Learn on someone else’s dime

I put in an application to work at 42floors for an entry level position and received back an email saying that they wouldn't consider me because they aren't relocating new employees to SF.

I didn't ask for relocation nor mention that I would be unable to relocate myself.

> The single most important factor on whether you’ll have a good experience is whether the company you join is exploding with growth or not.

Growth is a double-edged sword. Working at a high-growth company can, for some, be a rewarding experience. But high-growth companies can also be chaotic, dysfunctional and unreasonably demanding of employees.

And if head count grows faster than meaningful traction, which is not uncommon at venture-backed startups, there's nothing less rewarding than being a part of the layoff process that inevitably ensues.

> The best learning is when you get to see the company grow around you. If the company already has a hundred or two hundred people, it may still be a startup, but it is really a late stage startup, and all of the tremendous learning opportunities are already gone.

Nonsense. What you have the opportunity to learn is just as important as how much you can learn. On this front, larger, established companies often have a lot more to offer.

> So if you’re not blown away by everyone you meet during the hiring process, look elsewhere. You don’t want to be learning bad habits, especially because you might not know at the time that they’re that bad.

First, while it's usually wise to trust your gut if you get a bad feeling during the hiring process, if you expect to be "blown away" in a set of limited interactions with a prospective employer, you're probably being unrealistic. Keep in mind that what you see during the hiring process may be not be representative of day-to-day reality, and in some cases, what you see might even be staged[1].

Second, great people can make bad colleagues. An individual with a friendly and/or compelling personality isn't necessarily going to be knowledgeable or even competent. A lot of knowledgeable, competent people don't have a reality distortion field around them.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6543410

I think this advice is only necessary if you end up working for one of those companies that expects you to "show dedication" and "take ownership" and "be a team player" and "get into the company culture", i.e. work constant overtime. If you work a normal, sustainable, healthy, adult 40-hours-a-week, in your own town[1] there is still plenty of time to get some learning done at home.

Really, you should be learning on your own dime. Because if you're learning on someone elses dime, you're probably not actually learning correctly. You're pulled in two different directions, that of you trying to learn something and that of your boss wanting something productive out of you.

But if you just jump off the cliff already, I think you'd be surprised just how much you can learn in a very short period of time when you don't have to contend with common office distractions.

[1] I am always amazed at the throng of traffic every morning, city folk commuting to the suburbs and suburban folk commuting to the city. Just swap jobs already! Hell, why do so many people put up with taking jobs that require them to go to an office? It's so incredibly unnecessary for so many different types of work, yet people still do it. Trained monkeys.

I kind of expected 'learn on someone else's dime' to be about a company providing training as part of your job rather than a company hiring people with the expectation that they both do the job they are hired for and learn on their own everything needed to handle whatever new problem arises on any given day.

That doesn't sound at all revolutionary to me. That's basically every company I've worked for - we pay you to do a job but we also expect you to learn on your own time to keep your skillset up. The idea of the company actually helping you with the time and resources to do that learning would be something actually novel...

Sure there's value in on-the-job learning but most jobs give you that. There's also value in the kind of learning that you can only do in time outside of the time needed to do the tasks that are expected of you as part of your job.

As a 22 year old just out of college, this article sums up my experience the last few months.

>>Teach yourself a new industry

I was on the pre-med track throughout college. And by on that track, I almost went all the way (MCAT + all the pre-reqs). Got really bored wiht the root memorization involved + didn't think it satisfied my needs for creativity so I started learning how to code online via the usual free resources - Codecademy, etc. Realized that I needed some more structure and a mentor (had no idea of "best practices")without the ridiculous price tag associated with bootcamps, so I chose Thinkful (https://www.thinkful.com). I had chosen my industry.

>>Do one hour of research before you apply

I used and enjoyed the "product" for two months while conducting extensive research on every press article out there on TF. Was impressed by the background of both the co-founders and saw a post by Dan in our Community about an open intern position. Did more research and sent them a long email basically saying I'd do anything (had a bit of marketing experience so I pitched that).

>>Get in early

I was accepted as a Front-End/Marketing intern and had a lot on my plate immediately. I was/am a huge part of helping Thinkful grow now that I've moved up to become the Community Manager - I handle everything from starting a class to maintaining alumni relations.

>>Work with fabulous people

Super fabulous. We've added 3 more since I joined to become a 9 person team. Constantly growing. Everyone has different backgrounds and a unique sense of humor. Darrell (CEO/co-founder) gave this hilariously vague (but often quoted) advice to our Thinkful Fellow, "if you make it awesome, it'll be awesome. That's awesome." I think we're awesome.

>>Pick a rocket ship

I'm beyond excited of the direction we're headed. We hope to fill a void between the less structured online resources and the intensive in-person bootcamps.

>Learn

Basics of Photoshop/Illustrator, Social Media, Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, SEO, Github, HTML/CSS, Javascript/jQuery, and soon Python/Ruby.

All on someone else's dime - while earning a few dimes of my own, ha.

I wouldn't say the advice on how to pick an employer is the best one.

I have less than a year of experience in any sort of development. I spent most of that time at a non-profit that gave me a lot of freedom to learn. Small but good team that did government contracting, gave a lot of space to learn, and had people focused on staying on top of the web world.

I since switched jobs and am my company's AngularJS expert, solving any frontend problems that stumps my co-workers as well as architecting the frontend structure for new apps.

I think the important take away is to find an employer that gives you the space & opportunity to learn. Then it is up to you to make the most of it.

> We just signed up for Salesforce but haven’t installed yet.

Too late to say don't do it! For anyone else, don't go with Salesforce or with Dynamics! Install vTiger and pay 2 developers to look after it full time and add what you want. It will save you a fortune in money and frustration.

You think I'm kidding...just you wait...$11 per gigabyte, per month...an online CRM from Microsoft that can't talk to Exchange online...it's madness...

MoCoSpace... MobileCommunitySpace.

I was an early user, and when I failed to login for some period of time (6 months? 8?) my account was still active, but all of my precious images and videos were deleted.

Not too much pain, but losing the video of my late dog saying "Wow!" on command was enough to make me build my own website, which was a mild failure, which further encouraged me to build better websites, some of which became mildly successful for a fleeting moment (in web-time.)

That said, I enjoyed the article, as well as my telecommuting gig.

Aloha!

I think it's easy to know but hard to do it well for these tips

The key is to be qualified for a job, but not walk into the job a total master of all the tech being used. When I was hunting for a mobile job, I was hunting mobile jobs that didn't use objc because I knew it fairly well, but stuff like phonegap. This allowed me to code entirely in javascript and as a result, I got mobile experience which I wanted + JS experience, tech I haven't really used before. Keeps the job exciting, basically getting paid to learn.