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Career advice/politics advice needed. (warning: ranty and long) I'm on a 4 dev team that produces POCs (read: vaporware). Our development is driven by fleeting demo opportunities our boss gains. (removed the rest of this, I can probably be identified from it) There are three other developers, one of which is team lead. He works remotely 99% of the time while being unresponsive to inquiries/discussion. My boss frequently sends passive aggressive e-mails to the team about being in the office, to no effect. I think working remotely is preferable, but it's pointless if your average response time to a casual Slack message is 8-24 hours. My boss complains about him to me, which puts me in an awkward position, but I just laugh it off, as I have no interest in NARCing out fellow laborers. The real disappointment here is that he knows his poo poo, and I was excited to learn from him after we chatted during our interview after the grilling. It feels like a bait and switch, but I think my boss is to blame, and I am the one that loses. My boss favors me because he thinks I am well spoken and am not the "average developer that hides in a corner closing tickets". Thus, my boss leans on me heavily to meet with stakeholders, extract requirements, form stories, delegate tasks, and do most of the heavy lifting in regards to features and core functionality. These responsibilities weren't suddenly hoisted upon me - the team was so dysfunctional early on that I routinely pointed out how lovely the processes were / lack of processes were and began trying to establish sane procedures. The others may have little on their plate, and my work load is max capacity, but when more work comes down the pipeline, I'm the pointman. If our team needs to be represented somewhere, my boss flies me out (the others remain comfortable at home). I have to demo to technical and non-technical internal and external stake holders and prospective audiences. I have to read up on our strategy, the audience's strategy, and tie the value of our POC to their need we are trying to secure a contract to solve. The interesting part of the work, the actual development of the solution, gets off-shored to an execution team, and we are minimally involved beyond ink to paper. When I try to give any pushback, my boss becomes passive aggressive and vaguely threatening about how my goals need to align with his and my skip level's. This happened specifically when I questioned the value in flying out to an internal sales meeting to run a demo booth with completely static visualizations that show "what is possible in the future". I said this won't possibly increase our revenue and is a waste of my time otherwise. Fly some business strategist out, or better yet, fly no one out. He conceded and sent out someone else, but for at least a month afterward he referred to my "lack of enthusiasm" and asked if everything was going okay with me, as I seemed to "have my nose buried in development", and didn't have as positive a demeanor. A couple of weeks later, I had a sudden death in the family on a Thursday night, and I e-mailed in saying that I would miss part of next week due to attending the funeral and grief. My boss initially told me to take as much time as needed - then on Sunday night, text messaged me about the pressures of an upcoming project, and that he needed me as soon as possible, but he didn't want to impose upon me, but also there is a lot of pressure and a lot of eyeballs on this project. So I returned on Tuesday. The next week, I was walking through the hallway and passed him, and he suddenly blurted out "Don't be TOO enthusiastic now!", because I wasn't walking around with a plastic smile fixed to my face. This isn't what I wanted when I joined this team, and I'm not sure how this can be fixed without leaving. This may be my fault in not giving enough pushback early enough, or in not asking the right questions during the interview. I don't know! I was sold on this job as an opportunity to work on " innovative" "greenfield applications" (your alarms are probably going off if you're more experienced than I was a year ago). The dilemma began early on, when I identified the team's greatest need being compelling data visualizations. After my first couple of demos, my boss was impressed with my work, and it helped us secure revenue and began driving our teams flywheel. My responsibility after this initial success has dramatically snowballed, and my reward includes expectations in delegating, attending meetings, demoing, high pressure. I am basically experiencing the slowly boiled frog dilemma, featuring quasi de facto manager duties and team lead duties not reflected in authority or pay, and I am also way too inexperienced to be doing this poo poo. To top it off, I regularly receive high praises in informal 1x1 reviews. But I have not and will not receive a formal review that is shared with me, and my merit raise this year was 2% with little explanation. There is no incentive for me to be performing at this level. And if I ask