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Oh man I hope I didn't find this thread too late, definitely could use some advice as I'm not only at a crossroad but there's a hard time-limit as well. I graduated in 2012 with a dual degree in software engineering & computer science and have been working consulting gigs ever since. On the plus side this allowed me to get a ton of experience in all the 'soft' but necessary business skills that so many tech guys lack but on the negative side it's been very rare for me to actually build anything substantial rather than quick one-off jobs. Fortunately I'm one of those tech guys who actually has naturally good people skills so I took to this role readily and have been incredibly successful so far. I've been with my current employer for about 2.5 years now and I've grown rapidly to the point that I have ownership over entire projects and am brought in as an auxiliary firefighter on others as I've developed a reputation as the 'gets poo poo done' guy. However I started having my doubts last summer when I was given a 'one off' project that involved building an entire scalable, high-exposure, web-service from the ground up rather than just building customizations/configuring our off-the-shelf solution like usual. It'd been almost four years since I graduated and built anything substantial and it made me remember why I got into this field in the first place. Designed and built the poo poo out of it and the system ended up performing so much better than expected our customer expanded their contract almost immediately. That felt good. Real good. The irony was that it was such a fun project that it made me realize this company probably wasn't for me as another project like that probably wouldn't be coming around for another half-decade at least. So I started hitting up my college friends to see what was out there and one of them lined me up with a sales engineering role for a prominent and rapidly growing nosql company. I'm next in line to be hired and they're just waiting for additional sales guys to be hired to justify bringing me on as well. All that's left is hammering out the details like salary once that actually comes to pass which should be happening sometime this summer. Meanwhile, my current employer is about to sign a massive contract that will require a ton of manpower. Enough that they're asking me if I'd be willing to temporarily relocate out to Portland for 1-3 years (Realistically more like 2-4 years). Normally I'd be all over this but there's been a few things bugging me about them that I'm wondering if I want to commit to this place for the long-haul. The Good: - Extremely laid back atmosphere. Everyone treats everyone else like an adult and let's you do your job without second guessing you or micromanaging. Basically the only rule is 'do your job and do it well' and as long as you can do that anything else slides. - The above leads to being given responsibility as soon as people think you can handle it. I've grown extremely quickly here going from a still-fresh fearful-eyed grad to customer-facing tech lead in 1.5 years. I've been given genuine ownership of high-stakes and high-visibility projects and being able to deliver on those expectations feels good. The Bad: - Our (now ex-) CTO sincerely believed himself to be a genius and somehow convinced the other directors to allow him to build an entire development framework from the ground up to build a new edition of our software on top of. Instead of just using something like Spring/Hibernate, ASP.NET, Oracle ADF, etc. He had our engineers build the entire thing from scratch, believing himself to be smarter and more able than all these other companies. Keep in mind we're just a niche software vendor with a few dozen offshore engineers. It didn't end well. The result is that our software is incredibly complex and opaque as a result. As a plus the longer you work here the more valuable you become, moreso than other companies as you quickly become the sole person in the company who understands how certain things work. The problem is nothing is based off an industry standard which is total poison for my resume. If I feel like working here long-term? Whatever, no problem. But every year I'm here is a year that I'm not getting experience in anything relevant to the rest of the industry and it's starting to worry me. The Ugly: - Despite this rapid growth and glowing reviews both internal and external management has refused to acknowledge me, even with gentle prodding. I'm now starting to suspect that management just straight-up doesn't respect or value technical talent, rather viewing them as expendable high-turnover resources. I've watched as all our business consultants, who don't get me wrong are plenty talented in their own right, get accolades raises and promotions for half of what their technical counterparts get nothing for. Which leads me to where I'm at now. I essentially see three possible choices: Stay where I'm at : Enjoy the fact that I found a company that's actually low-stress and low-bullshit and that my long-term earnings are going to suffer because of it. I've already fallen well behind all my peers in earnings and staying here will effectively cement that. Continue working in a 'straddled' role where I'm not exactly any one role and more of a jack-of-all-trades. Which I don't mind but I feel like I could really be accomplishing so much more than what's available here. Pivot into the 'soft' skills : I take the sales-engineering role and fully-exploit what I think my 'niche' is, which is the rare competent technical guy who can also give ad-hoc high-stress high-stakes presentations without breaking a sweat. This would include a pretty significant pay-bump but I have no idea what my long-term prospects would look like going down this path. Plus- I'm changing jobs. And while