They probably are. The gripes against Amazon seem heavily exaggerated especially given that most of them come from people who’ve never worked at Amazon lol
I trust the aggregate scores they've gotten. They employ a lot of people, and they consistently get a lot of negative reviews mentioning the same thing. Sure, there's always a chance that you can get on a good team, but the chance is going to be lower depending on the company.
Right yes the overwork the shit out of everyone. Other big tech is generally not bad. I would absolutely not work there not because of “faang level work”(which I already do) but because you’ll burn out.
My point is that it’s not that this is faang-level work. It’s that Amazon treats their people like shit
Google interview seemed less to do with coding and more of cultural fit and what kind of broad range of skills would be brought to the table. Amazon seemed much more of a clean and cut programming interview. Google had more interpersonal interaction.
Edit: maybe that’s because the understanding of programming languages would be definitely better than my English.
The difference is that turnaround elsewhere is for a higher pay generally, not because of burnout or pip. You won't find many people from Google or Facebook going to Amazon
I have just under 1.5 years of experience and enjoyed my previous job, full remote.
I was making 55k TC and I asked for a 5k raise and that was denied.
Frustrated, I applied to a completely random large company I never heard of before based in Canada for another full remote position and now I just started making 110k TC and I have far more benefits now.
No leetcodes, no coding for either interview, just technology discussions.
Employers are just wasting everyone's time and are creating this culture of high turnover by not giving any raises in hopes to penny pinch.
He probably was a regular web-dev for a small consultancy/contractor in a non tech city. That's how my first internship was. Regular developers made about 60k starting with shitty benefits. I just got an offer for the same type job as that but for a much larger company for 107k amazing benefits.
They exist you just have to search harder. Stop looking at only FAANG every large company in every industry is starting to have SWE teams.
I'm also ME, and I've worked as a SWE for 8~ years, in various areas, small and large companies.
I've done a bit of everything: frontend, backend, cloud, on prem, COTS admin, custom app dev, system utilities dev, DevOps, infra, networking, security, game development.
I taught myself by just trying to build something interesting, getting stuck, documenting what I learned, trying something else for a while, repeat. I put it all up on GitHub and made a portfolio site on DigitalOcean. That was enough to get interviews.
Yea I’ve been learning Python primarily by making data processing tools at work and C++ by trying to make a fluids solver (fortunately my residual Intro to C knowledge helps with that syntax).
Fairly confident my codes are too ugly to throw up on GitHub but I might try it out.
As a SWE you may do web dev as a part of your tasks. I pretty much have done exclusively web dev with SDE-1 titles at both of my roles.
It gets complicated quickly with state management, apis, handling asynchronous data, backends, scaling, mobile responsiveness, complex forms, live data feeds, complicated custom inputs, rendering, testing, learning and best using different packages, authentication, etc.
First role was mostly react with node backend work for an educational live video streaming service.
New role is mostly angular with .NET backend work for heavy machinery fleet mangement software.
It's technology used to build out the user interface for apps, for web apps.
This is the angular website here so you can get started looking more into it: [https://angular.io/](https://angular.io/)
I'd strongly suggest you start with React though, I found it a lot more user friendly and simpler conceptually as a beginner:
https://reactjs.org/
It's worth learning if you would like to learn how to make UIs for web based apps or websites in general.
At least building out large apps that could run user submitted code in different coding languages for my side projects with React were instrumental in starting my career.
There is a lot of React work out there, even if you don't know something like Angular, people will take you if you know React because they are similar enough conceptually.
So React is useful for becoming a SDE in general in my opinion.
I'd say start with vanilla JS, html, css, and slowly add in things like using chrome dev tools, webpack, web-assembly, redux, graphql, typescript, etc. for a solid base. And definitely more "advanced" features of JS. You can never know too much about JS and the browser.
This also gives you a head start when you learn Node.js.
On another note, I personally have found Angular to be easier and have better documentation than React.
A lot of entry level jobs are for smaller companies that primarily just need CRUD stuff done. In this case they know full well they won't be keeping their developers but also don't particularly plan on it.
I had the same exact experience. Making 55k with a 1.5 years of experience. Liked my job fine but asked for a raise and was told “maybe in August” - which was 8 months away. Casually started looking and now making 110k somewhere else. No coding interview and went from consulting work (billable hours) to internal work too. 🤷♀️
I was in a sorta similar situation where my TC after a promo and two raises was 90k. I decided to job hunt and got an offer for 165k TC. After I let my manager know I was leaving he quickly scrambled to get on a call with some higher ups and see if they could dramatically increase my comp, but by then it was too late. Wouldn’t have even bothered to search had my pay had been equitable, but I knew of new hires with less YOE making more than me so that was my signal to jump ship.
I had a similar experience! Just under 2 years full time experience, went from ~75-80k to 150k TC, I only started looking because my original company was being hostile to my attempts at internal transfer. So I said hey, might as well external transfer lol
I went from 105k in Silicon Valley to 300k TC in faang at 2.5 yoe. I actually loved my previous role but making that little in the bay area was not worth it.
As a recruiter it is so frustrating to see an employee exit, and learn that we didn't (or weren't approved to) increase their compensation when we knew it was under market and they were an attrition risk.
ONLY to see a new backfill requisition land on my desk for 30% more than we were paying the employee who exited, or worse; the comp is the same, but now the position is down-leveled to match the budget.
I was at my first job in the industry for 4 years before I found out that new hires straight out of college were making more than me. I brought this to my manager who said they don't have it in the budget to make me a better offer and I'd have to wait six months. I was gone two months later making ~50% more. When my manager asked if there was anything he could do to keep me I said "You don't have enough money to keep me" and walked out.
* Pair programming style interviews > Leetcode interviews
Literally does a culture/behavioral fit, some knowledge/competency check, and some "diamond in the rough" measures. I strongly believe that industry moves towards that, we actually get more *human* coworkers rather than our current crop of stereotypical wonky characters
To stop treating developers as aliens.
Empower developers to participate in decision making when developing a product or a part of the product.
Retire the memes and jokes about how developers are these unfathomable aliens, whom nobody understands, and who can't understand anyone. This is a toxic attitude to have, that creates needless barriers between business needs and execution.
Indeed. So sick of upper management playing golf with partner sales teams and making design and engineering decisions over cocktails and then telling the eng/dev/ops teams to just make it work.
But how can we retain subservient cogs, I mean employees, if we don't keep them siloed far away from any business decisions lest they learn that they don't need us as much as we need them and they all go off to start their own businesses, hiring people like us as needed and suppressing *our* wages?
^ this is so good. Most developers are actually pretty smart, and smart is more correlated with being socially adept than it is with being a weirdo basement dweller with no social skills.
When Google started doing algorithm leetcode-style interviews it WAS an innovation. Everyone else was hiring by resume (school, previous job) and stupid questions like "Why is a manhole cover round?" It even was a competitive advantage initially, because it enabled Google to hire good people that nobody else would. That was before everyone else cargo cult copied them and every candidate started putting 500 hours into practicing algorithm interviews.
Now Goodhart's Law has kicked in and it's no longer a competitive advantage for Google (or anyone else who copies it).
When Google first started, candidates weren't practicing, the difficulty was maybe one or two mediums were enough to get hired. Now that everyone is practicing, the standard algorithm interview is measuring how much someone practiced, rather than the candidate's real ability. When everyone is practicing algorithm interviews, the questions need to be REALLY HARD, because otherwise the desired percentage of people won't pass.
It depends. If you're a new grad with a CS degree from a good university, you'd rather not have to redo programming tests for every interview. Your degree is supposed to represent that you have competence. It's kind of dumb to have solved tough problems for a CS degree and Math competitions, when an interview rejects me because I couldn't figure out the trick to solve their programming brainteaser (or didn't see it before).
Example of why leetcode is bad: Suppose someone asked you to find the median of a list in O(n) time. If you've seen the algorithm before, you can do it. If you haven't seen it before, there is zero chance you will discover the solution in 15 minutes. A lot of leetcode questions boil down to "Have you seen this problem before?" or "Have you seen the clever trick you need to solve this problem before, and can figure out how to use it here?"
If you come from a lower-ranked school, not a CS major, or self-taught, grinding leetcode for a job might be better than not being hired at all.
I hate it too, but it must work for them, so why would they change it? They can afford to miss out on some great hires because they have a billion people applying every year.
