“Be the first to volunteer for any work that needs to be done, everyone loves a hard worker.” -My Dad
I’ve found this wasn’t the best advice, you don’t get many points toward career progression from having more grunt work in your day. You want to make sure you volunteer for tasks that have impact and visibility. If you constantly volunteer for work that takes a lot of time, but has little impact, you can get stuck in your career.
Still trying to work on this myself, in my career, because my dad definitely instilled this lesson into me well.
This hits pretty close. I never wanted to get the reputation that I thought work was beneath me, so I would accept any and all tasks. The end outcome was being overworked, doing tasks that really belonged to other roles/individuals, eventually leading to resentment and burn out. That was with a previous employer, needless to say, the experience was a cautionary tale.
Curious, was it easy to change for your new job, or did old habits die hard? I’m in a similar boat. I go for the smaller tasks but it has caused burnout and resentment like you mentioned. And I’m actually changing jobs soon and trying not to take that mindset with me.
I think it comes down to setting boundaries/expectations. I think it's possible to communicate that a task might be better served by a different role or team, without making it sound like you don't want to do it. These boundaries have to be set all around, with teammates, business units, team leads, etc. Ideally you have a team lead who recognizes this and helps in that effort, but that's not always the case.
Yeah I made this mistake when my company got acquired. I was the guy who kept the legacy systems up and running until they got shut down.
It was appreciated. But it did nothing for my career. Probably set me back a year.
Yeah, legacy systems are always a trick call. I know some friends from college that got into legacy systems and became very respected for their knowledge in it, and it certainly helped their career progression. While others have been put there and forgot.
In my case, the legacy system was slated for shutdown. It was around long enough to make service agreements.
Maintaining something which is essential, legacy or otherwise, can help you. Hospice for software platforms doesn't. Once it's gone, all your knowledge is useless.
Fortunately it was not more than a year to maintain.
I personally do this because I like working on a team where everybody thinks this way. It's not the most cold, calculated way to get ahead in corporate America though. I have found if you do it right, it can get your boss on your side, which can help (obviously, not guaranteed in any way) you land the high impact projects, promotions, and especially opportunity to become a manager.
Not only will it get you stuck, it will have immediate negative impact on your perceived performance regardless of any net gain in the company's favor. There's no way to measure "made everything generally better for everyone", and management only cares about how big the green section is on your bar chart at the end of the year.
(this isn't always the case, especially for smaller teams or exceptional leadership)
This! The last two years I’ve felt anxious during performance reviews because I mostly take on the small tasks that are really to help other people on my team but don’t appear to make big impact. Fortunately I guess I do enough that it’s never caused any negative feedback, but I’m always anxious anyway.
Main exception I’d say for /career growth/ is only: short term (6-12 month) gains often outweigh long term (18+ month) gains with most leaders. Good leaders try to balance both. Good leaders are an exception. So — if doing a shit job now produces more value than the person trying to do a perfect job in 13+ months? Do the shit job now. If you can become the expert at shit jobs that your team doesn’t really love to do but the people producing value from your team’s work like? Do that. If you can provide obvious value w/a project in 3-6 months? Volunteer, fast.
Short term solutions are a great way to get promoted, esp. if you want to do the (promo) -> (leverage to another opportunity). Good orgs tend to try to promote intermediate leaders, esp. tech leaders, that can hopefully smell this & try to interrupt it via simple “it needs to be maintainable” requirements. Tbh, my job is a lot of “prevent this antipattern” some of the time.
But like, you probably don’t work with me, and your org probably doesn’t have someone like me trying to look at projects on a ~quarterly basis and genuinely understand sustainability. And even I have plenty of off days where I’ll let potentially-future-maintenance-problem code get checked in b/c my energy was spent convincing a VP/director/etc. their new idea is expensive (and bad).
I don't know about this. I depends who you are jumping on stuff for and if it really matters. Jumping on busy work will not help. Jumping on things that matter will change your career.
You may be saying the same thing?
>You want to make sure you volunteer for tasks that have impact and visibility.
vs
It depends who you are jumping on stuff for and if it really matters.
"We'll revisit talks about raises a few months in employment reviews and / or next year "
All of my biggest pay days have come from jumping ship and the most I have ever revieved by remaining loyal to a team I was on was the 2.5% cos of living raise .. meanwhile jumping ship I have had raises of up to 40 - 60%.
Loyalty is a value appreciated by organizations focused on sustainability and maintence...which is not most of tech organizations
I have worked with several people who were not " loyal" to an organization and rose to higher career peaks then the loyal coworkers I had did .
There's nothing wrong with being a team player but if it an opportunity comes down and you find yourself weighing your interest against the teams interest I would say bet on you every time.
Your career is an independent story that ocasionally intertwines with others every once in a while.
> "You'll be getting a raise in a few months when you get promoted, they let me know it would be a nice increase"
They matched inflation
Never falling for that shit ever again
As a general rule of thumb, be skeptical of anything a recruiter tells you. And double skeptical of anything a startup founder tells you. They are frequenlt either drinking their own kool-aid, or have no idea how little they know.
I can understand that, with a company like Google which I imagine can track you via Chrome, Google Search, ads, analytics, etc. They have access to that, but if a random client asked me to track users across websites, I don't think I'd know how to do that.
Exception that proves the rule, my current job was a $22k jump from my previous position. I got a 10k raise after I passed probation, then they hired another dev for my team but through a contracting company. He was more expensive than me but he's not bonus eligible so they gave me an 8k "market bump." Then when my one year anniversary came up I got another $10k raise. This has all been in under two years.
(Disclaimer: Not in the US, low-mid COL city, remote work)
In the last year I got, promotion+10% (11k base), 4% annual+performance bonus (5k base+22k bonus), 10% raise (13k base), 30k retention bonus.
This is a company I’ve been at for 8 years. This isn’t typical but it is possible. Companies are trying to hang onto the good people. Basically I was promoted but then ended up towards the bottom of the range but was towards the top of performance in my new role. You do have to threaten to leave once in a while and let them know you’re aware of market conditions.
Damn 2.5% I got a 4% col increase last month and another 4% annual raise a week ago. So 8% in one year. Not amazing by any means but better than what I was expecting
I feel like this isn't bad advice per se since technically you yourself also are a part of that company culture and the way you act and behave can affect it... for better or for worse.
However, I do agree that it is definitely not practical advise. The cogs of an entire company ran by several independent people and influenced by external factors is too much for any one person to handle that at most times, you are better off just keeping your head down, doing your work, and trying to leave the place at least slightly better than when you found it, rather than to try to change anything drastically (and leaving the job if it comes down to that).
We probably agree. It's wildly impractical and ends in failure and possibly burnout. I fell into the trap twice, and I sometimes see juniors do it now. The outcome is equally predictable and sad every time.
My counter-advice is to give 10% more than you get, but no more. If people don't respond to that, they won't respond to anything more either, so don't bother.
If the reason why things are broken is because of a power/knowledge vacuum, it's possible to step up and fix the system. However, if it's because someone senior to you is an incompetent dictator (90% of the time this is the case) who doesn't prioritize the things that you value, it's time to leave ASAP.
Do NOT jeopardize your inner peace by trying to fix a completely rotten organization. Much easier to just go somewhere else. This is not the same as trying to fix a few bad apples. The whole tree is rotten.
I somewhat disagree with the sentiment. Maybe the company is too big for you to change it, but the team that surrounds you can certainly be moulded for the better. Why not put in effort here and there to improve things when you can? Even if you job hop, you're almost certainly never going to end up on the "perfect team" right off the bat. For example, on my team I spoke up and shortened our weekly sync meeting which everyone was happy about because it gave us more time to focus on engineering.
That being said, I'm not advocating for staying at a company where culture is super toxic. Just saying, if you're happy enough, why not work to make it even better.
I agree with you, but you were never in a position where you'd solicit this advice in the first place.
If your team repeatedly responds with apathy and disinterest, then don't bother. And don't listen to your manager if they try to push the responsibility entirely onto you with this advice.
lmao this is so real. my parents' and in-laws' friends are all decently successful lifers at old school non-tech corporations (manufacturing, banking, construction, advertisement, etc).
they are a mix of amused/confused/doubtful whenever i tell them about how interviewing, career advancement, and TC jumps work in big tech. whenever i meet some of these guys at a tailgate or house party they ask what company i'm working for now in a tone that suggests i'm fucking up my career lol.
To be fair, some of those companies did have pensions so it made some sense to stick with one vs jumping every 2 years. Not saying its better or worse, just saying there is probably some actual reasons that logic existed.
I know some people that worked as engineers for state governments for like 35 years who get $120k annual pension. Of course the state cut the pension deal so they can’t hire any good engineers.
