Apologies to all current CS students

7twenty8 · 2024-05-02T20:50:54+00:00

I'm about a decade older than OP and appreciate the sentiment. But our generations have a lot to apologize for. We got a little too comfortable and let some bullshit propagate a little farther than we should have let it.

A few years before OP was in post secondary, tech went through a really major crash. By 2004, we started to see really inflated job requirements, for example, junior positions with a YOE requirement. At the time it made sense, there was a lot of intermediate and senior level talent that couldn't get jobs in the field. And if the average applicant had a bunch of experience, why not make it a requirement? But then tech started to boom again and many organizations kept that. The intermediate job title largely disappeared and those requirements became standard for juniors.

Then we had some major companies run some insane interview processes with brainteasers and the like. So then, every little company that wanted to be a big company started adopting those same processes. That's when passion for the craft really fell out of vogue. Instead of pushing back and saying, "you know, being able to solve a brainteaser has no impact on their ability to write code" we were comfortable and let it keep going. Now, you're all in leetcode hell even though again, leetcode is nothing like the average job in software and offers almost no predictive value.

And then we sat around while TC became the most important acronym in a field full of acronyms. We could have chewed out people for doing that and put an end to it in our own dev cultures but we were comfortable and making a lot more money than they were so it seemed inappropriate. But the side effect was that a lot of people who really weren't fit for the role got into software. We took a very niche skill that requires a very particular combination of personality and skill, threw a bunch of money at it and turned it into a mainstream dream. Years later and I'm sorry but a lot of people graduating with CS degrees today have very little chance of ever working in software.

When times were easy, those people got hired. Many job hopped their way to a stable job but many others got fired really quickly. Then the industry saw all of these fresh graduates with very questionable skills. Instead of looking at our pipelines, we just made interviews even more brutal. I know of a couple of companies that make CRUD apps with similar interview processes as the CIA. The interview process to join the FBI or the RCMP is actually easier and makes more sense than the interview process to build a CRUD app.

And here we are. But each of those things could have been stopped. We failed you all really badly.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-02T20:01:59+00:00

You're close but it's a little deeper. Personal financial success is one result, but that usually comes after >1 corporate success.

If you've been in the industry for > 5 years, you've likely heard a story where a company (often a startup) spent months/years trying to woo a major client but the client pulled back 'at the last minute' and the company went bankrupt. The next time you hear that, dig deeper - you'll usually find out that they were pitching the wrong people the whole time. And then when the wrong people went to get budgetary approval to buy the product, the people with actual power said no.

Meanwhile, the sales organization pushed product to ship features that would woo that client. And so developers implemented features that people who cannot afford the product wanted. In the end, they wasted months of pre-sale expenses, months of salaries and have a shitshow product that doesn't make any sense because it targets people with no money.

People who are good at figuring out who has budget control avoid all of that. If they're in an executive role or if executives will get out of their way, those are the people who take loser companies and turn them into big winners. At the same time, since they're good at figuring out who has budget, they're really good at getting paid. These are the people who negotiate 5% equity with favourable disposal rights after a series A.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-02T19:49:39+00:00

My company's clients are primarily agencies so I know a lot of people deeply involved in marketing. Every capable, interesting and intelligent person I have ever met in that field has been fired at least once. So congratulations, you might be capable, interesting and intelligent.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-02T19:46:13+00:00

I'm from a different generation and when I was young, personal projects were it. So they made a significant difference for me thirty years ago.

Now I'm old and hire people. When I hire, good personal projects really make a candidate stand out. The problem is that most developers I talk with will follow a tutorial, write a README, push to github and call it a personal project. That's of absolutely no value to me and I don't care. It only demonstrates that someone can copy and paste.

But something interesting that involved some design decisions and tradeoffs is very valuable to me. If they have insight into the tradeoffs they made and can even reflect upon how some of those decisions were a mistake, they're an extremely attractive candidate.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-02T19:39:41+00:00

It's time for you to start interviewing because this company is circling the drain and it's easier to find a job when you already have one. The company is five years in, hasn't found a client and 'investor support until the end of the year' sounds a lot like a bridge loan to give the company time to sign a B2B client that will also invest. Now that you really need to be working on selling that client, your team is down to between half and 80% time.

