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When to Leave That First Tech Job
An anonymous reader writes "Chris Wilson has an interesting piece about a scenario all CompSci/Engineering students dread, getting a job out of college and having it quickly turn sour. He writes: 'The first layoff is tough. After bending over backward, after being a loyal employee, this is the reward? To summarize how I felt: Disillusioned.' He discusses warning signs you should look for in your own work environment that point toward "Getting out". An interesting read, especially for aspiring engineers or engineers out on their first job."
...when your web server dies even before a Slashdot 'First Post'
When you're leaving your job, stay late on the last day.
Then, when everyone else has gone, start a fire.
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
When to leave your (first, second, third or nth) tech job
.NET experience. They searched my university's resume database for candidates, and I came up. Would I like an interview? Hell yes.
.NET Ninjas. We were going to produce top-notch software for the nuclear power industry. Combining management's knowledge of the nuclear field and our kung fu grip on .NET , we hoped to dominate our market niche. As developers we would be on the ground floor of a booming company. There was greater room for advancement compared to a traditional office environment. We all hoped to have company cars, top-notch health care, company cell phones, and tons of other wonderful perks; all just slightly out of reach.
When to leave your first job in the technology field
Editorial by Christopher Wilson
It was early May of 2004, and I was almost at the finish line for my degree. Between me and graduation: Just two summer classes. I was in the process of finishing what could only be described as the most intense spring semester of my college career. As the semester's end finally hit, I realized something. I was going to need a job, and I hadn't even started looking.
Then, almost on cue, the phone rang. The president of a small and local software company was looking for computer engineers with
I was to be part of a team of highly skilled, versatile,
It did not go as planned.
One stressful year later, while I was staying late with a few other developers to finish up on some work, I was asked to report to the president's office. My manager was already there, sitting on the same side of the desk as the president. They explained to me, in a level and professional tone, that due to financial factors, I was going to be let go, with only an hour's severance pay. Thanks for all the hard work, and best of luck.
The first layoff is tough. After bending over backward, after being a loyal employee, this is the reward? To summarize how I felt: Disillusioned. Only one thing kept me going -- pure ego. You know when the schoolyard bully says something about your mom in front of everyone? But, ignoring the size difference and the fact that he's already shaving daily at age 14, you step forward and say "Oh yeah?", with a Brock Sampson-like eye twitch the only warning of the impending ownage? That's the kind of ego that kept me determined to give software engineering a second shot.
Over the course of the previous year, my friends quickly learned I liked to talk about work less and less. When I did open up about it, they were astounded by, well, let's say various factors of the work environment. Each and every time it was discussed with my peers in the field, time and time they gave me the same advice: Get out.
I have to say, they were totally right.
All the signs were there, but I blazed on, telling myself that this was just a rough patch for the company, and that we'd pull out of this tailspin in time to land safely at our destination. I was ignoring the pilots screaming "Mayday, Mayday".
Now, while I was blind to obvious signs that it was time to leave, doesn't mean that you have to be. I would like to present the 4 signs that you should leave your workplace (for software engineers):
1 It's the environment, stupid!
In the University of Pittsburgh's Computer Engineering program, there is a mandatory department seminar, where the department informs us about our career options. Oftentimes, alumni come back to speak about the career opportunities in their field. It's all very, very dry, and as a result, nobody listens. They also fail to give one piece of advice that I would at the first seminar of every year, if I was ever asked to give one:
Don't work in cubicles, ever. Working in cubicles is the sure sign that you're not working for a successful company. Imagine the smartest person you know, working in your field. Now imagine how they would react if they were told they're going to work in a box with no door or roof,
When you're sitting in meetings thinking "I would cheerfully shoot any one of you fuckers in the face to get my last job back", it's probably time to move on.
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/6013d4189a6126e91 d2664e5ba57f581/index.html
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I work for a Doctor who owns his own practice. I recognize that he went through years of medical school to get where he is, and I respect that.
However, med school does not teach you Programming/Networking/System Diagnosis and Repair. It appears to have barely taught management.
When your boss thinks he knows how something should be done because he is a professional in another field, it is time to type up the resume and start passing it around. When you can't convince him of something because he "Knows" how it "Should" be done, your sunk.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
> After bending over backward, after being a loyal employee, this is the reward?
