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Che Delilas posted:This is common advice but don't let the fact that you haven't done this prevent you from applying to jobs. It's pretty difficult to jump into any kind of non-trivial project and contribute in a meaningful way, and fresh grads often have a problem with paralysis, getting stuck on this thought pattern of "I'm not quite good enough yet" because they haven't accomplished this or that or want to learn one more language or framework before they start job hunting. It's silly and counterproductive. I can definitely relate to thinking I don't know enough. With that said I have no problem shotguning out a bunch of resumes as graduation gets closer. Even if I feel like I'm conning someone if they want to pay me the numbers I see posted for entry level salaries. I graduate in may, how early should I start applying for jobs?
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Sep 2, 2015 21:01
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As long as you're clear with them that you're not available until you graduate: now
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Sep 2, 2015 23:33
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fence hopper posted:My question is, is a program that is obviously used for pirating books ok to showcase on a resume or talk about in an interview, do interviewers care about that? I guess if I did talk about it I could use Project Gutenburg books as an use case. Or does something like that only work when talking about downloading linux iso's on an internet comedy forum. My github account has the word "lolocaust" prominently displayed in one of the projects and I have three standing job offers 
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Sep 3, 2015 01:44
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So, that transfer that I had been posting about was a misunderstanding on my part, but I am going to begin supporting an SQL application. I'm going into a salary negotiation meeting on Tuesday. One of the things I want to know is how much it would cost them to bring on an SQL support employee. I can't find anything related to SQL on my city's Glassdoor (there's a dearth of any tech jobs listed aside from developer, really). Does anyone have an idea of what that sort of thing would bring in Colorado? Lower salaries around here than Boulder, a little lower than Denver. Fort Collins, if anyone knows where that is.
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Sep 5, 2015 01:48
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22 Eargesplitten posted:So, that transfer that I had been posting about was a misunderstanding on my part, but I am going to begin supporting an SQL application. I'm going into a salary negotiation meeting on Tuesday. One of the things I want to know is how much it would cost them to bring on an SQL support employee. I can't find anything related to SQL on my city's Glassdoor (there's a dearth of any tech jobs listed aside from developer, really). What's a "SQL support employee"? Do you mean a DBA? Look up DBA salaries. Cursory research shows 60k for that area.
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Sep 5, 2015 01:58
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I thought DBAs were the ones that updated tables, added them, that sort of thing. This would just be me looking up what they did, saying "Yes, that's actually what it's supposed to say," "You put the query in wrong," or "Nope, we need to fix that." At least for now.
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Sep 5, 2015 04:09
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I'd post this in the generic tech career megathread, but I don't think we have one, and the oldie thread doesn't seem like the right place for this. I'm having some trouble with my workplace. Almost every piece of feedback in my one-on-one sessions so far has been about me either not pulling my weight or lacking independence and direction. I've alternately been told that I need to contribute more and just "go for things", and then been told that I'm being too "aggressive" and to run things by people before going ahead with them. It's incredibly frustrating to get mixed signals like those, to the point where I'm beginning to question whether the problem isn't me, but the communication between me and my manager. That, and I've only ever had negative feedback from him - he cites feedback from others, but I never hear it from them, it's only filtered through the one-on-one sessions. I feel like there's no actual way to win, and like I'm ping-ponging between "go this way no that way". Unfortunately, expressing that worry to my manager basically resulted in "I'm sorry you feel that way" and a reiteration of his points, so it seems like a no-go to chase after that point. Either way, I certainly feel like I'm not really happy with what I'm doing, and I've only become less sure of what I want to do as time goes by (especially since expressing my interest in doing things that aren't devops were met with "well maybe you should do devops for a while first"). And I'm probably going to be told that I'm lazy and irresponsible and I kinda expect that because goons, but I do genuinely want to get better at my job, so I'd like a serious answer on how to improve.
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Sep 5, 2015 06:03
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Pollyanna posted:I'd post this in the generic tech career megathread, but I don't think we have one, and the oldie thread doesn't seem like the right place for this. Well, since you are bothering to post this, and it sounds like you actually want to improve, it's probably not you at fault. It sounds like your boss just doesn't like you and is laying the ground work to get rid of you.
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Sep 5, 2015 06:32
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Pollyanna posted:I'd post this in the generic tech career megathread, but I don't think we have one, and the oldie thread doesn't seem like the right place for this. If you're not actively looking for a new position, you should be.
