I wrote a HolyC compiler and an x86_64 assembler. It does a little bit of 16-bit, but noone needs it because it is juts used during boot and you have no business.
My 64-bit assembly is missing all the MMX SSE stuff at the moment.
Warm fuzzy nostalgia aside, this article seems to amount to "Learn everything, read everything, do everything, don't bandwagon, Apple is pretty cool. The other stuff is OK too, if you like that sort of thing. Learn Node. PS. Don't harrass people".
It's an amalgamation of every Medium tech-post ever.
> It's an amalgamation of every Medium tech-post ever.
Very well summarized.
While I enjoyed this post somehow, maybe because I was thinking of the good old times, I didn't feel comfortable reading: I found his views having a touch of an ubiquitous negativity and slight frustration. I disagree with many of his points. And I miss one clear message.
I guess the real message is: believe whatever the mainstream audience believes at the time. You can't really go wrong with always agreeing with whatever the current thought bubble agrees with - and be quick to change your opinions if the herd is moving. When the author saw the derision against Steve Ballmer, and the favor Apple was getting, he made the clear choice to jump ship. And because he was part of that popular herd jumping ship, it worked very well. Follow the wind.
It's actually a pretty good point and is a decent way to always remain relevant. You can't be left behind if you're always on top of the latest thought trends.
EDIT: A missing piece the author points out too: don't be an early adopter of a thought trend (Point 1: Forget the hype). Only jump in when it becomes mainstream. If you adopt something before it becomes mainstream, there's a chance it can fail. If you wait until it is mainstream, but get in just as it becomes mainstream, you get the benefit of being an early adopter and the benefit of never being on the unpopular viewpoint.
So your always going to be playing catch up - back in 94 when i had been playing with the www I volunteered to go to Edinburgh for a month to work on a cutting edge RAD/DSDM Project.
Basically I told my then boss see you after Christmas - If I have followed that advice I would have stuck with Oracle and Java or spent my career in Mainframes
Well enough if you want a traditional 9-5 job (which is fine if it suits you) - pity Java is such a PITA to work with though and Oracle do charge a lot! for there product.
Trouble is if your company pivots and you have been doing Mainframe COBOL for 20 years - you might find transitioning to a new language hard.
Well there was a period when it looked like the mainstream was going to switch away from Java, but then Android was released. Java is heavily mainstream still. If you're optimizing, it's still a good bet to stick with. But be ready to jump off if Android switches languages away from Java which may pull enough mind share to make Java a 'niche'.
At least, that's my interpretation of the article's logic mixed with what appears mainstream to me. There's a lot of room for subjectivity, but it's difficult to argue that Java/Android isn't an extremely mainstream direction.
I would happily go back to mainframes if given the opportunity. I miss the days of the "priesthood of the computer". I sorely miss linear languages like COBOL and PL. Yes, yes, I'm old fashioned, but man, were those the days. I miss programming on my 8-bit Commodore 64, praying I wouldn't run out of space on my floppy drive. Anyone remember Creative Computing magazine. I wrote every program in every issue for quite some time.
Now? I'm stuck working for a salary in a job that pays the bills. I live in Texas (I know, I know) where IT salaries are already low. Texas has that "right to work" mentality. My bosses are not real IT guys in the sense that they love IT. They're in it for the salary, whereas I'm in it because I still love it after a span of pushing bits over three decades. I would retire only if I won the lottery, but if I did that, I would likely buy a Z-Series mainframe and spend my days playing.
He is talking about daring bets on technologies with a potential. Then insists you learn Node.js.
If anything my bet is that JS is not worth learning at all because future is all about WebAssembly (and LLVM effectively - he is right about that).
There certainly seems to be a lot of young 'genius' and '*10' types who are willing to sacrifice their youth on the altar of a unicorn in return for a 1 in 100 chance of getting rich, if it's taking you more than 8 hours a day to make a living, you're poor :(
Even if the unicorns win it really depends on where you entered for you to actually make out rich. These days even the employees of the winner are getting shafted. There seems to be no ideas of human dignity or work life balance in this trade. It's not a profession, it's a trade. It should probably be unionized, and it would be if not for the high wage.
This was a good read - I'm a dev over 40 and much of this rang true. I think there's a lot of great advice in there. One standout for me was "Be prepared to change your mind at any time through learning. " - something that I think we should all aspire to.
I had the same initial reaction but if you think it through not having your visa renewed effectively comes down to being fired, i.e. the company terminating their dealings with you.
Doesn't make it better (at all), but it's essentially just the threat of firing albeit with more weight behind it for the visa workers. Not the company calling the visa office about you or holding on to your passport, etc...
Well, this risk is the price you have pay to work in a better country. And anyway, most probably they would have some time (in my case, up to 45 days) after the contract termination to find a new job, so it's not that tragic.
Not for Gastarbeiter. You're supposed to work, pay all taxes and GTFO before you can legally claim any benefits, while still being despised by unemployed locals for "stealing" their jobs.
I'm 41 and a dev (and manager and bunch of other roles when needed, but most my days are spent with software/hardware dev) and sure, it's all true what this article says, but there is no real personal advice there besides, as others said, just 'don't do everything, but do everything'.
So some unasked advice from a 40+ then which I wish I was told when I was 17 or something: a) believe in yourself; learn from others, but if you have strong opinions or think something is wrong then voice it even though others (are supposed to) have more experience b) fast typing and making long hours are irrelevant c) get out there and mingle with non coders a lot.
All of these 3 points (I learned them at different stages, in order of appearance above; c I only started doing 3 years ago) made me never having to need a job as such, always worked where/when I wanted, always made enough money and usually have enough spare time to do whatever while still performing.
It may be obvious (i.e. general networking effects), but what dynamic let c) give you work and freedom? Please elaborate.
As a coder who really dread interacting with people (especially non-technical people) in the context of work, I'd like to know how this advice would change my life.
There's a lot of money out there that code hasn't touched yet. Biological sciences in particular are remarkably stuck in the 20th century. Don't talk to them about bioinformatics. Listen to the things they're doing. As though you were 12. And just ask questions.
I can't emphasise enough how important (c) is. Personally, I find programming to be emotionally challenging in that you have to put emotion, and your own thoughts aside when cutting your code. Add in to the mix the social dynamic of the workplace and the emotional workload doubles.
I always had a feeling this was important. I remember reading about NEDs (New Economy Depression syndrome) and identifying with that, but it wasn't until I went and did a diploma in psychology that the rationality behind it all crystalised.
Across all fields that study wellbeing it's fairly conclusive that social support is one of the most powerful mediating factors. In summary the more friends you have the happier and healthier you will be.
How does this relate to "non technical people"? As a friend once said to me once, when I was going through a particularly kafkaesque work episode, "you need to get outside of your head". You need to engage with people on a plane other than the one you work upon every day - to give those parts of your brain a rest and to help you to develop others.
People are hard though. In many ways more difficult than computers but the key thing to remember is that unlike with computers there isn't a right or wrong thing to do at all times. People have empathy, they can be sympathetic, they can meet you half way and they can help you to figure out what you're thinking.
Start off with something small, where you don't have to have too many interactions, but where you can be around people. I don't know why but for some reason communal drumming classes comes to mind. The key is to be around people where they will get to know your face and you theirs.
I guess my current strategy for handling social dynamics (as an introvert) is not doing me any favours. I usually get quite close (in a professional context) to 1-3 co-workers and have most of my interaction at work with them. All others I keep at a distance. Then again, social interactions with people I don't know very well is really draining for me, and I can't spend that kind of energy at work.
I've always done this, though. I have a few friends that are very close, that I can count on for life, even if I don't "nurture" the relationships continuously. But making new friends is really hard.
All I can say is, I used to be like that. Your approach to professional relationships is healthy as far as I can make out ("1-3 co-workers ... All others I keep at a distance"). The only thing I'd suggest you develop upon is the relationships outside of work, keeping things lightweight (superficial, even) if you find people draining. What's important is to just be there. Socialising is like a muscle the more you use it the stronger, more enjoyable, and easier it will be to use it.
Hmmm - not necessarily... The operative term is "social support" so as long as you have access to that you should get the benefits. More relationships provide more access to support and stabilising relationships. Strength of relationships are of course important and an important correlate of social support but not a be all and end all. For instance you could obtain support thru sports club, church, book club etc of course you want to stay away from 'negative' relationships too which is easier for the more superficial ones. Strength coupled with a bad relationship can be quite damaging too
Well I had the same thing; I liked to really stick with techies and went to coding events (as far as there were any here). I thought that was nice and it felt like doing it right. Somewhere after selling a company I went travelling and relaxing for an undetermined period of time. Until I really didn't like that anymore and I wanted to get back on the horse and start full time coding again (I'm not the best with self discipline).
A friend told me to go to a fintech event and because it was 'tech' I thought I would meet a lot of very technical people (so same as always). There were only business people instead; most of them had a (long forgotten) technical background but only few were practicing any tech at that moment. I met a lot of them and exchanged ideas, possibilities and contact info. It was in a friendly way as I didn't go there to get work/jobs/projects; I was there to see what this market was like.