these guys may seem ok now there's no way to tell until I'm actually working there. I've worked for horrendous bosses before and I don't want to risk being in that situation again unless it's really worth it. Pivot hard into tech/development : I put my resume out now and start looking for a firmer tech role where I'll actually be building poo poo again. I feel like I'd be happiest with my day-to-day work in this category but I feel like I may have blinders on since it's all that I'm experienced with so I'm biased. I know long-term earnings will be healthy going down this route but I'm not sure if it's the best direction for me. I dunno. All this is made difficult by the hard relocation deadline coming at some unknown point in the future. Maybe as soon as 2-3 months from now, could be as long as 6-8 or maybe never if they wind up not signing the contract. Sorry for the wall of text. Got a lot on my mind. Necc0 fucked around with this message at 15:36 on May 25, 2016 |
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May 25, 2016 15:32
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:1) It matters which NoSQL company, as even prominent ones can be full of fail, like 10gen (MongoDB). I personally find the future of any given NoSQL company uncertain on a time horizon of 4 years or greater. While I'm skeptical of most or all NoSQL companies, there are definitely some which are definitely to be avoided. 1 - It's Marklogic. I was pretty skeptical about NoSQL as well until I started researching these guys and they're definitely on to something. I don't think they'll do anything like replace SQL but there's definitely a sizeable niche that they can nuzzle into that they've barely even begun to tap. 2 - I'm not quitting anything unless I have a firm offer. I'm not that dumb  3 - Looking at Glassdoor and talking to my friend who's trying to recruit me I know that even if I totally gently caress up negotiations I'll be up a solid 20% over my current salary. PLUS they have a real bonus structure unlike my consolation prize bonus that I get now. In all likelihood it'll be a 40-50% raise. necrobobsledder posted:1. What are you actually good at right now? Forget what people say you're good at or what you even want to do for a moment since the more questions get answered no or with less certainty the likely optimal path will mean making more drastic changes. I don't know what the correct word for it is but I'd say my current role is pretty close to #1. Essentially I'm the technical point of contact for my customer and have to ensure that everything is running smoothly. For any issue I have to ask myself: is this a valid request, how to we best address this, should i do this work myself or is this a job for engineering/operations/sales/whatever, even if it IS their job can i trust them to do it if this is a high risk portfolio, how do i make sure they're doing their job and make sure they meet deadlines/ensure they're providing quality work, how do i ensure my client is providing us with the information we need in a timely manner, how do i ensure their developers are properly integrating with our service, etc etc etc you get the point. It's a demanding job that requires technical skill, people skills, and a LOT of organizational creativity which unfortunately doesn't translate well to the typical 'here's my github'. I know this is my 'forte' because I've always been a sort of social wheeler & dealer all my life. As for satisfaction, it's really hard to say. I enjoy the work I'm doing now but I just can't shake the feeling that there's better work out there. If some angelic deity descended from the clouds tomorrow and said 'ye shall only work this job forevermore' I'd be fine with it but a little disappointed. As for social proof that's not at all a problem for me. I didn't even ask any of my friends for work but when some of them found out what my pay situation was they all started trying to recruit me. Two of my ex-coworkers from my current company have both reached out to me to try and pull me along with them. Plus the project managers here regularly get into spats over how my time will be allocated to their projects. Put simply I take pride in my work and I think everyone I work with appreciates that. So the sales-engineer job is a referral to a company that I think has a lot of potential plus I actually came off with a good impression of them when speaking to their engineers. The ex-coworkers was for a salesforce job (  ) so that was a no-go. Basically I feel like I'm in a position where normally I could be choosy but this Portland deadline has sort of thrown a wrench in things which has gotten me all flustered.Actually- typing this all out has helped organize my thoughts on this. I'm gonna reach out to the sales-engineering guys and let them know the clock is ticking and see what they can do. If we can't make something work I'll start hunting but remain picky. If nothing good pops up in time I'll just go to Portland. Necc0 fucked around with this message at 18:33 on May 25, 2016 |
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May 25, 2016 17:31
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necrobobsledder posted:To be fair, working at Salesforce is a lot more enjoyable from what I know having interviewed with them before (and not going through because of budget or location reasons primarily) than using their software. For some frames of reference, I've talked to people that are at Salesforce now and went through a Google acquisition and are much happier at Salesforce. Heroku still exists and isn't bleeding 50%+ of its engineers YoY unlike every acquisition I've been a part of (4 now). Sorry- *Salesforce partner It just didn't sound like something I'd be at all interested in since they were entirely based on customer outreach which sounds really difficult to get excited about.