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Sep 5, 2015 08:25
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Skandranon posted:Well, since you are bothering to post this, and it sounds like you actually want to improve, it's probably not you at fault. It sounds like your boss just doesn't like you and is laying the ground work to get rid of you. I really hope this isn't the case  but I've had a very dissatisfying experience with my manager mentoring me, most notably due to his general absence.greatZebu posted:If you're not actively looking for a new position, you should be. Is it because I hosed up, or because the situation is hosed up? What I want to know is where I contributed to the problem so that I can see what I did wrong, and prevent this from happening in the first place. I know that a lot of this came from being too hesitant/unconfident in the tasks I was given (...i think???? it's very unclear to me), so I've made a point of learning to be more assertive and "taking charge". I've been told that they want to delegate things to me and feel like it's safe to do so, and they say that cases where I have to rely on other people's input (e.g. asking in a PR whether we should keep a timeout that relies on a not-very-reliable module in, or go ahead without a timeout at all) shows that I can't quite handle it. I think a lot of my confusion and unease comes from the feedback reflecting something very different from what I see in my day-to-day work. It's hard to see the role any of this plays in what I work on, and I'm worried that that's because I'm just not seeing it/unable to see it. Regardless, I'm certainly going to think about the future of my career in a longer term, especially since I'm not 100% happy with where the company is headed these days.
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Sep 5, 2015 09:12
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Pollyanna posted:I really hope this isn't the case It doesn't matter if it was you or not but the situation now sounds hosed up. Your boss (and only him) seems to be reaming you out on not being confident enough, yet back in June.. Pollyanna posted:I was told today that asserting this change to the system was considered a little too aggressive. (A system which, let me remind you, is about a week old.) On the one hand, yes, it is aggressive, because this system is currently hard to handle and I needed to set boundaries and rules to make sure things didn't get too out of hand. On the other, it wasn't intended to order people around or anything, and it's really about changing the system rather than acting out against anyone. I probably acted like an rear end in a top hat somewhere down the line, either way. So which is it? Actually, it doesn't matter. If your boss wants you gone, your life will become increasingly miserable. You are obviously not happy where you are and I second the 'actively look for a new position' option.
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Sep 5, 2015 10:18
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Pollyanna posted:What I want to know is where I contributed to the problem so that I can see what I did wrong, and prevent this from happening in the first place. I know that a lot of this came from being too hesitant/unconfident in the tasks I was given (...i think???? it's very unclear to me), so I've made a point of learning to be more assertive and "taking charge". I've been told that they want to delegate things to me and feel like it's safe to do so, and they say that cases where I have to rely on other people's input (e.g. asking in a PR whether we should keep a timeout that relies on a not-very-reliable module in, or go ahead without a timeout at all) shows that I can't quite handle it. Sounds like you are unhappy with the company as a whole. It's time to move on. Maybe the job started out nice, but it's not now. These things happen, and it's best to get over the depressive moping stage and get on with looking for something better. Start now. Seriously, get your resume up to date this weekend and start applying for new jobs now.
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Sep 5, 2015 14:09
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Pollyanna posted:I'd post this in the generic tech career megathread, but I don't think we have one, and the oldie thread doesn't seem like the right place for this. Start looking for another job, you're not long for the one you have if you get feedback like that.
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Sep 5, 2015 14:20
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Pollyanna posted:It's incredibly frustrating to get mixed signals like those, to the point where I'm beginning to question whether the problem isn't me, but the communication between me and my manager.
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Sep 5, 2015 15:16
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Pollyanna posted:Is it because I hosed up, or because the situation is hosed up? Lots of time this stuff is about team fit, not necessarily the ability to do the task. The showing off your technical skill is what gets you hired, but what keeps you in is the ability to navigate personalities and acquire new skills that are needed to solve the problems presented to you. That's why it helps to have a mentor to help you figure out the workplace - let you know what tasks are high profile and require that extra touch, what to avoid, what to focus on. As for how much crap you're willing to put up with, that's why folks here are telling you that you might want to look for something else. Because in your position, it's a huge uphill fight. You have to be tough. You can improve your standing by very specifically making by your manager happy at all costs. Whether its worth it is up to you. Take his/her feedback very seriously. I know my manager had doubts on me while I started out (because think about it on their end - hiring decisions and budgeting depends on how good of a team you can get and it is too easy to throw the new person under the bus who isn't working out) and my mentor gave me extra time to really polish and prioritize my work for the manager. I'm doing ok now, but the hard work never really stops - you just have to put in all that you've got.