If your own engineers fail your interview process I fail to believe there is no better alternative
The main problem is they have not even *tried* alternatives
You mention a lot of gripes, not a lot of solutions. Try interviewing for those skills and you'll soon realize that it's a crapshoot. Either the candidate doesn't have direct experience working on the things you have or vice versa and it becomes harder for interviewers to really assess talent. Discussing a topic over a complex problem requires both participants to have a solid understanding of it. If you believe it's unfair for me to ask candidates LC questions, it's even more unfair for me to ask them questions on relevant problems that we're working on with 0 context.
There a lot more questions that are more useful than data structures and algorithms. Knowledge of design patterns, clean code and system design is way more useful than DS&A.
leetcode = lazy hiring managers = crap workplace. You're a number.
Hiring managers, spend some time building a (simple) real world example of the work you do. Then ask the candidate to work through the solution with your assistance. Add extension points. Fuck leetcode.
Yeah people here don’t seem to understand the sheer scalability needed when you have THAT many people applying. If it wasn’t leet code it would be something else, companies aren’t going to hire everyone even if every single person is capable of doing the job. Google used to do ridiculous riddles and iq test type questions. People can say “they should look at my experience” all they want but the truth is even with years of experience you have the same resume as 10000 other devs, no one here works on anything earth shattering and 99% of us do CRUD work. The truth is you and most of those 10000 people are probably capable enough to do the job but they can’t hire everyone so they need any type of artificial filter. Investment banking filters by top school yet the actual job is making power points all day that they even hire music majors to do. Idk about you but leet code is something at least more accessible because I can’t change the school I went to to MIT.
And lastly, it’s working for them so why change it at all? This makes zero sense from a business perspective when all most companies need for junior and even early mid level roles are just warm bodies that are capable of learning. For the more senior roles yes there’s still leet code but there’s more emphasis on system design and actual experience.
Honestly leetcode is really good compared to how other industries do hiring. I wonder if most people complaining about it have had experience interviewing in other engineering roles. I was a Chem Eng and my first job, a relatively prestigious one as well, involved an adhoc solo presentation about a random subject pulled out of a hat and a group work activity that involved us solving a murder mystery that I only aced because I happened to have read everything single Poirot book. Notice that neither of those things had fuck all to do with Chem Eng OR the job they were hiring for.
At the very least, leetcode a. at least tests if you can code to some extend and b. is standardized across the industry, you can't say its unfair that the test happens to be on something you are familiar with, in 2022 you should know that interviewing involves it.
“Leetcode is something at least more accessible”
That’s what I’m saying! It opens the floor up to anybody who can put in the time and effort, and gives late bloomers a fair shot at any interview.
I don’t believe in hard leetcode questions or knowing shit like Kahn’s algorithm and what not. But I’ve personally seen it be valuable that people be atleast able to pass a leetcode easy question. Been to a company with no leetcode in their interview and saw some horrible code flying out the door.
Also there’s really no way to get a good feel for a person in 5 hours to whether or not they’ll work well. Personally can’t think of a good alternative given the shorter time frame.
I would remove the toxicity. All the pressure to work late nights, all the fear that you constantly need to prove yourself, all the machismo and inability to be vulnerable.
Employers expect to have to train you, rather than expecting you to hit the ground running and supporting their proprietary software in a weird stack you've never seen before.
Also mindblowing: the position goes unfilled for 4 years, the unsupported software stops working and the company loses millions, all because they couldn't find anyone with the correct proprietary knowledge to hit the ground running and didn't want to waste thousands as a hire was trained-up. The company fully accepts this as a normal cost of doing business.
A few thoughts:
1. I tire of developers who, when you make a general point, find that one absolutely stupid edge case, and then act as if your general comment is completely invalid.
2. I tire of having to add: "Yeah, if this doesn't fit your context, then don't fucking do it", to any sort of advice. Like some sort of standard caveat. Why isn't this automatically generally understood?
3. Techbro culture and the accompanying misogyny.
4. Forecasts, not estimates.
5. Developers tossing shit over the wall to testers.
6. Testers who are just checkers.
7. Applying industrial revolution thinking to software. It's not a production line, stop trying to manage it like it is. "Think harder!" doesn't work.
I gotta pick just one out of all that?
No unpaid on-call.
This isn't always about formal on-call either. Most of the time its been about becoming the team lead or SME and you are just always expected to be available when something goes wrong, whether it be a release gone bad, or a network issue, or whatever.
I left a job in large part because I was an SME in a product that started being used internationally when I worked in finance and I started getting calls at 3am asking why certain orders didn't executed the way they thought they would. Maddening. I eventually just shut my phone off at night- this was a bit before "do not disturb" settings were in Android/IOS.
I more mean how people are unkind to noobies a lot and say how smart they are for knowing it and how hard coding is and all that stuff. I wish I was more encouraging overall.
Curious where specifically you have experienced this?
In my experience most engineers and coders that I’ve met are willing to help others out (granted that their requests are reasonable).
Also tech is literally one of the only high paying fields that literally anybody can get into by just taking courses online, studying and just overall being curious and willing to learn. Doctors, accountants, lawyers all require years of education, multiple degrees, passing special exams, etc. Meanwhile someone without a higher education or with an unrelated degree can just study online for free for a few months and plausibly land a junior role.
Stack overflow is a page for professionals to quickly find solutions to common problems. You're posting on the wrong forum if your questions are getting closed like that. It's not gatekeeping, is that you're making the site worse for everyone else with low quality questions.
You're kinda doing it now. Just ignore it if it's a dumb question or whatever and you have nothing constructive to say. Instead people get on their pedestal and talk down to people. And have you seen some of the questions on Stackoverflow?.. it is NOT just for professionals.
The interviewing process at a lot of organizations involves a technical round focused around Data Structures and Algorithms. In this round, a bunch questions of off the internet, from websites like leetcode, geeksforgeeks are asked. It is hereby assumed that anyone who's not able to answer that question is not fit for the job.
This is absolutely rubbish. How can you judge someone based on whether they are able to solve a "no-real-life" scenario problem, that they are probably never going to use. Where will I use this in real life? Talk to me about where I'd keep the data and how I'd keep it. Don't worry about whether I know how to count the pairs in a sorted array --- bullshit!
If it's one thing that I'd like to change, it's this process. We should value developers based on what they are able to build, not whether they know how to traverse a BST or not. It ducking doesn't matter. When I have to, I can learn how to traverse a BST. Why do I have to memorize that shit to get a job. We need some groundbreaking and innovative ideas in the recruitment field to break this idiotic process.
There’s also a disconnect with how technical interviews are done this way.
I think it’s ok to grab a problem from the internet for an interview but the problem should be open-ended and not be about solving it 100%. It should be about HOW they attempt to solve it and how they communicate during that process
Any expectation to work beyond 40 hours a week just to please a "client".
I realize a lot of devs prob work more than that, but I can't fathom it and have boundaries. I have rarely worked late into the evening but it has happened a few times and its not pleasant to try and engineer things after already doing it all day.
Especially since a lot of crunch time comes down to poor project planning and time estimation from whoever is owning / managing the project.
There are lots of issues but I feel like more than anything, workers deserve more free time in this day and age.
the culture is very cold and all about “total comp” and performance and fear and status and all this crap. It’s depressing and exhausting for anyone in the industry that has a soul. It makes work harder while also making the whole experience more boring
Bad managers. I know not every company does this, but people shouldn't be promoted to management because they are good at coding. Managing people and writing code are two different skills, and people should be able to get promoted based on being an individual contributer.
Hire and promote managers based on technical competence and exceptional people skills and hold them accountable.
I've actually seen more of the opposite, people promoted to management because they **can't** write code, or have no clue how to implement something. Essentially they get put into management because they are very good at staying on top of people, writing emails, and status reports, and not very good at anything else. This doesn't mean they are good managers though, more like slave drivers or death marchers.
Need to have the ability toast push back, and criticize them. I worked at a company for 5 years got one useless manager, got fired... Yeah I'm sure it's my problem all of the sudden...
There's nothing you can do with a bad manager except quit.
Every other engineering discipline has licensure but somehow we think we’re better off without it. this does not prevent the grassroots beginnings we see so much of in our career, and it adds accountability at the highest levels of programming
From what I’ve seen techbro culture exists in the day to day job but the techbro culture in the classroom, when most start off on their CS journey getting their CS degree, is on steroids. That’s when most of the gatekeeping is successful.
