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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?
How to negotiate for a better salary.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
It's better to ask forgiveness than to get permission.
Like a kid in a candy store your manager will want more, More, MORE! of your time if you let them. It's a feedback loop to encourage more hard work from you. Advice: pace yourself so that when it is really needed and really an emergency you can show up to slay the dragon. You control how much time you spend thinking about this job, not them.
Hire me...
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
...and when.
-Listen more, talk less, especially when you're young.
-Always meet a commitment you make.
-Keep every e-mail.
-Show up five minutes early to every meeting.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
Before you start suggesting changes on a system, first learn why something is done the way it currently is. it's usually for a pretty good reason.
You have to own your career.....no one else will do it for you. Negotiate a good salary. If you ever get passed over for a raise or a promotion, start looking for a different job. If the choice assignments aren't being given to you, look for a different job. Take ownership of your education....learn new skills before you need them and make yourself invaluable to the company. Take on the hard challenges.
Link is to slide show site littered with click bait adds. While the topic is a useful discussion to have with new graduates, link is to garbage site....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Save more on 401k, Roth-IRA; leads to tax reduction. Also live frugal. You never know when your job will vanish -- so the quicker you get a nest-egg, better. And for any tax deferred savings time is your friend; so earlier you start is better. And set your goal to be financial independence.
All companies are out to screw you. So you are a fool. A complete fool, if you give the company any loyalty.
Do not be afraid or feel bad to jump ship to another company that is offering something better. Also don't ever be afraid to ask for more money, because I guarantee you are underpaid.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Sounds like a Fortune 500 company I worked for in Silicon Valley. The company is unwilling to train employees to get certified because they might leave and make more money at a competitor. Never mind that employees are training themselves to get certified and leaving the company to make more money at a competitor because of the lack of training. While the best and the brightest are leaving, the unmotivated employees are becoming more entrenched in management and discouraging others from getting certified. Corporate dysfunction at its best.
1. I would not do the same things second time around, wouldn't be doing full time university and full time work, I would quit the university, do full time not for 5 years as I did but for maybe 4, move onto the contracts then as I did at first, but not do contracts for 10, instead do it for 5 and start my own business 6 years sooner after getting just enough experience anyway.
2. I wouldn't bother buying and fixing and renting/selling properties as I did on the side, that diluted my effort and pulled me back from starting my own real business.
Basically if I could talk to myself 20 years ago, I would tell myself to skip college altogether, work right away (as I basically did anyway, but I did full time studies and full time job, which was unnecessarily difficult). I would make sure to explain to myself how to properly save money from much younger age and tell myself to start the business much earlier.
You can't handle the truth.
If you code, and your manager doesn't code, or if you admin and your manager's area of expertise is 'management' and not 'system administration' stop wasting time and just get out. It's not going to end well.
A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills
She'll end up being the ex-wife.
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.
I wish I'd known about 401k matches, 457b, 403b and what an IRA is.. then what a Traditional vs a Roth is.. and that work is "work" not a place to express yourself, or practice your own personal morals.
It's a competitive.. generally disarming place where a lot of unsavory people [can and will hurt you] if given the chance.
Always keep your guard up, keep your mouth shut.. and be on the look out for an ambush.
Possibly off-topic but now that I am a very seasoned tech worker facing retirement starting investing in your future literally is my vote. There is nothing like time and compound interest so new grads, setup and contribute to that saving plan (401k, 403b). Pay yourself first, you will not regret it.
When I started I poured everything into a shit-ass job and they were MORE than happy to squeeze more and more out of me (because recent grad + .COM bubble burst, insanity, etc). After 6 years I was completely burnt out, extremely cynical, suffering depression and anxiety issues (which I'm still dealing with.)
After I quit that hellhole I went somewhere "normal" and I had a really hard time adjusting to not having to have everything done simultaneously as quickly as possible, I got my nights and weekends back and I didn't know what to do with myself. It was surreal.
That place started to go south (after it was gobbled up by a capital investment group) so I went to my current place which is even better still.
So the lesson I would give to my younger self is that don't be afraid to keep looking around for opportunities, sometimes the grass really is greener.
crazy dynamite monkey
Being right isn't enough. You have to be popular to effect change.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
All of the major mistakes I've made over the years fall into the category of not playing well with others. That often occurred when I became overly committed to getting the job done. Big mistake. I eventually turned that into a simple motto: "It's more important to get along with others than to get your work done." Basically, you lose more points for being a social problem than you gain for being a technical answer. The penalty for the former can be quite severe. The reward for the latter usually is minimal.
Corny as it may sound, a simple prevention/cure for this problem is to read, follow, and live the advice in "How to Win Friends and Influence People," by Dale Carnegie. (Available for free at your local public library.) That will also help you in all other aspects of life, since the same dynamic applies throughout. Heck, even those ISIS folks also could benefit from it - especially them.
IMHO, this should be required reading for everyone entering the workforce. Since I've begun practicing those principles, every aspect of my life has improved. Oh, except that I get more annoyed at people who remain clueless on these simple - and now obvious - principles.
She said I should become a Forester. She was right, the stints I did which required field work always made me the happiest. Maybe not Forestry but perhaps, Geology, Conservation, etc.
Listen to mom. If you are just starting out, bail before you get too frustrated and unhappy. There are too many BOFHs out there.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I wish I'd known that because I was good at something didn't really mean I'd enjoy it. Almost 20 years into IT and I'm still trying to figure out how to get out of it, not because the work sucks, but because mgmt sucks and office life is not for me. I only do it for the money, for years because I was married and had to provide, now there just isn't anything else I can do with the same earnings potential. I love technology, and have been dorking around with computers since my first (Vic-20), but just because I understand it, and it seems to come easy to me, doesn't make one iota of it enjoyable. I keep thinking with the next job it'll finally be the "one," then I meet the management team and realize it's just the same old crap in a new cube. Had I stayed in the service I'd be retired or close to it by now, and likely spending my days playing with fire and mud (as a potter).
I had major problems with multiple women hitting on me at the same time. The married ones really became a huge problem for me and them.
* That no matter how much you think you know, there is someone who knows more. That's called humility.
* That you will, invariably, look back at yourself in 5 years and think you were an immature kid/idiot. That's called growth.
