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Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008
I was just looking for a thread like this, thanks! I'm being considered for a senior software engineering position, but I've got to ask: What does it mean to be a senior software engineer? I'm comfortable with my skills, but I know there's more to it than that. Any veterans care to chime in?

What can I do to develop as an engineer outside of the technical aspects, which (IMO) I have well under control? What are some signals I can look for to determine if a company is good or bad, in terms of leadership, communication, opportunity, etc.?

Paolomania posted:

Is mobile going to continue to be big? Are there trends conspiring to waylay webdevs? Is high-performance computing a safe niche? I'd appreciate people's thoughts on what tech is a good bet for the near future.
Yes. Mobile is growing and shows no signs of slowing down in my experience. Webdev is a broad set of skills, but the skills are becoming commodities more quickly than mobile as frameworks that help application developers bootstrap mature. Mobile development offers more opportunities for top engineers to shine, in part because resources are more constrained and implementation tends to be closer to the metal than large websites (for good reason: size+performance is way more visible on single devices). iOS has revenues that are many multiples of Android's, and having spent my career developing both my iOS and Android skills extensively, I would definitely advocate for iOS as a gateway to mobile development, even factoring out the costs to transition to a Mac (if you haven't already), buying a device, etc. - besides the platform being much more profitable, it's much easier to pick the targets you want to reach: the OS version cycle is by far less broken, and the devices far, far, far less invisibly broken.

That said, Android positions compensate competitively with iOS positions, because (again, in my experience), despite the lower revenues, Android is harder to hire for, especially when it comes to finding people who aren't full of poo poo. On the other hand, iOS empowers engineers and designers to care about and execute on improving application quality to a much greater degree than Android does.

tl;dr: Mobile > webdev; iOS > Android if you want to get your foot in.

As for high performance computing, that sounds like a pretty vague term. If you're looking to go into ops (Operations), which is basically a union of sysadmin and engineer, and involve yourself in the maintenance, creation, and continued development of large systems, there's always demand, but it is also pretty challenging to get a start in, since you need to get really good at a lot of tools and be good at holding a mental model of how large systems work in your head. It's not a particularly *hot* thing, but I guess it is perpetually very warm, so to speak, to be one of those magicians that engineers a really robust backend for a company.

Software is eating everything and mobile is eating nearly as much. Usage patterns are shifting away from laptops and towards mobile devices in a big way and it's not a flash in the pan by any means, IMO.

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Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008
Thanks for the thoughts. To pose one of my other questions again, what are some signals that a company is good or bad, in terms of leadership, communication, opportunity, process, etc.?

JawnV6 posted:

I'm utterly compromised and biased, but I think the next hot area after mobile is wearables. Even those require a mobile dev at some point in the process, blinking lights are great but having a high-def screen and internet connection a BLE (sorry, "Bluetooth Smart") connection away is awesome.

Connect the right dots and it's clear enough that Apple spun up a wearables development team some time ago. I think that that's a clear enough indicator that it's going somewhere in the next two years, but as a general category, it hasn't fully proven itself to the degree that phones/tablets have, and I think it's not unreasonable to expect the skills to translate over from mobile to wearable to some degree, since the solution would probably share CPU architecture (ARM) and possibly even OS. On the other hand, there's also the upcoming VR tech from Oculus, which is an entirely different approach and extremely compelling for other reasons.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Excellent story, and it's great to hear some validation on the iOS and Android comparison. Word of advice for Android that I haven't already covered in the Android thread in past years - avoid animation and if possible, don't try to cache anything for your first version. Any local data model and abstraction will almost certainly change many times throughout the development if you do so save yourself the trouble and just get something working. Don't use fragment back stacks (fragments - use your best judgment). Forget about supporting tablets in v1 as well.

