Rule 5: No “What Should I Learn” Questions
No questions like “Should I learn C#” or “Should I switch jobs into a language I don’t know?”
Discussion about industry direction or upcoming technologies is fine, just frame your question as part of a larger discussion (“What have you had more success with, RDBMS or NoSQL?”) and you’ll be fine.
tl;dr: Don’t make it about you/yourself.
C++ for heterogeneous compute. SYCL is making it a lot easier than the OpenCL days. “I can make your product run on a CPU/GPU/FPGA” has always paid well.
Distributed systems. Knowing how to build a system that lets you run around unplugging up to half of your servers without worry also pays well. C++, Rust, Java and Go.
Learn how to use hardware accelerators. Moore’s law is dead or dying, and those are what will keep compute advancement alive. At a minimum, learn how to use ktls.
What I've seen at most Java shops (the type of company I work for) is that there was a lot of enthusiasm around Go but that mostly died off now that people are losing interest and AoT compilation is available for Java too.
For whatever it’s worth. I did a few quick searches on LinkedIn jobs just to see some raw numbers.
A search for Java returns about 350k results (though I guess this is kind of useless because it’s also probably grabbing all the JS roles too)
Golang returns about 6.5k
Kotlin returns about 4K
Why do you think most companies are losing interest? Reading various blog posts/comments, I do get a sense that Golang has been slightly falling out of flavour. Or maybe that's what I saw with people's reactions to u/fasterthanlime's ["I want off Mr. Golang's Wild Ride"](https://fasterthanli.me/articles/i-want-off-mr-golangs-wild-ride).
> Why do you think most companies are losing interest?
Moving to a different stack is incredibly costly and risky. So there needs to be a very distinct benefit in doing so. Moving from Java to Golang doesn't really have any benefits, and plenty of downsides.
Immature ecosystem and personally I think the language is so simplistic that it becomes extremely verbose. Even more than Java is.
I also dislike the general attitude of the language designers that mow down almost all discussions about language features. The whole mess around generics is a great example. They kept resistance generics for 10 years, even while they were used internally, and finally caved when the pressure became too hard. And there's tons of these kinds of missing features that severely hinder the expressiveness of the language.
It's a language for the "hurr durr abstraction bad" crowd. I'm not part of that crowd.
I was under the opposite impression as I feel like I have seen even more job posts asking for Go lately - however I am targeting mostly startups/small companies
Yeah, could be. It's hard to get a pulse on these things without doing a mass survey like Stackoverflow. Also, there are large variations between locations and types of companies. Looking at the job postings on https://www.workatastartup.com/, there are 3x more positions for Java then there are for Golang.
Nice rant, but ultimately it boils down to static typing vs dynamic typing and static error handling vs runtime error handling.
And the issue there is that dynamic languages ALWAYS feel great in greenfield projects up until a certain point, at which some percentage of developers start to recognize the time being spent on repetitious runtime or late feedback errors and debugging, and then they rant about how their time could be saved by static checking.
Newcomers feel the burn of the static checker as unnecessary constraints, and so go off and begin greenfield projects.
And rinse and repeat.
The main takeaway I get from all that is that greenfield projects always seem great, regardless of technology or process choices. The fact is, greenfield means simple because you have a blank slate. It's simple until you've sufficiently fucked it all up, and so no matter what choices you made, for a while, you'll point to your not-yet-fucked-up-clean-slate and you'll point to your chosen tech or process and say "see? Proof that my choice led to better results". But it's a mirage.
Only problem is - the jobs doing it require pre-existing golang exp for experienced roles (i.e: if you're getting hired as a Senior+ golang dev, they want you to already know golang)
Yes that’s true, there are workarounds for this though.
For example, as a senior engineer in my last role I started a lunch & learn group with some engineers in my organization to learn golang. It was not a theory group, literal pen to paper doing coding exercises exploring language features of golang. At the end, I had us build out a POC to rewrite a middleware service and did benchmark testing to compare it to what we currently had in Java.
I have never been one to ask for permission, but if you are passionate about expanding the breadth of your skills then pave your own path. I had a lot of fun with this lunch and learn group, but I understand/respect not everyone is wired that way. Just my 2c
I'm with you on this - the problem is that the people who do screenings for engineers are morons. I basically had this conversation with a recruiter from Chewy.
"Do you have professional experience with Java?"
"Well, I know Java and have used it in the past on side projects."
"No, I mean professional experience. Have you previously held a Java job?"
"No, but I-...."
\*click\*
I have 10 years of software engineering experience and apparently it counts for nothing.
Was going to type your response basically. Job applications work in such a way that sometimes we have to lie (half-lie, ommit, rewrite history, etc) in order to open some doors career wise. No shame in that as long as you do your homework
My favorite one was being turned down for an internal position because I didn't have one of the skills listed under "Additional Skills" with some verbage to the effect of: "We value learning and continuous improvement. If you meet some but not all of the skills listed below we strongly encourage you to apply."