* That the best managers are the ones who aren't necessarily domain experts, but whom are enablers and gurus in the sense that they guide you. That's wisdom.
* That little thing called a 401k? That you don't care about? CARE ABOUT IT. Max it. Then forget about it.
* That getting wound up in your co-workers drama is the worst thing you can do; stay clear, so that when the bomb goes off, you don't get hit with shrapnel.
* That being dependable, friendly, and willing to share your expertise is the only skill that *really* matters in the long run.
It's pretty much universally frowned upon by management, and if the relationship doesn't work out, both of you are stuck being around each other all day every day for the foreseeable future, which can be pretty horrible. OTOH, I met my wife at my first job out of school (but wisely, she refused to date me while we still worked together).
Fuck you and your vertically sliced pickles, Jerry!!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Design work is the easy part. Getting a team to agree on specs, timetables, features, and actually sticking to those agreements is very very hard.
The upshot is that if you are very, very lucky you might spend 20% of your time doing design work, mostly less, and that is at pretty good outfits.
1. Please, do what you love, love what you do...
2. See #1 (otherwise, life sucks...)
3. Keep commute time minimal
4. Have a life outside of work, really, enjoy life, or at least try...
5. There is always something that is due ASAP
6. There will always be someone you really dislike at work, deal with it 7. Start contributing to 401k, max out your contribution, or at least do company match if it's available. Remember, it's cumulative, the earlier you start, the better off you are.
Off the top of my head, I'm sure there are many more and possibly better suggestions...
1) Managers with some degree of technical knowledge are almost always better for tech workers than managers that don't really have any technical knowledge.
2) One of the very best managers I ever worked for was a woman. The two worst managers I ever had were women. Women tech managers will either be fantastic or horrible beyond belief. The bad ones were orders of magnitude worse than the worst male managers I've ever had.
3) When a bunch of co-workers start leaving a job or the very best ones in your department start to leave, it's probably time for you to consider leaving too.
4) I've had jobs that were really great that became bad or started bad and became really good. Conditions change. Be prepared for it to happen. And if they change for the worse, it may be your signal to find a new job.
5) Try to get along with co-workers because as you change jobs in your tech career, you'll often find yourself working again with people from a previous job and you don't want to have those people have a grudge against you when you start a new job.
6) Don't be a hothead. Stay cool. I had a pretty negative opinion of a manager in a sister office over some things some co-workers told me when they worked under him in the past. My attitude got so negative that I remember once almost blowing up at him over something trivial, but I kept my cool. That guy got promoted and became my manager's manager and he went to bat for me with his management to get me a promotion at a time when it was really difficult to get promoted. You can misjudge people and if I had blown up at the guy, he'd have never gotten me the promotion. I really learned a valuable lesson on that one.
7) My dad told me years ago not to ever kick people when they were down because circumstances change and people who are down today may wield great power in your organization later and they will definitely remember who was good to them when they were at the low point of their career.
If you have a problem elevate it. Bad news does not get better with age. The sooner you let your supervisor or management know there are problems the better. Like dropping your car off at the service station. When would you like to know the car won't be fixed on time? 5 Minutes before it is due or as soon as they know. My answer is "As soon as possible".
you'll never know, when you'll need to prove that you spent time on something. and, if you want to make a career, don't be humble and think that your work speaks for itself. advertise yourself - you won't get fired for bragging, just promoted.
See http://www.nbc.com/saturday-ni...
You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
Maybe not so much how to negotiate, as how to not low-ball yourself. Also, it would have been great to know what 'stock options' were.
When you get to a position where the person in front of you has to quit (or die) for you to get ahead, move on...
However, never run *away* from a situation, only run to something better (with more opportunity), often the grass appears greener elsewhere, but you should do your homework.
Oh yeah, and accumulate as many brownie points as you can along the way, they will come in handy...
If you don't check, you may find that you are working for an unethical jackass after you move across the country to take the job..
I wish I had known how mundane and utterly banal most software development is.
I spend 99% of my time on bug fixes, documentation, configuration management, and writing new code that quite frankly, aside from exact implementation, isn't that much different than code I wrote 10 years ago.
"I need to shuffle data from point A to point B."
"I need to hit an API and stuff the result somewhere."
"I need to make sure the user doesn't enter something retarded into this form."
Maybe 1% of the work I do is even remotely interesting. Why? Because of the flood of software frameworks and libraries that take care of all that interesting stuff for you. A vast majority of us don't have to care about the best algorithm for X, for example - that work has already been done. Software is more like legos these days. You take the pieces you want and put them together.
That is good in that making software is easier and faster than ever before, but it is murder for people who did this stuff because it was interesting. There's very little mystique these days.
Love sees no species.
20 seems a bit high.
I was in a small business of 10.
Two of them turned out to be complete assholes.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
and chances are good, that this is your boss.
- 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
It is annoying to write down everything, but when PHB gets off the phone with you, they immediately start morphing everything that was said into their version of what they think you said. If you don't do this, you will find that you over-committed even when you didn't and you will hear all sorts of things that everyone else thinks that you promised.
At the end of each call COVER YOUR ASS. Eventually, if you are lucky, they will stop calling you altogether and will simply START with email, since you aren't letting them get away with the famous "I thought you understood what we discussed" reality bending mechanism. You probably won't have to re-forward it PHB when they lose their mind in 3 weeks, but if you do, you will have it.
To: PHB
cc:team
June 2015 Release
Thanks for talking this through with me, I will go forward with A, B, and C as discussed and I appreciate that you agreed to delay D, E, F until after the milestone build is stable for the June 2015 release.
Clarify with your manager who is allowed to give you tasks. In a lot of environments, all requests from higher-up MUST go through your manager for prioritization. Make sure you know where and when this applies but it's probably most of the time, so just tell people "you need to go through my direct manager so we can track the things I need to work on". If you let four different people dump tasks on you, you'll get buried and you won't get your responsibilities done.
This bit me pretty hard my first few jobs and still does to some extent. Make sure you know what you're supposed to work on. If your plate is already full, don't branch out to other tasks. People are really good at overstating or understating the importance of what you need to work on, and you aren't the one who sets the schedule. It might be urgent for task A to get done this week, but maybe it's even more urgent for task B to get done by the end of next week, and if task B takes more work to get done...
