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by stegosaurus 3705 days ago
Is it even just hiring?

Every employer I've worked for has made the experience farcical. If not at the start, then over time. You interview for one job, and eventually end up doing something else.

A full time career that doesn't pay enough to buy a home. And they say software developers are overpaid.

I think the end-game for me is to just go camping with a laptop or something. I'll code for fun, rather than trying to meet this 'market demand' which provides people with studio apartments, temporarily, in exchange for ~all of their productive hours.

3 comments

> You interview for one job, and eventually end up doing something else.

LOL yeah, that's what happened to me for my last job. A recruiting process that lasted 4 bloody months for an electronic designer position, and when I was finally hired they put me on software testing; not only I had never done this, but I had never heard it was a thing. Anyway, after less than 2 months I was better as this than the CS graduates who had been doing it for several years and they were asking me for help in their work.

But now I have been unemployed for 2.5 years, I made it to the interview stage only once during that time, and I have given up on even just applying to any job offer for the last 5 months because it is absolutely pointless and humiliating to be repeatedly discarded by people who are clueless, who don't give a flying fuck about the persons they "harvest" and lack the basic respect in social interactions (like spending 2 minutes of their precious time answering a question, not blatantly lying, doing what they said they'd do, or even just showing up at the very appointment themselves fixed!).

So yes, in a way, I've quitted and I am getting ready to become a street beggar when all savings are gone. In the blogger case, his situation is too fresh, I don't think his mood of the day will last long for this time (and after all, he got plenty of interviews, at least), but I am really really tired of these completely nonsensical recruiting processes and their humiliating consequences.

Would you be interested in another software (or firmware) testing role? Where are you located?
If you know how to make stuff, you'll be okay. Be punk about it. It's not about talent, it's about delivering a product people will buy.

If you want someone to talk to (someone who is doing this), my contact info is in my profile.

I'd say a majority of those who graduated my CS class 6.5 years ago now own their own home, and that's in the UK where devs aren't as relatively well paid and house prices are high. There are plenty of good employers out there, though they don't spend all their time hiring because they have low turnover.

As for "eventually end up doing something else" isn't that career development? We can't bemoan having non-technical senior managers if some developers don't go on to do that.

> I'd say a majority of those who graduated my CS class 6.5 years ago now own their own home

I think what you mean is that they have a mortgage they'll be repaying for a long time. Houses are still too expensive to buy in the UK with a junior- to mid-tier developer's salary in the UK, even if you went to a place like Cambridge and worked for Google.

I assume you are excluding London from that?
> A full time career that doesn't pay enough to buy a home. And they say software developers are overpaid.

The average salary for a "software developer" job posting in my city (Charlotte, NC) is $101k. The average income in Charlotte is $53k. The median home value is $167k. 60% of the value of a home in a year is pretty good.

I've also lived in Sydney, Mannheim, San Francisco, and Seattle, and I noticed similar economics in each of these places (where the salary of software developers tended to be quite high relative to the average income). Do you perhaps live somewhere with a very different trend?

Sources:

- http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=software+developer&l1=charlo...

- http://www.bestplaces.net/economy/city/north_carolina/charlo...

- http://www.zillow.com/charlotte-nc/home-values/

I don't know when you lived in those cities, but things have evidently changed. I've lived in Sydney and Seattle. Median home price in Sydney is currently ~AUD$1 million and median home price in the Seattle area has reached ~USD$0.5 million. Average developer salaries in those cities are certainly not 60% of the value of a home.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/mar/10/australias-m...

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/king-county...

I didn't mean to imply that in each city, a software developer makes more than half of the price of a home in a year. What I am asserting is that, in contrast to the previous post, software developers can afford homes in these (very expensive) cities and they can do so at a much higher rate than the average resident.

An average software developer earns about $85,000 in Sydney, so you're right, they're priced out of the central city's market. Senior software engineers make $100-150k, so even they make only up to 15% of a median downtown home.

I lived in Macquarie Park, a suburb of Sydney (which is ~20 minutes by public transit from the center of the city). The median price for a house there is $619k. That's well within reach for a senior engineer, although admittedly more of a stretch for an average developer.

Software engineer salaries in Seattle average $111k. As you've said, the median home price there is about $500k, which is very much attainable for someone earning six figures. The average income in Seattle is $37k, showing that (just like in Charlotte) software developers make about 3x as much as the average resident, and are in fact one of the few groups not yet priced out of central housing.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/sydney-software-engineer-...

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/sydney-senior-software-en...

https://www.investsmart.com.au/property/nsw/2113/macquarie-p...

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=software+engineer&l1=seattle...

http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/washington/seattle/

I should also note that the $53k income is household income. Median personal income is $32k, meaning that a software developer makes over 3x the salary of a normal Charlotte resident.