I remember being pigeonholed. It's particularly easy to be pigeonholed into Android, in my opinion, especially if you complain about it. Sorry to say, but bury the pain or bear it on the forums. The best way out is to let the next naive sucker take your place on android, ruthless as that may sound. Then again, I am particularly strongly against developing for Android. Real talk: the combination of it and my boss at the job where I did it drove me into a severe depression that very nearly killed me, because he refused to acknowledge any responsibility for my well-being and did not have sympathy for the difficulties and pushed me unreasonably hard and blamed me (side note: that depression is way behind me now, though). Returning to the point I was trying to make, I suggest expressing a desire to get the ball rolling on Android and then hand it over to others and return to iOS.

Anecdata: I've been to both WWDC and Google I/O. I have met several iOS and Mac devs passionate about engineering, design, and products, and love writing them on top of Apple's SDKs. I have met none who enjoy Android in a similar fashion, and close to none who enjoy Andrpid development, period...and none of the people who liked it were even close to senior-level. Obviously, I am biased and have a non scientifically gathered set of anecdotes, but I trust my informed opinion on this enough: if programming is more than a job to you, or you like using your imagination, or if you just want to focus on building things instead of fighting code, don't get stuck on Android. Treading water pumps poison into the soul.

-----

Different question. This thread isn't just going to be about careers, right?

Wearables aside, what do you see as big opportunities in the industry? Mobile payments has already had a couple of years to reach a critical mass and a glut of companies jumping into the space make it unappealing to jump into, and the incumbent players in hardware are going to benefit from scale and tend to push out competition with price and distribution.

What kind of software is going to be important in the next five years that hasn't yet been made (or hasn't yet reached maturity)?

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008
Nice description!

Glimm posted:

While Android can be painful to work with at times I have to disagree with this completely. If at all possible design for tablets first, use Fragments, and for the most part Android will handle the heavy lifting for you. Just use custom resource folders for particular width devices and it's actually quite a lot easier than supporting say, the 3.5"/4" iPhone (that is to say, extremely easy ). Basically if you follow Android design principles, you're going to have a good time.

The rest of the Android complaints I tend to agree with (though animation is fine if you are minSdkVersion=14) - but that's maybe because I've been forced to do mainly iOS only at my day job for ~2 years now :( but I do keep up with my Android team and things have improved drastically as far as community support/developer excitement.
So using Fragments are a good idea period, but Android tablets in my time were far less popular than Android phones, and to reach the total addressable market, I always had to write against APIs 7 or 8. Perhaps the Nexus tablets changed this somewhat, but given the engineering tradeoff of polishing a tablet interface and making a good phone interface, pick the phone every time. If you don't have to choose between them, sure, do both, but for a minimum viable product, if tablets aren't a part of the spec, it's best to keep it in mind and release for phones first, if that saves time. This also reflects my more general belief that all other things being equal, the more targets you try to hit given a constant/stable amount of manpower, the lower the attention each target gets, and thus the greater the risk of lower quality of each experience. But there is certainly plenty of room for us to hold different philosophies :). I personally go for release fast - release often.

Though in terms of supporting 3.5" and 4" iPhones, there's a trick to making it easy that involves using Objective-C++ to create structs with measurements, and building your layout around that (ask me in the ObjC thread)

E: vvvv if you want GCD you might be able to mimic it with the executor framework, and writing some sort of glue to the main thread handler for main thread operations (I.e. UI). Relevant info: http://developer.android.com/training/multiple-threads/index.html

Doctor w-rw-rw- fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Feb 8, 2014

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

fritz posted:

I'm told there were a shitload of wearable computing companies at CES this year.
There were many of PMPs before the iPod and plenty of PDAs before the iPhone, none of them very good (I owned a RCA Lyra and a Dell Axim). I have a sneaking suspicion that whatever comes next, Apple will put a product out that changes how other people were thinking about wearables. On the other hand, it could end up being an AppleTV - interesting, but not good enough to change anything. I kind of hope that there's one clear non-Apple winner that puts out a quality product.


Interesting, but that makes it sound like turnover for senior levels/managers could be pretty high, and it's a high risk position. Can someone who reports early and often eventually be seen as too dependent on others, or be ignored on account of being too noisy? Crying wolf and being wrong seems like it could be as damaging to credibility as trying and failing to meet goals (with or without fault). What skills are involved in not loving up at that level?

