theworld572

I'm not equating killing yourself with not having children. Of course they are not the same. I'm simply reflecting irq11's logic back at him: if the only measure by which you judge a solution is how much CO2 emissions are reduced then killing yourself is the best solution.

irq11 does not consider the costs of implementing a world-wide child reduction policy. A combination of solutions including education, birth control, electric cars, reducing flying, solar energy etc. is FAR more realistic than the "no kids, no cars" approach. He complains about harsh reactions but he is the one who started this off from a very antagonistic perspective that everybody is just a mindless consumer while he is the arbiter of harsh truths that people are too weak-minded to admit to.

So you're basing it on nothing?

Based on what?

Sure but who is denying that you don't need to pay the other 95k? The article is arguing against a straw man. Nobody is saying that electric cars will be the end-all solution to climate change. Literally no one.

You know what would be EVEN more effective at fighting climate change than not having children? Committing suicide.

But people don't want to listen to the harsh truths. They would rather consume their way out of the problem with electric cars, education for third world countries, reforestation, solar power and other false hopes.

> To this end, it’s worth pointing out that the only item on that list that relates to family size is midway down, where it talks about family planning for the third world

"Educating Girls" and "Family Planning" are ranked 6th and 7th on the list (out of 80). So I don't know why you are saying that its midway down the list?

So, while you sit there waiting for the perfect solution (which is completely unrealistic) people actively working on real solutions.

> spending billions on something that gets you from 100 to 99.9 you're wasting time and energy that you don't have.

Of course those numbers are just made up but they are also very far from reality. Solutions to climate change have actually been ranked in terms of total cost and total amount of CO2 reductions and electric cars come in at the 26th most cost-effective solution to climate change:

https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/transport/electric-vehicl...

I really don't know why climate change seems to inspire so many people's inner contrarian where they just want to deride any attempt at preventing it because they haven't solved the whole thing in one go. There is no perfect solution, we are not going to fundamentally transform the world to a car-less society, or eliminate meat consumption.

Its like if you buy an electric car, somebody tells you "BUT you still fly!".

If you stop flying, somebody tells you "BUT you still eat meat!".

If you stop eating meat somebody tells you "BUT you still heat your home with gas!"

If you switch to electric heating based of clean energy sources somebody tells you "BUT you still buy avacados imported from across the world!"

It never ends.

Electric vehicles are ranking number 26 in terms of total cost and total atmospheric reduction of CO2:

https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank

So its not a talisman, but it is certainly a real step in the right direction. I don't hear anybody saying that electric cars means we can just forget about the other causes of climate change?

A very contrarian article that just argues against a straw man. I suspect people who write articles like this are usually the ones who revel in being smarter than everybody else.

So whats the alternative? Do nothing at all?

If you have $100k left to pay on your mortgage, and somebody offers you $5k towards the mortgage are you going to tell them they're offering you a "false hope because you'd still have $95k left to pay"?

EDIT: This is also known as the "nirvana fallacy": because the solution is not perfect - that means it is worthless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

they weren't good culture fits

Credentials - in my experience they just aren't a thing in software development. Apart from juniors just starting out I've never once seen a CV or a job application that mentioned any kind of programming credentials or certifications (if I understand you're meaning of "credentials" correctly?). For getting into a new area of development some ways to prove yourself are:

1. Contribute to open source codebases

2. Work on side projects

3. Convince your existing company to use a new technology so you can work on it in your day job.

Maybe others? I can't think of anything else right now..

Github profiles can be a bit hit or miss - I think probably most people don't really look at them. However if you have made meaningful contributions to open source codebases on github then you can link to those in your CV, or mention it on your covering letter or just mention it in the interview.

No, do not do a bootcamp. As others have said bootcamps are for people who have never coded before. If you want to up-skill and get a job using more current technologies, then you can self study in the evenings and weekends (if your circumstances allow for it) or you can quit your job and spend a few months learning a new technology/platform/language etc. (again, if your circumstances allow and if you have enough savings to do this). It sounds like you are itching for a more fast paced (to use a cliche) environment so I would recommend you start looking at other companies to work for while trying to learn the skills necessary for those jobs.

That said, if its mainly salary that you're concerned about then 150k is a pretty good amount. Even in more "trendy" companies - there is a ceiling to how much developers earn, AFAIK the only way to earn more than ~200k as a developer is to work for a FAANG company.

