Experienced Devs

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Senior Devs in huge corps: Do you even code? (self.experienced_devs)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by van2z to c/experienced_devs

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I have been working at a large bank for a few years. Although some coding is needed, the bulk majority of time is spent on server config changes, releasing code to production, asking other people for approvals, auth roles, and of course tons of meetings with the end user to find out what they need.

I guess when I was a junior engineer, I would spend more time looking at code, though I used to work for small companies. So it is hard for me to judge if the extra time spent coding, was because of me being a junior or because it was a small company.

The kicker, is when we interview devs, most of the interview is just about coding. Very little of it is about the stuff I listed..

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[–] van2z 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's interesting, where do you live?

[–] kabat 5 points 1 year ago

Poland.

A lot of development and other IT related jobs get outsourced, so experienced devs are in very high demand. We usually work in a B2B arrangement, a developer starts their own company (sole trader I think it's called in the US) and invoices an agency that deals with corporate customers.

Salaries are around 3-4x average national salary, with smaller taxes than on a work contract and less safety (which is not a problem due to high demand). Locally, managers do not usually play any role, I report directly to the customer's managers, usually far away from Poland. If I were to sign a contract with the customer, that's no longer B2B usually, the salary is less and taxes are higher.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Not OP but I'm in France and it seems to happen everywhere. I absolutely refuse to become a manager/tech-lead/whatever because they always get stuck in the same kind of job forever. I like C++ but I don't want to write C++ for the rest of my life, I want to study all the new things. And if you become a tech-lead, people lie to you by saying you will make decisions for the future. It's false and you have almost no power to change anything.