Can perspectives on reality be this far apart, or is he trolling?
That's without considering the related huge levels of gatekeeping now happening in hiring. Some experienced people are just too jaded to deal with it.
If someone entering the field now has nothing (e.g. CS degree from a good university, high-quality projects), to help him raise above this noise, it's a fool's gamble.
I'm currently trying out whether frontend development could be for me in my mid thirties. I knew that bootcamp marketing and YouTubers were exaggerating when it came to the jobs and their requirements. But I didn't think there would be so much 'noise' indeed.
I guess that means to only go through with it if you are really, really good and actually enjoy doing it. Not because it promises money and job stability.
I will say we've been trying to hire two seniors for the better part of 6 months and most of the people we end up on the phone with either end up going somewhere (presumably for more $ but it's rare to get a reason), or they do so poorly on the technical screen it makes you wonder if they just used someone else's resume. Nothing in between the two - I've been in my current EM role for probably 3 months, have done maybe 20-25 interviews, and we've extended 4 offers. One accepted then took a different job two days before his start date, one accepted, two declined.
If you want to drop me an email, the least I can do is offer some feedback on your resume / online profile(s).
My friends who work in nursing tell me it's not that there isn't a talent pool, it's that they are short staffed due to hiring limitations more than lack of interest, which then feels like being short staffed because everyone is putting in more time, which makes the environment suck, which does make people quit, especially exaserbated with covid and conspiracy theorists treating them poorly. But until the underlying issues are solved, it's not a real shortage as there are qualified people looking for work but not being hired.
Teacher shortage is similar, not willing to pay them enough(even when school funding is high, teacher pay stays low), and the amount of bullshit they have to put up with seems to go up every year, which is unrelated to amount of people with teaching credentials.
Programming has a similar problem, every company wants senior roles but very few are willing to train, so it's a bottleneck more than a shortage.
Now if only there was a way to monetize a COBOL or ABAP channel on Youtube, hmmm…
*Edited for clarity
Why would you assume he's trolling? In some EU countries the market is insanely competitive due to great free schools churning out coders like crazy due to the tech hype, plus tons of skilled immigrants from developing nations trying to break into the market, so companies are very picky since they get bombarded with applications, so people with little experience or failing the culture fit or whatever arbitrary metrics are used, can easily fall through the cracks and not find a job despite being talented.
The high demand you hear is true, but only for experienced seniors and, since nobody wants to take in juniors and train them this creates a bottleneck of artificial scarcity despite the high supply of less experienced devs.
A troll, or very isolated individual (perhaps both).
Maybe 20 years ago.
Then there's also complete dreamers. I hear football clubs often get guys who've played Champ Manager sending in an application on a whim.
I started to learn software development at 37 years old (shoutout to freeCodeCamp.org!). That was in 2017. I went the frontend route, so I naturally started with html, css, and javascript. Then, since React was already the most popular framework then, I started to learn it and build projects solely on React. I skipped Jquery, pre-ES5 javascript, and things like that. I focused on what was fashionable.
It turned out great for me! I am a very happy and successful (in financial terms compared to what I earned early or expected to earn these days) web developer.
Funny enough, my first job was using Ember. But six months in, the company decided to migrate to React, since it was getting harder and harder to hire people that wanted to work with Ember. Then a couple of React jobs. And now I started a job using Vue. So still learning fashionable things.
Btw, I never noticed ageism against me. I worked on a big Brazilian startup and then on three small American startups. Of course, plenty of the jobs that I applied for and didn't get could be because of ageism, I'll never know, but I consider myself to be successful in getting jobs, so at least I think it is not something that affected the general outcome of my career.
I just feel this field has become incredibly over saturated and it's now a race to the bottom.
About 6x the salary of the job I had before changing careers (I took a pay cut when I started as a junior).
Definitely a race up for me.
Which is why the most coveted positions in this field are in a few corporations that pay top dollar. Getting hired there is a different story in terms of barrier to entry and competition you will face including ageism which is unfortunately very much present.
So for someone non-young who looks at his future 10-20 years and tries to calculate risk, startups should not be taken into account. If one can't get a job at the top corps, one shouldn't enter the field. The risk is just too much.
What?? I think I never read anything in HN that I disagree more with.
I got fired December 1st last year because the company I worked was heading to an IPO and decided that they didn’t want to work with full time contractors from outside the USA anymore. I got paid the whole December month. I started in a new job in January 18th.
Being a good frontend developer is what minimizes the risk of my career, not working on companies that will exist in 20 years. I doubt a lot that I will be working in the same company that I am now in 10 years.
How do you expect to get into the field, not just graduating college with a CS degree? Your advice is like a self fulfilling prophecy. Go work at a startup. You'll learn tons. Sure, job security won't be as good as an established company, but the barrier to entry isn't either.
If you count on your company to never lay you off, you end up like old IBMers who got complacent, found they didn’t have a marketable skillset and when they got laid off and couldn’t find a job, they complained about “ageism”.
I’m 48 for what it is worth.
Java is still fashionable because of android development.
