> You could always switch to a company that doesn't make its money with ads
I always thought that I would be able to switch to any programming job I wanted, and that the only decision would be between making a lot and roughing it up (like the GP), or working for a better cause for less money (as you propose).
But now I find it -- after 25 years of professional experience -- nearly impossible to find any job. Maybe it is due to the coronavirus, or the budding depression (or both), but I've never seen the market so slow... :(
This is my observation as well, and it was even before the coronavirus. The majority of tech jobs in London are bullshit startups chasing after AI, blockchain or the latest JS framework. It's very rare that a real company hires (presumably because they have all the talent they need and don't need to hire for the sake of "growth") and when they do it's often a bad fit for my skills (Python/Django).
That strikes me as odd because I've found that nearly every company of a certain size has a programming team these days.
You might have to change tech stacks and rebrand yourself to appeal more to enterprisey jobs, but that's more of an issue of marketing than anything else. It will be a small transition, but once you do that you'll be fine.
All the permanent Django jobs I see also have over-engineering such as insanely complicated front-ends (that actually perform worse than good old HTML) or Kubernetes (when the entire product could be served off a single bare-metal server) or similar, not to mention they are BS startups doing user-hostile things.
Here in Boston I'm hearing that the market is still pretty strong. Lots of smaller companies are having trouble but bigger ones are hiring like crazy for senior and higher roles.
I always thought that I would be able to switch to any programming job I wanted, and that the only decision would be between making a lot and roughing it up (like the GP), or working for a better cause for less money (as you propose).
But now I find it -- after 25 years of professional experience -- nearly impossible to find any job. Maybe it is due to the coronavirus, or the budding depression (or both), but I've never seen the market so slow... :(