Some of the oldest web forums (circa '98) I've been to use the nested comment format you see on Reddit or on here. The flat timeline format because much more popular from what I've seen.
Reddit style forums are not great for posts intended to log something in progress (like a computer build) because they require the user to make a new thread multiple times instead of making a new comment that automatically brings the thread back to the first page. But flat list threads are great for that.
They usually try to compromise with comment replies shown in "comment pyramids" but they can get unwieldy quick. It's a reasonable tradeoff for the flat chronological layout.
It's more than a concept. They already exist right now. Amazon has a returnship program for example. "Return to Work" is another name given to them.
I'm interested in how to find them more easily, and from smaller companies. Finding them in general is like a needle in a haystack (as well as discussions about them, apparently)
I stumbled into it by accident as a junior software engineer. They offered me a 3-month contract-to-hire job, but instead it became a 2-year independent contractor job for the company. Most jobs that followed have been cold applying to startup contract jobs from Craigslist or obtaining them from local word-of-mouth. It's very feast or famine, and not everyone can keep the momentum of new clients going. As for myself, I am planning to leave self-employed work for the first time in over a decade, for the relative safety of a full-time job (even with the current market situation).
No detailed plans for retirement. I'd need a new job first, to start saving again and I'll cross the bridge when I get there.
But, it is true that I did not take my career seriously for a long time. I treated it more as just work, with no clear direction, since I didn't understand the fundamental difference between a career and a series of similar jobs. Every new job, I was just hoping for a modest pay raise and learning a new thing or two, and being able to coast when I wanted.
Coasting is probably acceptable once you hit senior level in a well rounded team, but I figured out the hard way it's bad to do as a junior or mid-level.
Am confused by your second paragraph. You refer to "easy times" of 5 years ago, but also say "one of the hottest tech job markets" in the past 18 months. Not sure if this is meant to say that today is as good as it was 5 years ago for jobs.
I just can't see myself improving by learning on my own anymore. As another professional told me, "you're practicing, but with no guidance and nobody to step in and let you know when what you're practicing is the wrong approach." And when a person can spend many hours a week with practice and learning and receive the same result - no job offers - as someone who did little-none, it's entirely reasonable to conclude that learning new things is just a waste of time.
I still code once in a while, just to keep busy. Still haven't gotten a good idea of "exchange rate" for employability with the knowledge I obtained from my personal C and JavaScript projects.
I know that many companies won't train you from the ground up, but there are a couple. So I started looking into WITCH and similar consulting firms with a contract training program.
InfoSys and Deloitte have rejected me for some general SWE positions (not language-specific) but there are other similar places. Don't mind if I have to go to one of these body shops, they seem like my best fit for a software job right now.
I've had my resume re-done several times, and took the aforementioned interview prep. Applied to almost a thousand jobs last year alone. It has not made me more employed. And yes, I do want a job handed to me because the lack of progress has made me very desperate.
I don't even trust myself to do the right things anymore. But I now prefer not to learn anything for work unless I am getting paid for it. There's no positive feedback cycle I can find otherwise.
I've had this happen early in my career- worked permatemp as a junior and finding out what I'm allowed to do as a 1099, so I decided to set my own hours. Co-founder of the company wasn't happy about it. He hired me as a contractor and didn't like that I established my rules as a contractor. Odd.
Wasn't just me at this workplace, but all the individual contributors were as well. We saw the writing on the wall, that the co-founders were not interested in full-time conversions and turnover rate increased.
It actually made me question the legitimacy of software careers for a while, because I was caught in this illicit operation.
I think your advice comes from the mistaken assumption that I haven't already looked beyond FAANG companies and startups. Thereby making some of your intentions hard to follow.
I suppose it has more to do with developers dealing more with logical systems than with physical and legal systems that have more direct and immediate consequences. In the case with doctors and lawyers, a bad process will have a more visible impact. In software, there's lots of "bad code" that still operates with the expected outcomes, regardless of the processes used (or ignored) that took them there.
Auditing and forensics does seem to get applied more frequently in cryptocurrency projects, but as you said, that sort of accreditation still has to be meaningful.
Formal credentialing generally means you demonstrate "I can do this", in a very drawn-out, thorough manner. It's gatekeeping more, but there's a much larger guarantee for your creds to be transferrable from place to place.
In software engineering, you demonstrate "I can do this", in a several-round bout of interviews. And then have to demonstrate it all over again and again, for every single company. Your interview performance is non-transferrable.
My opinion is, the latter is more wasteful as it involves repeating yourself a whole lot.
The former has a higher upfront cost but you are betting in the long run that it will amortize over time as you continue to go on interviews.
The latter has less upfront cost but a greater chance of creating more cost in the long run, depending on how much you interview and where.
OP spent 6 hours- personally I wouldn't spend that much on any assignment, but the bigger issue here is that 6 hours is only valid for one company. Interview "work" is so proprietary and non-transferrable- like currency that is useless outside that one company. You cannot take what you did there and show it elsewhere to expedite an interview. You will have to run through another several-hour process again (whether interviewing or another assignment), for some other variation of a CRUD based problem that they expect developers to do.