for a title change and/or pay increase to reflect my duties, I will be driven even further into a world of which I want no part, and will be doing less development and more flying. I want to avoid experiencing this situation again. Something similar happened in my first job - after a few months, the team lead leaned more and more heavily on me and ended up deferring to me, creating a situation in which I was the least experienced on the team but was essentially the de facto team lead, having way too much visibility and impact for someone not very confident in their skills and whose main goal is to learn. The mistake I made when accepting my current job was that I was desperate to leave the first job - I was underpaid, and ended up doubling my salary when I accepted my current position. I can be a bit more discerning now as the financial incentive to switch is low. However, the urge to escape is high - I desperately want out. My career goals are exclusively focused on being a developer. I do not want employees under me. I do not want to be involved in the business beyond development, even if I'm viewed as capable. I want to learn the domain, contribute effectively by building poo poo that matters, and move on after I've mastered what there is to learn in a particular role. My greatest desire is to work with someone who could provide me real mentorship. I also want more focus on microservices / GraphQL layer development / build automation ("devops") . I think my main mistake with my first jobs was in accepting positions with companies that are not tech companies. I would gladly accept a pay cut and work somewhere with a better culture and with mentors who give a poo poo. Unfortunately, I haven't been networking, as my current job exhausts my attention span and motivation. Given my lack of mentors and experienced people I trust, I turn to you for advice. Should I stay here for another year and give my boss more pushback, knowing that the market is hot and the consequences for me won't be very severe? Should I brush up on CTCI and hit the job boards? Should I slowly fade in my current position and start going to meet-ups and network my way into a job without the dehumanizing experience of endless take-home assignments, smug pedants and smoke and mirrors? Is my job experience common and will happen anywhere I go in this field? Help, I just want to build cool poo poo and go home at the end of the day! biceps crimes fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Apr 14, 2017 |
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Apr 14, 2017 22:28
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Thanks everyonevonnegutt posted:You might want to try to pick nonresponsive's brain and see if he's experienced similar - I could see burnout doing that to a person. He's friendly enough on a personal level but is completely avoidant about our situation at work. He's less willing to tow the line and participates minimally. My boss has shared with me (without solicitation/prompting from me) that the dev lead offers him critical feedback in 1x1s, and that he has expressed concern about the praise our boss heaps on me openly. And I agree. Our boss' open praise of me pits the rest of the team against me and is not an effective motivator. Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:Apply to Facebook? You sound like the kind of person who could thrive here, and our dev track explicitly does not eventually require a transition into management. fantastic in plastic posted:Find something else and leave. You're dealing with a passive-aggressive person; he won't fire you but he also won't fix the situation. The only way to "solve" it in any conclusive way is to persuade your skip-level to fire him and replace him with you, and it sounds like you don't want to go down that road. I'm able to communicate relatively well, but I am introverted and value my alone time. Which doesn't help in being trapped in unwanted roles. I do some volunteering regularly (not tech related) but may need to scale back that commitment to focus on course correcting my career. Che Delilas posted:As for avoiding the situation again, well, it's a numbers game and you've had bad luck a couple times in a row, is all. The best you can really do is take what you hate about your current and last job, and try really hard to find hints of the same nonsense in future employers during interviews. Not easy. But that's one of the reasons interview advice always includes "ask questions." Questions about the last time someone got promoted or took a vacation, questions about their process and tools, questions about their work environment. If they have products, find out about them (usually research on your own time is the best here, but a deeper question or two to the interviewers won't hurt). I suppose my next course of action is to brush up on my interviewing skills, start applying and putting out feelers, and maybe even go to some meet-ups. I do feel opportunistic appearing at meet-ups only when I'm job hunting, which is a habit I should probably permanently change.
