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?

Comments

1 thing

[koan]

How to negotiate for a better salary.

Re:1 thing

[harryk]

Not just knowing how to negotiate, but a better understanding of the comparable salary for that position and geographic location. It's difficult some times to appreciate what you're worth when starting out (or restarting) and granted - early on you may or may not be worth that much.

Case in point - I relocated years ago and the salary that I negotiated was comparable to the salary that I'd left in a previous locale. What I didn't grasp at the time, was the increase in cost of living for the new location. In reality, while I had negotiated an increase in pay for the new job, I'd actually taken about a 10% cut in pay based on cost of living.

Granted, people have to learn from their mistakes. And true, it may not be very common to relocate as part of your first job. But, with all of that said, I would say early on in your career, understanding what you're worth, and how that is compared to where you'll be working/residing is important. It's definitely something I'll have to help teach my children as they come of age.

Re:1 thing

[Frobnicator]

How to negotiate for a better salary.

This.... because for some ridiculous reason, the salary for your next job is based upon the salary of your current or previous job.

That gets right back to how to negotiate for a better salary.

Many HR drones are taught their side of salary negotiation. Tactics like asking you right up front about your previous pay rates and what you expect to be paid for the new job -- all of that done BEFORE you have even discussed what the new job is to be. Before you have talked with them about the duties and responsibilities. Before you have decided if the company is a good fit for you, and before the interviewers have determined if you can be a good fit for them.

Most people are terrible at salary negotiation. Based on various studies with some degree of variance, overall they suggest about 55% of men do not negotiate their wages, and about 70% of women do not negotiate their wages. That is NO NEGOTIATION AT ALL. HR departments have learned that most people will accept whatever low-ball initial offer is made, and companies take advantage of that fact. Of those that do negotiate, most of them do a poor job of it, using the lowball offer as the starting point for negotiating.

Get yourself some salary negotiation books before changing jobs. Ask for more, and use it to negotiate rather than demand.

As someone who has done more negotiation than I'd like with a roughly 3-year layoff cycle in my industry, I've had more practice that I want at this. In one job that I took, there was the initial lowball offer, which I laughed off and said "No, really, we both know that is a low-ball value, try again". Their second offer was a bit better but still below prevailing wages. So then, using negotiation tactics, I reiterated all the things I had done, all the benefits they were likely to see from me, and suggested a much higher value, about 3.5x their initial lowball. After a few more back-and-forths, and we settled on a good wage. Later in leadership when I was in a position to see everyone's salary, I could see how many of the people in the company -- notably most of the non-confrontational people and mediocre performers -- had wages similar to the initial lowball offers. Most of those who were assertive or high producers tended to have much higher wages. I don't understand how they are related, but they are clearly correlated.

Learn to negotiate. It is an important life skill. It applies directly to salary negotiation, but also to many other facets like getting the good projects and pushing back on corporate demands, including for software development learning to negotiate features from a bad list of requirements to a good set of easily producible items.

Managers

[jeremiahstanley]

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.

A couple of things

[Hussman32]

-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.

The cliches are right

[SQLGuru]

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.

Personal finance knowledge

[yes-but-no]

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.

Some random things I would tell myself

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

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.

Re:Negotiating when desperate

[HornWumpus]

My advice to a newbie is to never be a position where you can't say _NO_.

This means drive a beater and live in a cheap apartment until you have six months burn in the bank or market.

HR drones that work for bottom feeder companies can smell when you _need_ the job. You will never get a decent offer if you are desperate.

This goes triple if you are thinking of going contractor.

Always be ready to walk away smiling.

If you were in a position to need a job, don't ever expect to be able to fix you salary during reviews. It just doesn't happen.

They will always have your initial pay in mind, always. If you don't get it coming in the door you never will.

The biggest mistake of my carrier was accepting a 25% raise counter offer. Never accept counteroffers. NEVER.