Are there any good books to study the people parts of working in industry?

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Pie Colony posted:

how much free time do you guys find you get over a day? by which i mean time to just look at websites, blogs, maybe even videos or personal projects. also i guess overtime would be negative here.

Disclaimer: I'm not working at the moment but this applied when I was, and I'm keeping it up in the meantime:

The workday is mostly for work, but it's not horrible to spend a couple of minutes here and there keeping up on relevant technical blog posts. Investing time in your craft outside of work is kind of necessary to get an edge. I'm developing my career in something I love, so ~20 hours per week outside of work is not a big deal, but could be to someone who doesn't enjoy it as much (caveat: for me, that 20 hours is soft/flexible; I frequently interrupt it to do stuff with friends, play games, etc.). But time in this case is more something you make than something you get/find.

Unless you mean how much time I spend on HN, SA, and Reddit over the course of a day. Too much. :P

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Dietrich posted:

I've got 10 years of .net/sql development experience under my belt and my company is pretty dead set on killing "custom development" and moving everything to IBM BPM (which is a development tool, but for some reason everyone thinks it's off the shelf software) and/or Dynamics AX (which will need to be heavily customized to do anything like we want it to do).

I have zero interest in working in either of these development environments long-term, but this is a nice stable job, even if it doesn't pay well.

I've been considering jumping ship but I'm worried about job stability (two kids, stay at home wife), and having to work more anywhere else.

Some one talk me down/up.

There are large stable .NET shops around, they just don't get talked about a lot. A friend of mine works at Ancestry.com, I think, and they have a lot of .NET. I think they're transitioning a bit to Java, though.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008
I start on a trial at an early-stage startup (still in stealth) tomorrow. Any clues on what I should expect from companies where my employee number is going to be a single digit?

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Otto Skorzeny posted:

"On trial"? Does this mean they don't pay you in full or something?

It means they hire me as a contractor before hiring me full-time. I knew one of the founders from college, and basically talked to them for an afternoon before they said "okay we'll try you out." The pay is very reasonable and the cofounders are reputable.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Strong Sauce posted:

Protip for Google. Don't go for Google.
FTFY.

They have a pretty broken hiring process overall. My most recent dealing with them was a phone screen that involved writing Java that compiled in a plaintext online editor and getting nitpicked on style. I ended up with a correct solution, but didn't pass on to the next stage probably because I sounded totally out of my element writing Java in an online notepad (no poo poo)!

The previous time from that I was interviewed by a O(n) sperglord who wanted very mathematically precise bounds. Forgetting that he became a SDE after transitioning from a SRE, and that I was not interviewing for a core services group, that disqualified me too. Though that was slightly more justified I suppose, if you just take it for granted that that's what Google wants.

EDIT: though I suppose that sounds like sour grapes, a number of people I know have tried and had similar experiences in their rejections

Doctor w-rw-rw- fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Mar 6, 2014

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Strong Sauce posted:

Oh yeah and when you tell them you are leaving, refuse when they offer to raise your salary.

Yeah, counteroffers are often a delaying tactic so they can train a replacement because they didn't care about bus factor. Too often, the damage has been done already and you're not in for the long haul and both parties know that. You need some pretty hefty incentives to make it worth it, and if they've already demonstrated how little they value you, they're not likely to change their mind until the pain of a lost employee is fully realized.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

shrughes posted:

Uh yeah I'm pretty sure this is false.
It's not true enough to take at face value, at least.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Strong Sauce posted:

Ruby is the language.
Rails is not a language.
GNU/Linux is the OS.
Linux is not an OS.
:goonsay:

To be fair, while you are totally correct. Ruby deserves the close association with Rails, because that's arguably the framework the catapulted it into the mainstream.

Definitely not a startup-only thing, but after a certain size it won't be good enough to avoid a polyglot architecture or JVM layer (i.e. JRuby).