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Apr 16, 2017 02:13
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dantheman650 posted:Any good D3 tutorial recommendations? Going to need it for a new position I just started. Previous recommendations are good. My current role leans on D3 pretty heavily and I didn't have much experience with it before hand. There's a lot of information out there as far as medium articles and tutorials are concerned. I recommend reading Jim Vallandingham's posts. Specifically, Abusing the force was a useful overview of the force module (useful for network visualizations and "bubble" abstractions). There are also Over 1000 d3 js examples and demos, though there's a big of repetition here. Good for inspiration though. Implementing D3 effectively requires UX chops that enable you to display data in a compelling way while avoiding antipatterns, but recommendations for that are probably outside of what you were seeking out?
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Apr 20, 2017 07:12
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So I started my current position a year ago. I've busted my tail for a year, said yes to every inane request from my boss, flew to every demo we had and useless event we had (useless to me because there aren't other developers and I am being a discount product director). Received stellar casual feedback from my boss. He tells me I am the top performer and the back bone of the team and that I have a terrific attitude and drive. That I am the missing piece on his team that he's spent years looking for. Annual raise time, I get a 2% raise because "company performance". A week after during a quarterly financial performance town hall, we're all told our company, and more specifically, the unit I am in, has had a stellar year of growth. I didn't give any pushback in the review, since I knew that it would be pointless. The review didn't even touch on anything about my performance. Bullshit corporate doublespeak. Well now I am trying to hang back, and avoid being the point man for traveling and generally bushy tailed bright eyed sucker, and my boss is being passive aggressive. The rest of my team is generally unresponsive, slow working, come in at 10 and leave at 5, and my boss is generally passive aggressive towards them too. I'm pretty sure everyone gets 2% raises every year. I've been doing some interview prep during hours and am generally trying to set my sights on bigger and better places where I know that bullshit raises and incentivized mediocrity are not the status quo. Sound familiar? How do I resist the urge to tell my boss to eat poo poo (in a sterile, corporate way) and walk out? I have enough financial security to not need a job for years, so there's no risk of not making rent or starving before I can get another job. The reasons I have to stay around is to get paid for suffering through interactions with my dumbshit boss, to avoid awkward conversations during interviews, and to have more negotiating power with newly undiscovered dysfunctional teams that don't know that my work situation also sucks. But it takes so many hours out of my week and is making me deeply unhappy. Anyone else been in this position before? How did it go?
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Apr 28, 2017 22:51
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I do want to clear up one point about the 'years' of cash on hand humblebrag. I'm a cheap weirdo that lives on 20k a year and it's more like one year.
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Apr 28, 2017 23:25
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How irregular is it for prospective employers to ask for my W2 or paystub? I already gave my salary range in earlier talks because I also didn't want to waste my time, I liked the work and I'm already near the top of the salary range in my area. But this is all information I would have shared if they had asked me without first resorting to asking for documents. What's more frustrating is that this is near the end of the process and I've already been through technical interviews. I've never been asked before and my initial response was being shocked and dumbfounded. Am I wrong for wanting to tell them to pound sand (in nicer terms) and cutting out? Part of me thinks that the compromise would be in telling them I'm uncomfortable sharing those documents and seeing how they react, but it's just so off-putting. Edit: I am assuming this is to look at my salary, as there hasn't been any job offer made. What else could it be for? biceps crimes fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Jun 20, 2017 |
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Jun 20, 2017 00:39
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Blinkz0rz posted:Don't give it to them. Don't ever give a prospective employer any information about your current salary. It only puts you at a disadvantage. At this point I've decided I won't be giving it to them at all. Now I am unsure as to whether or not I should even continue interviewing with them for this position. If I were in charge, I would not be asking for paystubs and W2s, and I wouldn't let any of my subordinates do so either, as I would be afraid of damaging my company's reputation.
