15 ms·

From web developer to database developer in 10 years

179 points by pmbanugo 11mo ago

pmbanugo 11mo ago
I enjoyed reading this. It could be because I'm thinking of doing more of system/network programming (and learning Zig). I've spent the last 6 years in the JavaScript land and bored of yet-another-bundling or SPA-like pattern. So there's hope that with consistency and patience, one could build expertise in a totally different area
- Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
  There are JS frameworks that port to most platforms in about 3 minutes (use a Mac for iOS builds): https://quasar.dev/introduction-to-quasar/ https://quasar.dev/introduction-to-quasar/ That being said, Erlang/Elixir abstracts most db use-cases with ecto, and has some other incredibly powerful scalable features for sites: https://www.phoenixframework.org/ https://www.phoenixframework.org/ * Distributed * Fault-tolerant * Highly available * Hot swapping Depends on the use-case, but if your product is <14 month lifecycle App/shovel-ware, than go JS for the labor compatibility... Yet if you are hitting >40k concurrent users, the options winnow down fairly quickly. Have fun =3
  - pmbanugo 10mo ago
    I like the Erlang VM concepts and I enjoy attending their meetups
    - Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
      The OTP offers a flat/simple architecture, and most people are puzzled the first time they see a Phoenix channels demonstration. I think it is hilarious people assume 3NF or 4NF db schema can save them from bad design. Yet, many have tried to make SQL scale efficiently (with some obvious caveats) =3 https://www.cockroachlabs.com/ https://www.cockroachlabs.com/
- ehnto 10mo ago
  I'm also interested in more low level or systems programming, though I am coming from a mostly backend/system integration background. I feel like a roadblock is that I am self taught, and though I have been doing software engineering professionally for 15 years and software as a job for 20, I still can't call myself an engineer legally. I certainly know I can do the work, but I worry about hiring being wary of a lack of credentials as a legal liability for lower level stuff. I would love to hear people's stories of interesting jobs they've gotten without a degree in this space.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - freedomben 10mo ago
    > I still can't call myself an engineer legally. May I ask what country you live in?
- barddoo 10mo ago
  Same. It’s good to know that other people feel the same way.
maxnilz 11mo ago
Thanks, it is inspiring, And it seems like I'm on the same way of that transition, Here is my individual expirment database for learning db internals and rust.. https://github.com/maxnilz/sboxdb https://github.com/maxnilz/sboxdb Now, trying to implement a rocksdb-like LSM based storage in modern C++ and call it from the sboxdb, just for refresh my old C++ memory.
- pmbanugo 10mo ago
  This is cool, keep it up!
esafak 10mo ago
> I was unhappy with this type-casting so I held out while unemployed and continued to write posts and host virtual hackweeks messing with Postgres and MySQL. I started the first incarnation of the Software Internals Book Club during this time, reading Designing Data Intensive Applications with 5-10 other developers in Bryant Park. During this time I also started the NYC Systems Coffee Club. That's the spirit! And it worked.
CharlieDigital 10mo ago
If you can wrangle CSS, you can probably wrangle SQL pretty well. Both are declarative ways of traversing graph-like datasets (DOM nodes vs tabular relations).
- senderista 10mo ago
  That is not what "database developer" means in this context.
simonw 10mo ago
> I also wanted to cover what it's like coming from engineering management and founding companies to going back to being an individual contributor. (Spoiler: incredibly enjoyable.) I've done the IC to engineering manager back to IC thing and it is indeed a huge relief to learn that it's OK to do that. My favorite piece of writing on that is The Engineer/Manager Pendulum by Charity Majors: https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum/ https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum... Charity makes a very convincing case that it's OK to swing from manager to IC and back again several times over the course of your career and that doing so will make you more effective at both of those things.
- freedomben 10mo ago
  Hard agree. In fact I think doing the manager/IC transition back and forth several times is what makes you really great at both things. Understanding both sides of the equation from lived experience can be incredibly powerful at making you more effective. At a minimum, your ability to empathize with and understand the motivations/pressure on your manager or reports will help you navigate the tricky spots much better.
rrgok 10mo ago
I would like to have this kind of transition to the Compiler world.
- keyle 10mo ago