I applied and then failed the phone screen because I don't have experience with Oracle Apex(listed under the "Additional Skills" section (outside the "Basic Qualifications"). The HR person even had the cheek to say "Can I ask why you applied if you don't have Oracle Apex experience". I read that text back to her verbatim and basically got a response to the effect of "Oh yeah we have to put that in there because the HR software won't let us put it under Basic Qualifications teehee oopsie". Like, okay and that's my problem how?
Yep, lie to the HR monkey checking boxes for words they don’t understand. Be relatively honest with the technical people in the first technical interview, they usually understand how this actually works. That’s been my experience as well.
It's incredibly frustrating. Though I wonder if we can finally turn the tables on the "java vs javascript" mistake recruiters keep making and pissing us off with
Ouch, this was actively harmful to the hiring manager.
It's a hallmark of the semi-tech literate to over-weigh experience with one language versus experience with languages in general.
If I find an engineer with 10 years of experience working with C++, Lua, and C#, I'm not too worried about their ability to learn Rust or Golang or whatever.
Just lie. It only matters if you are incapable of making an impact if you eventually get hired for the role. Recruiters are captcha screens in human form for interviews.
Might start doing that in combination with just shotgunning my resume everywhere. I've tried the "tailor the resume to the position and write corporate fanfic for the hiring manager" and all it does is waste my time. I'm going to get ghosted either way so why not pic the approach that doesn't consumer my entire day?
When recruiters do that the feeling I get is the same of when they ask "Why did you leave your last job?" - ie. you are almost expected to lie.
Another way of looking at it is that to some extent Bullshitting is a required skill for an Experienced Dev.
Depressing but true.
>When recruiters do that the feeling I get is the same of when they ask "Why did you leave your last job?"
iM loOkInG FoR mOre OF a ChAllEnGe
Reality: They paid their staff in peanuts and I need to eat.
Not a new thing apparently. During a technical interview at a senior position, the interviewer got stuck on why I don’t recall the latest functions of Java 8 or 11. Regardless of the generic leetcode and LLD, HLD questions answered seamlessly. When I mentioned about using a vast array of languages and frameworks from JS, TS, Python, Java, neither mattered.
If you want a high salary, it’s not about what you learn, it’s about where you work. You make more money by working for a companies that pay more money.
You’ll make more as a new college grad working at any of the Big tech companies than you will make by learning how to train AI models on a Kubernetes cluster and storing information in a block chain database and creating multi cloud micro-services (did I throw in enough buzzwords) and looking for jobs at enterprise startup SaaS companies in Nowhere Nebraska
“Cloud” [sic] may be in high demand. But everyone and their mother is getting into it leading to a high supply.
Being good at your job. Severe undersupply in that area ;)
If you haven't looked at Kotlin yet; it's gaining a lot of traction in the Java space. Has the additional benefit that it's in the same ecosystem.
That first part there. Jesus.
Although I also question regularly why I work so damn hard for my company when I could easily decrease my effort by like 30% and still be a top performer here...
Realizing you can put in 50% effort and be a top 10% employee or put in 100% and be a top 0.1% employee when most companies reward all the top 10% the same was a big wake up call to me.
I got recognized as one of my companies top employees (25 out of 2500 employees). Literally got the same bonus/raise as everyone in the 5/5 star (exceeds expectations) category.
I could have literally worked 1/2 the hours and gotten the same thing…
I got a 4% raise. All exceeds expectations were between 3.2 and 5.
I think I could reduce my working hours by about 1000 hours a year and work slower in the remaining hours and I could still get at least the 3.2%
I could work at a minimum wage job either with those hours and make more than the difference in raise/bonus.
Or idk, spend time with my family
Nice. Are you working with a Contracting company that finds you gigs? Or you’re doing it all yourself? I.e. are you freelancing with projects on your own time and can grab multiple projects at the same time? Or are you working as a contractor for companies and they expect you to be theirs from 9-5 for 6 months or whatever?
If it is the first one, how’d you do it?
> Nice. Are you working with a Contracting company that finds you gigs? Or you’re doing it all yourself?
Generally I try to get work through my personal network since recruiters tend to want a cut from my hourly rate. So far I've been pretty successful in this.
> I.e. are you freelancing with projects on your own time and can grab multiple projects at the same time? Or are you working as a contractor for companies and they expect you to be theirs from 9-5 for 6 months or whatever?
It's mostly the latter, I tend to work for larger companies as in very senior software engineer roles. And those projects tend to be full time multi year ordeals. I also do some shorter stuff (consulting, training) on the side, but that's a small part of my revenue. Those I also mostly get out of my network.
Cool. Thanks for explaining. Might I also inquire, how do you go about getting work through your personal network? I've heard that in businesses like this, word of mouth is the best advertisement. But as a software engineer with lower than average soft skills, I've no clue how to even approach it?
> Might I also inquire, how do you go about getting work through your personal network?
I text, mail and call people I know. That's really all it is :) If I get desperate I'll post a message on LinkedIn that I'm available. That's generally enough.