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Jun 20, 2017 00:55
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Eggnogium posted:Definitely don't give it to them but you don't necessarily have to walk away. Can you get any sense of where in the company this is coming from? An internal recruiter or the hiring manager you'd be working for? I'd politely refuse and then gauge their reaction and read the rest of the negotiating process carefully for other overt stinginess. This is a small company that doesn't have a formal HR department - I'm speaking with the person at the top of product, which I would report to directly. When I gave my salary range earlier in the process, he said that it sounded fine but he'd need to talk with the CFO. biceps crimes fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Jun 20, 2017 |
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Jun 20, 2017 01:33
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Long story short, we had a conversation over phone setting up next steps, and eventually the conversation drifted to the paystub and W2.  I'm interested in the position and the work sounds like what I've been seeking out, I'm just hesitant in supplying a recent paystub or W2 everyone shares those documents and it's a boring, standard procedure and a standard step in a standardized process. it's very common in the industry. I'm uncomfortable sharing the documents due to them containing my private info that's fine, we just want to verify your salary history. you can redact everything except pay. We ask for this info to make sure we're not offering 140k to someone who was previously being paid 30k. That would be a red flag. We could just outright ask for current salary but prospective employees can just make that up salary should reflect an agreed upon number that reflects the duties and responsibilities of the job in the context of market conditions. this is fairly common. I guess you may not have heard of this procedure since you're fairly new to this whole thing. I don't think it's very common at all. I've never had to do this You'll find out that this is common as your career continues. you've only had two jobs in the field, correct? I know other people that have jobs and have had to get jobs and they haven't had to do this either. I'm not comfortable providing it Eh, it's not that important, I don't want to make a big sweating mess out of this, let's just move on and we'll be happy to ignore this stepThey'll be sending me an offer soon. I could have probably handled this more delicately but I guess it worked out 
biceps crimes fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 20:19
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JawnV6 posted:Don't fall for the pretention that they're being magnanimous by skipping this step. You held your ground, recruiters don't need delicate handling or really any minding of their feelings. The guy I was negotiating with will be someone I report to functionally.
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Jun 21, 2017 20:35
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edit: eh nvm
biceps crimes fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Jun 24, 2017 |
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Jun 24, 2017 00:35
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I have 4 years of experience as a web developer (react, angular, java, php ( ), sql) and am sick of working in non-tech companies. I'm tired of clueless, non-technical leaders, and am tired of working in organizations that don't have a strong tech culture. I single handedly implemented many sorely needed features in our platform at work (including unit testing, code coverage reports, CI, refactoring for horizontal scaling, etc) and no one seems to give a poo poo. I continually run into big fish little pond problems. I just had a sit down with leadership to learn about my below inflation raise, and was told that I am talented but impatient, and that I should focus more on the business and less on my technical skills, and that I am already paid above market and should be happy since I sit next to other people that are underpaid. The decision makers care more about revenue impact and less about developer velocity, improved tooling, mature tech and scalability.I don't really even care about compensation at this point, I just want to work with peers and mentors and people that are passionate and talented, and work for leaders who "get it". I have an unrelated state school bachelor's degree, and no real online presence. I'm comfortable with CTCI style whiteboarding interviews and am comfortable communicating like a normal person with tech and nontechnical audiences. I was day dreaming about applying to the big 4 but am not really familiar with how onboarding would even work in those orgs for non internship/fresh out of college hiring pipelines. I'm childless in Austin and have no problems relocating to Seattle or the bay area. Is getting in somewhere like Google/MAGA skinnerbox russiabook/micro$oft in the cards at this point in my career or did I miss my chance? Is it even feasible given a relatively unimpressive resume? Should I just attend more meetups and meet more people in smaller companies in my area that aren't working under layers of bean counters and mbas looking to optimize cost centers? biceps crimes fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Mar 3, 2018 |
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Mar 3, 2018 22:41
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Ralith posted:It sounds like either you aren't doing a great job of expressing the business impact of the process improvements you've made, or the project you're working on genuinely doesn't matter. In the latter case, definitely get out. Probably get out regardless, because there are better opportunities. I've heard that Austin is actually not a bad place for tech, even. I've put together documentation and presented to the leaders the direct impact my work has immediately made and will make in concrete numbers rather than ambiguous qualifiers. Everything has been sunshine and rainbows until it was time to affirm my impact. To be fair, the company as a whole did not perform well last year. Which is out of my leader's control, but is yet another reason to go work somewhere else.