I liked it so much I went to a lot of non-tech startup events and general events and talked to more and more people. After only maybe a month or two people started mailing with questions, projects, business proposals etc. One of them I am working on now full time and others I advice, have shares in or work with in some way as the tech adviser.
I dreaded the interacting part like you and I dreaded flying; I started doing both of them (as they are usually intertwined; I need to get to people obviously) a lot and now comes naturally and I sit talking to everyone; on the airport, in trains, in bars, wherever instead of staring into my phone or book. So when I got over this whole dreading sensation I expanded to a much larger circle of non work related friends as well as work related contacts & combinations of the above.
TL;DR the dynamic that gives me work and freedom is the fact that when knowing a lot of non tech people, acting and/or being 'senior' and being able to drop names of people/companies/projects they also know (hence the 'a lot' part) will put you in a position of adviser and tech-trusty. Which gives you opportunity and freedom as you do not need to prove yourself at all anymore.
Thanks a lot for elaborating. I suspect I need to get over my social challenges to make something like this work. And probably move (or travel more) to places where these gatherings actually happen. I live in a "technological desert" at the moment, which is a challenge in itself.
Funny, but those of us not living in the Bay Area do mingle with non coders a lot. It's actually hard to find coders to mingle with. When I visited Palo Alto for example it felt weird. On one hand it seemed great at first, hearing discussion on databases or JavaScript on the street from total strangers. On the other hand it felt like a bubble, like an echo chamber. I actually heard this guy saying he liked some girl and wanting to ask her out with the pretext of raising money for his startup. I was like "on what planet am I?"
My interactions were mostly with colleagues/employees I selected and hired myself; hardcore geeks. It gave me social-ish interaction without having to talk about scary non-coding things. I have always lived in Europe and outside my group of friends and/or colleagues I didn't really interact much. And my friends were obviously mostly techie.
Edit: it sounds a bit more negative than it was; I was always happy but now that I discovered this whole new thing I am more assured that the happiness will stay as I have a broader base now both emotionally and business wise if that makes sense
It's one of the reason why I left Silicon Valley. I love what I do, and I love to meet with other developers, but I was tired of only meeting people similar to me.
Now it feels good to be in a real city with many different people, doing different stuff. It's much more fulfilling than living in a bubble with clones of myself.
Of course they won't be. If anyplace else in the country had the volume of jobs that SV had, it would have equivalent salaries. But it'd also have roughly equivalent cost of living. It's almost a certainty that you will make less (cue anecdata), but cost of living will almost certainly bring you out on top.
In my area unless you want to be one of maybe two "IT guys" in an office, there's really only 8-10 employers within a half hour commute. There is no shortage of turnover or people bouncing around between them as positions open up. Sure it's not like SV where you can probably swing a dead cat and hit someone looking to hire a Go ninja rockstar, but there are plenty of coding jobs, especially if you're familiar with Java or C#.
Most large metros will have at least a halfway-decent number of software jobs available. NYC, Chicago, Dallas, Boston, Minneapolis, St. Louis, etc. all have decent markets. It won't be like SV where there are a million startups, but they also won't be 100% corporate, either. Check out LinkedIn or Dice or something to check a specific area.
Eh, Dallas is about 80% corporate, with the majority being non-software companies. It's really depressing since I don't have any interest in that kind of work beyond the money. There is some small to midsize web/mobile work to be had, though.
I left the valley in 1991, right before the "web 1.0" bubble burst. I moved to Boulder, Colorado. It's wonderful here. There's tech companies--including an active startup scene--but people are far more balanced, even the nerds.
Yeah but Boulder has some pretty crazy bubble issues of its own... I'm in the process of heading back to Denver in a couple months because I can't deal with it anymore. Sure, Denver's tech scene is bush league compared to Boulder's but there's only so much hippy-dippy I can deal with.
Age is an issue with software devlopment. Early forties is not old at all, realistically you will likely be working for another 20 years unless you've already made significant money. In many professions such as law you're only getting started at 40. If in software it's an achievement to reach that milestone than something is wrong.
If you're talking about the internet, a decade is a long time and an important distinction. We're not talking about a 32 year old dev. I mean hell I know plenty of early 30s folks.
40 years ago was 1976. We're talking about people who were born not too long after we landed on the moon (or even before). There's just not a lot of people that age who both went into programming and are still doing it, as opposed to management or something non-technical entirely.
So while it's not at all surprising to see an early- or mid-30s developer (I work with many), it is very surprising to see a mid-40s developer (I've only ever worked with two, and one had an almost violent aversion to anything except procedural VB).
Programming is a skilled labor, not a profession, in that you are "supposed" to do it for a couple years and then move on. Like teens used to work at McDonalds and give weird looks to the creepy 30 yr old guy still working fast food.
When its not noteworthy for programmers to have an age distribution similar to the greater population, or for experience to be respected instead of being made fun of, then programming will finally become a profession rather than a semi-skilled labor.
Personally I don't mind being made fun of by the kids... I get a lot of money cleaning up their inexperienced mistakes.
Please. That's borderline insulting to people who have to earn a living through actual, physical, labor.
Every programming job I've taken has started with the "Do you see your future self as a senior developer or a manager?" discussion. It's absolutely a viable career path to stay a developer, or at least it is now.
And there's the tired "lol these 30 year old kids don't know what they're doing I'm getting rich fixing their mistakes!!" tripe.
As one of the few left of my peers that still develops I would say that it is a milestone. There is a lot of burn out and churn along the way. I knew guys that left software dev to become a worm farmer. Most take the elevator up to management which is what I did becoming a CTO but I always position myself at small but growing companies so I could keep myself hands on with technology. I have two friends left that started dev around the same time as me (92). For most it's just not a long term industry and burnout usually takes it's toll.
That being said the web revolution happened in the early 90's and was a huge shift in development. There where a lot of older devs around at that time who where doing desktop and had no desire to make the jump so 40'ish is also kind of a demarcation line of where an epoch changed in development, so the fact that you see few over 40 devs could be a) that the web was small back then and there where only a handful of us doing it and b) The developers that where doing web in the early 90's where all young, therefore it is kind of origin of a new type of developer.
I'm 36 and really want to develop (c). I have decent social skills but I have no idea how to find non-coders to mingle with. Where does one start? Meetup groups? Cycling groups? Creating art and showing it?
I find sports are the best for meeting people and actually building a relationship. In my experience, floor hockey, slow pitch, hiking and cycling were good. Oddly, running groups were not. Also better results if it is a mix of men and women.
I think bringing a friend is essential. It reduces the awkward times when you don't know anybody. In addition, it doubles the chance of meeting people because your friend meets people too. A wing men are helpful :)
Art is solitary.
When I go to planned meetups for drinks, it is just small talk or ulterior motives (ie. they are looking for work).
In 1997 I was finishing high school, and about to commence undergraduate studies. I was "interested" in computing and Linux had passed 2.0 and was well on its way to entering the main stream. I remember obtaining a copy of redhat from my local library and a few very significant threads of my career to date commenced.
Java is also a child of the nineties and 1.1 I believe was the first arguably "finished" implementation. I remember the computer magazines were going off on about it at the time and I got a free Java IDE off a cover disk and wrote my first 2D canvas app.
These were the two main "galaxies" I inhabited for the last 20 years with various holidays here and there. The benefit of inhabiting such relatively "open" galaxies is that they provide easily accessible conduits to other galaxies too.
Thanks for the 90s nostalgia - very nearly brought a tear to my eye.
If it is really possible to learn one language each year, and read six books, I'm going to be very impressed with that. Especially considering side projects you actually start in some language, frameworks (which are not the same as languages, obviously), and conceptual things which are language-agnostic. And then comes family, home maintenance and, just sometimes, rest :-) .
I think it's possible to gain substantive exposure to one new programming language a year, to kick the tires and gain insight into some of the features and idioms that make it tick. However, I don't think it's really possible to become an expert in one new language per year. I think it is much more realistic to master one new language every 3–7 years (depending on the language). Playing with one new language per year might help one figure out which new language to master.
Reading six books a year is really nothing, and I'm not even sure why the author makes a big deal about it. Especially those books he suggested, are very short, often lots of pictures and examples. Agreed on the new language though, your best course is to just start a fresh project with something new. That's how I learn new things. Just jump in head first.
I liked the post, and empathized with some truths in it. I saved up and bought a used Commodore PET in 1977 at age 13. I taught myself assembler, c, basic, and went on to buy a Vic-20, C-64, Amiga 1000, Amiga 500, Mac PowerPC, NCR 3125 (386 pen-based tablet in 1995 or 1996!), and then read up on AI in the 1980s - Neural Networks, GAs, GP, Expert systems, Fuzzy Systems, Chaos, Complexity, etc... I was using Minix on my Amiga before Linux on my PowerPC, and I have dual-booted since, but Windows is also in my repertoire.