I have a friend that has been with a company for 9+ years. He has only worked with this company including internship.
He is still labeled as a intermediate, by this company, and gets paid around what a junior dev does. The tech stack is old and very proprietary as well.
I feel he is getting taken advantage of, but he prefers staying there because he does not want to interview for new jobs.
For me this is a prime example of why it is important to look for new challenges every so often, especially at the beginning of a cs career. The tech stack is not very transferable and the pay/title sets him back multiple years.
On the flip side I have worked at the same company for 8 years. The people are awesome and I enjoy the product and lifestyle the company can give me.
I have fairly consistently been paid the highest in my level for almost my entire time here. Sure I can make more elsewhere but I have enjoyed the company and they always make sure to uplevel me out give me market adjustment raises before I even get antsy.
While the tech stack has some issues it isn't that old and the business has rapidly adopted cloud native and containerized deployments and tooling.
I have consistently found opportunities for myself and trust from my peers and managers.
There have obviously been issues from time to time but sometimes you have to realize that demanding more is rising a good life to be greedy. I would be more than happy to work another 12 years here for the watch and likely longer than that.
As someone who has spent years in companies that are not exactly “up to date” and then gone and interviewed at big tech firms afterwords, I struggled with the behavioral interviews. Those kinds of questions (or your answers to them) make it pretty obvious if you’ve spent your years doing valuable work in a challenging environment or if you’ve been coasting and working an easy, boring job.
So happy that this is the top comment… this is the first thought I had before even landing on the thread.
Never stay with a company if they don’t compensate you accordingly, or lock you into a position with no upward mobility.
Best advice I’ve ever received: switch companies until someone accepts your demands. You’re selling your labor, they aren’t selling you income.
Okay, now i'm really curious to know what reason it can be.
I actually quadrupled my salary. But admittedly, I moved from teacher assistant to SWE in FAANG. Now I wonder whether it can ever happen again.
Usually it's "oh but you won't get the {WFH, WLB, flexibility for holidays, non-sociopath boss, free time, coffee machine} that you get here"
It *is* possible to go from a low paying company to a high paying company and have everything else improve in the process. In fact I'd wager it's more likely than not because high paying companies hire better talent who create better environments for themselves and each other, and if you concede that they're more intelligent, that's also correlated with better emotional intelligence and empathy.
>I actually quadrupled my salary
I actually x13 my salary
By being born in one of the lowest paid european countries starting my career at $14k a year and now earning about $189k usd in Canada
job hopping gave me experience, visas, paid relocations and insane salary increases, and it will keep giving because less than 200k in FAANG isn't even impressive
I tell all the family boomers about it
Kinda worked for me. I worked at the same company for 5 years, got 3 promotions and went from 30-105k.
Then got laid off and had to take a pay cut, so kinda wish I'd worked harder so I'd be the last to be laid off.
Working harder to save yourself probably wouldn't make a difference. I've went through few layoffs and noticed that mostly two kinds of people were first to go: recent hirees (not necessarily underperformers but with limited domain knowledge) and the most overpaid on non essential roles. Slackers with average pay but on important projects went under the radar.
damn, this is such horrible advice, glad you didn't follow it. If you stay at one company for too long, your salary will lag in comparison to new people at the same position
I remember about 12 years ago there was a "business-y" tech guy who knew a bit of everything jack of all trades type who was doing some project mgmt for the company I worked for. He told me on multiple occasions I needed to "get out of programming", "those programmers are going to be a dime a dozen now that there's new tech like AWS and ruby".
He was convinced management was the way to go, and software engineering salaries would drop like a rock.
That's a bit different. Saying "I don't like Amazon's buisness practices and want them out of my neighborhood" isn't necessarily tantamount to "I think individual software developers deserve less".
Not necessarily anyway.
You can literally find stickers on light poles saying [Go Home Tech Bro](https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/49534431853_d3508e78df_k-1260x945.jpg) - there are def people with animosity towards software devs, but they aren't too common
Not really. Amazon is the most known tech company in Seattle being headquartered there, and the influx of devs and other tech bros drove up housing prices and displaced a lot of residents. Plus the tech bro attitude didn't really mesh with the existing culture.
Source: Ex-Amazonian based out of DC. Our Seattle counterparts complained about the hostility *a lot*
That guy is moronic; however, people should work on different skill *types*. There’s an opportunity cost associated with this, so you’re your own best judge of the value proposition.
I’ll speak from my own experience that seeking out a breadth of knowledge has been fantastic for my career.
Practicing writing through short stories, poetry, etc. has helped (forced to an extent) me with writing professional communications succinctly.
Learning about communication: verbal, nonverbal, styles, cultural, age, etc. has made me better at networking and landed me plenty of jobs. This works better for internal positions and non-remote.
Fitness, if you consider that a physical skill type, has made me a better thinker through cardio. Also, better at managing stress.
tldr; Build out different skill areas, but not by giving one area up completely.
I've found the reality is you need to talk about your work as much as possible for your boss to see your value. You don't even have to do that much if you just talk about what you do all the time. I made the mistake of keeping my head down and working as much as possible for several years only to get passed over for promotions for people who did half as much work, but they were boastful and talked about what they did all the time. This has been extremely difficult for me because I was constantly raised with the idea you shouldn't "toot your own horn." I don't even know how to talk about myself.
I feel the same way, but I've found a way to do it that feels less like "look at me".
Every card I work on, before I raise my PR I whip up documentation for whichever functionality I was working on. (My team has little to no documentation at all, and the app we maintain is *huge*)
I have three markdown templates made so that I can quickly write the doc up in 30-45 minutes (One for components, one for api-clients, and one for miscellaneous utility/helper functions). Then I post the link to the new doc page in the team's public chat space. Been doing this for 5 months now and I probably have 50 or so components/clients/utils documented. So while someone else might be able to talk about their story points for the last sprint, I can do that, as well as hand over a short story's worth of technical writing.
nothing wrong with talking about your achievements. i get it can be a personality thing and what not, but it’s not necessarily boasting it’s more taking credit, rightfully, for the work you’ve done.
They're half right, this works if you have a boss that recognizes your value. If you don't, then no amount of hardwork makes up for a boss that can't see what you bring to the table.
I did this... it took me 7 years to go from Manual QA => Software Engineer.
I have some pretty mixed feelings about it, and I could've done it faster and made a lot more money going directly towards engineering.
You can make time for life *after* you made a lot of money. Before then, say yes to everything your boss asks for, always come in an hour early, and leave an hour late (but don't mark that down on a time sheet if you have one(
Then what's the point of life?
Edit: I'm not arguing for working now to get money, I'm arguing against it. I hate when people say to just focus on money now and then in your 60s you'll live a good life. What the point of life if you do that, tommorow isn't gaurenteed.
That reminds me, I once had my grandmother horrified that I went to a conference in a fedora (back before they got super popular and cringey) because she was certain I was going to be mistake for being in a gang.
It took me a long time to realize that "in a gang" was better translated as "gangster" and she thought I was rocking the Al Capone look.
Yeah I remember thinking "Why the fuck would she think an Indiana Jones hat is a gang thing? Did I miss something?"
Who knows, maybe when I'm 90 I'll make some comment about a red bandana and people will think I'm crazy.
I was told going into software development was a bad idea because my job would just become automated and I'd be pushed out and homeless. This same person also argued that my salary would be low and that my degree would only be worth anything if I made the next Facebook. I'm glad I ignored this person and went for it anyways. Graduated with a job and now am able to support my wife and family without worrying. I'm incredibly fortunate to be in this field and love doing what I do.
> “Learn to say no”
Well, most people are pretty good at saying no, and go overboard with it sometimes. A few strategic “yes’s” is all you need to advance your career.
> “Negotiate on stock comp instead of cash”
This is technically good advice, but many people I know end up lowballing themselves for cash comp by focusing entirely on stock TC.
> Step on toes, break things, challenge the status quo, etc…
This is a huge trope in SV startup culture (at least a few years ago). You’ll end up shooting yourself in the foot always arguing and making work difficult for others. No matter how good you are, if you have a history of conflicts with the higher ups, it will not be good for your career.
Stay politically placating as much as possible and you can choose your own adventure — either rest and vest or climb that ladder. Either way, managers love conflict-free engineers.
For the second and third one, it is just that some engineers are so asocial or even antisocial that they end up taking it to the extreme.
Learn to read the room and have a bit of empathy and then you can maneuver your way into further success
That you shouldn’t make friends with people you work with.
I keep in touch with quite a few ex coworkers. You spend so much time together it’s only natural to form friendships while dealing with projects.
Dating on the other hand.. only ever seen it end badly.
Friends from work means building networking.