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Sep 5, 2015 15:26
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Pollyanna posted:I'd post this in the generic tech career megathread, but I don't think we have one, and the oldie thread doesn't seem like the right place for this. Your comment about mixed signals reminds me of someone we recently fired. We had someone who we wanted to be more independent, but would screw up every opportunity we gave him to operate autonomously by breaking things and coming up with crazy unmaintainable solutions. Looking back now I can see we expected and needed him to be a senior developer when he was actually really junior. In retrospect I think this is mostly our fault. Consider that your manager and co-workers might want and need someone more senior, or think that you're more senior than you really are, but just don't realize it. It's not you - it might just be a really bad fit. That's not enough to fire someone though; he would snap at anyone who tried to talk to him about his code, and then started sexually harassing people. To echo everyone else you should start looking for a new job.
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Sep 5, 2015 16:50
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everyone posted:That bad, huh? Yeah, I've started to really lose confidence in the position, although it's moreso my manager and the company at large that I have concerns about. I have no idea if the situation is quite as dire as you guys are making it out to be, but it's not a situation I want to be in - I think it's time to put one last real improvement effort in, and if it doesn't pan out, I'll look for a job elsewhere. I'll update my LinkedIn  Another thing that bugs me about my mentor/manager is that he tends to say stuff like "I see you doing X Y Z" and other small things that come off as him deciding what I want to do for me. I think I posted this before, but I've expressed interest in working on back-end data processing and he just kind of brushed it off. Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but I really really dislike decisions being made for me and it's frustrating. That's another thing for the list of concerns I'll bring up next week. Tezzeract posted:I know my manager had doubts on me while I started out (because think about it on their end - hiring decisions and budgeting depends on how good of a team you can get and it is too easy to throw the new person under the bus who isn't working out) and my mentor gave me extra time to really polish and prioritize my work for the manager. I'm doing ok now, but the hard work never really stops - you just have to put in all that you've got. My mentor is my manager, at least officially - he's designated himself as my mentor, although his role is really manager. He hasn't actually done much mentoring stuff aside from anything filtered through his management role (i.e. his advice is always related to something I'm doing wrong), which is a huge disappointment. My real mentors at the company are others that are not him, but it's nothing formal, just people I like to work with. I really, really dislike the idea of a mentor being the same as your manager - it creates an awful tension between the two of you, and mentors and managers have wildly different and often conflicting goals as well. Right now, I'm working on adding some more functionality to our chatops setup. Hopefully, that'll get me back on their good side. Cryolite posted:Your comment about mixed signals reminds me of someone we recently fired. We had someone who we wanted to be more independent, but would screw up every opportunity we gave him to operate autonomously by breaking things and coming up with crazy unmaintainable solutions. Looking back now I can see we expected and needed him to be a senior developer when he was actually really junior. In retrospect I think this is mostly our fault. Consider that your manager and co-workers might want and need someone more senior, or think that you're more senior than you really are, but just don't realize it. It's not you - it might just be a really bad fit. You bring up a really good point. I think it really does kind of come down to them not knowing what to do with a junior developer - although I've told them that I'm very early on in my career, they talk about "taking a chance on me" and hoping to build me up in a particular way, which I'm fine with, but that's a hell of a lot to place on me right here right now. I'll certainly try to take it on, but...well, like I've said, I'm not filled with confidence in them. quote:That's not enough to fire someone though; he would snap at anyone who tried to talk to him about his code, and then started sexually harassing people.  Holy jesus, yeah, I don't want to be this guy like ever.
Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Sep 5, 2015 |
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Sep 5, 2015 16:51
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Pollyanna posted:That bad, huh? Yeah, I've started to really lose confidence in the position, although it's moreso my manager and the company at large that I have concerns about. I have no idea if the situation is quite as dire as you guys are making it out to be, but it's not a situation I want to be in - I think it's time to put one last real improvement effort in, and if it doesn't pan out, I'll look for a job elsewhere. I'll update my LinkedIn Please don't do this. Or at least, IF you go for 'one last real improvement effort', do it in parallel with finding a new job, not in series. Right now, you are almost certainly in denial that the job isn't working out, and that is almost always time just wasted. It's over, the sooner you start to move on (emotionally & literally), the better.