Hint: don't bend over backward.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I worked at Google. We had cubicles. Good thing this guy came along to tell me it wasn't a successful company or I never would have known.
I've worked in 4 companies which have bitten the dust in the last 10 years, some good indicators of problems are:
* Paying you in pizza and food stamps
* Managers being overly nice to everyone in meetings while looking very nervous
* 'Minor unexplained troubles' when pay fails to make it to the bank on time
* Large men standing at the doors of the company in pinstripe suits telling everyone to go home for the day
* Leaving the office late in the evening, seeing the company accountant loading what seems to be company property into the back of his SUV
* The CIO borrowing lunch money from you
* Sudden and unexplained 'asset stocktake' undertaken by little men you've never seen in the company before, calling themselves 'administrators'.
* You get an e-mail alert from the stock exchange warning you that your company has announced that it has been placed into liquidation.
Task Mangler
Huh. I work at one successful company with plenty o' cubes, my girlfriend at a very successful company where practically no one below VP has an office. So, there's probably something more going on here.
First off, a small company, or a startup, has a hell of lot better things to do with its money than build offices for its employees. If it's not demonstrably benefiting the customer, it's not worth the investment.
Second, yes, cubes do allow more noise in, and yes, it can sometimes be a problem. But the root cause is usually not the absence of a door and ceiling: it's the lack of self-discipline that causes some folks to holler back and forth over cube walls, and it's the lack of an ability to focus that causes some folks to be distracted by any conversation in earshot. As engineers, we shouldn't be paid big bucks just because we can crank out good software under ideal working conditions. We should be able to do quality work under less than ideal conditions, and we should have enough discipline to not create those conditions for others.
Now, if your company doesn't recognize that excessive noise is a distraction and a productivity killer, then that might be a good reason to leave. But at the end of the day, demanding complete quiet and isolation is a prima donna attitude. Learning to filter out minor distractions is achievable, and greatly increases the range of places you'll be able to be productive in. That will only help you in the long run.
He only graduated from college one year ago. What does he know?
You're in the tech field.
At all times you should have 20+ people you could call to have a resume on the right desk the next day. Network (the people kind). Then network more.
You are in a place where job turnover is worse then at McDonalds. Outsourcing, cutbacks, takeovers by another company, etc. Your job is about as safe as a house below sea level in New Orleans - you WILL lose it, just a matter of time.
So plan ahead.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
This kid graduated in the spring of '04 and, only 15 months later, is complaining about the IT industry? Get in line. Or rearrange your priorities. I think the college kids of today - or young people in general - think they are "entitled" to a nice job, nice pay, organized management, etc. Ha! Welcome to the real "Real World."
He's complaining about cubicles??? I recall one time a client (the president and the head of technology) came to visit us and they commented that it's too quiet in the office. They said that they wanted to hear and see people talking, discussing, and creating new ideas, etc. Sorry, kid, but you don't get a shiny office straight out of college, or even ever in life. He's got his expectations way, way, way too high. (I wonder if this carries over in his interpersonal relationships, or not, with the fairer sex.)
And yes, management is dumb in some areas, but really, really, really smart in the one area that counts - longevity. If a project fails, management doesn't get the can. They find the "problem" in I.T. and fire them. They can always shift the blame, pass the buck, and fudge the bottom line. The question to ask is how can you stay on managements' good side? Time to put your pride aside and learn how to suck up.
Personal growth is something you do on your own time not on company's time. They ain't paying ya to discover your inner calling.
Compensation & Overtime has been ruled null & void by the the greater supply of IT people. We are interchangeable. If you don't like and tell that to management they'll find a replacement for you, not pay you more. Every programmer thinks he's the hot shit. Don't let that get to your head. You're not.
I think this kid needs to growing up to do. It's funny because the older guys at the office just smile when I complain. It's the "been there, done that" experience that you learn as you grow older.
Take them for what they are worth.
When to start looking for a new job
1) You notice that the best engineers are systematically leaving the company
- They are leaving for a reason. Maybe it's bad management, maybe it's bad pay. Whatever it is, you don't want it either.