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Arachnamus posted:

GOV.UK gets around 8 million hits a week with tens of millions more on the way, and that's entirely MRI Ruby. https://www.gov.uk/performance/site-activity

Looks like they also use Python to me: https://github.com/alphagov

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Strong Sauce posted:

There was more to the post, where I also had "Java has existed since 1995, Spring has existed since 2003" Since Spring was the first framework for Java that came to my mind and matched my narrative but decided to delete it because I honestly don't know if the comparison was fair other than the fact that Spring is only one year older than Rails and would probably count as being for businesses. I realize now removing it made me sound like the Ruby/Rails thing was a huge deal. But IMO if you're going to make a statement about it, you should at least get that part correct.

Rails gets a bit of a bad rap because Twitter moved over to the JVM. I think that's a bit unfair given how much traffic Twitter gets over almost anyone else. GitHub runs on Rails and it works just fine. It seems the switch away from Rails happened because of an internal change in direction. Given Twitter's resources they could have contributed more to Rails and/or Ruby. Ruby 2.x is starting to see a lot more speed gains, but imagine if Twitter had people helping out with Ruby.

Maybe they did and decided it wasn't worth the trouble. I've heard Ruby is insanely hard to parse correctly. Wish I had that blog post where some guy tried to make a ruby parse then said, "Nope!" after going through and finding all the one-offs you had to account for in parsing.
Github - also polyglot. Used Erlang to serve up repos.

Re: Twitter
They did, it is, and they hired some really good Java people (i.e. Marius Eriksen). Twitter decided to use the best tool for them - I don't really think it's any company's responsibility to improve a platform if it isn't the product they're selling. There's goodwill and technical benefits to be gained from doing so, but not an obligation.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

bonds0097 posted:

Isn't that how we end up with issues like Heartbleed though?
Yes, and? It wasn't any company's responsibility to keep OpenSSL secure, it was their responsibility to keep their own products secure. The industry in general failed at that because we failed to recognize the connection between collectively paying attention and money to OpenSSL and securing ourselves.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008
I never said "Ruby isn't good enough to serve big sites", I said it wasn't good enough to avoid a polyglot architecture, i.e. an architecture that is tolerant of decoupled services, or a service-oriented architecture if you want to use that terminology. Which is really kind of true of nearly everything (Java in particular seems to embrace it IMO). I don't really understand what we're arguing about.

Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:

Definitely not a startup-only thing, but after a certain size it won't be good enough to avoid a polyglot architecture or JVM layer (i.e. JRuby).

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Hughlander posted:

Now you have me confused. Why would one wish to avoid an architecture that is tolerant of decoupled services?

Deployment should be no more complex than it needs to be, and the longer you can avoid that without ridiculous contortions, the simpler the ops will be, IMO. Two services means two application lifecycles and some sort of pooling or connection management, which in turns means more statefulness, and possibly more ways undeployment+redeployment can go wrong. Basically, a service-oriented architecture (IMO) usually goes from a net negative to a sizable net positive relatively quickly. So if you're starting from nothing and quickly rewriting a fairly conventional prototype into a fairly conventional version 0.1 of a product, engineering a decoupled service is liable to impede early progress, because it's easier to experiment on a newborn project when it lives in a simple world.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Paolomania posted:

Having decided to eventually move on from academic research, it is time to dust off the old Resume. I'd appreciate any critiques - the biggest question in my mind currently being whether to trim to 1 page or expand to a more verbose 2 pages.

Stick to one. Lots or white space there. Consider a two-column layout, and remember that it's not about writing everything in the resume, it's about getting the resume read. It's okay to leave some information out that you can explain in person.

JawnV6 posted:

Go for 2. Add an "intent" section describing your generic ideal job and tailor it to every place you send.
Agree on the intent section; disagree on two pages. It makes a difference when reading and marking up a resume. It means staplers whenever you print copies out or the risk of mixing up the papers. It's a pain.