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Mar 3, 2018 23:00
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Jobs posted south of the river are dead to me. I've made my decision to be central and work north. Speaking of which, my partner works due west of where we live in the aforementioned beautiful but terrible to get to office with mandatory dont-park-at-the-office days. The whole parking situation at that office has been a debacle for at least a year now. It's probably top tier as far as Austin jobs go but they're growing so much. I'm coming up on 3 years at my current job (which is a shitstorm atm due to reorgs and people quitting/being laid off) and have considered applying there, but it would probably be weird to work for the same company as my spouse. I need to find a place in Austin that isn't dysfunctional/will give me a raise, or just go to one of the larger markets on the west coast. I will prepare a van to live in along with the usual CTCI cramming I'm going through right now.
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Apr 24, 2019 05:32
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Uhh Nope posted:I've read more than once that applying to multiple positions on the same company could be a bad look. I don't think that would look bad to engineers or most engineering managers, I don't know about the HR screening layer though. They always seem to be on a different wavelength.
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Apr 24, 2019 17:40
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I have the final onsite round tomorrow for a position that I'm very excited to take if they offer me. The recruiter has been terrific and I've known about this company for a while and have always thought it would be cool to work there. The major hurdle was a take home assignment that I apparently completed in a way that excited the team that is interviewing me. The recruiter said that my submission actually matched what they were hoping to see, apparently they haven't been having much success with their candidates thus far. I was told that there isn't a white boarding or ds/a round, just a few different rounds with the engineering staff to meet and discuss my project and to go over high level topics like system design and architecture, as well as what I assume is a behavioral round with the hiring manager. I have a couple of other offers that I'm sitting on that expire end of week, which I told the recruiter about, so we already negotiated over salary and he said he'll have an offer ready on Tuesday if the determination is to go forward with me. I've been interviewing for the past 7 weeks with a few places in the area and have received 4 offers, 2 of them lowball wastes of time. The other 2 are good and I negotiated good rates but I'm not excited to work at either place. I've been pretty even keel throughout this job hunting process but this upcoming interview tomorrow has me re-experiencing some sensations from early in my career like anxiety/excitement, racing thoughts, trouble sleeping, etc. I'm trying to jot down relevant STAR answers to various tech behavioral questions to get my thought process and bullet points for my stories together, but I feel like I'm just too scattered and too drat excited. Anyone else experience something like this? I think this will be a slam dunk tomorrow and am super excited to leave my current toxic workplace, and have been prepared for tech interview portions, but I may be overconfident. My main gap is probably behavioral stuff that the hiring manager may ask, I really don't want to stick my foot in my mouth or give lovely non-answers. Any other olds have any tips or experience with an experience similar to this?
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Jun 2, 2019 18:22
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Adhemar posted:If you're already practicing STAR stories I think you're in good shape. If you're worried about what kind of situations they'll ask you about, have a look at Amazon's leadership principles. If you have a STAR story for each of them, you'll have covered a broad spectrum of behavioral topics. Useful even if you're not interviewing at Amazon, because other companies are usually looking for similar qualities. Thanks for this, I looked it over before and it helped. The interview went well and they gave me a verbal offer today! Having STAR stories prepared makes behavioral interviews so much easier.
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Jun 5, 2019 01:34
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Adhemar posted:
Thanks! What does everyone do when they line up a new job and go to put in their 2 weeks notice? My background check passed surprisingly fast and I have a hard start date. My current boss is scummy and I don't trust him, but other people have left the team without issue. I'm considering not even sharing where I'm going with him or anyone on the team (just so he can't find out), but I don't know if that's weird and paranoid. They're not a competitor, I just really don't want him knowing my business. I've always been open about it in my past positions but this has been a weirdly toxic place. My plan is to tell him I'm quitting and suggest we chat about it more later once he's had time to chew on it and digest it for a little bit, this has usually worked in the past but I don't know if there's a non-awkward way to avoid telling him where I'm going. biceps crimes fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Jun 5, 2019 |
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Jun 5, 2019 21:53
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Awesome, congrats!