THEN, I gave it all up and became a welder at an animatronics company that made window displays, stayed in the entertainment field designing stage machinery, special effects, and so on. My last job was at a water show diving and fixing hydraulic and electrical systems as a senior manager and show manager (not in the US, since a senior manager would not be caught dead in the water!). I have now aged 51 years 11 months, getting heavily back into neural nets, livecoding graphics and music while living in East Java, Indonesia. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY as a contrast.
All I can say, and what I bestow on my older two children (I just fathered a baby girl a year ago), is that I left the fast track to the huge salary to do what I wanted, and that always kept me happy, and busy in a good way. I read books until I don't understand them, and then go back and forth to others until I do, and I stayed physical, and avoided 'desk job' ailments of most people my age. I have grown to know it is time, time with family and friends that money buys you. And if you have food, a roof over your head and some toys, you don't need the other $25K to $100K per year, or what have you. No, there is nothing new under the sun, but I have miles to go before I sleep...
The Robert Frost reference I played because I always feel like I can keep learning som much more, do so much more, as I think he tries to convey in his article. And I played it off the English translation of his Latin quote, 'Nil nove sul sole' ('Nothing new under the sun') to convey that too.
You're never stuck; it's in your head. I grew up poor in Brooklyn, and I have taken lower paying jobs after higher paying ones for the experience and fun of it. You learn to live within your means. You don't need a remote job to move to Indonesia. I live on very little here. I spend more on luxuries like books and credit for Internet. I am far from any big stores or town, so the temptation to just spend is gone too. I am sure you can manage to save $10K USD in a year. I am spending the time studying, exercising, sleeping (I have slept an average of 6 hours or less per night for the past 30 years or so, and now I try and get 8 to 9 hours, sometimes more!). The old cliche 'Life is short' rings more loudly as you get older, and peers start dying around you. In our youth we rally to 'Seize the day', but we don't own it. As Joseph Campbell said and wrote, 'Follow your bliss'. The rest will take care of itself just like the feet and hands wash themselves in the process of showering or bathing. Semoga berhasil!
A question - you are looking for 'fun' in a job and, at the same time, consider programming fun - haven't you been able to find a programming job you like?
Not really. I code what I am interested in. Most jobs are broken down into small parts for many programmers to work on. I like doing one-liners, and code to solve a specific problem I am having in another discipline like engineering, or art.
I am based in Bulgaria and I recently had my first experience with a potential Swiss employer. It was rather unpleasant. After I went through 5 interviews we discussed my rates (as a remote consultant). I received a low ball counter offer which was about the half of what I usually charge. This quickly became a racist rant and a senior manager at the company tried to persuade me by saying that with the money they offered I'll "live like a king" in Bulgaria. Needless to say I politely declined because I would much rather work with people that value my work. I was really surprised that such unprofessional attitude came from Swiss company, but apparently it's not so uncommon judging by the blog post.
Sad as it may be your being based on a low income country was probably one of the main reasons they approached you. And it is quite universal so I wouldn't attribute it to unprofessionalism. From company's point of view it makes perfect sense to outsource to the best quality/price ratio.
And still, I was probably 30% cheaper than a local consultant. Anyway, if a relationship starts in this way I cannot image what working with the client would be, so I did myself a favor.
Actually, this wasn't the reason. I already knew the guy who approached me. They were developing a data analytics solution quite similar to others I have worked on/built in the past. They needed a developer with a real-world product experience in their domain. Unfortunately, it wasn't my acquaintance who was responsible for the hiring.
Luckily, the software development market is global and there are some really sane people out there.
That's very much untrue. EDIT: I stand corrected - this misses the point.
Sure, wages are lower than elsewhere (especially Switzerland), but the quality of engineers in eastern europe is very high.
Case in point: Google Switzerland employs lots of eastern europeans with Swiss-level wages. That wouldn't make any sense if the only reason was money.
EDIT: My math and electronics teachers (both women, data point) in my Swiss engineering school were Russian and Romanian. Their shared theory was that during communism teaching material was not written by teachers, but was written by topic experts (expert mathematicians were forced to write teaching books). It sucked for the experts (they were forced), but was great for students to have a book written by a master to study. Their point, not mine.
They have arrangements with authorities to get work permits more easily (it made a lot of debate in the press). They "import" qualified workers, paid Swiss salaries. If price was the only matter, that wouldn't happen - Google would open a development office there instead (they have smaller ones, but the Zurich office is the largest that is not in Mountain View).
Your "very much untrue" remark is very much off the GP's point then, which was that those considering remote outsourcing to Eastern countries do that mainly for the cost reasons. Not that these countries lack the talent worth paying for when onsite.
I think there are several other reasons why hard sciences developed more than soft sciences in former Communist states:
1.You can't really use ideology to fight them. If a researches comes and says that 2 + 2 = 4, even the most fervent apparatchik (Communist party member) would have had a hard time spinning it into 2 + 2 = -1. While in other fields such as sociology or history... things are a bit more malleable.
2. They're practical and quite far removed from anything that might stir up anti-establishment actions.
3. The "1984" factor: if you need highly skilled mathematicians and physicists for your weapons, you really need them. You wouldn't want to issue your army 7.5mm rounds for their 7.62mm rifles because someone was bad at engineering :)
That wouldn't make any sense if
the only reason was money.
Yes, it does.
Fewer Swiss would work for tech wages, because they can more easily get jobs in banking, finance, law, medical that pay better and/or are easier. Or hail from old money, and are artists, musicians, run galleries ... A similar phenomenon is at play in tech in the US, which is full of foreigners from EE, India etc.
This very much depends on the countries. For instance Swedish companies typically have very flat hierarchies, much more so than US companies. In fact when a US company buys a Swedish company often several layers of managerial hierarchy is added.
Do not be surprised, I've interacted with hundreds of companies, many are run incompetently by people unqualified for the position and who have no integrity or morals. Maintain your composure and move on, if you're not being turned down now and again for being too expensive, you're too cheap...
Saying 'you will live like a king' is not the smartest thing. He should have said:
'Please consider that your local living costs are much lower than in Switzerland. We incorporate those differences in our offered rate like every other company does. Thanks for your understanding.'
So the tone was—yes—unprofessional, the attitude not. And even if this attitude is debatable, you have to allow the other party to express reasons for a lower offer in a negotiation.
I don't understand the downvotes here. Results are results. I can understand paying a person more if you are worried about providing a living wage, but really you are paying them to do a service for the company.
If you are looking at two remote candidates offering to do the same work, the fact that one lives in India and the other in Paris should not make a difference in what you pay them (well, timezone difficulties aside). You should pay well for good work, and if it's not going to be good work you shouldn't pay at all. 'Pay well' is not relative to where a person lives, it's relative to the market value of that work.
Both phrases are quite presumptuous. As if I don't know what my cost of living is.
This is how much I charge. Thanks for your offer, it's way below of what I think I deserve for my services. Nah, I don't need a lecture from you on why I should find this generous. Nope, I don't care why you make me such a low offer. What does it matter if I can actually find people who pay the rates I charge?
The market will balance this out. Thanks for your time, have a nice day.
The employer can also and usually choose between different candidates and maybe there are some or many equally skilled professionals in country x offering their work for much less (because they can because of lower living costs). So, it's reasonable to ask for a lower price in such a context. It's not about disdain.
My argument is that "offer me whatever you want; I'll accept whatever I want".
I don't need a justification or a lecture on why I should consider your offer as a generous one. That's how much you can give for my services at a certain point in time. Even if I consider your offer low, I won't find it insulting. But I will find it insulting if you think that I should accept your offer because based on your opinion this is how much I should make because of where I live.
I find it quite bizarre that remote workers living in a country with lower cost of living are expected to take lower pay than locals while doing the same work and offering the same value.
Otherwise yes, people are allowed to express silly things and one shouldn't prevent them from doing so, especially when they show their true colors.
It's essentially about power differentials and narcissism, not money.
When you call out someone trying to lowball you and they start ranting, they're really ranting about a narcissistic injury to their self-image.
Someone who does that will be a terrible client, because they're operating from a position of contempt for the people they employ. They do not see you as an equal, but as an inferior.
If the "inferior" challenges their default entitled one-up world view by expecting to be treated like a competent and well-compensated professional, they're absolutely going to have issues with that.
An apt description of disturbingly many workplaces. This type of "superior" person can hide themselves quite well and have a decent working relationship with their "inferiors", but when challenged will show their cards.
The difference here was that OP had the power to say no, and wasn't trapped by obligations.
I have the impression that some commenters resent them for having that level of self-determination and make excuses for the behavior of the employer.
I don't think the customer of a remote contractor should care much what costs the contractor has. It's the contractor's job to deliver enough value so that they can charge enough to cover their cost of living and make a profit.
There are multiple advantages in taking someone local. Mostly in requirements gathering - it's easier to do this face-to-face, but there can also be cultural differences, knowledge of local business practices. Additionally, if it all goes wrong, it's easiest to take legal action when you're both in the same country.
I can understand paying remote workers somewhat less, regardless of what country they live in. I would expect productivity to be lower for remote workers and communication with them to be more difficult, hence the lower value.
