My Job Went to India
by Chad Fowler · first published 2005
45% recommend45% neutral9% critical
Why HN recommends it
Practical, tongue-in-cheek career tips for software engineers on staying competitive and valuable. It is suited to career planning and to working developers concerned about their jobs.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…all messed up and is attacking 'troublemakers' instead of the problems. 2. Your coworkers have complained to management that you are a ball of negativity that they don't want to hear. Read the book "My Job Went To India". It's a great book for career planning and it'll help you figure out whether you're in 1 or 2, I can't guess which. If it's 1, you can't fix it, you need to find a company with a healthy culture. If…
on “Ask HN: How can one deal with bad management?” ↗I read a book called "My Job Went to India" (it's a tongue-in-cheek tutorial of how to stay competitive in the computer industry) and one of the advice was: Always be the worst on your team. The idea is, of course, not to suck but to put yourself…
on “The Calculus Trap” ↗Just a little side note, if you haven't already, you should really read "The Passionate Programmer" (the previous edition was titled "My job went to India: 52 ways to save your job").
on “Who is your hero?” ↗Yep, that's a great book, with lots of good advice. I got the first edition, which was call "My Job Went to India, and All I Got Was This Lousy Book"
on “Best development book I've read, has no code in it” ↗…"Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World", which is _just_ what you need to break free of the fantasy land that books and classes put you in. (APress publishes this.) And don't be fooled by the title: "My Job Went to India And All I Got Was This Lousy Shirt". It's the distilled experience of a programmer who spent a year (or two?) in India when his company outsourced code, and sent him to manage the new group. There are…
on “Ask HN: Greybeard cowboy coder looking for advice on being more professional” ↗The advantage of physical presence with regards to job security is one of the points Chad Fowler makes in "My Job Went to India". http://www.amazon.com/Job-Went-India-Pragmatic-Programmers/d...
on “Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting” ↗It strikes me as disingenuous that the first edition was called "My Job Went to India: 52 Ways To Save Your Job". Being worried about losing your job doesn't seem to be related to being a passionate programmer (except probably negatively correlated, a lot of the time).
on “Pragmatic Programmers: The Passionate Programmer - A Must Read” ↗…chronic re-reading; I'd begun to think I wasn't getting out of it what I should be. I likewise recommend it to other programmers, new or otherwise. I avoided The Passionate Programmer when it was called My Job Went To India, deterred by the title and lack of reader recommendation. Maybe I'll give it a look now. Somewhat related, I found Land The Tech Job You Love to be a comprehensive and insightful resource.
on “Books you shouldn't read when starting out as a programmer” ↗…want to consider reading the excellent: http://www.pragprog.com/titles/cfcar2/the-passionate-program... Check out the reviews on amazon - might also be helpful to look at reviews for the out of print My Job Went to India. The passionate programmer is the 2nd edition of this book I gather.
on “Ask HN: How do you get started in enterpirse Java development?” ↗Where have I heard that before? Right, it was in the book "My Job Went To India", which was published more than 20 years ago.
on “Ask HN: Work on robotics or agents?” ↗…Suspects include foreign competition, automation, changes in corporate management, lax antitrust enforcement, and the decline of unions. Foreign competition is an obvious and much-discussed threat. My Job Went to India (And All I Got Was This Lousy Book) was the title of a real book in the wake of the dot-com crash. More recently that threat seems to have receded, if temporarily. Companies still employ offshore programmers…
on “Programmers Should Plan for Lower Pay?” ↗