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May 25, 2016 19:52
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It was mostly because they had an opening for an architect role with a description that seemed right up my alley- not to mention would have doubled my salary. My idea was to stay with them long enough to cement that title onto my resume and then jumping to a more meaningful company once ready. After talking to them though they said I'd be qualified for the role EXCEPT they need someone with prior salesforce experience on day one for it. But they're interested in offering me a bunch of other roles which don't really seem interesting / the direction I want to go in. Glad my read on salesforce in general was right as that was pretty much the exact logic I was thinking as well. This is why the NoSQL stuff is exciting to me because it offers a new realm of possible development and my engagements with customers will be both understanding what it is they do and trying to inspire them into what they could do with this tech. Then possibly building proof of concept demos for them which will scratch my 'gotta build fast' itch sufficiently, I think. Necc0 fucked around with this message at 04:17 on May 26, 2016 |
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May 26, 2016 04:14
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Comb Your Beard posted:Hi, I'm a full stack developer in the DC area. My biggest strength is the back end, and turning user wants into requirements, and requirements into business logic. My weakness is probably not being modern enough in the front end and application layer. This is literally me. I don't know what happened to dice because it was fine a few years ago but it's garbage now. The current hotness is stackoverflow jobs. I opened up my profile last night and had only two emails from recruiters this morning but both of them were sane and actually read my profile (!!!) I also hit up hired but they seem to be really picky and give zero feedback on what they're actually looking for. Maybe you'll have better luck?
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Jun 3, 2016 16:23
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Personal referral from friend / old coworker > stackoverflow > hired (???) > dice > generic job sites
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Jun 3, 2016 16:59
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Not saying it's bad because for those it's worked for I've only heard good things. Just saying that if you don't have whatever it is they happen to be looking for they give you zero feedback. Now that I think about it though that might be for the best It'd be real easy to bluff your way through if they told you what to change. edit: So basically if they reject you don't spend too much more time with it. Tweaking your profile won't do much. Definitely give it a shot though. From what it sounds like their presence in DC is still pretty sparse. Necc0 fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Jun 3, 2016 |
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Jun 3, 2016 18:57
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Yeah if you're not willing to do defense work (I'm not) you're gonna take a pretty noticeable hit to compensation here. It's actually one of the reasons I've been eye-balling sales engineering because it'd allow me to stay in this town and my compensation would become less restricted. However at the end of the day even poor compensation in comparison to Silicon Valley or New York is still really really good in the grand scheme of things so I can't complain too much.
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Jun 4, 2016 06:15
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Comb Your Beard posted:Hired.com I washed out for some reason. They seem pretty opaque with their process, I spent at least an hour on my profile. Yeah they keep spamming my facebook wall talking about all the positions they're looking to fill in DC and I'm considering calling them out in one of them. Also I would love to have a good metro-accessible downtown job instead of working out here in Tyson's. Want to trade?