When you start with lower pay with a promised raise in X amount of time... It's not going to happen. They'll stall and say they can't afford it as long as possible.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Been gov't employed for 5 months now, this isn't even hardly the case. There are almost no minority managers, let alone staff, and everyone generally is pulling their own weight.
Does not mean you're wrong, but the entire sphere of government employment isn't as racist as you are or make it out to be.
"Science is the power of man"
NOT to be so naive! 21 years old, fresh out of electronics school. Moved to Houston Tx. Believed everything the recruiter said. Got there, found out it wasn't what I thought it was. Stuck it out a year, just for the work experience. Came back to my home state, found another career in electronics and have been with it for 3 different companies for 33 years. Current one, 17 years. Take everything a recruiter tells you about a "major" corporation with a grain of salt. 18 months after I left the one in Houston, they laid everyone off and closed up shop, moved it to Dallas. Couple computer companies had that building for a while, northwest Cyprus, Tx area. Don't know who has it now.
'When [managers] say they are suggesting you do something, it's not really a suggestion â" 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.'
It's brainstorming. I do this all the time. Employee presents a problem, I say "well I'd probably do X". Now you can either go do X or go "well I was thinking of doing Y, what about that?". Then we can have a discussion about it. Keep in mind that when you ask your manager a question, his job is to make decisions and to do it quickly.
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
therefore, smart managers don't use emails.
Sure they do! They just also happen to run their own email servers.
I'm not sure what her rate is, but Hilliary is likely available to answer any questions you may have. I hear she is rather skilled at setting up data retention policies...
Rule 1 - YOU are probably the only person you will ever meet who can write code.
You may land in a team with many good coders, this is a lucky break. Most of the time any vendor, customer, or co-worker you work with won't know anything at all. You are just going to have to do their coding too. Vendors will give you broken XML documents that you have to parse, customers don't understand SSL, data center employees don't know how to ps -e | grep
Customers cannot possibly be expected to get off IE6
Nobody but you can do anything. Just accept it and deal with it, you will be much happier.
I wish I'd known about corporate psychopaths and how they enjoy bullying those that don't have power to fight back.
If I had that knowledge, I wouldn't have stayed that long in a place that was detrimental to my mental and physical well-being.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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.
Bear in mind that a lot of people are pretty desperate to get a paycheck. You can pretty easily take yourself out of the running for a lot of jobs by trying to negotiate salary (or by doing so clumsily) particularly when there are multiple qualified candidates for the job. Not saying that more folks shouldn't negotiate their salary but many times they are not negotiating from a position of strength. It's one thing if you have a nice pad of savings and can afford to say no to an offer. Not everyone is so lucky. I've been in both circumstances myself at different times so I understand how hard it can be to negotiate when not getting the job at all is a worse outcome than getting paid a sub-optimal amount.
That said I agree completely with what you said. Negotiation is a very valuable life skill. The sooner you get good at it the better.
Don't let fear of change keep you from getting higher-paying jobs. To quote Shia Lebouf, DO IT! JUST DO IT!
Wow, some serious pessimism there.
1) Absolutely. Documentation saves your life.
2) Crap. Speak out when it's wrong or forever be a lackey yes man who does whatever is asked of you. If it means you get walked out, that's what you WANT. You don't want to work for an arsehole who sacks you just because he disagrees. You are hired for a job. If, in doing that job, you disagree with an approach, you NEED to air that view. You can still do the "I think it's stupid, but that's what I'll do for you" line and wait for the "I told you so" moment, of course, but... fuck. And this especially applies if what you're being asked to do is stupid, illegal or just plain against your will (You're a professional who's been hired - if you have ANY say at you, you're a professional they should be listening too).
3) Fuck off. Of course it is. But it's ALSO your job to do as told. See above. "Absolutely... but you know I disagree, because X, Y, Z will happen - right?"
4) Close, but I'd say even less. Be prepared to walk at any point - I've stayed in jobs for YEARS but still, always ready to walk when it all goes wrong (i.e. the job is wrong for me, not the other way around, but that would apply if I thought that too).
5) Yuck. Make it clear that you are there, professional, and things are working because of your systems, yes, but fuck the ego. Just do it. Drop it in when you plan works against everyone's expectations, but bragging is... uncouth. How vulgar. Just an "I told you so", but more subtle is all you need. Blowing your own trumpet will make people hate you - you may or may not care, but it's unnecessary.
6) Crap. See above. I have told my direct boss (who's more often than not the company director) that their idea is stupid and I disagree several times. I either get proven right, or they know I'm doing it against my better judgement (and, often, they have had it decreed to them by outside factors even if they are directors!).
7) Wrong. I'm right, and employed, and especially right when I disagree with everyone else - because I don't disagree vehemently unless I'm SURE I'm right.
8) Nope. Don't play politics at all. Find allies, yes, but don't play people off against each other.
9) Possibly. I don't really care because the only people who decide my job / title / promotion know what I do and what I'm bringing to them. If they fail to promote (without just cause - I'm happy for them to say "We don't think you've managed this or that or the other very well" and I agree, that's fair enough), I move on.
10) Absolutely.
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."
To which the company will likely say "thank you for your time and we'll show you to the door".
To be clear, I agree with you but being right carries a non-trivial risk of not getting the job. That may or may not be a good thing.
Don't believe them. Don't trust them. Always have an escape plan ready...
I'm curious, if you were given this advice when preparing for the "awesome" job that college promised, would you have wasted four years and thousands of dollars for such an "amazing" opportunity?
I mean seriously...this warning sounds like a North Korean travel brochure.
Don't take your job home with you, if at all possible.
It is a little easier said than done in tech jobs with on-call rotations and whatnot, but it took me a long time to learn to disconnect after leaving the office. Bringing work stress home to other family members sucks for everyone involved.
However, while at work do your job the best of your ability and seek out more skilled people to expand your knowledge. You are going to see a lot of people being very lazy. Resist the temptation to join them.
and then spent the next year or so checking out Mexico instead of staying up all night messing around with C code.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
I've been working for the government for a year and my contract was extended for another year. The majority of the technical staff is white. Everyone starts work at 7:00AM and out the door at 3:30PM. Slackers find themselves on the unemployment line in a hurry regardless of their race.
While you should comply with company policies, you can always archive the emails in a variety of formats.