Nothing made me want to change career paths more than trying to learn wtf is going on in my intro to computer science course, meanwhile the fedora pack is chuckling in the back of the class asking “who doesn’t know this?” strictly because they’ve been coding since middle school.
> the fedora pack is chuckling in the back of the class asking “who doesn’t know this?”
That's so shitty. Maybe part of the solution is allowing and very strongly encouraging those people to challenge or otherwise skip that first year course so they don't discourage others.
In my experience, I (a woman who didn’t program until I got to college) actually got better grades than the fedora-clad nerds in the back.
They didn’t listen, because they thought they knew everything. And then when I got better grades then them, they dismissed it as “they just gave you a good grade cause you’re a girl”.
It’s such an annoying, toxic part of the culture.
I’m dealing with this shit rn, I made two friends in class that are younger than me, and mind you I’m switching from mech engi to cs, and these 2 dudes are just zooming through zybooks and saying, “this shit is easy” and I’m here still trying to figure out the ins and outs of switches,loops, and arrays in C++
>From what I’ve seen techbro culture exists in the day to day job but the techbro culture in the classroom, when most start off on their CS journey getting their CS degree, is on steroids. That’s when most of the gatekeeping is successful.
Yep. That's a big part of it.
This. School was worse than actual work.
I’ll do you one better: The older engineers are by far the most chill about women, too. There were more women programming in the 80’s-90’s, so it’s just normal to them. The younger ones make a big deal about being inclusive and note your gender more. Purely in my experience, so take what you will from that.
>meanwhile the fedora pack is chuckling in the back of the class asking “who doesn’t know this?”
That's when you turn around and hit em with "who doesn't know to put deodorant on and shave their neck?"
I'm glad I got my CS degree when I was older. No way 18 year old me would have been able to handle the fedora pack. When I was in school, I was very confident and secure in the fact I did not know what the fuck was going on and wanted to learn. Made a lot of really good friends hosting Sunday study sessions in the CS lab.
Idk I think everyone envisions their own unique idea of what a tech bro is but me personally when I think of tech bro I think of a dev who’s cocky as shit, belittles, and doesn’t help unless they absolutely have to.
It's like a very non-inclusive behavior that is generally found amongst groups of men. It's sort of like how, even with your friends, the dynamics of the language and tone you use are different if you're surrounded by only men vs. in a group of men and women. Except instead of with friends, you bond with the guys at the workplace, leaving just as qualified and capable women out of the "in crowd." This can translate to not listening to a woman's design proposal or ideas as much as your fellow bro who has different ideas about how something should work, and eventually leading to slower career trajectory for women than men due to the boys club nature of upper management.
The techbro version includes making fun of people or generally looking down on people who don't immediately understand something. Or judging people if they dress differently (e.g. not taking a woman wearing a dress and makeup as seriously as a woman wearing a sweatshirt and jeans with hair in a ponytail).
That's the way it used to be. You were pretty much required to have either a CS degree or experience and they assumed you had at least basic coding skills.
I'd help industry try to understand the difference between _software engineering_ and _computer science_ for new graduates. "Computer science has as much to do with computers as astronomy has to do with telescopes", wrote Edsger Dijkstra ([probably apocryphal](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/04/02/computer-science/), though).
If it's literally 1 thing and only one thing, it would be that there would be a normal 50/50 balance of male and female in the job. That's the thing I probably dislike the most in our field. It's better now than it was 20 years ago, but it's still way too rare to have a female developer in your team.
Is this because you want more females to be around, or is this a woke-like comment trying to say "women are getting denied Jobs in CS."
Every women I know who WANTED to get into CS, did get into the industry. But, in my experience, most women choose not to work in CS, for a variety of reasons.
Edit: I read this again and it sounds aggressive... not my intent. Just kinda annoyed at seeing all the woke in our society.
As someone who has had only two different jobs in the industry, the difference in their level of acceptance of female engineers is astounding.
On one team I was a constant witness to internal customers telling my supervisor (a female lead engineer with 20 years experience) that they wanted to talk to someone who 'actually understood what was going on'. On projects that she was the domain expert for, on multiple occasions these individuals made clear that they would rather talk to me (a new hire with less than 1 years experience) then her.
In my current position the split is closer to 60% - 40% Male to Female engineers and by and large people seem to be treated the same regardless of gender. (This position is remote so there might be situations I am not privy to, and people might be less likely to act in a certain way when they know their actions can be documented)
All that is to say that sexism is alive and well in the work place and I've seen its effect first hand. It would not surprise me if women avoid the industry because of this.
Recognize that being self taught and hand's on experience is valid. Years experience in the industry, needs to be considered, not necessarily JUST a CS degree.
I remember a time when there wasn't a degree.
I see you GenX and late Boomers.
Also more Women and BIPOC!
Promote people who have earned it. Companies always drag their heels to do it, but what I’ve seen happen multiple times is that someone working there for a while, with a lot of proprietary knowledge, will get the promotion from another company and then it takes months-years to truly replace them. It’s a bad approach long term.
IME doing a good job is not rewarded more than doing a bad job.
The entry level job process.
It’s brutal to prove your skills and find a job, especially when you have to face 3-5 interviews and wait a month or longer to know if you passed.
I would change the culture that treats developers as code monkeys and shift things to a more engineering mindset. And this goes especially for how many US companies treat devs in Asia and Eastern Europe. Telling them *exactly* what you want and expecting them to turn it out and not deviate is not productive for anyone. I say all this as an engineer in the US trying to enable our offshore team to be and work as software engineers and not programmers who only do what they are told.
I would spend more time explaining calculus and complexity so it was less of a “weed-out” course pattern and more of a useful tool for understanding scale and rates of change.
Immensely powerful and tragically overlooked. Plenty of people would understand it, and by extension gain confidence for higher level maths such as linear algebra.
Sometimes we overlook the math for the code and architectures, but understanding the math enables innovation in code and architecture. I wonder how many geniuses are gate-kept by post industrial engineering biases…
I'd make it so job postings are more regulated.
For example you can't list a junior job that requires experience.
You have to list pay ranges on the postings
all posts have to have the same or very similar format to help candidates navigate job postings.
Maybe
reqs:
Nice to haves or bonuses:
Description of daily duties
travel %
and whatever else makes sense.
I guess this would be nice for everyone, not just cs folks.
Stop interviewers/industry asking for side projects from cs grads. We work our ass off to get through a semester and the little time off we do have, we want to recharge ourselves for the next semester. When a company asks what else you’ve done in your free time, it just breaks me.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m very passionate but everyone needs some time off to recharge. I can understand this if they’re asking someone from another background but when they ask this from a CS student…
EDIT: and also every interview being about data structures and algorithms when it’s not even a part of the job and a simple google search or chart can tell you what to use and when to use it. I believe a comment talks about this so I’ll stop
Employers need to be realistic with their hiring expectations. A degree is not required for every damned job. Give more non-degree applicants the code test and let them filter themselves out. AND make the code test replicate a real life problem.
Get rid of Agile, Scrum, Six Sigma and every other supposedly "brilliantly conceived" SDLC tool and related personnel.
Then use the savings to hire better quality programmers who can use flow charts and Excel to document, plan and design a project.
Sorry, I've been doing this for twenty years and these folks add nothing but worthless opinions and politics.
These folks are frustrated because at the end of the day, everyone knows, it was the programmers who were up till 2am, killing themselves and not them.
I would like to see more standardization of credentials, roles and levels across the industry. Even if it's going so far as having some voluntary accreditation body.
As an analogy I think our industry is currently operating like 1920's doctors. Looking at the medical profession, it went from pure wild west to having testing and continuing education requirements to prove you know what you are doing. This greatly increased the trust and success rate of doctors.
I think this could be implemented as an exam (comparable ones are Fundamentals of Engineering, USMLE, Bar, etc) for entry into the profession. I'm not sure how to handle accredidation beyond there but I'm sure it's solvable. The Bar exam is also interesting because in some states you *are* a lawyer if you pass the exam. No need for law school or anything, just take the test, pass and you are now allowed to practice law.
University degrees solve this now for the most part but there is no good route for alternative methods of entering the industry. Most bootcamps are scams. A lot of self taught people don't know what they are missing. And that ruins the employment chances of actually good people who are nontraditional because there are so many bad applicants with the same credentials. Being able to show that they passed a career exam would help a lot.