Doctor w-rw-rw- fucked around with this message at 01:28 on May 10, 2014

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Strong Sauce posted:

One page, two page. Who cares? It does not matter. If you have a qualified applicant you're going to read their resume regardless.
It doesn't disqualify but it is totally a weakly negative heuristic when you have a lot of resumes of roughly similar quality.

Applicants aren't qualified until their resume passes the filter, so saying that he resume will be read in full because its qualification is known a priori is not true.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

JawnV6 posted:

I'm not terribly attached to the position, but the two resumes I've reviewed this week were 2 and 5 pages. If you can condense it to one that's great, but don't sacrifice quality just to meet that standard.
Fair enough, I retract my opinion.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Skuto posted:

Given that a major benefit of using contractors or doing contract to hire is the lessened risk on both sides if the other side turns out to be lovely, I don't think it's a particularly sensible idea to compare hiring procedures between them and regular full time hires.

Data point: I was hired full-time at my current place of employment after a week tryout period. It works as a decent low-pass filter over a resume that looks good but might have a spot or two (i.e. circumstances outside of one's control). It also is good for determining whether you can get along with the person.

The flip side of jumping from job to job is people quitting to recover from a job with full confidence that their job search afterwards won't be terribly prolonged. Definitely seen tons of people do it, so a 1 week trial isn't terribly outlandish, especially if the company is extremely hesitant to add an additional head at all, and is trying to keep head count down.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Skuto posted:

Unless I misunderstand you, you're saying that you were unemployed and are talking about people that are also unemployed in the above paragraph.

So you're really reinforcing the point that was made about the problem with that hiring method.

Hughlander posted:

That last is interesting because it could be rephrased as: We only hire unemployed people with no other options.

Ie: You can't interview during that week, you're not going to take a week vacation from a current job just to "contract" elsewhere etc... I wonder did they offer relocations? If so was hotel included for that week?
A lot of people I know have quit, done nothing for a while, then found something else after a while. Switching from one job directly to another job isn't the overwhelming common case within my circle of acquaintances (however common it might be more broadly)

I had a lot of options, but I wanted to try working at this particular company. After basically talking for a couple of hours they decided to try me out. It may not be the best for people who are working, but for someone taking their time, it's not so bad, and signal it offers is a lot more detailed - i.e. work habits / work ethic, deepness or breadth of knowledge, how they communicate. So saying "oh, it's for desperate people without jobs" is kind of a gently caress-you to the idea that some people aren't rushing to go from job to job.

:raise: I've actually never spent *less* than two months between quitting and getting an offer for full-time employment I actually want to accept. I usually take that time to work on hobby projects and do like 2 or 3 interviews a week, max. I usually don't even start looking for a job until a couple of weeks in.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008
Hiring internationally is a huge hassle, and at least in my experience, it gets harder the further from tech hubs you're aiming to go. France has especially dysfunctional laws for startups (though granted, you asked about positions without specifying that). IMO, getting hired as a team lead is basically not going to happen without credentials so good there really wouldn't be any question, or good contacts that can vouch for you strongly. Recruiters are probably not going to help.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

tef posted:

What's the staff rotation like, who has been promoted from or into your team ?
What was the last big architectural change and how did you manage it ?
How does a new feature get rolled out to production? What happens if it fails ?
Is there any on-call or on-site work ? How much holiday has the team taken this year ?

These are great. Point for point would have flagged problems in one of my past teams.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Paolomania posted:

Thanks for the advice all. Thanks to this thread I am making my transition out of academic research and into a position at Big G.

Congrats!

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

lmao zebong posted:

My company is currently considering undergoing a major transformation to our engineering side and is looking into moving all us mobile engineers from the major platforms into a single 'multi platform' team. We would be using a product that allows you to build a shared C# codebase that can build out native apps for all platforms. For a variety of reasons, I am not really interested in moving to this new platform, as I feel I have a lot of skills in iOS and also a lot to learn. I feel at this point in my career that it's more important for me to continue learning development for a native platform than some cross platform solution.
My question is, if my company does decide to go down this route, how open should I be that I am looking to leave with my new manager? I have made my reservations, both technical and business-wise very clear to those above me, but it seems very likely this decision is going to be ramrodded through by upper management. I am just curious where the line is - I have a casual relationship with my new manager so I wouldn't feel uncomfortable telling him I'm looking elsewhere, but I am unsure of the unofficial protocol of looking for a new job while being currently employed and how open I should be about it.

