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I've been a PHP programmer/developer since 2007 and I've applied for 5 local PHP jobs recently and I haven't gotten a single reply. How can I figure out what I'm doing wrong, or what may be missing from my resume, etc? Has the job market for PHP folks changed so much in the past few years that I'm being overlooked for omitting the mention of some crucial skill or technology?
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Jan 30, 2015 02:10
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Some companies are getting cheaper and wanting full stack developers, with a grand sprinkling of hipster JavaScript and CSS tools on top.
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Jan 30, 2015 02:16
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I made sure to mention my experience with the LAMP stack, at least, and LESS/SASS. In my most recent application, I mentioned in my email that I'm currently learning modern front-end stuff like Backbone.js and Node/Meteor. A modern web application's stack probably has 100 layers now that you have to run 25 command line tools to make a single-page website, I dunno if I could claim to be a "full stack" developer for that kinda thing, but I'm comfortable with LAMP for sure.
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Jan 30, 2015 02:43
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Personally I would never mention that I'm in the process of learning something. I know it's meant to sound like a positive thing, but to a person reviewing a stack of a hundred resumes it just sounds like "I don't know this thing, but I've heard of it."
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Jan 30, 2015 03:56
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Yeah, if you want to have X on your resume, just learn it, don't be learning it. It's not like the process is (1) spend a month learning something, (2) start using it. Especially when it's like, an API or library or framework with concepts you already know about. So if you get a resume that says that, it means that either the line is B.S. or if not that the person most likely takes forever to learn things.
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Jan 30, 2015 04:28
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sarehu posted:Yeah, if you want to have X on your resume, just learn it, don't be learning it. It's not like the process is (1) spend a month learning something, (2) start using it. Especially when it's like, an API or library or framework with concepts you already know about. So if you get a resume that says that, it means that either the line is B.S. or if not that the person most likely takes forever to learn things. I mentioned I was playing around with Backbone in my email, but my resume only lists things I know. I just wanted to give the impression I'm a go-getter™ who's eager to learn and adapt. (I was the lead developer in charge of hiring at my last office, and guys with stagnating skills were the worst.) Anyway, A bit more messing around and I can list Backbone as something I know on my resume anyway, it seems like there's not too much to it. I actually left my last job because it got boring, so my new job hunting approach was supposed to have this theme of "I want to be constantly learning new things" but now you're making me second guess my approach. Should I tone it down? Only mention it in the interview? Not at all? I don't want to get stuck in another boring job where I can't learn new things. In fact I'd dread it.
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Jan 30, 2015 08:15
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Lord Superchrome posted:I mentioned I was playing around with Backbone in my email, but my resume only lists things I know. I just wanted to give the impression I'm a go-getter™ who's eager to learn and adapt. (I was the lead developer in charge of hiring at my last office, and guys with stagnating skills were the worst.) Anyway, A bit more messing around and I can list Backbone as something I know on my resume anyway, it seems like there's not too much to it. I would have no problem as long as it was denoted as tinkering/hobby level
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Jan 30, 2015 08:32
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Lord Superchrome posted:I actually left my last job because it got boring, so my new job hunting approach was supposed to have this theme of "I want to be constantly learning new things" but now you're making me second guess my approach. Should I tone it down? Only mention it in the interview? Not at all? I don't want to get stuck in another boring job where I can't learn new things. In fact I'd dread it. You have to understand that I might form opinions from tone and word choice in writing that might not be the same as other people's and maybe I tend to "read between the lines" and notice subtext in places where other people would not, in ways that do not necessarily map to reality, so any advice I give where I'm paranoid that somebody might interpret things a certain way should be processed with skepticism. I tend to approach resumes that I look at as an interviewer, not a sifter and filterer, with extreme cynicism. So you're seeing my cynical reaction to somebody "learning" something -- a line I've tried to use sometimes. Also if I see somebody trying to come across as a "go-getter," naturally my reaction is, "oh, so this person's trying to make up for other deficiencies!" And now you're down the path of thinking, what if this is read by a third-level thinker instead of a shrughesian second-level thinker? This is insane and a horrible criterion for filtering resumes but it's the sort of thing that would make me want to be precise and exact with tone when I say that I'm learning backbone. Like, by not saying I'm learning backbone, but to say it in a way that says yes, I'm actually using it to make whatever, and I'm not just putting this line on a resume and I get your worldview while reading this information and am totally with it, and usually the desire to convey this results in the choice of a certain word or punctuation. This is totally mental but anyway you should definitely have he word backbone.js on your résumé, just say you've been using it to do X or whatever instead of "I'm learndning!", as Ralph Wiggum would put it
