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that is a good way of thinking about sales/development oriented roles. you are responsible for results that fundamentally, no matter what you do, are not fully within your control
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Aug 13, 2019 22:57
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:that is a good way of thinking about sales/development oriented roles. you are responsible for results that fundamentally, no matter what you do, are not fully within your control This makes me a bit concerned as I do have a real need for control over my results and can get pretty anxious and disappointed when outcomes don't match the work I put in. That said, as I get older I am more comfortable with mixed scenarios where half the outcome is down to me and half isn't. Which is why the expectations of development frustrate me: while you do have great control over outcomes, it's not total despite non technical people thinking it is. In my current role, for example, I service both internal and external products: these two workstreams can often intrude on each other and cause unexpected delays (generally client work slowing down internal development). Then there are normal development uncertainties like testing multiple hypotheses for a bug and taking all day to find a solution when it turned out to be something simple. The only way to control for these as an individual developer is to pull unpaid overtime. At least in sales, there's a general understanding that chaos and externalities play a role (barring "the leads are weak? you're weak" type management): in development, the expectation is that work will play out rationally and mechanistically, which is not always realistic and at least for me, can make me feel a bit like a tool on a production line. E: I am considering taking a break to teach & freelance abroad as a super trendy digital nomad, and then jumping back into sales if that doesn't work out or just being self employed if it does. Purple Prince fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Aug 14, 2019 |
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Aug 14, 2019 11:29
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i am keying off of one little statement in your whole post so forgive me if i'm overstating your aversion, but if you do not like working unpaid overtime, sales and business development is 100% not for you
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Aug 14, 2019 17:37
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:i am keying off of one little statement in your whole post so forgive me if i'm overstating your aversion, but if you do not like working unpaid overtime, sales and business development is 100% not for you Or teaching.
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Aug 14, 2019 18:01
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Or being salaried, really. I’m not sure who teaching is for, these days.
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Aug 14, 2019 19:34
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yeah fair enough on the teaching the thing with sales/bd is that you are really the arbiter of this stuff directly and you will somehow force yourself to do even more work which is worse than if someone else makes you do it imo like you look back and are thinking about poo poo that you missed or canceled and it's gently caress man, i did that to myself.
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Aug 14, 2019 21:08
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Yeah I don’t envy people in that line of work at all. I mean I’m still antisocial but I don’t even have a good excuse like that.
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Aug 14, 2019 22:22
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REMEMBER SPONGE MONKEYS posted:Or being salaried, really. Some one just said “those who can’t, teach” Actually I do have a lot of teacher friends, but they’re mostly a family affair (ie their parents and grandparents and great grandparents all did it) and exclusively private school. I have one friend who did two years private and switched to charter and is lovin’ it. He’s one of the family trade guys I just mentioned, though.
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Aug 14, 2019 23:55
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My SO loves her teaching job, but she's a huge nerd and gets to teach her favorite subjects at an all girl's private school. Most people aren't that lucky, myself included.
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Aug 15, 2019 00:19
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:yeah fair enough on the teaching I already do this with freelancing, albeit I can just bill for the extra time I spent on it. Quantity of work isn't really my issue, it's the control I have over it. Ideally I'd be looking for work with a sales commission so overtime wouldn't exactly be "unpaid". On teaching: TEFL in the place I'm looking at in Asia pays about the same as my developer salary but cost of living is much lower, so I would actually be better off financially. I have friends who lecture for a living and I wouldn't go in for that: one of them spent the last year playing politics in an attempt to get a permanent position.
