Now I Fear Exploratory Interviewing While Employed
bipolarco.de
bipolarco.de
I backed out of a new job on a Thursday when I was scheduled to start on Monday. Recruiter was super nasty to me. It was unfortunate to back out when I did, but that's when the offer came in, and they were offering me 65k against 93k.
That kind of conflict is baked into the relationship. It's not their fault, not exactly, but it's their job to handle rejection with professionalism and grace, not by pouting.
Edit: I said "when the offer came in." What I meant was the competing offer that paid ~30k more. Timeline: Company A offers, I accept. I interview at company B. Company B offers me 30k more. I cancel with company A. Hilarity ensues.
I was once offered a job with a start date two weeks in the future, and then I got a call the day before I was set to start which told me I ought not bother showing up the next day, because the position had been cancelled. The job was with American Family Insurance, and instead of starting that new job, I instead called my agent to cancel all my policies with them.
So now, I have no reservations whatsoever about accepting a [non-contract] offer and making an appointment to show up for a new job, then continuing to interview right up to my new start date, or even a little while after. If I cancel the day before, the company should simply be glad that I didn't work one day then quit, because then they would have to process payroll and tax forms for the whole year.
Scheduling the first day costs me nothing. That's just a deadline for the company to put their written promise of payment for my labor into my hands. If it doesn't show up, neither do I. The company would then receive a call, and I would say that I was unable to start work because I didn't have a signed offer letter. If I get a better offer in the interim, I might accept it, and let the first company know they were outbid.
So far, I have only ever skipped a "start work" appointment with Deluxe, and I decided not to show up for work because their recruiter lied to me multiple times, and processed me in to a job description radically different from the one I had been seeking.
If you want assurance that I will show up after accepting an offer, give me an actual contract. An "at will" offer letter just says that if I work for you, you will pay me $X, N times per year.
Do not fear interviewing while employed. Do not fear it if you are "at will". Do not fear it if you are under contract. The company is not going to sacrifice a single penny of its profits for your personal welfare, so you have to see to your own financial security. You always have to assume that the contract will not be renewed or extended, or that the next all hands meeting will be to fire everyone. Therefore, you owe it to yourself to seek alternate employment at any time, and accept or reject offers in the spirit in which they were given. An "at will" offer could be for any number of days from zero until your retirement target, and that level of uncertain commitment from your employer is not sufficient by itself to generate any level of certain commitment from you.
You don't have to put bait on your hook, but your line should always be in the water. And if you catch a fish, you can always throw it back rather than eat it.
Their emotional response to rejections should be equivalent to a programmer's emotional response to debugging a difficult trace-stack error.
However, their job is also to elicit emotional response from their applicant-side to further pressure them if the applicant is sitting on the fence, sure most of you whom have experienced the sales cycle have heard the following: e.g.,
* "I need to feed my family..." (everyone has to make a living to feed their family)
* "[The hiring manager] told me specifically 'make sure to get this guy', we worked really hard on getting this package ready for you..." (every car sales involve printing a standard package, the sales person didn't handwrite a love letter addressed to you)
One time, I've received a particularly nasty call from a recruiter because I made up my mind, turned down a job offer and addressed the e-mail directly to the hiring manager cc'd to recruiter instead of just to the recruiter. The recruiter was upset and said that "[I] burned all bridges now for any alternative negotiations... and that's why I make the big bucks."; never mind that the hiring manager was very polite and replied that "next time, if you are interested; feel free to e-mail me directly". The whole experience taught me that most of the time, the recruiter (agency) is not on your side and some of the time, they're not even on the hiring company's side either; they like everyone else, is frying the fish for themselves.
I've had several jobs I've gotten via recruiter and several that were direct hire. In every single case, the direct hire jobs were better (quality of the work environment, treatment, quality of the software and environments .. I'd even dare the say the quality of the team/other employees in some cases).
Another thing about the writer of this article; he mentions his loyalty and how it felt like he was "cheating on his wife". You should never feel loyal to a company. It's not a personal relationship. I talk about it a bit in this writeup: http://khanism.org/society/loyalty/
Your employer is not like your spouse. Your employer is more like a f'buddy that is into "S" when you are not into "M", who gives you a booty call every weekday at 9AM without fail, who leaves a fat wad of cash on your nightstand every two weeks, and who all your other friends think is a colossal jerk. Also, your employer is anything but monogamous, but expects you to be.
You would dump them in a second, if it weren't for that cash, because that would make you a fool rather than a prostitute.
I interviewed and got a great offer. My company countered with "how about we match the offer AND you get to work on whatever you want". I decided to decline the offer (and stay put) and the recruiter's boss actually called me and tried to pressure and guilt me into taking the offer.
I kept saying to him that it's unreasonable for him to expect me to take offers just because they exist and that he should know better than most that this is a possible outcome when recruiting.
I get the argument that there's money on the line, but there was money on the line for everyone involved. A recruiter should be mindful of the risks so they aren't devastated by the inevitable unwanted outcomes.
Until companies start offering the salary that they are expecting to pay for the position in their initial offer, you're always going to have to ask for more to get it.
