For a decade at Amazon, nearly everyone I worked with was following the linear, expected path. High school, university, degree, FAANG job. Amazon basically didn't interview SDE1s unless they were new grads. For a number of years that policy was explicit from our Director because "we find that works out best".
Now I'm at Shopify, where it feels like a complete 180. More than half my team took non-traditional paths- former dietician, government clerk, logger (like with a chainsaw). My team doesn't even seem like an outlier.
One thing I've noticed: the women I work with now are far more likely to have taken a non-linear path to get here. They weren't encouraged to go into that career when they were in high school, but later in life realized it was a good choice. One really great staff dev I've worked with told me how she was encouraged to be a tech recruiter (and did), then slowly realized she could be the one making the huge salaries she was offering people.
Amazon would never have given them a chance. And funny enough, Amazon struggles to hire women in dev roles.
Often, businesses don't realize how much they are missing until they bite the bullet and hire SV caliber engineers.
Seems every time I'm pitched something about "finding unconventional IT talent" it's about hiring cheaper programmers. There's a whole industry built around paying less for programmers. With questionable results. Hell, Canadian politicians pitched Vancouver as an ideal HQ2 location to Amazon since tech workers are worth ~50K less than in America[0]
Shopify's salaries are pretty competitive. They aren't "Bay Area" levels, but you can also live wherever you want, so your after-housing take home pay works out better.
Amazon Toronto doesn't pay much better than Shopify- I can say first hand.
> but you can also live wherever you want, so your after-housing take home pay works out better.
"After-housing" doesn't really mean anything: buying a house means you build equity into the house which you can later sell (and pocket the appreciation).
this doesn't apply to most junior/mid level engineers who are just a couple years out of college and are still on their student loans / don't have a mortgage / prefer to rent in downtown to be close to local Tinder scene :p
It also keeps the base those that have the privilege to turn down other jobs and focus solely on getting hired at Amazon (or other FAANG) right out of college.
A good chunk of folks (among whom exist great developers) are those that are focused on working a job while graduating, and getting to a point where they have stable finances. Then they focus on things like "what kind of job" do I want, and "where do I want to work". That could be years and years down the line though.
So it enforces an aristocracy / pedigree of sorts, but folks are hesitant to admit as such.
Amazon is universally known as the shit tier of tech. They can't hire top grads and people with experience because everyone has heard the horror stories. Sounds like they are optimizing their hiring strategy to mitigate this.
Amazon also pays much less than the other top tier tech companies. Maybe that's changed in the last 6 months but that was yet another reason why top talent didn't go there.
Ex-AWS here and echo what you said. Although there are some outliers (like myself, in terms of non-linear path) at AWS, most SDEs more or less traveled a similar paths:
That's interesting, most women I know were heavily encouraged and incentivized to go into computer science and engineering from university. Do you not live in a western country? I would expect similar incentives and pushes all over.
I don't really know about the background of the (few) women I know in my industry now though, except for the Indian ones who do seem to have a higher represenation and do I think seem to have engineering/cs degrees.
It sounds like the incentivization in the west is not working then, it is not getting to the right people or not going about things the right way. It actually doesn't surprise me if it does become a disincentivization for many women. It does seem pretty patronizing, shallow, and tone-deaf IMO, more likely designed by and for the political and grievance industries rather than actually being honest about women in technology and working to remove real barriers they face.
You can make big money as a tech recruiter. Why work for one big salary if you can take a percentage commission off of many big salaries over the course of a year?
There are some very talented recruiters that are very well-connected, very good at what they do, and very hard working, and they can make quite a bit of money.
But most recruiters are working for one company or one agency on a salary or hourly basis and it's not much money.
Modern software engineering / data analytics jobs require 3 month prep (from 0 background) in total to be hire-ready. Of course people from other fields are jumping ship.
