[HN Gopher] From web developer to database developer in 10 years
___________________________________________________________________
From web developer to database developer in 10 years
Author : pmbanugo
Score : 167 points
Date : 2025-11-04 09:02 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (notes.eatonphil.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (notes.eatonphil.com)
| pmbanugo wrote:
| I enjoyed reading this. It could be because I'm thinking of doing
| more of system/network programming (and learning Zig). I've spent
| the last 6 years in the JavaScript land and bored of yet-another-
| bundling or SPA-like pattern.
|
| So there's hope that with consistency and patience, one could
| build expertise in a totally different area
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| There are JS frameworks that port to most platforms in about 3
| minutes (use a Mac for iOS builds):
|
| https://quasar.dev/introduction-to-quasar/
|
| That being said, Erlang/Elixir abstracts most db use-cases with
| ecto, and has some other incredibly powerful scalable features
| for sites:
|
| https://www.phoenixframework.org/
|
| * Distributed
|
| * Fault-tolerant
|
| * Highly available
|
| * Hot swapping
|
| Depends on the use-case, but if your product is <14 month
| lifecycle App/shovel-ware, than go JS for the labor
| compatibility... Yet if you are hitting >40k concurrent users,
| the options winnow down fairly quickly.
|
| Have fun =3
| pmbanugo wrote:
| I like the Erlang VM concepts and I enjoy attending their
| meetups
| ehnto wrote:
| I'm also interested in more low level or systems programming,
| though I am coming from a mostly backend/system integration
| background. I feel like a roadblock is that I am self taught,
| and though I have been doing software engineering
| professionally for 15 years and software as a job for 20, I
| still can't call myself an engineer legally. I certainly know I
| can do the work, but I worry about hiring being wary of a lack
| of credentials as a legal liability for lower level stuff.
|
| I would love to hear people's stories of interesting jobs
| they've gotten without a degree in this space.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _I still can 't call myself an engineer legally._
|
| May I ask what country you live in?
| barddoo wrote:
| Same. It's good to know that other people feel the same way.
| maxnilz wrote:
| Thanks, it is inspiring, And it seems like I'm on the same way of
| that transition, Here is my individual expirment database for
| learning db internals and rust..
|
| https://github.com/maxnilz/sboxdb
|
| Now, trying to implement a rocksdb-like LSM based storage in
| modern C++ and call it from the sboxdb, just for refresh my old
| C++ memory.
| pmbanugo wrote:
| This is cool, keep it up!
| esafak wrote:
| > I was unhappy with this type-casting so I held out while
| unemployed and continued to write posts and host virtual
| hackweeks messing with Postgres and MySQL. I started the first
| incarnation of the Software Internals Book Club during this time,
| reading Designing Data Intensive Applications with 5-10 other
| developers in Bryant Park. During this time I also started the
| NYC Systems Coffee Club.
|
| That's the spirit! And it worked.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| If you can wrangle CSS, you can probably wrangle SQL pretty well.
|
| Both are declarative ways of traversing graph-like datasets (DOM
| nodes vs tabular relations).
| senderista wrote:
| That is not what "database developer" means in this context.
| simonw wrote:
| > I also wanted to cover what it's like coming from engineering
| management and founding companies to going back to being an
| individual contributor. (Spoiler: incredibly enjoyable.)
|
| I've done the IC to engineering manager back to IC thing and it
| is indeed a huge relief to learn that it's OK to do that. My
| favorite piece of writing on that is The Engineer/Manager
| Pendulum by Charity Majors: https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-
| engineer-manager-pendulum...
|
| Charity makes a very convincing case that it's OK to swing from
| manager to IC and back again several times over the course of
| your career and that doing so will make you more effective at
| _both_ of those things.
| freedomben wrote:
| Hard agree. In fact I think doing the manager/IC transition
| back and forth several times is what makes you really great at
| both things. Understanding both sides of the equation from
| lived experience can be incredibly powerful at making you more
| effective. At a minimum, your ability to empathize with and
| understand the motivations/pressure on your manager or reports
| will help you navigate the tricky spots much better.