Doing this may invite the wrath of the company legal department if discovered. This creates a VERY real source of potential legal problems for a company should they get sued. In most companies this would be grounds for immediate termination with cause if the actions taken conflicted with their email retention policies.
Be good at 2 of the following 3 things:
1. Be reliable and work hard. Be on-time to work and meet deadlines.
2. Be nice to everyone (i.e. be likeable). Treat everyone the way you want to be treated (presumably with kindness and respect).
3. Be competent at what you do - possibly even the best in the office (the "go-to" guy with the big problems.)
Examples:
1 + 2 = The incompetent but "he tries hard", punctual guy that everyone likes.
2 + 3 = The cool guy that's perpetually tardy, misses deadlines, etc. but gets the tough things done and is a go-to guy.
1 + 3 = The talented office ahole that everyone needs. To the extreme: Steve Jobs.
If you don't do two of those three things, you'll be out of a job sooner rather than later.
Everything you will ever achieve in your career will depend on other people. Learn to work well with others. If you have ambitions to achieve something noteworthy you are going to have to get a lot of people moving in the right direction. This is not easy but it is critical.
She'll end up being your next ex-wife.
FTFY
Your first job could be the best job you'll ever have and it could be your last job. But, it could also be the worst job you'll have.
Be honest with yourself. If it's not working, don't be afraid to move on. It's not worth being miserable when you're just starting your career. Don't quit impulsively, but if things don't feel right, ask some older friends if what you're experiencing is normal or not. You don't have the experience yet to know better, but your elders do.
My first job was as a software engineer at a site everyone over 30 has used (it's still around, but not as popular). It was the early days of the internet. At my 6 month review, I got "dinged" for going home one morning at 3 am when everyone else stayed through the night. This was after two weeks of 18 hour days. I was doing more harm than good coding at that point. I was being paid $33k/yr and had no stock options. I was told everyone had to do this to keep up with "Internet Time". Over the next few weeks, most of the senior developers (back when senior developers were actually senior with 10+ years' experience) quit en masse. It took me a few more months to realize that this was not normal and leave as well. I would have been much better off walking after the first month.
-Chris
Stay inside the IT framework, no matter how dysfunctional it is.
I did this in 1999, told my new boss to just get me a spare PC and I could handle the morning report printout ourselves. Want a change? Done in minutes, not months. Those web postings? Simple, couple lines of VBA to FTP. Another report? Sure. The Access database can manage all those mapping locally outside of Oracle. Corporate goal calculations? Err, why not. Daily compliance reports? Ok... Just give me admin on a SQL Server and I'll manage the tables...
Then it broke on vacation, so I had to modem in from FL. I became tied to this beast as the sole programmer supporting a dept of 8 people. I never got a budget for hardware upgrades, never got awards or credit for project management, since this thing was off the books. It took 7 FTEs to rewrite the mess after personal life & management changes in 2009.
In retrospect, I should have let IT do it and played the beurocracy. It would have made me happier in the long run.
I think this is overlooked by 95% of all people in the industry new or old. Go and spend some money on a chair. For the most part you are going to be spending 6-8 hours in it 5 days a week for a very long time. If you are willing to drop 1000-1500 for a bed which you spend comparable time you can spend $200-500 every 10-20 years for a good quality chair. It makes a giant difference in your time at work.
I have had the same chair for the last 15 years and it was worth every penny i spent on it. Yes your work may supply nice chairs but very often if you move offices or companies you will loose that chair. Get one you own and love!
Seriously. I thought all the shite jokes about corporate America were made up. I was very wrong.
file:
Two things never to forget:
1. CYA: Cover Your A$$ - always make sure that you have documentation to back up what you say happened in the course of a given project. If it isn't documented, it didn't happen. Always get written acknowledgement from all parties involved in any kind of agreement (email is fine).
2. Companies are in business to make a profit. Everything a company does is for this purpose. Even when companies treat employees well, it's only to increase profits. The executives who run the show would lay you off tomorrow if they thought they could do so and improve their bottom line, and they'd lose not a wink of sleep.
Starting out as a naive new engineer, I thought that my boss would have at least some interest in seeing my career progress. WRONG.
No matter how nice and friendly your boss seems to be, their motivation is to get more work out of you cheap. They are not interested in your future. Promotions mean more pay, and they don't want to pay you any more. They are not interested in your well-being. Nothing personal (usually), just business.
You must be your own advocate. You are the CEO of *your* business, and you are selling your time to another company. Make sure it is worth your while, because the other guy will do everything in their power to low-ball your compensation.
Don't be cocky. You may be good, but you're never that good that you can't be fired. Don't piss people off. Keep emotionally neutral in all your dealings. Think about your boss's situation before making demands.
Live frugally when you start out. Sock money away so you can survive for extended periods without a job. You may never need to tap those funds, but knowing that they are there will give you strength in your negotiations. If your boss senses you are terrified of losing your income, they have you by the balls and you will be their bitch working every Saturday. Deny them that advantage by being willing and able to walk out the door at a moment's notice.
Be only as loyal to the company as they are loyal to you. If they *are* working with you to increase pay and promotions, great, but more often than not they will drag their feet on these things. If there is simply no promotion or pay increase potential, look for greener pastures.
Pay attention to the fiscal health of the company. Remember that it can be costly to replace an employee, so they may want to negotiate to keep you on board, especially if you have been bringing value to the company. Don't make crazy demands when the company has had a bad quarter.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Yellow eye burns.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
We're all going to screw up at some point. If you are honest and forthright about your mistakes it tends to go over a lot better than when you try to hide them and it comes out later. I'm not saying you have to shout to everyone everything you've done wrong. But, if you hit the wrong button and cause lost productivity or take down a system you can aide in getting things put to rights a lot more by being honest than by trying to cover your tracks. And, you'll gain trust when you're honest about such things.
I've seen people who try to hide their mistakes, they tend to not last long around here once their behavior becomes known.
Also, if you don't understand something just say so and ask for clarification/help. The worst thing you can do on a project is say "yes" and walk away scared and not sure you know how to do it. Ultimately someone will be depending on your work, and when you don't deliver it can impact not just you but your coworkers. If you don't understand how to fill out a document, file a request, write a piece of code, etc... say so! Ask for guidance or an example. I assume when I delegate work that you know what to do, and I also assume that if you don't know you'll ask me for help.