2) You are forced to take a pay cut
- If you take a pay cut, take it when switching jobs. Your salary at a company should always be increasing, and never decreasing.
3) The coffee delivery man stops refilling your coffee machines
- Amenities getting cut in a budget crisis are one of the signs that further budget cuts are on the way.
4) The network gets locked down
- Some companies will lock down the network in an effort to eliminate wasted time. It leads to bitterness among the employees and rarely works out the way the management wants it to.
5) The company get-togethers become more frequent, but less extravagant
- HR is one of the first departments to know when things are going down the tubes. They respond by trying to raise morale with fun company get-togethers, but with a limited budget these get-togethers are less banquet celebrations and more confused standing around a punch bowl in the lunch room.
6) The CEO position has changed hands twice in one year
- It is not uncommon that a CEO will quit after a certain amount of time at the top. It is a bad sign, though, when a CEO can't last a year. Something is wrong with the business and he is getting out while the getting is good. You should follow his lead.
7) The CFO position has changed hands twice in one year
- CFOs are relatively harmless glorified accountants. Except when it comes to budgetary issues. If a CEO can't keep CFOs around, it is because they don't want to work for your CEO. Maybe you shouldn't either.
8) Your company announces a Brand New Direction
- Companies can't just change their direction. Every move should be calculated and based on the strengths of the company. If your company designs software to run banking systems, be wary when the CEO declares that the company will begin work on medical systems.
9) The atmosphere is acrid
- In a company where things are going well, there is usually a very strong atmosphere of comraderie. When things are going bad, or people are overstressed, that atmosphere turns sour. This cascades from the upper levels of management on down, so be aware when your coworkers stop being friendly.
10) The company opens a "research center" or "development center" in an impoverished country
- Companies have found that they can increase headcount by hiring low-cost engineers in impoverished countries like India. They will typically declare the foreign site as a development center to handle development overflow from the main office, and that no current employee will be let go (so relax, because you're safe). This seems to be okay until you notice that headcount in the local office is decreasing because the employees that are leaving aren't being replaced. Brain drain at any company is a serious issue, and one that is directly caused by this type of off shoring.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
No, no. That's the article.
When you're the IT guy for a company and you visit the page and see...
Service Unavailable
...and about 50,000 references to 'slashdot.org' in your log files.
That's when you quit. Let some other schmuck take care of that mess of melted aluminum and plastic on the floor.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Three things that scream GET OUT to me are:
;-)
1. Not getting the promotion you felt you deserved.
2. Being stuck using older technologies.
3. Having so little work to do that you become a slashdot "obsessive-compulsive reloader"
I have a burning desire to verbally bludgeon the author of this article, but instead I'll give a brief outline of my thoughts.
.NET is highly untested and nuclear power plants are the zenith of mission critical. If any nuclear power plants adopt .NET to run their plant, I'm moving to the moon.
A) This was your fisrt job. If you truly feel you can judge everything about the working world from your first job, you're shallow, incompetent and pathetic.
B) If you think succesful companies don't have cubicles, you're in for a very rude awakening when you get jobs #2 and #3, etc.
C) You were working for a startup. You should have demanded a very lucrative stock package. Most startups (and I really need to stress most--ask the SBA) fail! That's a risk you take and the stock package is the payoff if the comapny succeeds.
D)
Hey Chris, if you're expetations are this high for your first job, I pity you. You've got a long way to go and a great many things to learn.
--James
As far as I'm concerned, since he put NO effort into looking for a job, researching companies and talking to people about the company, he has little right to complain about the way things turned out.
There are plenty of students in their senior years who put some effort into their job hunts. Depending on your school, you may have a quality Career Services department that can be a lot of help. Or they may be idiots who don't know a thing about it.
If he got a job by doing nothing and waiting for a phone call, he should thank his guardian angel that he had the opportunity to work for a year.
.NET Ninjas
I don't think that I've bumped into any of those, are they like Tae Kwon Do-Dos?
Care to elaborate what "top company" you work for, so that I don't apply there, given what the colleagues and the employee selection process appear to be like? Are you one of their "smartest Comp Sci" grads? Does your job require computer science skills, but not manners?