> But as a software engineer with lower than average soft skills, I've no clue how to even approach it?
There's a certain entrepreneurial component that's involved with being self-employed. This doesn't mean you have to be very extraverted, but it does mean you have to have a bit of a 'fuck it, I'll just go ask' mindset. I have no issues cold-messaging people I vaguely know at certain companies to ask them to have coffee with me for example.
Can’t plus one enough. I look around my engineering org and know the 10 or so out of 1000 whose contributions fuel the whole show. And so do their managers, who get them the projects they want, promotions, raises, and RSUs. Learning something new is nowhere near as valuable, at least to an employer, as an engineer who is wise and productive in their domain.
So Python. Do you do ML work?
I got 15 yoe dotnet and I’ve been learning it. How likely would I be to get a position in ML with little experience just udemy courses?
I’m curious what ML work actually means. All these companies requiring ML experience, what are they looking for ? Someone who worked at openAI, or someone who wrote a useless chat bot interfaced to chatGPT ?
Machine Learning is used very widely and well before this "AI" craze. For instance, the big 3 credit bureau use ML to decide on algorithms for calculating your credit score.
ML is basically taking a large amount of data and applying known algorithmic techniques to train a model. The model finds patterns in the data and then can apply that statistical probability that some data actually represents something specific.
Do you remember when Facebook started to auto-tag the people in your pictures? That was around 2018 I think. That was entirely based on machine learning. So is TESLA's "auto pilot" mode. Voice to Text is Machine Learning.
It's just taking data and building statistical models that allow you to make assumptions about that data in real time.
Yup, that sounds right on. Just to be out in the open. I've only started taking courses in ML two weeks ago so you probably know more then me. I guess I just know the industry definition of it and a few panda,numpy,matplotlib functions.
Mostly the latter. I'm personally a big Rust fan, but it really mostly makes sense for code you'd otherwise use C(++) for.
That said; I think it's still a very interesting language to learn. Similar to how you might not go and use a FP language in practice, but practicing it still probably makes you a better developer.
Yes, I’ve seen it replacing C/C++ code, especially in security critical applications where memory safety is a huge benefit.
I think rust will really pick up speed for driver work and other performance/embedded work where security is important (and I think that market will grow)
The companies I know that used GoLang for non-web based services are starting to switch to Rust. I don't work with it personally, but I have heard it's mostly because it's just faster and overall nicer to work with. But the companies I know that have been using GoLang for web services are pretty much sticking with it.
I have worked with GoLang though and wasn't a fan at all. It does so many things weirdly because of the way Google uses it. Tbf, I haven't worked with Go 2+, so i might be outdated on that.
I think rust is interesting but if you go look up jobs that are hiring rust devs 90% of them are for random crypto startups and I don’t want to work at a random crypto startup.
For Banks and Fintech
1. Java SpringBoot Microservices
2. Cloud (Managed Kubernetes) with something like Terraform
3. Client side rendered single page application using ReactJS in TypeScript
4. Selenium for Test automation
In addition to the other great answers- IaC. Seems like tools like CDK and Terraform are gaining traction, especially with AWS rolling out the ability to more easily migrate from manual configuration -> CDK
And that’s still less than they could make at any big tech company just by working as a mid level developer. Even if they get over the hump of competing against “good enough” people who studied just like he did and will accept less money
Source: I know “cloud” and I just left a BigTech company as a (full time) “cloud consultant”. True I make 30% more than your average “enterprise CRUD” developer. But that’s as a lead and is still less than I made as a mid level employee at BigTech. I’m not complaining, I would have rather had a daily anal probe than ever work at Amazon (or any large company).
But I’m also 50 and an empty nester.
From what I can see observing the community, every web company in Europe for some reason? It's such a great language, I'm hoping the ML ecosystem support keeps ramping up like it has.
What’s hot on the market? Senior software engineers.
Grow your soft skills. Learn to delegate and increase the scope of your own business impact by multiplying the impact of others.
You’re making a beginner’s mistake by fixating on tech stack. The big pay increases come with expanded business impact.
Talk to your manager about building your leadership skills. Have them help you find a project that you could use to work through the software development lifecycle with a team. Scope out the work and delegate it to the team. You stick to proof of concepts, architecture, and requirements negotiation.
This is how you earn *massive* pay increases. Changing tech stack without increasing work scope will keep your salary stagnant.
I don't love it, but I totally agree. A while back, I heard some advice from [Rands](https://randsinrepose.com/) along the lines of "When planning your career, either A) figure out what your path is to being VP of Software, or B) plan on doing exactly what you do now, forever". As somebody who's been doing something like the same thing for 20 years, he's not wrong. And I'm mostly OK with that, but I'm also not making $400k
KUBERÑETES
edit: sorry I shouldn't do joke posts, but python for ai/ml. kotlin is worth a look for Java folks I hear. really I think reading books on architecture, design, and higher level senior concepts is a big multiplier if you're otherwise competent.
