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Ask Slashdot: What Do You Wish You'd Known Starting Your First "Real" Job?
itwbennett writes: ITworld's Josh Fruhlinger asked seasoned (and some not-so-seasoned) tech professionals what they wished they knew back when they were newly minted graduates entering the workforce. Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the best advice has more to do with soft skills than with tech skills. To wit: 'When [managers] say they are suggesting you do something, it's not really a suggestion — it is an order disguised as a suggestion. Plain-speaking is a lost art at big companies and corporate double talk is the name of the game.' What's your best piece of advice for the newest among you?
Is the one you create.....Start your own business. Even if it's a failure financially, it will be a success long term.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Related to the first one:
Learn that when you disagree with someone it might be because you don't understand yet, you can change reactions you get from people if you say
"I don't understand." instead of "I disagree."
Similarly, instead of "That's stupid." try "That doesn't sound right to me, can you explain?"
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Not just knowing how to negotiate, but a better understanding of the comparable salary for that position and geographic location. It's difficult some times to appreciate what you're worth when starting out (or restarting) and granted - early on you may or may not be worth that much.
Case in point - I relocated years ago and the salary that I negotiated was comparable to the salary that I'd left in a previous locale. What I didn't grasp at the time, was the increase in cost of living for the new location. In reality, while I had negotiated an increase in pay for the new job, I'd actually taken about a 10% cut in pay based on cost of living.
Granted, people have to learn from their mistakes. And true, it may not be very common to relocate as part of your first job. But, with all of that said, I would say early on in your career, understanding what you're worth, and how that is compared to where you'll be working/residing is important. It's definitely something I'll have to help teach my children as they come of age.
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
How to negotiate for a better salary.
This.... because for some ridiculous reason, the salary for your next job is based upon the salary of your current or previous job.
That gets right back to how to negotiate for a better salary.
Many HR drones are taught their side of salary negotiation. Tactics like asking you right up front about your previous pay rates and what you expect to be paid for the new job -- all of that done BEFORE you have even discussed what the new job is to be. Before you have talked with them about the duties and responsibilities. Before you have decided if the company is a good fit for you, and before the interviewers have determined if you can be a good fit for them.
Most people are terrible at salary negotiation. Based on various studies with some degree of variance, overall they suggest about 55% of men do not negotiate their wages, and about 70% of women do not negotiate their wages. That is NO NEGOTIATION AT ALL. HR departments have learned that most people will accept whatever low-ball initial offer is made, and companies take advantage of that fact. Of those that do negotiate, most of them do a poor job of it, using the lowball offer as the starting point for negotiating.
Get yourself some salary negotiation books before changing jobs. Ask for more, and use it to negotiate rather than demand.
As someone who has done more negotiation than I'd like with a roughly 3-year layoff cycle in my industry, I've had more practice that I want at this. In one job that I took, there was the initial lowball offer, which I laughed off and said "No, really, we both know that is a low-ball value, try again". Their second offer was a bit better but still below prevailing wages. So then, using negotiation tactics, I reiterated all the things I had done, all the benefits they were likely to see from me, and suggested a much higher value, about 3.5x their initial lowball. After a few more back-and-forths, and we settled on a good wage. Later in leadership when I was in a position to see everyone's salary, I could see how many of the people in the company -- notably most of the non-confrontational people and mediocre performers -- had wages similar to the initial lowball offers. Most of those who were assertive or high producers tended to have much higher wages. I don't understand how they are related, but they are clearly correlated.
Learn to negotiate. It is an important life skill. It applies directly to salary negotiation, but also to many other facets like getting the good projects and pushing back on corporate demands, including for software development learning to negotiate features from a bad list of requirements to a good set of easily producible items.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
- try to learn whatever they're willing to teach
- if it "seems" dumb, tedious, or backwards: don't immediately assume you know better. Instead, assume that you don't have all the information (because likely you DON'T: someone else has very likely tried whatever you're going to suggest many, many times).
