Along the same lines, I also find it useful to have a text log for each sizeable task I undertake. This could contain anything, notes of module structure, code & data snippets for testing, everything!
Like one of the top comments mentions, it acts as a node of knowledge within a wider system (graph) and I end up revisiting these logs more often than you would expect! It only gets better as you explore/document more and edges form.
I’ve been doing something similar. If I read a blog post / paper, etc. where I learn a lot on a topic I’m interested in, I will catalogue a pdf of it in Obsidian with a tag and an optional note. This makes it easy to access information locally very quickly and I find I learn a lot more because if I forget something, I open up the resource, read the doc and, come out learning a little more. A kind of convoluted version of spaced-repetition but more passive learning.
Granted, I’m aware this probably won’t scale to many topics but a few years and hundreds of notes later, it’s still working well for me.
There’s read.cv which is a network, portfolio and job posting site that’s more focused towards the design community. I have seen software dev jobs posted in there too.
I’ve also struggled to find an alternative to LinkedIn (which is unbearable at times). Maybe the way forward is for each community to have its own unique platform, like read.cv for the design community, another for games, embedded, etc.
Aside from that Hacker news who’s hiring has been the most useful in discovering opportunities for me personally although I realise this is focused mainly on technology roles.
Excellent point. Giving my perspective as a relative newbie (~5 years) to the industry with no comp. sci. background.
It was around the year 3-4 mark that I decided to knuckle down and try to improve my fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, memory models, concurrency, CPU architecture and some network fundamentals) by reading popular papers and literature and writing all of my personal projects in C and C++. I’m about two years into this study and while it’s been immensely rewarding, I’ve found it to be a huge undertaking while juggling life and a full-time job.
What I’ve also noticed is that, while I understand a lot more about what the CPU is doing, memory manipulation and how to write more efficient programs, I haven’t found it be particularly beneficial to my daily work (still Python and JS). I would love to be able to put these concepts into practice for many hours of my working day but it’s difficult to move from general web-stack development to more performance-oriented development (embedded, low-latency, OS, etc.).
My guess is that this is one of the reasons we have ended up in this situation. You can get away without knowing the fundamentals (a good sign of progress?) and that if you really do want to pursue these areas that promote building this kind of knowledge as part of your career, the barrier to entry is quite high and the positions are fewer than say a decade or two ago. I find it a shame because in my eyes, these areas are the most interesting and exciting areas of programming. It’s an art.
> Getting a job becomes more of a random toss than assessment of my skills.
I’ve coined a term for this throughout my long job search, it’s called the “leetcode lottery” (patent pending).
You can do a couple of hundred leetcode problems, but you’re still at the mercy of the Gods when your technical interview comes around. The worst part of this whole charade is that I come out of most interviews having learned nothing valuable and I can say the same for the interviewer. They haven’t learned about my strengths and weaknesses, etc.
I don’t have a better solution for how you can get an idea of my knowledge and skills over 2-3 hours of technical interviews though. And until someone does come up with a better idea, we’re stuck playing this game.
Thanks so much for your advice! I agree, having the opportunity to use the language as part of your daily-work helps massively, and is one of the best but most difficult options to realize. I'm aware this will come with some sacrifices (pay reduction, longer hours to catch-up) which I'm willing to make while I become more competent.
As for the second point, that is a great suggestion. However, I'm very limited by my current working environment (regulation, corp. restrictions, etc.) so it becomes a little more difficult.
I believe I will just have to push very hard for option one and continue to study areas of interest in my spare time. I'm reading xv6: a simple, Unix-like teaching operating system which is helping me grasp some practical applications using C.
Technologies: Python, Typescript, React, (Learning C)
Dream role:
I would love the opportunity to work with C (or Rust) in a professional setting. I think there are a lot of interesting problems that are being tackled in this space (audio processing, embedded, linux development and latency sensitive applications). I realize my experience is limited in this area but I hope that my current skills can bring value to your team (and business) while I build up confidence and competency. I'm hungry and always willing to learn. I enjoy working for smaller companies and teams :)
About:
Currently working for a trading team in a large investment bank. Prior to that I worked across the web-stack for 3 years at a start-up. As of the last year I have found myself becoming increasingly interested in performance focused programming and I find great joy in learning how the fundamental components of our software works (think memory allocation, semantics, concurrency, os basics).
I’m also a “full-stack” web developer and would love to transfer to a career in C (or Rust also?). There’s such a wide variety of interesting problems to be solved over many applications.
I’m not sure how I would begin making a career transfer. Would anyone happen to have any advice / experience on this? I would be really grateful!
Thank you for your incredible work! I have been reading Algorithms for Modern Hardware as part of my after-work study and I have found it invaluable—I reference it daily.
A little bit of a digression from the original topic but I have found sleeplikethedead[1] useful in the past for sleep related products (not affiliated with them). I hope it helps your search :)
Thanks for this! I've been diving into the basics of lock-free datastructures recently. Some posts that I've been working through which I've found useful:
Great explanation, as someone who is new to C++ and actively learning, these perspectives are invaluable.
I have been using some shared pointers in a personal project because of its ease of use but I aim to review and refactor this code to follow C++ idioms more appropriately. Thank you!
OP, I’m also a twenty something that moved from a fast paced start-up to a Behemoth.
It’s been 7 months so far and throughout the first 6 months, I have fought and resisted how BigCo operates—it left me tired and even more miserable. Within the last month however, I have stumbled across the same advice as has been given by the wise members above. This advice is invaluable, accept that within these organisations a lot is outside of your control. Rather, focus on projects, learning and hobbies outside of your work that bring you joy.
If your feelings remain unchanged within a couple of months to a year then consider making a change to another Co. Good or bad, these experiences are invaluable in helping us to decide on how we wish to pursue our careers.
Forgive me for this digression and for sounding selfish, but as a junior, I’ve really struggled for the last 2+ years to fully adapt to remote / hybrid working.
I’m wondering if anyone has advice on how I can continue to grow and become a top-class engineer within a remote environment?
Based on my experience so far, it’s very difficult to both onboard and mentor a junior from a remote setting. It’s not impossible, however, a lot of employers / teams still have not setup effective means for including and training the less experienced members of the team. I realise that much of this learning is of my own responsibility but I really, really miss spending time with my team and learning from those more experienced than I. I feel as though I have stagnated an awful lot over the last two years and there’s only so far self-learning can take you when software engineering is such a collaborative process.
I also think there could be a good opportunity to expand this to kitchen appliances too. Premium quality but really dumb. I would be a loyal customer