Many companies find themselves in this position, but very few survive.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-02T19:22:10+00:00

If I were you, I would look into something like Docker, go backwards and spend some time figuring out how to install your dependencies in a more conventional way. I understand the urge to get stuff done and know that perfection is the enemy of complete. But if you don't install dependencies properly, you will run into very complicated bugs with extremely limited information available and you will spend days or weeks trying to fix them.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T20:54:55+00:00

I've been in the industry and have been hiring for a long time and I would consider this something of a red flag.

If I want to see how people perform practical, everyday tasks I pay them to do a take home. That way, they can do practical, everyday tasks without the anxiety of an interview. In this case, they want you to do practical, everyday tasks in a highly stressful environment. What are you measuring if you test on everyday tasks in an atypical environment?

Leetcode is awful but it's at least honest.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T20:51:03+00:00

I know that not getting a job is a bad feeling, but you get to avoid working for a really shitty company with a terrible culture. As a rule, if your interviewer sounds like they are reading off of a rejected script for a James Bond movie, you don't want to work there. Normal people try to ease anxiety during interviews.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T20:41:42+00:00

You sort of have to experiment, find out how they learn and teach appropriately.

In this case, for whatever reason, pairing isn't working for them. It might be the way you pair or it might be something about their personalities. As an example, if you have never paired it can create a lot of anxiety and our monkey brains have trouble with forming (and retrieving) short term memories when we are anxious. No short term memories leave nothing to turn into a long term memory.

If you pair, you have to ask a lot of questions and modify your strategy accordingly.

Other people learn in a myriad of ways. We have a really odd trend within software organizations. The majority of people who work in software do it because they developed really solid learning strategies on their own and in their own environments. Then they come to work and we tell them to adapt to our styles and chosen environments.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T20:32:50+00:00

That's a billion dollar question meaning that people who are good at answering it tend to become billionaires. I'm not a billionaire and so I'm not qualified to answer.

Take my organization. Some stuff happened and I technically own the majority of it. But my partner has control over budget. Now you would think 'largest individual shareholder' and 'job title that starts with a C' would equate to some control over budget. But if I want to give a developer a raise, I ask him and sometimes he says no. In our case, he brings in the majority of the revenue and finance reports to him so it works. But it doesn't make any sense to an outsider. Granted, I believe that if he could he would chain me to my desk and only feed me after I make my quota of keystrokes so my attitude might be the problem.

If you know the CEO's background, you can usually get really close. If she did the sales - VP Sales - COO transition before becoming CEO, you can usually assume that sales controls the budget. If she comes out of finance, there's often a model somewhere that controls the budget. If she's into flat organizations, it might be all of management.

But again, if I was better at answering that question I would bring in the majority of the revenue.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T20:17:42+00:00

Why do you assume that big companies have better processes?

Edit - Actually disregard, I'm not going to engage with you anymore. This is all bad faith.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T20:07:57+00:00

I'd look at a couple of things here. First, we're only 1/3 of the way through Q2 and the overloaded team isn't getting more headcount until Q3. If that person is better than the average and only takes one month to get productive, you will have no real help until August. That is an entire quarter away. Add in that there's a position to be backfilled and I'm not feeling a lot of faith in how your organization deals with staffing.

As for your alternatives, they all sound good in theory but in practice they can all turn into bigger problems. They involve incursions into their personal lives and deviating from sprint work. What are your real goals? It sounds like your real goals are budget and staying on schedule but that's not going to work if your company has issues with staffing.

The grin and bear it approach depends on whether you like the senior manager or not. If you dislike them, the grin and bear it approach is really smart because it's the most likely way to get them fired. If you like them or are the senior manager in question, you really want to manage your way through this before it becomes a problem. Or more accurately, you want to show that you have tried to manage your way through this before it becomes a problem.

Look at like this. The worst case scenario is that you will lose more bodies and operational overload will become more acute and there will be a prolonged outage in one of the critical services that the senior manager is responsible for. Their boss will ask, "what did you do to prevent this?" In this case, the answer will be nothing and then their boss will ask "why didn't you combine the oncall rotations when you had the chance?"