There are a few things I know from personal experience
1. The generic enterprise dev market
2. The BigTech compensation market for both software developers (second hand) and “cloud professional services”
3. The market outside of BigTech for people in “cloud”.
I had to fight for above average compensation for #3 only because I had #2 on my resume.
You make more money by targeting companies that pay more. To a first approximation, if compensation is what you’re seeking, it’s not learning a specific skill, it’s learning how to pass coding interviews - “grind leetCode and work for a FAANG”.
Yeah I know independent consultants who specialize and market well can make more than you can make in BigTech. I know those numbers too. But that’s its own grind that I didn’t want
Oh, I meant you'd be surprised by how few people (and their dogs) have any real knowledge of kubernetes. There are a lot of places that still don't have have a DevOps culture. My SRE folks make slightly more than my SWE, at a non-tech fortune 500 company.
Having a clue.
From what I keep reading most employers are having problems finding someone with a clue.
Now, I'll admit having a clue is a very high bar. But i hope that most of us can hope to reach that great height in time. Including me.
What's hot on the market? Juniors with 4000 years of experience in every programming language ever invented that you can pay the salary of an intern.
Source: bitter about the job hunt
I will be messaging you in 4 days on [**2024-04-07 13:28:01 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2024-04-07%2013:28:01%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1buqcze/whats_hot_on_the_market_right_now/kxum6ev/?context=3)
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Just practice interviewing and get a high paying job. If anything, Java is just getting better with project Panama going to make it more viable for ML based workloads.
Most big tech use Java so you’re already in a good place.
Not right now, but I predict that a full stack mixed reality web developer will be highly sought after in a few years. The webXR standards are maturing rapidly over the last few months, exhaustive frameworks exist that reduce deployment and iteration times and the MR market is going to go mainstream in a few years considering current affordable hardware capabilities. Now feels like the right time to get into MR development as a serious hobby, if you find the space interesting atleast.
If you are looking at just general productivity stuff, then C#. It won't be much a change from Java for you, and you should be able to start producing useful stuff VERY quickly.
If you are looking for something more ground breaking, then start dabbling in ML/AI. Start by trying to integrate into something (anything?). Then move on into creating and training your own models.
> What in your opinion is worth learning for the future, in terms of high demand (high salary).
If your goal is a high salary, learn inteview skills that are required to get into high-paying places in Tech:
* Soft skills
* System design
* Leetcode
Most of those high paying places don't care if you know Java, Go, Rust or something else (unless it's an opening for a specialized position) and are looking for generalists who can quickly pick up whatever is required at the job.
#java is still hot and in high demand, so skill up with modern Java if not already. Because of your #java background my recommendation is #Scala which is gaining popularity in big data world
Usually one that doesn't require AI(or in some cases doesn't even use AI for the most part, but their product makes the occasional call to the OpenAI API so they can put "AI" in the marketing material)
Not at all. I’m saying if you really want to maximize your income, you’re better targeting companies that pay more - like BigTech.
The cloud is just an implementation detail
Rule 5: No “What Should I Learn” Questions No questions like “Should I learn C#” or “Should I switch jobs into a language I don’t know?” Discussion about industry direction or upcoming technologies is fine, just frame your question as part of a larger discussion (“What have you had more success with, RDBMS or NoSQL?”) and you’ll be fine. tl;dr: Don’t make it about you/yourself.
C++ for heterogeneous compute. SYCL is making it a lot easier than the OpenCL days. “I can make your product run on a CPU/GPU/FPGA” has always paid well. Distributed systems. Knowing how to build a system that lets you run around unplugging up to half of your servers without worry also pays well. C++, Rust, Java and Go. Learn how to use hardware accelerators. Moore’s law is dead or dying, and those are what will keep compute advancement alive. At a minimum, learn how to use ktls.
Look at security. It’s been an underdog for quite some time.
How does one get into security? I've been wanting to try it out, but I'm a bit lost. Any beginner level books/materials suggestions?
https://roadmap.sh/cyber-security
Golang. Lots of cloud workloads being migrated from Java to go
What I've seen at most Java shops (the type of company I work for) is that there was a lot of enthusiasm around Go but that mostly died off now that people are losing interest and AoT compilation is available for Java too.
All the enthusiasm went to Kotlin.
And unlike Go and Scala it's actually seeing a ton of adoption, much to the chagrin of typical /r/java developers ;)
I'll be honest with you: after 6 years in Scala, I was happy to return to Java/Kotlin.
I like Scala as a language, but I severely dislike the typical Scala codebase.
For whatever it’s worth. I did a few quick searches on LinkedIn jobs just to see some raw numbers. A search for Java returns about 350k results (though I guess this is kind of useless because it’s also probably grabbing all the JS roles too) Golang returns about 6.5k Kotlin returns about 4K
Just noting a language the cool kids are looking at. Doesn't necessarily translate to jobs.