  It's a fairly easy transition to do, once your bank account is empty you're halfway there.
  - pmbanugo 10mo ago
    LOL!
never_inline 10mo ago
> But my background kept leading hiring managers to suggest putting me on cloud teams doing orchestration in Go around a database rather than working on the database itself. This is extremely annoying. This also means if your first job is doing X, it is very difficult to break into Y even if you know quite well about Y, and even have side projects. I have tried attaching cover letters indicating even if my current experience is in X, I am quite familiar with Y, to no luck. (No one reads those stuff).
- mettamage 10mo ago
  Is there a way to work around this?
  - ccakes 10mo ago
    Lie on LinkedIn, get a foot in the door and explain in the interview
    - freedomben 10mo ago
      Risky. If I interview somebody and their resume is inflated or wrong, at best as a candidate you wasted my time reviewing your resume and scheduling interviews and what not, and now you're starting from a disadvantage because my first impression of you is one of being misled. We're a high-trust organization and anything that causes doubt on your integrity puts you at a disadvantage. If I'm interviewing you, it's because I considered you against the torrent of other applicants, and I likely excluded one that is more qualified than you based on your misrepresentation. That also doesn't work in your favor. If you are a truly exceptional dev in your previous field and can convince me of that, along with an up-front and transparent explanation of why you lied to me as our first interaction, it is possible to overcome this. However, that is a pretty small pool of people. Though, it definitely can work at some companies.
      - ccakes 10mo ago
        Definitely fair but for the candidate considering this, it's a numbers game. They're just looking to get their foot in the door for a new career path. You care, and you're right to care, but there will be others who don't. Then next time, it's no longer a lie and they can (in theory) get by on merit
mrweasel 10mo ago
On a similar note: I've been listening to various podcasts with Allan Judd for probably more than 10 years now. It's amazing to see someone go from a FreeBSD docs contributor and talented systems administrator to C programmer and ZFS developer. You have to have serious motivation to not just stay with what you know, but it's a nice kick in the butt to the rest of us to see that it can be done, with you put in the work.
fogj094j0923j4 10mo ago
>I held out while unemployed Watching Eaton's journey online was very inspiring but sadly I have also seen a lot of people doing this to no avail. This is eerily similar to how musicians do busking until they got noticed by a record label.
- bob1029 10mo ago
  The part where the analogy breaks down for me is the ZIRP phenomenon and historical developer salaries. The only thing that is sad to me is watching someone with 250K+ annual cash salary for a solid decade somehow becoming destitute after mere months of trying to do things without active W2 employment. Savings rate is a huge part of the "no avail" aspect. You can beat the pants off this game by simply being frugal. Income is 50% of the battle. How you spend it is the other 50%.
  - dangus 10mo ago
    I completely agree with you, it’s scarily easy to inflate your lifestyle or even not inflate it that much and just spend inefficiently. Still, it might be worth keeping in mind that W2 salaried upper middle class is the highest taxed segment of the US population. People who make more by owning companies and assets are taxed less, people who make less are taxed less. If you spent those 10 years paying for daycare, paying for after school programs, saving for your kids’ college (because you expect to pay nearly full price due to your income), and making other logically sound luxury spending decisions like eating fresh healthy foods rather than survival staples or taking a vacation because you only live once, I can see how you can end up with not quite enough savings. Or you might have a runway but you know it is really unwise to spend it, which ends up effectively making you functionally destitute by choice.
physicsguy 10mo ago
My experience (as a non-CS person) has been that aside from where there is a very large maths component which might block people without further academic-style study (and I wouldn't necessarily even count ML in that, since the maths needed for much of ML is relatively low level, it's certainly not graduate school level understanding maths), there are relatively few areas of software which have high barriers to entry in actually doing stuff - where the barriers are are people willing to take a risk on letting you have a go. That's usually much much easier once you're in a company than if you're applying for a role from the outside. Every time I've felt like I didn't understand something and felt overwhelmed at the scale at a task, 3-6 months down the line of throwing myself at the problem and trying to understand it, I've realised it's not as hard and part of the barrier was just the unfamiliar terminology and unfamiliar tools. Sure, there is a degree of needing to learn new stuff - which is true in any job and in life - to do new things. But those barriers are not normally insurmountable. That's been true for me in basically every area. It is also why I'm fairly willing to give people a chance, so long as they are able to demonstrate some knowledge which would be able to transfer.