Finally, don't think that just because you heard one story about somebody who got a 150k job straight out of bootcamp that this is the norm. The reality is most bootcamp grads find it extremely difficult to get a job because there is so much competition for junior developer roles these days.

How about volunteering to teach disadvantaged people how to code and help them get a job? For example https://www.hackyourfuture.net is in a few European cities, might not be in your city but perhaps you could try starting one where you are?

You could well be right about that.

Hey, your CV looks good, I wouldn't worry too much about the template, layout etc. at the end of the day employers decide to interview you based off of you experience and education - not because you picked a nice font for your CV.

That said a couple things you could change are:

1. Add a few sentences at the top, saying who you are and what kind of job or company you're looking for. i.e. "I am a systems engineer with experience coding in Python and am looking for software developer roles."

2. Your work experience is far more important than your education, so move the education part down so in between "recent work experience" and "volunteer work".

3. "Software Specialist"? Is that your official title? Can you just change the title to something else like "Software and Systems Engineer"? The difference is tiny but could make it a lot easier getting past recruiters and HR.

4. Emphasise the programming part of your current role in both your CV and when you talk about it in interviews.

Finally, pick what kind of a developer role you want - your CV says you know python, git, sql, linux - so maybe you want to be a backend python / django developer? If so start a github profile and contribute to open source python projects.

Personally I have an "Open Source Contributions" section on my CV with links to each codebase I have contributed to and a short description of what I did. This kind of thing will be extremely helpful for you starting out.

The best comment so far!

lmao, I'm pretty sure the commenter said "if he had built this in the US", rather than "if he had flown across the atlantic"

Most likely because developing a web app using a react frontend and an API backend adds a significant amount of work for arguably little to no benefit, especially not at MVP stage.

I've been on both sides of this game - worked as a developer and also worked as a penetration tester. I've seen pen testers laugh at the stupid vulns that developers introduce and I've laughed at a few myself. But I've also seen the deadlines as a developer, bugs that are bringing the whole system down and costing the company lots of money, legacy code that is extremely hard to understand and difficult to even get your feature working.

Those on the security side often only think "its really not that difficult to make it secure, just follow these guidelines and you'll be fine", but they don't realise the myriad of other issues that the developers are dealing with.

EDIT: Security needs to be encouraged from the top down. If management is onboard with follow secure practices then they need to also understand that that means things might take a little longer to complete.

Good to know.

I never said I wanted software engineering to be fun. I have worked on 4 different teams that followed Scrum and all four of those teams suffered from the same problems - low productivity and poor management. The most entertaining was a recent place I worked where we had a certified Scrum master who had been "trained" by one of the two founders of Scrum, when I joined I told him about some of the bad experiences I've had with Scrum and he said "yeah that annoys me, those teams are not really following scrum and so teams think that scrum is bad but really they are not doing it right". Of course in the months to come I realised that we ended up with the same exact issues I saw in previous teams. In contrast theses problems were just non-existent in teams that did not follow a set methodology.

Scrum is just not a good way to manage a team. I find Scrum to be a lot like religion - it means different things to different people but its evangelists always have a pre-prepared answer to every possible criticism, usually containing lots of jargon, buzzwords and double speak.

That sounds like typical scrum-enthusiast double-speak to me! :D

https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-scrum

"This Guide contains the definition of Scrum. This definition consists of Scrum’s roles, events, artifacts, and the rules that bind them together."

Definitions, Rules, Roles, Artifacts etc. Sounds pretty authoritative to me. If it wasn't authoritative, how would you even know what SCRUM "really" is? You cannot say both that SCRUM is not authoritative and lets you do what you want, and then also say "you're not doing scrum correctly".

Whats the point of SCRUM then? If all it does is to tell you "do what makes sense" why do we even need it? Thats a rhetorical question, I already know the answer is that we need it in order to keep SCRUM consultants, certifications, training etc. a profitable business.

Whether or not you think SCRUM is good or bad, you can't argue that a sizeable (if not the majority) amount of companies are "not doing it right" and that a sizeable (if not the majority) amount of developers loath working in SCRUM teams. So wouldn't we just be better off if the industry ditched SCRUM entirely?

My biggest criticism of Agile and Scrum is that it assumes that you can just plan out how a feature will work by sitting in a meeting and talking about it. Then spend the next two weeks implementing that plan. Software development almost never works out so neatly.