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Aug 15, 2019 08:17
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Look into Product/Project Management if the nomad lifestyle doesn't pan out but you're still hesitant to jump into hardcore sales. It's a nice mix of internal/external communications, strategy, managing expectations, and coordinating stakeholders. Technical skills and first-hand understanding of the dev process are a huge plus as well. That said, if you have 0 communications experience to show, it might be hard to land a comfortable gig at a real company right off the bat. But if you're willing to sacrifice 1 year of life for sales (or even a customer success role, but you'd probably be looking at a paycut), afterwards I think your resume will be in a pretty good spot. You'll be able to tell a convincing story about being cross-functional, etc. Bonus longshot option: if you can target companies that do exactly the kind of work you do now, you might be able to land an Account Manager/Account Executive role right off the bat. It's a bit more comfortable if you don't have lead generation responsibilities. Usually these positions require you to do 1 year or so of biz dev and then get promoted from within, but it's not completely unheard of to get into it straight from a non-client-facing role. You'd basically have to show them that: 1) you already know the ins-and-outs of the technology, WHY people buy it, and can hit the ground running 2) you're not a goon with bad judgement and can handle delicate situations 3) you've at least done your homework about sales and understand the core aspects For #3 you can check out Steli from close.io, maybe look into Sandler sales training (hint: you can find this stuff for free, also personally I think some of it is a bit outdated, but Fortune 500s have been built pretty much entirely on it, and the core concepts are still solid), and if you're into podcasts, I'd say The Advanced Selling Podcast and The Salesman Podcast are worth checking out. Understand what a pipeline is, what prospecting is, the differences between a prospect, a lead, a customer, what is a sales cycle. Learn to work backwards in terms of numbers and get some basics about business principles down (what is the average amount of cash a company brings in from one deal? what is the average close rate? how many deals do I need to close/how much revenue do I need to generate to cover my salary and then some? how many leads will I need to make those numbers?). What is upselling? What is nurturing? Understand how to structure and control a sales conversation. What is rapport? What is a USP? What is the difference between positioning and messaging? Understand at least the bare basics of what makes for a good vs. a bad cold call, even if you find a position where you never have to make them at all. If you go through all that on your own and can hold a semi-coherent conversation with a VP of Sales, you stand a good chance. That said, doing is always > studying in terms of how fast you learn. Oh, and avoid anything from Grant Cardone like the plague. That guy is full of poo poo, and you'll get BTFO'd by any serious software firm if you pull his "tactics". Bonus bonus: I don't know anything about actual teaching, but maybe it's also worth trying your luck as an instructor at a coding boot camp. Heard those guys clean up, can't testify first-hand though. Lol, nth edit: you mentioned you freelance - how do you get clients currently? Depending on the answer, that actually demonstrates pretty good communications acumen, so you could skip all the sales bullshit and gun straight for a decent PM-style role. lite frisk fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Aug 16, 2019 |
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Aug 16, 2019 05:14
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^^^this is $200/hr advice.
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Aug 16, 2019 13:47
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Lockback posted:^^^this is $200/hr advice.
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Aug 16, 2019 13:57
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Maine's techhire (where I am) just downgraded its IT training assistance from individualized, paid training to non-personalized, university bootcamp. Last week. The local head told me that he doesn't know what my TOSCA certificate (for advanced automation software) even is and said I'm not eligible for hiring if I don't have a computer science degree or prior work experience. Should I trust the services of an IT bootcamp if it's grant funds are due to run out within a year?
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Aug 17, 2019 00:27
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Looking for opinions from internet strangers on a possible radical career change. So, I've been working as a paralegal/legal secretary for close to five years now. I have an okayish paying job working for lawyers who aren't as short tempered or stressed out as most and the job itself is fairly mindless beyond figuring out how to organize things efficiently. I'm both bored and worried that a sophisticated enough AI might take my job someday, plus I'd like to make more money. It seems that the pay ceiling is about 90-100k if I work in a high-stress sweatshop where you have to edit and file motions for summary judgment at less than an hour's notice with no help and live in the Bay Area or NYC. The wife and I want to both start a family and move to an area with a lower cost of living that's closer to her parents. The average pay for secretaries and paralegals around there is about $15 an hour. I've been thinking about learning a trade, although I'm not sure which one. Perhaps either electric or HVAC related work (wife's parents live in the South and I imagine there's plenty of work in the latter). Everyone I've talked to says its a bad idea because I'm "too bookish" and would be a really bad culture fit (which I think is dumb and kind of classist), and suggest I try teaching instead (lol). They also say your body gets worn out fast and that once you retire you'll basically sit down in a chair and die. I've thought about becoming a programmer, but reddit says boot camps are a waste of time and money and you need a CS degree to be any good. I already have lots of student loan debt from private undergraduate college and an unfunded master's degree, so I feel that door is closed for me right now. That said, if we move near my in-laws, we'd have the entire upper floor at their house once we arrive to get organized, find jobs, and even go back to school for a little bit if necessary, so I could probably do a simple certification program. Should I just remember that the grass is always greener and soldier on in my comfortable but unfulfilling profession, or would a career change be a good idea? ProperGanderPusher fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Aug 17, 2019 |
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Aug 17, 2019 20:12
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Do you actually like programming, ProperGanderPusher? Do you do it in your spare time and contribute to open source stuff etc? If so you should do it at a cheap college even though you have debt. It'll be worth it in the end. If you've never touched a line of code, you probably aren't interested enough to make it work. If not code, the skilled trade sounds good. If you are a bookish guy you'll probably want to eventually move into management or teaching the trade, rather than grinding your body down to a nub doing the practical part of the job forever.
