fooboy

This. My comment history displays all sorts of worry about my place at work. I recently realized I've just been upset by how I've been underpaid for years in an extremely hot labor market and specialty.

I would never share my current salary with anyone that can use it against me in negotiation.

If a recruiter asks, I tell them I'm not comfortable sharing it. If they press, I tell them that I only discuss numbers once the company and I both agree there is a mutual fit.

No one has ever told me they will not proceed without my current salary, but if it ever came to that I would thank them for their time and hang up.

Thanks for commenting. Agreed with your definition of "solution."

This is why I'm leaving, actually: opportunities to design solutions are dwindling, as I'm getting more managerial work.

In the short term, I want to take on a hybrid quantitative/engineering role. A bit of analysis, a bit of coding. I'd like to do this at a startup to start, so that I'm also involved with product and business decisions (so that they clearly motivate my quant/dev work). I'd like to move into management for this type of work over time, but thats years from now.

While I'm not happy with the work, I'm happy with my coworkers and the environment. This (and the flexibility with my education) complicates the thought of leaving. Maybe its a set of not-so-golden handcuffs...

Thanks for commenting. Does it change anything if I say that I might not be qualified for those jobs right now?

To be fair my direct manager is supporting me on this--he's giving me more quantitative work and the work time to knock it out. If I stay it'll be because of that.

It's arguable that the team I'm aiming for is even MORE responsible for generating revenue, fwiw.

They clearly want me aboard as a dev, but the question is whether they're actively discouraging me or simply avoiding promises they may not be able to keep.

I don't follow. Your point is that my departure will yield a new developer?

I don't think my departure would be a good thing for them. I'm on a small team, and my leaving would greatly decrease their capacity.

I'm also being encouraged to take on more responsibility while I'm still around, so I'm not getting swept out the door or anything here,

Oh man, this hits close to home...thanks for the reminder.

This is a great great point. "Done" changes sometimes, but it can also keep getting pushed back in favor of "one more addition." That happens to me a lot.

I've definitely looked before. How would being INTJ or INTP (somewhere between the two) affect anything?

I wish someone had told me this sooner, because after going through the above scenario again and hearing "we'd love to hire you if you had a bit more experience" for the umpteenth time, I realized you're right.

Thanks for the tough love--I'm going to focus on getting that experience.

This cuts both ways: looking for work takes a substantial, non-zero amount of time, and it's extremely frustrating when startups decide to speak with you even though they know hiring you is "a long shot."

Searching for work at a startup has been a protracted, fruitless process. They have no problem conversing with you and checking out your background over coffee, lunch, whatever. After a few conversations and a technical interview, you find out there isn't a good fit.

Rinse and repeat for any number of tech startups, and you'll be waving goodbye to a month or two of your life.

Has anyone else had this experience? To me, the whole recruiting process is f'kd on both sides.

Sorry to pile on, but can you do the same for me? I'm considering a similar path to the one you're investigating here.

Well honestly, schools are decent at identifying whether you can succeed in their program or not. Whether you actually succeed is a different story, but I bet its a function (maybe exponential) of the effort you put in.

Hah, very true.

I won't mention the university, but they're in the northern Atlantic region (not MIT or CMU). My CS interests (machine learning and computational statistics) extend from my domain experience (applied statistics), and I also have a strong background in math. Finally, I bootstrapped my CS knowledge up to a certain level using online lectures from MIT, Stanford, and Harvard, and mentioned as much in my application.

Stepping up work on personal projects (website, OSS). I want to implement some algorithms in C once those outstanding projects are done.

What about you?