| rrgok wrote:
| I would like to have this kind of transition to the Compiler
| world.
| keyle wrote:
| It's a fairly easy transition to do, once your bank account is
| empty you're halfway there.
| pmbanugo wrote:
| LOL!
| never_inline wrote:
| > But my background kept leading hiring managers to suggest
| putting me on cloud teams doing orchestration in Go around a
| database rather than working on the database itself.
|
| This is extremely annoying. This also means if your first job is
| doing X, it is very difficult to break into Y even if you know
| quite well about Y, and even have side projects. I have tried
| attaching cover letters indicating even if my current experience
| is in X, I am quite familiar with Y, to no luck. (No one reads
| those stuff).
| mettamage wrote:
| Is there a way to work around this?
| ccakes wrote:
| Lie on LinkedIn, get a foot in the door and explain in the
| interview
| freedomben wrote:
| Risky. If I interview somebody and their resume is inflated
| or wrong, at best as a candidate you wasted my time
| reviewing your resume and scheduling interviews and what
| not, and now you're starting from a disadvantage because my
| first impression of you is one of being misled. We're a
| high-trust organization and anything that causes doubt on
| your integrity puts you at a disadvantage. If I'm
| interviewing you, it's because I considered you against the
| torrent of other applicants, and I likely excluded one that
| is more qualified than you based on your misrepresentation.
| That also doesn't work in your favor.
|
| If you are a truly exceptional dev in your previous field
| and can convince me of that, along with an up-front and
| transparent explanation of why you lied to me as our first
| interaction, it is possible to overcome this. However, that
| is a pretty small pool of people.
|
| Though, it definitely can work at some companies.
| fogj094j0923j4 wrote:
| references, apply for a company rich enough to fund various
| projects ( like crypto company, if your moral compass allows
| ).
| dmoy wrote:
| To me it seems like the majority of recruiters barely read past
| company name and job title.
|
| I switched from Dev to SRE at the same company, and within like
| one week of remembering to update LinkedIn job title, the
| random recruiter messages switched from Dev to "oh we are
| looking for someone like you with lots of SRE experience"
| (having worked in SRE for <3 months).
|
| So yea, it's difficult to get traction for something that isn't
| already your job title.
| MikeNotThePope wrote:
| >> the majority of recruiters barely read past company name
| and job title
|
| This is a failing of the hiring manager. If the recruiter
| can't tell who is and isn't a good fit, the hiring manager
| should have corrected the situation or not partnered with the
| recruiter.
| freedomben wrote:
| Disagree. The most common reason I've seen for this is the
| recruiters using largely or entirely automated tools to
| comb LinkedIn, Github, and many other sources and auto-
| blasting out those cold emails. They don't even look at the
| resume until you reply with interest. It's not (usually)
| the hiring manager's fault. They frequently don't even know
| that is occurring.
|
| I find that practice disgusting personally and will never
| do it myself or condone it in others, but it does seem to
| work.
| never_inline wrote:
| It probably doesn't work. It seems to work because you
| will never know the opportunity cost of not hiring a
| better person, after you already hired a worse person.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > and within like one week of remembering to update LinkedIn
| job title, the random recruiter messages...
|
| The LinkedIn random recruiter messages are a different game
| than resume screening. Most of those recruiters are using the
| LinkedIn search tools. Searching for keywords like "sre" is
| essentially useless because so many people do keyword
| stuffing. So instead, many recruiters will either be given or
| will ask for a list of companies to try to pull candidates
| from.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| My entire career was switching from one discipline to another.
|
| For me, the key was twofold:
|
| 1) Spend a lot of _extracurricular_ (not work) time, exploring
| new tech that interests me. This often included purchasing
| expensive kit, and attending classes, on my own dime (but I
| could usually use the spend in my tax write-offs).
|
| 2) Be willing to accept being paid a lot less than my peers.
|
| My career is a fairly eclectic one. I'm now retired, and spend
| a lot of time learning stuff, which is fun.