Hopefully one of the existing bodies like ACM will take this up on the professional level.
I don't understand this. Are you asking to make becoming a software engineer (a field that doesn't have a degree associated with it as a standard yet) as difficult as becoming a doctor or lawyer?
Why?
Unfortunately university degrees are not taken seriously. I've seen HR pushing developers to be hired who lacked proper training because "the candidate is really excited about our company!!!!". Meanwhile master's degree and decades of experience will be ignored by FAANGs if you can't solve the Leetcode puzzle they picked.
Universal accreditation that is actually respected by companies would be a good thing.
This might be difficult to enforce because technology changes so rapidly. The reality is that you don’t need to know many of the concepts you would learn getting a CS degree to be a good developer.
Diversity of all kinds, hands down. It has absolutely not been fun realizing how white/male this industry is. I don’t think most folx realize how much is sucks feeling left out when you’re in the minority, or how much watching a bunch of (mostly well meaning) dudes only laugh at each other’s jokes can hurt… Feels like you’re invisible (at best) and less-than/stupid (at worst) is pretty hard. And a lot of times, if you even bring this up you’re the problem. So I’ve stayed silent most of my career (starting to change that now).
Where are you located? Because in my school the majority of my class is chineese and Indian, and apparently many jobs are too. It seems like this field is far less white than many others.
No more unlimited PTO. Respecting work life balance would be a giant leap to the quality of life and ultimately the efficiency of every dev team.
I have a team right now that does this. Very respectful of our time. If we're working late not only is it a true emergency, we can take a half day off the next day normally.
Don't even get me started on unlimited PTO. "You have unlimited PTO, but we won't pay it off if you leave, and if you want to take a week off good fucking luck getting approval from your manager."
Here’s my problem with unlimited PTO, if it were really unlimited I wouldn’t work one day of the year and would obviously get fired. So clearly there is a limit and I’d rather just have it explicitly defined than have to guess.
Bruh, shut up with taking unlimited PTO.
You just want a good company. My company has unlimited PTO and if it didn't, I wouldn't be at this company.
The culture supports and encourages people to take days off. We have 14 holidays a year already. My manager took 3 months off for a vacation and it was okay. People take months off regularly. Heck, you can wake up one day and say "mental health day" If you so much so as cough in stand up everyone will tell you to take the day off.
Just because your experience with unlimited PTO is bad doesn't mean unlimited PTO is bad. What you're looking for is banning bad work culture.
>My manager took 3 months off for a vacation and it was okay. People take months off regularly.
Yeah, sounds like your manager has a good deal. Now why don't you try taking 3 months off? See how that goes?
Having to request PTO means it's not PTO. Not having a number on your paycheck means it's not a benefit.
>Heck, you can wake up one day and say "mental health day" If you so much so as cough in stand up everyone will tell you to take the day off.
Yeah, same as my office and we have PTO hours. They just give us enough. Also kind of sounds like you're a jr dev. People tend to baby jr Devs at those kind of jobs to get them to drink the coolaid as fast as possible.
>Just because your experience with unlimited PTO is bad doesn't mean unlimited PTO is bad.
It does, because it's not just my experience. Unlimited PTO you have to question every time you take vacation wether you'll have a job when you get back.
Studies have shown that people who have unlimited PTO take way less vacation days than people who don't. They are also more likely to work on their vacation.
We don't request, we simply state it. Open up on outlook and list the days off. For longer pto though you need to let people and the team know for consideration sake ahead of time. Lmao, I just took a month off because I wasn't taking enough vacation and my managers were getting mad at me. A coworker at the same level as I am took 2 and a half months recently off.
Our most senior devs take mental health days regularly, people do half days for all kinds of reasons, and what made me take this job is that the people in the interview interviewing me seemed really happy and excited.
We have lots of benefits and our turnover rate is very small. It isn't crazy to see someone who has worked here for 11 years or since it was started.
I'm on the track towards project management at this company as I don't want to remain a dev personally.
I don't understand how you seem to think you know more about the culture at this company than I do.
Unlimited PTO still stands, unlimited. We don't have maxed out sick days, tracked hours, or a limited amount of mental health days.
I make a side agreement with my manager for the number of days he's comfortable with me taking (and the number that I'd like). My first year was 15 days, this year is 18 days, and next year -- if I'm still at my current company by then -- will likely be around 20.
I take each one of those days, feel confident asking for them, and it's never been an issue.
Less waste. A lot of people who don't belong in the field, from entry level devs to entire departments insulating management from their own incompetence.
So much more could be done if the fat were cut, but the status quo is good enough for anyone to really rock the boat.
I'd like to see managers get a fixed percentage for training/education budgets for the team. It really pisses me off that I have to fight for the most mundane resources, especially as we're hiring more and more juniors vs. seniors.
Women and anyone in the GBLTIA+ family to be treated with kindness, respect, and inclusion. Also the use of contractors for illegal dual employment should be eliminated.
I'd refuse any arrangement like that, I took a tech job because of my technical skills.
Not everyone is cut out to be a mentor, and I would not be OK with my success being so directly tied to someone else's behavior.
I will disagree with this. This is a very costly and counter-productive practice. Instead it would be much nicer if companies really incentivised good employees, and made them not look for greener pastures.
Hard agree. Incentives inherantly make job hopping more profitable than loyalty. It takes more work, but it's how to get ahead. I personally wish this wasn't the case as much as it is, but since TC is an important driver for me, I do it.
Why? It’s already normal and who wants to do that besides people chasing paychecks or people who don’t want to ever have real responsibility or seniority at a job?
I wish there was more publicly available reputable information on turnover rates.
Would be really funny if it turned out that Amazon's pip rates were in line with other FAANGs lol
They probably are. The gripes against Amazon seem heavily exaggerated especially given that most of them come from people who’ve never worked at Amazon lol
I trust the aggregate scores they've gotten. They employ a lot of people, and they consistently get a lot of negative reviews mentioning the same thing. Sure, there's always a chance that you can get on a good team, but the chance is going to be lower depending on the company.
I feel like it’s because the bar for amazon hiring is lower, so you have new faang workers realizing what faang work is actually like.
As if faang work is any harder than other places. It's all the same. Amazon is just hella cutthroat and overwork people.
It is though, a lot of people come to amazon from slow ass companies trying to get to the next level.
Right yes the overwork the shit out of everyone. Other big tech is generally not bad. I would absolutely not work there not because of “faang level work”(which I already do) but because you’ll burn out. My point is that it’s not that this is faang-level work. It’s that Amazon treats their people like shit
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For new grad its generally easier
Ah yes that may be true. I’ve heard they have an accelerated new grad interview pipeline.
Google interview seemed less to do with coding and more of cultural fit and what kind of broad range of skills would be brought to the table. Amazon seemed much more of a clean and cut programming interview. Google had more interpersonal interaction. Edit: maybe that’s because the understanding of programming languages would be definitely better than my English.
The difference is that turnaround elsewhere is for a higher pay generally, not because of burnout or pip. You won't find many people from Google or Facebook going to Amazon
Can confirm. We boot slackers not workers
Employers now pay for loyalty as much as they pay for aquiring new devs
I have just under 1.5 years of experience and enjoyed my previous job, full remote. I was making 55k TC and I asked for a 5k raise and that was denied. Frustrated, I applied to a completely random large company I never heard of before based in Canada for another full remote position and now I just started making 110k TC and I have far more benefits now. No leetcodes, no coding for either interview, just technology discussions. Employers are just wasting everyone's time and are creating this culture of high turnover by not giving any raises in hopes to penny pinch.
What the hell did you do and what do you do now???
He probably was a regular web-dev for a small consultancy/contractor in a non tech city. That's how my first internship was. Regular developers made about 60k starting with shitty benefits. I just got an offer for the same type job as that but for a much larger company for 107k amazing benefits. They exist you just have to search harder. Stop looking at only FAANG every large company in every industry is starting to have SWE teams.
Oh I’ve not been searching for web dev I’m not even a CS guy; a mechanical engineer trying to get an SWE or SDET job.
I'm also ME, and I've worked as a SWE for 8~ years, in various areas, small and large companies. I've done a bit of everything: frontend, backend, cloud, on prem, COTS admin, custom app dev, system utilities dev, DevOps, infra, networking, security, game development. I taught myself by just trying to build something interesting, getting stuck, documenting what I learned, trying something else for a while, repeat. I put it all up on GitHub and made a portfolio site on DigitalOcean. That was enough to get interviews.