I suppose the closest thing we have to avoiding repetition is- the answer many won't like- Leetcode. You still have to navigate through opinionated views of your answers, but at least there are more patterns that carry over that its benefits compound more easily from interview to interview.
Before I started working remote, and when I had something resembling a normal 9-5 office job, I would have lunch with several of my co-workers almost every day. I do it more as a formality and because I'm already in the office with them so it doesn't really interrupt the flow of things.
Outside of work, though, I drop my colleagues at the drop of a hat. Doesn't matter if I had drinks and lunch with them many times, they are out of my mind as soon as I leave the office, goes both for quitting the job or just clocking out for the day.
I almost never go back to chatting with the people I worked with, unless I am curious enough to ask if their current company is hiring, as they would've changed companies as most do. Outside of that, I don't really have a need to contact them. Maybe the occasional look at my resume online, for a sanity check when I'm applying to various jobs.
Sounds exhausting to me. But, I'm not looking for advice on how to make friends at work. Moreso looking for avenues where being very close with colleagues is not a big necessity to have a good steady career.
I've freelanced and contracted for about 10 years before the 2.5 years time of no work. When I had work, it didn't do so well for me. Barely made good income, and it's so much freedom, to a fault. No safety nets. You need to be especially proactive to make it work for you, more than a regular job.
I did the bare minimum. I was picking off contract gigs for small business, and for below body shop prices. The most I ever made in one year was $50k. In my worst years I made under $10k.
It also turned me into an "expert beginner" because I worked in isolation, I was still living in the now, and my clients have been small with little to no exposure to a strong technical culture.
You need a lot of hustling and "working your network" to rise above that. At this point, it's killed my drive and want to go back to the relative safety of FT work.
That's an interesting perspective to me, since I'm the complete opposite with detail work. I feel like I am very much a little-picture person.
Most of my career I tend to strike out billable line items, close tickets, and became very comfortable with it. I found it easier to get in the groove of things with feature work coming in and chugging through it at a predictable pace.
It's true that you bury yourself in the details that way, but I didn't mind it.
However, this little-picture focus turned out to be bad for me in the long run.
I avoided small talk with co-workers, there was little to no casual socializing, after work I just want to shut my brain off and turn on Netflix or a video game when I'm back home.
Because of my focus of tallying down complete items being more important, I saw writing code as the only important thing there is to my job and career. I stopped noticing my coworker's needs around me, the company's greater needs, and the industry trends around me.
It included not caring about network building, company meets or other "extracurriculars" that will get you noticed and have a peer put in a good word for you.
I didn't want to manage big things, whether it's my network or my skillset. I just wanted to live in the moment and meet my boss's demands each day without worrying.
Consequently I would have to change focus now that I know how important the big picture is and not to ignore it. If I had to choose an alternative I might go for a ECE career or perhaps aerospace. Both will however require a full degree- you can't easily self-teach your way into those types of careers.
>You list the trifecta of red flags for employers:
Incredibly I never went out of my way to do everything as wrong as possible. It just kind of happened without thinking about what is really bad, for the first couple years of my career. I would have assumed that to have so many red flags you'd have to actively work to get them, but here we are.
I've been following point 1 by making side projects that make more use of modern web development. Have some on Github and one on Heroku as well. What is unclear to me is which kinds of topics are usually taught in on-boarding and which are left to the candidate to learn for themselves. I don't have experience with mentoring or on-boarding situations which is why I ask.
As for the next point, I am trying to avoid companies with no IT staff as I've heard many times that they are not well suited to grow your career in tech. I also know from experience, been there, done that, hasn't worked for me, so it's time to move away from them. They are more "cost center" than "profit center" jobs and am following different advice to choose companies where software is at the core of their business.
I'll see what I can do with socializing with others for professional talk. The only people I speak with face to face are the places I grab a bite or coffee, etc. and typically otherwise just converse and chat with people in tech focused communities like this one.
>the major difference between the world OP and yourself describes and my experience is mostly in that it seems you two are trying to get "a job" (any job) whereas I'm saying, I find companies that I think I would enjoy
I'm in the second group, for the long term goal on finding companies I'd like to work at. It's in the thread's title.
Recently I chatted with a less experienced engineer, he currently works at Lyft and has had internships at Intel and Github while at college, along with related extracurriculars. That is what inspired me to make this thread. I'm trying to build a several years long plan to do what is possible for a self-taught in order to get to a similar position.
So my aim right now is to plan a itinerary that is suitable from getting noticed the way reputable tech companies notice future graduates with good internships and credentials. I will have to earn my own credentials differently (not necessarily with a job), to position myself in the same way. You can think of this plan as a "school away from school" on the way to get multiple offers from reputable companies.
There is a risk that it may backfire from a hiring standpoint, since this plan would probably further delay my re-entry into the workforce. However, without the ability to pass job interviews, I will have to obtain other accomplishments without work experience. Also, I'll probably cut my oldest jobs from my resume to shorten my experience.
And this is the only top level reply. Interesting.