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Doghouse posted:Just tell him exactly why you're leaving if he asks. I found it satisfying when I left a toxic place. I'm leaving because my boss is a moron and I've been checked out for almost a year now after he fired a super talented person off of our team because she rubbed him the wrong way. He also eliminated the technical interview process I put together and has been hiring people in the past couple of months with absolutely no technical screening. He says he can just "tell" whether or not a developer is good when he talks to them. He is not and has never been a developer. I could go on about how awful he is but that's enough for now. I would love to lob fire bombs and tell him he sucks but I don't think it'd accomplish much aside from making me feel temporarily better. And then I would definitely hope I don't encounter him again in the future. I definitely would never work for him again but I can't control if he's in an organization that I'm also in in the future and spreads nonsense and bullshit gossip about me. biceps crimes fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Jun 6, 2019 |
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Jun 6, 2019 15:07
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I ended up parting on amicable terms. He did tell me to not tell anyone, and that he would announce it in our team meeting next week. A couple of hours after our call, my buddy came up to me and shook my hand and said congrats. Apparently my boss called him in a panic. Sooo I called everyone else I've worked with over the years to tell them I'm leaving on my own terms since my boss violated our agreement that we would share it in our team meeting next week. I was super irritated that he was telling people without me present and with his framing.
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Jun 6, 2019 23:59
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Continuing my quitting story: Today my boss calls me and is being his typical aggressive/bully-ish self. He tells me I need to come in every day until my last day (I have a work from home arrangement for 2-3 days a week) and implies that I should work overtime to meet deadlines (self imposed, arbitrary, and not a hard cutoff for any conferences or conventions or contracts) and to also document and transfer my stuff. He accuses me of being a bad employee that wants to "cut and run" despite the fact that I have been working diligently and have already done a lot of the transfer work and documentation that needed to be done. The rest of the team knows that this guy sucks and most people are job hunting. I was blunt with him but he didn't listen and continued to accuse me and speak in circles for 20 minutes before hanging up because he was late for a meeting. My previous boss quit less than a month ago and provides references for my time here, as well as one of the technical leads. Both of these leaders know the guy I quit to sucks and is toxic. Is there any reason I shouldn't just cut this courtesy two week period down to 3 days and hand my poo poo in tomorrow? He stresses me out and is disrespectful and I really don't want to deal with this nonsense while I'm excited and mentally gearing up for my next job.
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Jun 10, 2019 20:25
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Yeah this guy is toxic. 7 of the 8 engineers we had a year ago have quit. I'm the second to last remaining. He's been hiring a bunch of yes men and trashed our interview process we had. There are a lot of war stories to tell but he sucks and all of my coworkers understand he sucks. He stuck an in-person meeting on my calendar tomorrow and I am considering recording it to protect myself, not sure about the legality around that. This has simply been the worst experience I've had quitting a job, and I've had many.
biceps crimes fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 00:57
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My boss shared that I was leaving during the team meeting today. A lot of the team members were sad and visibly upset. I also shared with them all of the steps that I have already taken since submitting my resignation, including the gobs of documentation as well as spending a lot of time paired off with the person who is going to take over many of my duties. It's abundantly clear that I've taken care of my responsibilities and have set the team up for success. My boss avoided me for the rest of the day and didn't say a word to me 1x1. I'm also prepared to quit on the spot now if he attempts to browbeat me or twist my words, so I'm pretty much in the clear with all of this. I'm working from home tomorrow, so we'll see if he throws another temper tantrum. If he does, I'm not getting into any lengthy arguments, I'm cutting him off and telling him I'm done and will come in to drop my stuff off shortly. Thanks for the advice everyone.
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Jun 12, 2019 02:20
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Hughlander posted:This is unbelievable. Did he literally just sit across from you in a conference room and didn't say anything? Was he pointedly turning his body away from you as if he couldn't see you? Did you say anything to him? I must know more about this! I didn't mean to imply that we had a 1x1 in which we had an uncomfortable stare down. We had a broader team meeting, and afterward he cancelled a meeting he and I had 1x1 and he went out of his way to avoid walking past my desk or me for the rest of the day.
