We’re a platform for designing and managing digital government processes for permitting and licensing.
After for years of pain, struggle, and doubt, we’ve had more inbound interest this week than ever before, and I feel incredibly lucky to have landed in that small number of startups.
This can be a problem when you want to sell yourself as a proper SWE, when the people in charge of the hiring pipeline only understand simple pattern-matching for "React Wizard with 5 years experience". And you can't be too picky about where you want to work, even though they might continue to be picky for employees. It unfortunately makes it so you either already have to already be a very good match for their specific needs, or you are compelled to lie on your resume.
- Be generalist to cover all general concepts as you outlined
- Be a "programmer". That is knowledgeable in specific frameworks and languages
- Be data structure and algorithms guy. Most technical interviews involve them even if they are not needed in job.
My parents run a cafe/restaurant in rural Australia that was already not doing too great, and they were looking to sell. Now, they’re truly fucked.
Programmer moreso implies just making things work, like a carpenter, by putting together something good enough using existing tools, possibly constrained by the tools available to you, in my opinion.
That said, everyone's understanding breaks down at some level of abstraction, so it's a spectrum, and you can be plenty productive and useful operating at a high level of abstraction.
And it's not because of the diploma but because I am highly interested in the fundamentals of computer science, formal languages, automas, formal semantics, algebra, algorithms, data structures, coding theory, game theory, symbolic computation, graph theory.
But that doesn't make me an efficient coder since all that is required is to know a particular framework and programming language well and have lots of experience with it.
So, while I can understand the theory better, there will be many people coding faster and better than me.
I do however have the advantage of being able to pick up and learn stuff fast. Since I like to learn about new thinks I've also fiddled with lots of tech stacks and while I didn't mastered them, I've picked up enough to know what might be the best tool for a particular job.
So, beside stuff I use currently and which I am at a decent level, I am more of a jack of all trades. I don't know if anyone ever needs a jack of all trades at a company since everybody seems to be hiring highly specialized staff.
But I think my skill set might be of value when I'll be starting my own business.
But in practice, as you'll see in this thread, some people have very strong (and totally arbitrary) opinions about those words, for reasons I cannot fathom. Knowing this exists is important, I guess, because some people will (maybe silently) judge you for using the wrong one in the wrong context, and you should at least be aware that can happen.
I kind of doubt employers read it as such a technical term that it would factor into the hiring process.
If so, why not just use developer?
Does it though? Is there such thing as a low-trade programmer? Even at the very entry level the job postings say "Junior Software Engineer". Programmer, to me, just rings of the 80s/90s, when code was a little more gristly and our field didn't have quite such an inflated ego. It has a vintage charm.
"Software Developer" is... fine. It's accurate and descriptive, just very boring (and a bit verbose; "developer" without "software" could be ambiguous so you usually need to say both).
I am not implying that programming is low trade.
It's just nowadays, some people's perception of that term is being a code monkey.
E.g. it looks very bad for professional flea-marked trader or the small shop around the corner.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not a expert wrt. any of this. Don't listen to me ;=). It's all just speculation.
Companies which plan to downsize since a will will do it now, using COVID19 as a excuse.
Companies who have shifted some "bad consequences" into the future might now book them using COVID19 as a excuse for why they exist.
Companies who are already on the last straw will end now, (Such which without COVID19 might have survived a view more month up to a year but didn't see a chance for long term survival without a wonder).
A bunch of companies will go insolvent because COVID19 or following marked situation.
Because of this investors will be a bit more careful then normal, for most kinds of "fresh"/"new" startups it likely will not be a good time.
A small number of startups will have massive opportunities.
Marked will recover after at most 5 Years more likely 3.5 Years. At least if no further crisis happens (like WW3 or one of the massive Vulcan's going off).
Unrelated tip: Be a software engineer not "just" a programmer.