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Jun 13, 2016 17:00
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Monkey Fury posted:I might be about to trade my Metro-accessible job for one heading out into Herndon. I still... don't know how I feel about that. Better hours, pay-raise, possibility of a sponsored clearance, but... buying a car and I66 Take a long hard look at that commute before you dedicate to it. I'm doing Arlington -> Tyson's right now and it's about at the edge of my tolerance for terrible traffic. If you're against defense contracting like I am then your options are pretty much consulting or sales, yeah. Not to say there aren't positions out there but I don't see anything impressive or worthwhile any time I look. It's really not worth setting up shop here when you have to directly compete with the Northrop Grumman's and Lockheeds for talent.
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Jun 14, 2016 18:15
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at least I'll be going opposite everyone else in the morning and evening. Is moving into consulting or sales engineering really like... the two true outcomes of doing this in the DC area? I know we had this discussion a few pages back, but that's how it feels
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Amish Ninja posted:Description of what's probably a bad company The lack of technical grilling is normally a bad sign but if they're bringing you on as a contractor it's probably more they immediately cut anyone loose who can't hack it. Still a bad sign but not *quite* as bad. The biggest red flag is them having a distributed team and coming up with excuses as to why they can't bring you on as an FTE. Have you done any research on this company? Are they somewhat established? Do they have reviews on glassdoor? There's nothing wrong with working contract-to-hire but absolutely do not let them lowball you. Do not lose focus of the fact that you're comfortable where you are now and have the upper hand in negotiations. It sounds like if they're pushing you on time it could be because they're trying to rush you into making a bad decision. If the CEO is a smooth operator he'll try to pressure you into escalating verbal commitments that you'll feel awkward backing out of. Simply re-iterate that you're fine coming on as a contractor but due to the inherent risks with contract work you need the positive adjustment on your compensation. Stand firm on your demand because it sounds like he *will* pressure you. And remember that you're comfortable where you are now Necc0 fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Jun 21, 2016 |
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Jun 21, 2016 20:33
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Alright so update on my job hunt: Some interesting contract-to-hire positions are starting to land on my plate so now I'm curious what the rules of this market are since I've only been FTE since graduating. What are things I need to ensure in my contract, what are red flags to watch out for, what are unexpected pros/cons that most people don't know about, what kind of adjustment should I place on my expected salary to account for the FTE vs. CtH distinction, how does the transition back to FTE usually work once the contract has expired, etc etc etc?
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Jun 22, 2016 15:18
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We should probably set up another salary survey, huh? Why don't we have one every year?
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Jul 30, 2016 05:12
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Cryolite posted:Big growth in Chicago and Seattle though. Based on these numbers it looks like Washington, D.C. has the most C#, Java, C++, and Python jobs within 25 miles. necrobobsledder what do you think about that. I bet they're mostly cleared. DC goon who's actively hunting here: they're mostly sub-sub-contracted bottom of the barrel seat warmer positions. Which isn't to say there's a lot of good stuff here but we're always going to have that aspect to the job market.
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Aug 3, 2016 01:57
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I work in ad-tech in NYC and I have a "non-compete" that sounds like total horse poo poo to me. A few ad-tech companies have been trying to recruit me and seem to be willing to throw a lot of money my way (I'm talking 1.5x my current salary) but I'm a bit worried about dealing with the bullshit of a lawsuit. Can anyone shed some light on this? Bring it up with the competitors and let them navigate the legality nuances. If you can get them to accept all risk as part of hiring you you're golden.
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Aug 8, 2016 15:29
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Good Will Hrunting posted:The head of recruitment at a company I was rly interested in said "How's Thursday at 3?" (10 minutes from now). He never confirmed or answered my follow-up. Is every recruiter loving inept as gently caress? Pretty much, yeah.
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Aug 11, 2016 19:52
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sailormoon posted:... $350k/yr guaranteed with a scaling bonus based on the performance of myself and the firm.... This is
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Aug 16, 2016 02:55
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It could be worse. You could be working on a 20 year old code base with zero documentation, review, or QA where every engineer interprets the product manager's requirements however they like
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Aug 24, 2016 18:31
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The developers are across the whole spectrum, but mostly bad.