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Aug 17, 2019 23:55
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BarbarianElephant posted:Do you actually like programming, ProperGanderPusher? Do you do it in your spare time and contribute to open source stuff etc? If so you should do it at a cheap college even though you have debt. It'll be worth it in the end. If you've never touched a line of code, you probably aren't interested enough to make it work. No and no. I messed around on a Python info program a while back. It wasn't too difficult, but I don't have an ounce of passion for it and it would be a struggle to stay engaged. I would be doing it 100% for the money. That's another big reason I've been hesitant to go down that route.
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Aug 18, 2019 00:25
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ProperGanderPusher posted:No and no. I messed around on a Python info program a while back. It wasn't too difficult, but I don't have an ounce of passion for it and it would be a struggle to stay engaged. I would be doing it 100% for the money. That's another big reason I've been hesitant to go down that route. Absolutely do not do code, then. It's all about being the kind of person who can happily write near-identical for-each loops 8 hours a day every day. You will burn out quickly from sheer boredom.
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Aug 18, 2019 00:29
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Code boot camps aren't useless but if you have no passion for it at all it's probably not what you want to do. Do you have a degree in anything currently?
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Aug 18, 2019 00:38
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Lockback posted:Code boot camps aren't useless but if you have no passion for it at all it's probably not what you want to do. Do you have a degree in anything currently? MA in History. I foolishly tried to break into academia but decided I didn't want to make minimum wage as an adjunct for ten years in the hopes of *maybe* landing a tenure track position. I've given teaching some thought, but nearly all the actual teachers I've talked to have tried to talk me out of it due to all the bullshit they have to put up with on the part of administration and parents. And a lawyer is the last thing I want to be so taking that route with my legal experience is sort of a non-starter too. I'm a bit stuck at the moment and I figure that a job that doesn't have a high cost of entry, is more or less recession proof, eventually pays good, and will allow me to do more than sit on my rear end in front of a computer all day might be a good fit.
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Aug 18, 2019 01:34
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Sup MA history buddy. Best thing for me has been to get in somewhere and show them what you can do (which is at least work your rear end off). If you get with a manager who sees you have half a brain and are worth a drat, that could be your ticket to stability (and management). Doing a trade for a bit would give you subject matter expertise which is huge as a manager, IMO. Government still likes degrees too, if that’s worth anything.
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Aug 18, 2019 01:47
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I work for a company that was recently bought out by a much larger company. I was hired with the title senior analyst under the premise that the job would evolve and so too would by title. I do data science and meet the defintion of that work as described by the Burtch Works report. My salary is higher than my phd stipend, but it could easily be ~40k higher. I mentioned this to my boss in April and he said he'd look into it. I'm going to bring it up again after I return from a trip. However I have two choices I'm looking at right now: 1) stay with company and try to take advantage of the purchase -- the company is reorganizing a bit and I might be able to use that to my advantage. Not sure yet. It seems difficult to make any headway in that direction. 2) apply to a different company that is hiring a senior data scientist for similar work. This company is also a client of ours, however. I do not have any explicit non-competes, however our handbook advises us to consult with HR prior to taking employment where there may be conflicts of interest. Option 2 comes with added bonuses -- the company I'm considering has more vacation, additional sick leave, tends to pay more, and I could commute to work by bike or bus with ease. Not only am I looking at what will likely be a big salary bump, but I wouldn't have to replace a car that's on its last legs. My big concern is if something like that handbook could come back to bite me in the rear end. I don't have any explicit non-competes, but I do have a non-disclosure. Any thoughts on that? If jobs with this company are truly off limits, that basically forces me to move as we do not have many data science positions in my city. Any tips on negotiating option 1? I feel like my boss is silo'ing me from the big conversations, and I do not feel like he has the best command on what is possible for machine learning applications in our organization.
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Aug 18, 2019 23:29
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If those are your only two options in your current city, you need to think pretty hard about moving. In the meantime, you could run into issues taking a job at this other company, but you shouldn't let that prevent you from applying.
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Aug 18, 2019 23:38
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Option 1 is bad, option 2 is potentially (likely) fine. The conversation you want to have is with a lawyer though, not your company’s hr department.
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Aug 18, 2019 23:49
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Never ecer ‘consult’ your HR department. They are there to take care of your companies interests, not yours. They will actively screw you over for the slightest of gains, or just to spite you or set an example.
