mak4athp

6 ms·

1.
by mak4athp 11y ago
As you may have puzzled out from other responses here, that's a very personal question. You need to figure out the cultural details that mean something to you, then ask the questions that reveal them. For some people that's vacati
2.
by mak4athp 11y ago
If you carry this attitude through a series of future jobs, you're going to demonstrate that you're a pretty awful employee. Not all work is exciting, and new hires are often going to get the worst of it until they prove themselve
3.
by mak4athp 11y ago
It's extremely hard to sell a novel "job title" as a consultant. Most clients will want to see examples or case studies of your success in the role -- so that they can understand what you do -- and that can't happen unti
4.
by mak4athp 11y ago
You don't realize it yet, but you're expressing a ton of anti-patterns here. Not the least of which is an urge to prematurely optimize your project, and desire to invent your own new solution to a broadly (but not universally) sol
5.
by mak4athp 11y ago
As a full-time employee in the purely technical track, greater responsibility and pay would come through architectural and design roles. If he really just wants to code, the best way to maximize income would just be develop a career as a co
6.
by mak4athp 11y ago
Which of the above suggestions wouldn't apply to both? I understand what you're saying in general, but there are a lot of universals that would apply across all kinds of jurisdictions.
7.
by mak4athp 11y ago
You recognize the irony here, right? You won't give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but only take seriously the people who offer it to you. That strategy doesn't seem like it would pan out very well!
8.
by mak4athp 11y ago
There's a real difference between a Customer and a QA member, though. You can't demand leave the responsibility to make a good report on a customer because they're external to your organization. But you can do exactly that wi
9.
by mak4athp 11y ago
Everybody has different needs and expectations. Some of those even evolve or 180 over the course of a single career. Speaking to your own concern, the tradeoff is that many technical managers are only there because they fell upward. They ma
10.
by mak4athp 11y ago
I think your intuition is correct when you suggest that this approach isn't scalable. It runs counter to the concept of "flow", articulated in Peopleware[1] 30 years ago and confirmed many times since then. Sharing the pain h
11.
by mak4athp 11y ago
I personally agree with you, I just find that you/we are in the minority as hiring managers. When you hire a PHP person to join your Ruby team, you're making a bet that they're able to ramp up on the new environment as readil
12.
by mak4athp 11y ago
If you pursue a specialization and get bored, you move on from it. There's not a lot of drama to it and a lot of your skills will be transferable. On top of that, it sounds like you'll naturally keep investigating new areas as you
13.
by mak4athp 11y ago
> otherwise merit-based processes What a delightful thought experiment! In the meantime...
14.
by mak4athp 11y ago
Not really. For internal use as algorithm fodder, they've got millions of photos to harvest from Bing. And for external use, they can't confirm that the submitter actually had the rights to the image in the first place, so they ar
15.
by mak4athp 11y ago
Do you think there's really an answer to your question that would make you reflect on the issue? If so, what might the answer look like? If not, why did you ask the question?
16.
by mak4athp 11y ago
You generally need to bring an applicable skill to the table immediately on hire. With the exception of a few stable mid-sized companies that really love generalists and cultivating long-term employees, and fresh-grad hiring, most places ca
17.
by mak4athp 11y ago
Deciphering bad bug reports is absolutely a waste of your time as a developer, but that doesn't imply that the user is mistaken. In nearly all cases, the user is correct in sensing a bug but incorrect or inarticulate in their descripti
18.
by mak4athp 11y ago
If an organization is having developers triage vague bug reports directly from end users, they're already in trouble. Not only are developers a very expensive resource, they're generally not good at doing what you describe here. N
19.
by mak4athp 11y ago
1. Figure out what sector/industry you'd like to work in. 2. Figure out what's popular in that sector 3. Focus your skill development on that. With some exceptions, but there's a high affinity for certain technology stac
20.
by mak4athp 11y ago
Whatever strikes your fancy. If you're pursuing startup culture at your age, and you aren't trying to become a developer/engineer yourself -- you have all the freedom in the world. You've probably got more honed skills t
21.
by mak4athp 11y ago
Given where you are in your career, you're inevitably a high-risk person to hire for contract work. That means that at least one of the following will be true: * you'll be ignored by good clients that can afford to avoid that risk
22.
by mak4athp 11y ago
> Then again, if I'm hiring a rockstar engineer ... If all they want to do is come in for 6 months and crank out some projects and leave, I'll probably still be grateful to have them for that time. In 6 months, you won't k
23.
by mak4athp 11y ago
> Tenures too short? Maybe they delivered a lot of value in 6 months and were ready for a new challenge. Would you not hire a builder to build your house because they did the last one in 6 months? No, but I'd be hiring a contractor
24.
by mak4athp 11y ago
While you may not feel privileged because you had to make hard sacrifices, not everyone is in a position to make the sacrifices you made. But even then, your anecdote only speaks for yourself. There are many people who are indeed privileged
25.
by mak4athp 11y ago
1. Don't use the same password everywhere. 2. Use a password manager like LastPass or 1Password. Regardless of the incidental security risk of showing those rules, the site shouldn't facilitate your irresponsibility when it comes
26.
by mak4athp 11y ago
Talk to your supervisor (or theirs) first! They've spent the time to hire and ramp you up one their processes and code. Unless you're terrible at your job, they don't want you to walk away. So tell them that you're feeli
27.
by mak4athp 11y ago
Have you taken any vacations? Are you maintaining work/life balance day-to-day? Your job can be tough, it can be discouraging, and it can make you feel responsible both for and to a ton of people on a ton of different levels. But you n
28.
by mak4athp 11y ago
1. Previous experience seeing technology projects through their full lifecycle, so that you know what you're facing and can communicate it to others before you get there. 2. Confident and strong rapport with your stakeholders (CEO, boa
29.
by mak4athp 11y ago
> You have to inspire people to work hard, long and sometimes grueling hours to deliver. You're doing it wrong. If you're having that much trouble with deadlines and bandwidth, you should be inspiring your CEO, board, and inves
30.
by mak4athp 11y ago
A good interviewer isn't looking for somebody that's suave and comfortable in the interview. They understand awkwardness, nervousness and that it's easy to make stupid technical and social mistakes under pressure -- and they

More ›