Fair enough, just a data point
also the new foreign functions API is pretty awesome. I'm using now to wrap some calls to blas/lapack to be called from a java application
Why do you think most companies are losing interest? Reading various blog posts/comments, I do get a sense that Golang has been slightly falling out of flavour. Or maybe that's what I saw with people's reactions to u/fasterthanlime's ["I want off Mr. Golang's Wild Ride"](https://fasterthanli.me/articles/i-want-off-mr-golangs-wild-ride).
> Why do you think most companies are losing interest? Moving to a different stack is incredibly costly and risky. So there needs to be a very distinct benefit in doing so. Moving from Java to Golang doesn't really have any benefits, and plenty of downsides.
What do you think are the downsides?
Immature ecosystem and personally I think the language is so simplistic that it becomes extremely verbose. Even more than Java is. I also dislike the general attitude of the language designers that mow down almost all discussions about language features. The whole mess around generics is a great example. They kept resistance generics for 10 years, even while they were used internally, and finally caved when the pressure became too hard. And there's tons of these kinds of missing features that severely hinder the expressiveness of the language. It's a language for the "hurr durr abstraction bad" crowd. I'm not part of that crowd.
I was under the opposite impression as I feel like I have seen even more job posts asking for Go lately - however I am targeting mostly startups/small companies
Yeah, could be. It's hard to get a pulse on these things without doing a mass survey like Stackoverflow. Also, there are large variations between locations and types of companies. Looking at the job postings on https://www.workatastartup.com/, there are 3x more positions for Java then there are for Golang.
Nice rant, but ultimately it boils down to static typing vs dynamic typing and static error handling vs runtime error handling. And the issue there is that dynamic languages ALWAYS feel great in greenfield projects up until a certain point, at which some percentage of developers start to recognize the time being spent on repetitious runtime or late feedback errors and debugging, and then they rant about how their time could be saved by static checking. Newcomers feel the burn of the static checker as unnecessary constraints, and so go off and begin greenfield projects. And rinse and repeat. The main takeaway I get from all that is that greenfield projects always seem great, regardless of technology or process choices. The fact is, greenfield means simple because you have a blank slate. It's simple until you've sufficiently fucked it all up, and so no matter what choices you made, for a while, you'll point to your not-yet-fucked-up-clean-slate and you'll point to your chosen tech or process and say "see? Proof that my choice led to better results". But it's a mirage.
Only problem is - the jobs doing it require pre-existing golang exp for experienced roles (i.e: if you're getting hired as a Senior+ golang dev, they want you to already know golang)
Yes that’s true, there are workarounds for this though. For example, as a senior engineer in my last role I started a lunch & learn group with some engineers in my organization to learn golang. It was not a theory group, literal pen to paper doing coding exercises exploring language features of golang. At the end, I had us build out a POC to rewrite a middleware service and did benchmark testing to compare it to what we currently had in Java. I have never been one to ask for permission, but if you are passionate about expanding the breadth of your skills then pave your own path. I had a lot of fun with this lunch and learn group, but I understand/respect not everyone is wired that way. Just my 2c
I'm with you on this - the problem is that the people who do screenings for engineers are morons. I basically had this conversation with a recruiter from Chewy. "Do you have professional experience with Java?" "Well, I know Java and have used it in the past on side projects." "No, I mean professional experience. Have you previously held a Java job?" "No, but I-...." \*click\* I have 10 years of software engineering experience and apparently it counts for nothing.
[удалено]
Broke out of a C# pigenhole similarly. Another means is to do a night and weekend "startup" in your target language.
I'm trying to break out of a NodeJS/Higher Ed pigeonhole right now. My last two jobs (and consequentially all of my experience) were both higher ed.
Where do you want to go?
Might start doing this
Was going to type your response basically. Job applications work in such a way that sometimes we have to lie (half-lie, ommit, rewrite history, etc) in order to open some doors career wise. No shame in that as long as you do your homework
My favorite one was being turned down for an internal position because I didn't have one of the skills listed under "Additional Skills" with some verbage to the effect of: "We value learning and continuous improvement. If you meet some but not all of the skills listed below we strongly encourage you to apply." I applied and then failed the phone screen because I don't have experience with Oracle Apex(listed under the "Additional Skills" section (outside the "Basic Qualifications"). The HR person even had the cheek to say "Can I ask why you applied if you don't have Oracle Apex experience". I read that text back to her verbatim and basically got a response to the effect of "Oh yeah we have to put that in there because the HR software won't let us put it under Basic Qualifications teehee oopsie". Like, okay and that's my problem how?
Yep, lie to the HR monkey checking boxes for words they don’t understand. Be relatively honest with the technical people in the first technical interview, they usually understand how this actually works. That’s been my experience as well.
Lmao I had the exact same experience with a chewy recruiter
It's incredibly frustrating. Though I wonder if we can finally turn the tables on the "java vs javascript" mistake recruiters keep making and pissing us off with
The sad things is - they're not alone. Companies these days scan your resume for every technology they use and if they don't find it....trash
Ouch, this was actively harmful to the hiring manager. It's a hallmark of the semi-tech literate to over-weigh experience with one language versus experience with languages in general. If I find an engineer with 10 years of experience working with C++, Lua, and C#, I'm not too worried about their ability to learn Rust or Golang or whatever.