If you ask a manager why the company is doing something, and he/she tells you "it was decided", then start looking for another job. That answer demonstrates one or more of these things: incompetence, subterfuge, malfeasance. You don't need any of them.
Secretaries can make your life miserable, if you piss them off. Usually via office politics and gossip. Then again, they also happily stab their "friends" in the back, so avoiding them is your best bet.
If you have never heard of a programming language the company uses, there is a good chance it is not a good language to work with and you should probably stay away. If a business wants you to program in RPG for OS/400 systems, run away.
They will try to have your jobs ...
They will steal from you desk/wallet/anything
They will spread false claim about you
They will try to
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
I wish I could tell my young self to go find a promising startup or start something on his own... I didn't know, at the time, how much harder that would be once I have a family with children.
Being young & single, you can move any time, you can switch jobs any time, you can work 16 hour days and actually enjoy it, and you can lose your job and not care too much.
That's the time to go for it, to chase the big ideas, to go for broke. You don't get that chance again without very significant risks.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Nothing you do in school, no project, certainly not a "keystone project", can come anywhere close to the complexity of a real-life engineering, IT, or software project. All of the things like best practices and methodology you were learning in school were methods for managing complexity, and yet they could never actually show you real complexity like you're going to see in the workforce.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Things I wish I'd known, in no particular order:
1. Source control concepts (branch, merge, tag, revision, conflict, etc.). Ideally some hands-on experience w/ the most popular options. This wasn't even touched on in my undergraduate program.
2. How to accurately scope projects and manage my time.
3. The importance of making sure you're always working on something that will help you land your next job. If that isn't the case then it's time to start looking for your next job right now.
I was in a small business of 10.
Two of them turned out to be complete assholes.
Is that binary? :-)
I realize this would be difficult as a first-job type, but be very careful about taking on added responsibilities without any discussion with the powers-that-be about compensation. It is very easy for a "go-getter" to take on a lot more but never be recognized for those added responsibilities.
If nothing else, annual reviews should be an opportunity for you to bring up your now changed job description. As others have mentioned, salary negotiation is a key skill. If you are doing more for the company, you should use that as a negotiating advantage.
Oh, and start saving in a 401(k), IRA (Roth or otherwise) as soon as possible.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Excuse me while I hijack this comment.
You should QUIT while you can. Start you own business while you are able to live with your parents, sleep in a car, eat beans and rice, etc.
If you wait until you have a spouse and kids, you are locked in. Your options become limited.
Also, LISTEN when you are told to start a retirement account NOW. Don't wait even a month.
If you are not the entrepreneurial type then get your attitude adjusted. You are part of a team and not just some cog. It's easy to think that but you'd be surprised at what happens when you stop thinking that and act like a team member. People start coming to you, relying on you, and you start getting promoted. Don't sit in your cubical and bitch and moan. If your environment that precludes that, then find another environment. You've already decided that you are not going to work for yourself so find the best people to work for.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
2) If they don't give you a real promotion in 3-5 years, then they never will - but another company will give you the promotion. Make contacts.
3) Finding a place where you are happy is worth more than that promotion or the extra money.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
It is okay to say, "I do not know." or "I need to do some research and get back to you."
If you have ANY hesitation about making a change to a production system, DO NOT MAKE IT. We all have shot ourselves in the foot at one time or another. Learn from our mistakes. Do not be that guy (or girl).
Until you get good at estimating how long it takes to complete a task or project, double your estimates when someone asks you how long it will take you. It is better to over estimate and get it done sooner, than to under estimate and have people waiting on you. (BTW - Any non-trivial task will ALWAYS take longer than you think it will.)
Before making any changes, make sure that you have a good backup and that you have tested your ability to restore it. Yes, it will make things take longer but it is better to have a fallback position. This is doubly true in production. NEVER MAKE PRODUCTION CHANGES WITHOUT A BACKUP.
Be humble. The days of being a jack of all trades IT practitioner are dead and gone. There are too many things to know and not enough time to learn them all. By and large, IT people can be cooperative and supportive.... if you are humble. If you act like you know everything and fail to ask for help, you will find everyone lining up to watch you fail and snickering at you when you do. Check your ego at the door, learn from others and when you have the opportunity to, help others out when they ask for it. Do not be that dick who tells everyone to RTFM. Having said that, if someone asks the same question over and over again... feel free to tell them to RTFM. Nothing is worse than a freeloader. We all have jobs to do and while helping new people out is part of the job, doing their job for them is not.
1) No political decision improved a technical solution
2) All decisions are political
3) Commitments made by you are set in stone. Commitments made by management are set in Jell-o. In a microwave.
4) Being wrong may get you fired eventually. Your boss being wrong and blaming you will get you fired sooner. Telling your boss they are wrong will get you fired right now.
5) Contrary to popular opinion, if you find something you love, only try to make a living at it if you can be your own boss. Doing it for someone else will wring every last drop of joy out of it.
I may be having a bad day...
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt = [citation required]
If I could give some advice to my past self, it would be to immediately start living on half of my income. That way, I could have paid off debt immediately and started saving.
I wasn't interested in finances back then, but great blogs have cropped up since, like Mr. Money Mustache.
It's about early retirement and I'm not so much interested in that. But after ten years of working for the Man, I wanted to start freelancing. Turns out that if you have a family, you want to have quite a bit of money stashed away when starting.
So I kept working in a job I lost interest in, just to save half a year of income. Only then could I make the step towards starting a business for myself.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
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.
As a manager, here are the two pieces of advice I'd pass on:
1. We don't use passive voice in our memos. College is wrong. I've been out of college for a long time, but I always want to write to the business writing prof I had and let him know. We stress active voice.
2. I picked this up from a Murawski course (which deals with active voice writing). It was, "Doing work is bringing your supervisor a solution, not problems." That is, me going to my boss and saying, "Hey, I've got a problem here," isn't doing work. The work is going to my boss and bringing him or her a solution to the problem. Now, sometimes you get stuck and need help, and that's fine, and I'm happy to help - but your goal as an employee should be to bring me proposed solutions to problems (or, better yet, just take care of it, if you can).
I wish I could go back in time and tell my 18yo self to a) open a savings account b) set up an automated weekly transfer of some small amount into it.
