How does one get 3-5 years of experience if every job requires 3-5 years of experience? 🤔

Time travelling, but that also requires some experience lol

I keep seeing this and wondering if the job market is really that bad elsewhere. Here in the UK at the moment, there's plenty of junior / grad positions up for grabs that don't require any experience - and some of them aren't that badly paid either.

I think the problem is that folks want to have it all: good salary, good job. And they want it NOW.

call me old fasioned or wtv, but I believe one should suck it up, spend a couple of years working with low salary (or none at all) to get XP. And THEN apply for positions with good salary.

I've had no official development experience, but wanted to be a dev. I bit the bullet and did it -- being a mid-level UNIX/Linux sysadmin I left my warm chair for junior DEV job position. Needless to say that shrunk my salary significantly - as a junior dev I got ~30% of what I had as sysadmin. But NOW I have the XP I need in both areas (sysadmin, dev) and even a better looking payslip than I had before :)

Just suck it up, survive those 2 years on lower funds and you'll get the XP needed. The XP requirement is mentioned in job ad for a reason anyway :)

Internships?

In the uk:

Uni placement: 13k
First job for a year : 27k
Second job: 41k

Pretty easy here tbh.

@craig939393

Is that pre tax? And I'm assuming GBP?

@mrmr yes and yes

@mrmr I believe we get paid less in the UK than in the US unfortunately

@craig939393 Think it wildly depends where in the US - silicon valley is certainly way, way ahead of UK salaries, but other areas not necessarily.

Internships

Explain to me what a deadlock is:

To get a job one must first get 3-5 years experience in a similar role.

To get 3-5 years experience in a similar role one must first get a job.

What if you have 6 years of experience

@TempestasLudi @TheVariant

Is my sarcasm detector faulty or are you in all seriousness suggesting internships?

Because I KINDA consider it unfair to expect adult people which have a live to lead and rent and food and stuff to pay for to work basically for free for years. To hell with companies who demand that.

You do the work while you're sitting at your desk in your dead-end job.

Use the technology in personal projects, and deliver it to clients to battle test what you learn.

@mksana Well... I was kinda serious. The thing is, most internships I have seen offer a decent salary. Apart from that, most people who start working in development are young. I don't think small apartments are that expensive.
I mean, students can afford it too, while they usually don't earn any significant money. That means that working as an intern 5 days a week should earn you enough money as well.

First thing, experience ranges are always fake, they will not care if you have less.

Second thing, freelance, pro-bono, big school projects, extra curricular projects are experience too

@mundo03 this. I never realized this before I applied for a job.

"How much experience do you have?"
"Well I don't have any industry experience but i did work on these projects for this many years"
"Cool, that's experience right there"

@mksana I also advocate for internship. Know your place. It's not among seniors nor mids you know..

- had 0 years experience

- applied for 2 dev jobs, one was junior, one was without telling any level

- got accepted at both

- told one i'm not coming

- he gave me a huge salary boost if i start in his company

- still didn't go because other job was more interesting

at least where i live it's easy as fuck to get hired as a junior dev if you did a bit more than just your schools programming homework

@mundo03 i wouldn't call them fake, but all requirements (not just years of experience) can be treated as a wishlist, at the end of the day they have to choose between the candidates who apply and most companies never get applicants who have all the skills and experience the company wants.

@iamgio then you have or will get a job 😂

@Nanos I don't believe you. If you only do the most basic shot at uni and learn to get a degree only, not to become a good dev. Then yeah good luck.

Assuming you didn't do that and know how to make software and still can't get a job you must live in a Mormon community.

MHMM

Fake it.
Guy I know put a college degree he never got on his resume, applied at a small place, and got hired.
By the time they caught on and fired him, he had about 2 years of experience and got hired elsewhere based on that.

@netikras

I'm actually >40, so I think I'm past the internship stage and also do not have the problem at hand myself.

Except those occasional cases where employers ask for 3 years experience in a technology that was invented last year, but that's a different topic.

If it's a reasonably paid internship, I agree it's an option, but over here, internships are just an excuse for companies to have qualified people work for them essentially for free or for a pitance. There's time limited contracts, there's an evaluation period in which you can see whether an employee is up to the task, I don't see any reason why a company should get a free lunch.

@mksana Okay, firstly if one is >40 and is considering chaging speciality (e.g. dev -> sysadmin, nurse -> dev, pizza delivery guy -> laser technician, etc.), there's already a slim chance of getting a job in new field. I'm sorry but that is the fact. I've seen quite a number of students in their 40s trying to switch career path to developers by taking courses in college and trying to get a job after grad. Only a very few did make it through evaluation period. Others could not keep up. When you're >40 (actually >29, but let's not get into that), your ability to change your mindset is limited. And it takes more time. People should be HAPPY companies take the risk of being fucked up by free interns. Companies are giving you an oppurtunity to see how things are done in real life. To learn smth from specialists.

@mksana Second of all, if you're an intern in some company and you have no XP in the field, other employees, the ones who are paid to create the actual value, have to take some time off to onboard you, to train you. To teach you. And, of cource, to clean all the mess you've accidentally made bcz you had no idea you were doing it wrong. This drops company's productivity. Also brings risks of errors on the table.

