Now, good developers are measured by views and subscribers - and this is bad

For quite some time now I was just being flooded with invitations for social networking. I come, we chat for life, and then they give me an offer, as if the technical interview is over, and I confirmed my skills in absentia. But I don’t have a super page on a githaba, my resume is so gray, as if I was forced to compose it. The only proof that I am worth something is my ability to answer technical questions. But now they almost never ask me.

The fact is that I wrote several articles here, and they became popular. It seems to sound normal and deserved. Since I am talking about my experience and knowledge in publications, and people approve of them, then why are these formalities on the cab - my skill "community-apruvd."
')
But almost all the articles are not about the development - in them nagging about my depression. I'm glad that I no longer have to prove anything to anyone. But are you crazy to quote developers for such nonsense? I think we have gone, and I see alarming symptoms of this everywhere.

I have on Twitter all sorts of well-known developers write that they are looking for work or recommend their friends. Like, look, here is a signor, a tough guy, take it until you have taken it apart. They are trusted and taken by them and their friends, because a famous person will not advise garbage. I helped my friend write an article about how he conducts social networking, the article became popular, and he was offered the position of the technical viewer. Technical skill, of course, did not check.

Hell, there’s almost no vacancy for leads, because it’s believed that such people should not be looked for at a headhunter. They, they say, and so everyone knows. If these vacancies were nevertheless, the candidates would check the “media content” at the interviews - because there are no good developers, whom no one has heard about.

This is sur. "Cool developer" and "Media Person" became synonymous.

Previously, if you were told about cool development, you represented a greasy engineer among the pieces of iron. Now, if you are told about cool development, you represent a person who performs at a conference, leads an active twitter and posts photos. His name is on podcasts, learn by name in chatikah. Large companies hunt such directly without posting vacancies to the public.

I would not worry if the real became really famous. The industry thinks so, but it is not. I was beautifully whining, someone was joking funny, and then from thousands of developers they chose us, because our avatars often flashed in the tape. You are more likely to get a lead developer if you are the admin of js chatik in a cart than if you understand how javaScript works to the smallest detail.

A friend of mine worked in the book edition, and told that publishers now order bloggers, not writers, to write books. After all, since bloggers are already reading, then they are cool (and they will definitely buy a book from them). I think our industry is waiting. You can laugh that I exaggerate, and I will laugh when they hire a junior with a thousand followers on a tweeter as your techlide.

That is, in our time, the best people in all began to be those who somehow managed to get hold of attention. Because attention is the last final resource in the world, where the exhaustibility of everything else is defeated.

But I do not say that a socially active person is necessarily bad. I say that there are a lot of talented, intelligent introverts who right now for the beggarly wages write stillborn software in some gods of the forgotten office. I saw them and I worked with them. If a person is an introvert, this does not mean that it is bad to work with him. If a person does not write articles, and does not like to conduct social networks, if he does not want or can not speak at conferences (or go to them) - this does not say anything about how good he is at work.

The nightmare that has to say such evidence. But the managers blocked the barriers from these people at all levels. They invented soft skills and assigned them above hard skills. The same interview is a job for an extrovert. To make an impression, tell the sentimental story of your professional life for a sociable person to spit once. For a person who understands only the development - this is hell. But all the polls, employers say they are not ready to take even the best of development if it does not "fit into our culture."

It can be said that these are the problems of the "uncommitted". I think these are our problems. The lion's share of the binary code that executes my idea on the client machine is written by other developers. And the quality of these professionals is the quality of my work. I already pay too much for the fact that all sorts of fools work in the Western giants over the frameworks that I now have to use.



After all, HYIP influences not only what kind of people are hunted. It determines which technologies to use. Tell me what you are doing, and I will tell you what tools you have, because everyone uses only the most popular. Stars on the githaba, articles in tehnoblogs and speeches at conferences determine which framework you will take for your projects. If there is something popular, then even a crushing article will only strengthen the position of the tool in the community.

For me personally, Redux has become such a tool. Being originally designed for JS, in my opinion, it is very poorly suited for applications written in typeScript. But he is community-approved. I will be a fool three times, if I spend my time on the experience with another state management tool, no matter how good it is - the popular Redux or MobX require vacancies and cabins.

Worst of all, the tools are also becoming popular not because of the quality. Two different startups simultaneously started making their databases. The first invested in the development, the second in marketing. The first gathered a small community sundress. The second is a huge dissatisfied audience. The first lived, lived and closed under the sad sighs of hundreds of people. The second captured the market, earned money and only then began to think how to tighten the quality.

This vicious system supports itself. People who are just learning how to develop ask what is the most popular - so they choose which technologies to study, and so the summary of “React developer” appears. The developer on the popular framework, a real tidbit for modern business. This is not a jerk who saws his bikes, and dares to think that he can invent something. Now, if you have your own vision of how to solve a problem that a popular lib solves, you yourself immediately think that you are wrong. For example, I believe that F # is a much more powerful tool than C #. I have a lot of experience using both technologies, and I have my own vision. But no one will listen to me, F # unpopular, and I'm an idiot.

And if you think that there is no problem of HYIP, and you have never met its symptoms, you live in the development for old fart. You do everything right, you have C ++, and not all these newfangled frameworks. You do not let these hipsters with their “toxicity” and inclusiveness to the threshold. There is only one problem. You will take rest from old age from day to day, and I will have to deal with what remains.

---

From the idea that the bad becomes popular, and the good perishes in obscurity, it is injustice per kilometer. So it stinks, that sick. When my article with the biggest whining concentrate gathered 170 thousand views, I decided that I would continue to write only technical articles.

My friend and I have been preparing an article for three months on a typeScript type system, and it looks like we will need as many more to complete it. Then one and a half people will read it, and our work will be wasted. And to write a technical article is really work. We wrote a whole library to check what we are talking about in the article, realized that we were wrong, rewrote the article, and then rewrote the library again, and again crap. I know for sure that this article about types is much more important than all my other articles combined. But we now live in a world where hardcore articles full of code are simply unprofitable to write.

The average technical article on the Habré reads 5-10 thousand people, even if it has six months of work. I can throw around-technical nagging in a couple of hours, and a hundred thousand people will read it. In the first case, I will get a good experience, with which I will, through the sweat of my face, push myself to a better life and prove to everyone with foaming at the mouth that I really have this experience. In the second case, I will get an easy way to comfort.

Since you are reading this now, and not an article about types, then I made my choice. But here is my indulgence. I urge to influence the situation. Stop hiring those who are chatting coolly, stop giving people tweets, stop talking nonsense, that all top-level developers should be visible. Stop evaluating people for MacBook stickers. In development, the most important thing is what kind of code a person writes. Search and hire is difficult, and it will only be more difficult, well, okay. Managers can talk as much as they want about their soft skills. They talk about them because they have nothing else. I ask you to remember this.