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Aug 19, 2019 07:02
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ProperGanderPusher posted:No and no. I messed around on a Python info program a while back. It wasn't too difficult, but I don't have an ounce of passion for it and it would be a struggle to stay engaged. I would be doing it 100% for the money. That's another big reason I've been hesitant to go down that route. What kinds of things interest you then? I don't mean subjects, per se; I mean activities. Do you like working with people? In what capacity? Do you like working with your hands? Do you like solving problems? Do you like puzzles? Are you analytical? Are you emotionally engaged? Do you like to coach/mentor people? Do you want to never see another human face? Basically, what kinds of things do you want to spend 8 hours a day doing?
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Aug 19, 2019 14:29
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KillHour posted:What kinds of things interest you then? I don't mean subjects, per se; I mean activities. Do you like working with people? In what capacity? Do you like working with your hands? Do you like solving problems? Do you like puzzles? Are you analytical? Are you emotionally engaged? Do you like to coach/mentor people? Do you want to never see another human face? Learning and sharing what I’ve learned (i.e. teaching) are my two passions and it would be fun to teach for a living if the American public educational system wasn’t a miserable broken dumpster fire and if pay for teachers wasn’t insulting. If given a choice between touching a computer all day and being on my feet interacting with people and maybe even going outside now and then, I’d lean towards the latter, which is a reason I’m looking into trades even if fiddling with wires and meters all day sounds only mildly interesting to me at best. I don’t do well in roles prone to frequent “fire drills” where good work is expected in very short timespan at no notice *or else* (quite common in certain kinds of law). Does that give you a good picture?
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Aug 19, 2019 19:18
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do not become a tech of any kind you are like the polar opposite of the good profile
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Aug 19, 2019 19:20
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Yeah. You're not going to engage with anybody installing HVAC for a living. Maybe look into HR or corporate training. I was a technical trainer for 3 years and the pay was great (~100k) and I loved (most of) my students. LOTS of travel, though. Depending on what kinds of legal work you did, there's probably a way to leverage that in some sort of consulting capacity.
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Aug 19, 2019 21:42
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I think you need to prioritize what you want and figure out what you can compromise on. Because so far your requirements seem to be: High paying Interacting with people Low barrier of entry Not being in an office Recession proof Low stress (in terms of sudden deadlines) I'm not sure that job exists, and honestly it seems a little bit like you're kinda lurching from one idea to another. I think you need to decide what things are really important and be ready to have to deal with some things not being ideal. Maybe practice some coding exercises online and see if you can hack it and just live with an office job. Or pursue something sales related and deal with the stress. Or suck it up and go back to school for something. But you'll probably need to prioritize to figure out the great path.
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Aug 19, 2019 22:37
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You could win the lottery. 
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Aug 19, 2019 22:49
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Lockback posted:High paying Kidding aside, KillHour's suggestion of corporate trainer seems to check the most boxes. Although, you'd be at 80% travel and corporate training is the first thing companies cut in recessions.
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Aug 19, 2019 23:02
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Dik Hz posted:Evangelical preacher/cult leader? I’ll definitely look into it. I realize I’ll have to prioritize in regards to what I want, but I thought I’d throw everything out there and see why my options were and whether my passion for teaching could be fulfilled anywhere (looks like the answer is “maybe” rather than “no”).
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Aug 19, 2019 23:42
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Dik Hz posted:Evangelical preacher/cult leader? Why kid when this is still a real thing. Lockback posted:High paying quote:Interacting with people quote:Low barrier of entry quote:Not being in an office quote:Recession proof quote:Low stress (in terms of sudden deadlines)
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Aug 20, 2019 00:07
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ProperGanderPusher posted:I’ll definitely look into it. I realize I’ll have to prioritize in regards to what I want, but I thought I’d throw everything out there and see why my options were and whether my passion for teaching could be fulfilled anywhere (looks like the answer is “maybe” rather than “no”). If you know that you have a passion for teaching you should be investigating teaching as a career. There's always the option of learning HVAC installation, doing it as long as you can bear, then teaching it!
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Aug 20, 2019 00:19
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People who are good at hands on technical roles generally like problem solving, not learning in the traditional sense, and if you are not good at coming up with a good solution under pressure it just is not for you.