| ramon156 wrote:
| How do you have the time to do this? I already barely have
| free time, let alone time to attend classes
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| In my case, I'm a bit obsessed. I'm "on the spectrum," and
| that helps me to concentrate and understand stuff.
|
| Also, I just _like_ doing this stuff. My work is also my
| hobby. There 's not that many things that I'd rather be
| doing.
|
| I have also had a very good venue for doing volunteer work,
| and that has always provided a driving force.
|
| Of course, now that I'm retired, I have the time.
| fm2606 wrote:
| This is me to a big extent. Sometimes I feel like I to
| learn for learning's sake. Which is okay, or at least
| that is what my therapist tells me. I struggle with the
| fact that I "think about doing" vs actually doing.
|
| My work is my hobby too, that is why I struggle sometimes
| wondering if I will ever retire. Why retire when what I'm
| doing is for the most part fun. Sure, there are days that
| I'd rather be "doing X", or more like "studying X" than
| actually working but I'm enjoying work so much lately
| that it soon passes.
|
| Work also forces me to actually DO instead of thinking
| about doing. I have to perform. People are depending on
| me to get stuff done and that is a big motivator. With my
| personal projects, no one needs it or is expecting it so
| it is too easy to abandon.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> With my personal projects, no one needs it or is
| expecting it so it is too easy to abandon._
|
| In my case, I was fortunate to have projects that people
| depend on. Even my "hobby" work has always shipped.
| LRVNHQ wrote:
| The overwhelming majority of people who work around 40
| hours a week have plenty of free time.
|
| "I don't have freetime" is usually a tell sign that people
| either don't know how to manage their time / prioritize
| free time activities, or have made choice that they refuse
| to see as choice but as obligations instead (which
| implicitely just means they prioritize this activity a lot)
| matwood wrote:
| Yeah. I worked 30 hours/week when I went to undergrad
| full time for CS. Later I went back to grad school while
| also working full time. There is a lot of free time in
| many people's day. I'm also not saying it all has to be
| productive, I know mine certainly isn't, but it should be
| deliberate. I love sitting down to watch a movie or play
| a game, and I hate when I get sucked into some social
| media for 30 mins or an hour without realizing it.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > The overwhelming majority of people who work around 40
| hours a week have plenty of free time.
|
| Overwhelming majority? Plenty of people don't make enough
| from their 40h/w job to pay all their expenses and have
| to get another job or have to share responsibilities with
| a working spouse. Having kids or aging parents is also a
| common demand on ones time.
| LRVNHQ wrote:
| The average weekly hours of US employees is ~34
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP
|
| "Only" 5.2% of US job holders hold more than one job
| https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat36.htm
|
| If you want to argue that this doesn't add up with "The
| overwhelming majority of people who work around 40 hours
| a week have plenty of free time." then please provide
| sourced numbers rather than baseless internet doomerism.
|
| Oh and I'll add that the average commute time in the US
| is among the shortest in the OECD, since the long commute
| boogeyman always end up popping up in these discussions.
| hitarpetar wrote:
| you're describing people who work MORE than 40 hours a
| week
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Good point. Still, plenty of households can't get by on
| one 40h/w job. And regardless, childcare and elder parent
| responsibilities are things that I'd consider taking away
| from 'free' time, not a part of it.
| hitarpetar wrote:
| definitely. you're right that "free time" is a luxury
| never_inline wrote:
| Idk if it's about my demographic, but everyone in
| development positions who I know has to work till 7pm.
| There are people at less serious positions who leave at
| 5.
| wil421 wrote:
| Do you have a kids and a spouse? What's your age range? I
| found that the time I had in my 20s is filled by life
| obligations.
| znpy wrote:
| Wild guess: gp is self-employed and can manage their own
| time. I'm assuming that with some planning you can carve
| "learning time" across contracts.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| No, I always worked for companies.
|
| However, there was never the "996" shit, you see, these
| days. I generally did about 50 hours per week. Sometimes
| more; sometimes, less.
|
| Sometimes, if the extracurricular stuff also benefitted
| my day job, I could get the company to help out, there.
| znpy wrote:
| I see, thank you for correcting me!