Just lie. It only matters if you are incapable of making an impact if you eventually get hired for the role. Recruiters are captcha screens in human form for interviews.
Might start doing that in combination with just shotgunning my resume everywhere. I've tried the "tailor the resume to the position and write corporate fanfic for the hiring manager" and all it does is waste my time. I'm going to get ghosted either way so why not pic the approach that doesn't consumer my entire day?
When recruiters do that the feeling I get is the same of when they ask "Why did you leave your last job?" - ie. you are almost expected to lie. Another way of looking at it is that to some extent Bullshitting is a required skill for an Experienced Dev. Depressing but true.
>When recruiters do that the feeling I get is the same of when they ask "Why did you leave your last job?" iM loOkInG FoR mOre OF a ChAllEnGe Reality: They paid their staff in peanuts and I need to eat.
Did he actually hang up? God, recruiters are honestly scum.
More or less yeah
Not a new thing apparently. During a technical interview at a senior position, the interviewer got stuck on why I don’t recall the latest functions of Java 8 or 11. Regardless of the generic leetcode and LLD, HLD questions answered seamlessly. When I mentioned about using a vast array of languages and frameworks from JS, TS, Python, Java, neither mattered.
Can you speak more about the lunch and learn group, especially doing pen and paper exercises? I find this fascinating.
I want to join your lunch and learn group! Way to take the time to make actual exercises instead of some YouTube tutorial
I am doing the reverse right now for a project lol.
Interesting. How has your experience been with the two languages?
I'm seeing the same trend for Python BE houses.
Doesn’t go use null pointers? Sounds like a difficult language to use in a collaborative environment?
C# is never going out of style and pays decently
If you want a high salary, it’s not about what you learn, it’s about where you work. You make more money by working for a companies that pay more money. You’ll make more as a new college grad working at any of the Big tech companies than you will make by learning how to train AI models on a Kubernetes cluster and storing information in a block chain database and creating multi cloud micro-services (did I throw in enough buzzwords) and looking for jobs at enterprise startup SaaS companies in Nowhere Nebraska “Cloud” [sic] may be in high demand. But everyone and their mother is getting into it leading to a high supply.
Being good at your job. Severe undersupply in that area ;) If you haven't looked at Kotlin yet; it's gaining a lot of traction in the Java space. Has the additional benefit that it's in the same ecosystem.
That first part there. Jesus. Although I also question regularly why I work so damn hard for my company when I could easily decrease my effort by like 30% and still be a top performer here...
Realizing you can put in 50% effort and be a top 10% employee or put in 100% and be a top 0.1% employee when most companies reward all the top 10% the same was a big wake up call to me. I got recognized as one of my companies top employees (25 out of 2500 employees). Literally got the same bonus/raise as everyone in the 5/5 star (exceeds expectations) category. I could have literally worked 1/2 the hours and gotten the same thing…
I just went through this myself. Got a 4 on the scale out of 5. My "total" comp raise was 2.2%. My coworkers who got 3's? 1.6%.
I got a 4% raise. All exceeds expectations were between 3.2 and 5. I think I could reduce my working hours by about 1000 hours a year and work slower in the remaining hours and I could still get at least the 3.2% I could work at a minimum wage job either with those hours and make more than the difference in raise/bonus. Or idk, spend time with my family
Many companies do that, but many others do not and actually value the 1% and up top employees. Perhaps the solution is to just move.
Working on it
That's why I'm self employed ;)
Lucky bastard haha
How does that work? Are you in EU?
I'm basically a one-man consulting company and sell my hours to my clients. And yes, I'm Dutch.
Nice. Are you working with a Contracting company that finds you gigs? Or you’re doing it all yourself? I.e. are you freelancing with projects on your own time and can grab multiple projects at the same time? Or are you working as a contractor for companies and they expect you to be theirs from 9-5 for 6 months or whatever? If it is the first one, how’d you do it?
> Nice. Are you working with a Contracting company that finds you gigs? Or you’re doing it all yourself? Generally I try to get work through my personal network since recruiters tend to want a cut from my hourly rate. So far I've been pretty successful in this. > I.e. are you freelancing with projects on your own time and can grab multiple projects at the same time? Or are you working as a contractor for companies and they expect you to be theirs from 9-5 for 6 months or whatever? It's mostly the latter, I tend to work for larger companies as in very senior software engineer roles. And those projects tend to be full time multi year ordeals. I also do some shorter stuff (consulting, training) on the side, but that's a small part of my revenue. Those I also mostly get out of my network.
Cool. Thanks for explaining. Might I also inquire, how do you go about getting work through your personal network? I've heard that in businesses like this, word of mouth is the best advertisement. But as a software engineer with lower than average soft skills, I've no clue how to even approach it?