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Jan 30, 2015 23:28
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sarehu posted:You have to understand that I might form opinions from tone and word choice in writing that might not be the same as other people's
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Jan 31, 2015 00:02
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I was looking at the email I sent in 2011 that got me my last office job, and it was crazy short, like 2 or 3 lines just saying I'm a PHP developer, I've attached my resume. Maybe an air of mystery trumps any long-winded autobiography intro letter. Having done some hiring myself, I wanted to make sure I was unquestionably a stud and not a dud. Oh, and I also choose my words and punctuation very carefully, can't you tell?  Anyway, I also got an email back tonight, asking me to come in for an interview so look forward to an update next week about what went wrong. :P
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Jan 31, 2015 08:53
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Is it common to reach senior-level in salary and expertise in one stack and then switch to a completely different stack while maintaining the previous salary? Anyone else here do that? What was your experience? I'm a 28 year old .NET developer in suburban MD working on a plain but huge forms-over-data app at a state government contractor. It sucks; forms, forms, and more forms, a mountain of bugs, mediocre and lovely developers who break two things when fixing one, unit tests that don't pass in code deployed to production, critical issues requiring emergency releases all the time... the problems are never-ending, and I'm not learning anything anymore - just fixing stupid bullshit and writing more forms. I can play ping pong and come in whenever though, and I've made really good friends with some of the other developers. I used to make 85k and was pissed about it but after interviewing elsewhere I played it off my current company and now make 120k plus 10k retention bonus, with a probable 5k+ year end bonus, so I'll make at least 130k and maybe ~135k+ if I stick around until January 2016. For my area this COL calculator says that's $206k in SF. Goddamn. I feel like I'm stuck, and that there's no way I can hope to make as much elsewhere. I love C# but I see the rest of the world passing me by. I feel like I should've spent my 20s working at a startup, or working with JVM languages on hard problems instead of in .NET on stupid bullshit. I want to be using Scala, doing machine learning with Python, trying crazy WebGL stuff, or actually using math/statistics in an interesting domain... any of these instead of working on a system tracking Medicaid data. Sure, I can learn these things at night, and I am, but there's no way I can compete with people who already spend 40 hours a week working with these things. I have no idea if transitions like this are common in this industry. Is it reasonable for a .NET developer making 135k to learn Scala at night and then get a job making a similar salary effectively completely switching technology stacks?
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Mar 4, 2015 01:25
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Cryolite posted:Is it common to reach senior-level in salary and expertise in one stack and then switch to a completely different stack while maintaining the previous salary? Anyone else here do that? What was your experience?
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Mar 4, 2015 02:01
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Cryolite posted:I have no idea if transitions like this are common in this industry. Is it reasonable for a .NET developer making 135k to learn Scala at night and then get a job making a similar salary effectively completely switching technology stacks? Another option if you're set on Scala would be via F#. Leverage your .Net experience to get into some F#, from there it might be easier to "jump stacks" across to Scala. Still a bunch of night work, and probably tougher to find the first job, but you've got the framework behind you already when looking into that first step.
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Mar 4, 2015 02:54
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Cryolite posted:Is it common to reach senior-level in salary and expertise in one stack and then switch to a completely different stack while maintaining the previous salary? Anyone else here do that? What was your experience?
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Mar 4, 2015 06:23
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Cryolite posted:Is it common to reach senior-level in salary and expertise in one stack and then switch to a completely different stack while maintaining the previous salary? Anyone else here do that? What was your experience? It is definitely possible, but you have to be confident in your ability to learn and perform quickly. If you're have a self-image of "I can't compete with people who already spend 40 hours a week working with these things" you're going to portray that outwardly and aren't going to be able convince people to pick you instead. If you're smart and interested in the topic theres no reason not to believe in yourself. Meeting actual engineers who do the work you want to do and getting them to refer you to go around the dumb recruiter resume filter will also greatly improve your chances. Really the easiest method for doing this is probably finding a company that makes it possible to move within the organization. I've been at Facebook for the last three years doing basically this transition from senior SWE to a security engineer role. Its gone "hired as pure SWE" => "transfer to security oriented development position" => "transfer to security specific position". I've kept my salary and leveling throughout (actually getting promoted one level during) but doing this probably cost me a bit leveling/raise/bonus wise. I'd probably be a level higher by now if I'd stayed a SWE and my reviews have lately been more "meets all" instead of "greatly exceeds" which costs me a bit in bonuses, but I'm significantly happier with my current role and had I not made the switch I'd likely be burned out at this point.