But I agree that basing salaries on costs of living in the worker's country is wrong. Salaries should be based on what your labor is worth, not what your perceived economic need is. It's exploitative, and it's also not fair to local workers who would get priced out by foreign workers willing to settle for less.
It wouldn't have been smart either. What one should charge is what one can charge. And it's unrelated to what the cost of living is in a given country.
As a developer in Switzerland, I'm unfortunately not surprised.
Maybe Swiss firms have a real arrogance problem (not all, but many). If it makes you feel any "better", your country of origin is not the reason (I get comments like that while living in Switerland too).
They are mostly just clueless. Large Swiss firms even more so (Swisscom being the main offender).
EDIT: To clarify, I got lowball offers with some other bullshit reason like "but it'll help bootstrap your career". As if my multiple years (15+) of career in international companies doing a good job (as developer/architect/senior) was not enough for their position, somehow.
"The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y) [where Y>X]
On top of the above, the usual package for prospective employees:
Resolution of the CERN Staff Council
- the Management does not propose to align the level of basic CERN salaries with those chosen as the basis for comparison;
- in the new career system a large fraction of the staff will have their advancement prospects, and consequently the level of their pension, reduced with respect to the current MARS system;
- the overall reduction of the advancement budget will have a negative impact on the contributions to the CERN Health Insurance System (CHIS);
Pensions which will be applicable to new recruits as of 1 January 2012; the Management and CERN Council adopted without any concertation and decided in June 2011 to adopt very unfavourable mesures for new recruits.
http://www.gac-epa.org/History/Bulletins/42-2012-04/Bulletin...
Given that cheap and disposable trainees — PhD students and postdocs — fuel the entire scientific research enterprise, it is not surprising that few inside the system seem interested in change. A system complicit in this sort of exploitation is at best indifferent and at worst cruel.
While I understand the point you are trying to make (CERN is partially on Swiss territory), it is not a Swiss employer by any stretch of imagination: they have extra-territorial status, like the UN.
Swiss laws and wages don't apply to CERN (workers there also don't pay taxes, or contribute to Swiss social welfare).
Its annual budget is about 1 billion _swiss francs_.
La Suisse pourrait contribuer à améliorer les conditions sociales des travailleurs détachés du CERN. Le Conseil fédéral est prêt à évoquer la question avec l'organisation.
Staffs and Permanents are very well paid, even Fellows considering you pay no taxes and you get free UNICA healthcare which is insanely good compared to what you get in Switzerland (it's worth 1.2k CHF monthly, can cover your whole family).
It often does sucks if you work at CERN for some university, the salary then depends on their rates, and often you don't know where you will be in 2 years, but you still get UNICA + no taxes...
Then the problem is that getting a staff or permanent position is very hard, then again CERN cannot hire half the world, it's a matter of needs, From what I witnessed most people just take CERN as a stepping stone and move on, unless you're one of the lucky few to get a staff (and you're ok with gambling 5 years to get a permanent).
Staffs and Permanents, even Fellows are by and large from Western Europe. In particular senior staff positions (ie. decision making). Just look at any orgchart in any division.
Then we both agree, that jobs are not awarded accorging to the matter of needs, neither merit for that matter. It is about the most funding, which is self-selecting in the long tradition of Western European capital concentration: the first among equals. Makes sense, but contradictory to any publicly stated charter (be it CERN or EU).
Yeah, that's supposed to be good business sense: you pay less money for the same amount of work. In truth though, you get what you pay for, always. Software works the same regardless of who writes it, where they live, or how much you pay them, so if you pay less for a piece of software you'll just get a piece of software that's worth less money.
It's exactly for this reason that big corporate software is generally shite: because they try to get it at a discount by paying low wages to consultants whom they think they can afford to underpay because they live in a poor part of the world (hint: India). Then they end up with horrible messes of software that nobody wants to work with, at which point they have to pay more money anyway to convince anyone to fix the mess.
It's just people thinking they're so smart when in fact they're short-termist and dumb.
If what you were saying was true, you'd be getting better quality developers if you only hired guys that were born in your high-wage country. Thats not how it works.
I've met a lot of very bad german developers that command a decent wage, simply because there is a scarcity of talent, and I've seen lots of eastern european guys do a fantastic job earning much less, because thats how their local market is like.
I agree that it is never a good idea to pay less than the local average, though.
Since this thread starts with a Bulgarian developer applying for remote work with a Swiss firm, I think it's fair to say we're not talking about moving or visas. We're talking about an international market for talent in remote development.
The device you used to type in your opinion was likely produced in Asia. This enabled you to pay less without getting less.
You can in fact get a Bulgarian developer which is just as good or even better than many Western European or American developers (I have hired a few) and for a fraction of the price.
Meanwhile they may still be paid very decent amount of money that allows for them to have a standard of living exceeding the one they would have had if they had been employed in Switzerland with Swiss salary, and Swiss living cost.
You don't always get what you pay for with developers or any other services or products. Sometimes, but not always.
From my traveling experience the cost of food in large cities in Bulgaria and Romania is about the same as the cost of food in Canada. Yes, they have (much) lower wages there and they will accept your low offer because they have no better choice to make more money. Please don't delude yourself in believing you pay them a fair/decent price. You just pay them better than what they could make locally.
Oh, please. From my experience living in the US and now living in the capital of Bulgaria I know that the price of food, housing etc. is way lower here than in the valley or NYC. Easily 3 times cheaper. And the tax is lower too.
A decent full stack developer in his early 20s with no or little college education and 2-4 years of working experience is paid out 25,000 dollars yearly after all taxes and social contributions are paid.
Adjusting for living expenses that's like being paid out some $70-80,000 in the valley.
Developers here don't have debt, easily save up money, live in nice apartments, drive German luxury cars, enjoy 5-6 weeks of vacation where they travel to foreign countries. They meet in at 10 AM and leave at 6 PM sharp. We eat lunch together at restaurants every day and take plenty of breaks. From what I have experienced living 5 years here, life as a developer in Sofia (the most expensive city in Bulgaria) is more comfortable than in the Valley or New York.
Professional opportunities in the US are probably better, no doubt about that, but that's another story.
So many Americans simply don't understand what you're saying. Having lived outside of the US myself for almost 10 years and planning to do so again, it's a world of difference.
I'm in love with the entire Iberian peninsula, particularly the southernmost bits. It's poor(er), beautiful in people and in landscape, the weather is nice most of the time, and things are affordable, even by the local sheep farmers. I won't be getting rich, but I'll be living and working on my own terms. Best part is, the wife is amenable to this after the children are out on their own. My wife is in the medical field. She can likely transfer her license and skills over. Heritage-wise, she's from the area, so this is a bonus as well.
>>now living in the capital of Bulgaria I know that the price of food, housing etc. is way lower here than in the valley or NYC. Easily 3 times cheaper
You're comparing two of the most expensive places in the world to Bulgaria, it's likely that your statement is true of many parts of the US.
But also two of the places in the world that pays developers best. I bet developers in Oklahoma City are paid much less than in SF or NYC in average. So the main point stands.
I was talking about the average cost of life in North America, I think Montreal and Toronto can be considered about average. The cost of living in the Valley is not representative for medium to large cities of USA or Canada.
I assume that means you get a Denmark sort of price for your software. Yet you pay your developers a Bulgarian sort of wage.
I don't want to moralise, but in this case I don't see how I can avoid the conclusion that you're basically ripping them off. So I'll just stop here 'cause I don't like to moralise- but I'll just say that I'd never work under such conditions.
I thought it was the nature of business to sell at higher prices than you buy.
Feel free to moralise but try to live up to it yourself: Don't buy anything produced in parts of the world where people make less than you. Buying employees or services or products are the same, you know.
With virtually zero percent unemployment for developers in Sofia, need for programmers everywhere in Europe, no visa-requirement preventing anyone from leaving Bulgaria, and some 10-15 percent of the population already having left, I think it's fair to assume that nobody is getting ripped off.
The thing is that I don't have much choice when it comes to, say, electronics or the clothes I wear and so on, but I'm not the person who employs the people who make those things directly and I don't profit from their work. In fact, if you think of it this way, if I pay £15 for a cardigan made in Bangladesh by a woman who gets paid £5 a week for her work, I'm getting ripped off also. Why am I not paying pennies for it, if that's what her work is worth to whomever is selling it to me?
Your position, however is different than mine. In your case there's noone forcing you to not share a bigger part of your profits with the people you employ. The choice is all yours.
You maximise your profit. Fair enough. But that brings us back to my original comment. In a free market economy, everybody is maximising their profits. For low-wage workers that means minimising the quality of their work, and I don't see any way out of it, if you agree that everyone is a rational player.
The alternative is that you're hiring complete idiots, which also works to your detriment, considering they're expected to work with their brains.
You can always go the extra effort to locate the factory workers who make your clothes and start sending them money directly. You have that choice too.
