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

Recently, they’ve simply bombarded me with invitations to social security. I come, we chat for life, and then they make an offer to me, as if the technical interview is already behind, and I confirmed my skills in absentia. But I don’t have a super page on the github, my resume is so gray, as if they made me compose it. The only evidence that I'm worth anything is my ability to answer technical questions. But now they almost do not ask me.

The fact is that I wrote several articles here, and they became popular. It seems to sound normal and deserved. Since I talk about my experience and knowledge in publications, and people approve of them, then why these formalities in social security is my skill “community apruvd”.

That's just almost all the articles are not about development - they are nagging about my depression. I'm glad that I no longer need to prove anything to anyone. But are you crazy to quote developers for such nonsense? I think they got off, and I see alarming symptoms of this everywhere.

On Twitter, all sorts of well-known developers write that they are looking for work or recommend their friends. Like, look, here is the signor, a tough guy, take it before you make it out. They are trusted and taken by them and their friends, because a well-known person will not advise garbage. I helped my friend write an article about how he conducts interviews, the article became popular, and he was offered the position of technical assistant. The technical skill, of course, was not checked.

Hell, there are almost no vacancies for leads, because it is believed that such people should not be sought on a headhunter. They, they say, and so everyone knows. If these vacancies were still there, they would have checked the “media” at the interviews with the candidates - because there are no good developers about whom no one has heard.

This is sur. "Cool developer" and "Media persona" have become synonymous.

Previously, if you were told about a cool developer, you represented a greasy engineer among a piece of iron. Now, if you are told about a cool developer, you represent a person who speaks at the conf, conducts active twitter and posts photos. His name is on podcasts, they are recognized by their name in chat rooms. Large companies hunt these directly without posting vacancies to the public.

I would not be worried if the really best became famous. The industry thinks it is, but it is not. I whined beautifully, someone funny joked, and then of thousands of developers we were chosen, because our avatars more often flashed in the tape. You are more likely to become a leading developer if you are a js chat admin in a cart than if you understand the principles of javaScript to the smallest detail.

A friend of mine worked in a book editorial office and said that publishers are now ordering books to be written by bloggers, not writers. Indeed, since bloggers are already being read, it means they are cool (and they will definitely buy a book from them). I think this is waiting for our industry. You can laugh as I exaggerate, and I laugh when they hire a junior with a thousand followers on Twitter as your techlide.

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

But I am not saying that a socially active person is necessarily bad. I say that there are many talented, intelligent introverts who right now write stillborn software for a beggarly salary in some kind of godforsaken office. I saw them and I worked with them. If a person is an introvert, this does not mean that working with him is bad. If a person does not write articles, and does not like to lead social networks, if he does not want or cannot speak at conferences (or go to them) - this does not say anything about how good he is at work.

It’s a nightmare to say such obviousness. But managers placed barriers from these people at all levels. They came up with soft skills and assigned them above hard skills. The same interview is an extrovert job. Impress, tell the heart-breaking story of his professional life for an outgoing person, just spit. For a person who understands only in development - this is hell. But all polls employers say that they are not ready to take even the best developer, if he does not "fit into our culture."

We can say that these are problems of the “impaired”. I think these are our problems. The lion's share of the binary code that executes my plan 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 all sorts of fools working in the Western giants on the frameworks that I now have to use.



After all, hype affects not only which people are hunted. It determines what 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 github, articles on tech blogs and speeches at conferences determine which framework you will take for your projects. If there is something popular, then even a devastating article will only strengthen the instrument’s position in the community.

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

The worst part is that the tools are also becoming popular not because of quality. Two different startups simultaneously began to create their own databases. The first invested in development, the second in marketing. The first gathered a small community with a sundress. The second is a huge discontented audience. The first lived, lived, and closed under the sad sighs of hundreds of people. The latter captured the market, made money, and only then began to think how to tighten quality.

This vicious system supports itself. People who are just learning development ask what the most popular is how they choose which technologies to learn, and so the React developer resume appears. A developer on the popular framework, a real tidbit for modern business. This is not a moron who is sawing his bikes, and dares to think that he can invent something. Now, if you have your own vision of how to solve the problem that the popular liba 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 # is unpopular, and I'm an idiot.

And if you think that there is no hype problem, and you have never met any of its symptoms, then you live in development for starters. Everything is done right for you, you have C ++, and not all of these newfangled frameworks. You do not let these hipsters on the threshold with their "toxicity" and inclusiveness. There is only one problem. You will rest from day to day from old age, and I will have to deal with what remains.

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The thought that the bad is becoming popular, and the good is dying in the unknown, is permeated with injustice for a kilometer. So it stinks that makes me sick. When my article with the largest whining concentrate collected 170 thousand views, I decided that from now on I would write only technical articles.

My friend and I have been preparing an article about the type system in typeScript for three months now, and it seems that we will need as much to finish it. Then one and a half people will read it, and our work will be wasted. And writing 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, and again crap. I know for sure that this article about types is of much greater importance than all my other articles combined. But we now live in a world where hardcore articles full of code are simply unprofitable to write.

5-10 thousand people read the average technical article on the hub, even if half a year of work is behind it. I can throw about-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 push myself to a better life with my sweat and with foam at my mouth to prove to everyone 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 cool, stop hunting people on Twitter, stop talking nonsense that all top developers should be in sight. Stop evaluating people on macbook stickers. In development, the most important thing is what code a person writes. Searching and hiring is difficult, and it will only be more difficult, well, okay. Managers can talk about these soft skills as much as they like. They talk about them because they have nothing else. I ask you to keep this in mind.