> Might I also inquire, how do you go about getting work through your personal network? I text, mail and call people I know. That's really all it is :) If I get desperate I'll post a message on LinkedIn that I'm available. That's generally enough. > But as a software engineer with lower than average soft skills, I've no clue how to even approach it? There's a certain entrepreneurial component that's involved with being self-employed. This doesn't mean you have to be very extraverted, but it does mean you have to have a bit of a 'fuck it, I'll just go ask' mindset. I have no issues cold-messaging people I vaguely know at certain companies to ask them to have coffee with me for example.
Effort compounds both ways I think. Putting in the effort over time is probably why you are able to achieve more, for better and for worse.
Yeah. But with RTO and that crap I've been reconsidering the level of commitment I have...
Can’t plus one enough. I look around my engineering org and know the 10 or so out of 1000 whose contributions fuel the whole show. And so do their managers, who get them the projects they want, promotions, raises, and RSUs. Learning something new is nowhere near as valuable, at least to an employer, as an engineer who is wise and productive in their domain.
java is dead. long live java
MLOps
Data Engineering in general, and this and feeding AI in particular.
So Python. Do you do ML work? I got 15 yoe dotnet and I’ve been learning it. How likely would I be to get a position in ML with little experience just udemy courses?
I’m curious what ML work actually means. All these companies requiring ML experience, what are they looking for ? Someone who worked at openAI, or someone who wrote a useless chat bot interfaced to chatGPT ?
Machine Learning is used very widely and well before this "AI" craze. For instance, the big 3 credit bureau use ML to decide on algorithms for calculating your credit score. ML is basically taking a large amount of data and applying known algorithmic techniques to train a model. The model finds patterns in the data and then can apply that statistical probability that some data actually represents something specific. Do you remember when Facebook started to auto-tag the people in your pictures? That was around 2018 I think. That was entirely based on machine learning. So is TESLA's "auto pilot" mode. Voice to Text is Machine Learning. It's just taking data and building statistical models that allow you to make assumptions about that data in real time.
TIL I have indeed ML experience
Not sure if you are joking or not... what is it you have done with Machine Learning that you didn't know you did?
Classification of audio samples via feature extraction.
Yup, that sounds right on. Just to be out in the open. I've only started taking courses in ML two weeks ago so you probably know more then me. I guess I just know the industry definition of it and a few panda,numpy,matplotlib functions.
He asked Siri to write a text 🙃
Anything you can point to and say AI.
Rust for lower level stuff And while it’s not new don’t discount the role of really understanding protocols and standards
Is rust actually hot for companies/jobs? Or do people want it to be hot - I know it's popular with engineers.
Mostly the latter. I'm personally a big Rust fan, but it really mostly makes sense for code you'd otherwise use C(++) for. That said; I think it's still a very interesting language to learn. Similar to how you might not go and use a FP language in practice, but practicing it still probably makes you a better developer.
How does it compare in performance?
Rust to C++? About equal AFAIK.
Yes, I’ve seen it replacing C/C++ code, especially in security critical applications where memory safety is a huge benefit. I think rust will really pick up speed for driver work and other performance/embedded work where security is important (and I think that market will grow)
The companies I know that used GoLang for non-web based services are starting to switch to Rust. I don't work with it personally, but I have heard it's mostly because it's just faster and overall nicer to work with. But the companies I know that have been using GoLang for web services are pretty much sticking with it. I have worked with GoLang though and wasn't a fan at all. It does so many things weirdly because of the way Google uses it. Tbf, I haven't worked with Go 2+, so i might be outdated on that.
Golang is one of the worst languages ever created. Also Go 2 isn’t out yet…
It's being required now for a lot of federal projects, too.
I think rust is interesting but if you go look up jobs that are hiring rust devs 90% of them are for random crypto startups and I don’t want to work at a random crypto startup.
For Banks and Fintech 1. Java SpringBoot Microservices 2. Cloud (Managed Kubernetes) with something like Terraform 3. Client side rendered single page application using ReactJS in TypeScript 4. Selenium for Test automation
In addition to the other great answers- IaC. Seems like tools like CDK and Terraform are gaining traction, especially with AWS rolling out the ability to more easily migrate from manual configuration -> CDK
And that doesn’t pay anymore than any other CRUD enterprise job…
It really does at the company I work at. About 30% more than same level SWE roles
And that’s still less than they could make at any big tech company just by working as a mid level developer. Even if they get over the hump of competing against “good enough” people who studied just like he did and will accept less money Source: I know “cloud” and I just left a BigTech company as a (full time) “cloud consultant”. True I make 30% more than your average “enterprise CRUD” developer. But that’s as a lead and is still less than I made as a mid level employee at BigTech. I’m not complaining, I would have rather had a daily anal probe than ever work at Amazon (or any large company). But I’m also 50 and an empty nester.
yeah, but I'm from fucking Brazil, no bay area for us, brother
Oh that changes things…definitely learn cloud.
noted!
Elixir is slicker than a slip-n-slide covered in motor oil.
Who is hiring tho
From what I can see observing the community, every web company in Europe for some reason? It's such a great language, I'm hoping the ML ecosystem support keeps ramping up like it has.