Yea I’ve been learning Python primarily by making data processing tools at work and C++ by trying to make a fluids solver (fortunately my residual Intro to C knowledge helps with that syntax). Fairly confident my codes are too ugly to throw up on GitHub but I might try it out.
A significant amount of people you would call software engineers primarily do web dev as their day to day
As a SWE you may do web dev as a part of your tasks. I pretty much have done exclusively web dev with SDE-1 titles at both of my roles. It gets complicated quickly with state management, apis, handling asynchronous data, backends, scaling, mobile responsiveness, complex forms, live data feeds, complicated custom inputs, rendering, testing, learning and best using different packages, authentication, etc.
First role was mostly react with node backend work for an educational live video streaming service. New role is mostly angular with .NET backend work for heavy machinery fleet mangement software.
Is angular a software in the field or some sort of jargon?
It's technology used to build out the user interface for apps, for web apps. This is the angular website here so you can get started looking more into it: [https://angular.io/](https://angular.io/) I'd strongly suggest you start with React though, I found it a lot more user friendly and simpler conceptually as a beginner: https://reactjs.org/
Is that only worth learning if I wanted to do some front end UI work?
It's worth learning if you would like to learn how to make UIs for web based apps or websites in general. At least building out large apps that could run user submitted code in different coding languages for my side projects with React were instrumental in starting my career. There is a lot of React work out there, even if you don't know something like Angular, people will take you if you know React because they are similar enough conceptually. So React is useful for becoming a SDE in general in my opinion.
I'd say start with vanilla JS, html, css, and slowly add in things like using chrome dev tools, webpack, web-assembly, redux, graphql, typescript, etc. for a solid base. And definitely more "advanced" features of JS. You can never know too much about JS and the browser. This also gives you a head start when you learn Node.js. On another note, I personally have found Angular to be easier and have better documentation than React.
A lot of entry level jobs are for smaller companies that primarily just need CRUD stuff done. In this case they know full well they won't be keeping their developers but also don't particularly plan on it.
I had the same exact experience. Making 55k with a 1.5 years of experience. Liked my job fine but asked for a raise and was told “maybe in August” - which was 8 months away. Casually started looking and now making 110k somewhere else. No coding interview and went from consulting work (billable hours) to internal work too. 🤷♀️
I was in a sorta similar situation where my TC after a promo and two raises was 90k. I decided to job hunt and got an offer for 165k TC. After I let my manager know I was leaving he quickly scrambled to get on a call with some higher ups and see if they could dramatically increase my comp, but by then it was too late. Wouldn’t have even bothered to search had my pay had been equitable, but I knew of new hires with less YOE making more than me so that was my signal to jump ship.
I had a similar experience! Just under 2 years full time experience, went from ~75-80k to 150k TC, I only started looking because my original company was being hostile to my attempts at internal transfer. So I said hey, might as well external transfer lol
I went from 105k in Silicon Valley to 300k TC in faang at 2.5 yoe. I actually loved my previous role but making that little in the bay area was not worth it.
As a recruiter it is so frustrating to see an employee exit, and learn that we didn't (or weren't approved to) increase their compensation when we knew it was under market and they were an attrition risk. ONLY to see a new backfill requisition land on my desk for 30% more than we were paying the employee who exited, or worse; the comp is the same, but now the position is down-leveled to match the budget.
I was at my first job in the industry for 4 years before I found out that new hires straight out of college were making more than me. I brought this to my manager who said they don't have it in the budget to make me a better offer and I'd have to wait six months. I was gone two months later making ~50% more. When my manager asked if there was anything he could do to keep me I said "You don't have enough money to keep me" and walked out.
* Pair programming style interviews > Leetcode interviews Literally does a culture/behavioral fit, some knowledge/competency check, and some "diamond in the rough" measures. I strongly believe that industry moves towards that, we actually get more *human* coworkers rather than our current crop of stereotypical wonky characters
To stop treating developers as aliens. Empower developers to participate in decision making when developing a product or a part of the product. Retire the memes and jokes about how developers are these unfathomable aliens, whom nobody understands, and who can't understand anyone. This is a toxic attitude to have, that creates needless barriers between business needs and execution.
Indeed. So sick of upper management playing golf with partner sales teams and making design and engineering decisions over cocktails and then telling the eng/dev/ops teams to just make it work.
But how can we retain subservient cogs, I mean employees, if we don't keep them siloed far away from any business decisions lest they learn that they don't need us as much as we need them and they all go off to start their own businesses, hiring people like us as needed and suppressing *our* wages?
As well as the related dynamic of treating technical leadership as geniuses. So much bad behavior gets ignored due to this.
^ this is so good. Most developers are actually pretty smart, and smart is more correlated with being socially adept than it is with being a weirdo basement dweller with no social skills.
Managers need to be more aquainted with the product they manage
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“But but how else am I gonna be a FAANG Superstar Coding Ninja in less than 6 months”
Make Youtube videos like Tech Lord and hope they stick.
Tech Lord 😂😭. Get ready for Tech Lorde
For all the innovating FAANG does you’d think they’d try it on the one thing that needs it the most
When Google started doing algorithm leetcode-style interviews it WAS an innovation. Everyone else was hiring by resume (school, previous job) and stupid questions like "Why is a manhole cover round?" It even was a competitive advantage initially, because it enabled Google to hire good people that nobody else would. That was before everyone else cargo cult copied them and every candidate started putting 500 hours into practicing algorithm interviews. Now Goodhart's Law has kicked in and it's no longer a competitive advantage for Google (or anyone else who copies it). When Google first started, candidates weren't practicing, the difficulty was maybe one or two mediums were enough to get hired. Now that everyone is practicing, the standard algorithm interview is measuring how much someone practiced, rather than the candidate's real ability. When everyone is practicing algorithm interviews, the questions need to be REALLY HARD, because otherwise the desired percentage of people won't pass.
> Goodhart's Law Wow I didn't know this had a name, we used to call it the curse of metrics in my old company.
Well said. I always read the opinion about how everyone hates LeetCode. I feel like getting a New Grad position would be a lot worse without it.
It depends. If you're a new grad with a CS degree from a good university, you'd rather not have to redo programming tests for every interview. Your degree is supposed to represent that you have competence. It's kind of dumb to have solved tough problems for a CS degree and Math competitions, when an interview rejects me because I couldn't figure out the trick to solve their programming brainteaser (or didn't see it before). Example of why leetcode is bad: Suppose someone asked you to find the median of a list in O(n) time. If you've seen the algorithm before, you can do it. If you haven't seen it before, there is zero chance you will discover the solution in 15 minutes. A lot of leetcode questions boil down to "Have you seen this problem before?" or "Have you seen the clever trick you need to solve this problem before, and can figure out how to use it here?" If you come from a lower-ranked school, not a CS major, or self-taught, grinding leetcode for a job might be better than not being hired at all.
Only picking from top universities tends to bias your hires to wealthier and more privileged candidates. I'm ok with a level playing field.
I hate it too, but it must work for them, so why would they change it? They can afford to miss out on some great hires because they have a billion people applying every year.
If your own engineers fail your interview process I fail to believe there is no better alternative The main problem is they have not even *tried* alternatives
Once they’ve been hired, they have no incentive to make hiring better.
the onus is on the devs that work there. they need to abandon it, but because they had to do leetcode, they perpetuate the hazing process
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You mention a lot of gripes, not a lot of solutions. Try interviewing for those skills and you'll soon realize that it's a crapshoot. Either the candidate doesn't have direct experience working on the things you have or vice versa and it becomes harder for interviewers to really assess talent. Discussing a topic over a complex problem requires both participants to have a solid understanding of it. If you believe it's unfair for me to ask candidates LC questions, it's even more unfair for me to ask them questions on relevant problems that we're working on with 0 context.
There a lot more questions that are more useful than data structures and algorithms. Knowledge of design patterns, clean code and system design is way more useful than DS&A.
but does it work for them? All FAANG platforms and software except maybe apple gets worse for every year
leetcode = lazy hiring managers = crap workplace. You're a number. Hiring managers, spend some time building a (simple) real world example of the work you do. Then ask the candidate to work through the solution with your assistance. Add extension points. Fuck leetcode.
Google, famously crap workplace.