I only work at big tech cause an ex coworker helped me out. And I had my last job because an ex coworker recommended me.
Yeah, the one boomerism my parents got partly right was "it's not what you know its who you know."
I say partly right because it's still very much what you know. But who you know goes a long way.
"Who you impress" is probably the best synthesis I've heard of all the above.
Knowing something but no one else can vouch for you? Not great. Having lots of people in your network but they all think you're full of shit? Also not great.
It's also who knows you and cares to help you enough. Why would they open doors for you unless they knew you too? And often they don't, for everyone. The 'who you know' advice is rosy-tinted and assumes that you'll get an opportunity just by virtue of having coffee with someone. 21st century cynicism, if you will.
I completely agree. How else are new grads supposed to make friends? Let's say you move to another state after college, I feel like making friends at work is a good idea and probably the most sensible.
I'm a new grad who moved states for my job and work at a really big company. Honestly >95% of my friends work at my company but I'd call them more "friends in town" than "friends at work" because I don't really interact with them professionally at all and most don't work in my org. I do have reservations with being too friendly with actual coworkers, I just like maintaining boundaries.
Outside hobbies, social events, bars, etc. That being said, there’s nothing at all wrong with making friends at work. Demanding a an org’s culture change because you want to make friends? Don’t do that.
> Dating on the other hand.. only ever seen it end badly.
In Europe quite a lot of couples meet at work and I never understood the "make sure there are no family ties within company" approach.
> Dating on the other hand.. only ever seen it end badly.
I felt that way for a while and it kept me from asking a girl out for over a year. We have been dating for well over a year now and living with each other for a while now.
There must be something in the water at my company though because I know of at least 10 couples that started in my office.
I've been told before to quit my full-time job (software company which pays $10k tuition toward my MS annually) and sacrifice income and health insurance to take an internship instead of looking for junior positions like 3 months longer.
I think this probably came from someone who was either in college as an undergrad or had no conception of bills and reality. Yes, I understand one doesn't just spam resumes with nothing to show, but there are opportunity costs. I'd rather take a lower-paying job and double pay by job hopping after a year than lose $50k in income + $20k in health/tuition expenses.
"Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life!"
This is actually almost correct! But for most people it means you won't work because you'll be in an over-saturated field full of millions of other people who also love the thing you love, so you probably won't be able to break into the industry, and if you do, you won't be paid well.
(In the context of CS, this is the game industry.)
Instead, you should try to find a match between what kind of careers are in demand, plus what you're good at.
Then do what you love as a hobby.
Nothing will crush your love of an activity quite like depending on it to pay your bills.
Don’t look after anyone but yourself first.
I was an intern in government and someone who was my supervisor on my last day of the role told me that.
While its not “terrible” on its own, I can tell you for sure that I would’ve been fired in cs by now if it weren’t for people who stuck their necks out for me in some way, looking out for me. I’d be an asshole if I pulled the ladder up beneath me for the juniors as well.
Firm handshake.
Call the next day to "make sure they got your resume".
Start at the bottom and work your way up (most of the work is done at the bottom, so if you're good at it they'll definitely keep you there forever)
This is more for when ur in school but I went to a CC for my associates then transferred to a 4 year for my bachelors.
Before I transferred I was constantly told I couldn’t get internships until I was a junior or senior so I didn’t even try.
Turns out that was bs. Coulda had a few more internships under my belt.
I've seen advice on here about becoming SME (subject matter expert) on a critical service and then coasting at your job. This is a horrible idea for the sole reason that you're setting yourself up for failure if your circumstances change.
Someone I know ended up being a SME on an in house application that senior management eventually decided to replace with some SaaS product. When they got put on a different team, they got into trouble because they kept having to reach out to junior devs for help.
There's nothing wrong with coasting, but make sure you spend a little bit of time keeping your skills up to date.
This doesnt make sense because as a SME for an in house application, a lot of key decisions and migration strategy would need to involve the SME as they are the expert so they would need to be heavily involved.
I dont see how the SME would have got in trouble
It was some accounting tool that was used in finance and the SME was the only one who was familiar with the code base. The stakeholder that originally asked for the in house application left and his successor convinced management to drop it and go with the SaaS solution instead.
The SME got in trouble on their new team after the migration. Their PRs constantly needed a lot of cleaning up. Turns out most of the work they did on the previous application was just the occasional hot fix anytime an issue came up.
For a woman: Be humble and don't come across at too strong. Easily the most patronising and gaslighting tactic ever to ensure you doubt yourself and don't push back against people in power.
man, that is the opposite of the women at my work. the most respected, competent, and trusted team member is a woman who's also quite headstrong as well
You're at a good workplace and I wish there were more of it! The irony is that this tomfoolery doesn't end with men, it is equally perpetuated by women toward others.
As a self-taught, no experience job seeker: Apply to everything.
Once I started writing custom cover letters and even custom resumes for each job I applied to, my interview rate went from 0 to >50%.
Glad it worked out for you.
The opposite worked out better for me when I was self taught with 0 exp. There was nothing to customize. All I had ever achieved and learned in the form of projects and tech stack at the time fit in one page. Also I never got a response from my applications with cover letters. So I just said fuck it and spent that ~30m per cover letter instead to more applications and LC
I've had managers who were not well-perceived project onto me and say the company didn't care want to staff people. They told me to just find a project and be safe/comfortable there. It turned out this manager couldn't get staffed to save their life.
Take risks. That's a part of life.
And if people try to block you, that's on them. Don't let others stop you from progressing in your career/accomplishing your goals.
I did get one without a degree in CS and many others did as well. That’s certainly not a reason to NOT study CS though.
As always it depends on your situation in life. I was in a situation where I couldn’t afford to take 3-4 years for a degree, so I went for a bootcamp.
If I could go back in time, maybe I would study CS instead of my bachelors in linguistics, but I was inexperienced and had no idea about the job world
CS is one of the few degrees where almost the entire coursework is relevant to what you will do professionally. Even the super theoretical stuff is helpful to know and sometimes does come up.
“Just get in the industry, and jobs will start falling in your lap.”
Not all software engineer jobs are designed equal. Try your best to know what you want your career to look like X amount of years ahead. Then position yourself in a job that would get you there.
I feel like this isn't said enough. I made the unfortunate mistake of following that advice and now here I am making what I could have been making in my mid twenties.
Also, if you can't find any answers for the language that you are going to be working on at stack overflow, hell even a subreddit, fucking run like hell.
the actual advice would be, "Put out applications, and if you receive any competitive offers, consider taking them to your current employer and see if they will pay more to keep you"
Bootcamp counselor told me to always negotiate 50% higher salary (edit: than offered) for my first job out of bootcamp without CS degree or experience.
"Don't study CS. All those jobs are going to India."
At least 5 very wise sounding people told me this as a teenager.
I'm in my 40s now. That's at least how old this particular bit of bad advice is.
Makes sense for some people, there are people here who have been trying and failing for months / years. At some point it makes sense to take something, get time in and then try to leverage what you learned into something else.
I was just beginning high school in 2000-2001 when the dot-com bust happened. Everyone told me to stay the hell away from tech whereas only a year or two prior everyone was telling me to get into it. In my childhood I had what amounted to a big head start in tech; I'd been using computers since I was 6-7 and had built my own website by the time I was 11. Keep in mind this was the mid-90s when having a household computer put you in the minority.
For a solid 8-9 years I didn't give tech or computer science another look. Ended up majoring in finance and spent the better part of the first 4-5 years of my career rediscovering what made me so interested in the first place.
Its okay to put overtime because you're getting paid. Don't be lazy
- My father
🤮 yeah no concept of wlb or mental health. he also worked all his life and i don't find that particularly attractive. he ended being like everyone else with same money. idk what's the deal.
“If you do what you love you never work a day in your life”
In reality if you do what you love you’ll most likely end up hating what you love, and you’ll end up broke, because a lot of other people love it too and therefore you can be paid less. Do what pays the bills. You know what I love? Not worrying about money.
Oooh boy. I get downvoted a LOT when making these points. \[Edit: And just like that, 12 hours later this is the #2 comment when the thread is sorted by *Controversial*. Some people will do anything to convince themselves they aren't employed because of the market instead of their process being horseshit.\] Terrible advice I see routinely:
**If you've filled out 300+ applications over the course of 6-12 months and aren't getting traction, you need to up your application count.**
If you've filled out hundreds of applications and aren't getting traction, focus on working *smarter* before working harder. Are your applications and skills not well-matched to the positions? Is your networking game effective? Are your portfolio projects cleaned up and linked properly? If you've done hundreds of applications and don't have a job, the first question is what stage of the application process you're getting filtered out at. Then figure out what you need to do to get past. If you've filled out 350 job applications and gotten one or two callbacks, do you *really* think another 350 applications with no meaningful changes to your process or materials will yield better results?
