stutsmansoft

What I've been hearing is companies going mobile first and only adding web later to support a broader demographic.

Anyone able to confirm/disconfirm that?

I also had a bad experience with graphQL, or perhaps more accurately the Apollo client for it.

I hated the namespaces on the code-generated classes and ended up manually wrapping them, obviating the benefit.

It was also super brittle, when the back end would change something it would break the clients.

I agree that salary ranges are needed.

I would add though, "leetcode" is also why companies struggle to hire.

I avoid outright companies who use this as a filter, and cut the process short if I encounter it along the way.

Prima donna? Sure. But I believe quite strongly these things measure memorized puzzles, not skills.

I couldn't agree more. I recently discontinued the process with a company over the leetcode garbage.

Those things test one thing: how many of those puzzles have you memorized the solution to.

I'm also an "old" and suspect you're right about the young-pass-filter.

Absolutely yes.

I've been developing professionally for almost 30 years. I still love making software and I'm good at it.

When I started in this industry, being able to do it at all was the barrier to entry. The processes were light; "here's what we need it to do, go figure it out." Responsibility (and impact) were both high.

Somewhere along the line that changed. Teams blew up to be dozens of people. Process fads weighed things down with tons of meetings, silly ceremonies and other things that actively slow down productive developers.

Add to the mix the hell that is tech interviewing now. If you're interviewing for anyone that will pay well, you're going to be subjected to "leetcode" style puzzles under pressure and stress scrutiny. If that's not how you best think and solve problems, tough!

So yeah...I can absolutely relate. I still love building software and I hate the industry.

The only escape is entrepreneurship or possibly consulting, both of which I am actively looking to do.

This proves that in the real world, problems are solved by research and thinking.

Whiteboard leetcode crap is simply a test for "have you heard the trick for this one or not?"

The dealers brought it on themselves...many of them actively disincentivize EV purchases when you try to buy one.

Why? They want to protect that recurring service bay revenue. Oil changes, plugs, belts, etc.

I agree with everything you said here.

I've been severely disappointed with the psyche of man - we've discovered a large chunk of humanity doesn't believe in science and cares only about themselves.

That doesn't feel like a recipe for long-term success.

I think companies that break out of the leetcode habit are going to do well. There's a lot of great talent out there that's being passed over by these tests.

Agreed. And there's a lot of great talent that doesn't even want to try with some of these companies solely due to the hostile interview process.

I understand your frustration.

It becomes hard to find a job you can live with.

I've had some mixed experiences as an engineer without business skills.

Some mistakes I've made attempting to go it alone:

- Let a client go too long without paying me resulting in them stiffing me for a 14K loss.

- Took on too much work without hiring help resulting in burnout.

- Over-estimated jobs and under-charged them, resulting in my pipeline running out sooner than I expected and leaving me hungry (see #2)

I've often wished for some kind of "software Jerry MacGuire" who can front-end my work, sell me to clients, deal with the contract shuffle/payment and get me what I'm worth.

It’s absurd how huge engineering teams have become.

Remember the twitter app was originally written by one guy - I bet that team has 50 people on it now, and it’s not better for it.

I have a similar experience level to your own, and I am equally horrified by today's interview gauntlet.

This, coupled with exploding team sizes and heavy-handed process fads, have left me to consider entrepreneurship as the only viable option from here on out.

It was an off-the-shelf jailbreak solution, and I sprinkled it in over 100 places in the code. I read people on jailbreak forums expressing frustration that my app was "too hard to crack and not worth it." Success!

But once it backfired and affected a single paying customer, I decided to change my course.

I was able to dig up the sales report.

https://imgur.com/a/xE9UG1B

All those factors are plausible. If I can still get sales reports I will see if I can re-identify the dropoff and look for correlation.

I will say it certainly -felt- like removing the DRM was a mistake at the time, because the cliff was dramatic and immediate.

As others have pointed out this was a product in the 2009 era, and it did eventually get replaced by a first-party app from TiVo at which point I just shut it down.

Correct, that was the app. It did reasonably well and tanked to near-nothing when DRM was removed, and to full nothing when TiVo finally released their own.

Kinda clickbaity.

I sure own my Porsche EV.

I don't have the daily thrills/hassles of the constant OTA updates, because they don't do them except for the radio.

Not concerned about repairability when the designs are so simple there's almost nothing to break...plus it has a good warranty.

No effect? My own experience differs.

I had an iOS product that was doing well, and it had some DRM to prevent jailbreakers.

I had a legitimate buyer complain and after soul-searching I removed the DRM.

Sales immediately dropped to near zero and never recovered.

So at least in my experience, piracy affected sales.

That's stupid.

Mame 1.0 should have been the first public release to the world.

And still not version 1.0

I'm just over 50 and I'm finding it harder to stay in programming.

Most companies want to push me upward into management (which I don't want to do) - and I feel like I'm aging out of eligibility for most development jobs.

How did you manage to stick with it? I still love it.

Can confirm. They don't care, at least my reps in Texas don't.

I get form letters loosely related to the issue I complained about, and sometimes not even remotely related.

Can we not start another "meme cure" based on sketchy "research?"

I made a Delphi component once. It was immediately modified in ways I disagreed with, renamed, and spread by someone else.

The person who did this didn’t even have a conversation with me about it before doing so.

This was before GitHub and forking and such, but it made me feel angry and unappreciated.

The code that went around was almost entirely my work.

I’m still bitter 25 years later and I’ve never contributed to Open Sores again.

I'm a huge fan of the "demo project" interview. It really allows me to shine where whiteboard gameshows don't.

I don't need or expect payment, either. If I'm legitimately interested in the company, I am happy to spend a couple of hours showing them my stuff. Hell I'm proud to do it. I do enjoy programming, after all.

I think Xcode, Instruments etc are _amazing_ tools...especially for the price. Compare with the Android toolchain.

See I'm the inverse. I'd take the 8 hour project over the whiteboard.

Thinking in a quiet, relaxed environment beats trying to reason through a problem while also thinking about how you are "performing."

I personally would love this style of job screening.

I'm not at all worried about 8 "unpaid" hours.

Good luck