agentultra 10mo ago
Great story! I always like to tell developers that they can do anything if you just stick to the fundamentals. It's not such a big mountain as it seems! The type-casting part is relatable. It definitely feels like we're all being pigeon-holed by hiring managers and ATS systems that categorize us and rank us by keywords and work history. It can sometimes be quite difficult to switch from something like web development to embedded to databases. Good on you for breaking through. I'm also looking to break into databases. But despite having worked on database libraries, general programming experience, and years of designing and operating systems using databases... there's at least hundreds of people who have been working in databases for years longer and getting one's foot in the door that way is tricky. Keep sharing your passion, that seems to really help stand out. Not all of us might be in a position to found a company or run a user group in a major city (if it doesn't already exist)... but we can write blogs, attend those meetups, give talks, and help each other out on projects.
- bashmelek 10mo ago
  Even when I was still in school and looking for internships I could feel this. In CS we learned more about compilers and operating systems, but companies wanted web developers, so IT and IS had a big edge. I did game programming on my own time, so companies would recommend interning with a game company. It was frustrating. I’ve been working in web development for many years now. It’s okay. I still don’t know what I want to be in the future. I still don’t feel like a “real dev”. But still do some side learning. I’m happy it worked for the writer, and I hope it does for you too.
  - agentultra 10mo ago
    I should add that you are a real dev. There's all kinds of programming out there. That's why I enjoy DSA and maths; it's the stuff that transcends languages and has applications in almost every domain. You benefit from knowing how to implement a queue or balance a tree whether you're writing databases, making games, or building distributed systems. Anyone can learn this stuff. Ignore the gate keepers and the little voice that tells you only smart people can do this. You're a smart person. Crack a book, open a new file, compile some code. You'll get there.
nowaymo6237 10mo ago
In the era of LinkedIn, Ted talks and podcasts it’s always good to have a narrative of who you are and your journey to your successful endeavors
rekabis 10mo ago
This is the first time I have ever heard the term “database developer” to mean a developer of the database internals, of the database engine itself. Every other use I have ever come across has meant the development of the databases themselves, the file in which data is stored in a relational (and recently, non-relational) manner. Because when we talk about “a database”, we are almost never talking about the engine that works with one, we’re talking about the file that holds all the data. The former is invariably called a “database server”. Wouldn’t a much more accurate and subject-separate term have been “database engine developer” or “database server developer”? That alone, I think, could have reduced or even eliminated a lot of confusion. And no, not a newb: working with computers since 1982, on the Internet since 1988, on the web since 1992, and in the IT industry since 1997. In the English-speaking world, too.
mrnaught 10mo ago
An inspiring story.Recently made a similar transition from backend development (with some frontend experience) to database development in C, current team am part of manages the authentication aspect. Can truly resonate with this journey on a personal level.
tstrimple 10mo ago
I'm very glad I was able to start my career in startup world where titles don't mean anything and the prevailing attitude was roll up your sleeves and figure it out. No one else is going to solve it. Within my first five years I was doing everything from terminating network cables to managing servers to app development from the database to the various front ends (web and native, later mobile). I've built always on kiosk software. Fitness devices for medical study. I've built device firmware. I've built ML models. And no one ever told me that's not my job. You're able to learn and grow an incredible amount in environments that don't lock you out of work based on the shape of the cog that the company hired for.
752963e64 10mo ago
[dead]