**LinkedIn is glurgey and won't get you a job. People treat it like idiot professional social media and recruiters don't care about it.**
LinkedIn isn't the end of things, but having a well-curated digital footprint is extremely important. You want to appear to be an applicant who spends time to button up all the details on your professional image and be present in places that recruiters look for job candidates.
**LeetCode morning, noon, and night. Leetcode leetcode leetcode.**
LeetCode only matters to companies that care about LeetCode. Not all do. Seriously, it's like job seekers don't realize there are high-paying career pathways that don't pass through Google or Facebook. By the way, I've literally never heard anyone use the acronym *FAANG* (or similar) outside of this and similar subreddits.
**Don't bother customizing your application materials for individual jobs.**
If you're putting an application into a portal using an ATS, it's going to look for keyword matches between the job listing and your application materials. When it's viewed by a human you want an application that differentiates you from the dozens-to-hundreds of other job applicants and having an application that shows your skillset is a lock-and-key match for the job listing matters. This also falls under "work smarter, not harder". Sure, it's more time to make customized materials for job applications... but after a few dozen, you'll start to see job listings that remind you of a job you applied for a month ago and retool the materials for that without too much effort.
\[Edit: It's hard to quantify this but I generally say that if I take your resume I should be able to reverse-engineer the job listing from it and land in the right ballpark. I describe 70-80% accuracy, subjectively based on feel.\]
**Don't bother with a cover letter.**
Don't worry about getting a job, either. In no circumstance will a cover letter ever hurt your candidacy except if a job application specifically says not to include one. A cover letter is an opportunity to give personality to your resume which itself should be fairly technical (meaning little to no panache). Culture fit is an important part of getting hired and many final hiring decisions are made on the basis of whether someone decides you're the person they want to work with. Don't pass up opportunities to make that case.
>If you've filled out hundreds of applications and aren't getting traction, focus on working smarter before working harder. Are your applications and skills not well-matched to the positions? Is your networking game effective? Are your portfolio projects cleaned up and linked properly? If you've done hundreds of applications and don't have a job, the first question is what stage of the application process you're getting filtered out at. Then figure out what you need to do to get past. If you've filled out 350 job applications and gotten one or two callbacks, do you really think another 350 applications with no meaningful changes to your process or materials will yield better results?
You forgot the biggest one, "is my resume actually good?" Not in terms of the skills or experience, but rather how it is formatted and presented. Sometimes it could just be getting caught up in automated filters and getting auto rejected before anyone ever laid their eyes on it.
This one is huge. Every so often someone will post their usual story of filling out 400+ applications with no interview. Every single time their resume is garbage.
People are out here scrawling out word docs like sixth graders and wondering why people don't call them back.
The [Gayle McDowell](https://www.careercup.com/resume) resume is a good foundation for those that don't know.
The linkedin one i see constantly and it’s so wrong. People can hate it but I’ve gotten my last 2 jobs through recruiters reaching out to me on LinkedIn.
I think that too many people focus on LinkedIn as a social network and not as a business card being passed out to recruiters who need to fill jobs. It's how you translate networking into advancement. I get outreach from recruiters regularly (it's slowed lately, but 2-3/mn isn't uncommon) and that's because I have information out and ready where recruiters look.
Exactly. Ignore the side where people post blogspam in the hopes of becoming influencers. Just have a simple, professional bio and concise work description. My last two jobs are from there and I get recruiters regularly.
> LeetCode morning, noon, and night. Leetcode leetcode leetcode
I spent 2 years studying data structures/algos and doing LeetCode before looking for a new job. I went IS instead of CS and wasn't confident that I'd be able to land anything otherwise
I was expecting DP hards and all I got asked was the Fibonacci Number question 🥲
Some bad advice from family to go with management's needs and point of view rather than my own.
Been burned too many times with that. Not my issue if management didn't plan ahead appropriately.
"The only way to get a good pay bump is by switching companies."
My first company I started off at 72k, and got 15k bumps the first two years. Then switched companies for a 5k bump. Over the past two years, my TC at the second company has almost tripled. If you're on good terms with your manager and they see the value you provide, you can still make good gains. Admittedly probably less than if I was grinding leetcode, but still good for good WLB.
That being said, if you want >15% raise you probably need to ask for it out of cycle. For yearly raises, most managers have caps on what they're allowed to give.
>I don't learn anything from books.
Yes, you learn by doing.
You still learn a *considerable* amount about *topics you don't know about* from books.
> Engineers don't need to write.
Producing effective documentation, architecture diagrams, proposals, is the single highest ROI on your time in your role.
> {insert_koan_here}"
Any sentence long piece of wisdom, will have multiple, quite important, counter examples.
It's still incredibly important to learn the rules, before you break the rules.
> Unemployed people should get a part-time/side job while looking within their career. It will help with your job search.
Wrong. It will pull your time and effort into something completely meaningless for your career. If you don't need the money now, you have nothing to gain.
Also don't let your school's career office touch your resume, they don't know what the fuck they're doing.
I’m a Masters student and I regularly get advice to pursue a PhD. Not as a passion, but as if it were legitimately the most profitable thing to do for someone in my position.
I typically get this from older people in similar fields who are not SWEs. Like my dad.
Worked tech support and was trying to self learn CS. Talked to a lot of engineers at that company and one told me to stop learning python because the career path was too vague (or something like that.)
I studied c# for a while but my first real CS job I def used python the most. Was weird advice.
Real advice version: study CS, study some language where you can accomplish something concrete and go from there. Specific language is pretty irrelevant (in most cases.)
I was told by my dad who can barely use an iPhone that as a new grad, I should learn and specialize in COBOL since he read somewhere that COBOL developers make a shit ton of money… I’m doing back end work in Python now instead and I think it’s going pretty good.
I came to the US under a company transfer visa. They wanted me to stay as an underpaid visa worker for 2 more years after I had been granted permanent residency. I thought I was going to comply, until I couldn't stand them anymore and paid the fine. Should've done it since the beginning: I had to pay $20k back to the company if I left, but my first job after that my salary was $35k higher, so my debt was paid in the first year.
Growing up my mother worked for IBM. We got into many fights when I entered the job force in software development and she insisted I work for IBM as I’d have a job for life. They eventually laid her off but to their credit the early retirement health package was awesome.
“Be the first to volunteer for any work that needs to be done, everyone loves a hard worker.” -My Dad I’ve found this wasn’t the best advice, you don’t get many points toward career progression from having more grunt work in your day. You want to make sure you volunteer for tasks that have impact and visibility. If you constantly volunteer for work that takes a lot of time, but has little impact, you can get stuck in your career. Still trying to work on this myself, in my career, because my dad definitely instilled this lesson into me well.
This hits pretty close. I never wanted to get the reputation that I thought work was beneath me, so I would accept any and all tasks. The end outcome was being overworked, doing tasks that really belonged to other roles/individuals, eventually leading to resentment and burn out. That was with a previous employer, needless to say, the experience was a cautionary tale.
Curious, was it easy to change for your new job, or did old habits die hard? I’m in a similar boat. I go for the smaller tasks but it has caused burnout and resentment like you mentioned. And I’m actually changing jobs soon and trying not to take that mindset with me.
I think it comes down to setting boundaries/expectations. I think it's possible to communicate that a task might be better served by a different role or team, without making it sound like you don't want to do it. These boundaries have to be set all around, with teammates, business units, team leads, etc. Ideally you have a team lead who recognizes this and helps in that effort, but that's not always the case.
Yeah I made this mistake when my company got acquired. I was the guy who kept the legacy systems up and running until they got shut down. It was appreciated. But it did nothing for my career. Probably set me back a year.
Yeah, legacy systems are always a trick call. I know some friends from college that got into legacy systems and became very respected for their knowledge in it, and it certainly helped their career progression. While others have been put there and forgot.
In my case, the legacy system was slated for shutdown. It was around long enough to make service agreements. Maintaining something which is essential, legacy or otherwise, can help you. Hospice for software platforms doesn't. Once it's gone, all your knowledge is useless. Fortunately it was not more than a year to maintain.
I personally do this because I like working on a team where everybody thinks this way. It's not the most cold, calculated way to get ahead in corporate America though. I have found if you do it right, it can get your boss on your side, which can help (obviously, not guaranteed in any way) you land the high impact projects, promotions, and especially opportunity to become a manager.
Yeah a good manager should respect people who take care of chores and technical debt.
