Ask HN: Give a novice dev a dose of reality?

[fooboy]

Hey all, posting under an alias since my normal nick is linked to me IRL. I'm a pretty novice developer (1-2 years professionally, 3-4 since I first learned Python), and as my previous questions might demonstrate, I have very concrete career goals.

At my current job, I'm working on things that I believe have little or no impact on where I want to be in a few years. I need quantitative/statistical experience to do what I want to do, and I'm not getting it at work. At the same time they're very accommodating when it comes to my part-time education (walking in late after morning class, taking time to study, helping me with math theory questions), and I'm also building some general dev experience, which is always good.

So HN, I need a dose of reality here. Am I expecting too much for someone with my experience? Should I swallow my pride a bit, take advantage of my job's accommodations and work on this boring, semi-relevant work? Or do I need to leave as of yesterday?

EDIT: In the past I've "aimed high" for gigs, and I'm worried about getting rejected based on my (potentially inflated) view of my skills. Should that complicate this question at all?

[Arjuna]

By my estimation, you have two primary options, but I wanted to first ask you to consider:

Is there any possibility that you could (even if slowly, at first) move toward where you want to be in the current job? The reason I ask is, if they are accommodating about your educational goals, then they value that and they value you. So, think about what is available where you are at. I can't tell from your post, but if the work you are doing is semi-relevant, then it could be that you are currently in a "semi-relevant" area because they are grooming your talent for the future; meaning, they want to get you warmed up before they put you in a starting slot as a wide receiver [1] in The Show [2]. Just a thought that maybe you haven't considered.

Otherwise... you could:

1. Start going on interviews.

If you truly feel that things are going nowhere at your current job, and if you feel confident with the target subject matter, then start interviewing. Even though your current experience is semi-relevant, you can still leverage it, coupled with your education, to demonstrate that you can discuss the subject matter and deliver in the target area. Only you will be able to determine if you are ready to take this step. Sure, you may get rejected on some interviews, but, at some point, we all have to "put ourselves out there" and give it a shot.

2. Stay where you are and "work your craft" until you are ready to move.

If you are unsuccessful in landing any solid interviews (or you simply don't feel ready to start interviewing), then stay the course. Appreciate the situation that you are in as being temporary. Stay focused, keep working on your education and, this part is critical: start developing a portfolio. That is, start working on side projects that are related to the area where you want to be. This will increase your skill-set while simultaneously increasing your ability to talk comfortably about the target topic during an interview. This is, of course, important, because you want to be comfortable with the topic so that you can sell yourself during an interview. A portfolio will also show initiative, interest and experience in the target area to a potential employer.

Wishing you the best.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_receiver

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League

[IgorPartola]

Two things. First, what are your career goals? You say you have them, but not knowing what you are trying to do, it's hard to tell whether you are getting ready for it or now. Do you want to build your own startup? Join a large tech company as a developer? A researcher? Do you want to become employee 1 at a startup? Do you want to go into management?

Second, if you are happy with your employer, stick with them, at least until a good opportunity comes along. It's rare to find people you like working with.

In my personal experience, pet projects and general hacking advanced my career much more than any project an employer threw at me. In fact, most of the projects I worked on for an employer were driven by experience I had acquired on my own time: "hey, I think we should build a highly available MySQL cluster over WAN. I have done this before and it'd be perfect for this application" or "hey, I'd can create a small C program to spoof source IP addresses in UDP packets to simplify transitioning from one server to another" or "hey, let's put our entire server configuration into puppet" or "hey, let's package everything into .deb packages". In other words, I play with tech, then bring it to my employer (now client as I am a contractor) and some of it sticks, not the other way around.

[fooboy]

In the short term, I want to take on a hybrid quantitative/engineering role. A bit of analysis, a bit of coding. I'd like to do this at a startup to start, so that I'm also involved with product and business decisions (so that they clearly motivate my quant/dev work). I'd like to move into management for this type of work over time, but thats years from now.

While I'm not happy with the work, I'm happy with my coworkers and the environment. This (and the flexibility with my education) complicates the thought of leaving. Maybe its a set of not-so-golden handcuffs...

[jlebron2]

I would suggest to continue working at your current job while still working towards your career goals.

For one you can start researching companies where you see yourself working and that align with your career goals. After you have gathered a decent list of companies you are interested in, check to see if they have entry level jobs you can apply for that fit your skill set. For the jobs requiring more advanced skill sets, find out what those skills are and work at them.

There is a ton of free information available to help you move forward and advance in your career. Take online courses (coursera.org and edx.org are both great resources available for free) and read books at your local library. Continue to build the necessary skills so that when an opportunity in which you are interested in does come up, you are prepared and have the necessary skills and experience.

Hope that helps! Good luck and hope you are able to get where you want to go!

[SnootyMonkey]

I'd leave as of tomorrow, once you found the job that is directly on track to where you want to be.

Life is too short to be on some deferred plan.

[fooboy]

Thanks for commenting. Does it change anything if I say that I might not be qualified for those jobs right now?

[jf22]

Grass isn't always greener.

If you're progressing in school and the job is being accommodating I'd stay for a bit and see what happens.