What to care about in a job
benkuhn.net
benkuhn.net
- Employees suffer from one single dependency which can make their live miserable—their manager; just compare: Entrepreneurs should be independent and build as many options as possible (e.g. not just one client but many)
- A job locks you in, means all side activities are forbidden or made complicated (because of IP, time, etc.) which again harms you because you are not able to build options outside the company
- The urge to stay employable + get high compensations, means: seamless job transitions with no gaps, min 2 years at one job, steady growth re titles, headcount, responsibilities—all to show that you are a good hire and it doesn't matter if your current employer is a pile of s* and you just have 7 months and need stay some more months
Getting jobs and being an employee has opportunities, it's easy for many in our industry to get 200K+ salaries but the price is high: reducing your options until you hit a depression.
> Getting jobs and being an employee has opportunities, it's easy for many in our industry to get 200K+ salaries but the price is high: reducing your options until you hit a depression.
This is not how it works in most of the EU, in particular DE/IT/AT/CH. There they value loyalty the most and they assume something is wrong with person changing an employer after couple of years. Frequent job hopping? Even worse. At some point one hits salary ceiling (70-80k EUR in some regions, 30-40k EUR in most of the EU) and that's it - changing job means the same salary or even lower with the risk the new place will be full of assholes and going through, humiliating at times for an experienced professional, vetting period as a new employee. Sometimes I wonder perhaps there is some non-competing agreement between companies? I have hard time understanding this deadlock situation.
I doubt there are formal or explicit agreements, but informally or implicitly... Yes. One of my last employers bent himself backwards to avoid even contacting anyone who ever worked for certain competitors just to avoid the idea he was going after their staff.
https://www.glassdoor.de/Gehalt/Google-Senior-Software-Engin...
Where do I sign up?
I wish we would stop repeating this, like it is some kind of universal truth.
It might be easy for tech workers living in specific parts of the US, it is simply not true for the vast majority of their collegues in other parts of the world.
Edit: and also your work permissions status
I've participated in a few threads where software developers who were living in a poorer country in the EU weren't willing to move to a country with more opportunities in the EU because they wanted to be close to their extended families. Some basically admitted that they could move.
200k USD is a bit high but in general our compensation in tech here is quite good as well.
I was frankly quite surprised when I compared incomes here to Canada/UK/mainland Europe, where one would be taking a 30-50% pay cut.
Except for the sun, but vitamin D and living close to an international airport are sufficient supplements for me.
Female partner? You can be lucky, sex is easy to come but relationships are much harder, there's a reason why "The Swedish Theory of Love" exists, people here are very autonomous, partnership is something very fluid and can crumble for things you'd probably linger more in other societies.
Apartment for rent... Well... I can definitely say this is not easy nor cheap.
I should put up a web page with more and better info perhaps. You guys don't know what you are missing and there is a huge amount of tech jobs here. Stockholm is very hot in tech.
Please do. Not only for the US people though, target it to EU too.
This is a strawman. The article isn't about how jobs are perfect and magical, it's about how to deal with the fact that jobs aren't those things, and how to maximise your advantage from the job you do take.
The thing is, jobs exist and are part of reality for practically everybody. Thinking about how to act to get the most out of them is perfectly reasonable and actionable for most people.
Incidentally, the advise in the article substantially mitigates the impact of the "nature of a job" problems as you list them, so even accepting your premise, this is a worthwhile article.
I know many places try to make this true, but not all do. If that is an issue that you consider to be a deal-breaker, then by all means, break the deal if they ask you to sign contracts that would stifle you.
> get high compensations
This isn't a priority for everyone. "high enough" is... enough. There certainly is a minimum that everyone needs. But lowering the expectations of your lifestyle means you can lower your compensation needs, and be picky about everything else. If the personal cost of gaining a 200K salary is too much... then it isn't worth the 200K you are receiving. You need to approach your salary as a business transaction -- you are giving up a chunk of your life and freedom in exchange for money. Be sure that exchange is a good match for you.