I've experienced a couple of different relationships with my bosses over the years:

  • Totally distrusted, no respect for programming skills, actively suspected anything he said. Left of my own accord. Have never looked back - it was a shady company, anyway.
  • Trusted, was somewhat open with, that trust was betrayed.
  • Trusted with my life, secrets, anything. Would follow anywhere but extenuating circumstances.
  • Trusted, reciprocated and responded to communication, pledged to help me out as a friend, independently of company relation. CEO.

So I'd say that if you a) don't trust your boss with your life or b) have a very open line of communication (i.e. friendship, very healthy professional relationship) -- keep your mouth shut. Your protocol should be your two weeks' notice.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008
I've had my fill of early-stage startup life for a while (edit for clarity: the 'real' reason is a bit more detail than I want to reveal outside of PM, but it's reasonable), so me and my CEO are planning my exit (amicable departure - incidentally, #4 on the previous list). So I'll be on the job market again. Anyone have any insight on places that a) do iOS and b) are generally good at promoting good people?

Doctor w-rw-rw- fucked around with this message at 08:25 on Jul 30, 2014

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Arachnamus posted:

This may be straying into e/n, but do any of you find yourselves so disillusioned with software development that you seriously entertain the idea of throwing it all in and never touching a computer again?

I was ready to give up programming after a certain company nearly ruined me. Maybe you're burnt out and need to spend some time away from programming to figure out if you can like it again somewhere else?

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Arachnamus posted:

Well, poo poo. 4 for 4.

If your finances can take it, take a sabbatical. Quit if you need to. Dwelling on a lovely job is unhealthy and it takes time to deprogram yourself of the Stockholm Syndrome that's keeping you there. If you have to, find another job and defer your start date and _don't_ think about it in between.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

baquerd posted:

"It wasn't a good fit"
"I always want to ensure that I am adding to the company's bottom line, and ultimately the position wasn't adding value"
"I always want to give my best, and there seemed to be more of an emphasis of quantity over quality"
"It's important to me that the customer comes first, and I wasn't allowed to emphasize that objective"
These sound pretty bland. If the CTO is looking for something to change their mind, they may not be enough. But that's not to say they might not work. I don't know who the CTO is, and those are standard lines that may work.

I've been in a similar situation and going in deep and being earnest *can* work, though it's certainly risky.

Saying too much is worse than saying too little, and you really need to come off as authentically wanting to be in it for the long term, and be as honest as you can be without stooping to trash-talking. I've gotten away with it because I can usually get a good enough read on my interviewer to know how far to go.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Cheekio posted:

If you're looking for better hours, a longer term position, and stronger management, the CTO may have a point that this isn't the job for you. That said, there are plenty of positions that do put emphasis on these things.
He says what he's really looking for:

syntaxrigger posted:

All I really want is a place where I can program, become a better programmer, and be around people who are excited about programming. Which this place has.

Full Disclosure: The startup I work for is in Texas. It is my first time working for one.
For non-dealbreaker issues, you can learn and adapt and figure out more about what you want. Having friend recommendations (assuming they actually work there) counts for a lot.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Blinkz0rz posted:

And then it becomes the new normal. If you're default stance isn't to distrust your corporate structure and be wary of any and all management decisions, then shake my goddamn head at you.

Management's job is to make you do more for less. Always.
Quit your job or quit the industry, please.

I've been there. I've worked at two companies where the leadership was distrustful and/or exploitative, but my last two jobs have been exactly the opposite. Circumstances allowing, you need to avoid companies that make you act like an abused employee.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Blinkz0rz posted:

It's not even "gently caress the man." Companies want to pay you the minimum amount possible to keep you there. That's a point of fact. Arguing against it is like arguing that gravity doesn't exist.

