Ask Slashdot: What Do You Wish You'd Known Starting Your First "Real" Job? 583
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?
1 thing (Score:5, Insightful)
How to negotiate for a better salary.
Re:1 thing (Score:5, Informative)
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. Whenever I get called by a recruiter for a position I'm semi-serious about, they undoubtedly ask me what my current salary is so they can base my future salary on it. I always lie lie and lie some more up to the point of what I think their position is worth.
Re:1 thing (Score:5, Interesting)
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. [amazon.com] 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.
Negotiating when desperate (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Negotiating when desperate (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Negotiating when desperate (Score:5, Insightful)
My advice to a newbie is to never be a position where you can't say _NO_.
Great advice but not always possible. Sometimes life just isn't very kind to some people. Worst thing is it's pretty easy to get trapped
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Sure. But I think a response to that is to accept what you have to and then keep going. If you take a lowball wage just to make the rent, don't sit there for years waiting for things to magically get better. Use that new position as your fallback, and keep looking, because now you're not in the position where you're forced to say yes.
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What sibling said.
I've been socked with life events that drained all the financial liquidity I thought I had... and at the same time had to go hunt down a new job. The solution was simple - I took the first one that looked halfway decent that allowed my family to stay fed, clothed, and warm. I then busted my hump to improve my finances over a year, then went looking for a better job when it was clear the one I was at wasn't going anywhere. Turned out that I became the most valuable member of the team when I
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With any skills at all even a shit job leaves you enough to save (if you don't get sucked into payment plans).
I was addressing my 22 year old self. I already had mad skills. Moved to Cal with a rusty Ford, $1000, a couple of Engineering degrees and a hot job prospect (that turned out to suck tech job wise, still paid a lot better than any previous college job).
One company towns are a trap, never take a job in city/town with only one employer.
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My advice to a newbie is to never be a position where you can't say _NO_.
Great advice but not always possible. Sometimes life just isn't very kind to some people. Worst thing is it's pretty easy to get trapped
The thing is, 90% of people who get trapped, get trapped through their own bad choices. They buy an expensive car they can barely afford, they put everything on credit, they have personal loans for consumption, spend too much money keeping up with the Joneses (by spend money, I mean use credit) and all of a sudden when something bad happens they're up to their eyeballs in debt with few assets to show for it and little to no money in the bank.
Whilst the proliferation of easy credit shoulders a lot of the
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1) Don't spend like you are rich.
2) Unless you are rich.
Will lead to relative richness.
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Re:Negotiating when desperate (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah surely the fact that medical bills constitute the largest single source of bankruptcy in this country, even with most of those people having medical insurance, is proof that people fucked up spending too much. Those idiots shouldn't have gotten hit by a drunk driver, or sick, or hurt...
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The only exception is if you're 15 years old and it's literally your first job, and in that case it's probably appropriate that the offer is for minimum wage.
So, if I'm 21 and graduating from college, I'm supposed to have enough saved to be able to turn down that first offer? I don't know about you, but I worked >50 hours / week in college (making between $10 - $20/hr at various jobs in early 2000's), and I barely kept the tuition bills paid. Granted, I basically had no debt coming out of college, which put me ahead of a lot of my peers, but I wasn't in any position to say no to a job offer and live on my luxurious (non-existent) savings.
Now that I'm ~15 ye
Luck does matter (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Re:1 thing (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Cool thing about negotiation, all those reasons that you reiterated don't even have to be logical. You just need to say "[words and words and words] therefore I deserve a higher salary." Remember their initial offer wasn't logical at all, either.
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You really don't see how they're related? The non-confrontational types didn't want to argue, and the mediocre folks didn't think they were worth more. I think any other outcome would be the surprise.
Re:1 thing (Score:5, Insightful)
This.... because for some ridiculous reason, the salary for your next job is based upon the salary of your current or previous job.
Nope... Because rule 1 of negotiating for a better salary is "don't tell the recruiter either how much you currently get paid, or how much you expect/want".
Re: 1 thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you lose your offer when you're asked for a recent pay stub.
Then perhaps you short-circuit this from happening altogether, and instead pose the question of relevance when current salary is queried.
It is an odd question. It's like going to buy a new car and the dealer asking you what you paid for your last one.
Re: 1 thing (Score:5, Interesting)
This is one of the forces in our society that is directly reducing upward mobility and contributing to the demise of the middle class.
Re: 1 thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Typically, I thought they pay attention to what you drive onto the lot.
I always ride my bicycle to car dealerships. Why would you buy a new car if your old one is still running?
Re: 1 thing (Score:5, Insightful)
People buy new cars because they want new cars. People who need cars buy used.
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What I did was stall. I continuously gave the HR person homework to do every time they asked. One tactic was to use the "total rewards" approach that companies like nowadays. Salary is just a small component of the whole - which includes bonus, stock grants, health care, etc. so I asked them what their offer would contain and how it would all come together. In the end, I got them to give me a number for the salary as a "starting point". I then used the "if you are not embarrassed by your counter offer, it's
Re: 1 thing (Score:4, Interesting)
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."
Taking a risk (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Taking a risk (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, to be a good negotiator, you have to be willing to LOSE.
But to make that easier...you want to be looking for a NEW job while you STILL have a job.
Things are a bit more dicey if you are out of work and NEED a job....so, try always to negotiate from a vantage point of power. If you don't need the job, you can negotiate much better. Saying no doesn't bother you in that game of chicken.
And in this day in age, you should be interviewing for new jobs at least 1-2 times a year, if for nothing else, to keep in practice.
The only way you move forward in salary and responsibility if you're in the W2 race, is to change jobs every few years.
Re:Taking a risk (Score:5, Interesting)
To which the company will likely say "thank you for your time and we'll show you to the door".