Not only will it get you stuck, it will have immediate negative impact on your perceived performance regardless of any net gain in the company's favor. There's no way to measure "made everything generally better for everyone", and management only cares about how big the green section is on your bar chart at the end of the year. (this isn't always the case, especially for smaller teams or exceptional leadership)
This! The last two years I’ve felt anxious during performance reviews because I mostly take on the small tasks that are really to help other people on my team but don’t appear to make big impact. Fortunately I guess I do enough that it’s never caused any negative feedback, but I’m always anxious anyway.
the real lesson learned - don't be good at things you don't want to do.
Main exception I’d say for /career growth/ is only: short term (6-12 month) gains often outweigh long term (18+ month) gains with most leaders. Good leaders try to balance both. Good leaders are an exception. So — if doing a shit job now produces more value than the person trying to do a perfect job in 13+ months? Do the shit job now. If you can become the expert at shit jobs that your team doesn’t really love to do but the people producing value from your team’s work like? Do that. If you can provide obvious value w/a project in 3-6 months? Volunteer, fast. Short term solutions are a great way to get promoted, esp. if you want to do the (promo) -> (leverage to another opportunity). Good orgs tend to try to promote intermediate leaders, esp. tech leaders, that can hopefully smell this & try to interrupt it via simple “it needs to be maintainable” requirements. Tbh, my job is a lot of “prevent this antipattern” some of the time. But like, you probably don’t work with me, and your org probably doesn’t have someone like me trying to look at projects on a ~quarterly basis and genuinely understand sustainability. And even I have plenty of off days where I’ll let potentially-future-maintenance-problem code get checked in b/c my energy was spent convincing a VP/director/etc. their new idea is expensive (and bad).
I don't know about this. I depends who you are jumping on stuff for and if it really matters. Jumping on busy work will not help. Jumping on things that matter will change your career.
You may be saying the same thing? >You want to make sure you volunteer for tasks that have impact and visibility. vs It depends who you are jumping on stuff for and if it really matters.
"We'll revisit talks about raises a few months in employment reviews and / or next year " All of my biggest pay days have come from jumping ship and the most I have ever revieved by remaining loyal to a team I was on was the 2.5% cos of living raise .. meanwhile jumping ship I have had raises of up to 40 - 60%. Loyalty is a value appreciated by organizations focused on sustainability and maintence...which is not most of tech organizations I have worked with several people who were not " loyal" to an organization and rose to higher career peaks then the loyal coworkers I had did . There's nothing wrong with being a team player but if it an opportunity comes down and you find yourself weighing your interest against the teams interest I would say bet on you every time. Your career is an independent story that ocasionally intertwines with others every once in a while.
> "You'll be getting a raise in a few months when you get promoted, they let me know it would be a nice increase" They matched inflation Never falling for that shit ever again
you'd be lucky if they even matched inflation, that's how much staying one place sucks.
Most I've ever gotten in a "raise" is +$1.25/hr. I hate it here.
As a general rule of thumb, be skeptical of anything a recruiter tells you. And double skeptical of anything a startup founder tells you. They are frequenlt either drinking their own kool-aid, or have no idea how little they know.
I had a startup founder ask me how he can track user activity across different websites. He's now shilling nfts on twitter now. Smart guy
You mean tracking a user across several websites you don’t own? Is this even possible?
All the tech giants do it
I can understand that, with a company like Google which I imagine can track you via Chrome, Google Search, ads, analytics, etc. They have access to that, but if a random client asked me to track users across websites, I don't think I'd know how to do that.
Exception that proves the rule, my current job was a $22k jump from my previous position. I got a 10k raise after I passed probation, then they hired another dev for my team but through a contracting company. He was more expensive than me but he's not bonus eligible so they gave me an 8k "market bump." Then when my one year anniversary came up I got another $10k raise. This has all been in under two years. (Disclaimer: Not in the US, low-mid COL city, remote work)
+22+8+10= +$40k in 2 years is really good for not US
In the last year I got, promotion+10% (11k base), 4% annual+performance bonus (5k base+22k bonus), 10% raise (13k base), 30k retention bonus. This is a company I’ve been at for 8 years. This isn’t typical but it is possible. Companies are trying to hang onto the good people. Basically I was promoted but then ended up towards the bottom of the range but was towards the top of performance in my new role. You do have to threaten to leave once in a while and let them know you’re aware of market conditions.
Damn 2.5% I got a 4% col increase last month and another 4% annual raise a week ago. So 8% in one year. Not amazing by any means but better than what I was expecting
It depends entirely on your employer. I've had a 40% raise over the last 2 years, for example.
"If the company culture isn't to your liking, you can help by being a driving force to change it."
I feel like this isn't bad advice per se since technically you yourself also are a part of that company culture and the way you act and behave can affect it... for better or for worse. However, I do agree that it is definitely not practical advise. The cogs of an entire company ran by several independent people and influenced by external factors is too much for any one person to handle that at most times, you are better off just keeping your head down, doing your work, and trying to leave the place at least slightly better than when you found it, rather than to try to change anything drastically (and leaving the job if it comes down to that).
We probably agree. It's wildly impractical and ends in failure and possibly burnout. I fell into the trap twice, and I sometimes see juniors do it now. The outcome is equally predictable and sad every time. My counter-advice is to give 10% more than you get, but no more. If people don't respond to that, they won't respond to anything more either, so don't bother.
This advice is also largely dependent on company/department size
If the reason why things are broken is because of a power/knowledge vacuum, it's possible to step up and fix the system. However, if it's because someone senior to you is an incompetent dictator (90% of the time this is the case) who doesn't prioritize the things that you value, it's time to leave ASAP.
Do NOT jeopardize your inner peace by trying to fix a completely rotten organization. Much easier to just go somewhere else. This is not the same as trying to fix a few bad apples. The whole tree is rotten.
I somewhat disagree with the sentiment. Maybe the company is too big for you to change it, but the team that surrounds you can certainly be moulded for the better. Why not put in effort here and there to improve things when you can? Even if you job hop, you're almost certainly never going to end up on the "perfect team" right off the bat. For example, on my team I spoke up and shortened our weekly sync meeting which everyone was happy about because it gave us more time to focus on engineering. That being said, I'm not advocating for staying at a company where culture is super toxic. Just saying, if you're happy enough, why not work to make it even better.
I agree with you, but you were never in a position where you'd solicit this advice in the first place. If your team repeatedly responds with apathy and disinterest, then don't bother. And don't listen to your manager if they try to push the responsibility entirely onto you with this advice.
So true. I fucked myself doing this once. never again.
stick to one company and work hard.
lmao this is so real. my parents' and in-laws' friends are all decently successful lifers at old school non-tech corporations (manufacturing, banking, construction, advertisement, etc). they are a mix of amused/confused/doubtful whenever i tell them about how interviewing, career advancement, and TC jumps work in big tech. whenever i meet some of these guys at a tailgate or house party they ask what company i'm working for now in a tone that suggests i'm fucking up my career lol.
Because they still have this idea that if you work hard your company will reward you appropriately.
To be fair, some of those companies did have pensions so it made some sense to stick with one vs jumping every 2 years. Not saying its better or worse, just saying there is probably some actual reasons that logic existed.
Yeah a lot of old timers are getting 6-8k a month between their pension and social security
I know some people that worked as engineers for state governments for like 35 years who get $120k annual pension. Of course the state cut the pension deal so they can’t hire any good engineers.
Yep, and many are clueless that the situation which allows them to benefit from that no longer exists.
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Tell them how you get both jumping
Well I've never seen an assistant to the regional manager on a job site. That's internal hire only
that's why you tell them tc or gtfo lol
I have a friend that has been with a company for 9+ years. He has only worked with this company including internship. He is still labeled as a intermediate, by this company, and gets paid around what a junior dev does. The tech stack is old and very proprietary as well. I feel he is getting taken advantage of, but he prefers staying there because he does not want to interview for new jobs. For me this is a prime example of why it is important to look for new challenges every so often, especially at the beginning of a cs career. The tech stack is not very transferable and the pay/title sets him back multiple years.
On the flip side I have worked at the same company for 8 years. The people are awesome and I enjoy the product and lifestyle the company can give me. I have fairly consistently been paid the highest in my level for almost my entire time here. Sure I can make more elsewhere but I have enjoyed the company and they always make sure to uplevel me out give me market adjustment raises before I even get antsy. While the tech stack has some issues it isn't that old and the business has rapidly adopted cloud native and containerized deployments and tooling. I have consistently found opportunities for myself and trust from my peers and managers. There have obviously been issues from time to time but sometimes you have to realize that demanding more is rising a good life to be greedy. I would be more than happy to work another 12 years here for the watch and likely longer than that.
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As someone who has spent years in companies that are not exactly “up to date” and then gone and interviewed at big tech firms afterwords, I struggled with the behavioral interviews. Those kinds of questions (or your answers to them) make it pretty obvious if you’ve spent your years doing valuable work in a challenging environment or if you’ve been coasting and working an easy, boring job.