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Mar 4, 2015 11:59
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I would echo what others are saying. I would not think about the startup angle, and look for larger/mature companies that can handle internal movement (might exclude a lot of companies in the area that do contracting). That's a more common class of company than startups that are willing to let you pick up experience as needed. A larger company will more likely value non language specific experience as well. As someone whose experienced in your geographic area I will also mention salaries in the area lagged behind NYC and the West Coast for awhile but recently it seems companies are realizing you get what you pay for (in terms of attracting talent). Salaries have risen pretty fast recently. So even if you take a downgrade in title/responsibility you might maintain pay. This might be hard to judge going into an interview, though. I don't have any clearance but compare pretty favorably to many peers whose work requires one. And I don't carry any of the baggage having a clearance comes with.* * If you want to stay in MD.
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Mar 4, 2015 15:49
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Working for a startup is orders of magnitude more likely to gently caress you over than anything else. I'm not saying never do it, but if you do it make sure it's either yours (full equal share) or cash upfront. Also the types of people that actually carry through with starting a startup are 98% deluded idiots with grandiose visions of themselves and impossible to work with, so just bear that in mind. Anyway specialization in some obscure boring-rear end field is just one of those choices you have to make and live with. There's always one or two dudes in every city that do like Hypercard or Filemaker or literally COBOL or something, and some bank or government department or hospital build their system using that poo poo in nineteen-dickedy-doo, and will basically up to the point of the cost of replacing it (which is massive) to keep it running. You can make a lot of money. Serious, serious money. It's just a different lifestyle. You got work, 9 to 5 and you get to not really give a poo poo beyond getting paid. You go home after and spend time with your friends and family. You have time to go to the gym, that sort of thing. It's not a bad life at all. That said, I've had stressful fun jobs and well paying boring jobs and I've definitely been happier in the former (though i also feel I've lucked out finding medium sized, well established companies that have competent staff and do interesting work). I mean it's a lot of money you'd have to leave on the table, but then again, you probably don't really have dependents yet? Now is probably the time to chose. Just take your sweet long time doing your due diligence, the industry is lousy with abusive psychopaths. Really ask around, find former employees if you can etc. etc. Actually make use of the "do you have any questions for me" part of the interview and try to eek out tell-tale signs of a dysfunctional company ("who has last say in technical decisions?", "do people go out for lunch together?", "what sort of equipment do developers get? what if i want ___ instead?", "how do you do project planning?").
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Mar 4, 2015 19:34
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Curious what you guys suggest looking out for when interviewing with startups? I hear lots of mixed stories and anecdotes about them, to the point it's hard to know what to think 
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Mar 5, 2015 17:43
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Startups aren't all the same. There's various phases of growth (five man, 20 man, 100, etc.). Find out how many clients they have, their revenue, and their growth projections, and see if their projections make sense. Companies with established clients and revenue (instead of bleeding VC capital dry) must be doing something right. Also, honestly, pretend equity doesn't exist. Equity is great if the company grows large enough and if you're around long enough for it to matter, but otherwise you have to live for now. It's one thing to take a pay cut for the benefit of being able to work on interesting problems, but evaluate the opportunity just on that, and not the mythical equity money that might or might not (probably not) come.
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Mar 5, 2015 21:08
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ExcessBLarg! posted:Startups aren't all the same. There's various phases of growth (five man, 20 man, 100, etc.). Find out how many clients they have, their revenue, and their growth projections, and see if their projections make sense. Also be aware of people who were crucial at 5 maintaining that role at 20 or 100. It's a great way for someone to go from IC to Director without any relevant training, experience, or mentorship on how to manage that personal growth. Ask a lot of questions about process, milestones, etc. how they're arrived at and how the team & management reacts when it's clear a milestone won't be met.