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Aug 20, 2019 03:27
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I have moved to the UK-London to continue my career in Quality Assurance (construction, materials, transportation projects etc.) but having a hard time to break into the industry right now. I was looking for something that might make me more employable in the IT sector and came across the idea of maybe moving to Software QA. My ex-gf is in IT/software and she pretty much said it's not possible without a degree/background in IT first but I wanted to ask some other people in general. I've tried googling things but it didn't answer much besides "lol, get rekt gramps" (I'm 38). I mean, I'm not sure how the principles of Quality Assurance (mainly ISO systems) apply to the software QA but at least it would give me an idea before I put time and effort into that. I mean, I prefer keep doing what I did for the last 11 years but if the entry-level jobs for that are paying same or more than mid-level construction industry jobs, why not? Galewolf fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Sep 2, 2019 |
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Sep 2, 2019 16:55
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You might face a bit of a challenge here as the kind of organisations that care about software QA to the extent they implement ISO specifications tend to be companies making big enterprise software or mission-critical systems (think: defence). These same organisations are the most likely to use IT/computer science degrees as an easy way to screen talent. ISO standards in computing are also often implemented as part of standard or commonly used libraries. There's also some challenges with QA roles nowadays in that a fair number of organisations have shifted towards DevOps, which means that there may well not be a QA team that's different to the development team. Both of those factors militate against getting hired as a QA person who isn't also an engineer in the majority of companies. If you can find QA work in industries that are both software heavy and do a lot of safety critical work, on the other hand, you might have more luck. Think defence, automobiles, energy, industry, aerospace etc. Those might also allow you to make use of your previous experience in the construction industry. However, they're also quite likely to be based outside London. Finance might also be worth a shot as it's a heavily regulated space. I see these roles come up from time to time in my own job searches and they always make me feel like a hack for working in an industry with relatively relaxed QA standards.
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Sep 2, 2019 18:35
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QA is all about building automation testing and understanding your release pipeline. You absolutely can get into it at 38 but it's a whole new set of skills. To be a QA engineer you'll need: 1. Have some experience with Selenium or other automation tools. 2. Have some proficiency in the programming language the company is using. You don't need Dev-level but you'll need to be able to show off a Javascript application or something 3. Some level of DB querying. SQL is a nice start, but learning Mongo or some other NoSQL is also important. 4. Be able to communicate and write something well. Your previous experience on this will probably be good. 5. Understand and have some experience with AGILE methodology ISO systems aren't going to come into play at most software companies, though being able to write a good process always helps. Basically, coming from a materials QA you don't have much of a headstart on software QA. If you want to break into the software world, start learning some languages and see where that takes you, but don't let the name QA fool you too much, it's a very different beast.
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Sep 3, 2019 16:33
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okay now i'm in a bit of a pickle and i could use some advice FINALLY, after four months of it being discussed, i'm being put in charge of my own department. we're off-site from the rest of the company, so i'll be overseeing everything there and reporting it to my boss and delivering poo poo at the end of the week problem is, we haven't actually discussed my position changing or my pay structure changing. i work in data entry and currently i get a base hourly rate of 17.50 + a bonus based on number of results in a week (starting at 1200 and then i think it's $.50/lead). I've (secretly) automated my job almost entirely, which means my weekly results numbers are absurdly high, to the point where I think my biweekly hourly net was like $1050 and my bonus was $1600, which gives me a net of 2650. I have no issues with this, especially considering I can basically do it with no effort while I'm doing other poo poo. Problem is, when I start managing I'm going to be getting less leads out in a week (probably). So I need to talk with my boss and HR to figure out how we're going to adjust my pay. I have a suspicion he doesn't actually know my job description, because he's basically left all of this to me to figure out by myself, and I suspect he has no idea what I actually do or how much I make weekly. I'm worried if I bring this to them they're going to give me a "raise" that's going to end up making me less per week than what I'm making now. What's the best way to go about this? I figured my best bet is to write up something describing my job day-to-day, the hourly breakdown of what I'm actually DOING, and my current pay system, and then a second document describing my (presumed) updated day-to-day and hourly breakdown when I'll be managing people. On average, if you combine my hourly rate with my usual bonus, I make like 33/hr. I do not think they'll offer me that, I have a suspicion that's significantly higher than what they intend. On the other hand, I've been the only one doing the job and I feel like I deserve adequate compensation for what I've done so far. It's also my own software that we're using. I feel like something like $22/hr + a bonus starting from 2000 instead of 1200 + a % of what the guys under me make as a bonus, although that's hard to calculate because i don't know how efficient they'll actually be napkin math puts that at a net of 2700, which would be $50 more than what I make right now. I have a suspicion I'm just NOT going to get an offer that's equivalent to what I'm making now by volume, and I have no idea how to approach this. I suppose I could just turn down the promotion entirely and they can find someone else to manage everyone and I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.
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Sep 3, 2019 18:12
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