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Sep 5, 2015 17:04
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Pollyanna posted:Another thing that bugs me about my mentor/manager is that he tends to say stuff like "I see you doing X Y Z" and other small things that come off as him deciding what I want to do for me. I think I posted this before, but I've expressed interest in working on back-end data processing and he just kind of brushed it off. Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but I really really dislike decisions being made for me and it's frustrating. The only real choice you have is to leave and find employment elsewhere. That's probably worth doing in your present circumstance simply because you don't have other experience to compare this to, to really know if things are normal and your expectations are out of line, or if they're abusive and you're too inexperienced to know not to put up with it. Either way, it's still a good thing to get new experiences. Just beware though that in nearly every job there's going to be work you don't necessarily like to do, and sometimes it takes a while to move into the position you really want to be in.
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Sep 5, 2015 17:04
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Pollyanna posted:That bad, huh? Yeah, I've started to really lose confidence in the position, although it's moreso my manager and the company at large that I have concerns about. I have no idea if the situation is quite as dire as you guys are making it out to be, but it's not a situation I want to be in - I think it's time to put one last real improvement effort in, and if it doesn't pan out, I'll look for a job elsewhere. I'll update my LinkedIn Kind of piling on you here but I want to make it very clear. Your current employer has very likely already decided to fire you and is just putting together the paper trail to make sure you can't tangle them up in a lawsuit over it later. Finding a new job so you can quit instead of be fired should be your number one priority. Its very likely not your fault, junior developers getting poor performance ratings in my experience is almost always majority the fault of the manager and senior team members. Unfortunately, hiring/firing is not a fair thing in any way so you're going to be the one to pay for it.
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Sep 5, 2015 18:12
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This loving sucks, then. To be honest, though, I'm annoyed by this, but also not completely surprised. It really doesn't feel like they understand what a junior engineer is supposed to be and what responsibilities they're supposed to take on. They have supported me very, very little as one - I almost never work with anyone at a higher level than me, only either on my own or with other engineers around my skill level. (In fact, almost nobody pairs on anything...we're all just kinda typing away at our computers and silo'd off in our own things.) Plus, engineers have been leaving recently, and there's been some worrying executive memos regarding the sales people saying their jobs are "in danger" - this combined with the fact that we're expanding heavily without the market value to back it up (as far as I can tell) suggests that the company's in for some rocky times. You're right, I think it's time to quit. I'm not going to be very happy here, no matter what. I wish things could be different, but what can I do. I just hope that leaving after ~6mo isn't a mark on my resume. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Sep 5, 2015 |
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Sep 5, 2015 19:05
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Okay, I'm looking for some advice/guidance. The last three years at the company I've been working at since high school, I've become sort of a "cheap" programmer. I started out updating and adding to my department's existing automation in Macro Express, until I wrote something independently for my former department. I then started using Autohotkey and took on a couple of different projects for departments that came to us as well as a request to get something working from higher up. The project was somewhat a success, I sped up the process and even impressed a VP and others in a meeting, but there wasn't too much follow through with the people who were supposed to use it changing up their process a little bit. After that I discovered AutoIT, which I do the majority of my current work in, and was given the next level position within my department and a slight pay bump. I took over responsibility for all of the department's scripts and macros, and was given the ability to focus solely on coding and future, instead of my regular job responsiblities. Since then I've done work in Excel VBA, JavaScript for Acrobat, learned Git, mentored a coworker with coding and even built a few things in Python and Ruby to expand my horizons. I wanted to put some stuff up on Git to demonstrate my abilities but was never sure of the legality of it. Other background is that I've been at the company (though it was acquired) for 10 years straight from high school, but dropped out of college due to being young and not knowing how to balance the full-time job and schoolwork and was being paid very well at the time. I've since recently started college again (starting at Community College to get the lower stuff for cheaper out of the way), but that makes it very hard to get into side projects. Basically, I wanted to know if any of this is "worthy" to get me into the door entry level programming, even without a bunch of it up on my Github? I like my job and love the challenge of solving problems with programming, but of course want more money and I'm not seeing it coming soon where I'm at, and am definitely unsure if I'd be seen as hireable as a developer. Thanks for anything you can tell me.