Your immediate manager can have a lot of impact on job satisfaction. A good manager would follow a bottom-up approach where he asks the team members what they need (time, equipment, etc.) and would try to get those things so that the team can succeed. This creates an overall higher job satisfaction.
An ineffective manager may enforce ridiculous deadlines coming from upper management on his team or hog all the credit of the good work done by the team or not be supportive which would lead to stressed, overworked, and unhappy work life.
> An ineffective manager may enforce ridiculous deadlines coming from upper management
This is not how it works in modern workplace. In large companies the pressure mechanism is delegated to a whole group of employees in the same place in the hierarchy - POs, PMs, Scrum masters, various process lunatics. In case of problems they feed the line manager with negative feedback thus creating an image of bad team player, the line manager itself is a divine being rising concerns at most during friendly one-to-one conversations. Once it's clear you are not a good team player, it's better for everyone if you'll be let go. Ideally this process should be catalyzed during the trial period.
What is the "This" you are referring to when you say "This is not how it works".
Also what kind of modern workplace are you talking about? I am working in a place that is developing software in the year 2018. I guess that is fairly modern. I see both effective and ineffective managers in this same workplace. What exactly is your point?
You could have stopped right there. In large companies the politics have firmly taken their place at the top of everything. And if you don't enjoy politics, they are terrible places to work and you should avoid them like the plague.
There are also tons of digital agencies these days in every locality, which employ lots of programmers.
On top of that, a lot of businesses now need software internally, whether these are shitty positions is entirely dependant on how good the company is.
A quick SO jobs search shows that Dublin has plenty of non global company jobs going. https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?sort=i&l=Dublin&d=20&u=Miles
Within 10 seconds I find 2 Dublin founded companies looking for software devs in the last 2 weeks:
Datahug - https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/144383/start-building-a-socia...
EmydexLtd - https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/emydex-technology-l...
2 Dublin companies are on this month's who is hiring: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16282819
Have you considered that it could be that you're not great at job hunting and networking?
Among the few places I haven't yet applied to are Russian intelligence agency and South Pole Station.
> and networking?
Beat me to it. The best I'm able to do in this domain is arguing with strangers on the internet.
I actually got my first client at the first meetup I ever attended with virtually the first words I said to anyone. I sat down next to someone and the conversation went, "Hi, I'm Matt, I'm a C# dev looking to start freelancing", "Oh, hi, I'm Jon, we need a C# freelancer".
Like I could list 5 local companies right now I know of off the top of my head that are always looking for devs and I personally haven't even been to a networking event for like 2 years.
I've had some great nights too, some long interesting chats. One that always sticks in my mind is someone who'd just setup his own ML cluster on AWS and him telling me all about Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence, which had just come out (wow, 4 years already). Or sometimes just having fun and a few drinks.
It's not just your direct manager that can make your job shitty, it can be anyone on the management chain from your direct supervisor up to the CEO.
A good manager can mitigate the effects of poor management at the higher echelons, but it will still persist, hovering under the surface.
I prefer my manager to be professionally friendly, not a neck breather and treat me as an adult. Currently very happy with my manager :)
1. Very technical with no political skills. They are great to work for as mentors but they have no power in the organization to get their teams resources, raises, or promotions. They weren't career motivated because they made enough to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle and don't understand why you care so much about money.
2. The overly political. They will throw you under the bus in a heart beat to make themselves look good. They are very good with managing up. If you make them look good though and no how to play the game, you can get ahead. I was never good before recently at playing the game.
It's a rare manager that's good at both - they are like a unicorn. But they are great to work with. They can manage up well enough to communicate both the technical needs of their teams and get resources and compensation for their teams and they can help you on the technical level. I would have never been able to transistion from developer to dev lead without them.
Of course, it's important to read that section as "what I don't prioritise", not "what you shouldn't prioritise".