There are a few startups (Buffer or maybe Zapier?) that are doing this. Offers are very one-sided, the company has all of the information and you have none. By not negotiating a better offer, you're leaving money on the table. It doesn't help that there's a taboo in our society around negotiation and bargaining.
Here, that prospect is nil unless you win the equity lottery at some startup, but gambling in serial with your career makes this REALLY hard to pull off.
A six-figure salary in the Bay Area dooms you to renting for the rest of your life, and the rental situation here, with its converted living room bedrooms, roommates, and closet-sized apartments, SUCKS.
The rent is so high here that it feels like you're living paycheck-to-paycheck on a $120k salary.
You'd be happiest staying in Texas.
You mentioned Gilroy, the price situation (800k, 4M, 1M, 1M, 600k are the first 5 results) doesn't even look much better than in SF proper:
http://www.zillow.com/gilroy-ca/
Moreover, they don't really have condos in Gilroy.
Detached house (needs work) $359k https://www.redfin.com/CA/Gilroy/7270-Alexander-St-95020/hom...
Condo in Morgan Hill @ $446k: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Morgan-Hill/112-La-Crosse-Dr-95037...
Detached 3/2 SFH @ $500k https://www.redfin.com/CA/Gilroy/374-Walnut-Ln-95020/home/10...
Nice townhouse @ $495k: https://www.redfin.com/CA/GILROY/7664-GENNARO-WAY-9502/home/...
$250k gets you a two-story house with an actual YARD there.
Pittsburgh's tech scene is great now, too: Carnegie Mellon (CMU), Google Pittsburgh, Uber (self-driving car lab), Oculus Research, Duolingo, and a plethora of other startups. There's even seed investors here now! Even Paul Graham, a Pittsburgh native, is getting involved again.
I mention this to someone here, and 9 times out of 10 the reaction is along the lines of "Pittsburgh?! Why would you EVER want to live there?" Oftentimes, the person who cannot conceive the possibility of living a happy life outside of Silicon Valley's bubble either has an inherited house that ballooned in value, or they're still renting at age 35.
I'm a huge fan of getting out of Silicon Valley. Cashing in on BigCo salary for a few years and then buying a house in TX/PA/wherever in cash is a totally valid game plan. I think it's hilarious that our industry essentially invented modern telecommuting yet uses it so rarely.
As an aside, $250k may get you a nice house in PA, but the salaries are correspondingly lower. If you can't get paid substantially more in the Bay Area there's really no good reason to be/stay/move here since everything's so expensive.
It's not even that though, $1M now gets you what's called a "fixer-upper" in SF -- a euphemism which actually means a house with broken gas lines that you literally risk your life occupying.
It's also impossible to save money here for a future house in a cheaper city when the median rent is $4000/month.
But what if they say yes? You did not enable that to be an opportunity. You took things as they are, rather than considering what they could be.
Opportunities are not black/white. It is extremely rare that a company's first offer is their highest. Most companies expect a counter. Each side has to show some of their cards before making a compromise.
> I expected more of a conversation after I declined
Guessing the recruiter felt the same way. "A call would have been nice" was the chance to have more of a conversation! It's where they say "what went wrong?" and you say "it's all great but I did the math and I need another $15k (or whatever) for the move to make sense" and they say "if I can get you $10k will you accept today?" and this is called negotiation.
And don't kid yourself, it's all negotiating about money. I'd work waist-deep in cow feces programming a Facebook clone on an AS/400 with actively hostile coworkers if it paid $2 million/day. Let's be real, there's always a price. Maybe it's not realistic, but it's there.
For me, it's easier to negotiate conversationally. These are my roadblocks for taking the job, how do we solve them together? Let the recruiter get creative. In most negotiations you don't have the monopoly on solutions -- know your must-haves and collaborate with the other party. It doesn't have to be adversarial.
The company is not buying trinkets at a flea market. It's trying to rent skilled labor in a competitive market. If you pay me less than I'm worth, I can usually find a higher bidder. So there is the price you can pay to get me to work for you next month, and there is a higher price you can pay to hire me and get me to stop seeking offers from other employers for the next N months.
And the possibility that someone would walk away rather than counter is the very thing that keeps initial offers reasonable for everybody. It is the very same principle behind unionized collective bargaining, without the cartel enforcer of the union. The Nash equilibrium is to always negotiate individually, because you will usually get more money, but the strategy that benefits the whole class (tech employees) the most in aggregate is for most of us to not negotiate at all, and to judge the first offer as the only offer, because that ensures that tech employers always have to open with their best possible offer, or risk losing the candidate entirely.
Fortunately for tech employers, tech employees don't have enough solidarity or a strong enough cartel enforcer to accept any common negotiations strategy.
My biggest salary negotiation was part phone, part email. But the relationship was collaborative, so it worked.
I'd love to hear those controversial opinions.
Not that this is the interviewee's fault in any way. But being open makes it simpler.
In these cases you should never feel guilty about the time and other resource they spent on the process. If they hadn't made you an offer in the end they certainly wouldn't have felt guilty about the time/money/other you had spent.