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Mar 5, 2015 21:31
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ExcessBLarg! posted:Startups aren't all the same. There's various phases of growth (five man, 20 man, 100, etc.). Find out how many clients they have, their revenue, and their growth projections, and see if their projections make sense. Companies with established clients and revenue (instead of bleeding VC capital dry) must be doing something right. Here's a few simple rules to follow: Companies granting stock options and planning an IPO or acquisition will submit a 409A appraisal to the IRS indicating the fair market valuation of the company. Similar valuation reports are typically given by the board of directors at least semi-annually to important equity holders in the company (VCs, etc., not individual option-holding employees). Most companies will never give you this verbatim, but if you understand it and the important numbers on it, move the equity conversation towards asking for those numbers. Informed hiring managers can probably give you the valuation of the company and an approximate fair market value of your options. They cannot give you a strike price on exercising those options because that strike price can only be determined by the board of directors. Like others have pointed out, existing equity becomes diluted if the company sells additional stock to new investors, so understand what their plans are with respect to additional funding rounds. Additionally, if the company secures additional financing before your options are granted, the change in material assets can increase the strike price of your options by an order of magnitude, so be careful and understand the company's plans. Ask about the cliff on stock options. Most option packages come with a three-year cliff, meaning you are entitled to absolutely nothing until you have been at the company for three years. Negotiate towards 33% vesting at a one-year cliff, with additional options vested quarterly up to three years, especially if the company is positioned for a potential acquisition or IPO in the near future. Do this regardless of anything else in your option package. Like others have pointed out, equity isn't worth a whole lot if you're not one of the early employees of a company (returns fall tremendously past employee #20-30). Because of vesting, exactly how many employees this is depends on the employee churn rate -- startups go through employees much faster than established companies. People who never hit their cliff, whose option package was worth nothing, don't count. Make sure you use this to your negotiating advantage if you're on the edge of this range. Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Mar 5, 2015 |
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Mar 5, 2015 22:01
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Misogynist posted:Again, the answer is a big it depends. "Pretend equity doesn't exist" is a great model when you don't really understand equity and don't want to understand equity. Otherwise, by not asking the right questions, you might be screwing yourself out of a big payday if the company does become really successful. To reuse a phrase from earlier in the thread: don't be Homer Simpson selling his shares in the power plant for $25. Are 3-year cliffs the norm? Fred Wilson talks about a 1-year cliff (with monthly vesting thereafter) being typical in his posts on the subject. Also, acceleration in the event of an acquisition is also an important contractual item, right? Otherwise you can find yourself losing all your unvested options via a "relinquish them all or you're fired lol" type clawback from the buyer.
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Mar 5, 2015 22:22
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Blotto Skorzany posted:Are 3-year cliffs the norm? Fred Wilson talks about a 1-year cliff (with monthly vesting thereafter) being typical in his posts on the subject. Also, acceleration in the event of an acquisition is also an important contractual item, right? Otherwise you can find yourself losing all your unvested options via a "relinquish them all or you're fired lol" type clawback from the buyer. Acceleration is potentially important, given the trajectory of the company. If they're positioning themselves for an acquisition, it's very important. If their financial endgame is to sustain organic growth and earn a consistent revenue stream, it might be completely irrelevant. Either way, it doesn't hurt to ask about/for such a clause.
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Mar 5, 2015 22:32
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Also, at a startup it's a good idea to know your employment law poo poo, because they won't. For example the place I worked at didn't know that CA law requires paying out accrued vacation time when the employee leaves, and when I started they accidentally the whole health insurance for all the employees. Also a goon hacked the HR contractor's website and found out how much money I made.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:21
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sarehu posted:For example the place I worked at didn't know that CA law requires paying out accrued vacation time when the employee leaves They probably also didn't know it needs to be accounted for as a liability on the books, either, because in CA accrued vacation time represents earned, yet unpaid, compensation.
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Mar 6, 2015 02:46
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:*shrug* I don't take such a hardline stance and don't expect others to. I do resist giving a salary, but if push comes to shove, how much I want to work there affects how much I care about giving the number. Like the other poster said, if not disclosing your compensation with your current employer actually ended the conversation with a prospect, you wouldn't want to work there. The only reason to disclose is if you're just really desperate for any work regardless of how much they're obviously intending to shortchange you. The line that's pretty consistently worked for me is along the lines of "those are terms between myself and my current employer, and I can't disclose it". It's saved me tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars already. Progressive JPEG fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Mar 7, 2015 |
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Mar 7, 2015 20:12
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Progressive JPEG posted:Like the other poster said, if not disclosing your compensation with your current employer actually ended the conversation with a prospect, you wouldn't want to work there. The only reason to disclose is if you're just really desperate for any work regardless of how much they're obviously intending to shortchange you. I work with engineers, designers, and product people. Not necessarily with people who set the compensation policy. Bad management might be highly correlated with rejecting people who don't give numbers, but that's my choice to make based on context, not by some coarse equivalence or over-generalized rule. That said, your line is pretty good and I might steal it next time I'm looking.
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Mar 7, 2015 20:44
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Just state (the high end of) your expectation instead.
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Mar 9, 2015 19:21
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I have an interview tomorrow at a self-described 'startup in stealth mode'. Can't find anything concrete about what they do on them thar internets and the two employees I've exchanged email with so far don't even have it listed on their LinkedIn pages, so they're doing a pretty good job with that stealth. What should I ask above and beyond the normal interview questions? Or do I try to pretend it's a normal job at a company with revenue and whatnot?
