Imagine if we took "onboarding" as seriously as clock makers used to.
Working with a master for a few years to learn the craft, step by step, always under an experienced gaze.
Or conversely, imagine what a clock would look like if it was cobbled together by someone who has just gone through a few weeks of clock-making bootcamp. I feel this is what some of our software looks like.
My girlfriend is doing code bootcamp to try to have an option outside of her current job. I do know one girl who did it a couple years ago, who was a bartender and is now writing frontend React for Nike and making six figures. My GF's very smart, and I want to encourage her, but I don't think it's going to work. She's not a watch-maker. She's good at people. Here's my glossy view on this. Everyone wants this glamorous job now of being an engineer. But you have to be a fuckin obsessive OCD geek to look at a shitpile of cat output and be like what the fuck went wrong here, I can't stop, sleep or eat until I figure it out. It's okay. Not everyone can or should make watches. How do you train them..? Put them in the woods with StackOverflow and give them something impossible.
There are plenty of good jobs for people who are good with people and know there basics of how to code, though, so that may well work out well for her even if she doesn't end up enjoying full on development.
I believe that the problem is that the software development industry is completely built around engineers, staying at companies for two years or less. There’s lots of reasons for this. I think a lot of those reasons are cultural (SE culture, not nationality).
I stayed at my last company for almost 27 years. When I mention that in venues like HN, it’s usually mocked, and I’m basically called a “chump,” for doing it.
My only exposure to this weird, desperate, corporate ladder-climbing culture is via HN. It freaks me out to hear the lives coders are living inside these places, because it bears literally no resemblance to the way I articulate code or think about my job. I basically come here for the spectacle. I've been freelance since the first dot-com collapse in '98. I just come here to hear how $megacorp[$x] is abusing people. That being said, I always worry what if I had to go back to work for one...
I get a sense that you exist like myself, and other coders I've known, outside the furious competition for status in a FAANG, doing our own thing and crafting our own art. It's kinda calming and peaceful to watch from the grandstands while the central rat race shit show goes on.
[edit] I was also banned from here for 8 years for personally insulting the founder, who encourages and finances, uh, certain stereotypical corporate rat race bullshit.
A few years ago, I went to a dinner, hosted by Facebook. They were recruiting devs, and had a bit of an open house. I was curious about their operation.
The experience was fairly pleasant. I liked the people, but decided that the company wasn't really one that I wanted to join.
I was talking to one of the managers, there, and he boasted that he had been at Facebook longer than at any other company in his career. Since he was fairly young, I was curious.
Working with a master for a few years to learn the craft, step by step, always under an experienced gaze.
Or conversely, imagine what a clock would look like if it was cobbled together by someone who has just gone through a few weeks of clock-making bootcamp. I feel this is what some of our software looks like.