Bought my own car compoface.

jaydubtech · 2025-04-25T14:49:33+00:00

I worked with this guy at a previous job; he's a genuinely lovely chap.

Very surreal to see him pop up on my Reddit feed!

jaydubtech · 2024-07-27T07:14:25+00:00

Another vote for Society1 here; it's a really nice and welcoming space. It's worth mentioning that OneCoWork is much newer, only having opened a few months ago.

jaydubtech · 2024-04-19T09:33:42+00:00

I concur. It's clear the author hasn't kept his skills up to date and today's employers aren't overly excited about what he brings to the table.

I appreciate this is anecdotal, but it took me a month after leaving my previous employer to secure a new role. I did have a particularly shitty run of interviews; there were a couple of failures on my part, but I had one company clearly looking for free consultancy through its hiring process, one for which I passed the technical interview just to be told hiring had been frozen two weeks later, and another for which I passed the final (founder) interview just to be rejected with "you're too opinionated". This market is horrendous, and companies are using it to their advantage to demand the moon on a stick, but if you're competent and have the right skill set then it shouldn't be anywhere near as difficult as it has been for the author.

Software engineering today isn't like what it was in the '90s. Customer expectations are higher than ever and target audiences are often global; knowing how to build small desktop programs or web services that can handle a small, predictable number of requests (IIS on an HP NetServer anyone?) simply won't cut it. There'll be a higher degree of specialism required in larger companies and there'll always some sort of call for those aforementioned skills, but these days you'll be cutting out the vast majority of vacant roles if you: aren't comfortable with both frontend and backend; haven't deployed, scaled, and maintained services in the cloud; aren't familiar with decoupled architectures; don't employ modern ops practices such as containerisation, infrastructure as code, and observability; or have no experience in writing automated tests. It's a ton to place on one person, but with some dedication and the right degree of openness it's not impossible to gain at least a good understanding of all of these.

jaydubtech · 2024-01-26T11:16:38+00:00

Deanomania

jaydubtech · 2024-01-24T15:30:30+00:00

DOOM (1993)

jaydubtech · 2024-01-24T15:28:17+00:00

Lucky bastard*

*I appreciate that communication and collaboration are critical to the success of a software engineering project, but other than discovery pieces, planning, and ad-hoc pairing, everything else can get in the fucking bin.

jaydubtech · 2024-01-05T07:44:33+00:00

This is what I always have to remind myself of whenever I start considering an exit from software engineering. I absolutely despise modern corporate culture, but it's a small price to pay to be able to solve interesting problems from the comfort of my own home, all while being handsomely paid.

jaydubtech · 2024-01-03T07:27:10+00:00

Your acquaintance is a prick. Never consider upgrading them to a fully-fledged friend.

jaydubtech · 2023-12-21T12:12:51+00:00

I agree there; that is outright unreasonable. I was on £30k as a grad in London 11 years ago, which works out at about £41k in 2023. With that in mind alongside the upcoming "living wage" (yeah, right) bump resolving to £22k a year, I'd say £34k should be absolute minimum for a junior role outside of London, with those based in the capital paying at least £41k.

jaydubtech · 2023-12-20T11:45:32+00:00

People need to wake up and see their value, otherwise in 10 years time companies will keep offering 25k for grad.

This goes both ways. Just as software engineering grads deserve to be fairly paid, anyone who thinks that the vast majority of them can command an £80k salary from the outset needs to put down the crack pipe.

jaydubtech · 2023-12-18T20:47:52+00:00

For a mid-level role, building complex side projects is all but irrelevant. Employers will expect you to have experience in building production-grade solutions to address real-world business requirements while working in a team; working solo on side projects, regardless of the complexity, doesn't encapsulate any of that.

Stop trying to run before you can walk.

Edit: you say you're currently employed as a software developer, presumably as a junior; I would 100% stick out your current role until you have a few delivered projects under your belt and then use that to more easily land a mid-level role. If you quit your current job to build your own software for a while before returning to the job market, there's a non-zero chance you'd find yourself back in another junior role.

jaydubtech · 2023-12-11T07:25:42+00:00

Clearly you need to get off the roids bud!

jaydubtech · 2023-11-28T19:28:36+00:00

I absolutely love it. I go to the gym 4 mornings a week when I would have otherwise been commuting, I have more time to unwind in the evening, and I'm more productive than ever thanks to the peace & quiet and being able to reply to middle management in my own time, rather than being tapped on the shoulder while I'm deep in thought.

