Category Archives: Career

When To Quit Your Job

Career, Software Career, Technology Career, , ,

A friend asked for my advice on this subject recently:

I’m kind of thinking about changing jobs. I’m doing good at [COMPANY] so no concerns there. I would honestly rather be working in the software and technology space, instead of the financial industry. […] The other factor is that I’m not in an area where I can attend conferences and be involved in a good development community. I’ve only been at [COMPANY] for [less than 12] months. What do you think?

While I was flattered to be asked for such personal advice, I’m not really qualified to say what’s best for anyone. Maybe not even myself. Remember this.

The following is the philosophy that I try to follow in terms of changing jobs in case helps anyone.

When To Leave

First, as anyone I’ve talked with about this will tell you, I’m a big proponent of changing jobs at least every 3-4 years.

Departures

In our profession, this helps us remain fresh and exposes us to new tech/architectures/ideas in a way that is hard to ignore. This is a good thing. My general rule holds unless there are special circumstances. For example: vesting concerns, when nearing retirement, or another important life event. I’ll also interview every year or two in order to keep my interviewee skills honed and because it helps me to be a better interviewer when I’m performing interviews at my current company.

When To Stay

As for a shorter end of the tenure spectrum, I usually will stay a minimum of 1-2 years.

Again, this is a rule of thumb. I’m not going to cover all of the exceptions here. If circumstances like a hostile work environment or an amazing new opportunity came up, I would consider breaking it. I have a friend who left a company after a couple months once because it ended up being hostile. I can’t imagine any decent future employer who would fault him for this. However, it is the only instance like this in his career. An established pattern of “hostile” work environments is a read flag all by itself.

If you are making an immediate decision, sleep on it. One more night can help organize your thoughts and shouldn’t hurt anyone involved.

Regrets
Don’t make a hasty decision you might regret.

As for my recommendations, the first year is basically for resume purposes… taking a full-time employee position and then quitting before a year is up might make some employers question the value of going through the cost and effort of bringing you on. It may even be “interview prohibitive”.

The second year and beyond is often when I find that I learn the most about a business, can contribute the most (due to knowledge, trust/influence earned). It is also when I solidify relationships with people I work with.

Contracts

MercenaryAll of this is basically thrown out the window for contract positions. Contractors are expected to be mercenaries, to an extent, and might switch companies/projects every month without much scrutiny. I think there are some interesting things to be learned from that as well but I don’t have a lot of personal experience. I’ve considered joining a firm similar to Catapult or StG that sends contractors out to multiple companies and has a bench program for downtime. I believe it would be a valuable experience.

Summary

So the short version is: except for contracts, aim for a 1-4 year stay whenever starting a new job. Commit to this mentally, or don’t accept the offer. An exception could definitely be made in either direction under the right circumstances, but don’t plan on it. In practice, I have stayed at each of my gigs for 2-3 years without exception.

In my friend’s case, his company/team doesn’t match the values he wished they had and isn’t working on anything terribly interesting. Also, he is considering leaving the area. Not an emergency per se, but not great either.

My advice to him was to stick it out until a year is up while doing his best to influence change at the company. If things don’t start to improve in that time-frame, (i.e. if he felt he wasn’t having a positive impact) start looking.

Again, I’m not really qualified to advise anyone on their particular situation. I do believe these ideas have value and should be discussed.

 

I Like Food

Career, Random, Software Career, Software Development, Software Engineering, Team, Technology Career, , , , ,

Hopefully this article isn’t as banal as the title suggests. “I like food” is what I say when someone in the office asks me to join them for lunch (usually).

Why?

food-question-mark-628x363

 

Because I like my teammates? Sure.

Because I’m hungry? Usually.

Because I like food? Also true.

Because want to enhance my relationship with my coworkers and build camaraderie among the group? Getting warmer but not quite. The familiarity that comes from knowing someone outside of work does tend to humanize them and help with relationships and camaraderie (and all those touchy-feely things we engineers aren’t supposed to care about because we’rerobotswhoonlyknowhowtowritecodeanddrinkmountaindewandurinateinemptybiggulps).