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
OMG, a 24-year old almost straight out of college who knows EVERYTHING! I've never encountered one of those before!
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
I work for a university so I see it all the time, the undergrad that thinks that their degree (and no real experience) should net them a great, high paying job in a low stress environment where they get what they want. Well, those that chase the numbers, usually end up getting screwed. No suprise, if you are fresh out of university with no experience, you aren't worth a whole lot at that point. Takes more time before you have the skills and experience to back up a big salary.
Guy strikes me as one of those. Ok, so maybe he really did get in a bad situation but his gripes scream of lack of experience. Cubicles are not always bad, maybe even not often. Personally, I wouldn't want an office at my current job. If we were all in offices, it would just make shit much harder and necessitate twice weekly staff meetings. As is, with us all in one room, we just talk as needed. If you are busy, you put your headphones on and people leave you alone. If not, you listen. Maybe people are talking about something that relates to you.
Not saying that's the case at all companies but to pretend cubicles are universally bad is stupid.
Same thing with the management gripe. On the surface it's some valid stuff, but tech people often get too caught up in thinking management is stupid. Well guess what? Just because they don't agree with you, doesn't make them dumb. There are realities in business that most tech people don't deal with. If your boss is good, you won't have to. However that doesn't mean they aren't there and that they don't have to be dealt with. Just because they have a different view than you, or won't do what you want doesn't make them stupid.
I mean I'd really like to spend about a million dollars upgrading labs in our department. That would be enough for all the top of the line hardware, software, desks, presentation equipment, etc that I'd like to have. However my boss would not be stupid for telling me no if I asked. Would it improve the education of our students? No question, and that is our prime goal here, it would be our product if we were a business. However it's not at all cost effective, nor within the amount of money available to us. Each year our group requests several hundred thousands of dollars for upgrades, and we never get near that much. However, we don't cry about management not supporting us. They want to know what we'd like, and we tell them. They weigh that, and decide based off of our resources what we can afford to get.
It's valuable to know when to leave a company but "when you work in a cube" and "when you and your boss disagree" aren't valid times. Also, when you are new to the market, espically wiht no work experience, consider lower pay. I'm ot saying lowball yourself, but look at what's offered. Often people who hire newbies for insane saliries are doing so because their expecations are unrealistic, much like yours. Realise that you aren't worth a ton and find someone who understands that. If you find a good place, you'll be given realistic tasks to your skills, chances to learn and grow, and people who know what's going on to guide you.
Man that was the funniest onion article i've read in awhile!
Hey, look. A manager from EA has posted.
Was wondering when they would come by.
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I dream of a cubicle. In this country (the UK), the norm is completely open plan. That is, you have a big room where everybody works with no internal walls or partitions. The open plan room I'm in at the moment is relatively OK, there's only five people in it and it is quite small. Yesterday I was at the Gherkin and the floor I was on was completely open except for a central core where the toilets, lifts and other services were, the cafeteria and the meeting rooms.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Two things:
I learned long ago that corporate loyalty is an outdated concept because companies are no longer loyal to their employees.
The expression about "commanding respect" does not mean that someone demands respect without earning it, but rather someone that has earned and controls respect.
Example: Linus commands the respect of the open source software community.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Judging a job _only_ by the money ("I personally believe the time to leave that first tech job is when you can find another job that pays significantly more") is IMHO a case of literally not seeing the forest for the trees.
Money is a means, not an end. You can't eat money, you can't get much entertainment out of just looking at a bunch of 100$ bills, etc. The question is what you can do with them to improve your life quality, not the number alone, like some screwed-up game score.
And before you lash back with "well, duh, with more money you can buy more stuff and be happier", no, that's still not getting it.
Yeah, you can buy a bigger plasma TV or some high-end stereo or whatever, but if you end up in a job where an asshole demands your presence there 14 hours a day, and occasionally that you bring a sleeping bag and don't leave until he sees some program ready (yes, I've actually seen such an asshole)... you won't actually have the _time_ to actually _use_ those. You'll just have time to eat and flop into bed.