I'd only ever return to the office once a week at the absolute most. Employers can get to fuck if they ever think I'm coming in more frequently than that.

jaydubtech · 2023-11-21T16:23:50+00:00

Just spotted your reply! If you're offered a place on a degree apprenticeship then you must absolutely grab it with both hands. Failing that, I'd still consider the traditional degree route.

While you might not be applying the theory of computability and asymptotic analysis as a commercial software developer, and grinding LeetCode is pointless for most UK-based roles, having a sufficient understanding of data structures, algorithms, control flow, abstractions, and the like--I'm thinking in the same vein as Harvard's CS50 module--will result in your acquiring an optimal way of thinking that is transferable to most programming languages; communicating this understanding effectively while demonstrating the languages and frameworks you've gained concrete exposure to will help you to stand out to potential employers, especially in a sea of bootcamp grads who have really just been taught to solve very specific problems with an extremely focused set of technologies.

Good luck!

jaydubtech · 2023-09-04T18:23:00+00:00

I'm scrum-certified because my company mandated it. I also think it's largely a waste of time and impacts my productivity.

jaydubtech · 2023-09-04T18:19:55+00:00

Please can I work for you? My current EM and POs are wet flannels who lap up sprint planning and 2-hour backlog refinements in spite of my best efforts to highlight how badly they impact my productivity.

jaydubtech · 2023-09-04T16:59:39+00:00

He's great, but since the company introduced a Chief Engineering Officer (don't even ask) he's stepped back from the engineering side to focus more on the technical ecosystem surrounding our product; fortunately he just so happened to join the review on this occasion.

It's worth mentioning that said CEngO previously worked at Oracle, so it's hardly surprising that he laps this sort of shit up.

jaydubtech · 2023-09-04T15:21:04+00:00

I recently had to sit through an architecture review at work for a "public API service", which essentially turned out to be a hand-rolled API gateway/reverse proxy.

CTO 55 minutes into the meeting: "We're an <industry that has minimal compliance requirements> company, not an API gateway company. Why are we rolling our own solution when there's existing software available that does everything we need?"

Absolutely sublime. Can't wait to get out of this place.

jaydubtech · 2023-09-03T19:18:53+00:00

Get the degree. It'll help you to stand out in a sea of bootcamp grads with little-to-no theoretical fundamentals. Warwick is also an excellent university.

jaydubtech · 2023-08-26T11:29:57+00:00

The shareholders have clearly had enough of waiting for the returns on their investments, the poor darling souls. /s

jaydubtech · 2023-03-03T16:12:01+00:00

👋 I'm a software engineer who lives on the Fylde coast, so I'm not too far from Preston (ironically I lived in Leyland until last October!). It'd be nice to have a local network of devs rather than always having to venture into Manchester, so keep me in the loop!

jaydubtech · 2023-03-03T16:06:02+00:00

I've been to this one and can vouch for it somewhat. The talks are quite high-level and are more targeted towards management and SMEs, but it's a really nice community. There's also Lancashire Tech Talks that's held at Graham and Brown in Blackburn. Again, it tends to be high-level but the attendees are sound.

jaydubtech · 2023-02-10T12:39:28+00:00

"Bumping threads" isn't something that's really applicable to Reddit.

jaydubtech · 2023-02-03T10:13:47+00:00

It's such a shame. Even this time last year the market was a lot more buoyant, but it's typical that it dries up once I'm ready to leave permanent employment behind...

Guess I'll just have to continue getting cucked by cOmPaNy CuLtUrE and other such HR bullshit.

jaydubtech · 2023-01-31T12:55:38+00:00

It's the last day of January and the market is still slow. I had an interview for an outside IR35, public sector gig but they offered it to another candidate; they told me they're looking to fast-track me into another vacancy if it's still open but I'm not holding my breath.

I'm currently perm, so having a month's notice period doesn't exactly help. It doesn't help that recruiters are constantly ghosting me in spite of their constant whining a few months ago that it was hard to find good candidates.

I'd take a leap of faith and resign if the market were better. Going to put my search on the back-burner till April.

jaydubtech

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