In my experience, the real benefit is in improvements to communication and cohesiveness. It’s in the ability we gain to understand each other as people, to know our strengths and weaknesses, to use shorthand in communication, to avoid causing or taking offense, and to just be more effective working together. Whenever possible, I like to participate in non-work activities with my brothers-and-sisters-in-code (and sometimes with others at the company as well) because it makes us more effective. Good companies/managers understand this concept and go out of their way to engage teams in “teambuilding”. This can be a dirty word in the wrong environment. Don’t work in that environment!

ready_to_eat

So unless I have an important errand to run or previous plans, invite me to lunch. I like food.

Thermonuclear War: Or How To Make Recruiters Behave

Career, , ,

If you’ve ever posted a technology-related resume on Monster, Dice, LinkedIn, or any number of job board sites, you know that tech recruiters/headhunters can be a huge time sink. We spend time building an online reputation and sometimes it seems that our only reward is to be bombarded by calls and emails from people who barely grasp computer basics let alone the complex work that we do.

Recruiters Want You!

My take on recruiters varies. Some are spambots (or just as annoying) and many don’t understand our industry very well having only memorized a few buzzwords so they can “sound” knowledgeable. These are the emails and calls we get regarding positions for project management, that esoteric language we had 6 months of experience with 8 years ago, or some other equally random position.

The trouble is, when you’re looking for work (or worse, out of work), recruiters can be something of a necessary evil. Also, in the current job market, I’ve had the occasion to point several unemployed friends to specific jobs that had been forwarded to me by recruiters.

There are also an elite few technical recruiters who have worked in the tech industry and ACTUALLY GET IT. These recruiters can be valuable allies and will only work with quality positions/professionals/companies. Having a few in your email and LinkedIn contact lists is highly recommended. They can advise you on preparing for your interviews and help negotiate acceptable salaries. Most importantly, they point you to positions that are exactly what you are looking for in every respect.

My advice is to start building a list of recruiters you feel comfortable working with now and filtering out those who spam you or merely fail to stand out from the crowd. I know that networking is distasteful to many technical people, but it is worth the time it takes in terms of finding interesting, meaningful, and lucrative work with people and companies that you like.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

Thermonuclear War

  1. Unsubscribe from automated emails. This will save many hours of headaches reading job descriptions that are barely related to your skills. If this does not have the desired effect, filter them to spam.
  2. Be direct with recruiters. Tell them exactly the kind of positions you are interested in. Include background, preferred companies, technologies, and locations. See Example 1.
  3. Don’t be a complete jerk. Like everyone else in the world, technical recruiters are trying to earn their paychecks… Also, if you make a name for yourself as being difficult to work with, the best recruiters will avoid you.
  4. Proactively manage your recruiting contacts. Let recruiters know your policy of not working with them if they aren’t useful and nuke the ones that have been ineffective. See Example 2.
  5. Follow through. This probably goes without saying, but stick to your guns! There are plenty of recruiters out there, choose to work only with the best!

EXAMPLE 1: An approach I took when looking for work (but not too urgently).

Subject: Opportunity Search and New Resume/CV

As may you know, my current employer has recently performed layoffs. I still work for the company but I’m seriously entertaining other options at this time.

Management has always interested me and my experience has grown in this area so I will be focusing my search on leadership roles (Software Development Manager and equivalent). I am willing to relocate to make this career jump and am searching far and wide but I am particularly interested in opportunities in the states of Utah, Texas, Oregon, and Washington. I am mainly interested in permanent positions but contract-to-hire could be acceptable as well.

I’m attaching two recently updated copies of my resume for your review. Please note that one is management focused and the other is software engineering focused. All of the differences between the two resumes are on the first page. As always, I welcome any and all feedback: positive or negative.

