[tdeck]

I always got the impression that most of the truly entry-level software jobs (the kind where they routinely hire people with associates degrees or no degree) are in unglamorous companies, in cities all throughout the country, writing code in unsexy languages like SQL, C#, and J2EE. These companies don't typically try to pretend they only hire the top 10% of the entire industry, and they're willing to train people on the job. They don't pay the big bucks, but it's better than working at Kroger.

Unfortunately the narrative of "you too could be writing ugly line-of-business applications for $40k/year" is not an exciting sell, as you've said, to people who have watched a few episodes of Silicon Valley. So there's an expectation mismatch. We want to point at the Bureau of Labor Statistics about openings in the software industry and think that they're about changing the world with node.js and AWS lambda, because that's a more promising vision of tomorrow that doesn't involve encountering Windows Server 2005 in the course of your daily work.

[whipoodle]

Sure, doing your time in those sorts of places and then moving on is a good approach. That's more or less what I did. (I went to college for CS, but I'm oldish.) But those jobs can suck for reasons that don't really have anything to do with technology.

While you're unlikely to catch me extolling the virtues of cool-guy startups, they do tend to have the benefit that they "get" developers and bias towards facilitating the work rather than the endless bullshit you tend to get sucked into in the bigger places.