7 ms·

Ask HN: How do you escape CRUD jobs?

171 points by diminium 14y ago

You know the drill. When you left college, you wanted to work for the big guys - Intel, Google, Apple, NASA - doing things which can change the world. You wanted to do stuff like create a compiler or figure out an algorithm. Unfortunately, reality hit back hard and you got stuck at a typical company doing CRUD operations. Make reports here, manage documents here, upgrade calendar software here. It pays pretty good but it's not the dream you wanted. Irony then rings and the deeper you move in your career, the more CRUD experience you get and the less "let's design the next generation algorithm" experience you have. Thus causing those companies to pigeonhole your resume to pass you on for someone else. How do you escape from this trap?

bryanh 14y ago
Smart hackers are in really high demand so this shouldn't be that big of a problem. Talk to a few companies that do interesting things. Most are hiring.
codewright 14y ago
Build up a portfolio of the kind of work you want to be doing. You don't get a job in compilers by complaining. You do it by getting commit access to gcc. Hop to it. Alternately, do a startup in the space you want to be in and let VCs pay for the privilege of you educating yourself. Either way.
- thedigitalengel 14y ago
  I was very lucky in the sense that I could participate in two Google Summer of Code programs. With some relevant experience, I'm now in a good position to get the exact kind of job I want (which also happens to be related to compilers / VMs).
symbion 14y ago
- Do non CRUD work outside work - Once you have enough experience/knowledge, seek out a non CRUD job.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  I think this is really key. You have to realize that your employer may be of the type which says "Well anyone can do this CRUD stuff so we'll add him to the pile" and that is probably true, but if you're really capable and passionate you'll be doing the CRUD and learning new stuff too. Talk to people at work about the cool stuff, if you manager is someone you can talk to, talk to them about it. Learn what you can, build things. Find a non-CRUD project that you could do that would make your manager look good, then explain that to them and get their buy in. They are doing it to look good but you'll have solid experience on your resume when you blow town. The biggest mistake new college grads make in their first job is that the only thing they can do is what their manager told them to do. Sure you have to do that stuff too but if you're smart, figure out a way to get that stuff done and get other fun stuff done. That stuff you get to pick for yourself so it will be, by definition, not CRUD.
  - ritratt 14y ago
    I am stuck with a CRUD (testing) job. Been trying really hard to get out. Learned python. Created many side projects at work to improve current process and personally to expand horizon and geow. But whenever I go for an interview for a development position, they are always like, "We currently need someone who has hands on experience with <relevant technology> development. So we cannot take your candidature further." Really demotivating. Feels like I am gonna be stuck as a tester for life despite having so many ideas and knowledge!
    - jyu 14y ago
      You're probably not applying to the right position, or start using <relevant technology> for side projects. Not sure where you are, but it seems like there are more and more openings for web developers.
- Spoygg 14y ago
  You must absolutely refuse to work anything you do not actually want outside of work. That will make all the difference. If you for some reason would get a job outside of your profession would you do it outside work too? That goes for any profession. If you want to make difference you have to plan in some time for that. Not everyone is that lucky to get dream job right out of college, actually I believe most of us don't. Only you can create (a path to) your dream job.
karterk 14y ago
You need to find an actual problem that stretches what you know and demands you to dig deeper into areas of computer science that interests you. Reading theory and books won't get you far as you will realize that the real-world problems bring a lot of perspective that is not documented well enough in most books. So, how do find a challenging problem to solve? Most people will suggest working on side projects, but some really hard problems (e.g. distributed computing) requires resources that make it impossible to pursue as side projects. Also, having people much smarter than you around you helps with the learning. So, the alternative in this case is to join a start-up or a big co just so that you get a chance to explore difficult problems.
ssylee 14y ago
I have trouble finding a CRUD job to work in. At least the expectations from employers are not that high.
bozho 14y ago
You can get some motivating stuff done even without changing the field. Specializing in something cool and strange is fine, but as someone mentioned - there will probably be a 95% repetitive task there as well. While staying at your current industry segment, you can still do interesting stuff: I've discussed that here http://techblog.bozho.net/?p=1063 http://techblog.bozho.net/?p=1063
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
martininmelb 14y ago
I've had some CRUD jobs and some non-crud jobs. Interestingly, all the CRUD jobs came through Agencies and all the non-crud jobs were direct. There may be something there...
andrewtbham 14y ago
I recommend clearly articulating your programming experience. Reading your job description I can't tell if you're doing programming or sys amdin/support desk type stuff. Like "upgrade calendar software." Are you installing upgrades or writing the upgrades? Also, what do you mean by crud? I assume... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Create,_read,_update_and_delete http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Create,_read,_update_and_delete
kalyan02 14y ago
Build something. Anything. Small or big, doesn't matter. Just build - in your free time. If you don't have free time, make time. What to build? Pick something that you wish software/hardware did, but you don't know any that does.