- At the end of the day, this is a simple transaction: they are PAYING YOU MONEY to DO something. Odds are, that "something" isn't "check your instagram account" or play "words with friends". Just fix it in your head that you have nothing better to do elsewhere at all, and try to internalize (or pretend) that you really give a shit about how well your task is done.
- you're not a precious snowflake.
Don't be anything like in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (Millenials in the Workplace)
-Styopa
"Then you lose your offer when you're asked for a recent pay stub."
The obvious response to which is, "Sure, but in exchange, I'll need copies of the pay stubs for those working for you in comparable positions."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Also, it would have been great to know what 'stock options' were.
Simple enough, they are the hybrid offspring of lottery tickets crossed with artwork.
* Usually they're not worth the paper the offer is printed on.
* Occasionally they'll be worth a few bucks, enough for a nice dinner or entertaining night.
* In rare cases they'll be worth a notable amount of money.
* In extremely rare cases both the lottery aspect and the fine art aspect will conspire. The company succeeds in the lottery of business, and you will have kept them long enough for them to achieve some value and not sold them for a nice dinner or entertaining night. These extremely rare and extremely lucky individuals discover unexpectedly they can buy a mansion and retire early.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Then you lose your offer when you're asked for a recent pay stub.
No you don't. Provide a fake payslip. Your current employer is legally bound from sharing your pay information and your future employer is legally bound from getting your pay information without your permission.
if anyone ever displays knowledge of your current pay then there is a criminal charge in their future regardless if it's the new place or the recruiter.
Everyone negotiates with full knowledge of the other parties price point or no one does. Turn about is fair play.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
It's based on the idea that people can be divided into (for example) "$100k people" and "sub-$100k people", and that there's no way a "$100k person" might possibly be in a situation where he's not making $100k, and if he is... well fuck him, he didn't deserve it anyway. He's used to getting fucked over, but we need to keep our spreadsheets looking good for the IPO!
This is one of the forces in our society that is directly reducing upward mobility and contributing to the demise of the middle class.
I'll never know if I would have gotten more money had I gone higher, but that moment of insecurity still bothers me to this day.
You would have, almost certainly. I'm an Estimator, so I'm often in the position of throwing out a price on something. If I give someone a quote and get an e-mail from Sales 10 minutes later saying the customer has accepted it and is placing an order...I know for sure I've left money on the table.
To which the company will likely say "thank you for your time and we'll show you to the door".
This isn't 2009. Companies are desperate for talent, and they would be foolish to push away qualified applicants over something so silly.
I have sat on both sides of the interview table. I have never been asked for a paystub. I have never asked for one. I always ask "what are your salary expectations?" If I think it is a low ball, and I want to hire you, I will offer you ~10% more, and maybe another bump after 90 days, if you are good. If your salary expectation is reasonable, I will make a matching offer. If it is high, I will offer the low side of what I think you are worth, expecting you to negotiate up from there.
I don't believe in making techs negotiate for their salary, because my experience is that being able to negotiate well, and being a good coder, are not positively correlated. When hiring a salesperson, I negotiate hard, and expect them to push back equally hard, because a timid person is not right for the job.
My advice... don't have sex with the office cleaning lady in your desk area. That sort of thing is generally frowned upon, even if it's not explicitly stated in the office rules.
It's even easier than that... I just short circuit the whole conversation by saying (and yes, this is a direct quote): "I'm looking for $x per year to mitigate the risks of leaving my current position and to make it worthwhile - meet the number, beat the number, or we'll both be wasting our time." ($x equals my assessment of the current market for the position).
It destroys any pussy-footing around, allows you to get right down to assessing the rest of the company. Note that I have also had polite refusals at other interviews and the conversation ended there, but those were very rare. By doing it this way, I've increased my yearly salary in the past few jobs by $13k and $27k over the past 12 months (a $13k bump to a contract-to-hire position that I'd later soured on, and a further bump of $27k to my current position's salary.)
YMMV, but it works out very well.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?