| jonas21 wrote:
| How did you manage to write off for your expenses for tax
| purposes? I thought this was not possible for regular
| employees in the US (your profile says you're in the New
| York). I'd love to be able to do this.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It's been awhile, so I can't remember exactly how it
| worked (I've used an accountant for the last 30 years or
| so), but I was able to argue that it went to benefit my
| day job (which it actually did), and I mixed in a lot of
| stuff that directly benefited my day job (like taking my
| team out for a holiday dinner, on my personal expense, as
| the company didn't do that kind of thing).
|
| I wouldn't do it without a decent accountant. In my
| experience, they always paid for themselves.
| tanjtanjtanj wrote:
| I don't know your exact circumstances but it sounds like
| your "decent accountant" was helping you commit tax
| fraud.
| dmoy wrote:
| Prior to TCJA there were a wider range of allowed
| deductions for W2 workers.
|
| You would not be able to (legally) do that today
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I believe that. It's been a very long time, since I
| declared anything like that. I think I remember my
| accountant telling me that I couldn't anymore, so I
| shrugged, and declared what I could. Also, I retired in
| 2017.
|
| Thanks for not immediately going on the attack.
| dmoy wrote:
| For programmers it wasn't that big of a deal. Maybe some
| electronics purchases were no longer deductible, or a
| little bit of software, etc. Home office could be
| sizeable.
|
| Some other professional got royally screwed - e.g. a
| concert violinist can no longer deduct a $50,000 violin
| purchase if they're employed by an orchestra as a W2
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Doubt it. Don't forget that they also have a stake in
| things. That's why we pay them.
|
| That's why I say we should have accountants.
|
| I'm always thrilled to have strangers on the Internet
| attack me, and even attack an accountant that they never
| even heard about before. Thanks!
|
| Have a great day!
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| what works for me: I need to establish a "normal state"
| that includes some of this, achieve momentum and then add a
| little more. Most of us have a lot of slack hiding in the
| required activities, but you can't recapture this all at
| once. Do something scheduled but onyl a few hours a week.
| Once it ends, keep doing something scheduled in that
| timeslot - even if it's not "official" (ex: I go to the
| library on a specific day/time and study low-level
| electronics). It is way easier to keep going with your
| normal routine and supplement than it is to make big
| changes all at once.
| vasco wrote:
| I find it's easier to prove that within a small company after
| you're in. You just fix a problem in the area you want to work
| in, then you fix another problem, and soon after people want
| you on their team or a team is created around you to fix that
| class of problem. But lots of engineers just wait to be picked
| while only doing the stories assigned to them. Or they are in
| big companies, of which I don't know about.
| zerr wrote:
| Never gets old:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/4k994j/if_...
| pjmlp wrote:
| I have come to the conclusion years ago that it is easier to
| work on a consulting agency, where everyone is "jack of all
| trades master of none", than trying to apply to regular HR
| positions.
|
| In agencies, a bit like startups, everyone "knows" everything
| up to the point of winning projects.
|
| While everyone knows here how famous some of those projects end
| up being, but if you can take this ongoing pressure to "know"
| everything, it is much easier to switch between roles and
| programming stacks, than the usual HR looking for X on the CV
| and nothing else.
| mrweasel wrote:
| On a similar note: I've been listening to various podcasts with
| Allan Judd for probably more than 10 years now. It's amazing to
| see someone go from a FreeBSD docs contributor and talented
| systems administrator to C programmer and ZFS developer.
|
| You have to have serious motivation to not just stay with what
| you know, but it's a nice kick in the butt to the rest of us to
| see that it can be done, with you put in the work.
| fogj094j0923j4 wrote:
| >I held out while unemployed
|
| Watching Eaton's journey online was very inspiring but sadly I
| have also seen a lot of people doing this to no avail. This is
| eerily similar to how musicians do busking until they got noticed
| by a record label.
| bob1029 wrote:
| The part where the analogy breaks down for me is the ZIRP
| phenomenon and historical developer salaries.