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Sep 5, 2015 19:57
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Pollyanna posted:This loving sucks, then. To be honest, though, I'm annoyed by this, but also not completely surprised. It really doesn't feel like they understand what a junior engineer is supposed to be and what responsibilities they're supposed to take on. They have supported me very, very little as one - I almost never work with anyone at a higher level than me, only either on my own or with other engineers around my skill level. (In fact, almost nobody pairs on anything...we're all just kinda typing away at our computers and silo'd off in our own things.) Plus, engineers have been leaving recently, and there's been some worrying executive memos regarding the sales people saying their jobs are "in danger" - this combined with the fact that we're expanding heavily without the market value to back it up (as far as I can tell) suggests that the company's in for some rocky times. Just to be clear, don't quit until you get the other job. This stuff usually takes time to go through the works. Be pleasant at work and don't make it obvious that you're job searching or complain. You'll end up with a better job and more money in the end.
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Sep 5, 2015 20:01
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LoSesMC posted:After that I discovered AutoIT, which I do the majority of my current work in, and was given the next level position within my department and a slight pay bump. I took over responsibility for all of the department's scripts and macros, and was given the ability to focus solely on coding and future, instead of my regular job responsiblities. Since then I've done work in Excel VBA, JavaScript for Acrobat, learned Git, mentored a coworker with coding and even built a few things in Python and Ruby to expand my horizons. I wanted to put some stuff up on Git to demonstrate my abilities but was never sure of the legality of it. You're going to have to present yourself as very junior but I think if you focus on your work with javascript, ruby and python in your applications you could probably get a few interviews. Past that you're probably going to have to display some sort of knowledge of algorithms and complexity to get a job, but the bar is pretty low there.
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Sep 5, 2015 20:22
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You know, the more I think about my situation, the more convinced I am that they don't actually know what to do with a junior engineer, and are confused about my role as an engineer and the expectations they have in me. I'm almost sure that this is a problem on their end that's gone too long without fixing. They seem to think that a junior engineer is a senior engineer with lower pay. They ask me to be more assertive in going for things and higher-level decisions, and then scold me for being too aggressive and not running things by others when I do. If they want me to make higher level decisions like this, they either need to give me guidance and the freedom to gently caress up (which I expected from the beginning :/), or bump up my pay by at least 33% because then I'm actually a senior, not a junior. This is really disappointing, and the worst part is how it feels like they're making it out to be a personal failure of mine instead. That's completely unacceptable and a deal breaker on its own. I have another weekly one-on-one later, but it's going to feel a bit more like an exit interview. I can tell you that if their response to my point about being a junior given the responsibilities of a senior is "well maybe we should reduce your pay", that's the nail in the coffin. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Edit: Like, the comment about wanting to delegate to me is a great example of this, because right now I don't feel like I can take on delegated tasks without feeling like I will inevitably be judged and dinged for it. Also, that comment about being too aggressive still smarts, because 1. I thought that's what they wanted of me and 2. that word has hella baggage when said to or about a woman, and this is supposedly coming from our diversity leader. You know what, that's my second grievance. The deal about somehow being both too meek and too aggressive at the same time just smacks of typical workplace sex bias and double standard. I thought they were better than that. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Sep 6, 2015 |
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Sep 6, 2015 15:01
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Pollyanna posted:You know, the more I think about my situation, the more convinced I am that they don't actually know what to do with a junior engineer, and are confused about my role as an engineer and the expectations they have in me. I'm almost sure that this is a problem on their end that's gone too long without fixing. They seem to think that a junior engineer is a senior engineer with lower pay. They ask me to be more assertive in going for things and higher-level decisions, and then scold me for being too aggressive and not running things by others when I do. If they want me to make higher level decisions like this, they either need to give me guidance and the freedom to gently caress up (which I expected from the beginning :/), or bump up my pay by at least 33% because then I'm actually a senior, not a junior. I didn't want to bring it up because I wasn't sure, but yes, it did sound a lot to me like the typical "Confident male = a go getter, Confident female = aggressive bitch" double standard. Don't up and quit though, try to just grin and bear it until you have something lined up. Then you can be all smiles when you resign because "it's the opportunity of a lifetime" or however you want to spin it, but then it's on your terms, and they have to beg you to finish things.