Companies seek to create value, not make money. Capitalist markets usually measure value in terms of money. It's a subtle distinction that many miss out on, but an important one. Optimizing for money can destroy value when taken to a literal extreme, i.e. screwing people over pay or hiring and firing in the search for lower salaries.

One of my past companies got away with paying people poo poo and when they lost talent, they ended up with a hole they couldn't fill without a significantly higher base salary + spin-up/training time. They're still trying to get back some of the people who left because they failed to determine the appropriate value of retaining their employees.

Your framing inevitably results into making a classic mistake that fuels the Innovator's Dilemma. Reducing costs might increase revenues, but it frequently decreases long-term value by starving investment in innovations that might undercut the core business. See: hard drive companies over the past half century, or look up the book (appropriately called The Innovator's Dilemma).

With that said, yeah, many companies don't see things that way, and do exploit their workers. They are to be avoided, or exploited in return until the relationship is no longer worth sustaining (i.e. be a contractor and make bank off the fuckers then peace out when they make work not worth the money they're paying you).

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

kitten smoothie posted:

Dear recruiter: I didn't respond to you when you emailed me at work the first, second, or third time. I am baffled as to why you think emailing me at work a fourth time will result in a different outcome, and why you think it's a good idea to hire the sort of person who thinks it's a good idea to use work email to correspond about leaving their job.

Does emailing people at work actually generate actionable leads and responses? Is it the same thing as selling dick pills via spam, that you'll annoy 99.99% of people and they'll trash your message, but the .01% of idiots that respond will make it all worth the trouble?

I just told them I'd add them to the blacklist my circle of friends maintain if they kept trying, which was enough to get several off my back. Also, the number of people some recruiters need to successfully place to earn a living is in the low double digits, so if they take a shotgun approach really aggressively, they can probably get away with not being intelligent or tasteful.

Also, I stopped updating my linkedin, got rid of my resume and website, and boom, fell off the radar like I wanted.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

geetee posted:

I noticed a job posting recently from a recruiter for my company. The salary range was about 20k higher than I currently make. Annual reviews are wrapping up pretty soon and I doubt they'll just bump me up there. It's a pleasant place to work, but I don't want to get dicked around either. Have you guys had any luck in this area? Is it better to be a straight shooter and say you're going to be looking for a new job, or drop more subtle hints? I've been at this place for over five years, and I'm usually the go to guy for most things, so a solid reputation. I also know they have trouble finding talent.

My approach would probably be something like:

"Hey boss, I noticed that the salary range for $POSITION is substantially higher than my yearly salary.

I like working here, but I'd like to be paid what I'm worth. I add a lot of value here and I understand our systems very well. Sometimes these things can fall through the cracks over time, but I think I've done a lot for $COMPANY in the past 5 years, and it's really important to me that my compensation matches my value to the company. Do you think you could talk to someone about getting this resolved, please?"

It's better to be honest IMO, since if you're lying you should leave anyhow. And in any case, even if you do leave, you should get the raise so wherever you go next you have a higher salary number to quote if you don't successfully manage to not give that number before getting an offer.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Che Delilas posted:

There's no reason to ever give this number. Some places will refuse to move forward without it, at which time you should either tell them to gently caress off or state a number that corresponds to your desired salary, not your previous one.

Your previous salary is irrelevant to your new job. Full stop.

*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.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

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 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.

I would have no problem as long as it was denoted as tinkering/hobby level

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

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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Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Che Delilas posted:

Reining yourself back in to an 8 hour work day is a big step you can take to help yourself avoid it, though.

kitten smoothie posted:

I don't owe anyone poo poo but myself

wwb posted:

bourbon
same

kitten smoothie posted:

But also I'm curious how you deal with developer burnout because I'm going to still have to work here until I get around to finding a new job.

Personally, I travel out of the country with no concrete plans and no responsibilities for a minimum of two weeks. By the time I get back, I've managed to forget my routine and what the mindset that went with it felt like.

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