179 points by pmbanugo 11mo ago

I enjoyed reading this. It could be because I'm thinking of doing more of system/network programming (and learning Zig). I've spent the last 6 years in the JavaScript land and bored of yet-another-bundling or SPA-like pattern. So there's hope that with consistency and patience, one could build expertise in a totally different area

Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
There are JS frameworks that port to most platforms in about 3 minutes (use a Mac for iOS builds): https://quasar.dev/introduction-to-quasar/ https://quasar.dev/introduction-to-quasar/ That being said, Erlang/Elixir abstracts most db use-cases with ecto, and has some other incredibly powerful scalable features for sites: https://www.phoenixframework.org/ https://www.phoenixframework.org/ * Distributed * Fault-tolerant * Highly available * Hot swapping Depends on the use-case, but if your product is <14 month lifecycle App/shovel-ware, than go JS for the labor compatibility... Yet if you are hitting >40k concurrent users, the options winnow down fairly quickly. Have fun =3
- pmbanugo 10mo ago
  I like the Erlang VM concepts and I enjoy attending their meetups
  - Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
    The OTP offers a flat/simple architecture, and most people are puzzled the first time they see a Phoenix channels demonstration. I think it is hilarious people assume 3NF or 4NF db schema can save them from bad design. Yet, many have tried to make SQL scale efficiently (with some obvious caveats) =3 https://www.cockroachlabs.com/ https://www.cockroachlabs.com/
ehnto 10mo ago
I'm also interested in more low level or systems programming, though I am coming from a mostly backend/system integration background. I feel like a roadblock is that I am self taught, and though I have been doing software engineering professionally for 15 years and software as a job for 20, I still can't call myself an engineer legally. I certainly know I can do the work, but I worry about hiring being wary of a lack of credentials as a legal liability for lower level stuff. I would love to hear people's stories of interesting jobs they've gotten without a degree in this space.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- freedomben 10mo ago
  > I still can't call myself an engineer legally. May I ask what country you live in?
barddoo 10mo ago
Same. It’s good to know that other people feel the same way.

maxnilz 11mo ago

Thanks, it is inspiring, And it seems like I'm on the same way of that transition, Here is my individual expirment database for learning db internals and rust.. https://github.com/maxnilz/sboxdb https://github.com/maxnilz/sboxdb Now, trying to implement a rocksdb-like LSM based storage in modern C++ and call it from the sboxdb, just for refresh my old C++ memory.

pmbanugo 10mo ago
This is cool, keep it up!

esafak 10mo ago

> I was unhappy with this type-casting so I held out while unemployed and continued to write posts and host virtual hackweeks messing with Postgres and MySQL. I started the first incarnation of the Software Internals Book Club during this time, reading Designing Data Intensive Applications with 5-10 other developers in Bryant Park. During this time I also started the NYC Systems Coffee Club. That's the spirit! And it worked.

CharlieDigital 10mo ago

If you can wrangle CSS, you can probably wrangle SQL pretty well. Both are declarative ways of traversing graph-like datasets (DOM nodes vs tabular relations).

senderista 10mo ago
That is not what "database developer" means in this context.

simonw 10mo ago

> I also wanted to cover what it's like coming from engineering management and founding companies to going back to being an individual contributor. (Spoiler: incredibly enjoyable.) I've done the IC to engineering manager back to IC thing and it is indeed a huge relief to learn that it's OK to do that. My favorite piece of writing on that is The Engineer/Manager Pendulum by Charity Majors: https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum/ https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum... Charity makes a very convincing case that it's OK to swing from manager to IC and back again several times over the course of your career and that doing so will make you more effective at both of those things.

freedomben 10mo ago
Hard agree. In fact I think doing the manager/IC transition back and forth several times is what makes you really great at both things. Understanding both sides of the equation from lived experience can be incredibly powerful at making you more effective. At a minimum, your ability to empathize with and understand the motivations/pressure on your manager or reports will help you navigate the tricky spots much better.