|
| The only thing that is sad to me is watching someone with 250K+
| annual cash salary for a solid decade somehow becoming
| destitute after mere months of trying to do things without
| active W2 employment. Savings rate is a huge part of the "no
| avail" aspect. You can beat the pants off this game by simply
| being frugal. Income is 50% of the battle. How you spend it is
| the other 50%.
| dangus wrote:
| I completely agree with you, it's scarily easy to inflate
| your lifestyle or even not inflate it that much and just
| spend inefficiently.
|
| Still, it might be worth keeping in mind that W2 salaried
| upper middle class is the highest taxed segment of the US
| population. People who make more by owning companies and
| assets are taxed less, people who make less are taxed less.
|
| If you spent those 10 years paying for daycare, paying for
| after school programs, saving for your kids' college (because
| you expect to pay nearly full price due to your income), and
| making other logically sound luxury spending decisions like
| eating fresh healthy foods rather than survival staples or
| taking a vacation because you only live once, I can see how
| you can end up with not quite enough savings.
|
| Or you might have a runway but you know it is really unwise
| to spend it, which ends up effectively making you
| functionally destitute by choice.
| physicsguy wrote:
| My experience (as a non-CS person) has been that aside from where
| there is a very large maths component which might block people
| without further academic-style study (and I wouldn't necessarily
| even count ML in that, since the maths needed for much of ML is
| relatively low level, it's certainly not graduate school level
| understanding maths), there are relatively few areas of software
| which have high barriers to entry in actually doing stuff - where
| the barriers are are people willing to take a risk on letting you
| have a go. That's usually much much easier once you're in a
| company than if you're applying for a role from the outside.
|
| Every time I've felt like I didn't understand something and felt
| overwhelmed at the scale at a task, 3-6 months down the line of
| throwing myself at the problem and trying to understand it, I've
| realised it's not as hard and part of the barrier was just the
| unfamiliar terminology and unfamiliar tools. Sure, there is a
| degree of needing to learn new stuff - which is true in any job
| and in life - to do new things. But those barriers are not
| normally insurmountable. That's been true for me in basically
| every area. It is also why I'm fairly willing to give people a
| chance, so long as they are able to demonstrate some knowledge
| which would be able to transfer.
| agentultra wrote:
| Great story! I always like to tell developers that they can do
| anything if you just stick to the fundamentals. It's not such a
| big mountain as it seems!
|
| The type-casting part is relatable. It definitely feels like
| we're all being pigeon-holed by hiring managers and ATS systems
| that categorize us and rank us by keywords and work history. It
| can sometimes be quite difficult to switch from something like
| web development to embedded to databases. Good on you for
| breaking through.
|
| I'm also looking to break into databases. But despite having
| worked on database libraries, general programming experience, and
| years of designing and operating systems using databases...
| there's at least hundreds of people who have been working in
| databases for years longer and getting one's foot in the door
| that way is tricky.
|
| Keep sharing your passion, that seems to really help stand out.
| Not all of us might be in a position to found a company or run a
| user group in a major city (if it doesn't already exist)... but
| we can write blogs, attend those meetups, give talks, and help
| each other out on projects.
| bashmelek wrote:
| Even when I was still in school and looking for internships I
| could feel this. In CS we learned more about compilers and
| operating systems, but companies wanted web developers, so IT
| and IS had a big edge. I did game programming on my own time,
| so companies would recommend interning with a game company. It
| was frustrating.
|
| I've been working in web development for many years now. It's
| okay. I still don't know what I want to be in the future. I
| still don't feel like a "real dev". But still do some side
| learning. I'm happy it worked for the writer, and I hope it
| does for you too.
| agentultra wrote:
| I should add that _you are a real dev_. There 's all kinds of
| programming out there. That's why I enjoy DSA and maths; it's
| the stuff that transcends languages and has applications in
| almost every domain. You benefit from knowing how to
| implement a queue or balance a tree whether you're writing
| databases, making games, or building distributed systems.
|
| Anyone can learn this stuff. Ignore the gate keepers and the
| little voice that tells you _only smart people can do this_.
| You 're a smart person. Crack a book, open a new file,
| compile some code. You'll get there.