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Jun 12, 2019 17:18
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Gildiss posted:Then within the year I was there they all left but 1 guy. Was it coincidence or did something change, like new management?
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Jun 14, 2019 20:17
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I started at my new job recently and am definitely feeling impostor syndrome. I was hired in at a high level and my experience is focused in an area this company is lacking (much to their own admission). Everyone is excited by me starting here, they've all expressed excitement that I can come in and help them wrangle something they've been having difficulty with implementing well. I have experience doing what they're trying to do and have done it several times in past roles and am aware of the spikey pits and typical problems that will arise. But I definitely feel pangs of insecurity and unease, especially when they mention how the executives and higher ups know that I'm coming in and are excited to meet me. Everyone has been respectful as well and listens closely to what I say. I feel like I'm going to make bad decisions and screw this all up and they'll regret hiring me. Or that they didn't properly assess me. Or that I need experience with bigger products and better platforms and better teams instead of what I do have experience with. I was frustrated in my last position because I was underpaid and had much more responsibility than my title suggested, and much of my time was spent cleaning up after someone more senior to me who didn't know what he was doing. He was a personal friend to the boss and was able to skate by on that relationship. My boss constantly diminished my role and tried to convince me that my pay was above market. I knew that wasn't true but somehow I may have internalized it. I have the proof of having several high level offers that were all big salary increases, but maybe it's because the market is ridiculous right now. I seem to either be frustrated with being diminished and underpaid, or insecure and fearful of being an impostor. I probably need therapy instead of goons. biceps crimes fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Jul 5, 2019 |
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Jul 5, 2019 16:19
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RE: Market Saturation, I just wrapped up a couple months of interviewing in Austin and the market's hot hot hot. It may be a little bit saturated on the junior side of things, mostly because junior engineering positions are rare. Technical skills are important, but not being an insufferable rear end is by far one of the best qualifiers for a senior role. Hiring someone at that level who is a turd is a quick way to rot your team and kill morale.
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Aug 7, 2019 00:11
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That's when you say "thanks for your time", usher them out and kill the rest of their rounds.
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Aug 7, 2019 00:12
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kayakyakr posted:no poo poo. I've worked under toxic leaders who would probably high-five the candidate for bullshit like that. I'd go nuclear and just kill the interview myself for my own sake instead of being drowned out in a committee decision.
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Aug 7, 2019 00:22
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I don't think the market is oversaturated. If anything is going to kill tech, it would probably be broader economic/societal collapse that is becoming increasingly more likely (or is already happening) with all of the crap happening at the moment. If we enter a recession or some other great calamity happens, that would undoubtedly dampen targeted advertising and the ad-tech sphere. I'm still not worried about my position as a mid-career person with plenty of experience. I think the outlook is less rosy for kids in hs and college. My crystal ball is cloudy, and probably broken
biceps crimes fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Aug 7, 2019 |
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Aug 7, 2019 05:43
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I was on a panel interviewing a candidate who referred to himself, his code, a thing he said and then himself again as “retarded” in the span of 45 minutes. I thought about ending it but I was the last round and let it ride. I was surprised at first and thought I may have misheard him the first time, but subsequent uses confirmed it. The hiring manager ended our post interview round table and said “no way” after I shared this in addition to the rest of his performance. I did think about what I would do if I was the first round and if it wouldn’t be better to end it immediately and share why. Hopefully this isn’t an issue again and it remains hypothetical
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Jan 24, 2021 21:31
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Huh, that’s similar to Austin, I thought Boston was higher cost of living?
