other work I've done.
As a result I can give advice about pretty much anything you see standing on the street in a city, from where the concrete shape comes from and why that mix was chosen to why the street is so narrow to why the post office box is shaped like it is. Although a lot of this knowledge is shallow, it gives other people a good starting point to explain the more complex and in-depth topics of a given subject to me. That makes it easier for us to work with eachother and makes it easier for flaws in methodology, practice, or understanding to be noticed by both of us and thus makes it easier for me to understand where I went wrong. And if someone points out that I am wrong, that doesn't make me upset. It gets me excited because that means there's more to learn and more skills to acquire.
I doubt any of this would've been possible if I had actually gotten a stable job as a mechanical engineer and stuck to a single career path.
Men who change jobs: literally articles inventing new vernacular stemming from the mental gymnastics required to justify the hypocrisy — men aren’t incapable because they change jobs — they are prodigy — men aren’t untrustworthy for changing jobs — they are taking nonlinear career paths because of the uncertainty in the market
I think job (er, company) hopping is a perfectly good career strategy. It's just better suited for a different set of folks. Both options being available are great.
Seen plenty of people drop out of things and never make a return to some magical FAANG or whatever employment/founding/etc after. Those folks don't make the headlines though and you don't remember them because - well - why would you.
I'm 28, I make 170k/yr, and I drive a 2008 Nissan. I'm a 5'6" straight male, 150lbs, not unattractive, and I haven't had sex in five years. Frankly, I've never had a relationship longer than a couple months in my life.
In almost every quantifiable aspect, you've got me beat - but I don't envy you at all.
You're very intelligent and driven. There is this common thread in all your posts - you want what you can't have. You make one-percenter money, but you envy those with generational wealth. You can't find your ideal woman and it's killing you. You have a fairly clear-eyed view of dating dynamics among straight yuppies in the US that animates you to post obsessively about it in relevant threads. There's an anger at Silicon Valley, at women, at capitalism and humanity - alongside a resignation that this is the way things are. You seem pretty depressed.
I don't have most of what you do, but I'm pretty happy about my lot. I have autonomy at work, I like spending time with my friends, and my family's alright too. You said in one of your comments that most men would rather kill themselves than die alone - that really struck me. I don't feel that way, and I hope that if you do, you can find a path toward not feeling that way one day.
Anyway, I'm sorry for the surprise armchair psych. I guess the reason I'm writing this is because I consider myself an unusually driven and self-critical person. I push myself pretty hard and I get upset when I don't meet my own unrealistic standards. I'm usually in the 90th percentile and not the 99th, and that is a constant source of frustration. I've been through years of therapy to learn to control this part of my personality, but I worry about losing my edge. I've also made certain career choices, like picking a smaller start-up with high autonomy and WLB over a more lucrative FAANG role, and I often worry I fucked that up and wasted two years. Reading your posts made me realize that I could be in that 99th percentile, earn 4x what I am making now, and still be chasing that next thing. I hope this doesn't come off as patronizing, and that the perspective is at least interesting.
Assuming you're not religious (as most people on this site aren't), why not just pay for it? A higher class escort is no more likely to have STDs than a promiscuous bar hookup, and even then the chance of catching something is low; for HIV, for instance, on average someone'd need to have unprotected sex with a HIV positive person over a hundred times to catch it.
We just say, “I haven’t had sex” because it’s shorthand and isn’t as emotionally taxing to the audience.
Well, to some extent you’re right. There are things I want that I can’t have. I’d love for capitalism to die, mixed use development to prosper, and gender roles to become like dinosaurs but those are far reaching things that I don’t expect to change.
But for my daily life - I do focus a lot on what is achievable, just insanely hard. Like you said, I’m in the 99th percentile and I’m still focused on being even higher. To some, being where I am seems like success regardless of where you started (and it is to some extent) but I want to go further. It’s not like I couldn’t ever be satiated, it’s just that I wish to do more and be more because I know I’m capable of it.
People are different. Just because I’m miserable doesn’t mean I chose the wrong path. It’s just that some paths aren’t for others. In the same way that bdsm might not be for you - choosing an extremely punishing and grueling lifestyle to climb your way to the top might not be your cup of tea either.
To me, at this moment, success is worth more than happiness. Happiness is quite abstract anyway and goals can be quite concrete. I tend to feel happiest when I feel like I’m getting what I want - and that doesn’t have to mean that I have it already… it just means it’s clear I’m on the right path.
A couple engineering degrees -> offshore drilling engineering work -> business degree -> PM at computer hardware -> IT industry analyst -> primarily external software marketing. But the latter 3 were all ~ten years.
I always wonder how rare this sort of pathway is.
My resume has over 20 years of experience: backend, frontend, platform, k8s, cto roles and much more.
Still Companies automatic filter sort me out because I don't have "the correct" degree unless i tell them that i have been freelancing forever.
Therefore sure, go for it, but no its not the future.
This is the "zuck was a college dropout" all over again.
Specializers seem to be at a huge advantage in this economy. Switching careers to find your specialty may be a good idea. What can yo be among the best in the world at.
For example, if you are a "product designer" aka someone who designs software user interfaces, I fundamentally do not believe you can be exceptional at your job unless you have experience programming front ends.
In web development, writing CSS forces you to think about everything on the page. Everything. Adding interactivity with Javascript forces you to think about user experience on a micro scale. Those details add up, and I have found the best product designers are often those who were previously developers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2013/03/14/why-a...
I feel really fortunate to have made these transitions without much turmoil (though I would argue the costs of doing so are quite high relative to people I know who have had a more linear path).
Music school -> food service -> massage therapy -> software.