One is bootstrap. Do what you care about, and make a dent. If all you want is to be able to sustain a frugal life then this takes less effort, but not that much less than earning far more.
The other option is to join a (true) non profit. Some of them do seek growth, but some don't.
Do your own projects on the side and keep your antenna peeled for other opportunities more in line with your own life goals.
If they're not looking to grow themselves then why would they invest in growing you?
But they still need to replace employees who retire and such.
EDIT: The reality behind the 'no time/energy to "train" me' is often that small companies do too little hiring for IT-type positions to support any sort of formal training, or even coherent documentation of their current stuff. (It may be quite different if you'd been hired as their junior-most bookkeeper or lathe operator.) And their tiny IT staff needs to be jack-of-all-trades problem-fixers - so if you need formal structures and training to get things done, then you're a poor fit anyway.
If you like stagnant work, you have to find a company requiring that kind of work. Probably not in the software industry.
Story of life. Everyone is looking for a middle way between an acceptable work and money.
In the order hand, he’s the mythical programmer who is passionate with tech and doesn’t care about money.
If you’re at a job where you get handed jira tickets and crunch bugs, you can probably ignore the big picture purpose and purpose and just be a cog that pushes code.
But if your job keeps telling you to think about why and how to improve the product, you will immediately see your values butting up against management’s values. This is a recipe for disillusionment because it causes you to think about what you value and then you get sucker punched when you see decisions being made with a different set of values by a machine that disregards your own.
Who do you know that's working age, capable, and doesn't want a good job?
Which is fine, if you can find a way to make it happen.
But for the majority of us, work means work. It's not always aligned with your own interests, it can feel like drudgery, and we accept the uncomfortable reality that our labor is probably making somebody else richer than it's making us.
I'm a fan of cooperatives, where at least you know that you have part ownership over your endeavors. But even then, you often need to work to satisfy clients and customers, rather than to satisfy your own interests.
Ultimately, I've learned to separate my hobby interest in programming and my work. I accept that work will always feel like work, but a few things (like good coworkers) can make a big difference. I try to make the experience tolerable for myself and my coworkers, and then I do what I really love on the side.
A job is and always has been a means to live for the majority of people on this Earth. Feigning a mentality of always wanting to grow is part of the act when it comes to corporate life. But even that in itself (corporate life) is a privilege compared to the grueling work most people throughout history have done.
I suppose in other industries this isn’t always expected. For example, you can easily be a mid-level accountant for your entire career without the company or industry expecting you to be on track to be their next CFO.
Maybe the author should be looking at medium/big non-tech companies that have been around a long time, have aging codebases, and aren’t innovating in the same way as as big tech or startup. I suspect they might find developers who have been there for many years and are pretty complacent.
https://abelbodis.hu/lovecode.html (The whole site is very much in progress)
* are mostly B2B oriented
* are (usually) private
* have a healthy balance sheet
* have their own niche so they don't have to fight for survival and don't have much to expand as well
if you know where to look.
The caveat is that they probably are not hiring many people, and the bar is not low by any means (even though most employees are mediocre). In the current market, many people want to be working at those companies.
It was one of the best places I've worked. People were kind, had families, and went home after their 40 hours. I stayed for 6 years before deciding to strike out on my own.
Same is true for software. There’s so many smaller, rural companies that lack the knowledge. There’s so many out of the box opportunities to add a little IoT into the field. There’s so many little wins to be had NOT following the boomer path of career servitude to an omnipotent leader Boss. You don’t have to go down the that road, you can always pivot or be supporting those efforts.
It seems like what you are perceiving is a common market delusion. An unfortunate fact of hiring is those workers who are not employed and satisfied are often less experienced and skilled than those who are well placed and not looking. The same logic applies the other way around to companies. Those who are looking to hire juniors who haven't yet found their way are often companies that lack a solid center and just want to squeeze some money out of whatever customers they can find using whatever tool is at hand.
With the current state of things if your needs are truly modest then there is a good chance that you can get by with some independent offering. Find something you are interested in and make it work for someone willing to pay for it. Make sure to lean more into sales and actually making things work for customers than the engineer tendency to envision mechanisms and focus entirely on that. This way you can set the balance for yourself, and I can absolutely guarantee that you will experience the realities of growth or death up close, though in a more personal way that you can take control of and manage for yourself using criteria that have meaning for you.
Or maybe landing on a lucky spot of a run of the mill consultancy company where you're left at god's will until you retire. Their attrition is so high layoffs are rare, at least where I live (YMMV)
I've never, in nearly 20 years in the sector, been unemployed for more than a few months at a time. It's been a year, half my LinkedIn contacts are also looking for work.
Cannot recommend non-profits at the moment.
The problem is that not many folks are willing to take a pay cut like that, so the level of employee talent was abysmal.