What really happens is that you have a set of requirements and an idea of how you are going to implement the feature. You start working on it, maybe you discover that there is a whole area of code that needs updating in order to allow for your feature to be implemented. This adds on another week of work required.

In a common-sense based development team, what usually happens is the developer has a quick work with the project manager and maybe other devs who need to be involved and says "Hey, I've found out that we need another week to complete this feature because X needs refactoring, do you still want me to continue with this?" then the PM either says "Yes this feature is important, even if it will take another week" or "No, the feature is not important enough to be worth spending another week on". Its really not rocket science.

In SCRUM what usually happens is the SCRUM master will tell you that the rules say that we have already committed to a set amount of work this sprint and that extra week of work falls outside the scope so we should create another card for the extra work and consider this card blocked.

The whole idea of having a rule for what to do in that situation just seems absolutely crazy. Just do whatever makes sense! Its really not that difficult.

Making a move to embedded programming sounds like a good idea, but I think its definitely possible that after a few years of doing that you will get bored too. You say that you "don't want be stuck writing code to automate business processes for the rest of my life" but will embedded be any better? I don't have much experience with embedded stuff beyond arduinos but I'm sure there is an equivalent complaint in that area like "I don't want to be stuck implementing input/output specifications given to me"? I think the HN / developer crowd emphasises interest and passion in one's work to an unrealistic degree.

My own personal solutions for this dilemma are:

1. Try and make as much money as you can and save so that you might be able to retire early, or at least retire from development and take on a less-well paying but more fulfilling job.

2. Work less (i.e. part time 3-4 days a week) and spend the remaining time volunteering or doing something you find more fulfilling.

3. Work freelance so you at least have a lot of variety in the projects you work on.

> Nope, this would be to move to London.

Ah ok, that makes a lot more sense then.

> So, this would be a developer with ten years experience looking for essentially "any" developer role in London.

Really? So you have been working in Bristol as a developer for 10 years but can't manage to get a job in London? Thats mad. At what stage to you get rejected? i.e. CV rejected, initial phonecall or in person interview? Do they give you any reasons?

This seems to me like a real failure of late stage capitalism. Similar to how factories in the soviet union were overstaffed with middle managers who barely lifted a finger.

I might be wrong but this just seems almost like a ponzi scheme of some sort - keep moving up the middle management chain and getting somebody else to replace you. No offense to darrenwestall, I'm hating the game not the player.

I studied maths and computer science at university for precisely this reason - I heard many programmers say they wish they knew more mathematics. Honestly there have been very very few times where my knowledge of mathematics has directly helped me with coding, possibly even none.

Unless you continue to study mathematics, which you will likely only do if you stay in academia, you will forget what you've learned! It boggles my mind to think that I used to know advanced calculus, group theory, linear algebra etc. I have forgotten all of it bar the very basic concepts behind them.

That said where it has helped me is in logical thinking - stuff like abstractions as the article describes. Writing mathematical proofs requires logical precision which is very helpful when programming. If you spend enough time studying mathematics then eventually some of the core concepts will sink in and it will help in thinking of solution. Though I would not advise that you study it with the aim of thinking "How can I use this knowledge in programming" - its not directly applicable unless you are doing graphics programming, AI, data science etc.

> I can get to London by 9 if I get the first train in from Bristol, so travel isn't a huge issue

> a few of them were for companies hiring in my exact stack, while also saying they sponsor visas

So you are looking for a job at a very large company which will be ok with you commuting from Bristol to London and that will also sponsor you to move to America?? Thats an extremely specific company-search, I don't think its fair to say that that is any way representative of what its like for senior developers to find jobs.

Also google maps shows that the train from Bristol to London takes 1 hour 40min, so assuming it takes 30mins to the station on both sides, thats about 5 hours a day spent commuting, and I haven't even looked at the cost either. Even if you get 1-2 days a week working from home thats going to be a lot of travelling, as an employer I would be worried that after 6 months or so you will quit because of long commute times.

> The problem can be addressed by removing the "employee mindset" from potential programmers.

This is very true and a nice way of explaining it. Also the people who got hired 5-10 years ago with no college degree are the ones who taught themselves PHP in high school and built sites with it. Then they taught themselves Java/Ruby/Python/Javascript etc. Most coders like that think "I want to learn coding to built X" and they go ahead and do that, employers can see that kind of initiative and drive.

Which is a very different mindset from "I want to pay $X amount to get trained to be a web dev because I want a job as a web dev".