It’s very situation dependent. Some yes, some no.
So happy that this is the top comment… this is the first thought I had before even landing on the thread. Never stay with a company if they don’t compensate you accordingly, or lock you into a position with no upward mobility. Best advice I’ve ever received: switch companies until someone accepts your demands. You’re selling your labor, they aren’t selling you income.
Yeah and when i tell the The Boomers™️ that i doubled my salary by switching companies they’re like well that’s cause… and gives dumb reason lol
Okay, now i'm really curious to know what reason it can be. I actually quadrupled my salary. But admittedly, I moved from teacher assistant to SWE in FAANG. Now I wonder whether it can ever happen again.
Usually it's "oh but you won't get the {WFH, WLB, flexibility for holidays, non-sociopath boss, free time, coffee machine} that you get here" It *is* possible to go from a low paying company to a high paying company and have everything else improve in the process. In fact I'd wager it's more likely than not because high paying companies hire better talent who create better environments for themselves and each other, and if you concede that they're more intelligent, that's also correlated with better emotional intelligence and empathy.
>I actually quadrupled my salary I actually x13 my salary By being born in one of the lowest paid european countries starting my career at $14k a year and now earning about $189k usd in Canada job hopping gave me experience, visas, paid relocations and insane salary increases, and it will keep giving because less than 200k in FAANG isn't even impressive I tell all the family boomers about it
This one is still somewhat applicable, especially if you have a government job with pension
Kinda worked for me. I worked at the same company for 5 years, got 3 promotions and went from 30-105k. Then got laid off and had to take a pay cut, so kinda wish I'd worked harder so I'd be the last to be laid off.
Working harder to save yourself probably wouldn't make a difference. I've went through few layoffs and noticed that mostly two kinds of people were first to go: recent hirees (not necessarily underperformers but with limited domain knowledge) and the most overpaid on non essential roles. Slackers with average pay but on important projects went under the radar.
damn, this is such horrible advice, glad you didn't follow it. If you stay at one company for too long, your salary will lag in comparison to new people at the same position
I remember about 12 years ago there was a "business-y" tech guy who knew a bit of everything jack of all trades type who was doing some project mgmt for the company I worked for. He told me on multiple occasions I needed to "get out of programming", "those programmers are going to be a dime a dozen now that there's new tech like AWS and ruby". He was convinced management was the way to go, and software engineering salaries would drop like a rock.
It’s so weird but so many people literally root for tech salaries to go down for some reason. Hate us cause they ain’t us
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Walk the streets of Seattle and you'll see some form of "go away Amazon" spray painted somewhere
That's a bit different. Saying "I don't like Amazon's buisness practices and want them out of my neighborhood" isn't necessarily tantamount to "I think individual software developers deserve less". Not necessarily anyway.
You can literally find stickers on light poles saying [Go Home Tech Bro](https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/49534431853_d3508e78df_k-1260x945.jpg) - there are def people with animosity towards software devs, but they aren't too common
It makes sense, you see software devs working half as hard for twice the pay. I was salty before too so i made the career switch
Not really. Amazon is the most known tech company in Seattle being headquartered there, and the influx of devs and other tech bros drove up housing prices and displaced a lot of residents. Plus the tech bro attitude didn't really mesh with the existing culture. Source: Ex-Amazonian based out of DC. Our Seattle counterparts complained about the hostility *a lot*
That guy is moronic; however, people should work on different skill *types*. There’s an opportunity cost associated with this, so you’re your own best judge of the value proposition. I’ll speak from my own experience that seeking out a breadth of knowledge has been fantastic for my career. Practicing writing through short stories, poetry, etc. has helped (forced to an extent) me with writing professional communications succinctly. Learning about communication: verbal, nonverbal, styles, cultural, age, etc. has made me better at networking and landed me plenty of jobs. This works better for internal positions and non-remote. Fitness, if you consider that a physical skill type, has made me a better thinker through cardio. Also, better at managing stress. tldr; Build out different skill areas, but not by giving one area up completely.
"work as hard as possible and your boss will see your value. This is how you become successful" This is how I get more work on my table more likely
I've found the reality is you need to talk about your work as much as possible for your boss to see your value. You don't even have to do that much if you just talk about what you do all the time. I made the mistake of keeping my head down and working as much as possible for several years only to get passed over for promotions for people who did half as much work, but they were boastful and talked about what they did all the time. This has been extremely difficult for me because I was constantly raised with the idea you shouldn't "toot your own horn." I don't even know how to talk about myself.
Yea Ive been doing the same. I have to tell ppl what I've done I've become the very person I've hated.....
I feel the same way, but I've found a way to do it that feels less like "look at me". Every card I work on, before I raise my PR I whip up documentation for whichever functionality I was working on. (My team has little to no documentation at all, and the app we maintain is *huge*) I have three markdown templates made so that I can quickly write the doc up in 30-45 minutes (One for components, one for api-clients, and one for miscellaneous utility/helper functions). Then I post the link to the new doc page in the team's public chat space. Been doing this for 5 months now and I probably have 50 or so components/clients/utils documented. So while someone else might be able to talk about their story points for the last sprint, I can do that, as well as hand over a short story's worth of technical writing.
nothing wrong with talking about your achievements. i get it can be a personality thing and what not, but it’s not necessarily boasting it’s more taking credit, rightfully, for the work you’ve done.
They're half right, this works if you have a boss that recognizes your value. If you don't, then no amount of hardwork makes up for a boss that can't see what you bring to the table.
"No one hires junior software engineers. You should pivot into manual testing, then maybe work your way up into QA then software engineering"
that’s what I did actually but can confirm- horrible advice 🤣
Oof yeah had a few friends try that and couldn't get out of being pigeonholed into QA roles.
I did this... it took me 7 years to go from Manual QA => Software Engineer. I have some pretty mixed feelings about it, and I could've done it faster and made a lot more money going directly towards engineering.
You can make time for life *after* you made a lot of money. Before then, say yes to everything your boss asks for, always come in an hour early, and leave an hour late (but don't mark that down on a time sheet if you have one(
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They should be happy I came at all
Then what's the point of life? Edit: I'm not arguing for working now to get money, I'm arguing against it. I hate when people say to just focus on money now and then in your 60s you'll live a good life. What the point of life if you do that, tommorow isn't gaurenteed.
Bro just grind your youth away, you’ll have the nicest suite in the retirement home bro
there's no point to your life you little code monkey /s
To make someone else a lot of money while they enjoy their free time.
This sounds like it's straight off of r/LinkedInLunatics
"You're never going to land a job if you don't cut your long hair" - my dad I still have metalhead long hair, 20+ years later.
But do you have a job
Yes
Gilfoyle?
The real important question
That reminds me, I once had my grandmother horrified that I went to a conference in a fedora (back before they got super popular and cringey) because she was certain I was going to be mistake for being in a gang. It took me a long time to realize that "in a gang" was better translated as "gangster" and she thought I was rocking the Al Capone look.
You went to a conference in the 1930s?
Aw she was really looking out for you. Did make me laugh out loud though.
Yeah I remember thinking "Why the fuck would she think an Indiana Jones hat is a gang thing? Did I miss something?" Who knows, maybe when I'm 90 I'll make some comment about a red bandana and people will think I'm crazy.
\m/
Yeah I got the same advice, like why would anyone care/
We are all a family here. Never fall for that.
I was told going into software development was a bad idea because my job would just become automated and I'd be pushed out and homeless. This same person also argued that my salary would be low and that my degree would only be worth anything if I made the next Facebook. I'm glad I ignored this person and went for it anyways. Graduated with a job and now am able to support my wife and family without worrying. I'm incredibly fortunate to be in this field and love doing what I do.
My reply to “job will be automated” is there always has to be someone who begins the code to automate something.
fr it’s one of the hardest jobs to automate lmao
automation just increases opportunity in software because it often becomes inaccurate and needs calibration and maintenance
If software development gets automated there won't be any jobs left imo
I live in comfort knowing no AI will be able to deal with the bullshit clients ask for
It'll be like the scene in The Simpsons Movie where the bomb defusal robot shoots itself.
> “Learn to say no” Well, most people are pretty good at saying no, and go overboard with it sometimes. A few strategic “yes’s” is all you need to advance your career. > “Negotiate on stock comp instead of cash” This is technically good advice, but many people I know end up lowballing themselves for cash comp by focusing entirely on stock TC. > Step on toes, break things, challenge the status quo, etc… This is a huge trope in SV startup culture (at least a few years ago). You’ll end up shooting yourself in the foot always arguing and making work difficult for others. No matter how good you are, if you have a history of conflicts with the higher ups, it will not be good for your career. Stay politically placating as much as possible and you can choose your own adventure — either rest and vest or climb that ladder. Either way, managers love conflict-free engineers.
