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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."
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...
-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."
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.
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.
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.
No, the enemy of my enemy on this particular subject has something in common with me right now. The enemy right now might be my friend against my "friend" on another subject. Don't be a dick to any of them unless you want them to go out of their way to be your enemy as often as possible.
And go out drinking with them. It's stupid but patronage, not merit, runs the workplace. Don't get so chummy that you can't bring yourself to throw them under the bus if you actually need to.
The lessons from Machiavelli's The Prince ring true. You can cooperate, you can be confrontational. If you are confrontational you have to expect others to be confrontational back to you in the future, so the benefit in being confrontational better outweigh the negatives that one can reasonably foresee down the road. The people above you have gotten to where they are by stepping on others; you will be stepped on and if you want to succeed beyond simply being the best worker, you will step on others too.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Being right isn't enough. You have to be popular to effect change.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
That advice doesn't work so well in personal relationships.
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.
* 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).
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.
And go out drinking with them.
Watch my boss get arrested because he got caught letting an underage employee take a sip from his Kamikaze at a company event being hosted at a restaurant. Did the company fire him? Nope, they promoted him. I stopped going to company events where alcohol got served and got branded for not being a team player by the company drunks..
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...
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.
- 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.
If the company drunks run the company, then it's their opinion that matters. As bad a person as Stalin was, his quote, "to the strong, it is the weak who are wrong," applies.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
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
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.
The company drunks ran the company into the ground. I watched my stock shares go from $20 to $0.02 in two years.
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.
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.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
Actually, no.
I've learned one thing: Never ever touch the hot topic everyone else seems to avoid. Not even with a ten foot pole. There are exactly three things that can happen. Either it resolves itself. This is the norm and gets you off the hook. Or someone else is stupid enough and tackles it, gets burned and loses his job. That's fine as well. Or it blows up and the blame is shared within the department. That's ok as well since nobody gets fired for it.
Since promotion happens today by tenure and not by merit, what you do is less important than what you don't do.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It depends what you are talking about... My brother in law used that same saying "It's better to ask for forgiveness then for permission." when it came building an oversized deck on his house, then a privacy fence, and some other remodeling all requiring a permit. It didn't work out for him.
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
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:
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!
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 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
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.
Should've left (and/or sold) sooner. Man's gotta know when to let go of sunk costs.
That is all.
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).
How to deal with the crippling depression and alcoholism that are by-products of the whole process.
I actually got a shocked reaction from someone once: 'You shorted your employer's stock? That is so unethical.'
It is no more unethical to short your employers stock than to buy it. So long as they can't prove you are trading on insider information.
If you ever hear that Oracle has cancelled their Christmas party, short that fucker or buy puts. Ellison has his ego tied up in those parties. If it's cancelled, it means they are sitting on very bad news.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I tried that with a woman one time. The worst that could happen, my friends told me, was that she would say no. Actually, no wasn't the end but the beginning. She started a harassment campaign that lasted ten years. O_o
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.
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 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.
That's different......if someone says, "this is my minimum, I refuse to go lower," then there's nothing you can do. But if they're flexible, it's a matter of finding a point where both of you can be happy.
Of course, if they really can make more elsewhere, they should go elsewhere. I've done that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.