I'm a software dev/sysadmin mix, ~8 years' experience, looking for
work again after some time off. (Based in a capital city in Australia
if that's relevant)
I have no idea how to characterise the projects that I've enjoyed the
most or would like to do in the future.
The projects that I've found the most enjoyable are not the ones
that you see advertised by recruiters and companies; Kubernetes,
cutting-edge, greenfield projects, massive cloud accounts... meh.
Some fun stuff I've done or would like to do:
- Upgrading that weird service everyone is accidentally relying on but afraid to touch
- While money pours into LLMs in healthcare, fax machines were still used every day
- Working out the "low-level" part of the system colleagues put off for 2 years because nobody wanted to read through the boring 400-page ISO spec
- Maintaining that abandoned 500K line Java system with most errors being
RuntimeException
with a null
description
- Working in small teams, max 8-10 people
Any tips to characterise this kind of work to focus my job search? I
know it's different from working at a software company
pumping out features.
Tight deadlines and shoestring resources don't bother me (as long as I
get my salary!). Having people who don't take it all super seriously
along the way is super important.
How do I look for this? Trial & error? I feel like there must be...
consultancies? ... working on these kinds of projcets. Perhaps there's
some name or buzzwords that I need to use? Or would I need to talk
with one of those mega big consultancies like Accenture?
Of course very open to the possibility that I'm being totally
unrealistic and way too picky in a down market.
My bread and butter is working in Go, Python, backend and OS stuff.
Networking, Linux, BSDs, that kinda thing.
Thanks all!
Yeah that was it for me. I got loads of messages from recruiters but they were really low effort communication. I even put in things like "INCLUDE THE WORD
GLENDA
IF YOU READ MY PROFILE" near the top of my profile/experience section. Out of the hundreds of messages, I'd say fewer than 10 actually wrote "GLENDA"!The conversations I did end up having were shitty anyway. Essentially I think the world got software fever over the past few years and it's only just recently cooling down. People going into recruiting without any people skills, let alone industry knowledge. Companies desperate to hire people for no reason, including people who just did that "Quit your job and start coding!" nonsense.