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Aug 24, 2016 20:22
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Alright so update on the Necc0 job-hunt that started months ago: I'm super conservative with the companies I talk to. If I'm not 100% on their business plan, future prospects, culture, office, etc I usually bail. Because of this my job hunts typically take longer than usual but I've gone to in-persons with two companies now that both seem really compelling. I haven't received offers from either of them but I'm very confident both will give me an offer. Now I'm having trouble deciding between the two because they both seem like solid work opportunities but they'll be massively different. Company A: Very very small security company, maybe no more than 50 people. They've found a very interesting niche in security that's been a massive but obvious blindspot for many companies and found an extremely method for securing it. I wasn't too compelled by their elevator pitch at first but decided to go in to see them in person anyways because they're almost entirely staffed by CMU professors so they had to have been up to something. Was ultimately extremely impressed with the work they've done so far and they had a very clear vision of where they wanted to go. I would be a lead developer helping them delve into genuinely uncharted territories working under the guidance of some of the smartest people in computer science. The big part is despite being only a few years old and going through a single VC round they're already profitable. Because of this they're growing slowly but steadily and are in no rush to ramp up volume or make mistakes. Since they're truly in a niche category and security seems to finally be taken seriously by the rest of the world, they've looking at a very target-rich environment. Pros : I get to move from a career of consulting into a bona-fide sw.eng role. Work underneath stupidly smart people on a profitable product with tons of freedom to accomplish my work as I want. In-person meeting was with the CTO himself who seemed genuinely excited about what they'd caught on to and wanted me to be part of it. Potential to be on the ground-floor of something big. Cons: It could all be smoke up my rear end- or this whole thing could end up flopping. Their customer base seemed pretty wide so far but satisfied with their results, but I don't know if that's just the honeymoon phase. If this ends up just coasting I could be stuck working on the same product that never really goes anywhere making minor modifications / maintenance for years with nowhere to go. Company B: Mediumish company with around 450 people but HUGE aspirations. Like company A they too have locked themselves into an interesting niche but instead of being uncharted territory they're going head-to-head with some of the biggest titans in the industry. Almost everyone who interviewed me was an ex employee of the Great Other competitor (including myself) and seemed to have a very deep loathing for how that company ran things along with a very clear vision of how much better things could be. Despite not being taken seriously by said competitors they've been scoring extremely serious victories which has demonstrated just how strong their platform is. I would continue my career as a technical consultant here working with some renegade titans of silicon valley. These guys aren't profitable yet but they're scoring huge victories left and right and building strong relationships with their clients. everyone is extremely confident in the CEO and they're looking to go public within the next five years. Pros: By remaining in consulting I get to keep the freshness in my work by working with different clients and technologies every 6ish months. While the base pay will probably be roughly the same as company A I feel like their bonus and equity package is going to be MUCH more lucrative. Potential to get in to a company that may explode like a bottle rocket as they're still getting ready for liftoff. Cons: LOTS of travel. They're telling me 75% is expected but realistically usually drops to ~30% once the customer sees the travel expenses. I'm fine with this but it'd be nice to have the freedom of working remote or in a single steady office for once. Sorry for all the words, I guess I'm more chewing over all the information I took in this week more than anything. These are both really compelling places to work and I'd be excited to wind up with either of them. But due to how much potential is at stake I feel like there's a lot more weight on the decision than normal. I think sleeping on it for a few days will be best.
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Aug 27, 2016 00:23
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Sup fellow frustrated-with-the-DC-market goon. Funny enough both companies that are giving me offers ended up being from other cities and just have a tiny presence here in order to snipe frustrated engineers away from DC.
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Aug 27, 2016 15:35
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JawnV6 posted:This is pretty ridiculous. I don't want to get into too many details but many of the guys were in very high places at the Big Dog companies. Yes what I said was a bit hyperbolic though 
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Aug 27, 2016 18:19
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Most aggravating interview experience I've ever had was when I was walking the interviewer through my logic, thinking out loud, starting from the naive solution and moving forwards etc only to have the interviewer suddenly tell me everything was wrong at the very end because I'd fundamentally misunderstood what he was asking for in the first place. It was then that I learned that just because the interviewer isn't vocally responding to anything doesn't necessarily mean you're going in the right direction- it probably means they aren't even paying attention. If you're on the phone and can't see that the interviewer is actually paying attention to you, force them to acknowledge what you're doing by occasionally asking simple questions and not moving forwards until they answer.