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Sep 6, 2015 15:59
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Pollyanna posted:I have another weekly one-on-one later, but it's going to feel a bit more like an exit interview. I can tell you that if their response to my point about being a junior given the responsibilities of a senior is "well maybe we should reduce your pay", that's the nail in the coffin. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
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Sep 6, 2015 16:16
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True. On the one hand, I genuinely mean to improve relations, but on the other, it's just not worth it. I wouldn't bring up the double standard bit unless there's no other option. I'd approach this from the junior vs. senior employee POV first and foremost.
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Sep 6, 2015 16:34
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Pollyanna posted:True. On the one hand, I genuinely mean to improve relations, but on the other, it's just not worth it. There is no point in telling them anything constructive. You're leaving, the question is when. You what it to be on your terms, not theirs. Your job now is to do what is in your best interests, not theirs.
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Sep 6, 2015 17:00
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Edit: You know, I don't know. But don't go thinking they're treating you sexistly. If you're down the path to getting fired it's not because they're sexists. It's not productive to think that when it's really because you're not pulling your weight. sarehu fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Sep 6, 2015 |
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Sep 6, 2015 22:53
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sarehu posted:typically harsh sarehu goonsay Have you actually reviewed Pollyanna's code? Without doing that, I don't see how you can make such a judgement (aside from you just being you). Edit: yeah, nice retraction there. pretty harsh, even for you.
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Sep 6, 2015 23:09
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Pollyanna posted:And I'm probably going to be told that I'm lazy and irresponsible and I kinda expect that because goons, but I do genuinely want to get better at my job, so I'd like a serious answer on how to improve. Go for things, but run them by people, succinctly and without wasting their time before you go too deep. Don't ask what to do, come up with what you're going to do, and then run it by your coworkers. Do not go into a meeting with this junior/senior developer nonsense. Oh, hell no, nobody's gonna want to listen to that.
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Sep 6, 2015 23:32
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I didn't see what he posted, but I could be the best coder in the world and sarehu will still be an assumptive cock. Either way, I'm not free of fault - I let a deadline slip last week when I was taking up a ticket from someone who was out that day, and I've rested my eyes for a few minutes on the company hammock before (startups don't like people resting). It's perfectly possible that they're actually pissed over that, but it doesn't seem to be the issue at hand according to the feedback I've gotten. Which reminds me:sarehu posted:If you're down the path to getting fired it's not because they're sexists. It's not productive to think that when it's really because you're not pulling your weight. Do you actually know what the issue is here? Seriously asking, I'd love an easy and simple answer to this, and having a mind-reader on my team would be super helpful. sarehu posted:Go for things, but run them by people, succinctly and without wasting their time before you go too deep. Don't ask what to do, come up with what you're going to do, and then run it by your coworkers. I've done exactly what you suggested and it was part of the "I don't want to have to baby you" feedback examples, so nope, that's not it. quote:Do not go into a meeting with this junior/senior developer nonsense. Oh, hell no, nobody's gonna want to listen to that. Humor me. Why is this? Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Sep 6, 2015 |
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Sep 6, 2015 23:34
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Pollyanna posted:Do you actually know what the issue is here? Seriously asking, I'd love an easy and simple answer to this, and having a mind-reader on my team would be super helpful. What the issue actually is is irrelevant, because I made a conditional statement -- that if they're actually going down the path to you getting fired, if that's what's going on, it's not because of sexism making them judge your contributions more harshly. Unconscious biases and unequal reactions don't drag things down that far. Pollyanna posted:Humor me. Why is this? It won't help you get what you want, and it'll alienate you from your boss.
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Sep 7, 2015 00:00
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Pollyanna posted:Do you actually know what the issue is here? Seriously asking, I'd love an easy and simple answer to this, and having a mind-reader on my team would be super helpful. He doesn't know, he just comes in here and shits all over the place whenever he feels bad about his life. You're the only person that can know the real issue, you've been there. None of us have. I think you're probably spot on in that they are just crap at actually teaching people things, and just expect to hire people who already know exactly the things they want them to know. Teaching people isn't easy, but they don't want to accept that they hosed up handling a more junior person, so they put the blame on you. It doesn't even need to be a mustache twirling villain, just someone unable to face their own inadequacies. However, regardless of the reasons, your next steps are the same: find another place to work. You need to put your energy into doing something productive, not mourning the loss of the job you think you had 6 months ago, and definitely not listening to anything sarehu says.