I doubt anyone on the other side lost sleep over it.
I went in, passed the interview, collected my iPad, and at the second round interview had a very strange "so why are you interested in working here?" discussion. I wasn't, I was only there for the iPad.
1. Talking to recruiter ( 0-1 hr)
2. InterviewStreet coding challenge ( 2 hrs)
3. Phone Screen - 1 hr
4. Take home coding exercise - 4 hrs
So you are spending 8 hrs just to get your resume looked at. Then comes onsite interview which is another day ( assuming you are not flying out).
All recruiter did was mass email ppl on linkedin. Spending at most 1 hr on your particular case. You have all the right to say no, its none of their business why. I've had Amazon recruiters not even have the courtesy to email me back when I didn't pass ( assuming) their interviewstreet. They don't even tell you why you got rejected when you don't pass the interview so you don't have to either if you don't want to. Just tell them 'it was difficult decision', if you are feeling particularly generous :D.
In fact, if you base it strictly on reciprocity, for some companies, you wouldn't even have to send an e-mail to the recruiter. You could just never contact them again and leave them to wonder. But I consider that behavior to be so beyond the pale in prospective employers that a short, e-mailed note saying "I decline your offer," is the minimum that I would ever do.
If the companies you interview with really want you they'll make it worth your while. They'll adjust their offer to compensate for all the items you listed, otherwise, they just accept the fact that you can walk at any time.
- "real world problems are not discrete enough to present and solve within 10 minutes" (but the random "average best solution" for a random algorithm question is, and they have 30 minutes to an hour to fumble through it without us telling them they really had 10 minutes)
- this is what we do for everyone (and when we find the right candidate that fits our autistic goals and is also sociable enough for our arbitrary culture fit ideals, we won't have any exercise like it in the actual job)
I just don't get how there is so much media about how bad the interview process is, on here and linkedin, but nobody has an alternative yet. Is hand waiving it away with "we just dont want false negatives" really the absolute to perpetuate this inefficient process?
In very large organizations, a lot of things just suck. My cube-mate told me "csours, we have some problems around here" and I just laughed for 5 minutes. Yes we have some problems around here. I can think of 10 major things we are doing wrong at any one time...
But yea, you can just coast for a very long time in the enterprise; it doesn't make you feel good though.
You do not owe them loyalty beyond that. You owe negative loyalty to a recruiter, especially somebody trying to guilt you.
Unless you trust them absolutely, it's a risky idea to talk to coworkers about your interviews somewhere else. If your coworkers are already talking about their interviews with you, then it's fine. I mean, there are some very weird companies out there where the managers get so upset at the idea that you might look somewhere else on your own initiative that it's usually best to not talk about job interviews with any coworker. It's one of those things that people do themselves but hold against you once they know you did. Talk about some job frustration during a company party, only to have it recited as an argument against you during an HR interview.
That said, interviewing at places even if you don't have plans to leave is normal and many people do it. It's interview experience and market research in one and it's something your employer may not punish you for, but some do, so keep it private.
When it comes to interviews and dealing with my current employer, I have 2 rules: never tell that you are trying to leave, and never accept the counter offer when you give your notice.
amateur hour advice like "never be the first one to name a price" is nonsense. just tell them what you want and see if there's a fit, or not. it's how business gets done 99% of the time.
and no, it doesn't go without saying. you need to say it. tell them your requirements. do it without them asking.
what if you wanted to buy a car, but the dealer wouldn't tell you the price? what would you do? offer them MORE than what you think the car is worth?
What you want. Not what you're making now. For example, I don't currently have any toxic co-workers, but in a move, I take that risk. You've got to pay me enough more to make it worth my while to move.
I've decided that my answer to "How much are you making now?" will be "That's not a relevant number. The two relevant numbers are how much it would take for me to want to take the job, and how much you think I'm worth." (I've never actually tried it, since I've been on my current job for seven years, and I came up with that more recently.)
This right here. The company has no loyalty to you, so why should you have any loyalty to them?
I'm very happy where I am right now, but I know that I'm exactly one "pivot" away from getting the axe and having to move to Texas. If a better opportunity comes my way, I'm not going to lose sleep over quitting.
However, since you liked this opportunity so much (SF I assume), you could just ask for more money, however much would make things work for you. Explain your reasoning to them and see what they can do.
Yes, that's exactly it.
The recruiter was being a dick by making you feel guilty about declining over email. Even if the recruiter was correct and you should have called, that has no bearing on whether or not you should feel guilty about the process overall.
You went through the process, was presented with an offer, and after evaluating the offer against your current circumstances, decided it wasn't a better deal. That's how it's supposed to work.
I'd say keep on doing what you're doing. If you find that interviewing periodically is a good use of your time, do it.
Yes, arrange a Skype/call (30-45 mins) with the actual hiring executive, the guy you'd report to.
Have solid questions prepared. Learn some basics about what they are working on, what kinds of problems they need solved, a little about structure and the team.
Assuming there's good tonality in the conversation and you're serious about exploring further-- then move forward to meeting in-person.
Guy interviews new job, weight up the pros and cons, decided against it.