That is interesting definition o making it big. I believe you need to be somewhat on the business side of things to make it big that way. There is a surplus of programmers who can write to spec but how many can spot the thing to build that will be disruptive? That's a different skillset.
You don't need that much money for the kids themselves but I find spending quite a bit on conveniences to compensate for being short on time. Cleaners, gardener, dry cleaners, extended childcare facilities etc.
Even coding my fun projects becomes a hassle and annoying when the precise vision I have is not easily and quickly built with the available tools.
These days I get an infinite amount of pleasure from chopping onions, carefully cooking them until they caramelize, salting/spicing them ever so slightly, and watching the smiles on my friends faces. It's a definite and immediate payoff, and a visceral one at that :)
99% maintaining. I think part of the reason is I want to be paid well and so that naturally filters out greenfield stuff. The well paying greenfield requires greenfield experience in whatever hyperspecific stack they are using.
Looks like a simpler time. You just say what you did. No need to BS it up to sound like you are gods gift to programming. And once you get the job probably no logging every second of your time.
Umm, that time still exists. My resume is exactly like this, just says what I did and doesn't contain BS. IDK what you mean about "logging every second your time" but all government contractors require a daily timecard and did so in the 80s as well (according to my coworkers - I was a kid in the 80s). The reason being was so they know how much time to bill for!!
If you wanna work in hip startups then I guess it's different but if youre like me and working in boring industry like IBM and defense contractors, it's still like this. I'm old and boring, my job is a means to gain money, nothing more.
I don't spend a weekend tweaking css either, just a simple text resume simply formatted that I created in Google Docs and FWIW since I started working in industry my resume has had 90%ish success rate in getting job interviews. Of course, I also have only applied to jobs I'm interested in and I don't job hop like crazy.
You must be quite fortunate to have such excellent connections amongst the privileged elite, most people will never get past "the algorithm" if they don't stuff their resumes full of buzzwords to even get past some python script.
Many companies these days install tracking software on workstations, as well as for programming challenges during the interview process.
IBM and defense contractors are known for the good old boy game, so your mindset is not surprising. I used to work at Ball and was pushed out for complaining about every single face in every single meeting being white, so I'm something of an authority on this subject.
Maybe in silicon valley startups, but not in most places. Honestly.
>I used to work at Ball and was pushed out for complaining about every single face in every single meeting being white
I doubt that's why you were "pushed out..." Or maybe "complaining" was not done in a constructive manner.
(My uncle thinks he gets "pushed out" of all the jobs he's ever had because of some silly reason like this[1] but it's actually because he has poor work ethic and doesn't get along with others. I used to listen to him talk to dispatch when he was a truck driver living with us...uhhh it was embarrassing to listen to...)
Also, I'm a woman myself, FWIW.
[1] stuff like "my boss promoted my coworker over me because she's pretty." That was the last "reason" he had.
Silicone is the stuff of shower sealant and plastic surgery. Silicon is the thing embeded circuits are made of. FWIW. The idea of a silicone valley did make me smile though, thanks for that.
It'd be nice if there were tailored dictionaries you could use in your spell checkers. Like injecting the Doctor/Lawyer/Engineer dictionary so that you don't sit there fighting with your phone to get some acronym to properly post.
For what it's worth, my resume to this day is still this style. I'm around 40, been in various forms of IT since end of high school. My resume has never been more than a bullet point list of my skills, and my experience.
I've gotten almost every job I've applied for based on that + the interview. The few I haven't gotten, weren't because of the resume (I've always asked why, so I could improve).
My success rate is also quite high. After being at one company way too long, I started aiming for jobs over the past 10 years where I wasn’t completely qualified, focusing on learning over money - even though the salary bumps were nice.
The company is getting a steal and I’m learning. I have one more aggressive jump I can do in the next 3 years before I top out in my market without going into management.
That's an interesting argument. I am just starting out as a fresh grad. I applied to three places and got into all three. I did pretty much the same things when trying to land up internships. Maybe, I should try being more ambitious.
Maybe, it really would require a lot of research to determine if one of the two purposed situations are correct.
I wrote my comment to inspire people to look at jobs they normally wouldn't, because I believe applying for a wide range of jobs is a good strategy for learning about the labor market.
The thing that stuck out the most to me in the resume is that he went to university to learn programming languages. That wouldn't happen today. Today you'd either get a book and definitely work through some online materials. How do you proof competency this way? You'll have to point at projects you did and talk a little more about what you did. I'm pretty sure that the set of potentially required skills has exploded. Knowing the right language seems to have been mostly it back then, the rest was likely proprietary to the company. I don't that they had yet another Fortran framework be popular every year. You didn't also need to know the correct test framework, scripting language, several markup languages etc.
While simpler times are attractive, I'm glad we have so much choice.
I know that some of my friends from college went and did a 1-year CS masters program after their science degree. The curriculum was programming and basic CS fundamentals. I think this is pretty close to "going to university to learn programming languages" so I do think it still happens today. That said, I think the way of proving competency would still fall to projects because there are so many ways to take classes on programming these days that simply doing it doesn't mean you've learned anything.
Yes but higher signal to noise ratio back then and programming and computer science were not as much a commodity degree. Now there are so many people on the internet and playing chameleon ;)
You had to seek out jobs in newspaper listings in local or national newspapers (international too). I would get people applying for jobs back in early 90s who thought that having a modem at home and having read one programming book qualified them for the job.
No coding interview in those days, but you were let go in a day or week if you could not perform what you said you could do during your first two tasks.
I do wonder if they higher fast and fire even faster approach isn't ultimately better for everyone than the silly whiteboard interviews many companies do nowadays. At least there was an exact match between the skills because of which you have the job and the skills you need on the job.
> I do wonder if they higher fast and fire even faster approach isn't ultimately better for everyone
I think so and I wish it was the case. It was always frustrating, when I worked at large companies where poor performance wasn't an easily fireable offense, that it led to quality performance not being an easily laudable trait. I've also found in states and companies that are willing to fire bad developers (as opposed to, say, stringing them and the sub par side of the industry along), the cream has an easier time reaching the top. Sadly, due to sympathy for the employee and hate for the employer, many places make it harder for your signal flourish simply because of the protection of the noise.
That's right. A whiteboard interview can be done without getting the interviewee up to date with the company's policies and tools, which might take longer than a couple hours.