How to deal with the crippling depression and alcoholism that are by-products of the whole process.
Don't act impulsively, but when things start turning bad, just move on. I was placed under a manager that was trying to build an empire. Unfortunately he wasn't a good leader, or a good engineer, or good at cost and schedule management, or good with suppliers. He had 45 minute "stand up meetings." It became the running joke that the only reason he remained is that he had compromising photos of someone high up. My blood pressure would start to increase as soon as he came into the room. But I had good work to do, so I let it ride. He had asked me to do some business development work to generate some leads. I did the work and found, in particular, one great lead that would be perfect for us. I put the package together and tried to get approval to continue the pursuit... crickets. Several months later and I'm in a meeting regarding staffing new business and this comes up and everyone is saying how great it is and how my boss is so good at this sort of thing. No attribution for me at all, and no recognition at annual review time. I worked for him for two years. I should have bailed much sooner.
That doing something for the money is the wrong reason and that doing something that combines your passion and an income is the better option, even if you initially earn less. I did a career switch from teaching performing arts to spoiled brats who often couldn't appreciate and went into FOSS-centric web-development at the turn of the millenium. I came on board just in time for the crash, but I never regretted it. Staying in my "real" profession with the only realistic occupation would've killed me. Or brought me into a mental health asylum.
I would go back to performing arts on the spot. As a performer and/or choreograph with the right crew and the right amount of funding. But not as a so-so paid overworked excuse for a nanny for spoiled kids of the wealthy who have no idea what life is like in the real world and are too spoiled to appreciate good art. The best students I had were those who came in from middle to low income families - they felt like they had stepped into paradise. Which the school basically was. And the appreciated it and behaved accordingly. Those I still remember with warm thoughts. The others I sometimes sort of hate, hoping they ran into some serious lesson somewhere on the way into adulthood.
It was roughly three years into teaching that I noticed I never wanted to become a teacher in that field, that I wanted to perform and that there was no money in performing. I left that field, went into IT and never turned back. Being your Type A 80ies computer kid and RPG nerd did help with that.
I'm getting by as an experienced part time webdev, consultant and software architect and fiddle with FOSS technologies on the side when I'm not out dancing. Feels great.
Any newcomer should consider switching job and hobby if things turn out to be a drag - it's what I did and it worked great for me.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
If you don't switch over to management in the first 24 months of your career, you will be forever stuck in Development (for good or bad).
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.
Anchor price Apparently it works in salary negotiations too.
for #1 - like Clark Howard (AM radio but he's often very good on practical stuff - Every hear someone old say "dammit, I ended up with too much money!" Didn't think so..). Learn what a deliverable is and deliver them. In fact, under-promise and over-deliver. Once you're sure you know EVERYTHING about something, take five and ask "what did I forget / not think about". Better yet, do that with someone else in the room. Get a mentor or friend whose criticism you trust. Better this get done by someone you like than someone who can fire you. Want to impress people with your individuality and your passionate feelings? Put them into your work. That's why you took X career in the first place. Feed your awesomeness into your work rather than making people think your true self lies somewhere else (cat / car / frisbee collection / mustache wax collection / etc. - this sort of thing is perceived as tedious and leads co-worders to first think, then hope you have much better things to do than force yourself to work with them). Learn to think like your customer and like your boss. They may but always be right, but you'll be less deer-in-the-headlights when the inevitable pushback comes. Focus. Multitasking is a cruel invention to test your character. Draw a line for work's encroachment into family and friends and make it plain that you will work like a dog for your scheduled time, but after that, crossing it will be done only in cases of a problem needing doctors or lawyers to help fix. Of course there will be exceptions, but you can always make exceptions, moving that line the other ways is an order of magnitude more difficult. Better yet, be the sort of person who lets colleagues share the good parts of your life - parties, get-togethers, etc. so they see the value of the rest of your life and you theirs. Talk to those above you and below you in an organization. Find out ahead of time what they see as absolutely necessary to define success and use that information to work with them. Everyone has different agendas and personal goals, but define the common goals as soon as possible and make sure everyone pulls in the same direction, they can spin off their own little pieces as well.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Act reasonably in the sense relating to others on a adult-to-adult instead of parent-child or child-parent, in addition don't let emotions dictate actions. Also some people may seem like jerks but they know their stuff, don't write them off. Compared to some that are great to party with but you will never learn much from them. There may be supervisors that are total "alpha hotels" but they are very good at keeping the money rolling in, nice guy would be more pleasant to have as boss but a moot point if the division gets canned and you are out of job.
mfwright@batnet.com
1.) Don't invest your money with that Mutual Fund that lost your retirement fund.
2.) Don't work for the company that you put millions of dollars of overtime into for 10 years that promised ownership and bonuses and then let you go with a pitiful two month's severance.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
..source control.
That would have saved quite a bit of time. They probably mentioned it at university, but I remember skipping a few lectures here and there.
Caveat: I forgot to mention that not all organizations will accept this "aspergers discount". If they find you "difficult", some orgs will simply let you go rather than cut your salary.
It's kind of like ball teams: some team managers want consistency and predictability in players, and pay a premium for it.
Other teams are willing to take "damaged goods" to save money on players or take a gamble, and have staff that is used to dealing with unpredictable personalities. (It may be lack of "team" skills, habit of missing practices or being late, or a criminal/drug background.)
Ben Wallace pretty much won the Detroit Pistons the championship a decade ago by keeping Shaq at bay with vigor and skill usually seen in a more expensive player. But, he has a record of ticking off other players and staff on his team.
Both types of teams can and do win the big trophy, BUT you have to fit the profile of the team expectations to stay with such a team.
Table-ized A.I.
Good jobs are high stakes games. The better the job, the faster you can be gone.
The ultimate reason for all the school is to give you choices down the road.
What really sucks is to be un-credentialed and have only one employer as job reference. If you find yourself in that position, even if you love your job, it is time to move on, just to prove your qualifications for future prospects.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
1. Start saving early.
2. Live below your means.
3. Keep debt to a minimum. Never put on a credit card more than you have in your savings account.
4. Debt isn't evil, but you should treat it as if it was. Keep it to a minimum.
5. If you're buying a house, don't take out a mortgage for more than three years gross salary. And when you do get a mortgage, get a fixed mortgage.