Additionally, let's talk about happiness on the whole. Even if money could buy some happiness, it's not a linear scale. Twice the money doesn't make you twice as happy. So you gain, what? Maybe 5% extra happiness in those 4-5 hours at home. If the price to pay is anywhere between 8 and 14 hours of pure hell at work, I'd say on the average you're actually worse off.
Guarding against the future? Hah. I'll tell you what's more likely to happen, because I personally know people who chose to work for an asshole for a lot more pay. You know how much they've saved for the future? Well, one was telling me at the end of last week that he's some $2000 in debt... right after salary day. (And that's not counting the debts for his car, the house, etc.)
Welcome to the deathtrap of consumerism. See, most people who try too hard to believe that success is measured in money alone, and that more money can literally buy happiness... end up literally trying to buy it. Or failing that, trying to convince themselves that theirs is the right way. ("Hey, look how much stuff I can buy with that money! Of course it's worth it! Why, that's what success is all about!")
The guy I was mentioning above, we're good friends, so I hear about it each time he gets a raise or a promotion. Also when he buys new stuff. Guess what? Each raise was followed by an even bigger increase in how much he spends. Each time he'll just get a bigger car, a bigger computer, then military-grade IR goggles for when he goes fishing, then now a bigger house in a whole other (more fashionable) town. (Just in case those 12 hours a day at the office weren't enough, now he'll also spend an extra 2 hours commuting.)
Those in turn just dig the trap deeper. Now with all those monthly payments and being in debt he _has_ to keep at it.
So what did he _really_ get out of it? Well, from where I stand, it looks like he's got $2000 debt, plus the loans for the car and house, and some 12 hours a day of high stress. Now with the extra commuting, he only gets to see his infant son briefly before going to sleep, and on weekends. Yeah, way to go.
My advice? Forget it. I've saved a lot more on a lesser wage. Not falling into the "money is everything, and consumerism is the way to show it off" trap tends to have that effect.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Everyone cuts the schedule. If they didn't reduce the schedule from 8 to 6 days then they wouldn't be "productive". Get over yourself and learn to pad everything by the necessary 25% to 30% in time so that when they cut it out it's still attainable. But make sure it looks like a struggle doing it. If you get on schedule without massive OT then they cut goes from 25% to 35% to 45% and so on. One company I worked at they had a 75% fluff to every number just to survive all the management cuts that will come along during the budget reviews."
No, not everyone. Only PHBs act like that. If the company you work for has to do all that charade, and you _still_ end up with massive overtime, you've just told me you have a complete idiot for a boss. And let me get back to one particular management idiocy there:
"If they didn't reduce the schedule from 8 to 6 days then they wouldn't be "productive"."
No. Measuring productivity like that has got to count as not just clueless, downright surrelistic lack of clue. And let me give you just one reason why.
In this job everything can be done in 1001 ways, and about 900 of them are bad shortcuts. They involve write-only code, lack of testing, and generally just hoping that the quickest and dirtiest and most unmaintainable hack will just work on the first try. If you cut someone's time by 25% you've just told them to take such a bad shortcut.
The result isn't just bad unmaintainable code (which _will_ bite you in the ass when you want to make a v2.0), and not only just buggy, but it might blow the deadline even worse. Debugging bad code takes a lot longer, and debugging (in one form or another) is what you do some 90% of the time. A shortcut that's nearly impossible to debug, and nearly impossible to change into something else (e.g., when debugging says that your very choice of algorithm was wrong) will likely take longer to be ready.
Or it may never be ready. Someone I know is still stuck in a project that should have been finished in the last quarter of _2002_. But yeah, they were always under pressure, so they skipped testing almost completely until the end of 2004, they always fixed bugs via the quickest hack that can sorta work, never had time to figure out a _consistent_ way to implement that spec, or to get a good spec out of the client for that matter, and so on.
Having to add fluff to justify the deadline wrangling game, again, adds complexity and adds places where bad shortcuts will bite you in the ass.
So that kind of approach "productivity" just means making a bad product.