But back to your original point, do you believe that a shirt made in England that you would pay twice the amount of money for, would be 2 times higher quality than a shirt made in Bangladesh?
So I end up paying twice for each item I buy? Nice.
>> do you believe that a shirt made in England that you would pay twice the amount of money for, would be 2 times higher quality than a shirt made in Bangladesh?
My experience is that clothes and particularly shoes that I buy which were manufactured in Europe and are noticeably more expensive than the cheaper varieties made in SE Asia, are generally better quality and tend to last longer.
>> So I end up paying twice for each item I buy? Nice.
Not if you believe that you underpaid for it in the first place.
>> My experience is that clothes and particularly shoes that I buy which were manufactured in Europe
I was under impression that those were not available to you from your earlier posts. In that case, you can simply choose to pay more for European clothes of higher quality, so not sure what the problem is.
The Swiss also have a real ageism issue. When I worked there, I had a good friend who was Swiss that got fired. He was in his 50s at the time and the attitude was that nobody that age should be coding. He was a very good developer, but couldn't get hired because of his age. He started a web development company. The key to his success was that when he met with clients he presented himself as "the boss" with his crew of young developers. Back at the office, he was that crew of young developers. He told me that if his clients thought he was the one developing the code, they'd never have hired him.
As an American I've heard this is a major issue in our software industry as well. But I'm young and I don't know any significantly older developers so I can't really verify.
> Companies want you to shut up about that, so that women are paid 70% of what men are paid.
Stopped reading here because I assumed the rest would be equally as well informed. Shame too, I was enjoying the perspective.
Edit: Decided to give the author the benefit of the doubt and continued reading for the opportunity to have my perspective changed. With that said, I'm also not very fond of the anti-white male narrative quoted below, and I'll elaborate on why
> If you are a white male remember all the privilege you have enjoyed since birth just because you were born that way. It is your responsibility to change the industry and its bias towards more inclusion.
I don't think the real problem here is with being white, male or privileged. (Though, obviously our industry has a problem with diversity.) Programmers, for better or worse, typically aren't very sociable people, and thus become abrasive to dissenting opinions. (I'll be the first to admit that I do this, and will continue to do it as I try to improve and reduce this behaviour.) Whether that opinion comes from a transexual black 10x-er or a straight white female who recently graduated from college, or even a seasoned veteran with 25 years experience. Quite often, a difference of opinion for programmers defaults to "they're wrong because they don't think like me." I experience this daily, and I'm a straight white 21 year old male from an affluent community. So to the authors point, yes if we could stop being assholes to each other that would be great. However I absolutely disagree that the behaviour of my peers is racially motivated, and I resent the implication.
And I'm supposed to "send the elevator down" just to those who I assume to be the most slighted minority? How do you suppose that works? Should I just assume that all women need my help and support because they're women? What indicators would one even use to determine such a qualification, other than being systematically sexist and racist? Here's a thought: help everyone, as often as possible! Don't motivate your behaviour based on peoples' identities!
But yes, I do agree with the underlying sentiment that follows, I just wish it wasn't prefaced with unnecessary garbage.
> Do not critisize or make fun of the technology choices of your peers; for other people will have their own reasons to choose them, and they must be respected. Be prepared to change your mind at any time through learning.
I was reading about zeromq. From zeromq, I linked to iMatrix, OpenAMQP, GSL, and then Pieter Hintjens and Protocol of Dying. Indeed, history of software, including the people behind it, is no less interesting than the software itself.
"Say 'I won’t do what you tell me' and change jobs. There are fantastic workplaces out there; not a lot, but they exist. [...] Do not let a bad job kill your enthusiasm. It is not worth it. Disobey and move on."
Especially Europeans have problems thinking like this. I always advise engineers to keep on looking for better offers / jobs the moment they take a new job. Instead many hibernate in a job for 3-5 years without thinking of their careers and hence miss opportunities.
Disclaimer: To help engineers finding jobs / working on their careers and support IT-firms to find people, I recently started a small headhunting agency.
So mail me, if you look for a tech-job in Zurich. Salaries here after [!] taxes start at 7000 CHF / month. Find my e-mail address in my hn-handle or check out my story "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT" https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...
Compensation wise it's still a better idea to move to the USA to work at google & co then. A typical goofacesoft sr engineer gets +$250k/yr total compensation + paid for health insurance with a %30-%40 total income tax rate as a sr engineer.
Also to start a corporation, you have no capitalization requirements and it's easy-ish to hire canadians, australians and people work who work in a foreign office for +1 yr on a L visa. The waiting times for citizenship in the USA are surprisingly less than switzerland if you're not chinese or indian, which is pretty bad when the USA beats you in citizenship waiting time.
And most important of all, there is a shit ton of VC cash to get investment dollars from.
I think you confuse many things here. For canadians US is the better choice but for people from the EU who are not top 5% of the engineers, Switzerland is the best choice.
Being in the top 30% of engineers or even mediocre means you will make a decent or very decent living in Switzerland. I am not sure, if this is true for the US.
As one those engineers who has worked in SV for 5 years, you definitely do not have to be in the top %5.
You probably spent 4+ years of your life going to some sort of university to get a degree to help get something like 60k euro per year software job. So is spending a couple of months really getting good at cracking the coding interview and doing some practice interviews is definitely worth the $70k+ equivalent after tax salary bump. Even getting a job at a FaceGooSoft european office and later transferring to HQ in SF would be a good idea. Do realize though it's hard to change jobs with an L1 visa vs. H1B once you have one, so that should be your goal.
Now the USA has it's non-salary downsides for sure, but if you're just thinking in salary terms then the USA beats CH as far as I can see.
You're assuming that everyone with a bachelor or master in CS can just walk into FaceGooSoft after reading "cracking the coding interview".
That is not true.
The false-negative rate at FaceGooSoft is very high, they have a revolving door of candidates, that is why they can afford it.
I am interviewing people for IT-jobs for over a year now and I met many engineers that are Google-material but did not make it into a tier-1 firm for some reason (they where scared-off by annoying recruiters, where asked unlucky questions at interviews, did not even try or even want to make it in there).
Hence, they have to work at mediocre companies and life at mediocre companies is better in Switzerland than in the US, I believe.
That is why you apply for 10 companies, get 3+ offers and maybe try a few times. They know that people get rejected for BS reasons and it's totally cool to apply again after +6 months. They even will start contacting you again to apply! With enough prep and determination, you can do it, and the amount of time & money required is far less than getting any 2 year masters degree.
You can even apply to not FaceGooSoft, get in the USA with smaller company X and then try from a more comfortable position of having a work visa and being in the USA.
3-5 years? Try 1-2. The reason is that there are a lot of opportunities, and it gets boring to work on the same thing for a long time. Also you can learn more different things and fill out your resume by changing jobs more often.
That said, I personally prefer to stay at a job for at least three years, given the opportunity.
Yes, it is a software development thing. Labour market is crazy.
Employers are obsessed with "acquiring talent". If you can show "growth potential" (as in, being able and willing to learn and extend your expertise), they will overpay you for the first 2 years or so. After that, they will feel entitled to recover their investment in you, so you will continue to grow, but your salary will stagnate.
Meaning, 3-5 years is the sweet spot for getting another income boost from the next talent acquirer willing to pay you to learn even more.
>If you are a white male remember all the privilege you have enjoyed since birth just because you were born that way. It is your responsibility to change the industry and its bias towards more inclusion.
Nice post. A bit nostalgic but we all need a meme to get readers interested. In the OP's case its "I'm getting older, but I still love what I'm doing. Come join me!".
What I do when a new tech hype comes along, is allocate myself some time to it. Ok, Webpack? Let me give myself three days (around 20 hours) to check it out. If I don't understand it at first, keep pushing. If after 20 hours, I still don't get it, abandon it and move on.
Of course, 20 hours is just an estimate. If after a day, I feel like some magic has taken place (like what Backbone.js did to me), I'm hooked.
And yes, definitely gravitate towards a galaxy. Sometimes galaxies do merge and you will reap the benefits :)
I'm 38, programming for 15 years. And I still love coding and doing systems stuff.
"That means that you she or he gets 100 KCHF per year, but she or he are actually creating a value worth over a million francs. And of course, they get the bonuses at the end of the fiscal year, because, you know, capitalism. Know your worth. Read Karl Marx and Thomas Piketty. Enough said."
While neither Karl Marx nor Thomas Piketty have a great track record when it comes to economic policy prescriptions (Dean Baker's opinion on this might be interesting for people who share much of their world view with all three of these economists), will they teach me to better negotiate based on my "knowledge of my worth"? I rather doubt that they will, given that the punchline of much of their writing is that worker compensation necessarily trends towards the subsistence level over time, r>g, etc. etc. Certainly if the point is to "know your worth" in the sense of being able to negotiate a better compensation, a better source ought to be available.
Separately, it's an interesting turn of events that fairly politicized economists' writings are now recommended reading for computer programmers. The next logical step is a recommendation to join a political party (certainly joing the political party would help one's career in the USSR where Marx was required reading for people entering the professions.)
a nice piece on understanding self and the pursuit of a rewarding life in tech or code or whatever (with real examples from said life) diverged in a wood of political lecturing garbage.
