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Why do you think they have a pessimistic attitude?

I´ll use myself as an example.

I started coding professionally at 23 (I´m 43). For years I pushed myself to be the best coder I could. At 35 I got laid-off. After that I just got sucky jobs were I´m treated like they have me there as a favor (and I work with the latest, and I´m, even with the pessimism, a top performer).

A coworker of mine that thought that coding was a losers job, coded for some months and went to work as a B.A and later as a PM, nowadays is an engineering manager which earns way more than me and is treated way way better. His whole programming experience is an 8-month part time stint with Winforms. And sadly he is not the exception...

In most places devs are being had.




With all due respect, there is no reason to have had sucky jobs over the last 8 years. The market has only gotten increasingly hotter... if you're in a tight spot career-wise, do the work to get into a better company working w/ better people.

If it's an issue w/ passing interviews at better companies, interviewing unto itself is a skill that should be regularly honed.

When I was a younger engineer I was stuck in a job that was unsatisfying for about 5 years... every 1.5 years or so I would interview w/ 3-5 positions, usually one or two would be close to an offer but I ended up empty-handed, would get deflated and give up.

Over the last decade I've taken the job search much more seriously, usually interviewing at 15-20 companies so I can end up w/ 3-5 offers to choose from. Yes, it's very time consuming (probably some 60-70 hours of my time over 5-6 weeks), but the quality of the companies I've worked at has been consequently more satisfying.




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