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Mar 16, 2015 16:10
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Munkeymon posted:I have an interview tomorrow at a self-described 'startup in stealth mode'. Can't find anything concrete about what they do on them thar internets and the two employees I've exchanged email with so far don't even have it listed on their LinkedIn pages, so they're doing a pretty good job with that stealth. What should I ask above and beyond the normal interview questions? Or do I try to pretend it's a normal job at a company with revenue and whatnot? I guess, ask all the questions you normally would answer via looking it up on the internet. They can't fault you for not knowing these things due to their stealth mode. Definitely ask about their business plan for 1,2,3,4,5 years, and if they have an exit strategy. I'd mainly be concerned about the likelihood of the business succeeding and how long that may take, so ask enough so you can evaluate that for yourself, then decide if you want to take that risk. Pretend they are on Dragon's Den, and you're a Dragon... but be more polite.
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Mar 16, 2015 16:17
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Munkeymon posted:Or do I try to pretend it's a normal job at a company with revenue and whatnot? Two crucial questions: 1) How much money have you raised? 2) How much money do you currently have in the bank? Raised $100M? Fantastic!! Have $50k left in the bank? Not so fantastic. You want to know if they've got a comfortable runway for the next few years and how they're managing cash flow. If they're really poor at fundraising you might be pulled off techinical work to go coddle an investor, or have the fun of a "payroll event." I'm not sure if those are in your "normal" interview question set, but they absolutely should be part of interviewing at a startup.
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Mar 16, 2015 17:38
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JawnV6 posted:lol no OK - I just didn't want to make a protocol/etiquette mistake like talking about salary during the interview. Their initial contact with me actually specified that they'd be paying market-competitive rates rather than expecting people to starve for years and hope for a payout later, so I'm assuming there's a trade-off where I'd get less/no equity if I'm even early enough to be considered for equity (guessing not) but at least get paid well. Thanks, both of you
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Mar 16, 2015 18:41
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Munkeymon posted:OK - I just didn't want to make a protocol/etiquette mistake like talking about salary during the interview. Don't get me wrong, someone might well balk at you asking those questions. But a startup is inherenlty risky, and you want to make your decision with an understanding of as much of that risk as you can. If they want to hide that information from you, it could be a red flag.
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Mar 16, 2015 19:33
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Good remote job boards? Specifically for mobile jobs? I see SO careers has openings tagged as such, curious what others might be out there.
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Mar 16, 2015 20:55
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JawnV6 posted:Don't get me wrong, someone might well balk at you asking those questions. But a startup is inherenlty risky, and you want to make your decision with an understanding of as much of that risk as you can. If they want to hide that information from you, it could be a red flag.
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Mar 17, 2015 02:55
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kitten smoothie posted:Good remote job boards? Specifically for mobile jobs? I see SO careers has openings tagged as such, curious what others might be out there. WeWorkRemotely is a nice board because it is only for remote opportunities, but be warned that anecdotally speaking I'd say about 60-70% of the postings are Rails positions, with the rest being a mix of JS, PHP, and an even smaller minority of other stuff. It's run by Basecamp/37signals so that's not completely surprising but if you hate Ruby you won't have much luck on there most of the time. I did find my current job on there though (which is not doing Rails!) so it's not all that bad. You just need to have patience and check every day or two for new stuff.
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Mar 17, 2015 03:42
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kitten smoothie posted:Good remote job boards? Specifically for mobile jobs? I see SO careers has openings tagged as such, curious what others might be out there. There's also https://www.wfh.io/ I don't check it that often, and can't really speak to the quality of the jobs, but it seems to have some traffic.
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Mar 17, 2015 04:00
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Plorkyeran posted:They may be iffy about giving concrete numbers, but if they won't even give you a ballpark of how long they can keep making payroll then the answer is almost certainly "not very long". He was actually quite up-front about having a time/spend limit that he was willing to go up to before pulling the plug if he wasn't getting any sales or buyers and it was somewhat less awkward to talk about than I expected. Also I'd be up for equity after six months, so that's cool. Now I just have to research how much it'll cost me to buy my own health insurance for the first time ever
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Mar 17, 2015 21:09
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Munkeymon posted:Also I'd be up for equity after six months, so that's cool. Does "up for equity" mean "the first of your guaranteed options begin to vest" or "we'll start to have the conversation about your points"?
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Mar 17, 2015 21:49
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JawnV6 posted:Does "up for equity" mean "the first of your guaranteed options begin to vest" or "we'll start to have the conversation about your points"? The former, but we haven't had the actual compensation negotiation yet. He said something along the lines of "you'd be vested for equity at six months". E: also the coding test was an RPN evaluator, which turned out to be a pretty fun and easy. Munkeymon fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 22:00
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