Hiring is tough right now, but it's tough for everyone. But that has lead to a huge increase in wages. Every one of my friends in the industry has seen promotions and 40% pay raises.
The author is telling people to pick up Cobol/Basic/Pascal/MUMPS (and not Go or another modern language) as their first language in 2022? To make themselves more employable? How did this make it to the front page? I get that some people will like the old-man grumpiness in the post but put that aside and focus on the actual advice they're giving - it's just outright harmful career advice.
And also, think about it from first principles - why would people starting their programming careers 15+ years later than most people need to pick different tools? It makes no sense at all.
*One low barries to entry* Companies like Vanguard are desperate for Cobol engineers. They'll train just about anyone. I know quite a few financial analysts of all ages that made the leap to maintain their legacy systems and are doing quite well for themselves. There is little competition for this sort of job
*It might work out well for everyone* Not everyone is looking to do the latest, most marketable work. Imagine someone that is 57 and plans to retire in 5-10 years. This works out great for both them and the employer. The employer gets coverage on their legacy systems, springs free folks earlier in their career to build that sexy, next gen replacement, the employee gets a nice, cushy ride into the sunset. If its planned well the replacement system arrives right around retirement time. Migrate and move to Florida
*Some folks are not looking to ride the dragon* Some folks love the idea of a system that is completely understood and battle tested. Some of these legacy systems benefit from 30-40 years of hardening. Adding enhancements and such have clear, uniform processes honed over decades with very little in the way of surprises. For many folks the idea of come in at 9 and leave at 5 with little volatility is very appealing.
To each their own.
On both sides of the market. There's like 75 times as many javascript job listing as there are cobol ones on popular job boards.
You can get all of those things without leaning on a tech stack with such a small job pool. Most development jobs, especially at large companies, are maintenance-oriented development.
Java is the ecosystem to learn if the three points you listed are important to someone. There are gobs of Java jobs out there, many are battle-tested systems built long ago running in established companies. Another benefit is that there's an actual job market for Java developers, which should be a huge consideration for everyone, because having a stable job isn't the same as having a stable job feel good going to every day.
Because the people hiring people that are relatively inexperienced but not practicing undercover age discrimination tend to be very much not representative of the industry, or opportunities for new programmers, at large; people starting their career late need to specifically target that market segment, not the more general one.
Note: I am not convinced of the specific advice, particularly in language focus, that the author here gives, but it is still less wrong than your suggestion that there is no difference between the optimum approaches for (by age) late- and early-entrants to programming.
The other place that doesn't practice age discrimination as much in my experience is local companies. They have a hard time attracting anyone in the first place so it's the easiest to get started if you just show you're reliable and willing to learn/work.
That is our gain. I've interviewed some great talent for entry level positions who have 20 year experience in weird non-programming things. They lack the technical skills to be worth more than entry level pay, but their resume shows more passion than many of the fresh out of CS (or boot camp) they are competing against. They also have enough background that if their skills develop as expected they will move up the ladder quickly.
The difference is more likely to be in the interview skills. How they can make an effort to relate more with the interviewer (since they won't "naturally" connect through popular videogame tastes, memes, slangs, or whatever).
You can make a 2x2 matrix with "legacy code quality" on one axis, and "language percieved desireability" on the other axis.
You can make truckloads of money, earn much respect, with nearly zero negative ageism, in at least one of those quadrants.
"Building new" versus "maintaining existing" are different mindsets, and often a choice.
For older people just getting started, "maintaining existing" is often the wiser first decision. From there, the particular mix of language and tech stack count, and often the more obscure the better.
Find a good niche.
I would go for C#, Java, or (if you have a masochistic streak) C++. And SQL.
Honestly Go seems to be over its honeymoon period and is probably a safe bet also (there's 500 Go vs 600 C# jobs on my regular UK job search site).
This. Go is an established technology by now. Plus, it is really, really easy to learn and get productive in...I mean, being accessible even to beginners was one of the design goals of the language. One can literally get to grips with its basics over a long weekend.
JavaScript/TypeScript/Node/React/etc is a treadmill.
Rust is on my TODO list to dabble in; at least at a glance the language has a solid conception, a clean syntax for portability, and the language syntax appears to lean towards clarifying much of the undefined behavior optimization other languages get humans into trouble over.
I'd even take mono / C# over Java; but that's just because of the real world enterprise nightmares I've seen... all the fossilized versions of vulnerable libraries everywhere.
Wrote these just after I switch careers ~4 years ago:
1. https://zmsy.co/blog/career-switch/ 2. https://zmsy.co/blog/switching-careers-to-software-engineeri...
I don't think it's a good idea for anyone to learn it now for a job.
If you get semi-technical there are loads of product owner/business analysts roles to fill in.
Let alone if you just want any job there is first line support / second line support.
There are plenty configuration roles which don't require knowledge of coding but ability to learn configuration settings, operating browser, operating software on different angle than just using it - but being able to congfigure it for others to use.
BS.
I'm not one for terse responses but I cannot think of any better way to say it. This author evidently has never worked with anyone outside their graduating class. Without "outside interests" or "family" I predict they will burn out within five years.