- trustfundbaby 14y ago
  I cannot upvote this enough. When I was getting started on rails years ago, I found it hard to make headway just making headway on a project I got dropped in the middle of. It wasn't until I decided to migrate a personal project of mine from php to rails, and had to set it all up on a VPS with Phusion Passenger, all by myself, that I made that order of magnitude jump in skill level from novice to intermediate dev. Having that side project has also let me try out so many different things I could never be able to try out at work without know if it would work or not. Those countless hours you spend off the clock screwing around with something just because you want to is simply invaluable to your progress as a developer, this is why to this day, I keep an eye out for developers that find time to hack on side projects.
zura 14y ago
There is one interesting observation from my experience - the less developed (or even banana) the country is, the more (or exclusive, for banana countries) demand is for PHP/ASP.NET/J2EE etc Web/CRUD stuff. On the other hand, in more developed countries, the demand is quite big for C++/Desktop/3D/Compilers etc "good stuff". Web + large scale JavaScript stuff also falls in the latter case, although I don't consider it as "good" ;)
- potatolicious 14y ago
  > "On the other hand, in more developed countries, the demand is quite big for C++/Desktop/3D/Compilers etc "good stuff"." I don't think this relationship really holds. It's really more like: in every non-US country the overwhelming demand is for CRUD stuff. The demand for non-CRUD software is almost exclusively an American phenomenon. This is, of course, somewhat of a generalization, but I do believe the trend holds true. I grew up in Canada, where the software scene is very heavily CRUD. The main CS employers in town are such exciting names as SAP, IBM, TD Bank, Royal Bank, Bank of Montreal, and Scotia Bank. I spy a pattern. The demand for "higher level" programmers is tiny (there's a Mozilla outpost, and a small smattering of startups few people even know about). From talking with friends internationally, it seems like this is the case in the UK and France also - all highly developed countries. The only place where I've seen any substantial opportunities for C++, 3D, compilers, and other non-CRUD code is in the US.
  - raverbashing 14y ago
    It's not as clear cut as this There is a lot of C++ work in 'developing countries' (dependent on the country as well) No 3D in France? Have you heard of Catia? There is C++ as well YMMV, even though I like working with low level programming, the high level, semi-crud work can be nice and with less BS
  - wyan 14y ago
    There's plenty of C++ opportunities in the financial industry, including non-US financial hubs.
- devb0x 14y ago
trustfundbaby 14y ago
Someone has already mentioned side projects, my other suggestion is to look at parts of your app where you can break out of the CRUD cycle. Could you use threading to speed up bulk processing of documents? Can you use some new package or gem to improve your day to day development flow? (for example, i just found a rails gem that helps speed up start up time for rails tasks, totally using that at work) How about your Version control, are you using the latest techniques or type of software? What about learning more about dev ops, how to manage the server and do little things here and there without bothering the server guy? What about search, are you writing contorted sql queries to hit the databases for your search, or are you using elasticsearch, solr, sphinx or lucene which are better suited for those things? Is your logging app writing to file logs, or (worse your RDBMS database) or could you use mongodb to speed that up? Are you analyzing data you collect in an insightful way or is it time to read up on some analytics tutorials, to come up with smarter ways to inspect your data? how fast is your software? Could it be faster? How can you make it faster? etc etc etc In the end it comes down to your curiosity to learn and try new things. That will help you keep abreast of new ideas and help you spot opportunities to apply them sensibly. It should get you from where you are until the point where you feel that opportunities like these are exhausted, at which point, its time to move on. Never let yourself stop growing as a developer.
- mprovost 14y ago
  There's (almost) nothing worse than stumbling across a project written by a bored developer and then having to support it. Instead of a perl script and some SQL, it will use some smattering of the techs that you mention above. Often not for any real reason, but just because their job isn't demanding enough so they make it as interesting as possible. But it's better for everyone if you do this on your side projects - when you leave your CRUD job someone else is going to have to maintain the wobbling stack of technologies that you used to pad out your resume.
  - aledalgrande 14y ago
    Well, I had the opposite experience: as the developer wasn't curious, I had to maintain a codebase with custom (incredibly inefficient) SQL queries instead of a search engine, custom code for which gems exist, pages were never optimised so they became slower and slower etc. in the end a complete rewrite was needed. As @trustfundbaby says, you can apply new techs sensibly and that's what you should do, without the extremes. And guess what? You could actually learn something from someone else!
moocow01 14y ago
Seek out opportunities in other industries/segments of computing. The reason a lot of work is CRUD work is because most web applications and business applications are just data/information management systems targeted toward a certain use. My unscientific guess would be that 95% of at least minimally complex web and business applications boil down to being CRUD with a UI and a lot of marketing spin. This means that if you work in this segment you are going to be mostly working in CRUD. There are many other segments of computing where your work will be incredibly different. Examples: - Computer graphics/gaming - Embedded systems - Networking Caveat - after working in a new segment you most likely will find that they have their own 95% core competency skill set (like CRUD is for web/business apps)
wturner 14y ago
I don't think your question really has to do with programming. I think it has to do with the feedback loop of being pigeon holed, age and job history. There is a Robert Greene book that just came out called "Mastery" which I haven't read, but I listened to some of the promotional interviews he's done. He talks about this a lot and part of the book is about breaking out the cycle. I'm in that state right now with my current "job" predicament.