If you're a good intern and you DO learn a lot during your internship companies are not willing all this effort to be wasted. They usually keep the intern after the period is over. An intern becomes a junior employee.

But if you were slacking as an intern or not wiling to learn you'll be kicked off as soon as the internship period is over.

@Nanos I only see it as a fair deal. Companies take risks of your failures and teach you how to do things right. They are doing smth FOR you and you still want them to pay you on top of that? seriously...?

What if there were NO internships. How would you learn things? Googling? Testing things out at home? Home labs are soooooo far off from real life you know. You can play arround at home as much as you like. You'll prolly learn what the docs say, But you will NOT learn how to do things right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

This model is used since the veeeery old days. And it works.

@Nanos Whoops, I've tagged you in accidentaly :D

@netikras

You misunderstood me, I'm not planning on changing career paths and this is why I'm not affected. IF I were to do that, yeah, I guess I'd run a higher risk of not getting a proper new job in new field. Sure.

Internships aren't inherently evil, especially paid ones which offer more than a token salary (but significantly less than you'd earn when properly hired), but otherwise, we'll have to agree to disagree.

@mksana Please excuse me for using 'you' so much. It was not directed at YOU in particular :)

As for changing careers, well.. If one is NOT changing career path then one should have plenty of experience required to apply to new positions making this problem moot. Hence I assume we're talking about someone either changing careers or someone who's never had one yet.

And this part of your comment is what triggered me:

"If it's a reasonably paid internship, I agree it's an option, but over here, internships are just an excuse for companies to have qualified people work for them essentially for free or for a pitance. "

as is seems to claim that internships are evil (from intern's point of view) and are "just an excuse to have qualified people work for them [companies] essentially for free" :)

But yeah, I agree we disagree on this.

@netikras Just saying, but... You are sort of too optimistic. Or better, you trust companies too much.

It's not that rare to see young devs with years of experienxe in the OS community (all verified via github and such) being offered "internships" where they have the "opportunity to learn" what they have just shown to be proficient with. Because, hey! Most of the times, only experience in "real companies" is considered experience. I've met some guys who have been put straight on the code, with almost no training at all, and were more than capable to do the right job...

Of course, not every company is like that, but it does happen quite often. Sometimes they do end up getting free work for months, not even hiring someone in the end.

I understand we all have to start somewhere, but having to take up even just 2 unpaid internships in a row is not viable for everyone..

@netikras

Welcome to the real world, where running a business is an expensive and risky thing to do.

Hiring people with a zero experience in the field is a gamble, and everyone know that.

That internships shouldn't be paid I find a worrisome idea. What if something an intern does creates tremendous value for the company?

How would someone in an internship be motivated to share any knowledge to your company if the pay is shit anyways?

@vandroid64 look, let me put it that way: I HAVE been in your shoes and I HAVE been advocating anti-free internships ideas.
When you see enough idiots who claim to be excellent devs but have no real-life experience and you have to clean all the shit after them, the 'do free internship to get at least a clue of what the fuck is actually happening under the sun' starts to sound like not such a bad idea.

After all when an intern's shit hits the fan the compani hides the intern in a closet and claims it's the devs' fault, bcz saying that the company trusted that fucking retard enough to give him enough power to tear everything down is VERY bad for business. And the client doesn't care why we fucked up nor which imbecile commented out the 'where' clause. Client wants compensations and free service.

So don't tell me you actually believe an intern is likely to create smth SO incredibly valuable. I think I have way better odds becoming a world-class ballet dancer than some just-out-of-college-cherry-guy-mr-zuppah-hacker-bcz-he-runs-arch actually creates something of actual value rather than slacks all day and wastes our time.

Don't get me wrong, there are motivated interns who are on the right track. But these folks also are just interns. They are there to learn. Not to build. And learning means mistakes. And mustakes means supervising dev's wasted time on the intern instead finishing that 6 story points' blocker task.

@netikras

Interns have no business being in prod anyways. Leaving an intern home alone with the keys is rightly a bad idea.

I've seen both useless interns and senior devs/architects so I'm under no spell believing that everyone who passes screening is an awesome dev just waiting to be uncovered.

But let's say they break even, I.e fuckup less than they contribute, I'm willing to reward them for it. A bit of a strain on seniors, but if you eat your young, you'll grow old really fast in this business.

My point is still this; if you don't pay them, why would they have any incentive to do anything _except_ slack off and do the bare minimum required to get a positive letter of recommendation that you'll write just to get rid of them? I'm genuinely curious.

Our company seems to be in good shape rolling in new hires, some with experience, some without. We lose a few, and often it's not the ones we would like that makes it, but it's a gamble everytime.

@vandroid64 To answer your question: "to get real-life experience in the field". No more, no less.

If there is a chance to be employed after internsip is over -- hooray. If this thance is thin - you'll have seen enough to apply for positions requiring experience.

no-pay thing is a pain, I know. But it's doable.

In a company I worked for some years back we kept using a phrase that fits to this discussion:

You get what you pay for.

The real-world problem with companies - at least over here, and especially big companies - is that they ride on the "potentially you can move from the internship to a real job" ticket all the way.

Meaning, they offer a 12 month internship for no or lousy pay with the vague promise of a real job after that. But when the year is over, the intern is let go and another unpaid intern fills that same slot. It's capitalism baby.