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[ 718 ms ] story [ 1362 ms ] threadMy 64-bit assembly is missing all the MMX SSE stuff at the moment.
I don't really care for those.
It's an amalgamation of every Medium tech-post ever.
The OP contains a lot of opinions about a lot of different subjects. An amalgamation.
And if you mean by amalgamating that he united or tied together a lot of different opinions on a lot of different things, how is that unpleasant?
Very well summarized.
While I enjoyed this post somehow, maybe because I was thinking of the good old times, I didn't feel comfortable reading: I found his views having a touch of an ubiquitous negativity and slight frustration. I disagree with many of his points. And I miss one clear message.
It's actually a pretty good point and is a decent way to always remain relevant. You can't be left behind if you're always on top of the latest thought trends.
EDIT: A missing piece the author points out too: don't be an early adopter of a thought trend (Point 1: Forget the hype). Only jump in when it becomes mainstream. If you adopt something before it becomes mainstream, there's a chance it can fail. If you wait until it is mainstream, but get in just as it becomes mainstream, you get the benefit of being an early adopter and the benefit of never being on the unpopular viewpoint.
Basically I told my then boss see you after Christmas - If I have followed that advice I would have stuck with Oracle and Java or spent my career in Mainframes
And last I heard, there are tons of job openings asking for experts in Oracle and Java.
So how exactly would that have been terrible in terms of getting a steady income?
Trouble is if your company pivots and you have been doing Mainframe COBOL for 20 years - you might find transitioning to a new language hard.
Then you are not following the advice discussed.
At least, that's my interpretation of the article's logic mixed with what appears mainstream to me. There's a lot of room for subjectivity, but it's difficult to argue that Java/Android isn't an extremely mainstream direction.
Now? I'm stuck working for a salary in a job that pays the bills. I live in Texas (I know, I know) where IT salaries are already low. Texas has that "right to work" mentality. My bosses are not real IT guys in the sense that they love IT. They're in it for the salary, whereas I'm in it because I still love it after a span of pushing bits over three decades. I would retire only if I won the lottery, but if I did that, I would likely buy a Z-Series mainframe and spend my days playing.
Your WHAT is always going to be playing catch-up?
I started my career as a software developer at precisely 10am, on Monday October 6th, 1997... I had recently celebrated my 24th birthday.
That was an eye-opener. For some reason I thought Switzerland was a worker's utopia with the relatively higher salaries.
Doesn't make it better (at all), but it's essentially just the threat of firing albeit with more weight behind it for the visa workers. Not the company calling the visa office about you or holding on to your passport, etc...
So some unasked advice from a 40+ then which I wish I was told when I was 17 or something: a) believe in yourself; learn from others, but if you have strong opinions or think something is wrong then voice it even though others (are supposed to) have more experience b) fast typing and making long hours are irrelevant c) get out there and mingle with non coders a lot.
All of these 3 points (I learned them at different stages, in order of appearance above; c I only started doing 3 years ago) made me never having to need a job as such, always worked where/when I wanted, always made enough money and usually have enough spare time to do whatever while still performing.
As a coder who really dread interacting with people (especially non-technical people) in the context of work, I'd like to know how this advice would change my life.
I always had a feeling this was important. I remember reading about NEDs (New Economy Depression syndrome) and identifying with that, but it wasn't until I went and did a diploma in psychology that the rationality behind it all crystalised.
Across all fields that study wellbeing it's fairly conclusive that social support is one of the most powerful mediating factors. In summary the more friends you have the happier and healthier you will be.
How does this relate to "non technical people"? As a friend once said to me once, when I was going through a particularly kafkaesque work episode, "you need to get outside of your head". You need to engage with people on a plane other than the one you work upon every day - to give those parts of your brain a rest and to help you to develop others.
People are hard though. In many ways more difficult than computers but the key thing to remember is that unlike with computers there isn't a right or wrong thing to do at all times. People have empathy, they can be sympathetic, they can meet you half way and they can help you to figure out what you're thinking.
Start off with something small, where you don't have to have too many interactions, but where you can be around people. I don't know why but for some reason communal drumming classes comes to mind. The key is to be around people where they will get to know your face and you theirs.
I've always done this, though. I have a few friends that are very close, that I can count on for life, even if I don't "nurture" the relationships continuously. But making new friends is really hard.
Thanks for the advice, though.
Just to nitpick, it's more about the strength of the relationships that you have, not necessarily how many friends that you have.
A friend told me to go to a fintech event and because it was 'tech' I thought I would meet a lot of very technical people (so same as always). There were only business people instead; most of them had a (long forgotten) technical background but only few were practicing any tech at that moment. I met a lot of them and exchanged ideas, possibilities and contact info. It was in a friendly way as I didn't go there to get work/jobs/projects; I was there to see what this market was like.
I liked it so much I went to a lot of non-tech startup events and general events and talked to more and more people. After only maybe a month or two people started mailing with questions, projects, business proposals etc. One of them I am working on now full time and others I advice, have shares in or work with in some way as the tech adviser.
I dreaded the interacting part like you and I dreaded flying; I started doing both of them (as they are usually intertwined; I need to get to people obviously) a lot and now comes naturally and I sit talking to everyone; on the airport, in trains, in bars, wherever instead of staring into my phone or book. So when I got over this whole dreading sensation I expanded to a much larger circle of non work related friends as well as work related contacts & combinations of the above.
TL;DR the dynamic that gives me work and freedom is the fact that when knowing a lot of non tech people, acting and/or being 'senior' and being able to drop names of people/companies/projects they also know (hence the 'a lot' part) will put you in a position of adviser and tech-trusty. Which gives you opportunity and freedom as you do not need to prove yourself at all anymore.
Edit: it sounds a bit more negative than it was; I was always happy but now that I discovered this whole new thing I am more assured that the happiness will stay as I have a broader base now both emotionally and business wise if that makes sense
Now it feels good to be in a real city with many different people, doing different stuff. It's much more fulfilling than living in a bubble with clones of myself.
In my area unless you want to be one of maybe two "IT guys" in an office, there's really only 8-10 employers within a half hour commute. There is no shortage of turnover or people bouncing around between them as positions open up. Sure it's not like SV where you can probably swing a dead cat and hit someone looking to hire a Go ninja rockstar, but there are plenty of coding jobs, especially if you're familiar with Java or C#.
Thoughts on that?
Huh? I think you have the wrong year!
The web existed in 1991, but it was still . . . embryonic. No one had yet made any money on it.
The web existed in 1991, but it was still . . . embryonic. I think you mean 2001.
40 years ago was 1976. We're talking about people who were born not too long after we landed on the moon (or even before). There's just not a lot of people that age who both went into programming and are still doing it, as opposed to management or something non-technical entirely.
So while it's not at all surprising to see an early- or mid-30s developer (I work with many), it is very surprising to see a mid-40s developer (I've only ever worked with two, and one had an almost violent aversion to anything except procedural VB).
When its not noteworthy for programmers to have an age distribution similar to the greater population, or for experience to be respected instead of being made fun of, then programming will finally become a profession rather than a semi-skilled labor.
Personally I don't mind being made fun of by the kids... I get a lot of money cleaning up their inexperienced mistakes.
Please. That's borderline insulting to people who have to earn a living through actual, physical, labor.
Every programming job I've taken has started with the "Do you see your future self as a senior developer or a manager?" discussion. It's absolutely a viable career path to stay a developer, or at least it is now.
And there's the tired "lol these 30 year old kids don't know what they're doing I'm getting rich fixing their mistakes!!" tripe.
That being said the web revolution happened in the early 90's and was a huge shift in development. There where a lot of older devs around at that time who where doing desktop and had no desire to make the jump so 40'ish is also kind of a demarcation line of where an epoch changed in development, so the fact that you see few over 40 devs could be a) that the web was small back then and there where only a handful of us doing it and b) The developers that where doing web in the early 90's where all young, therefore it is kind of origin of a new type of developer.
I think bringing a friend is essential. It reduces the awkward times when you don't know anybody. In addition, it doubles the chance of meeting people because your friend meets people too. A wing men are helpful :)
Art is solitary.
When I go to planned meetups for drinks, it is just small talk or ulterior motives (ie. they are looking for work).
Java is also a child of the nineties and 1.1 I believe was the first arguably "finished" implementation. I remember the computer magazines were going off on about it at the time and I got a free Java IDE off a cover disk and wrote my first 2D canvas app.
These were the two main "galaxies" I inhabited for the last 20 years with various holidays here and there. The benefit of inhabiting such relatively "open" galaxies is that they provide easily accessible conduits to other galaxies too.
Thanks for the 90s nostalgia - very nearly brought a tear to my eye.
I can easily go thorough 6 books in a month one of the advantages of commuting by train.
Great to see u made yourself a good life in east java.
My grandpa lived in Solo and my dad in Jakarta.
I tried so much to move there. But couldnt make it.