qdot76367 14y ago
It's a long game, but building what you're interested in, even if it's the boring parts of what you're interested in, can get you noticed. Due to writing drivers and tools for people to use different hardware, I've now worked in/with: - Robotics (via working on open source educational robotics stuff) - Virtual Worlds (via making hardware to interact with them) - Health Devices (via reverse engineering health devices) - Neuroscience (via reverse engineering eegs) - Haptics (via reverse engineering haptics controllers. Noticing a trend here?) - Digital/Interactive Art (via writing Max/Puredata/OpenFrameworks/Processing plugins for aforementioned projects) - Teledildonics (via [censored]) (My github is at http://github.com/qdot http://github.com/qdot, where you can witness the ADHD firsthand) And the list grows every time I start working with a new library or device. Most of my dayjobs tagentially relate to something I've worked on in my spare time, though I try to keep from taking a job that'd completely subsume any one interest, as that tends to be a permanent mood killer (I'm looking at you, popular virtual world company that crushed my VW dreams). So yeah, just find what you're interested in, do something in it, try to be part of a community around it, and let things work naturally. Then comes the hard part: Tying all of this back together via /you/. You can make neat stuff all day long but if you can't tie it together with your own personality, then you're just a person who aimlessly cranks out neat stuff, which is something that will worry employers. Presenting a complete and coherent package of all the stuff you're interested in and why you're interested in it, with proof that you can do (more importantly: finish) it and show how that can benefit others is really the key. But damn, is it ever hard to get there. PS stay the hell out of teledildonics. That is MY TURF.
- amzuko 14y ago
  qdot is on hackernews? hoo-ray.
- jhurliman 14y ago
  waves
- omegant 14y ago
  Teledildonics... ROFL! XD best branch of telematic robotics ever!
SandB0x 14y ago
Lots of related discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2052362 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2052362 Your company probably isn't interested in switching to cool language x or doing that big rewrite that you'd hoped to lead. You'll have to identify the skills you need for your ideal job and work on them yourself. A great first step is a to automate repetitive parts of your job using languages and tools that you want to learn. Don't ask if you can do this, just do it discreetly at first. It's a good stepping stone between the familiarity of your job and side projects at home.
Lapsa 14y ago
There are no CRUD jobs and it's not a trap. Actually - it's quite a shame that so many programmers dream about hacking through hyper-hard algorithms instead of understanding people around.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
meaty 14y ago
Welcome to software development. You have just discovered exactly what 90% of it is. applying canned solutions to known problems. Roll up your sleeves and dig in. Even our massive financial platform is a glorified CRUD box with a mere three bits of cool algorithm stuff which have been the same since 1995. Most of it is pasting bits of crap onto more bits of crap. Even google apps is pretty much just a big CRUD system. The art and science is making all these operations scale. Well that's what it is for me. 50 operations a second - no problems. We hit 10000 queries/second. Things work differently then which is where you have to turn back to deep computer science knowledge. I've developed a deep knowledge of mathematics, statistics and algorithms trying to keep CRUD systems alive. we write our own cache, store and messaging layers as well as a logging system that can keep up with the audit requirements of the above. At the end of the day, its quite interesting if you don't shrug it off. Embrace what you have. Edit: I am also the guy who gets all the traditionally shitty jobs. The hard things to debug, distributed bugs, timing and locking issues, race conditions, reliability problems, the 3 day debugging sessions, the Microsoft patch breakage dance and the 'its 2am and everything just caught fire' jobs. I LIVE for this. I am literally the last hope every time. I never lose. Being trusted with this and as the last line of defence is an honour and why I rather like what I do as well. It's always challenging if you go looking for challenges.
- liljimmytables 14y ago
  You're right about CRUD and canned solutions. On the other hand, I think that OP is in fact bemoaning their lack of investment in the product- that "CRUD" is just the most notable feature of it. So I would agree and disagree with you at the same time: "embrace what you have" is true for "embrace this approach to development" because it's good, and you will find joy in the details. However, "embrace what you have" is false for "I'm doing a job where I have no love for the things I'm making." The longer you try to embrace it, the more damage you will do to yourself and to your employer.
methodin 14y ago
You can almost always extract more from your current employer (if you haven't been doing so), you just need to demonstrate the passion and will to do different things. If you do chances are you will get some more opportunities - if not then it really is a dead end and you should move on. The biggest mistake you can make at any job is to not learn or take away anything from it. Sometimes you just have to ask for what you want. Jobs should be more than a paycheck. You exchange your time/effort for growing/learning. Both parties are aware of it and should act accordingly. If one party is not living up to the bargain it's time to find a new partner.