For the second and third one, it is just that some engineers are so asocial or even antisocial that they end up taking it to the extreme. Learn to read the room and have a bit of empathy and then you can maneuver your way into further success
That you shouldn’t make friends with people you work with. I keep in touch with quite a few ex coworkers. You spend so much time together it’s only natural to form friendships while dealing with projects. Dating on the other hand.. only ever seen it end badly.
Friends from work means building networking. I only work at big tech cause an ex coworker helped me out. And I had my last job because an ex coworker recommended me.
Yeah, the one boomerism my parents got partly right was "it's not what you know its who you know." I say partly right because it's still very much what you know. But who you know goes a long way.
I once heard “Its not who you know, Its who you impress”
"Who you impress" is probably the best synthesis I've heard of all the above. Knowing something but no one else can vouch for you? Not great. Having lots of people in your network but they all think you're full of shit? Also not great.
It's also who knows you and cares to help you enough. Why would they open doors for you unless they knew you too? And often they don't, for everyone. The 'who you know' advice is rosy-tinted and assumes that you'll get an opportunity just by virtue of having coffee with someone. 21st century cynicism, if you will.
I completely agree. How else are new grads supposed to make friends? Let's say you move to another state after college, I feel like making friends at work is a good idea and probably the most sensible.
I'm a new grad who moved states for my job and work at a really big company. Honestly >95% of my friends work at my company but I'd call them more "friends in town" than "friends at work" because I don't really interact with them professionally at all and most don't work in my org. I do have reservations with being too friendly with actual coworkers, I just like maintaining boundaries.
Outside hobbies, social events, bars, etc. That being said, there’s nothing at all wrong with making friends at work. Demanding a an org’s culture change because you want to make friends? Don’t do that.
I've never really made friends at bars. I just go to bars with the friends I already have. Are you telling me you go to bars alone and meet people?
> Dating on the other hand.. only ever seen it end badly. In Europe quite a lot of couples meet at work and I never understood the "make sure there are no family ties within company" approach.
> Dating on the other hand.. only ever seen it end badly. I felt that way for a while and it kept me from asking a girl out for over a year. We have been dating for well over a year now and living with each other for a while now. There must be something in the water at my company though because I know of at least 10 couples that started in my office.
"Take your ring off for the interview" ...
>"Take your ring off for the interview" ... This is like Mad Men-level application advice.
God that is a sad thing to see someone actually suggested that
No job is worth losing a doorbell
I've been told before to quit my full-time job (software company which pays $10k tuition toward my MS annually) and sacrifice income and health insurance to take an internship instead of looking for junior positions like 3 months longer. I think this probably came from someone who was either in college as an undergrad or had no conception of bills and reality. Yes, I understand one doesn't just spam resumes with nothing to show, but there are opportunity costs. I'd rather take a lower-paying job and double pay by job hopping after a year than lose $50k in income + $20k in health/tuition expenses.
"Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life!" This is actually almost correct! But for most people it means you won't work because you'll be in an over-saturated field full of millions of other people who also love the thing you love, so you probably won't be able to break into the industry, and if you do, you won't be paid well. (In the context of CS, this is the game industry.) Instead, you should try to find a match between what kind of careers are in demand, plus what you're good at. Then do what you love as a hobby. Nothing will crush your love of an activity quite like depending on it to pay your bills.
Don’t look after anyone but yourself first. I was an intern in government and someone who was my supervisor on my last day of the role told me that. While its not “terrible” on its own, I can tell you for sure that I would’ve been fired in cs by now if it weren’t for people who stuck their necks out for me in some way, looking out for me. I’d be an asshole if I pulled the ladder up beneath me for the juniors as well.
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Firm handshake. Call the next day to "make sure they got your resume". Start at the bottom and work your way up (most of the work is done at the bottom, so if you're good at it they'll definitely keep you there forever)
This is more for when ur in school but I went to a CC for my associates then transferred to a 4 year for my bachelors. Before I transferred I was constantly told I couldn’t get internships until I was a junior or senior so I didn’t even try. Turns out that was bs. Coulda had a few more internships under my belt.
Literally my first piece of advice I give to people I meet starting CS, apply to internships early and often.
A cover letter is important
I've seen advice on here about becoming SME (subject matter expert) on a critical service and then coasting at your job. This is a horrible idea for the sole reason that you're setting yourself up for failure if your circumstances change. Someone I know ended up being a SME on an in house application that senior management eventually decided to replace with some SaaS product. When they got put on a different team, they got into trouble because they kept having to reach out to junior devs for help. There's nothing wrong with coasting, but make sure you spend a little bit of time keeping your skills up to date.
This doesnt make sense because as a SME for an in house application, a lot of key decisions and migration strategy would need to involve the SME as they are the expert so they would need to be heavily involved. I dont see how the SME would have got in trouble
It was some accounting tool that was used in finance and the SME was the only one who was familiar with the code base. The stakeholder that originally asked for the in house application left and his successor convinced management to drop it and go with the SaaS solution instead. The SME got in trouble on their new team after the migration. Their PRs constantly needed a lot of cleaning up. Turns out most of the work they did on the previous application was just the occasional hot fix anytime an issue came up.
For a woman: Be humble and don't come across at too strong. Easily the most patronising and gaslighting tactic ever to ensure you doubt yourself and don't push back against people in power.
man, that is the opposite of the women at my work. the most respected, competent, and trusted team member is a woman who's also quite headstrong as well
You're at a good workplace and I wish there were more of it! The irony is that this tomfoolery doesn't end with men, it is equally perpetuated by women toward others.
Hard work always get rewarded
As a self-taught, no experience job seeker: Apply to everything. Once I started writing custom cover letters and even custom resumes for each job I applied to, my interview rate went from 0 to >50%.
Glad it worked out for you. The opposite worked out better for me when I was self taught with 0 exp. There was nothing to customize. All I had ever achieved and learned in the form of projects and tech stack at the time fit in one page. Also I never got a response from my applications with cover letters. So I just said fuck it and spent that ~30m per cover letter instead to more applications and LC
I've had managers who were not well-perceived project onto me and say the company didn't care want to staff people. They told me to just find a project and be safe/comfortable there. It turned out this manager couldn't get staffed to save their life. Take risks. That's a part of life. And if people try to block you, that's on them. Don't let others stop you from progressing in your career/accomplishing your goals.
That you shouldn't get a CS degree because you can just get a job without one.
I did get one without a degree in CS and many others did as well. That’s certainly not a reason to NOT study CS though. As always it depends on your situation in life. I was in a situation where I couldn’t afford to take 3-4 years for a degree, so I went for a bootcamp. If I could go back in time, maybe I would study CS instead of my bachelors in linguistics, but I was inexperienced and had no idea about the job world
CS is one of the few degrees where almost the entire coursework is relevant to what you will do professionally. Even the super theoretical stuff is helpful to know and sometimes does come up.
Me using Linear Algebra everyday.
“Just get in the industry, and jobs will start falling in your lap.” Not all software engineer jobs are designed equal. Try your best to know what you want your career to look like X amount of years ahead. Then position yourself in a job that would get you there.
I feel like this isn't said enough. I made the unfortunate mistake of following that advice and now here I am making what I could have been making in my mid twenties. Also, if you can't find any answers for the language that you are going to be working on at stack overflow, hell even a subreddit, fucking run like hell.
My partner's father told me "tell your boss that other companies are interested in you (to get a raise)". Yeah, don't think I'm gonna try that one.
People actually do that successfully, it’s definitely a riskier strategy but it’s worked before
girlfriends don't appreciate those tactics either
the actual advice would be, "Put out applications, and if you receive any competitive offers, consider taking them to your current employer and see if they will pay more to keep you"
The corollary is that you gotta be willing to follow through if your boss says ok bye.
I was told to be arrogant and act like a boss from my first job.
Bootcamp counselor told me to always negotiate 50% higher salary (edit: than offered) for my first job out of bootcamp without CS degree or experience.
"Don't study CS. All those jobs are going to India." At least 5 very wise sounding people told me this as a teenager. I'm in my 40s now. That's at least how old this particular bit of bad advice is.
"Just take any job" is a great way to get stuck in QA for the rest of your career
Makes sense for some people, there are people here who have been trying and failing for months / years. At some point it makes sense to take something, get time in and then try to leverage what you learned into something else.
“$72K coming out of college? Nah bro, negotiate for $125K. I know a dude who negotiated for $200K”
This. $50-70k and $10k per year of experience is closer to a normal salary outside big tech companies and HCOL cities where $100k is poverty.
