Comment by giantg2
5 years ago
I'm an intermediate dev, masters degree, 9 years experience, non-FAANG, higher cost of living area (not SV, NYC or NVA), and work with obscure tech and proprietary tools.
It sucks that I suck. Oh well.
5 years ago
I'm an intermediate dev, masters degree, 9 years experience, non-FAANG, higher cost of living area (not SV, NYC or NVA), and work with obscure tech and proprietary tools.
It sucks that I suck. Oh well.
You might suck, but it seems more likely that you're getting ripped off by an employer who hopes you don't know what your skills are worth.
Are you on LinkedIn? Do you ever speak with recruiters about other opportunities? That's a great way to get a feel for the 'market rate' for your skillset in your area. When's the last time you changed jobs?
They're stuck because they work with proprietary tools on obscure tech. Nobody else wants them because their experience doesn't translate.
I recently made the transition but it was extremely difficult. I ended up with 1 offer after ~10 or so interviews and ~50 or so applications.
Yeah, this is my situation. I am AWS certified and started working on a team that uses it, sort of. So maybe I can transition off of there in a year or two because the subject matter sucks.
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Obscure tech and proprietary tools do translate… if you can translate them.
Programming languages are all the same, so learn 3 or 4 new ones and discover that you can probably write in any language for an interview (then do some in relatively unfamiliar languages for kicks and giggles to practice).
Tech is all the same. Take data in, poop data out. That’s the whole job. The formats and protocols change, but once you starting thinking about your stacks as data-in, data-out, they all start looking the same.
Make video games or hardware drivers from scratch, those are the hardest things to make. Video games from complexity overload, and hardware drivers from interface complexity.
I already know Python, Java, Java for Android, Neoxam script, scripts (bash, bat), and Angular to some degree. I've also used JS, AngularJS, C++, C#, powershell, assembly (Intel), and COBOL in the past. So yeah, stuff translates and it isn't that hard to learn a new language (neoxam is probably the hardest since there is limited documentation and examples).
I don't have any interests in games or drivers. Those aren't applicable in my company either. I am currently working on an Angular site. I will host it on S3 with a Lambda and maybe SQS for a marketing email list. This is tech that we use at my job, and many other places.
I really didn't mean for the comment to come across that way. I fully agreed with "it sounds great because it is great". I just wanted to provide another perspective too.
No, I completely get that. I'm just adding some of my background to show my thoughts. I know there are other areas and other people that command higher prices.
Learn the skills for the job you want, claim you do that stuff on your current resume (within reason), and jump ship. Most prospective employers won't push too hard with needing references from your current place of employment. Find your best mate at your last job, edit that portion of your resume, and fill them in on the details.
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