A product's architecture and the allocated time should involve understanding the pros and cons of each approach. That's what design is all about: making an informed choice, and knowing the price you pay for that choice. (And there will _always_ be a price to pay. In some cases it will just be much smaller than the gains.) Replacing it with a sad game in which management pats just themselves on the back for imposing an arbitrary 25% to 75% without even asking what's the effect, is pretty much _the_ nemesis of any kind of good design.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Here is what you do. You graduate as a computer or electrical engineering student. You move to Northern VA. You contact a big defense contracter like Lockheed or Northrupp. You get them to hire you contingent upon you getting a clearance. You work on project X when you get your clearance. You now hate your job but guess what you have a clearance so you can basically be a warm body to fill a slot and have about a thousand options open to you. (Btw I hate the warm body slot filling thing but god do I see it all the time!)
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
You're absolutely right. I don't know of a single large company that *doesn't* use cubes. It makes me question the writer's knowledge of...anything. He admits he didn't do anything to look for a job, didn't even bother to listen to alumni dispensing career advice because it was "all very, very dry." He grabbed the first one that made an offer, and got disillusioned when they canned him. Well, duh. Put a little effort into that job search, you'll have less chance of that happening.
There are other signs that make me think I'd like to hear management's side of the story. For one, he sounds like a prima donna. His sole qualification is a Bachelors in CS from a middle tier school, and he acts like he should be given the golden boy treatment in his first job. An office for a kid who knows .NET? Company car?!?!? Sorry, Charlie, the 90's are gone and that crap's over.
Also, he sounds a bit arrogant - implying that anyone over 40 doesn't know what they're doing, mentions that management didn't take his advice, etc. That could be true, or it could be that he's an arrogant little man who can't constructively work as part of a team.
I also wonder how good he was at his job - he says that management told him he wasn't picking up the work fast enough, and that he was just "barely middle of the pack." He says that was them "setting the employees up for failure." Yeah, that's one option. That or they don't think he's getting the job done.
Finally, this wasn't a mass firing. The impression I got was that he was selected to be let go among the team. He claims they blamed it on finances, but legally they would anyway, in all likelihood.
We only have one side of this story - it could well be another case of a kid coming out of college with a ton of arrogance, no respect for people who have a ton more experience than he, skills that didn't translate to his job, and a problem working with others. Perhaps there's a reason he was canned?
(parts of this previously posted by me)
The social contract is broken irretrievably, and we all need to adapt to the new reality. The new reality is, don't get too comfortable, keep the resume up to date, and move on the minute things are the slightest bit fishy. Some signs to look for:
o No more free pens in the stockroom, now the admin hands them out one by one and makes you sign for them.
o An all-company memorandum from the CEO shows up suddenly, responding to hallway rumors or soft-pedaling bad news.
o The perennial blame game between Sales, Marketing, and Engineering stops simmering and comes to a full boil in the hallway.
o A top executive (any top executive) leaves mysteriously.
o Sales guys start leaving (more than one is big trouble)
o "The Board" starts poking around and introducing themselves to people.
o A routine purchase request for equipment is turned down, regardless of justifications presented.
o There is an odd new emphasis on collections activity.
o "Investors" start showing up for tours of the engineering department.
o The annual customer conference is canceled or postponed.
o A delivery date is moved forward inexplicably, without consulting the engineers on the project.
o It is impossible to get a reasonable explanation from your boss for a clearly unreasonable situation or request.
o You are asked to stop work and "document" your project at a time that seems inappropriate and wrong.
o You are asked to sign any document "acknowledging" your equity position (if any), when it should be abundantly clear what your equity position is.
One small way to protect yourself (and to acquire information about the company's activities that they would not normally share with you) is to take advantage of any stock purchase plan (real stock, not options) put forward, and buy a few shares (preferably as few as possible). This will at least make you privy to the legal documents around acquisition scenarios and so on.
But the best way to protect yourself is to get the resume engine revved up the minute you see the warning signs above. No need to delay. Get the hell out.
The inexperience of the author is overwhelmingly evident in the "take no crap, live in my fantasy world" tone that he takes. Don't work in cubicles? Yea right, so where is the other 95% of the IT industry going to work since they are now barred from working at any company which doesn't piss away all it's money on overpriced urban real estate so every junior level coder can have their own office. To equate a company's respect for it's employees with whether or not they give you an office is a clear fallacy and will bar the author from working at many, many fine companies. Don't get me wrong, I hate cubeland too...HATE it. As a noncomformist it really rubs me the wrong way. However, it's the reality of what you have to put up with in this industry. It's a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things.