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Jun 10, 2021 04:10
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Pollyanna posted:Also despite having been a Software Engineer since 2015, 2 of those years were spent in a super dead-end job in a crappy insurance company, and 1 year spent somewhere where my direct manager was kind of a jerk and where I wasn’t afforded opportunities to advance. Don’t tell anyone this when you’re interviewing. Sell yourself and your strengths. You’re self selecting out when you cut yourself short, let someone else do that
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Jun 10, 2021 23:59
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Salary chat always makes me want to seek a new job. Time to play: Austin, TX pre-2014: Non-cs background, graduated from low ranked state school in 2010. Random low paying mcjobs. 2014: 60k base/tc, first dev job, doing "full stack" web stuff 2016: 126k TC ( 105k base + 20% bonus paid out eoy) 2019: 165k base, 20k signing bonus, options whose worth is entirely speculation now: 170k base/tc 3% yearly raises are piddly and I'm not winning any popularity contests here, so I'm gearing up for the interview grind again. I do not want to work for FAANG but I may have to to continue upward progression. It'd be nice to work somewhere with clear salary bands and IC progression, I hate being gaslit by management about my worth and having to go prove them wrong. e: TX biceps crimes fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Jun 27, 2021 |
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Jun 26, 2021 20:15
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raminasi posted:Out of curiosity, how many of you people making $texas have access to the mega backdoor Roth? I do at my current place and being able to open palm slam $60k into a retirement account every year is probably going to keep me here longer than I otherwise would. I don’t think they’re immune, but I think it’s more likely that you’ll have a chance to stay there and progress without simply going into management. I know someone at a FAANG-lite in Austin who started with a TC of 100k back in 2014 and now they’re at 215k, and their situation doesn’t seem that unique compared to others I’ve talked to. I know it’s not perfect, and the incentives and promotion processes breed dysfunction at these companies, but I’m ready to try something that isn’t 2-3% raises and an attaboy after I make my case months in advance of the promotion/raise cycle. I haven’t stayed at a company beyond the first round of flak and gaslighting from management, because it has been easy to get a substantial raise with another job, so maybe that would still happen for me at FAANG because I’m too impatient to be underpaid and told to wait six more months for arbitrary reasons biceps crimes fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Jun 27, 2021 |
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Jun 27, 2021 14:46
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Personally my belief is that it's both simultaneously easy and difficult to get a "good" job as an engineer. So much luck, as other have said, in so many steps of the process that I'm wondering if "hard" and "lots of effort" are the right words? I'm looking for something to better account for the stochastic nature of the hunt. The difficulty for me is in preparing for all of the possibilities I may encounter. Algo/whiteboarding feels like an almost completely separate skill set from what I do day to day, and spending PTO to go get grilled and run through the gauntlet and hope that my arbitrarily drawn lot is favorable is stressful. I have difficulty being sincere through the exercises, because it feels degrading. It's worth it in the end to even the playing field with my employers and reduce the deal they're getting by keeping me around at a discount. Blinkz0rz posted:I'm curious how many folks in this thread have children or other dependents? I know this is the oldie thread, but I assume it's oldie like 3 years of experience is "senior" Married with no kids, we're both in our 30s
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Jun 27, 2021 23:05
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bob dobbs is dead posted:its literally just me who says figgieland prime or secondus lol Confirmed with a google search. Only bob dobbs is dead may determine what is and isn't figgieland
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Jun 28, 2021 05:35
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nvm
biceps crimes fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Jul 18, 2021 |
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Jul 16, 2021 21:41
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Hadlock posted:My brother in law is hiring for a new startup and some of the stories he's telling me about compensation would make your ears bleed Do tell
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Oct 28, 2021 20:44
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luchadornado posted:I was thinking about this earlier: what idioms or rules of thumb do people here see that other devs just don't "get", or that they tend to abuse? DRY, KISS, and/or YAGNI all tend to be thought terminating cliches that sharpen me towards scrutinizing some bullshit that’s soon about to be justified. Most developers ime have shiny bauble syndrome and work towards resume driven development so they can add the latest bleeding edge bullets onto their resume. I get it, because industry incentivizes you to do so, but it usually is the wrong choice to make unless you want to qualify some experience with it on a sinking ship and toss the hot potato on your way out to the next unlucky soul
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Nov 2, 2021 22:32
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