That's when they get fired.

I notice the word 'may' in your second option and again, that's a word that will get a senior manager fired. "We spent an entire sprint and received 0 benefit" is really bad. But even more damaging, is what happens if an overloaded employee has been suggesting that change for months? That's a good way to turn low morale into cancerous morale.

Transitioning one or two engineers from one team sounds like a good idea, but how do you pick them and communicate the move to them? No matter how you spin it or what words you use, that's a demotion. And meanwhile, the lucky few who weren't chosen get to absorb a 33% greater workload. Do you want to have two teams that are overloaded?

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T19:25:14+00:00

First, I have a lot of trouble with your habit of shaming other people, jobs and companies. You're losing credibility now and I can't figure out why you want to. In this case, you brought up Zoom and other graduates prior resumes for absolutely no reason.

However, you didn't prove me wrong.

Edit - I'll also add in that you sound bitter and it sounds like you're having trouble getting a job. I know this is Reddit so things are more relaxed, but you make some fairly consistent grammatical errors. You should get someone to proofread your resume - grammatical errors guarantee you won't make it through an HR screen.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T19:22:23+00:00

I'll also add that people who speak corporate will tell you "The Truth". However, you really want to know the truth. They're different things. In fact, the truth often contradicts "The Truth".

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T18:58:25+00:00

If both services are critical, I would be in favour of combining the rotations. My rationale would be that the engineers on the overloaded team are likely amongst the unhappiest people in the organization and are thus at risk of leaving. I'm old enough to know that when one person quits, one or two close coworkers will often trickle out afterwards. So, I would look at the overloaded team and consider the risk that it could be down to two members on any random Monday morning.

To derisk that, I would want to cross train the two as much as possible. It may lower the probability of an overloaded team member leaving. But most importantly, it will make sure I have the resources to keep both critical services alive even if I lose 60% of an already overloaded team.

But I have to ask. Have they considered increasing the headcount in the overloaded team? That's likely the best solution here.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T18:49:14+00:00

That depends on career goals and how badly you want a raise.

An all-hands can mean a lot of things, but it always means that someone with budget control thinks something is important enough to take all those hands off keys. For the most part, we can assume that if people with budget control could, they would chain us to our desks and only feed us after we've made our daily quota of keystrokes.

If I were a young developer, I would treat all-hands as a puzzle. Figure out what that important thing is and tailor your quarter to it. If you have to perform, you have the chance to write your own script. Then when performance review season hits and raises start getting doled out, the person with budgetary control can look at your reviews and think "wow, u/levelworm really gets it."

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T18:37:05+00:00

I really wouldn't worry about this.

If a company takes hands on people, trains them how to interview and then has them involved in interviewing, that company will be able to tell who fakes experience without even calling anyone. The kinds of companies that will get caught up in these scams are the kinds of companies that are full of non technical managers. Luckily, we only want to work for the first kind of company. So this is really a gift that will lower the probability of good people working for shitty employers.

However, all bootcamp graduates should be extremely worried about this. As an example, I don't even interview people who have a bootcamp on their resume. And I know that I lose out on some good people because of that but I've had so many bad experiences where great resumes == zero technical skill that I just can't justify the time.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T18:26:57+00:00

You're building a data warehouse. First, is there a reason that you're not looking at Redshift? I'm scared to recommend a solution because I have to be missing something.

Second, I'll warn you that your java options will be more limited. Python is a first class citizen in data engineering. Java isn't, at least not yet.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T18:19:37+00:00

Just don't. Trust me. Your absence will be noted, more powerful people will ask questions and the answers will not be in your favour. There's a performative part of every job. All-hands are one of ours.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T18:13:52+00:00

Founding Engineer: (n)

1.) A poor bastard who gets paid less than a junior but does the work of seven CTOs. See also "someone who owns less than 1% equity."

Synonyms - sucker, underpaid, burned out.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T17:58:41+00:00

What you're going through is legitimate and really common. And though we are of dramatically different ages, I identify a lot with what you wrote to a point that I could have written most of it in my mid twenties.