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Sep 7, 2015 00:25
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honestly you're a junior engineer. being a junior-analyst i had several people holding my hand. i know what they teach engineers, and it's not something you can expect having fully applied in any given environment right off the bat. that takes time and experience. don't feel bad about this job. i wouldn't even take it as work experience, because it sounds like a lovely environment overall, even if you don't have a senior engineer around to help you out and hold your own hand. just start looking somewhere else, where junior engineers are actually sought and valued.
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Sep 7, 2015 00:56
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6 mo hops are nothing. How well you interview and why you did what you did is what matters. That is, how you explain it, of course. What really happened doesn't matter. Just make sure you have another worker bee there who can be a reference for you if at all possible. Seriously, nobody is going to care in this industry. I've done quick stints for a few years now and I have no problems getting interviews or offers.
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Sep 7, 2015 06:15
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Pollyanna posted:Humor me. Why is this? Your best bet is to start looking for ways to be proactive in getting more direction from your manager. For example you could try setting simple achievable, measurable goals that you can tick off between your one-on-ones, and discuss them with him. In your next one-on-one pick something negative he says, tell him you'd like to improve on that you'll track how you go over the next week, then update him in the next meeting. You'll either come to the following meetings with "I've taken your advice and done X since last time and everyone is happy" to combat the negatives, or you can come back with "Okay this week I tried to do X but I still had problems/you weren't happy, this is why I struggled, what can I do differently over this next week to improve?" and you might get some actual guidance. If that doesn't work, try something else. Keep trying things even if it seems futile (and write down what you've tried and how each one goes). It might not work at all, but when you do interview at another place and tell them you aren't getting the guidance you need you can talk about these positive steps you've taken and how they haven't worked out which should reassure them that it wasn't you that was the problem.
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Sep 7, 2015 17:21
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I won't bring it up. For now, it's disaster management and evaluating other opportunities I have. I definitely will make a point of simply not being the right fit for the position and having had trouble getting guidance from them and implementing their suggestions. Destroyenator posted:Your best bet is to start looking for ways to be proactive in getting more direction from your manager. For example you could try setting simple achievable, measurable goals that you can tick off between your one-on-ones, and discuss them with him. In your next one-on-one pick something negative he says, tell him you'd like to improve on that you'll track how you go over the next week, then update him in the next meeting. You'll either come to the following meetings with "I've taken your advice and done X since last time and everyone is happy" to combat the negatives, or you can come back with "Okay this week I tried to do X but I still had problems/you weren't happy, this is why I struggled, what can I do differently over this next week to improve?" and you might get some actual guidance. This is already happening. Each one-on-one, I type up notes and highlight what my weaknesses are/where I can improve myself. It's from comparing my weekly notes and reports that I noticed the pattern of conflicting messages. I always ask "how can I improve" and take it seriously, although I'm always extremely nervous and anxious during these one-on-ones. One thing I haven't said is "here's what I did and you still weren't happy", which I avoided because it sounded too accusatory, as well as "here's what I did and everyone's happy", which I just haven't brought up.I'm not going to just check out and stop trying to improve myself/get along with my manager, but I'm certainly not going to pretend that there isn't a chance of this ending predictably. I just hope I can end on a high note.
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Sep 7, 2015 19:20
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Cool, it sounds like you've got it under control. The "you weren't happy" was because I don't know what feedback you're actually getting, it does sound a bit accusatory like that. I suggested measurable goals so you can tell him upfront that you'll be aiming to fill them over the next week because it makes it easier to raise those things later. It goes from "Here's a grab bag of things that happened this week that went well/poorly" to "I'm going to aim to achieve this in the coming week" and "Here's how I went on the measures we picked last week". He should be involved in setting the goals and reviewing them, it doesn't need to be a formal thing but it's how you'll hopefully move him into giving you some concrete guidance. It probably won't save the situation but it also gives you something to talk about in interviews. People are (usually) aware that juniors need support you just want to be able to reassure them that you really were given nothing, not that you had support but couldn't manage without over and above handholding. If you're struggling with nervousness plan out ahead of time what you want to get out of the meeting. Take a short list of things you want to discuss and cross them off as you go, it makes it easy to introduce new ideas/questions when there's a gap in conversation and it's a obvious signal to him that you've got a set of things to talk about and you'll be able to cover them all.
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Sep 7, 2015 20:02
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