rrgok 10mo ago

I would like to have this kind of transition to the Compiler world.

keyle 10mo ago
It's a fairly easy transition to do, once your bank account is empty you're halfway there.
- pmbanugo 10mo ago
  LOL!

never_inline 10mo ago

> But my background kept leading hiring managers to suggest putting me on cloud teams doing orchestration in Go around a database rather than working on the database itself. This is extremely annoying. This also means if your first job is doing X, it is very difficult to break into Y even if you know quite well about Y, and even have side projects. I have tried attaching cover letters indicating even if my current experience is in X, I am quite familiar with Y, to no luck. (No one reads those stuff).

mettamage 10mo ago
Is there a way to work around this?
- ccakes 10mo ago
  Lie on LinkedIn, get a foot in the door and explain in the interview
  - freedomben 10mo ago
    Risky. If I interview somebody and their resume is inflated or wrong, at best as a candidate you wasted my time reviewing your resume and scheduling interviews and what not, and now you're starting from a disadvantage because my first impression of you is one of being misled. We're a high-trust organization and anything that causes doubt on your integrity puts you at a disadvantage. If I'm interviewing you, it's because I considered you against the torrent of other applicants, and I likely excluded one that is more qualified than you based on your misrepresentation. That also doesn't work in your favor. If you are a truly exceptional dev in your previous field and can convince me of that, along with an up-front and transparent explanation of why you lied to me as our first interaction, it is possible to overcome this. However, that is a pretty small pool of people. Though, it definitely can work at some companies.
    - ccakes 10mo ago
      Definitely fair but for the candidate considering this, it's a numbers game. They're just looking to get their foot in the door for a new career path. You care, and you're right to care, but there will be others who don't. Then next time, it's no longer a lie and they can (in theory) get by on merit

mrweasel 10mo ago

On a similar note: I've been listening to various podcasts with Allan Judd for probably more than 10 years now. It's amazing to see someone go from a FreeBSD docs contributor and talented systems administrator to C programmer and ZFS developer. You have to have serious motivation to not just stay with what you know, but it's a nice kick in the butt to the rest of us to see that it can be done, with you put in the work.

fogj094j0923j4 10mo ago

>I held out while unemployed Watching Eaton's journey online was very inspiring but sadly I have also seen a lot of people doing this to no avail. This is eerily similar to how musicians do busking until they got noticed by a record label.

bob1029 10mo ago
The part where the analogy breaks down for me is the ZIRP phenomenon and historical developer salaries. The only thing that is sad to me is watching someone with 250K+ annual cash salary for a solid decade somehow becoming destitute after mere months of trying to do things without active W2 employment. Savings rate is a huge part of the "no avail" aspect. You can beat the pants off this game by simply being frugal. Income is 50% of the battle. How you spend it is the other 50%.
- dangus 10mo ago
  I completely agree with you, it’s scarily easy to inflate your lifestyle or even not inflate it that much and just spend inefficiently. Still, it might be worth keeping in mind that W2 salaried upper middle class is the highest taxed segment of the US population. People who make more by owning companies and assets are taxed less, people who make less are taxed less. If you spent those 10 years paying for daycare, paying for after school programs, saving for your kids’ college (because you expect to pay nearly full price due to your income), and making other logically sound luxury spending decisions like eating fresh healthy foods rather than survival staples or taking a vacation because you only live once, I can see how you can end up with not quite enough savings. Or you might have a runway but you know it is really unwise to spend it, which ends up effectively making you functionally destitute by choice.