edw519 14y ago
You're asking the wrong question, my friend. Don't blame the CRUD for all the bullshit that is often associated with it. (Reminder: CRUD stands for Create Retrieve Update Delete, and is the underlying philosophy for the database applications that run the world we live in, the 90% of the iceberg that most hackers never see or even think about.) I've been doing CRUD for 33 years and it's been an incredible ride. I credit my CRUD work for putting me in the right hand 5% of that bell curve, ahead of the rest of my fellow hackers who have built so little of substance. Sure, I've built apps that move people and things to the right place, and also have done a lot of "reports here, manage documents here, upgrade calender software here", but what job doesn't have some crap work go to along with the gravy? I've never seen any good job without it's share of maintenance, refactoring, testing, process, and meetings with drones. I've also build software that generates other software, invented new frameworks, and devised algorithms that dramatically improved the way we make and build and move the stuff that's probably in your cubicle right now. I've taken cool academic theory from my pure mathematical background to build software that has blown away the posers everywhere around me. And you know what? You do that just once, and every champion in the enterprise runs to you with their giant budgets to solve their CRUD problem du jour with your "genius". Believe me, you don't have to work at "Intel, Google, Apple, or NASA" to "change the world". You're just as likely to be a cog in the wheel at those places as anywhere else. You can change the world from where ever you're at, and in fact, if you're working on a CRUD app, I think you're actually in a better position to do it. You just have to ask a better question. My suggestion: "How to you escape the shackles and bullshit of your CRUD job and use all those great resources in your head to turn that job on its side and change the world from right where you're at?" Find the answer to that question. It may be easier than you think.
- weareconvo 14y ago
  > Believe me, you don't have to work at "Intel, Google, Apple, or NASA" to "change the world". Listen to this man. I was a full-time software engineer at Google for 5+ years, and I didn't change shit.
  - kami8845 14y ago
    I don't think anyone believes that you enter at the bottom of the ladder of a shop with 10,000+ software engineers and then change anything major. To do big stuff at Google you have to either work there 10+ years or come in from another company having done good stuff. The only realistic shot for hackers to change the world is through their own startup.
michaelochurch 14y ago
Accept that software is not a meritocracy. Not even close. The politics are as vicious as in any other industry. You want to know why that idiot is calling technical shots while you're downwind of the complexity that he imposes? Because he played the game, and you didn't. Now, the good news is that most software companies are running at about 5% efficiency. Most of the code they have exists to serve dipshit requirements that aren't necessary and make no sense. It's junk complexity that no one would miss if it were gone. Why is this relevant? Because if you're putting 8 hours per day into order-following grunt work, you're an idiot. Do that, and of course you'll have no time to work on interesting stuff. The way you get a better job is to spend at least half your day learning the skills that you'll need to get where you want to go. Treat it as an optimization problem. You want not to get fired. That's one constraint, but not a tight one because a lot of people keep their jobs for years while doing very little. Your objective: you want a better job in a year. Are you going to get a better job within the same company, doing more interesting work? Or are you going to leave for an external promotion as soon as it's viable? No one is going to know if you put side-project accomplishments on your resume, so you should. Most people only "look for work" when they're in shitty situations. The rest of the time, they either (a) coast, or (b) put their all into their assigned work because they "really believe in the company". Both of these extremes are ridiculous. Always keep an eye open for something better, and start your search process when things are going well, not when they've gone to shit, politics have turned against you-- note, 95% of firings are about politics, not "performance"; that's an attempt to use middle-class guilt to prevent a fired employee from seeking legal recourse-- and you've lost your confidence. You need to be selfish, because no one will look out for your advancement. Treat well the people who treat you well. Find ways to read machine learning books at work. (Don't open a book at your desk; that's political suicide. Get an e-reader or PDF.) One thing: don't write any code that you care about owning using company resources or "working time". If you want to turn a side project into something salable, get up at 5:00 or dedicate your weekends. It's not worth the risk. So yes, the disgusting truth is that 90% of the work you'll be assigned will actually hurt your career. This is why, in most jobs, you should be putting just enough into your assigned work to get by, and using the surplus for your own advancement. By the way, most of the work going on in the corporate "big guys" is junk as well. Yes, there are people at Google and Amazon who get to work on cutting-edge machine learning algorithms, but most people at those companies don't, you'll almost certainly not get such work in your first year, and the politics you have to navigate to get onto those projects will disgust you and, if you succeed, make you a worse person. One solution would be only to work at open-allocation companies like Valve, but in 2012 there aren't that many of those yet. There will be more in the future, as they outshine the closed-allocation dinosaurs and starve them of talent, but that will probably take 10-20 years. For the mean time, you have to learn to fight. One of the problems with most career advice sites is that they give AFC advice instead of teaching Game. The people who get to work on the good projects are those who figure out how to control the division of labor. They found a way to make people trust them "prematurely" and gained enough influence over the division of labor to have a niche. It's not a trivial thing to do. You'll have to go far out of your comfort zone, learn some social skills you might have been weak in, and it will take years. Right now, though, I don't see any other option.