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Sep 3, 2016 22:25
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return0 posted:I've definitely been in places where everyone is sensible, competent, and nice, but the organisation is dysfunctional and all the all the things you're being told to work on are absurd and clearly a futile waste. It can be fun for a while (because people are cool) but it becomes very frustrating eventually. This is exactly the situation I'm leaving right now and I still have all sorts of doubts about it. I genuinely love working with all my coworkers but we're sort of a bubble inside a massively incompetent organization with cheapskate upper management. I know I'm leaving for greener pastures but I'm worried about the possibility that my new coworkers will be lame or worse.
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Sep 13, 2016 22:45
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After appealing the decision to not promote me twice a few months ago and putting in my resignation last week my employer just now called to ask if there were any financial considerations that we could talk over to keep me on board. Just a heads up to anyone in a management position: don't loving do this. It's insulting.
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Sep 14, 2016 17:46
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mrmcd posted:A recruiter for Facebook just Blast that out to 10,000 people and you're guaranteed to catch a few people who just so happen to be in the right place at the right time for you.
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Sep 20, 2016 03:44
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We used to share a building with them in Tysons Corner, VA but they've disappeared. I was pretty jealous of all the catered food I had to share an elevator with.
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Sep 22, 2016 03:55
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Stinky_Pete posted:Is it really a bad idea to stay at the same place for a long time? I know Sheryl Sandberg said that these days it's a corporate jungle gym and not a corporate ladder, but I was prepared to work for Google indefinitely, and maybe try to move to Valve in 10 years if they'll take me. There's no real hard and fast rule beyond 'cross that bridge when you get to it'. Make sure you're having regular structured discussions with management where you're both setting goals and milestones. Re-evaluate your position every now and then and ask yourself if you can be doing better somewhere else and if it's worth the risk and effort to jump. Some people get lucky and have a great ladder to steadily climb in their first job out of school. Others roll snake eyes and have to jump every 2-3 years just to keep their head above water. Others still just don't give a poo poo. It's all up to you
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Sep 23, 2016 16:51
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Negotiation chat! I've received an offer that I'd be entirely happy taking straight-up, but I know the common advice is "always ask for more". Unfortunately, the other two companies I'd been interviewing with in this pass both backed out due to internal issues, so I don't have any other places I can shop around to get competing offers. Do I just go back and say "hey, I like this offer, but could the numbers be a little higher?" That seems kind of...un-smooth. Yup. I just did this a few weeks ago with, 'This all looks really great and I'm very excited about this. If you can make the base salary ($base * 1.025) then I'm all yours' He immediately fired back with that number and I signed the papers. Easy peasy. Worst thing that will happen is they'll fire back telling you that you're already at the very top of the salary band. That's where you pretend to think about it for a bit and accept anyways.
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Sep 24, 2016 17:44
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I ran into a take home as well and I told them they'd have to disclose the title & salary band I was working towards before I did it. They ended the discussion instead. Probably dodged a bullet
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Oct 7, 2016 16:20
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Alright so this is interesting. I'm now a month in to my new consulting gig and have been doing the standard 'just read as much as you can about the company's product and wait for an assignment' routine. Boss calls me up this morning telling me that they've got a billable job for me- scrum master. This totally came out of left field but I guess it sort of makes sense since it gets me into a billable role where my lack of experience with the product won't matter too much. Apparently the consultants I'll be leading are sort of rough in the people-skills category so my primary role will just be keeping them in line. Any advice? I've worked in agile environments before but I've never formally studied it. If this actually goes through I start on Monday.
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Nov 2, 2016 15:36
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Yeah my biggest concern is that the whole point of this company's product is it massively slashes development time so this being my first project with said product is going to make it difficult to accurately make predictions. However our primary role for the first few weeks is going to be training so that might not be too much of a problem.
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Nov 2, 2016 16:08
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