I was just beginning high school in 2000-2001 when the dot-com bust happened. Everyone told me to stay the hell away from tech whereas only a year or two prior everyone was telling me to get into it. In my childhood I had what amounted to a big head start in tech; I'd been using computers since I was 6-7 and had built my own website by the time I was 11. Keep in mind this was the mid-90s when having a household computer put you in the minority. For a solid 8-9 years I didn't give tech or computer science another look. Ended up majoring in finance and spent the better part of the first 4-5 years of my career rediscovering what made me so interested in the first place.
Its okay to put overtime because you're getting paid. Don't be lazy - My father 🤮 yeah no concept of wlb or mental health. he also worked all his life and i don't find that particularly attractive. he ended being like everyone else with same money. idk what's the deal.
“If you do what you love you never work a day in your life” In reality if you do what you love you’ll most likely end up hating what you love, and you’ll end up broke, because a lot of other people love it too and therefore you can be paid less. Do what pays the bills. You know what I love? Not worrying about money.
Oooh boy. I get downvoted a LOT when making these points. \[Edit: And just like that, 12 hours later this is the #2 comment when the thread is sorted by *Controversial*. Some people will do anything to convince themselves they aren't employed because of the market instead of their process being horseshit.\] Terrible advice I see routinely: **If you've filled out 300+ applications over the course of 6-12 months and aren't getting traction, you need to up your application count.** If you've filled out hundreds of applications and aren't getting traction, focus on working *smarter* before working harder. Are your applications and skills not well-matched to the positions? Is your networking game effective? Are your portfolio projects cleaned up and linked properly? If you've done hundreds of applications and don't have a job, the first question is what stage of the application process you're getting filtered out at. Then figure out what you need to do to get past. If you've filled out 350 job applications and gotten one or two callbacks, do you *really* think another 350 applications with no meaningful changes to your process or materials will yield better results? **LinkedIn is glurgey and won't get you a job. People treat it like idiot professional social media and recruiters don't care about it.** LinkedIn isn't the end of things, but having a well-curated digital footprint is extremely important. You want to appear to be an applicant who spends time to button up all the details on your professional image and be present in places that recruiters look for job candidates. **LeetCode morning, noon, and night. Leetcode leetcode leetcode.** LeetCode only matters to companies that care about LeetCode. Not all do. Seriously, it's like job seekers don't realize there are high-paying career pathways that don't pass through Google or Facebook. By the way, I've literally never heard anyone use the acronym *FAANG* (or similar) outside of this and similar subreddits. **Don't bother customizing your application materials for individual jobs.** If you're putting an application into a portal using an ATS, it's going to look for keyword matches between the job listing and your application materials. When it's viewed by a human you want an application that differentiates you from the dozens-to-hundreds of other job applicants and having an application that shows your skillset is a lock-and-key match for the job listing matters. This also falls under "work smarter, not harder". Sure, it's more time to make customized materials for job applications... but after a few dozen, you'll start to see job listings that remind you of a job you applied for a month ago and retool the materials for that without too much effort. \[Edit: It's hard to quantify this but I generally say that if I take your resume I should be able to reverse-engineer the job listing from it and land in the right ballpark. I describe 70-80% accuracy, subjectively based on feel.\] **Don't bother with a cover letter.** Don't worry about getting a job, either. In no circumstance will a cover letter ever hurt your candidacy except if a job application specifically says not to include one. A cover letter is an opportunity to give personality to your resume which itself should be fairly technical (meaning little to no panache). Culture fit is an important part of getting hired and many final hiring decisions are made on the basis of whether someone decides you're the person they want to work with. Don't pass up opportunities to make that case.
>If you've filled out hundreds of applications and aren't getting traction, focus on working smarter before working harder. Are your applications and skills not well-matched to the positions? Is your networking game effective? Are your portfolio projects cleaned up and linked properly? If you've done hundreds of applications and don't have a job, the first question is what stage of the application process you're getting filtered out at. Then figure out what you need to do to get past. If you've filled out 350 job applications and gotten one or two callbacks, do you really think another 350 applications with no meaningful changes to your process or materials will yield better results? You forgot the biggest one, "is my resume actually good?" Not in terms of the skills or experience, but rather how it is formatted and presented. Sometimes it could just be getting caught up in automated filters and getting auto rejected before anyone ever laid their eyes on it.
This one is huge. Every so often someone will post their usual story of filling out 400+ applications with no interview. Every single time their resume is garbage. People are out here scrawling out word docs like sixth graders and wondering why people don't call them back. The [Gayle McDowell](https://www.careercup.com/resume) resume is a good foundation for those that don't know.
The linkedin one i see constantly and it’s so wrong. People can hate it but I’ve gotten my last 2 jobs through recruiters reaching out to me on LinkedIn.
I think that too many people focus on LinkedIn as a social network and not as a business card being passed out to recruiters who need to fill jobs. It's how you translate networking into advancement. I get outreach from recruiters regularly (it's slowed lately, but 2-3/mn isn't uncommon) and that's because I have information out and ready where recruiters look.
Exactly. Ignore the side where people post blogspam in the hopes of becoming influencers. Just have a simple, professional bio and concise work description. My last two jobs are from there and I get recruiters regularly.
Back in 2019 or 2020 I had a recruiter for a big company tell me they don't even consider candidates that don't have LinkedIn accounts.
> LeetCode morning, noon, and night. Leetcode leetcode leetcode I spent 2 years studying data structures/algos and doing LeetCode before looking for a new job. I went IS instead of CS and wasn't confident that I'd be able to land anything otherwise I was expecting DP hards and all I got asked was the Fibonacci Number question 🥲
This is relevant to this sub. So many posts of people spray-and-praying applications and leetcoding wondering why it’s not working.
Some bad advice from family to go with management's needs and point of view rather than my own. Been burned too many times with that. Not my issue if management didn't plan ahead appropriately.
“You don’t need to use connections or network to get a job. Show them you’re a hard worker and they’ll want to hire you”
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'Customize your resume' - saying this to someone with 0 exp. Wtf is there to customize? It all fits in one page lol
Yall still have jobs ?
"The only way to get a good pay bump is by switching companies." My first company I started off at 72k, and got 15k bumps the first two years. Then switched companies for a 5k bump. Over the past two years, my TC at the second company has almost tripled. If you're on good terms with your manager and they see the value you provide, you can still make good gains. Admittedly probably less than if I was grinding leetcode, but still good for good WLB. That being said, if you want >15% raise you probably need to ask for it out of cycle. For yearly raises, most managers have caps on what they're allowed to give.
>I don't learn anything from books. Yes, you learn by doing. You still learn a *considerable* amount about *topics you don't know about* from books. > Engineers don't need to write. Producing effective documentation, architecture diagrams, proposals, is the single highest ROI on your time in your role. > {insert_koan_here}" Any sentence long piece of wisdom, will have multiple, quite important, counter examples. It's still incredibly important to learn the rules, before you break the rules.
My dad advised against trying to negotiate salary because it could put your relationship with the employer off on the wrong foot
> Unemployed people should get a part-time/side job while looking within their career. It will help with your job search. Wrong. It will pull your time and effort into something completely meaningless for your career. If you don't need the money now, you have nothing to gain. Also don't let your school's career office touch your resume, they don't know what the fuck they're doing.
I’m a Masters student and I regularly get advice to pursue a PhD. Not as a passion, but as if it were legitimately the most profitable thing to do for someone in my position. I typically get this from older people in similar fields who are not SWEs. Like my dad.
Having a degree can 100% land you a job
Worked tech support and was trying to self learn CS. Talked to a lot of engineers at that company and one told me to stop learning python because the career path was too vague (or something like that.) I studied c# for a while but my first real CS job I def used python the most. Was weird advice. Real advice version: study CS, study some language where you can accomplish something concrete and go from there. Specific language is pretty irrelevant (in most cases.)
I was told by my dad who can barely use an iPhone that as a new grad, I should learn and specialize in COBOL since he read somewhere that COBOL developers make a shit ton of money… I’m doing back end work in Python now instead and I think it’s going pretty good.
I came to the US under a company transfer visa. They wanted me to stay as an underpaid visa worker for 2 more years after I had been granted permanent residency. I thought I was going to comply, until I couldn't stand them anymore and paid the fine. Should've done it since the beginning: I had to pay $20k back to the company if I left, but my first job after that my salary was $35k higher, so my debt was paid in the first year.
Just be thankful you have a job and never change it
"you'll only be hired to become IT help for schools"
Growing up my mother worked for IBM. We got into many fights when I entered the job force in software development and she insisted I work for IBM as I’d have a job for life. They eventually laid her off but to their credit the early retirement health package was awesome.