In 17 years you never had a past co-worker contact you about a job? That's confirmation that your past performance is affecting your future job prospects. And if you have had that kind of contact, then your statement above is a lie.
People are vastly overestimating network effects when you and your peers have similar experience and backgrounds. You'd likely get the job anyways, and the job probably isn't that great (in terms of upward momentum) to begin with.
As someone who's done hiring look at the people who have a list of good references. It's basically just the same position/level for _years_ because that's all your network can give or feels comfortable giving you (why would they give you a better job than they have).
Is all you care about in a job the money? And are you looking at your total comp, or your hourly rate?
In my experiences, the places that pay the most _have_ to pay that much because the job sucks. By the time you divide their salary by hours actually worked, people at FAANG end up making significantly less than I do. I value all my time, not just my bank account.
What does my reputation buy me? In the worst job market in the last 20 years, I had two offers in hands within three weeks. I can bring top performers willing to work for regular salaries into wherever I land. All of that is because a lot of people who worked with me in the past would like to work with me again, and the companies we build software for benefit.
I've built my career on jobs with _actual_ advancement, not just a bigger number. And it has been plenty lucrative.
Startups don't succeed because the code is good, but they sure can fail because it is bad. When a company needs to save itself after the underqualified mercantile engineers have left a spaghetti mess of lambdas scattered all over the org or a spaghetti mess of a monolith with every model in one folder, they are very happy to pay for actual expertise.
I care about my well-being and being able to float for extended periods of time if necessary. I can go many, many years without a job at this point and suffer absolutely zero quality of life issues.
>the places that pay the most _have_ to pay that much because the job sucks.
I mean don't overwork for an employer who doesn't care about you (none of them do)? Just go switch jobs.
>I've built my career on jobs with _actual_ advancement
This just reads like a no true scotsman fallacy. What does "actual" advancement mean here? Again, I have plenty of security (not job security) right now.
>I can bring top performers willing to work for regular salaries into wherever I land.
So you're fine with exploiting people? What? Just because someone is willing to be a fool doesn't mean you should stand by and let them be one.
And also, I question the "top performers" part of this, given your other qualifiers throughout the post. Especially the comment about big tech. The numbers don't add up in your favor.
> In my experiences, the places that pay the most _have_ to pay that much because the job sucks. By the time you divide their salary by hours actually worked, people at FAANG end up making significantly less than I do. I value all my time, not just my bank account.
This is the type of copium that you usually hear from people who have never worked in BigTech…
BigTech could afford to pay me 50% more as a mid level employee than working a lot harder at a 60 person startup and that company was paying about average for a local enterprise dev in a major metropolitan area.
I’m no longer there. But I had to get a job as a “staff” level employee to even get in the range when I left of my job as a mid level employee at BigTech. Comparing the leveling guidelines, it’s about the same as a “senior” at the equivalent job at BigTech.
That advice is valid for dime-a-dozen coders working dime-a-dozen jobs, which, granted, is the majority of developers, but we're on Hacker News. The more specialized and deeply technical a role is, the smaller the pool of qualified people is and the really senior folks tend to know each other. Networking matters much much more in these smaller tight-knit communities.
I had to look for a job both in 2023 and last year. For me it was both a network and specialized skills.
Specialized skills for me was cloud + app dev consulting and working at AWS (ProServe) and even more specialized was that I was a major contributor on a popular official open source “AWS Solution” in it niche and I had my own published open source solutions on AWS’s official GitHub site.
That led to two interviews and one offer within three weeks.
My network led to offers where a former manager submitted me to a position at the company that had acquired the company we worked for as a “staff architect” over the technical direction of all of their acquisitions. They gave me an offer.
My network also got me an offer from a former coworker who was a director of a F500 non tech company. He was going to make a position for me to be over the cloud architecture and migration strategies. He trusted me and he had just started working there.
Last year, my current job just fell in my lap, the internal recruiter reached out to out to me and that led to an offer.
I also had another former CTO throw a short term contract my way to tide me over.
But on the other hand, my plan B applications as a standard enterprise CRUD developer working remotely led to nothing.
>Then you’ve done a shitty job building your network.
Even better! I've been in a position to see "network effects" over and over and over again at the highest levels.
I'm telling you an uncomfortable truth: Job hop.
>I had several C-level folks reach out with roles.
See, this is how I know we're speaking past each other. You're acting as if this means something. It doesn't. Until you can even being to accept this is just a placebo effect it's unlikely you'll accept the effort was wasted.
Something something can't convince a man he was fooled.
