We go through this, generally, every 4 years. I don't know why it feels like 4 years is the 'period' of new-school-hacker-on-the-scene, it just feels like it from the perspective of industry/capitalism out here in the workforce.
Perhaps its because it seems like 4 years is the mean time between start and end of the new-school; i.e. it takes at least 4 years for the group who have forgotten how to do the old stuff to be replaced by the group who don't know anything about the old stuff, and just re-invent it all again, with bells and whistles, and .. y'know .. youth'y cool.
Truth. I was looking for a new job a few months ago and I have always used the terms and % match for 401k as a kind of dipstick to see how well the company treats its employees. I was shocked when I talked to some startups and some didn't even have a 401k, and I was blunt with the HR recruiter and said that is a big red flag to me. He said the younger employees don't care and offered to show me results of a survey they did a few years back. I believed him, because they also had a generous vacation policy and also paid for 100% of the cost of health benefits- which is what younger workers look for these days. I joked with the recruiter that if I accept their offer, my first week I will offer a lunch and learn on the benefits of saving for retirement and why its so advantageous to start when you are young!
Its unfortunate how little people coming out of college understand about personal finance. In my previous job, I was constantly giving mini personal finance lessons and advice to my team.
I didn't end up accepting at that startup for somewhat related reasons- another company made me a monster offer, that to come back full circle on, would allow me to be comfortably financially independent in roughly 4 years- and at that point I will have my "F you" money and can do what I want.
The problem is that many investment products in 401ks under perform. At my last company the best fund netted on 4%. Since I now manage my own IRA, I get 15-20%.
They say $40k is the median salary for new developers in Canada, this is much lower than I've observed and it makes me question the quality of the entire dataset. Are these really professional software developers who answered the survey?
Canadian new grads tend towards $60-70k with larger American companies paying closer to $80-90k in the same location. My sampling is heavily biased towards Ontario. I expect Greater Vancouver to be similar but perhaps the rest of Western Canada, along with Quebec and the maritimes are dragging the average down.
From what I've been told by Canadian co-workers, software salaries in the country are _significantly_ less for equivalent work compared to the US. Something 1/2 to 2/3 as much.
I graduated in May from a Big 10 college with a computer technology degree.
As much as remote work seems great, I still need a senior level developer I can walk over to and ask questions of.
As well, the program I was in was in a constant state of flux, and the incoming freshmen are able to choose a lot of targeted tracks like Cyber Security, Forensics, High Performance Computing, etc. When I started there were too options: one focused on the business side and one on the engineering side.
I'm surprised to see "desktop applications developer" in front of "mobile developer". Where are these desktop jobs, and desktop applications? The work I see in the Apple world is mainly iOS, with some macOS. Do Windows developers make up the difference?
Yes. There is a whole world of windows applications out there doing central line of business work for all the unsexy but more common businesses throughout the country.
This report (and others) suggest companies are hiring those with non-CS degrees. If this is the case, then how do self-taught or non-CS majors get hired when the bar to entry is solving medium to hard level leetcode problems?
A part of the puzzle might be that being good at solving interview questions is orthogonal to having CS coursework under your belt. I can speak anecdotally from my own experience in that I didn't get good at those types of problems until I spent my own time working on them.
A have worked most of my career all over the travel industry and there is a huge shift I have noticed in the past couple of years. First of all the companies in this space are massive having thousands of developers and secondly these companies typically have an old industrial mindset of never firing or retiring people and absolutely never making hard transitional decisions that impact the work force. All of these companies are shifting as much as they can, if they aren't there already, to conduct as many transactions as possible over a website.
Most of these companies have been around forever and have been engaged with selling online, in some capacity, since the 90s. The problem with that is that until about 9 years ago web technologies were slow and nobody took them seriously. Even now formal training in web technologies is rare.
This is problematic because more is continually demanded from web technologies and the majority of the work force is completely lost. The universal technology in every one of these companies is Java and it dominates nearly all aspects of development at every stage. Java isn't a web technology. The result of that problem differs by company due to internal perceptions of technology and company culture.
One company I worked with was growing its revenue and market incredibly fast outpacing their peers and historical norms. This group had the freedom to make candid decisions about their future and reality in general. They had the most bench-warmers of any group I worked with, but they also realized the future is in JavaScript instead of Java. The challenge is that legacy developers wanted to learn this "new" way, but transitioning is hard, especially if you aren't doing that work in your job. There was a lingering fear of obsolescence here.