I am still stuck at the hamsters wheel in London. Hopefully i can get a fully remote job and then move to Indonesia. I can only dream !
/dream
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^ Free, get as many as you need.
Luckily, the software development market is global and there are some really sane people out there.
Sure, wages are lower than elsewhere (especially Switzerland), but the quality of engineers in eastern europe is very high.
Case in point: Google Switzerland employs lots of eastern europeans with Swiss-level wages. That wouldn't make any sense if the only reason was money.
EDIT: My math and electronics teachers (both women, data point) in my Swiss engineering school were Russian and Romanian. Their shared theory was that during communism teaching material was not written by teachers, but was written by topic experts (expert mathematicians were forced to write teaching books). It sucked for the experts (they were forced), but was great for students to have a book written by a master to study. Their point, not mine.
remotely?
They have arrangements with authorities to get work permits more easily (it made a lot of debate in the press). They "import" qualified workers, paid Swiss salaries. If price was the only matter, that wouldn't happen - Google would open a development office there instead (they have smaller ones, but the Zurich office is the largest that is not in Mountain View).
Yeah, so I assumed.
Your "very much untrue" remark is very much off the GP's point then, which was that those considering remote outsourcing to Eastern countries do that mainly for the cost reasons. Not that these countries lack the talent worth paying for when onsite.
Thanks for showing me the problem with my argument.
1.You can't really use ideology to fight them. If a researches comes and says that 2 + 2 = 4, even the most fervent apparatchik (Communist party member) would have had a hard time spinning it into 2 + 2 = -1. While in other fields such as sociology or history... things are a bit more malleable.
2. They're practical and quite far removed from anything that might stir up anti-establishment actions.
3. The "1984" factor: if you need highly skilled mathematicians and physicists for your weapons, you really need them. You wouldn't want to issue your army 7.5mm rounds for their 7.62mm rifles because someone was bad at engineering :)
There's also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik
Fewer Swiss would work for tech wages, because they can more easily get jobs in banking, finance, law, medical that pay better and/or are easier. Or hail from old money, and are artists, musicians, run galleries ... A similar phenomenon is at play in tech in the US, which is full of foreigners from EE, India etc.
'Please consider that your local living costs are much lower than in Switzerland. We incorporate those differences in our offered rate like every other company does. Thanks for your understanding.'
So the tone was—yes—unprofessional, the attitude not. And even if this attitude is debatable, you have to allow the other party to express reasons for a lower offer in a negotiation.
If you are looking at two remote candidates offering to do the same work, the fact that one lives in India and the other in Paris should not make a difference in what you pay them (well, timezone difficulties aside). You should pay well for good work, and if it's not going to be good work you shouldn't pay at all. 'Pay well' is not relative to where a person lives, it's relative to the market value of that work.
This is how much I charge. Thanks for your offer, it's way below of what I think I deserve for my services. Nah, I don't need a lecture from you on why I should find this generous. Nope, I don't care why you make me such a low offer. What does it matter if I can actually find people who pay the rates I charge?
The market will balance this out. Thanks for your time, have a nice day.
> The market will balance this out.
The employer can also and usually choose between different candidates and maybe there are some or many equally skilled professionals in country x offering their work for much less (because they can because of lower living costs). So, it's reasonable to ask for a lower price in such a context. It's not about disdain.
EDIT: why the downvote?
My argument is that "offer me whatever you want; I'll accept whatever I want".
I don't need a justification or a lecture on why I should consider your offer as a generous one. That's how much you can give for my services at a certain point in time. Even if I consider your offer low, I won't find it insulting. But I will find it insulting if you think that I should accept your offer because based on your opinion this is how much I should make because of where I live.
No thank you, I'll be the judge of that.
Otherwise yes, people are allowed to express silly things and one shouldn't prevent them from doing so, especially when they show their true colors.
Looks to me like they dodged a bullet.
When you call out someone trying to lowball you and they start ranting, they're really ranting about a narcissistic injury to their self-image.
Someone who does that will be a terrible client, because they're operating from a position of contempt for the people they employ. They do not see you as an equal, but as an inferior.
If the "inferior" challenges their default entitled one-up world view by expecting to be treated like a competent and well-compensated professional, they're absolutely going to have issues with that.
The difference here was that OP had the power to say no, and wasn't trapped by obligations.
I have the impression that some commenters resent them for having that level of self-determination and make excuses for the behavior of the employer.
If you can low one employee, why not lowball them all, and and up with only lowballed employees?
EDIT: funny as it is, my rates were probably a third less than what a local consultant would have charged them.
DO you also think it is weird that people who live in incredibly expensive cities like NY or SF should get paid more money then?
But I agree that basing salaries on costs of living in the worker's country is wrong. Salaries should be based on what your labor is worth, not what your perceived economic need is. It's exploitative, and it's also not fair to local workers who would get priced out by foreign workers willing to settle for less.
Maybe Swiss firms have a real arrogance problem (not all, but many). If it makes you feel any "better", your country of origin is not the reason (I get comments like that while living in Switerland too).
They are mostly just clueless. Large Swiss firms even more so (Swisscom being the main offender).
EDIT: To clarify, I got lowball offers with some other bullshit reason like "but it'll help bootstrap your career". As if my multiple years (15+) of career in international companies doing a good job (as developer/architect/senior) was not enough for their position, somehow.
http://www.tdg.ch/geneve/actu-genevoise/suisse-prete-aider-e...
And a warning to non-western members:
"The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y) [where Y>X]
source: LHCb calorimeters : Technical Design Report
ISBN: 9290831693 cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264
On top of the above, the usual package for prospective employees:
Resolution of the CERN Staff Council
- the Management does not propose to align the level of basic CERN salaries with those chosen as the basis for comparison;
- in the new career system a large fraction of the staff will have their advancement prospects, and consequently the level of their pension, reduced with respect to the current MARS system;
- the overall reduction of the advancement budget will have a negative impact on the contributions to the CERN Health Insurance System (CHIS);
http://cds.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2015/46/Staff%20Asso...
Pensions which will be applicable to new recruits as of 1 January 2012; the Management and CERN Council adopted without any concertation and decided in June 2011 to adopt very unfavourable mesures for new recruits. http://www.gac-epa.org/History/Bulletins/42-2012-04/Bulletin...
Given that cheap and disposable trainees — PhD students and postdocs — fuel the entire scientific research enterprise, it is not surprising that few inside the system seem interested in change. A system complicit in this sort of exploitation is at best indifferent and at worst cruel.
Swiss laws and wages don't apply to CERN (workers there also don't pay taxes, or contribute to Swiss social welfare).
La Suisse pourrait contribuer à améliorer les conditions sociales des travailleurs détachés du CERN. Le Conseil fédéral est prêt à évoquer la question avec l'organisation.
It often does sucks if you work at CERN for some university, the salary then depends on their rates, and often you don't know where you will be in 2 years, but you still get UNICA + no taxes...
Then the problem is that getting a staff or permanent position is very hard, then again CERN cannot hire half the world, it's a matter of needs, From what I witnessed most people just take CERN as a stepping stone and move on, unless you're one of the lucky few to get a staff (and you're ok with gambling 5 years to get a permanent).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN#Member_states_and_budget
/out
It's exactly for this reason that big corporate software is generally shite: because they try to get it at a discount by paying low wages to consultants whom they think they can afford to underpay because they live in a poor part of the world (hint: India). Then they end up with horrible messes of software that nobody wants to work with, at which point they have to pay more money anyway to convince anyone to fix the mess.
It's just people thinking they're so smart when in fact they're short-termist and dumb.
I've met a lot of very bad german developers that command a decent wage, simply because there is a scarcity of talent, and I've seen lots of eastern european guys do a fantastic job earning much less, because thats how their local market is like.
I agree that it is never a good idea to pay less than the local average, though.
you find exceptions and cost of living in different places creates some disparity but as a rule "you get what you pay for" still holds water
you assume that getting a visa is easy. Often impossible or insanely difficult.
You can in fact get a Bulgarian developer which is just as good or even better than many Western European or American developers (I have hired a few) and for a fraction of the price.
Meanwhile they may still be paid very decent amount of money that allows for them to have a standard of living exceeding the one they would have had if they had been employed in Switzerland with Swiss salary, and Swiss living cost.
You don't always get what you pay for with developers or any other services or products. Sometimes, but not always.
But don't take my word for it: https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/sofia/s...?
A decent full stack developer in his early 20s with no or little college education and 2-4 years of working experience is paid out 25,000 dollars yearly after all taxes and social contributions are paid.
Adjusting for living expenses that's like being paid out some $70-80,000 in the valley.
Developers here don't have debt, easily save up money, live in nice apartments, drive German luxury cars, enjoy 5-6 weeks of vacation where they travel to foreign countries. They meet in at 10 AM and leave at 6 PM sharp. We eat lunch together at restaurants every day and take plenty of breaks. From what I have experienced living 5 years here, life as a developer in Sofia (the most expensive city in Bulgaria) is more comfortable than in the Valley or New York.