He rambles on with the usual "the boss doesn't take my genius advice" garbage too. It's not surprising and I certainly had my complaints about how they did things at the company I was laid off from a year out of college. However, that's how things are. Your goal should be getting in to a company where the higher-ups make good decisions so you don't HAVE to feel like everyone is stupider than you. I think a lot of times it's a corporate culture issue and you need to find a place which does things the same way you would do them. It doesn't necessarily mean that a company is bad just because everything isn't done the way you want it. The higher ups are the higher ups and they are going to do things they way they want to do them whether you agree with them or not. If the company is doing stupid things, I would agree that it could be a warning sign, but this dude frames it as though his junior level advice is supposed to matter. It's good to have a boss that listens to everyone, but sometimes you do not understand all the factors involved.
One of the most important things I think you learn working for companies in offices your first couple years out is office and company politics. There are SO many factors that go into decision making beyond what is technically important. Sometimes those other factors result in bad technical implementation, but a lot of times those other factors are just the reality of doing business and you need to accept them and work with them rather than chafing against them with the "I'm a genius" attitude the author takes. You as the junior level employee are not always privy to all the information which goes in to making a decision.
Certainly, there are bad managers and bad companies out there, but I think this dude is just not framing his advice in the right way. He comes off as the bitter, smarter than you tech worker who just got laid off. I think his attitude is part of the learning process, but I also think that he is giving bad advice to people who may be in a similar situation. He's making it out as if you're going to find a utopian place to work in your first couple years out: not going to happen for most people. I certainly don't encourage anyone to stay somewhere they're not happy, but you need to think about the balance of experience you're getting and what you're going to do in the future. If you keep quitting jobs because they're not treating you like a king, you will never, ever get a job you really like. When you're on the bottom rung sometimes you need to suck it up and put in your time. A lot of times, as you get more experience, things will start to make more sense to you.
I don't mean to come off as the jaded gray cubeland dweller. I certainly want to change certain things where I work and I am not exactly a conformist on any level. However, there are things you learn with experience that you just don't learn any other way. Now, with a couple years under my belt, I am just starting to understand why things are done the way they are. I am fortunate to be at a company which I think makes really excellent policies, in general, and being here it's easy to see that there are things I don't understand which actually result in a network that works pretty well. Coming to understand those factors is what you learn by sticking it out and not demanding the corner office right away.
Be thankful for your cubical. One of the top level executives at our company decided that cubicals cut down on inter-departmental communication. So... down came the cubical walls. I now work in a totally open office. EVERYONE can see what is on my monitor ALL THE TIME. Since I spend a large part of my time doing solid modeling and FEA work, I have an audience far more often than I would like. I do not work well in a fishtank. Ironically, the home office (where top-lvl-exec spends most of his time) has cubicals. Just us unwashed red-headed step children that can't. The only silver lining is I have a test lab I can hide in when I want to browse me a little /.
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I work for an extremely successful software company (Google is one of our clients) - I work in a cubicle - The office is in Chicago's Merchandise Mart - for those of you about to rock, I salute you, but for those of you who don't know, the MM takes up two entire city blocks (which in Chicago means it's 1/8 mile x 1/4 mile), has its own zip code and is the largest commercial building in the world - Only 5% of the people who work in the building are fortunate enough to have an office on an exterior wall of the building (with a window!) - where the hell are they going to put everybody else? build offices out of the whole scenario? Perhaps I'm a sucker, but I'd rather work with my headphones on (like I would anyway) and have the company's money go toward the huge bonus I'll get at the end of every year for working hard than toward them re-modeling the interior of this building - work is just where I work to get money to do the things I do when I'm not at work - the cubicle (or "office" as I like to call it) is the least of my issues
I rate this article a 2 out of 5 - if the kid hadn't put his graduation year in the article, I still would have been able to guess his age just from his idealistic rant with little real substance - "don't work for a manager that's an idiot" - Brilliant advice, captain underpants! yes, it's true that it's difficult to work for someone you don't respect, but in the real world (aka, not in your high school honors class) you're going to work with people who are of different levels of intelligence, people with different types of analytical skills, etc. Calling everybody stupid just because you're, as mentioned in the article, 'disillusioned' is what we call (in the grown up world) "being a fucking baby" - which we normally follow with "grow up"
calling all destroyers
The truth is that company loyalty shouldn't be expected anymore; the people that extoll their adoration your work, dilligence and effectiveness are the very same ones that will let you go. You leave a job when the job doesn't satisfy your own personal balance of perks and financial compensation. This may sound unreasonably cynical, and certainly, things are seldom black & white, but alas, staying somewhere because of some quaint, Pleasantville-era work ethic has a much more negative net effect on your life than simply quitting and forging ahead.