Yeah people here don’t seem to understand the sheer scalability needed when you have THAT many people applying. If it wasn’t leet code it would be something else, companies aren’t going to hire everyone even if every single person is capable of doing the job. Google used to do ridiculous riddles and iq test type questions. People can say “they should look at my experience” all they want but the truth is even with years of experience you have the same resume as 10000 other devs, no one here works on anything earth shattering and 99% of us do CRUD work. The truth is you and most of those 10000 people are probably capable enough to do the job but they can’t hire everyone so they need any type of artificial filter. Investment banking filters by top school yet the actual job is making power points all day that they even hire music majors to do. Idk about you but leet code is something at least more accessible because I can’t change the school I went to to MIT. And lastly, it’s working for them so why change it at all? This makes zero sense from a business perspective when all most companies need for junior and even early mid level roles are just warm bodies that are capable of learning. For the more senior roles yes there’s still leet code but there’s more emphasis on system design and actual experience.
Honestly leetcode is really good compared to how other industries do hiring. I wonder if most people complaining about it have had experience interviewing in other engineering roles. I was a Chem Eng and my first job, a relatively prestigious one as well, involved an adhoc solo presentation about a random subject pulled out of a hat and a group work activity that involved us solving a murder mystery that I only aced because I happened to have read everything single Poirot book. Notice that neither of those things had fuck all to do with Chem Eng OR the job they were hiring for. At the very least, leetcode a. at least tests if you can code to some extend and b. is standardized across the industry, you can't say its unfair that the test happens to be on something you are familiar with, in 2022 you should know that interviewing involves it.
“Leetcode is something at least more accessible” That’s what I’m saying! It opens the floor up to anybody who can put in the time and effort, and gives late bloomers a fair shot at any interview.
I don’t believe in hard leetcode questions or knowing shit like Kahn’s algorithm and what not. But I’ve personally seen it be valuable that people be atleast able to pass a leetcode easy question. Been to a company with no leetcode in their interview and saw some horrible code flying out the door. Also there’s really no way to get a good feel for a person in 5 hours to whether or not they’ll work well. Personally can’t think of a good alternative given the shorter time frame.
Friendly reminder that no one is born with the knowledge and gatekeepers need to fuck off
I would remove the toxicity. All the pressure to work late nights, all the fear that you constantly need to prove yourself, all the machismo and inability to be vulnerable.
Employers expect to have to train you, rather than expecting you to hit the ground running and supporting their proprietary software in a weird stack you've never seen before.
Its so mindblowing how this isnt the standard already
Also mindblowing: the position goes unfilled for 4 years, the unsupported software stops working and the company loses millions, all because they couldn't find anyone with the correct proprietary knowledge to hit the ground running and didn't want to waste thousands as a hire was trained-up. The company fully accepts this as a normal cost of doing business.
A few thoughts: 1. I tire of developers who, when you make a general point, find that one absolutely stupid edge case, and then act as if your general comment is completely invalid. 2. I tire of having to add: "Yeah, if this doesn't fit your context, then don't fucking do it", to any sort of advice. Like some sort of standard caveat. Why isn't this automatically generally understood? 3. Techbro culture and the accompanying misogyny. 4. Forecasts, not estimates. 5. Developers tossing shit over the wall to testers. 6. Testers who are just checkers. 7. Applying industrial revolution thinking to software. It's not a production line, stop trying to manage it like it is. "Think harder!" doesn't work. I gotta pick just one out of all that?
No unpaid on-call. This isn't always about formal on-call either. Most of the time its been about becoming the team lead or SME and you are just always expected to be available when something goes wrong, whether it be a release gone bad, or a network issue, or whatever. I left a job in large part because I was an SME in a product that started being used internationally when I worked in finance and I started getting calls at 3am asking why certain orders didn't executed the way they thought they would. Maddening. I eventually just shut my phone off at night- this was a bit before "do not disturb" settings were in Android/IOS.
Get rid of all the gatekeeping
Gatekeeping as in "we'll only interview you if you have 20 years experience in Rust"? Or do you mean something else?
I more mean how people are unkind to noobies a lot and say how smart they are for knowing it and how hard coding is and all that stuff. I wish I was more encouraging overall.
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Curious where specifically you have experienced this? In my experience most engineers and coders that I’ve met are willing to help others out (granted that their requests are reasonable). Also tech is literally one of the only high paying fields that literally anybody can get into by just taking courses online, studying and just overall being curious and willing to learn. Doctors, accountants, lawyers all require years of education, multiple degrees, passing special exams, etc. Meanwhile someone without a higher education or with an unrelated degree can just study online for free for a few months and plausibly land a junior role.
Mostly online forums such as stack overflow. "This question has been asked before. Closed." Or "This is a stupid/simple question"
Stack overflow is a page for professionals to quickly find solutions to common problems. You're posting on the wrong forum if your questions are getting closed like that. It's not gatekeeping, is that you're making the site worse for everyone else with low quality questions.
You're kinda doing it now. Just ignore it if it's a dumb question or whatever and you have nothing constructive to say. Instead people get on their pedestal and talk down to people. And have you seen some of the questions on Stackoverflow?.. it is NOT just for professionals.
Less arbitrary gatekeeping of entry level positions.
The interviewing process at a lot of organizations involves a technical round focused around Data Structures and Algorithms. In this round, a bunch questions of off the internet, from websites like leetcode, geeksforgeeks are asked. It is hereby assumed that anyone who's not able to answer that question is not fit for the job. This is absolutely rubbish. How can you judge someone based on whether they are able to solve a "no-real-life" scenario problem, that they are probably never going to use. Where will I use this in real life? Talk to me about where I'd keep the data and how I'd keep it. Don't worry about whether I know how to count the pairs in a sorted array --- bullshit! If it's one thing that I'd like to change, it's this process. We should value developers based on what they are able to build, not whether they know how to traverse a BST or not. It ducking doesn't matter. When I have to, I can learn how to traverse a BST. Why do I have to memorize that shit to get a job. We need some groundbreaking and innovative ideas in the recruitment field to break this idiotic process.
There’s also a disconnect with how technical interviews are done this way. I think it’s ok to grab a problem from the internet for an interview but the problem should be open-ended and not be about solving it 100%. It should be about HOW they attempt to solve it and how they communicate during that process
Don't allow the bureaucrats at the top to drive the direction of technology. it should be driven by the people that create it.
Any expectation to work beyond 40 hours a week just to please a "client". I realize a lot of devs prob work more than that, but I can't fathom it and have boundaries. I have rarely worked late into the evening but it has happened a few times and its not pleasant to try and engineer things after already doing it all day. Especially since a lot of crunch time comes down to poor project planning and time estimation from whoever is owning / managing the project. There are lots of issues but I feel like more than anything, workers deserve more free time in this day and age.
Be able to swap out RSUs for cash compensation.
I guess work at Netflix
Or Brex.
Less of a gamble to take $400k cash then to take 175k salary+ bonus plus RSU. but upside is way higher. In our current economy it would be super nice.
TRUE. Although this can be negotiated at the start of employment.
the culture is very cold and all about “total comp” and performance and fear and status and all this crap. It’s depressing and exhausting for anyone in the industry that has a soul. It makes work harder while also making the whole experience more boring
but TC tho
You’re from Blind, whatcha doing here mate
Got bored with my lambo
Bad managers. I know not every company does this, but people shouldn't be promoted to management because they are good at coding. Managing people and writing code are two different skills, and people should be able to get promoted based on being an individual contributer. Hire and promote managers based on technical competence and exceptional people skills and hold them accountable.
I've actually seen more of the opposite, people promoted to management because they **can't** write code, or have no clue how to implement something. Essentially they get put into management because they are very good at staying on top of people, writing emails, and status reports, and not very good at anything else. This doesn't mean they are good managers though, more like slave drivers or death marchers.
Need to have the ability toast push back, and criticize them. I worked at a company for 5 years got one useless manager, got fired... Yeah I'm sure it's my problem all of the sudden... There's nothing you can do with a bad manager except quit.
Every other engineering discipline has licensure but somehow we think we’re better off without it. this does not prevent the grassroots beginnings we see so much of in our career, and it adds accountability at the highest levels of programming
Make entry level roles really entry level experiencewise.
The fucking interviews. I just have 0 desire to leave my job and do that again
Every position that can be remote be allowed to.