Professional opportunities in the US are probably better, no doubt about that, but that's another story.
I'm in love with the entire Iberian peninsula, particularly the southernmost bits. It's poor(er), beautiful in people and in landscape, the weather is nice most of the time, and things are affordable, even by the local sheep farmers. I won't be getting rich, but I'll be living and working on my own terms. Best part is, the wife is amenable to this after the children are out on their own. My wife is in the medical field. She can likely transfer her license and skills over. Heritage-wise, she's from the area, so this is a bonus as well.
You're comparing two of the most expensive places in the world to Bulgaria, it's likely that your statement is true of many parts of the US.
But median salary in Toronto is merely around USD 50,000 before tax according to payscale: http://www.payscale.com/research/CA/Job=Software_Developer/S...
That leaves Toronto developers with significantly less than Sofia developers when you adjust for taxes and purchasing power.
I don't want to moralise, but in this case I don't see how I can avoid the conclusion that you're basically ripping them off. So I'll just stop here 'cause I don't like to moralise- but I'll just say that I'd never work under such conditions.
Feel free to moralise but try to live up to it yourself: Don't buy anything produced in parts of the world where people make less than you. Buying employees or services or products are the same, you know.
With virtually zero percent unemployment for developers in Sofia, need for programmers everywhere in Europe, no visa-requirement preventing anyone from leaving Bulgaria, and some 10-15 percent of the population already having left, I think it's fair to assume that nobody is getting ripped off.
Your position, however is different than mine. In your case there's noone forcing you to not share a bigger part of your profits with the people you employ. The choice is all yours.
You maximise your profit. Fair enough. But that brings us back to my original comment. In a free market economy, everybody is maximising their profits. For low-wage workers that means minimising the quality of their work, and I don't see any way out of it, if you agree that everyone is a rational player.
The alternative is that you're hiring complete idiots, which also works to your detriment, considering they're expected to work with their brains.
But back to your original point, do you believe that a shirt made in England that you would pay twice the amount of money for, would be 2 times higher quality than a shirt made in Bangladesh?
So I end up paying twice for each item I buy? Nice.
>> do you believe that a shirt made in England that you would pay twice the amount of money for, would be 2 times higher quality than a shirt made in Bangladesh?
My experience is that clothes and particularly shoes that I buy which were manufactured in Europe and are noticeably more expensive than the cheaper varieties made in SE Asia, are generally better quality and tend to last longer.
Not if you believe that you underpaid for it in the first place.
>> My experience is that clothes and particularly shoes that I buy which were manufactured in Europe
I was under impression that those were not available to you from your earlier posts. In that case, you can simply choose to pay more for European clothes of higher quality, so not sure what the problem is.
If you paid people a lot more money you'd get a lot better software.
You get what you pay for alright, regardless of whether you recognise it as such or not.
This is completely wrong, but it sounds nice.
I think you are verifying it.
Stopped reading here because I assumed the rest would be equally as well informed. Shame too, I was enjoying the perspective.
Edit: Decided to give the author the benefit of the doubt and continued reading for the opportunity to have my perspective changed. With that said, I'm also not very fond of the anti-white male narrative quoted below, and I'll elaborate on why
> If you are a white male remember all the privilege you have enjoyed since birth just because you were born that way. It is your responsibility to change the industry and its bias towards more inclusion.
I don't think the real problem here is with being white, male or privileged. (Though, obviously our industry has a problem with diversity.) Programmers, for better or worse, typically aren't very sociable people, and thus become abrasive to dissenting opinions. (I'll be the first to admit that I do this, and will continue to do it as I try to improve and reduce this behaviour.) Whether that opinion comes from a transexual black 10x-er or a straight white female who recently graduated from college, or even a seasoned veteran with 25 years experience. Quite often, a difference of opinion for programmers defaults to "they're wrong because they don't think like me." I experience this daily, and I'm a straight white 21 year old male from an affluent community. So to the authors point, yes if we could stop being assholes to each other that would be great. However I absolutely disagree that the behaviour of my peers is racially motivated, and I resent the implication.
And I'm supposed to "send the elevator down" just to those who I assume to be the most slighted minority? How do you suppose that works? Should I just assume that all women need my help and support because they're women? What indicators would one even use to determine such a qualification, other than being systematically sexist and racist? Here's a thought: help everyone, as often as possible! Don't motivate your behaviour based on peoples' identities!
But yes, I do agree with the underlying sentiment that follows, I just wish it wasn't prefaced with unnecessary garbage.
> Do not critisize or make fun of the technology choices of your peers; for other people will have their own reasons to choose them, and they must be respected. Be prepared to change your mind at any time through learning.
Perfect. Why did we need the intro?
I was reading about zeromq. From zeromq, I linked to iMatrix, OpenAMQP, GSL, and then Pieter Hintjens and Protocol of Dying. Indeed, history of software, including the people behind it, is no less interesting than the software itself.
Especially Europeans have problems thinking like this. I always advise engineers to keep on looking for better offers / jobs the moment they take a new job. Instead many hibernate in a job for 3-5 years without thinking of their careers and hence miss opportunities.
Disclaimer: To help engineers finding jobs / working on their careers and support IT-firms to find people, I recently started a small headhunting agency.
So mail me, if you look for a tech-job in Zurich. Salaries here after [!] taxes start at 7000 CHF / month. Find my e-mail address in my hn-handle or check out my story "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT" https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...
That is even more incentive to come over now rather than in 1-2 years, when the immigration cap for EU citizens will be implemented as planned.
Also to start a corporation, you have no capitalization requirements and it's easy-ish to hire canadians, australians and people work who work in a foreign office for +1 yr on a L visa. The waiting times for citizenship in the USA are surprisingly less than switzerland if you're not chinese or indian, which is pretty bad when the USA beats you in citizenship waiting time.
And most important of all, there is a shit ton of VC cash to get investment dollars from.
Being in the top 30% of engineers or even mediocre means you will make a decent or very decent living in Switzerland. I am not sure, if this is true for the US.
You probably spent 4+ years of your life going to some sort of university to get a degree to help get something like 60k euro per year software job. So is spending a couple of months really getting good at cracking the coding interview and doing some practice interviews is definitely worth the $70k+ equivalent after tax salary bump. Even getting a job at a FaceGooSoft european office and later transferring to HQ in SF would be a good idea. Do realize though it's hard to change jobs with an L1 visa vs. H1B once you have one, so that should be your goal.
Now the USA has it's non-salary downsides for sure, but if you're just thinking in salary terms then the USA beats CH as far as I can see.
That is not true.
The false-negative rate at FaceGooSoft is very high, they have a revolving door of candidates, that is why they can afford it.
I am interviewing people for IT-jobs for over a year now and I met many engineers that are Google-material but did not make it into a tier-1 firm for some reason (they where scared-off by annoying recruiters, where asked unlucky questions at interviews, did not even try or even want to make it in there).
Hence, they have to work at mediocre companies and life at mediocre companies is better in Switzerland than in the US, I believe.
You can even apply to not FaceGooSoft, get in the USA with smaller company X and then try from a more comfortable position of having a work visa and being in the USA.
Look at this guy as another example:
http://haseebq.com/farewell-app-academy-hello-airbnb-part-ii...
That said, I personally prefer to stay at a job for at least three years, given the opportunity.
Employers are obsessed with "acquiring talent". If you can show "growth potential" (as in, being able and willing to learn and extend your expertise), they will overpay you for the first 2 years or so. After that, they will feel entitled to recover their investment in you, so you will continue to grow, but your salary will stagnate.
Meaning, 3-5 years is the sweet spot for getting another income boost from the next talent acquirer willing to pay you to learn even more.
FUCK YOU AND YOUR WHITE GUILT BULLSHIT!
That aside, a lot of the more generic points make sense.
What I do when a new tech hype comes along, is allocate myself some time to it. Ok, Webpack? Let me give myself three days (around 20 hours) to check it out. If I don't understand it at first, keep pushing. If after 20 hours, I still don't get it, abandon it and move on.
Of course, 20 hours is just an estimate. If after a day, I feel like some magic has taken place (like what Backbone.js did to me), I'm hooked.
And yes, definitely gravitate towards a galaxy. Sometimes galaxies do merge and you will reap the benefits :)
I'm 38, programming for 15 years. And I still love coding and doing systems stuff.
While neither Karl Marx nor Thomas Piketty have a great track record when it comes to economic policy prescriptions (Dean Baker's opinion on this might be interesting for people who share much of their world view with all three of these economists), will they teach me to better negotiate based on my "knowledge of my worth"? I rather doubt that they will, given that the punchline of much of their writing is that worker compensation necessarily trends towards the subsistence level over time, r>g, etc. etc. Certainly if the point is to "know your worth" in the sense of being able to negotiate a better compensation, a better source ought to be available.
Separately, it's an interesting turn of events that fairly politicized economists' writings are now recommended reading for computer programmers. The next logical step is a recommendation to join a political party (certainly joing the political party would help one's career in the USSR where Marx was required reading for people entering the professions.)