When do you quit? As many here have noted, when that first round of layoffs is announced, when the perks and benefits start being trimmed, when it is painfully clear that the environment in which you work is more of a pean to mediocrity than a medium for productivity. I know, I know. I've just effectively nixed most companies (even some successful ones,) but the truth is that in the post-internet-resume world, IT workers are commodities (whether here or in India) and workplace egotism in a necessary evil.
We are all mercenaries. Don't do pensions, don't recite the latest company mantra, don't put up with abusive bosses, deadwood or pervasive mediocrity and don't bet on the come. Get your money when you can, stash it away (for you never know if you'll see it again) and retire on your terms.
There are several lessons that the author--who is clearly little experienced in the work force--should take away here. For one thing, posting about the "signs" that he should've seen, particularly when those signs are generally wrong, doesn't come off as good advice to people who've been professionals for awhile. It comes off as sour grapes. Why is he wrong? Let's find out.
Cubicles are of the devil
Repeat after me: No, they're not. With proper soundproofing tiles on the ceiling and carpetted floors, you should be able to hear only your closest neighbors, and drowning them out is what comfortable headphones are for. If you can't get into the zone and do quality work, that's a personal issue, not your employer's. If you are having a hard enough go of it, you should talk to your manager about the problem.
Management is stupid
Generally, you can't get away from this. However, the cases that he cites as management incompetence really weren't necessarily icompetence at all. The author was upset because people like working the way they're most efficient. He seems to think that every new piece of technology makes people more efficient, which is a belief that is only held by recent college graduates. The problem with new technology is that it requires time to retrain your brain. And if the technology really is more efficient (and I would argue that few new languages truly have resulted in massive productivity increases), the question becomes: is the new technology so efficient that the retraining costs will be overcome by the productivity increase we'll get when everyone is running full speed? Usually, the answer is no, or at best "maybe." That's not something you want to stake the future of the company on, which is what you're doing at a small company.
Further, he was upset that after he studied for a few hours, management wasn't convinced that he was the right person to do a full reformat/install of their primary development server. WHAT A SHOCKER! If he were a real go-getter, he would've come in anyways, so he could've learned what the actual problems were going to be during the procedure. Then next time he was somewhere where this came up, he could've at least had cursory experience with the issue.
Personal Growth
I can't really disagree when he says companies should provide mechanisms for personal and professional growth. But what I can say is that when management is telling you that you are in the middle of the pack, look inward. If they're telling you that you're middle of the pack, you're probably actually closer to the bottom. If you feel you're working your hardest and management is telling you that you're not doing a great job, it might be that it's time for a career change.
Compensation isn't everything
That's true, but on the other hand, no one wants to be paid less than they're worth. The key here is that if you're at a job that makes you happy, you'll be more productive and a better employee. Consequently, you'll be recognized by your employer, and generally compensated more.
Final thoughts
It seems to me that what happened in this situation is the author was inexperienced and didn't realize what he'd gotten himself into. His job was a high-risk, high-reward situation. The company promised him ground-floor entry into what they thought was going to be a big hit. Turns out they weren't right, and he hadn't done his due diligence first. The theory with startups is that you churn and burn, and when you're done you can retire at 25. Of course, the reality is that 99% of startups fail and employees are left with nothing but the experience.
When interviewing for a position, the most important thing is to realize that you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you. During the interview, when asked if you have any questions, ask if you can meet some of the other team members you'll be working with alone. Tell them you'd like to get a feel for the l
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.