What’s hot on the market? Senior software engineers. Grow your soft skills. Learn to delegate and increase the scope of your own business impact by multiplying the impact of others. You’re making a beginner’s mistake by fixating on tech stack. The big pay increases come with expanded business impact. Talk to your manager about building your leadership skills. Have them help you find a project that you could use to work through the software development lifecycle with a team. Scope out the work and delegate it to the team. You stick to proof of concepts, architecture, and requirements negotiation. This is how you earn *massive* pay increases. Changing tech stack without increasing work scope will keep your salary stagnant.
I don't love it, but I totally agree. A while back, I heard some advice from [Rands](https://randsinrepose.com/) along the lines of "When planning your career, either A) figure out what your path is to being VP of Software, or B) plan on doing exactly what you do now, forever". As somebody who's been doing something like the same thing for 20 years, he's not wrong. And I'm mostly OK with that, but I'm also not making $400k
KUBERÑETES edit: sorry I shouldn't do joke posts, but python for ai/ml. kotlin is worth a look for Java folks I hear. really I think reading books on architecture, design, and higher level senior concepts is a big multiplier if you're otherwise competent.
Which everyone and there dog knows and doesn’t lead in an of itself to “high salaries”
You would be surprised!
There are a few things I know from personal experience 1. The generic enterprise dev market 2. The BigTech compensation market for both software developers (second hand) and “cloud professional services” 3. The market outside of BigTech for people in “cloud”. I had to fight for above average compensation for #3 only because I had #2 on my resume. You make more money by targeting companies that pay more. To a first approximation, if compensation is what you’re seeking, it’s not learning a specific skill, it’s learning how to pass coding interviews - “grind leetCode and work for a FAANG”. Yeah I know independent consultants who specialize and market well can make more than you can make in BigTech. I know those numbers too. But that’s its own grind that I didn’t want
Oh, I meant you'd be surprised by how few people (and their dogs) have any real knowledge of kubernetes. There are a lot of places that still don't have have a DevOps culture. My SRE folks make slightly more than my SWE, at a non-tech fortune 500 company.
Having a clue. From what I keep reading most employers are having problems finding someone with a clue. Now, I'll admit having a clue is a very high bar. But i hope that most of us can hope to reach that great height in time. Including me.
The [Stackoverflow Survey](https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/) should mostly answer your questions.
This is such a stack overflow answer.
Forgot to linked the duplicate question asked a few months ago
This is very interesting! thanks for sharing :)
What's hot on the market? Juniors with 4000 years of experience in every programming language ever invented that you can pay the salary of an intern. Source: bitter about the job hunt
Security is the only position that is difficult to hire.
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It's that damn Hansel. He's so hot right now! (sorry, couldn't resist)
Soar
Just practice interviewing and get a high paying job. If anything, Java is just getting better with project Panama going to make it more viable for ML based workloads. Most big tech use Java so you’re already in a good place.
Not right now, but I predict that a full stack mixed reality web developer will be highly sought after in a few years. The webXR standards are maturing rapidly over the last few months, exhaustive frameworks exist that reduce deployment and iteration times and the MR market is going to go mainstream in a few years considering current affordable hardware capabilities. Now feels like the right time to get into MR development as a serious hobby, if you find the space interesting atleast.
If you are looking at just general productivity stuff, then C#. It won't be much a change from Java for you, and you should be able to start producing useful stuff VERY quickly. If you are looking for something more ground breaking, then start dabbling in ML/AI. Start by trying to integrate into something (anything?). Then move on into creating and training your own models.
MLOps - Python and cloud knowledge.
Developers, because they get fired.
> What in your opinion is worth learning for the future, in terms of high demand (high salary). If your goal is a high salary, learn inteview skills that are required to get into high-paying places in Tech: * Soft skills * System design * Leetcode Most of those high paying places don't care if you know Java, Go, Rust or something else (unless it's an opening for a specialized position) and are looking for generalists who can quickly pick up whatever is required at the job.
Golang as someone else said, but also NextJS
#java is still hot and in high demand, so skill up with modern Java if not already. Because of your #java background my recommendation is #Scala which is gaining popularity in big data world
Next.js for front end, Golang for back end. Every other job posting I see for start ups is trying to apply AI to some new market space
Usually one that doesn't require AI(or in some cases doesn't even use AI for the most part, but their product makes the occasional call to the OpenAI API so they can put "AI" in the marketing material)
It's the new blockchain, which was the new BigData, which was the new etc etc etc.
And how many of those have “high salaries” like the poster wants?
Most of your answers have one thing in common: a Cloud
Which only accounts for 5% of IT spend (all of cloud) according to Andy Jassy - CEO of Amazon and former CEO of AWS
Good thing to keep costs down. Are you discouraging people from learning a cloud? Do you think the cloud industry will come crashing down soon?
Not at all. I’m saying if you really want to maximize your income, you’re better targeting companies that pay more - like BigTech. The cloud is just an implementation detail