josh_fyi 14y ago
There is tremendous demand for software engineers today. No matter that you are doing CRUD, employers need you. They can't see your code that you developed at work, so a Github with some quality code would be good -- but the key is to remember that there is some employer out there who is better for you, and that that employer needs you as much as you need them. Try my webapp, fiveyearitch.com , which we've optimized exactly for employed software engineers who want to scratch your itch. I think it's important to leverage your current job, not escape it. You have a powerful starting position; you just need to hop over to a better job.
wenbert 14y ago
Find different ways in doing it. When I do not have time, I do it like how I did it in my previous projects/work. When I have some time, I try do it in a different way - look at my previous code and then try to improve.
swapnilt 14y ago
Hmm..Maybe do something like - 1. Resign 2. Start/Join a startup
programminggeek 14y ago
Start by figuring out how to make it better. As in, automate the boring parts and fix the parts that suck. Also, start building something cool. Like, seriously, build something cool. Even if it's just for you. I've been geeking out about software architecture and engineering lately to make TDD not suck, so I built Obvious to scratch my own itch. It's the most fun I've had building software in years. I don't know if anyone else is going to care, but I've enjoyed it immensely. http://obvious.retromocha.com/ http://obvious.retromocha.com/ if you're curious.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
patz 14y ago
Hi, I'm a QA in a industry company and I'm doing these daily manual testing just because I was a previous field engineer and knows much more about the domain than my fellow colleges. I'm so tired of such kind of job since everyday just get exhausted doing these test. I'm in a great puzzle about what to do next, and I'm also wondering what can I do if I change my job. Can anyone give some suggestion? Thank you!
Aqueous 14y ago
You have a job. Stop complaining.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
joshcrews 14y ago
I'm speculating here, and may be wrong. You may have a more "I don't know how I got here, but I kinda feel like somebody's slave" problem than a CRUD problem. If that's your problem, there's an eject button that will be a wild and scary ride, but you're likely to come out more healthy, excited, passionate and feeling alive. Go independent (as in quit, become a freelancer/consultant). If you do, your initial contracts probably won't be on the forefront of changing the world; but I'm speculating that that's not your problem anyway. After going independent, and learning all of the self-management and business skills and establishing a reputation you'll also get more project offers than you can do and you'll be able to choose ones that change the world more, and the impact of your projects will probably go up overtime. And at that point, you'll also be hunted by the world-changing organizations that seem so distant now (if you want to leave consulting and go back full-time)
mseebach 14y ago
So what do you want to do? Practically nobody's full-time job is changing the world, and for everyone who does manage to put a dent in the universe, loud opponents will tell you you're doing it all wrong. First step in "escaping" is having a vision of what escaping looks like. What really makes you happy? As others have pointed out, escaping may very likely still look a lot like a CRUD app. Spend some weeks keeping a diary, taking note everyday of what you did you liked and what you didn't like. Try to figure out the "why" for each of those. A pattern will likely emerge.
martinced 14y ago
Tired of CRUD? What about learning CRA (Create Read Append)? There are so many places where people did add "time" information to CRUD DBs because of the 'U' and 'D' that it's not even funny. Learn a CRA DB and go apply to companies using today technologies that shall be used in the future mostly everywhere. Most CRUD DBs I've been working with would have had absolutely zero space issue had they been using a CRA DB. And this would have solved so many issues. The only downside of "CRA vs CRUD" is that CRA DBs tend to be bigger (not than the CRUD one who did poorly re-model time that said)... But with today's hardware and especially memory growing up so fast and going down in price so quickly (the two being related but not identical), it's really not a problem anymore for 99.99% of the companies out there to simply store facts in a "ever growing, append-only" DB. Just an example: there are many times where someone up the chain asks for some information and you either have to ask the DB guys to give you a backup of the prod DB at "time X" on some DEV/PREPROD environment or you have to go fetch business information by parsing logs. These are two major fails. And they're mostly related to the fact that most CRUD DBs are modeled as "non factual". The 'U' and 'D' are irreversible operation losing business information and developers time. So learn about CRA DBs like Datomic (which you can, btw, back with a SQL DB like PostgreSQL) and then go apply to companies who "saw the light".
vegas 14y ago
You quit.
