As you may have puzzled out from other responses here, that's a very personal question. You need to figure out the cultural details that mean something to you, then ask the questions that reveal them. For some people…
If you carry this attitude through a series of future jobs, you're going to demonstrate that you're a pretty awful employee. Not all work is exciting, and new hires are often going to get the worst of it until they…
It's extremely hard to sell a novel "job title" as a consultant. Most clients will want to see examples or case studies of your success in the role -- so that they can understand what you do -- and that can't happen…
You don't realize it yet, but you're expressing a ton of anti-patterns here. Not the least of which is an urge to prematurely optimize your project, and desire to invent your own new solution to a broadly (but not…
As a full-time employee in the purely technical track, greater responsibility and pay would come through architectural and design roles. If he really just wants to code, the best way to maximize income would just be…
Which of the above suggestions wouldn't apply to both? I understand what you're saying in general, but there are a lot of universals that would apply across all kinds of jurisdictions.
You recognize the irony here, right? You won't give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but only take seriously the people who offer it to you. That strategy doesn't seem like it would pan out very well!
There's a real difference between a Customer and a QA member, though. You can't demand leave the responsibility to make a good report on a customer because they're external to your organization. But you can do exactly…
Everybody has different needs and expectations. Some of those even evolve or 180 over the course of a single career. Speaking to your own concern, the tradeoff is that many technical managers are only there because they…
I think your intuition is correct when you suggest that this approach isn't scalable. It runs counter to the concept of "flow", articulated in Peopleware[1] 30 years ago and confirmed many times since then. Sharing the…
I personally agree with you, I just find that you/we are in the minority as hiring managers. When you hire a PHP person to join your Ruby team, you're making a bet that they're able to ramp up on the new environment as…
If you pursue a specialization and get bored, you move on from it. There's not a lot of drama to it and a lot of your skills will be transferable. On top of that, it sounds like you'll naturally keep investigating new…
> otherwise merit-based processes What a delightful thought experiment! In the meantime...
Not really. For internal use as algorithm fodder, they've got millions of photos to harvest from Bing. And for external use, they can't confirm that the submitter actually had the rights to the image in the first place,…
Do you think there's really an answer to your question that would make you reflect on the issue? If so, what might the answer look like? If not, why did you ask the question?
You generally need to bring an applicable skill to the table immediately on hire. With the exception of a few stable mid-sized companies that really love generalists and cultivating long-term employees, and fresh-grad…
Deciphering bad bug reports is absolutely a waste of your time as a developer, but that doesn't imply that the user is mistaken. In nearly all cases, the user is correct in sensing a bug but incorrect or inarticulate in…
If an organization is having developers triage vague bug reports directly from end users, they're already in trouble. Not only are developers a very expensive resource, they're generally not good at doing what you…
1. Figure out what sector/industry you'd like to work in. 2. Figure out what's popular in that sector 3. Focus your skill development on that. With some exceptions, but there's a high affinity for certain technology…
Whatever strikes your fancy. If you're pursuing startup culture at your age, and you aren't trying to become a developer/engineer yourself -- you have all the freedom in the world. You've probably got more honed skills…
Given where you are in your career, you're inevitably a high-risk person to hire for contract work. That means that at least one of the following will be true: * you'll be ignored by good clients that can afford to…
> Then again, if I'm hiring a rockstar engineer ... If all they want to do is come in for 6 months and crank out some projects and leave, I'll probably still be grateful to have them for that time. In 6 months, you…
> Tenures too short? Maybe they delivered a lot of value in 6 months and were ready for a new challenge. Would you not hire a builder to build your house because they did the last one in 6 months? No, but I'd be hiring…
While you may not feel privileged because you had to make hard sacrifices, not everyone is in a position to make the sacrifices you made. But even then, your anecdote only speaks for yourself. There are many people who…
1. Don't use the same password everywhere. 2. Use a password manager like LastPass or 1Password. Regardless of the incidental security risk of showing those rules, the site shouldn't facilitate your irresponsibility…
As you may have puzzled out from other responses here, that's a very personal question. You need to figure out the cultural details that mean something to you, then ask the questions that reveal them. For some people…
If you carry this attitude through a series of future jobs, you're going to demonstrate that you're a pretty awful employee. Not all work is exciting, and new hires are often going to get the worst of it until they…
It's extremely hard to sell a novel "job title" as a consultant. Most clients will want to see examples or case studies of your success in the role -- so that they can understand what you do -- and that can't happen…
You don't realize it yet, but you're expressing a ton of anti-patterns here. Not the least of which is an urge to prematurely optimize your project, and desire to invent your own new solution to a broadly (but not…
As a full-time employee in the purely technical track, greater responsibility and pay would come through architectural and design roles. If he really just wants to code, the best way to maximize income would just be…
Which of the above suggestions wouldn't apply to both? I understand what you're saying in general, but there are a lot of universals that would apply across all kinds of jurisdictions.