High School Dropout -> GED -> Redneck Tech School -> RF Tech -> OJT -> Electronic Test Engineer -> Extracurricular Learning -> Big Iron Programmer -> Extracurricular Learning -> Mac Programmer -> Major Corporation -> Major Engineering Company for 27 Years (as Engineer and Manager) -> Declared Persona Non Grata in the Tech Industry (for Being Old) -> Extracurricular Learning -> Working for Free on Stuff That I Find Interesting
Also, I have been an artist and a musician, in that time (neither professionally).
We'll see what the future holds. It's been an interesting ride, so far...
Ageism is too much of a thing in tech. These young frontend js developers can't even hold down F2 to enter the BIOS. So much knowledge lost from companies letting decades worth of experience walk out the door. And it shows, so many modern products have shite architecture.
Ageism is a thing in society; young workers are on the hook serving elder owners “experience” propping up their value store (ephemeral assets/brands), serving their contracts and debts.
Humanity will only ever play the “don’t say these words or you’re ageist.” as reality will always force elders on the young and force the young to shut them out to define their own social value stores.
There is evidence in neuroscience by 13-14 kids brains “switch off” to their mothers voice, favoring new emotional information. Does not seem unreasonable then that even as adults we need to “switch off” and experience new modals: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mom-voice-kid-brain-teen...
Individuals need to accept their mortality, not just literally but figuratively.
IME, technologists don't care how old you are. The problem is identifying them and finding groups of them. Not all devs are technologists, and, arguably, not all technologists are even devs.
You're out of touch if you think that architecture is what anyone cares about these days. It's about getting PMF and first to ship. Everything else is not even secondary but completely forgotten. If you can manage to make good architectural decisions while shipping incredibly fast - hey, congrats, you got lucky on this project. But I've worked with plenty of devs with 20+ years of experience and what holds them back is their reluctance to just ship shit code real fast.
This ultimately makes them less usable for management because we're not focused on sustainable and clean code - we're focused on getting that next round of funding, beating the competitor to the market, and pivoting wildly to get PMF. (or just more plainly - appeasing our bosses - whether that's the VC, the CEO, the CTO, a VP, a director, or another manager or some customer who gives us money)
You might think your practice is what matters but what you forgot is that no one gives a shit what you think. The employer gives a shit what you'll do and if you'll do what they want. You don't do what they want? HIT THE BRICKS JACK! Go retire.
Employment is for serfs. You want to dictate the rules? Start your own company.
Sadly, I find that I have the heart of a craftsman, so I won’t compromise my own Principles.
True, some (a lot, maybe) folks will sneer at me as a “poor,” and look down on me, for not being willing to compromise my personal Integrity for money, but I learned to ignore that, a long time ago. I’m not competitive, and I don’t care about dying with the most toys.
I like making stuff that will improve lives, and make the world a better place. I’d much rather do free work that benefits a destitute, homeless, recovering drug addict, or a re-entering felon, than be paid for work that is really about entertaining some wealthy, bored, tech bro.
I know that is a minority stance, in this community. I don’t feel (or want to feel) as if I’m better than anyone here, but I also know that I’ll be vigorously attacked, just for saying things like “I want to care about the people that use my work.”
Not saying the following is true of you, but the parallels brought it to mind. I (45) was speaking with a friend (50+) this week about job prospects. He's been employed in a particular creative field for his adult life and feels as though he's missed a boat in transferring into management tiers of some sort, while others around him did so. Did he not take the initiative? Did he not impress the right people? No one told him that perhaps he should consider this path. Resentful vibes. There's a very palpable feeling at these ages that you're potentially near-unemployable.
Now, he'd talk about principles and being a craftsman and doing things the right way. I'd say, sure, but I'd quietly wonder if he's procrastinating, being stubborn, being slow, prioritising the wrong things. My own foibles lead me to make similar mistakes, so I assume it's true for many others also.
If you have the means, or a market for attention to detail, then you absolutely can do things your way. Like you implied, you can get a lot of satisfaction out of simple things and meaningful things. But if, like 50+ friend, someone has bills to pay and desperately needs work, at what point are they making excuses when they should be recognising that many employers don't want stubborn employees prioritising what to them are the wrong things.
I worked for a company that actually had values similar to mine. It had lots of problems, but, in the aggregate, I ended up staying for a long time.