Executor 14y ago
Join foundations like Apache, FSF, Linux and Mozilla? Join open jobs like Valve, Github, 37signals? Either way... I don't think changing the tech world is the answer. It's our SOCIETY that needs changing, requiring people to be politically active, self-educate, protest, etc.
orangethirty 14y ago
Back when I started working on cars (like a million years ago) my dream was to build hot rod Ford Mustangs. I would devour every magazine or book that was about doing that (I still have a bin full of them). Why Mustangs? My brother loved them. He worked and worked and bought himself a pretty beat-up example (an '82 GT, which was slow as hell). In that car we had countless adventures that I still cherish to this day. Like that time we drove about 20 miles in around 5 minutes because the parts sotre was closing and we needed a part for a Corvette (another story altogether). Or the time the crankshaft fell into the oil pan, thus leaving him stranded and engine-less (it was pretty funny). So, I got into cars because i had a dream of modifying Mustangs. My brother had a friend who was a Racing mechanic that speciliazed in Mustangs. We hung out at his shop night after night. I kept learning how cars worked (I was around 13 years old), and how to modify them. Years passed and I had turned into a walking Mustang library. I could quote the specs of every Ford Racing Camshaft (still can). I kept working on cars. Little by little I kept getting experience. But I was not getting any experience with Mustangs. Shoot! Tinme passes by and I own a repair shop. Im a full fledged mechanic. Working on cars was fun, but it didnt make me happy. My dream was Mustangs, not Toyotas with a bad power steering pump. But I kept going. After a while, I got the chance to work on Porsches. I quickly learned all about them and got into the art of modifying them. It was fun, but they were not Mustangs. Got as far as working with other high end Euro cars such as the BMW 850 V12 6-speed. Fine car. Sucky build quality. Went back to fixing regular cars because I had to pay the bills. I still hadnt modified a mustang per se, but knew how to. I wanted to buy one of my own but could not afford it. There I was wanting to do something, and not doing it because I thought I couldnt. Then my brother passed away. With him, my desire to build Mustangs went away. Turns out I just wanted to build Mustangs with him. You know, make him proud. At that moment I realized that we have to ask ourselves what do we want to do and do it. Instead of beating around the bushes, just go straight and do it. Life is too short to waste time on shit that doesnt make you happy. Even though I dont know you, I can say the following. If you are tired of building bullshit applications at work, then quit. Save up some money, quit and take another job doing whatever it is you want. If you cant find a job doing just that then start your own company. Funding these days is easier to get than Malaria. The problem is not CRUD apps (which I actually like doing), or algorithms. The problem is that you feel stuck. Un-stuck yourself by making a decision and sticking to it. It is better to make a bad decision and in the way fix it, than to wait until conditions are right (which they will never be). I never got the chance to build that Mustang with my brother. You will never get another chance to write amazing software either. Carpe Diem, my friend. Carpe Diem.
__--__ 14y ago
There is one way to change programming fields that almost feels like cheating and is a feature unique to startups in Silicon Valley. Find a company doing the work you want to be doing that's currently in crazy startup staffing mode. That's how I went from writing CRUD apps to making facebook games. I was completely unqualified for video game development, as most of my experience was with web-based CMS's in PHP, but I could solve fizzbuzz and they were desperate for programmers. That last part is key - they wanted to launch 30 games in one year and didn't have the manpower. They grew from 30 people to 300 in one year, and 300 to 600 the next. The downside to this is you need to be able to learn new skills and languages fast in a high stress environment. But, if you do it right, you can learn a lot in a short amount of time as well.
wuxia 14y ago
hehe
shreyash02 14y ago
Boring jobs exist everywhere even at Intel, Google and NASA.

michaelochurch 14y ago

I think he's using "CRUD" as a metaphor for "crappy assigned work that hurts your career". This has nothing to do with "CRUD" so much as the dissatisfaction that sets in when you realize that the shots, in most of the world, are still called by morons with no vision. Actually, I think CRUD itself is a good thing. Why? Because it's a description of a simple interface. You really get the elegance of a CRUD API in the corporate world. Normally, you have a bunch of stupid features and requirements that attached themselves like barnacles. In truth, building CRUD apps places a person well above the average in the typical corporate stack. At least you're building new stuff and have a chance to shine. Unlike on a maintenance job (which is what most people get) you will get visibility if yo do good work. Most corporate denizens don't even get that. They're lucky to write 200 lines of new code per month. My suggestion: "How to you escape the shackles and bullshit of your CRUD job and use all those great resources in your head to turn that job on its side and change the world from right where you're at?" The problem here is that most people need an income, every month, or they start to have serious financial problems. Knowing where overperformance leads-- getting attacked by envious/insecure idiots and ending up unemployed-- I wouldn't recommend it unless he has financial security.