One company I worked for refused to figure it out. They were confronted by all manners of technology decisions they could not agree upon resulting in different layers of management doing their own things without agreement. The only strong part of that business was marketing. The company folded and somebody bought the brand for super cheap with a skeleton crew.
One company I worked for waited very late to accept this reality and struggled to figure it out. There is a JavaScript layer, which is largely a vanity architectural layer over and reliant upon the legacy Java layer. This group has done well by cornering large areas of the marketing and acquiring competition. The technology is slow compared to their competitors, expensive to maintain, and very painful to work on. Many of the developers refused to abandon doing as much as possible in Java and will often block new code submissions that could be better served in Java. There was no fear of obsolescence because nobody in a decision making capacity was willing to do things in a new ways.
I cannot imagine what this industry will look like 10 years from now as the technologies and developers continue to age and new blood continues to either burn out or grudgingly conform to the old technologies.
[+] [-] mmjaa|8 years ago|reply
Perhaps its because it seems like 4 years is the mean time between start and end of the new-school; i.e. it takes at least 4 years for the group who have forgotten how to do the old stuff to be replaced by the group who don't know anything about the old stuff, and just re-invent it all again, with bells and whistles, and .. y'know .. youth'y cool.
[+] [-] bluetwo|8 years ago|reply
A fully funded retirement = Freedom
I know it doesn't seem important now, but if you focus on this early in your career, you'll have a lot of flexibility later in your career.
[+] [-] kevstev|8 years ago|reply
Its unfortunate how little people coming out of college understand about personal finance. In my previous job, I was constantly giving mini personal finance lessons and advice to my team.
I didn't end up accepting at that startup for somewhat related reasons- another company made me a monster offer, that to come back full circle on, would allow me to be comfortably financially independent in roughly 4 years- and at that point I will have my "F you" money and can do what I want.
[+] [-] virmundi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatwebdude|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrick_99|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uiri|8 years ago|reply
Canadian new grads tend towards $60-70k with larger American companies paying closer to $80-90k in the same location. My sampling is heavily biased towards Ontario. I expect Greater Vancouver to be similar but perhaps the rest of Western Canada, along with Quebec and the maritimes are dragging the average down.
[+] [-] Khao|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d4mi3n|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caseysoftware|8 years ago|reply
It also explains the extremely short term thinking - free lunch vs retirement - of the entire data set.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zzalpha|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OedipusRex|8 years ago|reply
As much as remote work seems great, I still need a senior level developer I can walk over to and ask questions of.
As well, the program I was in was in a constant state of flux, and the incoming freshmen are able to choose a lot of targeted tracks like Cyber Security, Forensics, High Performance Computing, etc. When I started there were too options: one focused on the business side and one on the engineering side.
[+] [-] pkamb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kasey_junk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackernewsacct|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] khalilravanna|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austincheney|8 years ago|reply
Most of these companies have been around forever and have been engaged with selling online, in some capacity, since the 90s. The problem with that is that until about 9 years ago web technologies were slow and nobody took them seriously. Even now formal training in web technologies is rare.
This is problematic because more is continually demanded from web technologies and the majority of the work force is completely lost. The universal technology in every one of these companies is Java and it dominates nearly all aspects of development at every stage. Java isn't a web technology. The result of that problem differs by company due to internal perceptions of technology and company culture.
One company I worked with was growing its revenue and market incredibly fast outpacing their peers and historical norms. This group had the freedom to make candid decisions about their future and reality in general. They had the most bench-warmers of any group I worked with, but they also realized the future is in JavaScript instead of Java. The challenge is that legacy developers wanted to learn this "new" way, but transitioning is hard, especially if you aren't doing that work in your job. There was a lingering fear of obsolescence here.
One company I worked for refused to figure it out. They were confronted by all manners of technology decisions they could not agree upon resulting in different layers of management doing their own things without agreement. The only strong part of that business was marketing. The company folded and somebody bought the brand for super cheap with a skeleton crew.
One company I worked for waited very late to accept this reality and struggled to figure it out. There is a JavaScript layer, which is largely a vanity architectural layer over and reliant upon the legacy Java layer. This group has done well by cornering large areas of the marketing and acquiring competition. The technology is slow compared to their competitors, expensive to maintain, and very painful to work on. Many of the developers refused to abandon doing as much as possible in Java and will often block new code submissions that could be better served in Java. There was no fear of obsolescence because nobody in a decision making capacity was willing to do things in a new ways.
I cannot imagine what this industry will look like 10 years from now as the technologies and developers continue to age and new blood continues to either burn out or grudgingly conform to the old technologies.
[+] [-] bigtex|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigtex|8 years ago|reply