Could I have made a lot more, somewhere else? Absolutely. But that’s never been what I wanted. As it has turned out, I was able to leave the workforce at 55 (like I had a choice). I live humbly, but I also write code I want to write, the way I want to write it, for whom I want to write it, and I learn new stuff, every single day, without having anyone insisting that I compromise my Integrity, so they can make money.
I won’t lie. I was really pissed off (and still find it infuriating), when I realized what was happening.
In many ways, what I find most offensive, is the willful self-destruction, implicit in ignoring experience. It’s really no fun, watching companies, with so much talent and potential, implode, when they could have been so much better.
One of the characteristics of that company I worked for, was their frugality. They were (and still are) absolute tightwads. I got used to making do with limited resources, and figuring out how to motivate and reward employees, when I didn’t have the traditional leverage at my disposal.
It taught me a lot, but was also never comfortable. I would have loved the bucketfuls of money that so many companies seem to have, these days.
But maybe that whole gravy train is suffering a derailment.
Look on the bright side, if your principles are really good (by which I mean reproducible and high quality), then you should be able to use LLMs to crank out the boilerplate faster than the young folks who have no principles or work experience to lean into.
However, if you disclose this, expect large companies to demand your prompts as their work product, which will diminish the moat that you, as a craftsman, have created.
Unless you intend to do so, don’t accidentally turn your craft into a mass manufacturing template, that’s all I’m saying.
Oh, and this is neither her, nor there, but I work very fast. So fast, in fact, that the people I work with complain about it. I’ve learned to slow down, and spend a lot more time, “polishing the fenders,” so to speak. Folks seem to be happy with the results.
I do very good code, based on excellent architectures, very quickly.
I do it for free, because no one thinks that’s worth paying for, and that suits me just fine. The last thing that I want, is some money-crazed manager, insisting that I ship crap, so they can get rich. The poor folks that use my software will get a Quality level that far surpasses much of the commercial stuff out there.
Unfortunately though the lifespan of modern products isn’t very long either, so there’s not much value in investing in old time engineers to build products that could last forever. Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands, etc.
I don't know that your experience is but I've worked on many products that are 10+ years old. Additionally, I'd take 3 old time engineers over 6 new engineers in a heartbeat. The problem is that every business wants to cut labor cost because that's the MBA way to do things. Why pay USA wages to someone with 15+ years of experience when you can hire three new beginners in the USA or an entire team in another country (again with less experience) for the same amount? The part you're missing from your analogy is the speed and quality of the bridge to be built. Want it done fast and right? Hire the engineers with experience. Want it done fast and possibly going to collapse and end in a lawsuit in 5 years? Hire those idiots.
I would agree with this. Late 40s here, and my comp today is higher than it's ever been, but Im pretty sure my comp as a percentage relative to my peers is at its lowest point ever and will get lower in future jobs.
The underlying reason is that young fresh grads are running circles around old timers.
I hate to say this, but in quite a lot of circumstances, ageism is very well justified for these reasons:
1. IT/CompSci is constantly changing and high growth area, any engineer worth his/her salt will grow rapidly.
2. High performance old-timers have either retired (earning their $$$) or moved up the ladder to manager/director/VP/Founder levels.
3. Regular IC old-timers who have not progressed in their career - companies don't want them, because old-timer who has not grown in his level - is a red flag for companies.
4. There are some old-timers who prefer part-time/consulting type gigs, but I put them in Founder category, all of them have their own LLC/S-corp and run one man consulting/entrepreneurship shop
It's funny when people generalize this way. You cherry picked specific scenarios as if that suddenly supports your claim that ageism is well justified. Anecdotally, I've worked with engineers across age ranges. Sure, there are the "rest on their laurels" types who stagnate in their careers. But there are also battle hardened veterans who can debug issues that are mind bendingly difficult to unravel and are happy to stay as IC. I'm curious what metric you'd pick to validate the claim that "...young fresh grads are running circles around old timers." Because based on the quality of the code and other observable aspects this isn't the case. Google introduced a whole new programming language (Go) because fresh grads weren't running circles around anyone and it was easier to go that route than get them to parity with the industry veterans.