6. Invest as much as possible in low expense ratio index funds.
7. Open up a Roth IRA early and maximize my investment in it every year.
8. NEVER use an investment advisor. Read a book instead. (Common Sense on Mutual Funds by Bogle is an excellent start. If you want something simpler, The Boglehead Guide To Investing)
9. NEVER buy investments through your insurance company.
10. When you start having kids, start a 529 plan for each ASAP.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Nice. I legit chuckled at that.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Luck has nothing to do with it. If you don't have savings, it's because you fucked up by spending too much of your income.
Spoken like someone who has never been in a big financial or social hole or had a severe medical condition. Sometimes hard work and talent and making good decisions isn't enough. If you grow up in a depressed area with a poor family there is a non-trivial chance that opportunities are going to be hard to come by. Sometimes people have severe medical conditions that put them in a financial hole or make it difficult to work. Get sick and you might find yourself in a deep financial hole through no fault of your own. Sometimes you find yourself in a bad situation because someone ripped you off.
It's easy to say luck has nothing to do with it but that simply isn't true. It is a LOT easier to get opportunities if you are in a good financial position to start with. It's a lot easier to make money when you already have money. That isn't to say you can't make it if you don't have a silver spoon but it is a lot harder and that is a matter of luck. Being healthy is largely a matter of luck. My mother suffers from ALS and cannot work and that is NOT her fault. Your romantic notion that all that matter is hard work and fiscal discipline is a nice story but a false one.
I've never heard of this happening (to programmers).
I hire people all the time and I've had to say no to great candidates who wanted more money than we could pay. I've also turned away applicants who thought they were worth more than they were. Most companies have a budget and they aren't going to exceed it. They know what local market rates are (unless they are idiots) and are unlikely to pay you more than that. If you live where I do you probably aren't going to get a six figure salary as a programmer but the cost of living is a LOT lower than in Silicon Valley so the net result is often better.
I've messed up negotiations pretty bad, too (by telling them that I was going to give my current company a chance to counter-offer....it ended with the hiring manager yelling at me for a while), but they'll still come back.
That is VERY unusual. Most employment negotiations do not go anything like that. I'm not a programmer but I do have two masters degrees, an accounting certification, and a lot of experience as an engineer and I've had times when it has been REALLY hard to find work better than flipping burgers. If you are luck enough that getting work hasn't been a problem, congratulations. Unfortunately that doesn't describe most of the working population.
I wish I had understood myself better and that the cool stuff I wanted to do and explore was more in academia and/or starting my own company than being an employee. If I could turn back the clock in my era I would have got a CS PhD so I had the choice of academia and research labs. And I would want my young self to really really get that working on things you really give a damn about in the way you think best is way way more important than a steady paycheck.
Put the maximum you can, into your 401k, right from the start.
The goal is US$1+million by retirement.
Start right away, and the Rule of 72 works for you.
Wait, then you sweat it out as retirement looms closer.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Not all job offers are as good as they seem and even if you are getting a lot more money you may find the work environment so unpleasant that you wish to go back to your old job with a smaller and more humane company, only to find that it is not even remotely possible.
I wish I'd known that loyalty and initiative will be punished by the insecure and incompetent ones above you.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
If she cheated on her last fiancee, she'll cheat on you too, eventually.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
If you are less experienced you are trading your time to develop skills, if you are more experienced you are trading your skills for more time.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
is not given, it's taken. You can nearly always count on getting responsibility without authority. Also, many of the comments here have applicability to large corporations. personally, I prefer small companies, WAY, WAY, better. Usually there's far fewer a55h0l3s, there's more freedom, and less political gamesmanship.
Please have respect for people with different abilities, especially children.
Everyone should retire once before getting married, or at least before having kids. Retirement doesn't have to be forever, but before you are 30 some things are much easier.
Get a job before you graduate, any job. The workplace is not the uni.
That's an interesting answer kids, pretend to be self-reliant by sponging off others and start a business when you have little experience on how to do anything involved with it. Why would we want the kids to have their attitude adjusted to that?
A different answer is to get some skills together so you have something to sell first. If you can't keep it in your pants long enough to get that far before having kids then why do you think you have enough self discipline to run your own business anyway?
This "get your attitude adjusted" shit is condescending and hilarious in this suggestion where an "entrepreneurial type" is supposed to sponge off their parents. It sounds more childish than entrepreneurial to me.
"Don't be good at anything you don't want to do for the rest of your life."
Those were the words of my first supervisor on my first day, and after almost 10 years experience in software development, no truer words have been spoken to me since.
That "Dilbert" isn't fiction.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Corollary: Always be on good terms with the supply sergeant.
Lots of good stuff in this thread, but in particular:
1. Max the 401(k) immediately and put it in index funds.
2. Humility. There will always be someone smarter than you- listen until you can ascertain.
3. Don't be a doormat, but be helpful and friendly and free with info until someone screws you. A lot of people hoard information thinking that it gives them job security- it doesn't, really. What if they got hit by a bus? You're *much* more valuable as a team player that helps things run more smoothly.
The key is to keep this simple truth in mind: it's a job. You do it to survive.
Don't let your sense of self-worth and your identity get tied up in your view of your career. Your job does not define who you are, you do it because someone is paying you to do it for them.
There is satisfaction in doing the work well; and it is nice if the work fits with your personal tastes, but if you refuse to let it define you, you will be the happier for it.
And as a definite plus, it will strengthen your negotiation position. If it is just a job, it's easier to walk away if the compensation does not suit you.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Not because of money, but the probability of you landing your preferred job first time around is unlikely...
There was an article kicking around somewhere which had a pretty good analogy with a peak finding algorithm: Imagine you are on a hilly terrain and you have a limited viewing distance, if you go to the tallest visible peak you will probably not find anything close to the tallest peak... but if you meander more randomly at first around the landscape (to learn about the landscape) and gradually have a more directed tendency toward the end of your "seeking period" then you have a much higher chance of finding one of the highest peaks.
For jobs one persons high peak can be another persons low, this isn't because company x is better than company y or job a is better than job b, it's just that everyone is different, so you have to do your own meandering.
It has been a great many years since I was fresh out of school. I now own my own company and employ nearly 50 people.