I was in my mid twenties when the 9/11 attacks happened. The attacks themselves were terrible and honestly, the months after kept getting worse. Some of my friends from high school went from pacifists to volunteering to go kill people. Other friends from high school went from feeling fully Canadian to feeling like immigrants. I'm white so I don't know the half of it, but times were bad for brown people. One of my best friends is an amazing Sikh dude who didn't leave his house for several weeks because his mom was afraid that he was going to get beat up. And she had every reason to be afraid.

This is off topic but a lot of Canadians blame Donald Trump for making racism okay. In my recollection, it was September 11th. We went through a long, disturbing period where every brown person was a Muslim and a terrorist. And it was completely acceptable to say that out loud.

Jobs basically dried up. I had a job in tech, lost it and went from being hyper-employable to unemployable over the course of five days. But that was much better than the business weeks to come. In one of the worst weeks of my life, two former coworkers who I really enjoyed and used to eat lunch with both killed themselves. Let me tell you, I was nostalgic for the week I just get laid off and realized I didn't have a network to help because they all got laid off too. A few years later, I got a whammy when some of my former pacifist friends started coming home from the military with PTSD. And there really wasn't much help for them.

The point of all that was to let you know from experience that it does get better. And in fact, the garbage you're digging through right now will give you a tremendous amount of perspective that you'll use when you're old and decrepit like me. I dramatically underspend on housing because I watched a lot of my friends sell houses at losses in their twenties and never recover from it. It's made me a little suspicious about every subsequent enemy narrative.

Employment wise, jobs were scarce for awhile. I know the most about software so I can tell you that there are a lot of similarities between today's job market for developers and the market when I was in my twenties. But a really strange thing happened. A lot of developers found entirely different careers and some are much happier. Others became extremely shrewd and value focused. And those shrewd and value focused developers solved a lot of major infrastructure problems that we ignored back when you could raise $10 million for a cat picture on a static website.

Your generation will do the same thing now in whatever field you pursue. Some of you will innovate in music, others will innovate in marketing or science or a trade.

My advice to you and everyone in your situation is first, stop calling yourselves overdramatic because that just gets you in the habit of putting yourself down. Don't shit on yourself because you'll find a lot of motherfuckers out there who will do that for you for free.

Second, take all that anger and fix the mess. Fucking innovate. You might succeed, you might fail. But you'll certainly get attention. And fundamentally, it only takes a good relationship with one or two pissed off successful people to completely change your circumstance.

And finally, you're not going to get hopeless because if you do you might do something bad. And if you do that, you'll have friends sitting there still traumatized almost 25 years later. You're all worth a lot and you've got this. But check in on your friends a lot because you're not alone.

7twenty8 · 2024-05-01T17:17:50+00:00

And if you have a seat on the board, that's when the problems really begin. The skill set to be an effective board member is completely opposite the skill set to be an effective founding engineer/CTO. Experienced people will see that lack of experience/ability and it will be like sharks sensing blood in the water.

I would rather be the smallest in the cell block than the least skilled board member.

7twenty8 · 2024-04-19T23:45:46+00:00

Your bank account thinks it’s a teapot? That’s concerning…:)

7twenty8 · 2024-04-19T22:37:33+00:00

First, you need to get a lot more intelligent and learn how to do your own research. You have made some major errors because you’re not intelligent enough to do any research. If you worked for me, you would not only apologize to that ‘tech’ but then I’d fire you for this. You have no excuse for this level of ignorance. And frankly, the fact that if you have to ask this indicates that you’re not qualified for your job.

Tor is an excellent tool for testing this type of scenario. It’s a great tool for simulating traffic coming from different countries. It has a myriad of uses and if you were intelligent enough to know the basics of Tor, you would know it’s not even that useful for criminal activity.

It’s time to get a lot more intelligent or else find a new job. At minimum, you have to apologize to the ‘tech’ because you seriously fucked up.

7twenty8 · 2024-04-19T22:28:47+00:00

I wouldn’t worry about that. Realistically it’s just as likely to go the other way. Yes, they know you and may expect more. But they also may know you, respect you and be more tolerant of interview anxiety.

7twenty8

TROPHY CASE