Polymath was always an idea that appealed, mainly due to Leonardo da Vinci (check out his drawings of turbulent water).
I think the problem is career paths, as though a working life must optimise for linearity to achieve success, when instead those individuals who explore breadth and depth and fun are both most productive and creative.
Anyone who can see a problem and potential solution through more than one prism of learning is nearly always better able to communicate their insight and share their joy of thought. They tend to be more patient of failure, happier to be corrected, and fresher when returning to the problem again.
Also, more money demonstrating multi-disciplinary competence when moving jobs is definitely a thing. Good managers are rare
Part of the problem is the idea that people must have X years experience in Y.
I once applied to a game development company. I have something like 20 years experience in systems programming. The problem is that my CV doesn't have any game development experience on it... But when I was about 20, I programmed my own 3D engine, and my own raytracer with soft shadows. A few years ago, I've worked with GLSL as well. I'm familiar with concepts like perspective projection, backface culling, scene graphs, shaders, 3D models, etc. and I'm sure that I could figure out how to work on a 3D game and produce useful work fairly quickly, but these people quickly tossed my CV into the "no" pile because I've never worked at a game development company before.
At the end of the day, I'm doing very well at a different company doing systems programming, but my point is, people look for boxes to check on your CV. This is especially bad if you have to go through non-technical recruiters. Your best bet if you want to get into a programming job IMO is to try to speak directly to developers who work at the company. If you can show them you know your stuff, they might just give you a chance.
I worked at a digital animation and FX studio and we got applications all the time from people basically just like you. People without any directly relevant experience on their CV, but with a passionate cover letter about how they spend their free time working on their own animation projects and links to fun things they've done. As long as they had something fun and interesting to show we almost always called them in for an interview. Admittedly we where a fairly small and quite anonymous shop and didn't get hundreds of applications. Probably at larger, more famous, places it is harder to do this.
This has been a lot of my life. I wanted to be a mechanical engineer when I was younger, so I picked up a lot of the skills for that. I also became interested in architecture as a specific subset of that, which got me into learning about city planning, which got me into learning about systems infrastructure, which got me into learning about both classical and modern urbanism. I also learned a lot about internal combustion engines, which got me into learning about materials sciences, which got me into learning about chemistry, which curved back and got me into learning about metallurgy, which got me into learning about manufacturing processes.
I never became a mechanical engineer because my understanding of math at the time was poor. Instead I've jumped around from job to job or gig to gig, learning everything from woodworking and joinery to programming and electrical engineering. Each bit of work I did after the first dozen or so has supplemented or reinforced knowledge from other work I've done.
As a result I can give advice about pretty much anything you see standing on the street in a city, from where the concrete shape comes from and why that mix was chosen to why the street is so narrow to why the post office box is shaped like it is. Although a lot of this knowledge is shallow, it gives other people a good starting point to explain the more complex and in-depth topics of a given subject to me. That makes it easier for us to work with eachother and makes it easier for flaws in methodology, practice, or understanding to be noticed by both of us and thus makes it easier for me to understand where I went wrong. And if someone points out that I am wrong, that doesn't make me upset. It gets me excited because that means there's more to learn and more skills to acquire.
I doubt any of this would've been possible if I had actually gotten a stable job as a mechanical engineer and stuck to a single career path.
Because that's when there was an inflection point in specialization.
There are many polymaths other than DaVinci.
Like Feynman, he refused to specialize so much as everyone else of his time. And, like Feynman, he was kind of a jerk, so he got his way.
But back to the point: we don't need to be non-linear so much as not overspecialized. What we usually see as "genius" is often expertise in multiple fields and the cross-pollination of ideas from that (Da Vinci and Feynman, for sure!). So I agree with you on that point.
Women and marginalized people who change jobs: Flakey and incapable. Unable to handle a job. Something must be wrong. Clearly a sign of caution to be taken as a reason not to work with them.