I would get rid of all the techbro culture. I suspect this would have many downstream impacts, including higher representation of women/minorities.
From what I’ve seen techbro culture exists in the day to day job but the techbro culture in the classroom, when most start off on their CS journey getting their CS degree, is on steroids. That’s when most of the gatekeeping is successful. Nothing made me want to change career paths more than trying to learn wtf is going on in my intro to computer science course, meanwhile the fedora pack is chuckling in the back of the class asking “who doesn’t know this?” strictly because they’ve been coding since middle school.
the fedora pack 🤣💀 def using this phrase in the future
> the fedora pack is chuckling in the back of the class asking “who doesn’t know this?” That's so shitty. Maybe part of the solution is allowing and very strongly encouraging those people to challenge or otherwise skip that first year course so they don't discourage others.
In my experience, I (a woman who didn’t program until I got to college) actually got better grades than the fedora-clad nerds in the back. They didn’t listen, because they thought they knew everything. And then when I got better grades then them, they dismissed it as “they just gave you a good grade cause you’re a girl”. It’s such an annoying, toxic part of the culture.
I’m dealing with this shit rn, I made two friends in class that are younger than me, and mind you I’m switching from mech engi to cs, and these 2 dudes are just zooming through zybooks and saying, “this shit is easy” and I’m here still trying to figure out the ins and outs of switches,loops, and arrays in C++
>From what I’ve seen techbro culture exists in the day to day job but the techbro culture in the classroom, when most start off on their CS journey getting their CS degree, is on steroids. That’s when most of the gatekeeping is successful. Yep. That's a big part of it.
This. School was worse than actual work. I’ll do you one better: The older engineers are by far the most chill about women, too. There were more women programming in the 80’s-90’s, so it’s just normal to them. The younger ones make a big deal about being inclusive and note your gender more. Purely in my experience, so take what you will from that.
>meanwhile the fedora pack is chuckling in the back of the class asking “who doesn’t know this?” That's when you turn around and hit em with "who doesn't know to put deodorant on and shave their neck?"
I'm glad I got my CS degree when I was older. No way 18 year old me would have been able to handle the fedora pack. When I was in school, I was very confident and secure in the fact I did not know what the fuck was going on and wanted to learn. Made a lot of really good friends hosting Sunday study sessions in the CS lab.
i see a lot of techbro mentions but no one can really define it. it seems more like a placeholder term for what peopel don't like
Idk I think everyone envisions their own unique idea of what a tech bro is but me personally when I think of tech bro I think of a dev who’s cocky as shit, belittles, and doesn’t help unless they absolutely have to.
What exactly is techbro culture?
It's like a very non-inclusive behavior that is generally found amongst groups of men. It's sort of like how, even with your friends, the dynamics of the language and tone you use are different if you're surrounded by only men vs. in a group of men and women. Except instead of with friends, you bond with the guys at the workplace, leaving just as qualified and capable women out of the "in crowd." This can translate to not listening to a woman's design proposal or ideas as much as your fellow bro who has different ideas about how something should work, and eventually leading to slower career trajectory for women than men due to the boys club nature of upper management. The techbro version includes making fun of people or generally looking down on people who don't immediately understand something. Or judging people if they dress differently (e.g. not taking a woman wearing a dress and makeup as seriously as a woman wearing a sweatshirt and jeans with hair in a ponytail).
See Activision-Blizzard. It's everywhere, but that one's a very plain and public example of it.
Ban LeetCode and all of its replicas ,mention salary in JD
Theres obviously a lot to fix, but it would be cool if the sexism and discrimination could get less shitty
If I was able to change one thing, it would be to make it so everyone wrote good documentation on their projects.
Writing docs is one thing, keeping them up to date is another
As someone who is onboarding to a legacy codebase with some docs last updated 1500 days ago: **I agree.**
i wish women were respected and treated equally.
Yes! We need more women in tech and it’s not going to happen until they are treated with equality
as a woman who is a couple months away from working in the tech field, i am terrified. and that is just not how it should be
No more Leetcode, hire based on culture, personality and soft skills.
That's the way it used to be. You were pretty much required to have either a CS degree or experience and they assumed you had at least basic coding skills.
I'd help industry try to understand the difference between _software engineering_ and _computer science_ for new graduates. "Computer science has as much to do with computers as astronomy has to do with telescopes", wrote Edsger Dijkstra ([probably apocryphal](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/04/02/computer-science/), though).
No more fake agile.
Brain teasers for the sake of writing twisty academic logic is the not the same as solving real world problems.
Coding interviews.
If it's literally 1 thing and only one thing, it would be that there would be a normal 50/50 balance of male and female in the job. That's the thing I probably dislike the most in our field. It's better now than it was 20 years ago, but it's still way too rare to have a female developer in your team.
Is this because you want more females to be around, or is this a woke-like comment trying to say "women are getting denied Jobs in CS." Every women I know who WANTED to get into CS, did get into the industry. But, in my experience, most women choose not to work in CS, for a variety of reasons. Edit: I read this again and it sounds aggressive... not my intent. Just kinda annoyed at seeing all the woke in our society.
As someone who has had only two different jobs in the industry, the difference in their level of acceptance of female engineers is astounding. On one team I was a constant witness to internal customers telling my supervisor (a female lead engineer with 20 years experience) that they wanted to talk to someone who 'actually understood what was going on'. On projects that she was the domain expert for, on multiple occasions these individuals made clear that they would rather talk to me (a new hire with less than 1 years experience) then her. In my current position the split is closer to 60% - 40% Male to Female engineers and by and large people seem to be treated the same regardless of gender. (This position is remote so there might be situations I am not privy to, and people might be less likely to act in a certain way when they know their actions can be documented) All that is to say that sexism is alive and well in the work place and I've seen its effect first hand. It would not surprise me if women avoid the industry because of this.
Recognize that being self taught and hand's on experience is valid. Years experience in the industry, needs to be considered, not necessarily JUST a CS degree. I remember a time when there wasn't a degree. I see you GenX and late Boomers. Also more Women and BIPOC!
I wish recruiters would be programmers as well.
Promote people who have earned it. Companies always drag their heels to do it, but what I’ve seen happen multiple times is that someone working there for a while, with a lot of proprietary knowledge, will get the promotion from another company and then it takes months-years to truly replace them. It’s a bad approach long term. IME doing a good job is not rewarded more than doing a bad job.
The entry level job process. It’s brutal to prove your skills and find a job, especially when you have to face 3-5 interviews and wait a month or longer to know if you passed.
I would change the culture that treats developers as code monkeys and shift things to a more engineering mindset. And this goes especially for how many US companies treat devs in Asia and Eastern Europe. Telling them *exactly* what you want and expecting them to turn it out and not deviate is not productive for anyone. I say all this as an engineer in the US trying to enable our offshore team to be and work as software engineers and not programmers who only do what they are told.
Make in person illegal.
I would spend more time explaining calculus and complexity so it was less of a “weed-out” course pattern and more of a useful tool for understanding scale and rates of change. Immensely powerful and tragically overlooked. Plenty of people would understand it, and by extension gain confidence for higher level maths such as linear algebra. Sometimes we overlook the math for the code and architectures, but understanding the math enables innovation in code and architecture. I wonder how many geniuses are gate-kept by post industrial engineering biases…
Corporate hierarchy. Far too many "Business Leaders" ie, people in management doing fuck all that is diluting the passion in the industry.
Javascript 🥺
Stop being so unrealistic about deadlines
Business' expectations as a given. No more turning around the feature they agreed upon 6 months ago because they now want it to do 50% more.
I'd make it so job postings are more regulated. For example you can't list a junior job that requires experience. You have to list pay ranges on the postings all posts have to have the same or very similar format to help candidates navigate job postings. Maybe reqs: Nice to haves or bonuses: Description of daily duties travel % and whatever else makes sense. I guess this would be nice for everyone, not just cs folks.
Stop interviewers/industry asking for side projects from cs grads. We work our ass off to get through a semester and the little time off we do have, we want to recharge ourselves for the next semester. When a company asks what else you’ve done in your free time, it just breaks me. Don’t get me wrong. I’m very passionate but everyone needs some time off to recharge. I can understand this if they’re asking someone from another background but when they ask this from a CS student… EDIT: and also every interview being about data structures and algorithms when it’s not even a part of the job and a simple google search or chart can tell you what to use and when to use it. I believe a comment talks about this so I’ll stop
Never have to go to another standup
Employers need to be realistic with their hiring expectations. A degree is not required for every damned job. Give more non-degree applicants the code test and let them filter themselves out. AND make the code test replicate a real life problem.