You recognize the irony here, right? You won't give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but only take seriously the people who offer it to you. That strategy doesn't seem like it would pan out very well!
There's a real difference between a Customer and a QA member, though. You can't demand leave the responsibility to make a good report on a customer because they're external to your organization. But you can do exactly…
Everybody has different needs and expectations. Some of those even evolve or 180 over the course of a single career. Speaking to your own concern, the tradeoff is that many technical managers are only there because they…
I think your intuition is correct when you suggest that this approach isn't scalable. It runs counter to the concept of "flow", articulated in Peopleware[1] 30 years ago and confirmed many times since then. Sharing the…
I personally agree with you, I just find that you/we are in the minority as hiring managers. When you hire a PHP person to join your Ruby team, you're making a bet that they're able to ramp up on the new environment as…
If you pursue a specialization and get bored, you move on from it. There's not a lot of drama to it and a lot of your skills will be transferable. On top of that, it sounds like you'll naturally keep investigating new…
> otherwise merit-based processes What a delightful thought experiment! In the meantime...
Not really. For internal use as algorithm fodder, they've got millions of photos to harvest from Bing. And for external use, they can't confirm that the submitter actually had the rights to the image in the first place,…
Do you think there's really an answer to your question that would make you reflect on the issue? If so, what might the answer look like? If not, why did you ask the question?
You generally need to bring an applicable skill to the table immediately on hire. With the exception of a few stable mid-sized companies that really love generalists and cultivating long-term employees, and fresh-grad…
Deciphering bad bug reports is absolutely a waste of your time as a developer, but that doesn't imply that the user is mistaken. In nearly all cases, the user is correct in sensing a bug but incorrect or inarticulate in…
If an organization is having developers triage vague bug reports directly from end users, they're already in trouble. Not only are developers a very expensive resource, they're generally not good at doing what you…
1. Figure out what sector/industry you'd like to work in. 2. Figure out what's popular in that sector 3. Focus your skill development on that. With some exceptions, but there's a high affinity for certain technology…
Whatever strikes your fancy. If you're pursuing startup culture at your age, and you aren't trying to become a developer/engineer yourself -- you have all the freedom in the world. You've probably got more honed skills…
Given where you are in your career, you're inevitably a high-risk person to hire for contract work. That means that at least one of the following will be true: * you'll be ignored by good clients that can afford to…
> Then again, if I'm hiring a rockstar engineer ... If all they want to do is come in for 6 months and crank out some projects and leave, I'll probably still be grateful to have them for that time. In 6 months, you…
> Tenures too short? Maybe they delivered a lot of value in 6 months and were ready for a new challenge. Would you not hire a builder to build your house because they did the last one in 6 months? No, but I'd be hiring…
While you may not feel privileged because you had to make hard sacrifices, not everyone is in a position to make the sacrifices you made. But even then, your anecdote only speaks for yourself. There are many people who…
1. Don't use the same password everywhere. 2. Use a password manager like LastPass or 1Password. Regardless of the incidental security risk of showing those rules, the site shouldn't facilitate your irresponsibility…