Men who change jobs: literally articles inventing new vernacular stemming from the mental gymnastics required to justify the hypocrisy — men aren’t incapable because they change jobs — they are prodigy — men aren’t untrustworthy for changing jobs — they are taking nonlinear career paths because of the uncertainty in the market
The problem with non-linear career paths are that they're less predictable and work for people who have a higher career focus.
I think job (er, company) hopping is a perfectly good career strategy. It's just better suited for a different set of folks. Both options being available are great.
Seen plenty of people drop out of things and never make a return to some magical FAANG or whatever employment/founding/etc after. Those folks don't make the headlines though and you don't remember them because - well - why would you.
whew, I just spent the last hour of my life reading your post history.
I'm 28, I make 170k/yr, and I drive a 2008 Nissan. I'm a 5'6" straight male, 150lbs, not unattractive, and I haven't had sex in five years. Frankly, I've never had a relationship longer than a couple months in my life.
In almost every quantifiable aspect, you've got me beat - but I don't envy you at all.
You're very intelligent and driven. There is this common thread in all your posts - you want what you can't have. You make one-percenter money, but you envy those with generational wealth. You can't find your ideal woman and it's killing you. You have a fairly clear-eyed view of dating dynamics among straight yuppies in the US that animates you to post obsessively about it in relevant threads. There's an anger at Silicon Valley, at women, at capitalism and humanity - alongside a resignation that this is the way things are. You seem pretty depressed.
I don't have most of what you do, but I'm pretty happy about my lot. I have autonomy at work, I like spending time with my friends, and my family's alright too. You said in one of your comments that most men would rather kill themselves than die alone - that really struck me. I don't feel that way, and I hope that if you do, you can find a path toward not feeling that way one day.
Anyway, I'm sorry for the surprise armchair psych. I guess the reason I'm writing this is because I consider myself an unusually driven and self-critical person. I push myself pretty hard and I get upset when I don't meet my own unrealistic standards. I'm usually in the 90th percentile and not the 99th, and that is a constant source of frustration. I've been through years of therapy to learn to control this part of my personality, but I worry about losing my edge. I've also made certain career choices, like picking a smaller start-up with high autonomy and WLB over a more lucrative FAANG role, and I often worry I fucked that up and wasted two years. Reading your posts made me realize that I could be in that 99th percentile, earn 4x what I am making now, and still be chasing that next thing. I hope this doesn't come off as patronizing, and that the perspective is at least interesting.
>I'm 28, I make 170k/yr, and I drive a 2008 Nissan. I'm a 5'6" straight male, 150lbs, not unattractive, and I haven't had sex in five years. Frankly, I've never had a relationship longer than a couple months in my life
Assuming you're not religious (as most people on this site aren't), why not just pay for it? A higher class escort is no more likely to have STDs than a promiscuous bar hookup, and even then the chance of catching something is low; for HIV, for instance, on average someone'd need to have unprotected sex with a HIV positive person over a hundred times to catch it.
I don’t get this idea. When someone says they haven’t had sex - it usually isn’t indicating they only want unattached sex. It usually is shorthand for saying, “I haven’t had sex and I’d like to experience that with someone I have an emotional bond with. I’d also like to be loved and cared for and desired by someone that I feel similar to.”
We just say, “I haven’t had sex” because it’s shorthand and isn’t as emotionally taxing to the audience.
> You're very intelligent and driven. There is this common thread in all your posts - you want what you can't have.
Well, to some extent you’re right. There are things I want that I can’t have. I’d love for capitalism to die, mixed use development to prosper, and gender roles to become like dinosaurs but those are far reaching things that I don’t expect to change.
But for my daily life - I do focus a lot on what is achievable, just insanely hard. Like you said, I’m in the 99th percentile and I’m still focused on being even higher. To some, being where I am seems like success regardless of where you started (and it is to some extent) but I want to go further. It’s not like I couldn’t ever be satiated, it’s just that I wish to do more and be more because I know I’m capable of it.
People are different. Just because I’m miserable doesn’t mean I chose the wrong path. It’s just that some paths aren’t for others. In the same way that bdsm might not be for you - choosing an extremely punishing and grueling lifestyle to climb your way to the top might not be your cup of tea either.