The way I got to live the dream is by being honest and having integrity from the get go. That means saying what is on your mind, professionally and personally, and above all, being NICE about it. Also, being flexible and eager to go outside my comfort zone was a huge help in learning everything I had to learn to go out on my own. The biggest mistakes I see "green" engineers make are:
1) Getting defensive. You're going to be wrong. A lot. You have a lot to learn, and a winning attitude is to accept this and seek out learning opportunities. There are certain school I just won't hire from anymore because they program their students with ultra large egos, probably to compensate for the ultra large price of tuition. There isn't much room for ego in an Associate Engineer position.
2) Getting lazy. We all realize you've been busting your ass to get your degree, and that being a good student is more than a full time job. But, you don't get to stop working hard just because you graduate.
3) Closely related to being lazy is: doing the bare minimum. You'll likely not be assigned enough work to keep you busy for 40 hours, but it will generally be expected that you spend the remaining time seeking out learning opportunities, reaching out to people for new work, and generally being eager and inquisitive.
4) Pigeon-holing: I see this one a lot too. Having your first real job is scary, and often I've seen new grads learn their first new skill, get comfortable with it, and then not want to do anything else. I would say the first 10 years of your career are not the time to specialize in something. The first 10 years are for exploring different skills and use cases and finding out what you're really good at.
I think the top three things you can do during the first year in your new job are:
1) Get to know everyone you can and what they do, and learn something about it, and how it ties in to the overall goals of the company
2) Be helpful. Offer to assist more senior engineers with testing, documentation, or whatever. You need to learn how to do the mundane and seniors will definitely appreciate your help in doing some of those tasks.
3) SAY SOMETHING when you get into trouble. If you're getting behind, don't know how to do something, or need help, SAY IT. You will not get in trouble for not knowing what to do, and the only way to learn is to ask. "I don't know" is not an obscene phrase.
Develop a skill set and the self discipline to work 100% remotely. Then you can work for a company in an expensive city while living anywhere you want.
Sure, not all companies will hire 100% remote employees, but it opens up your job search to the entire world instead of just the companies within driving distance of your house. It also allows you to work on multiple contracts at the same time.
Your employer can print your wages on a giant billboard next to the freeway if they want to. I don't know where you got this idea that pay is legally protected. Granted, lots of employers try to keep pay secret to improve their negotiating position (and to facilitate blatantly discriminatory pay scales: see,e.g., Lily Ledbetter). In fact, it *is* illegal for a company to have rules that prevent employees from disclosing their own pay or discussing pay (Part of the National Labor Relations Act).
Some employers (Costco) actually publish ALL their employee's salaries/wages.
And don't talk about sex, politics, or religion. Also--HR is not your friend
I've never heard somebody complain about accumulating too much money. I have heard complaints that someone shouldn't have spent all that time at work, and should have spent more time with his family (haven't heard this from a woman, personally).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
As someone who started as a programmer out of university, and has grown a quite successful career, my number one piece of advice is to now work on your social skills as much as your technical ones. Learn to build and sustain relationships - projects and work will come and go, though it's far more likely the people you meet will stay in your network for a long time.
Be professional - always.
Shut the fuck up. Probably the best advice you'll get here. Most of the time you're not required to respond.
If there's something politically tough to do, get others involved.
Things other people with they knew - never get your fun at the same place you get your pay check. After hours - go home, go someplace else. Don't mingle except on those rare occasions. Seems like this never ends well.
Find out WHAT your company is SELLING and HOW they're doing it.
Casteism
Plan your retirement by 40;
Casteism
one's a spec sheet, the other's an advertising pamphlet
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
If you end up working in a unionized environment:
1) Always be changing positions, and applying for new jobs leveraging whatever projects you've recently been involved with. Ideally never stay in a position longer than 3 years. Do not expect any promotion, or any manager to go to bat for you or trust them, you have to do everything yourself, be mercenary.
2) Do not expect your union to do anything for you other than collect your dues.
I think it is funny that 90% of the comments for this topic are on negotiating/bargaining salary with management. I bet a big percentage on here would either be promoting unions as a tool for the workers, and another big percentage would be saying that unions are full of overpaid idiots. What many people do not understand about unions, is that they are pretty much all about "collective bargaining". Which means, if I don't think I am getting paid enough, I cannot go to my manager and ask for more money. I can't negotiate on my behalf for a better salary, it is done "collectively" by the union on behalf of everyone. There are a whole pile of union rules, however every single manager will know how to bend or break the rules, and most unions (at least from my experience) are toothless entities. So in a sense, the union is more of a disadvantage, as you do not even have the ability to do it yourself, and the union itself is pretty powerless to do anything for you. In fact many times management will blame union rules for a failure to follow through on promises. Anyway, I wish someone told me at the beginning, that you need to only look out for yourself, use positions only as stepping stones to your next better position and move on, keep doing that until you are content where you are, then stay there. Don't trust management, ever. If they say there is a delay, or they are looking into it, unless there is a contract in front of you to sign, be applying for opportunities elsewhere. I am the guy with the most experience, both in terms of years and content, the most competent, have more responsibility, and capable, yet I am the lowest paid guy in the room. Yet I have also struggled over the years to get out of hole of staying on one position too long, because largely the competition can cite other positional titles, as well as what is mentioned in this topic a lot, previous HR salary comparisons. Going to the unions reps will get you blank stares, shrugs, and emphatic pats, but not much else.
Anyway when I first started out, I had the idealistic understanding, that you get a job, and if you are good at it, be loyal, try to improve the business, and increase your knowledge, responsibility, and function they they will promote you in salary and position. This is wrong (at least in a union environment). Management will be more than happy to let you do all that without any additional compensation. If you want to get ahead, do it yourself, be a mercenary, the job is there to provide you with things for your next application/interview within a year or so (or less). Stay too long at any one position and you risk getting stuck there...
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/...
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Also, it would have been great to know what 'stock options' were.
* 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.
Also, you can fall victim to having lots and lots of pre-IPO or pre-investment-round options which can be diluted to the point of worthlessness. If you are not a founder of the company and driving the ship when the options are massaged through the funding rounds, do not consider any options as future earnings. Consider them as worthless trinkets, then you can only be pleasantly surprised when they will, hopefully, be worth enough for a night on the town 5 years down the road.