pcl 14y ago
I've noticed this sentiment on HN a number of times. In my experience at large companies and small ones, I've never seen overperformance turn into unemployment. I believe it has happened, but I doubt it is common, and I certainly don't think it's common enough to base job decisions on. In my experience, I have seen the opposite a number of times -- people who overperform have been rewarded with more responsibility and more-interesting jobs. This includes situations in which people automated away their job responsibilities.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  In my experience at large companies and small ones, I've never seen overperformance turn into unemployment. It's more subtle than that. People don't get fired directly for overperformance, so much as they make enemies who later sabotage them. It's hard to do anything important and not piss someone off. I have an overperformance story from Google that's legendary, although I didn't actually get fired. Overperformance doesn't inexorably lead to termination, and it's certainly not immediate. It is, however, more likely to lead to termination than the opposite. (On the other hand, underperformance is more toxic to your career in the long term.) "Performance" is a middle-class myth for AFCs (Average Frustrated Chumps). You get fired if you fail politically. Being at either extreme, performance-wise, increases the likelihood that this happens.
  - oxide 14y ago
    Tell us the story.
  - hga 14y ago
    I suspect some of it has to do with your personality and how much your over-performance engenders envy. Looking at my work history, it cost me 3-4 jobs at companies that subsequently failed. The best example is one where the new and essential product needed to avoid an m*n database transaction explosion, where m is the number of clients. My warnings about this---and it was very easy to explain and the math is rather simple after all---kept me off that project and sidelined to a dead end. The project ... went even worse than expected, was never reliable after the 2nd client logged in (the project manager had never even done a multiple client system before), until a new crew was hired to rewrite it, but it was a little late by then.... When Mr. Church say "You get fired if you fail politically." he's spot on. That was obviously a factor these jobs and cost me another one or two. All of these were small companies, except for Lucent during it's year of free fall from 106,000 employees to a targeted 35,000 or so; they ended up getting bought by Alcetal. Here's a constructive comment (I hope): one thing you have to watch out for is managers who are failed programmers. Even worse is if they had no input into your hiring.
xiaoma 14y ago
>Knowing where over-performance leads-- getting attacked by envious/insecure idiots and ending up unemployed This sounds like what you're saying-- Law 1: never outshine the master. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6ldbjR2trg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6ldbjR2trg
- SatvikBeri 14y ago
  And Law 46: never appear too perfect.

timr 14y ago

Ugh. This "answer" is the textual equivalent of an imspirational poster with a picture of a cute animal -- it sounds really nice, but doesn't say much of anything, or have any actionable advice. What advice it does have is bad: "Figure out how to change the world from your current job". Right then. Hang in there, champ. Stay where you are. The world is better than it seems, mmkay? Fuck that. The answer to your question is simple, and has very little to do with "changing the world" from your current job: you need to reach for what you want. If you're not happy with your current work, find new work that's better. Nobody is just going to hand you a plum job because you're kicking ass on CRUD apps. The world doesn't work that way. And it's highly unlikely that you're going to move into ML or compiler design by writing a classifier or a DSL for your current CRUD app-writing gig. Want to be doing machine learning? Apply to positions that involve machine learning. Those could be at your current company, but probably not. You might have to take a pay cut. You might have to move. You might have to go outside of your comfort zone. But you need to work for it. Can't get a job doing what you want because you're not qualified? Okay, fine. Go back to school. Find a junior-level job in a field that's orthogonal to what you really want. Maybe get a low-paying tech position in an academic lab that does research into ML or compilers or computer graphics or something else. Take courses at the local university in statistics, math and theory. Get an MS or PhD. People on HN will tell you that college is a waste of time, but they're wrong. They're mostly trapped doing CRUD work, like you. Education -- and certification -- matters. So, get some, if you're not qualified. Work your ass off, and learn theory. Most of your peers won't do the work. The point is that you "escape the trap" by working really hard in a focused way. And it's a bit of a hill-climbing problem, because you don't really know your end goal, and you don't really know what the path looks like to get there, but you nearly always know a direction that's "up" from where you are right now. So, step aggressively in an upward direction. The way you avoid getting trapped is by not standing still.

lincolnbryant 14y ago
Some of the best programmers I have met left higher paying jobs to do something that at least somewhat changes the world for better or helps people. This is about the vertical within our horizontal discipline. Working at a marketing company will be very different than defense. Some people want to work with visually appealing things, some people will only be happy if their software helps people. Don't blame the CRUD (cleaver play on words though). If you are truly a developer and find the horizontal you love you will be glad to work on it's CRUD.