To me, at this moment, success is worth more than happiness. Happiness is quite abstract anyway and goals can be quite concrete. I tend to feel happiest when I feel like I’m getting what I want - and that doesn’t have to mean that I have it already… it just means it’s clear I’m on the right path.
Nice path. Mine went from Engineering -> TSPs -> Manufacturing -> MSc Telco -> TSPs -> MSc CS dropout -> DA(finance) -> software dev + ML. Even though I didn't finish my 2nd masters, It helped put my foot on the door.
Seems pretty normal at least at my age. Leaving aside degree periods, four careers--three reasonably adjacent, the other not.
A couple engineering degrees -> offshore drilling engineering work -> business degree -> PM at computer hardware -> IT industry analyst -> primarily external software marketing. But the latter 3 were all ~ten years.
high school genius -> A Level failure -> record store stock clerk -> biochemistry & biophysics -> computational molecular biology PhD (abandoned) -> bike messenger -> systems support engineer -> software engineer -> UWashington CS&E staff -> amzn -> stay at home parent -> FLOSS hacker -> guest professor TU Berlin -> seemingly world-level expert on DAWs
I learned to program at 12 and with 16 i founded my first startup (which failed of course) and there i learned that coding is only half the game and added a bachelor in economical psychology instead of Comp-Sci.
My resume has over 20 years of experience: backend, frontend, platform, k8s, cto roles and much more.
Still Companies automatic filter sort me out because I don't have "the correct" degree unless i tell them that i have been freelancing forever.
Therefore sure, go for it, but no its not the future.
This is the "zuck was a college dropout" all over again.
Specializers seem to be at a huge advantage in this economy. Switching careers to find your specialty may be a good idea. What can yo be among the best in the world at.
Yes specialists are a huge advantage, but I do believe in certain fields, being a specialist can be a big disadvantage.
For example, if you are a "product designer" aka someone who designs software user interfaces, I fundamentally do not believe you can be exceptional at your job unless you have experience programming front ends.
In web development, writing CSS forces you to think about everything on the page. Everything. Adding interactivity with Javascript forces you to think about user experience on a micro scale. Those details add up, and I have found the best product designers are often those who were previously developers.
I really couldn't think of what other careers for me to pursue other than writing code. Simply transitioning to other domains/specializations in software engineering is already challenging enough for me, could really use some advice from someone who had a successful transition. (Im a mobile dev now but looking to potentially transition to computer graphics)
Non-linear career paths are the present. You’ve been able to get a job in software without formal credentials my entire software career, which started roughly in 2008. Who is this written for?
Speaking for myself: line cook -> web developer -> software engineer -> newspaper editor -> software engineer -> bike messenger -> freelance journalist -> software engineer -> product manager. My “career path” has never come up in any interview, ever.
It's nice to see that this has become more of the norm/average. For one, non-linear career paths have existed for a long time, to use the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants", innovation would be less if it weren't so. Good article and exposure of thinking for everyone
Local 600 Loader/2nd AC in film industry > high school English teacher > tech industry consultant.
I feel really fortunate to have made these transitions without much turmoil (though I would argue the costs of doing so are quite high relative to people I know who have had a more linear path).
Translation. Our wonderful capitalism can no longer support normal salary so that people can retire at reasonable age. So prepare to work till you drop dead so that those few that own half of the Earth can own a little more of it.
Now I'm at Shopify, where it feels like a complete 180. More than half my team took non-traditional paths- former dietician, government clerk, logger (like with a chainsaw). My team doesn't even seem like an outlier.
One thing I've noticed: the women I work with now are far more likely to have taken a non-linear path to get here. They weren't encouraged to go into that career when they were in high school, but later in life realized it was a good choice. One really great staff dev I've worked with told me how she was encouraged to be a tech recruiter (and did), then slowly realized she could be the one making the huge salaries she was offering people.
Amazon would never have given them a chance. And funny enough, Amazon struggles to hire women in dev roles.