| pmbanugo wrote:
| I wrote my first queue this week, and started learning DSA
| this week as well. I use to ignore those topics, but I
| think the path I seek would benefit from that knowledge.
| pmbanugo wrote:
| Thanks. web dev or game dev are still developers. I don't
| subscribe to the "real developer" mindset, except if they're
| vibe coders :)
| Aurornis wrote:
| > The type-casting part is relatable. It definitely feels like
| we're all being pigeon-holed by hiring managers and ATS systems
| that categorize us and rank us by keywords and work history. It
| can sometimes be quite difficult to switch from something like
| web development to embedded to databases.
|
| When people ask for advice about changing fields, I recommend
| working at smaller companies that have work in their current
| domain and also the domain they want to switch to. The most
| accessible route is to look for a startup that will hire you
| for your current expertise but that also has needs for the type
| of work you want to do. Startups are much more willing to let
| people bounce between domains than a big corporation with a
| giant org chart and middle managers defending their domains.
|
| I've been at a couple companies that were open minded about
| interviewing people with backgrounds that didn't match the
| role. We had a few success stories of people making big
| changes, including one person who transitioned from tech
| support to junior developer and then continued to grow.
|
| To be honest, though, hiring people far outside their work
| history was more often a failure than a success. A lot of the
| applicants were applying to the job because they thought the
| grass would be greener on that side of the fence, but then
| became disillusioned when they encountered the same software
| engineering challenges in a different domain.
|
| A couple of the people we hired just wanted to jump from domain
| to domain over and over again. As soon as we started getting
| them trained up enough to be productive, they demanded to
| switch to another new domain. In the interview phase it's hard
| to tell who wants to commit to the new domain versus those who
| want to explore and switch around a lot.
|
| So I reluctantly admit that I get it. In a job market like this
| where hiring managers get 100 applicants within hours of
| posting a job, filtering for people who have the experience
| instead of candidates who want to learn on the job is a
| rational choice.
| brightball wrote:
| I've never seen it as that much of a leap. At least half of my
| work on web applications in my career, especially earlier
| before SPA's were so popular, revolved around finely tuning the
| database. In the later parts of my career, it still does
| because it seems like fewer people want to "deal" with the
| database internals.
|
| IMO pivoting fully into DB development would be a very natural
| path, for me at least.
| nowaymo6237 wrote:
| In the era of LinkedIn, Ted talks and podcasts it's always good
| to have a narrative of who you are and your journey to your
| successful endeavors
| rekabis wrote:
| This is the first time I have ever heard the term "database
| developer" to mean a developer of the database _internals,_ of
| the database engine itself.
|
| Every other use I have ever come across has meant the development
| of the databases _themselves,_ the file in which data is stored
| in a relational (and recently, non-relational) manner.
|
| Because when we talk about "a database", we are almost never
| talking about the engine that works with one, we're talking about
| the file that holds all the data. The former is invariably called
| a "database server".
|
| Wouldn't a much more accurate and subject-separate term have been
| "database engine developer" or "database server developer"? That
| alone, I think, could have reduced or even eliminated a lot of
| confusion.
|
| And no, not a newb: working with computers since 1982, on the
| Internet since 1988, on the web since 1992, and in the IT
| industry since 1997. In the English-speaking world, too.
| mrnaught wrote:
| An inspiring story.Recently made a similar transition from
| backend development (with some frontend experience) to database
| development in C, current team am part of manages the
| authentication aspect. Can truly resonate with this journey on a
| personal level.
| tstrimple wrote:
| I'm very glad I was able to start my career in startup world
| where titles don't mean anything and the prevailing attitude was
| roll up your sleeves and figure it out. No one else is going to
| solve it. Within my first five years I was doing everything from
| terminating network cables to managing servers to app development
| from the database to the various front ends (web and native,
| later mobile). I've built always on kiosk software. Fitness
| devices for medical study. I've built device firmware. I've built
| ML models. And no one ever told me that's not my job.
|
| You're able to learn and grow an incredible amount in
| environments that don't lock you out of work based on the shape
| of the cog that the company hired for.
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