eternalban 14y ago
> Accept that software is not a meritocracy. Not even close. The politics are as vicious as in any other industry. Would you please share your professional experiences in industries other than software? Thank you.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  Well, I've worked in finance and the politics, while a negative, weren't any worse than in typical software companies. In fact, I think the ethics are better in finance than in these fly-by-night VC-istan concerns. Software politics are especially nasty, because the industry tries hard to believe that it's a meritocracy, but work where there's potential for excellence is so rare that it's allocated as a political favor. Most software engineers are assigned work that hurts their career, and have to figure out how to navigate this. The winning strategy seems to be to sneak away time and resources to learn what you really want, while creating the appearance of full dedication to the assigned work. It feels dirty and it takes a while before people are comfortable with it because, hey, everyone does it. The best way to understand closed-allocation software politics is to watch a film about an unrelated industry: Glengarry Glenn Ross. The characters are sleazy salesmen in the 1980s, but it's really about Work and, specifically, the emasculating state of affairs that exists when high-quality work (the Glengarry leads) is inaccessible or allocated politically, leaving the rest to fail (with low quality work) in a game that looks like a meritocracy. When the film opens, you're led to believe that they're losers. They're being yelled at by their boss's friend (played by Alec Baldwin) in a performance that's truly epic. What becomes clear toward the end is that they are talented (if scummy) salesman, who have been set up to fail, because the leads given to them actually are useless. (One is a nutty old couple with no financial resources; they "just like talking to salesmen.") That's like software. The industry turns people into mediocrities and failures, but that's because the no-vision morons who call the shots at the tops of these companies are only giving them low-quality work, and they stop learning.
  - gregpilling 14y ago
    As a full commission sales person for a large part of my life, in my view they were crappy salespeople. In sales you quickly learn to get your own leads. I have never seen a company supplied lead that was worth a pinch of poo.
- meaty 14y ago
  Just to back up the OP's claim for him/her: I've worked in unskilled labour, defence, engineering and finance professions, finally settling on financial software. They're all just as packed with a shit-ton of politics as each other. The worst thing I did was making pizzas while at college. That was asslicking and backstabbing central.
eddieroger 14y ago
I used to think this was applicable for tech jobs at non-tech companies (of which I've had two thus far), but now that I'm at job #3, a software engineer at a tech company, I think it's universal. It's absolutely right that no one will look out for your career other than you, because it's no one else's job to help you advance. It's completely politics - not that it has to be cut-throat, but you have to own your own work destiny. Of course, not wanting to advance is fine. Many of the techies-turned-managers I've worked for hated the advancement because it removed them from the actual tech. A few even made "lateral" moves to get back to the tech. Likewise, many of the engineers I've worked with are perfectly happy writing code, and just want a merit increase annually. Someone once told me "dress for the job you want, not the one you have." It's basically that. If you want a better job, do your current job better. It will get noticed, and that's how you advance.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  Of course, not wanting to advance is fine. Many of the techies-turned-managers I've worked for hated the advancement because it removed them from the actual tech. Advancement doesn't require becoming a manager. (If it does, in your company, then change companies yesterday.) It means working on more interesting, higher-impact projects. Most engineers that I know only become managers because there is no other way to control the division of labor and get quality work. (Of course, in reality, managers don't get to do the decent work either because they spend all day in meetings.) What you really need is enough control over the division of labor to continually have high-quality projects to work on. One solution would be only to work for open-allocation companies.
  - eddieroger 14y ago
    Totally, and I didn't mean to suggest it is. The lateral moves I mentioned were to technical architect roles, which aren't daily coders, but also aren't management. However, that's not the path some people want to take, either.
    - testing12341234 14y ago
fab13n 14y ago
> software is not a meritocracy [...] The politics are vicious [...] why that idiot is calling technical shots [...]? Because he played the game, and you didn't. Dilbert-style ass-licking and treachery is one way to play the game; being indispensable because you solve unsolvable problems is another. It is, by definition, the hacker's way. It's tricky indeed because it requires a healthy dose of insubordination. A healthy company is a company which can be operated by real, i.e. mostly average, people. Big companies are optimized not to depend on individual genius, although they sometimes pathetically pretend the opposite. If you want to impose your better but non-standard solutions, you'll have to build them stealthy, them shove them down the middle management's throat when they painted themselves in a corner with the standard ones. Your way _might_ solve the problem, and it _will_ get you disliked by anal-retentive and insecure managers; move away from them, or make sure that you become indispensable faster than you become irritating to them. If you pull it off, they'll help you move away from them anyway.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  "being indispensable because you solve unsolvable problems is another. It is, by definition, the hacker's way." Those problems are 'near' insolvable often because clueless people were in charge making decisions they shouldn't have been allowed to make. By rescuing orgs like that, you run the real risk of being relegated to perpetual clean up guy, and you bolster the decisions. Rough example: System X was built so badly because of bad directives, that it's taking 3 hours for a report, and you need 10 reports per day, but you can only do 8 (8x3=24 hours). Every current employee and 2 outside consultants all say "this can't be fixed", not because it can not under any circumstance be fixed, but the cost/benefit doesn't even come close - it's a crappy bandage at best. You, being "indispensable super dev" work overtime for 3 weeks to 'fix' things, and reports are now 15 minutes (like they should have been). Great - you just 'solved the unsolvable'. Whoop. You've perpetuated the bad decision making process, and it will be months or years before there can be real change in the org now. Being 'indispensable' also usually means you're tied to crap projects and will never get moved out of that department/division in an upward capacity - you'll have to quit that company to get any real advancement.
  - 14y ago