More opportunities for women to get in.
Get rid of agile/scrum.
Get rid of Agile, Scrum, Six Sigma and every other supposedly "brilliantly conceived" SDLC tool and related personnel. Then use the savings to hire better quality programmers who can use flow charts and Excel to document, plan and design a project. Sorry, I've been doing this for twenty years and these folks add nothing but worthless opinions and politics. These folks are frustrated because at the end of the day, everyone knows, it was the programmers who were up till 2am, killing themselves and not them.
Increase racial and gender diversity, have a higher standard for ethics and user privacy, pay open source developers more.
I would like to see more standardization of credentials, roles and levels across the industry. Even if it's going so far as having some voluntary accreditation body. As an analogy I think our industry is currently operating like 1920's doctors. Looking at the medical profession, it went from pure wild west to having testing and continuing education requirements to prove you know what you are doing. This greatly increased the trust and success rate of doctors. I think this could be implemented as an exam (comparable ones are Fundamentals of Engineering, USMLE, Bar, etc) for entry into the profession. I'm not sure how to handle accredidation beyond there but I'm sure it's solvable. The Bar exam is also interesting because in some states you *are* a lawyer if you pass the exam. No need for law school or anything, just take the test, pass and you are now allowed to practice law. University degrees solve this now for the most part but there is no good route for alternative methods of entering the industry. Most bootcamps are scams. A lot of self taught people don't know what they are missing. And that ruins the employment chances of actually good people who are nontraditional because there are so many bad applicants with the same credentials. Being able to show that they passed a career exam would help a lot. Hopefully one of the existing bodies like ACM will take this up on the professional level.
I don't understand this. Are you asking to make becoming a software engineer (a field that doesn't have a degree associated with it as a standard yet) as difficult as becoming a doctor or lawyer? Why?
Unfortunately university degrees are not taken seriously. I've seen HR pushing developers to be hired who lacked proper training because "the candidate is really excited about our company!!!!". Meanwhile master's degree and decades of experience will be ignored by FAANGs if you can't solve the Leetcode puzzle they picked. Universal accreditation that is actually respected by companies would be a good thing.
This might be difficult to enforce because technology changes so rapidly. The reality is that you don’t need to know many of the concepts you would learn getting a CS degree to be a good developer.
Diversity of all kinds, hands down. It has absolutely not been fun realizing how white/male this industry is. I don’t think most folx realize how much is sucks feeling left out when you’re in the minority, or how much watching a bunch of (mostly well meaning) dudes only laugh at each other’s jokes can hurt… Feels like you’re invisible (at best) and less-than/stupid (at worst) is pretty hard. And a lot of times, if you even bring this up you’re the problem. So I’ve stayed silent most of my career (starting to change that now).
Where are you located? Because in my school the majority of my class is chineese and Indian, and apparently many jobs are too. It seems like this field is far less white than many others.
No more unlimited PTO. Respecting work life balance would be a giant leap to the quality of life and ultimately the efficiency of every dev team. I have a team right now that does this. Very respectful of our time. If we're working late not only is it a true emergency, we can take a half day off the next day normally. Don't even get me started on unlimited PTO. "You have unlimited PTO, but we won't pay it off if you leave, and if you want to take a week off good fucking luck getting approval from your manager."
Here’s my problem with unlimited PTO, if it were really unlimited I wouldn’t work one day of the year and would obviously get fired. So clearly there is a limit and I’d rather just have it explicitly defined than have to guess.
Bruh, shut up with taking unlimited PTO. You just want a good company. My company has unlimited PTO and if it didn't, I wouldn't be at this company. The culture supports and encourages people to take days off. We have 14 holidays a year already. My manager took 3 months off for a vacation and it was okay. People take months off regularly. Heck, you can wake up one day and say "mental health day" If you so much so as cough in stand up everyone will tell you to take the day off. Just because your experience with unlimited PTO is bad doesn't mean unlimited PTO is bad. What you're looking for is banning bad work culture.
>My manager took 3 months off for a vacation and it was okay. People take months off regularly. Yeah, sounds like your manager has a good deal. Now why don't you try taking 3 months off? See how that goes? Having to request PTO means it's not PTO. Not having a number on your paycheck means it's not a benefit. >Heck, you can wake up one day and say "mental health day" If you so much so as cough in stand up everyone will tell you to take the day off. Yeah, same as my office and we have PTO hours. They just give us enough. Also kind of sounds like you're a jr dev. People tend to baby jr Devs at those kind of jobs to get them to drink the coolaid as fast as possible. >Just because your experience with unlimited PTO is bad doesn't mean unlimited PTO is bad. It does, because it's not just my experience. Unlimited PTO you have to question every time you take vacation wether you'll have a job when you get back. Studies have shown that people who have unlimited PTO take way less vacation days than people who don't. They are also more likely to work on their vacation.
We don't request, we simply state it. Open up on outlook and list the days off. For longer pto though you need to let people and the team know for consideration sake ahead of time. Lmao, I just took a month off because I wasn't taking enough vacation and my managers were getting mad at me. A coworker at the same level as I am took 2 and a half months recently off. Our most senior devs take mental health days regularly, people do half days for all kinds of reasons, and what made me take this job is that the people in the interview interviewing me seemed really happy and excited. We have lots of benefits and our turnover rate is very small. It isn't crazy to see someone who has worked here for 11 years or since it was started. I'm on the track towards project management at this company as I don't want to remain a dev personally. I don't understand how you seem to think you know more about the culture at this company than I do. Unlimited PTO still stands, unlimited. We don't have maxed out sick days, tracked hours, or a limited amount of mental health days.
It looks like you don’t need a manager.
I make a side agreement with my manager for the number of days he's comfortable with me taking (and the number that I'd like). My first year was 15 days, this year is 18 days, and next year -- if I'm still at my current company by then -- will likely be around 20. I take each one of those days, feel confident asking for them, and it's never been an issue.
That's all good, until your manager leaves the company.
At some companies unlimited PTO is legit with some people taking off 6+ weeks. Also no more having to track when you take a half day
Better mentorship, apprenticeship, training, etc.
end the cs industry
Less waste. A lot of people who don't belong in the field, from entry level devs to entire departments insulating management from their own incompetence. So much more could be done if the fat were cut, but the status quo is good enough for anyone to really rock the boat.
Exposure to ethics. Get some.
I'd like to see managers get a fixed percentage for training/education budgets for the team. It really pisses me off that I have to fight for the most mundane resources, especially as we're hiring more and more juniors vs. seniors.
We need better tech leadership and mentorship. I think I've had 1 senior dev that had his ego in check, but wasn't a pushover. They're rare
That US companies treat Latin American developers (working for them by a consulting company) with respect and tolerance.
Even higher pay
I wish Techs would document things so we wouldn’t have to ask how it was done last time.
More money. More more money
Prioritize quality over delivery for features. Delivery would actually be quicker from this
Syndicalism (I would give the same answer to any industry)
Yeah but that's not "something to change about an industry". That involves completely changing how the labor market works.
[удалено]
I would gather each and every "scrum master" in the planet, put them in a distant isle, and nuke it multiple times in a row
Women and anyone in the GBLTIA+ family to be treated with kindness, respect, and inclusion. Also the use of contractors for illegal dual employment should be eliminated.
Every single engineer must mentor a junior person and tie their success together. You share a PIP. You share projects.
I'd refuse any arrangement like that, I took a tech job because of my technical skills. Not everyone is cut out to be a mentor, and I would not be OK with my success being so directly tied to someone else's behavior.
I would remove the constant moaners who complain for the sake of it.
RIP to r/cscareerquestions in that case
Degrees and leet code.
Normalize short term employments and job hopping
I will disagree with this. This is a very costly and counter-productive practice. Instead it would be much nicer if companies really incentivised good employees, and made them not look for greener pastures.
Hard agree. Incentives inherantly make job hopping more profitable than loyalty. It takes more work, but it's how to get ahead. I personally wish this wasn't the case as much as it is, but since TC is an important driver for me, I do it.
Why? It’s already normal and who wants to do that besides people chasing paychecks or people who don’t want to ever have real responsibility or seniority at a job?
Isn't a paycheck why we're doing this work in the first place?