Years and years of the “Dead Sea” effect made it a thoroughly incompetent work environment where they were oblivious to how bad it was because the managers had never seen what’s real job was like before
But aligning with values might be easier since that is what a nonprofit is all about. It’s an organization that is going all-in on one particular specific set of values, to the exclusion of commercial goals like making profit for owners or shareholders.
Which means that they also don’t pay as well (nearly as well) as private big tech companies. If nothing else, working at a nonprofit will help you realize how important money vs mission is to you, in a very personal way. You’ll either say “I can live on this” or “this sucks, I can’t stand being underpaid.”
Note that not all nonprofits are charities. There are thousands of trade associations, chambers of commerce, economic development councils, etc. in the U.S. And of course all sorts of political committees and orgs across the spectrum.
The hiring manager is lying to you
Your boss is lying to you
The CEO is lying to you
All everyone cares about is money 99% of the time. Anything else is just a lie. We are not family, and most people give a rats ass about any companies "goal". We just want a paycheck and most of us want a bigger paycheck than last time all the way up the chain.
So what do you do, as an enthusiast? The way I have survived is to make the work interesting in small ways - try different techniques, libraries, algorithms; it depends how much time pressure you're under, as to how much leeway you have. Take advantage of training opportunities - there is always a lot to learn, even if you think you're pretty good already, and more skills improves your chances of landing better jobs in the future. Take pride in your work, even if no-one else notices.
Yes, the corporate life is a grind, but so are most jobs, and at least you get a comfortable chair. Make the best of it or do something else.
I wonder if he's considered a job as a developer in the Dutch government?
I work at a company in the American Midwest that makes measurement equipment. A friend programs robots for a high tech factory. We're both musicians (and cyclists) and play in a band together.
However, dismissing the overhead associated with such positions is a very simplistic view. It isn't about writing "bad code" or "good code". Rather, it is about solving complex tasks and maintaining huge systems – that's the real challenge. Hands-on experience or proper guidance can save you a lot of time.
It's heartwarming to see so many people come to the realisation that endless consumption/growth/production makes us miserable.
The issue is that we all exist under capitalism, unfortunately until it's gone, we're forced to live within it.
Regardless of which direction you grow, I think give. enough time, the quality of your work will speak for itself.
I've watched too many people try to run the rat race of moving up the later. Staying at a job/role for only 18 months just to hop to the next thing. They lack depth in their area and eventually bottom out completely.
Anyway, to me it seems that the best strategy is to gather 2-3 years of experience and only then start job hunting for real. Yes, the current situation sucks, but so does the job market. I wouldn't have advised hopping after just a year even back in the ZIRP days, much less nowadays.
Also bold move to publish such a post and publicly advertise who one is working for. That's going to result in snarky comments about yachts from whoever is up there at the very least.
I feel like this is a really detached piece on the realities of work and capitalism. Did a decade of prosperity in software industry made people forget what work is?
In capitalism (I mean in a job) you are paid to build what others want you to build. You are selling your time and effort. Either that or you build your own thing and monetize it. If "rent wasn't an issue" most people would paint, dance make art, explore, play, create. But for most people, rent, food and healthcare are the issue...
But I'd like to offer some sympathy. I certainly have grappled with thoughts like these and have also been guilty of posting a rant on HN at a moment when I've been down!
I do wonder if part of this is influenced by the AI craze that has companies substituting junior engineers for LLMs and how hard it is to get hired fresh out of university these days. I do feel for those who genuinely want to grow and become better engineers since it does seem like companies are betting less and less on developing young talent.
Then there's the whole philosophical discussion about work and meaning and everything. Thoughts around this are certainly very present in our minds during our 20s (P.S. I'm still in this decade of my life too). There are many alternative paths, but they often aren't for everyone. I know people who live with very little, and don't consider steady work a high priority at all. Many of them are happy, but most of us couldn't cope with the lifestyle. You then have the path of starting your own thing, but that path is usually more painful and terrible for your finances too.
It's all tradeoffs. It sucks, it hurts. And I'm sorry that the market is terrible right now for those starting out. Good luck.
If you’re working with people who are fun to be with, it doesn’t matter if your work consists in circling numbers like they do at Lumon.
Work is not fun in itself, that’s why they’re different words. As my boss used to say: if you enjoy it, it’s not work. But if you can have fun while doing the work, it’s a lot better.
So yes go find nice people who are fun to be around, avoid the assholes and big corp and you’ll be fine.
Usually smaller companies are better, ones that have focus on good stuff, like a company that makes toys, or medical things.
What I chose to do is go to small finance firms. I get much much less than the CEO, but much more than I would anywhere else. That allows me to free up some time to do other stuff. There are a lot of nice people in finance (mostly cause everyone is well paid so noone really complains). 2 problems: sometimes people in finance are too money-driven, and that can be annoying, and the learning curve is steep.
BitWiseVibe•48m ago