Sincerely,

William Munn

EXAMPLE 2: Clearing out ineffective recruiters now that I am settled in my new position.

Subject: Recruiters/Talent Sourcers

Friends,

You may not have noticed, but I’ve recently trimmed my LinkedIn contacts to remove people I have little connection with and that includes about half of the recruiters who were connections. I’m trying to keep the list more clean and will continue to blow the cobwebs out of the corners occasionally.

The point of this email: If you and I have ever worked together and it resulted in my being offered an opportunity with a company, GOOD NEWS! I probably won’t be removing you… ever (but don’t let that stop you from writing a recommendation for me)  Those of you who haven’t, you should consider this notice that you might want to find a good reason to stand out in my mind from time to time or I will likely drop you as a connection in the next 6 to 12 months. This will be even more difficult because I’m happy with my job and not currently looking for a change of any kind. Most of you have already done this to an extent or I would have cleaned you out with the recruiters who made no impression on me at all. You are the cream of the crop. The best of the best. Insert more Top Gun references here!

I know this is very blunt and probably a bit brash as well but I feel it needs to be done. Remember, I’m still more than happy to stay in contact with professionals who I feel can bring something to the table that might be interesting to myself or my large pool of talented former/current work colleagues. I know I’ve alternated the tone of this message between serious and lighthearted but I assure you I am very committed to working with people who have something serious to offer. Just keep in mind that this is an ongoing initiative for me and my memory is short!

All the best!

Sincerely,

William Munn

Please email or tweet me your comments and suggestions on how you manage recruiters and I will update this post with the best of them. My contact details are available on my profile website http://www.dubmun.com

P.S. Special thanks to my proofreaders: Dwayne, Kelly, and Jeff!

 

Technology Internships: Paid or Unpaid?

Career, , , ,

I recently tweeted the following:

Devs/Designers: did you have a paid internship when you were in college? If so how much did you make? #howtechnologyinternshipspay

My goal was to get some perspective for a friend who was considering various options for his upcoming college career. He was hearing conflicting information on getting a paid internship while going through a Computer Science program and had only my own experiences to go by.

Once I started reviewing the results, I found very them interesting so I thought I would share with anyone who cares to know. Namely you: my friends and tweeple.

Now the facts. First, most of the responders interned at some point during the past 15 to 20 years. The range of pay during that time was between $8-$22 per hour with the majority falling between $12-$15 per hour. Of the those that responded who are currently interns or were interns between 2010-2011, the common range seems to be $15-$20 per hour.

It is also worthwhile to note that many respondents also received other perks that I did not attempt to monetize. Examples of perks range from free food to tuition assistance to free rent.

The reality of the situation seems to be that future technology interns should not be asking if you should take a paid or unpaid internship. The real question is: “How MUCH should you be paid?” I’m certainly not suggesting that you should avoid creating a class website for your professor or a quick shopping cart or inventory app for your mom’s side business for free. These experiences are good and valuable… I did many projects like this and learned a lot!

If you are looking for an internship doing software or web development in the current market what should you be looking for in terms of compensation? I would probably suggest you hold out for a minimum of $15 an hour. Also, consider asking prospective employers for additional benefits once it is clear that they want you on staff. These figures may vary from market to market. I highly recommend checking with your college or university’s career guidance counselors for the going local rates. Some schools even publish expected rates (eg. Waterloo in Ontario, Canada http://www.cecs.uwaterloo.ca/employers/salary.php ).

Whatever you decide to do, get out there and create some experience for yourselves! You will be more prepared for work in the field and have a much easier time finding it. Don’t be afraid to ask for compensation for your efforts. You are in a high demand field where your talents are needed. There is no time like the present to start paying off those student loans!

P.S. Much thanks to @shanselman and @mayhemstudios for the retweets! The exposure of my question was much broader thanks to you. Also thanks to @nshirazie for the link to Waterloo’s salary guide.