So you haved worked for one or more companies in your career, you have been fired for several times and it is always the same situation you end up in : looking for a new company, staying a limited time and then get fired as fast as you came. This is terribly true nowadays as companies decreased their tolerance and are quick to take decisions. In this chapter I will explain you how to survive the market being a mediocre developer. I would like to say first that it is not a shame to be a mediocre developer, but rather that the current market is particularly intolerant : companies want things done now, quickly and sharply without any mistakes being made. During the last years we have assisted to terrible lay-offs form companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Meta (Facebook)
So it is hard to define but we will try to give some elements that define a mediocre developer. So you are a mediocre developer if you constantly struggle to wake up during the morning, you come at work at the exact time of the daily, and you cannot improve even if it has been months you are in the company. Then you code "primitively", for example if you code in a modern programming language, you don't want to use the latest stuffs and program in a simple imperative way, you don't use fonctional because you don't read the documentation, you are not interested in learning delegates, wpf, serialization etc.. You just want to code simply in an imperative way as it is also usually the one you learn at university. If you could choose the programming language you would choose C language and only work with array and primitive data structures, you prefer to design things instead of using them. But when it comes to create something for production, you just hate correcting other peoples's code, you don't want to learn the code base. You hate cloud as well as virtual machines and never learnt docker or kubernetes. For git, it took years for you to know how to pull, commit and push your code and if you could, you would program with a pen. Then you are a mediocre developer if anything that is asked to you take years to be done : you still have your first ticket active months after you join the company and still don't figure out how to finish it, simple tasks are a nightmare and you are not comfortable in meetings. You just want money in, you want to just do some simple stuffs and be paid for it. And we can understand that, to some extent the majority of the developers are not obviously top tier developers, a lot of them just do this work because they have no alternative : imagine being not so handsome, not so tall and struggling in the labor market, you know that being a developer might help you to get out from poverty. Some people succeed, some don't
Guys, I have been a developer since a couple of years now, but guess what : I have so often been fired that it is almost normal. Each time is the same : you got the contract and you are happy, then you go in the company : the first months are easy as nobody judges you because you are new, but as time passes your manager begins to notice that you are slow, not on time or that you don't master your subjects. And here is when the problems come : more and more you are being blamed, more and more you are being disrespected until the final thing comes : the firing meeting. It is a meeting where your manager announces that you are being fired, he or she will say something like : "I am going to end the contract", or begin to speak badly with you, using a hostile tone. If you are onsite your manager will usually bring you in a separate room where no one hears what is occurring : these are usually the worse moments because you see disrespect at the maximum but at the same time you can't just punch this guy in the face, which would be funny but not interesting on the long run. So you might say why am I struggling being a mediocre developer ? I have my own reason but if you are a developer you know how well it can get paid, which is particularly interesting nowadays as prices have skyrocketted.
I recommend changing company each 5-6 months as it is usually the time they begin to treat you badly. Some people might say that you should just improve and then everything will come back together but this statement is not true, indeed if you are being disrespected the first time, you will be disrespected a second time and a third time by your manager and your colleagues so it is only a matter of time before you get fired so after six months, if you can find an other mission, just jump into it without any considerations. You have two choices : be fired or leave before it is too late. Because there is nothing worse than being fired and struggling to find an other opportunity.
As a mediocre developer, you absolutely want to avoid long duration in your companies because as time passes people will notice that you are not excellent and will begin to speak bad against you until you get fired, so this is why you must think as a consultant : the consultant comes to the company for a limited amount of time, he is external so he is not invited to useless meetings and other christmas diners, new year celebrations etc.. The consultant has more freedom to organize his work and if he leaves : it is not shocking at all because he is not expected to stay all the time. And companies have understood that it is preferable to hire an external for a couple of months in order to decide if he is really good and keep him or fire him. So we will always be on the second choice but the company needs time to decide if you are a really good developer or if you are not. We will exploit this time at our advantage as it is preferable to work for 6 months than to not work at all. And 6 month is usually the time the company needs to decide if you are good enough for the position or not
If you are a mediocre developer you always have to save some amount of cash in order to survive the duration between the time you get fired and the time you find a new opportunity : always be pessimistic and assume that you will not find a new opportunity for a while. In my case I use a simple mathematical principle : the "sup born" which means that I look in the past years in my career and I measure each time I am not employed between two jobs and I take the longest duration. So if for instance you were fired from your company several years a go and it took you six month to find an other opportunity and it is the maximum duration, then you have to save enough cash to stay six months without an income.
The key point here is to always listen to the market because there might be a new opportunity that will give you an extra 6 months duration before you are fired again and this is very interesting because 6 months will let you organize yourself first, improve your looks and skills and this definitely can make the difference.
You need to be attractive in your profile as companies will look for new developers on social networks, so you constantly need to have an updated cv or resume in order to push it when needed. You need to be visible on all platforms so that recruiters can have access to you easily and this will definitely help you find a new opportunity. Because the second you get fired your life is in danger and troubles. If you don't act quick enough you become homeless so it is a very sensitive topic and this is why we also advise to invest some of your capital in the future to find it when needed.
Being a mediocre developer is not easy but if you act quick enough and you anticipate on the long run, you might save your life from terrible difficulties, and so you might be able to live a "normal" life even if all of this is relative. Don't forget that companies are full of mediocre profiles, this because if this person who work a 9 to 5 was truly exceptional, he will not then work everyday but rather a couple of years and then start his own business or startup. May the winds of mediocrity carry you until you can deploy your wings.