physicsguy 10mo ago

My experience (as a non-CS person) has been that aside from where there is a very large maths component which might block people without further academic-style study (and I wouldn't necessarily even count ML in that, since the maths needed for much of ML is relatively low level, it's certainly not graduate school level understanding maths), there are relatively few areas of software which have high barriers to entry in actually doing stuff - where the barriers are are people willing to take a risk on letting you have a go. That's usually much much easier once you're in a company than if you're applying for a role from the outside. Every time I've felt like I didn't understand something and felt overwhelmed at the scale at a task, 3-6 months down the line of throwing myself at the problem and trying to understand it, I've realised it's not as hard and part of the barrier was just the unfamiliar terminology and unfamiliar tools. Sure, there is a degree of needing to learn new stuff - which is true in any job and in life - to do new things. But those barriers are not normally insurmountable. That's been true for me in basically every area. It is also why I'm fairly willing to give people a chance, so long as they are able to demonstrate some knowledge which would be able to transfer.

agentultra 10mo ago

Great story! I always like to tell developers that they can do anything if you just stick to the fundamentals. It's not such a big mountain as it seems! The type-casting part is relatable. It definitely feels like we're all being pigeon-holed by hiring managers and ATS systems that categorize us and rank us by keywords and work history. It can sometimes be quite difficult to switch from something like web development to embedded to databases. Good on you for breaking through. I'm also looking to break into databases. But despite having worked on database libraries, general programming experience, and years of designing and operating systems using databases... there's at least hundreds of people who have been working in databases for years longer and getting one's foot in the door that way is tricky. Keep sharing your passion, that seems to really help stand out. Not all of us might be in a position to found a company or run a user group in a major city (if it doesn't already exist)... but we can write blogs, attend those meetups, give talks, and help each other out on projects.

bashmelek 10mo ago
Even when I was still in school and looking for internships I could feel this. In CS we learned more about compilers and operating systems, but companies wanted web developers, so IT and IS had a big edge. I did game programming on my own time, so companies would recommend interning with a game company. It was frustrating. I’ve been working in web development for many years now. It’s okay. I still don’t know what I want to be in the future. I still don’t feel like a “real dev”. But still do some side learning. I’m happy it worked for the writer, and I hope it does for you too.
- agentultra 10mo ago
  I should add that you are a real dev. There's all kinds of programming out there. That's why I enjoy DSA and maths; it's the stuff that transcends languages and has applications in almost every domain. You benefit from knowing how to implement a queue or balance a tree whether you're writing databases, making games, or building distributed systems. Anyone can learn this stuff. Ignore the gate keepers and the little voice that tells you only smart people can do this. You're a smart person. Crack a book, open a new file, compile some code. You'll get there.

nowaymo6237 10mo ago

In the era of LinkedIn, Ted talks and podcasts it’s always good to have a narrative of who you are and your journey to your successful endeavors

rekabis 10mo ago

This is the first time I have ever heard the term “database developer” to mean a developer of the database internals, of the database engine itself. Every other use I have ever come across has meant the development of the databases themselves, the file in which data is stored in a relational (and recently, non-relational) manner. Because when we talk about “a database”, we are almost never talking about the engine that works with one, we’re talking about the file that holds all the data. The former is invariably called a “database server”. Wouldn’t a much more accurate and subject-separate term have been “database engine developer” or “database server developer”? That alone, I think, could have reduced or even eliminated a lot of confusion. And no, not a newb: working with computers since 1982, on the Internet since 1988, on the web since 1992, and in the IT industry since 1997. In the English-speaking world, too.

mrnaught 10mo ago

An inspiring story.Recently made a similar transition from backend development (with some frontend experience) to database development in C, current team am part of manages the authentication aspect. Can truly resonate with this journey on a personal level.

tstrimple 10mo ago

I'm very glad I was able to start my career in startup world where titles don't mean anything and the prevailing attitude was roll up your sleeves and figure it out. No one else is going to solve it. Within my first five years I was doing everything from terminating network cables to managing servers to app development from the database to the various front ends (web and native, later mobile). I've built always on kiosk software. Fitness devices for medical study. I've built device firmware. I've built ML models. And no one ever told me that's not my job. You're able to learn and grow an incredible amount in environments that don't lock you out of work based on the shape of the cog that the company hired for.

752963e64 10mo ago

[dead]