This isn't 2009. Companies are desperate for talent, and they would be foolish to push away qualified applicants over something so silly.
I have sat on both sides of the interview table. I have never been asked for a paystub. I have never asked for one. I always ask "what are your salary expectations?" If I think it is a low ball, and I want to hire you, I will offer you ~10% more, and maybe another bump after 90 days, if you are good. If your salary expectation is reasonable, I will make a matching offer. If it is high, I will offer the low side of what I think you are worth, expecting you to negotiate up from there.
I don't believe in making techs negotiate for their salary, because my experience is that being able to negotiate well, and being a good coder, are not positively correlated. When hiring a salesperson, I negotiate hard, and expect them to push back equally hard, because a timid person is not right for the job.
Re: 1 thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Then you lose your offer when you're asked for a recent pay stub.
No you don't. Provide a fake payslip. Your current employer is legally bound from sharing your pay information and your future employer is legally bound from getting your pay information without your permission.
if anyone ever displays knowledge of your current pay then there is a criminal charge in their future regardless if it's the new place or the recruiter.
Everyone negotiates with full knowledge of the other parties price point or no one does. Turn about is fair play.
Re: 1 thing (Score:5, Interesting)
It's even easier than that... I just short circuit the whole conversation by saying (and yes, this is a direct quote): "I'm looking for $x per year to mitigate the risks of leaving my current position and to make it worthwhile - meet the number, beat the number, or we'll both be wasting our time." ($x equals my assessment of the current market for the position).
It destroys any pussy-footing around, allows you to get right down to assessing the rest of the company. Note that I have also had polite refusals at other interviews and the conversation ended there, but those were very rare. By doing it this way, I've increased my yearly salary in the past few jobs by $13k and $27k over the past 12 months (a $13k bump to a contract-to-hire position that I'd later soured on, and a further bump of $27k to my current position's salary.)
YMMV, but it works out very well.
Re:1 thing (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:4)
I could have used this knowledge not just on my first job but when I was interviewing for my current job 14 years ago. The interviewer asked me what salary I was seeking which was, in hindsight, an obvious trap. If I gave too low a figure, they'd "grant" me that instead of the higher figure they were thinking of. I had a figure in mind but got nervous that I wouldn't get the job if I went too high. I wound up taking about five thousand off my "figure in my mind" - and was promptly awarded that. I'll never know if I would have gotten more money had I gone higher, but that moment of insecurity still bothers me to this day.
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Re:1 thing (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll never know if I would have gotten more money had I gone higher, but that moment of insecurity still bothers me to this day.
You would have, almost certainly. I'm an Estimator, so I'm often in the position of throwing out a price on something. If I give someone a quote and get an e-mail from Sales 10 minutes later saying the customer has accepted it and is placing an order...I know for sure I've left money on the table.
Re:1 thing, among others (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Permission vs Forgiveness (Score:2)
It's better to ask forgiveness than to get permission.
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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 m
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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.
Managers (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Yeah, and understand that when the PM says "well, if we all work 24x7 we'll be ontime" then PM is an idiot and should be told that.
Way too many employers will run you into the ground and burn you out because they'll just keep asking for more.
Don't do it.
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Yep Learn to say NO.
Re:Managers (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and understand that when the PM says "well, if we all work 24x7 we'll be ontime" then PM is an idiot and should be told that.
Right idea, wrong tactic.
Instead of going head to head, it's a great place to be passive aggressive and start asking how you will be compensated for the extra hours and how they would like you to handle time off for job interviews.
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I learned this lesson from my father. He would work from 7am to 5pm, come home with a stack of work, and work until 10pm. He would also do nearly a full day's work on Saturday and Sunday. There was no overtime pay involved at all. When I asked why he worked like this, his reply was that his boss expected this level of work from him. I pointed out that his boss only expected it because he was providing this level of work output.
When I started working, I made sure my bosses knew that my work ended when I
In Office Politics... (Score:2)
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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 Machia
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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..
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Should've left (and/or sold) sooner. Man's gotta know when to let go of sunk costs.
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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.
Know what to kiss... (Score:2)
...and when.
A couple of things (Score:5, Insightful)
-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.
Re:A couple of things (Score:5, Interesting)
Related to the first one:
Learn that when you disagree with someone it might be because you don't understand yet, you can change reactions you get from people if you say
"I don't understand." instead of "I disagree."
Similarly, instead of "That's stupid." try "That doesn't sound right to me, can you explain?"
Re:A couple of things (Score:5, Informative)
this so much. As a lot of young people straight out of college I thought I knew it all. So I heard something and immediatly say "that's stupid, why would it do it that way?" Which ends up as 2 problems a)the person loses some respect for you and b) You could be wrong because you dont know the full picture. So you end up being in a big argument, when finally the other person says something that is key to the discussion that you didnt know about and then it makes sense why they did it that way
So now I always try to do "I dont understand", and "can you please explain the rational?" Because chances are I am just missing a piece of the puzzle. However, I have also learned anything that comes out of my bosses mouth is stupid, so I just nod and agree and do the opposite.
Re:A couple of things (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A couple of things (Score:5, Funny)
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After years of dealing with people who simply haven't learned the discourse of mutual understanding, I find myself automatically translating for them.
After you're answered time and again with "How is this stupid? I don't understand what you would like to change." and have details you never imagined shared with you in an easy to follow manner, you'll start doing the same yourself without even realizing it.
Basically, try to be around people and organizations who already do this instinctively and you'll find
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nah he is a stubborn 75 year old british guy who just in this past 5 years finally came to the realization that the internet is here to stay. For the longest time he thought it was a passing fad. And I am not even joking.
I remember 2 years ago that he told me to add a feature to our website that changes the background color every month, and he wanted to approve the colours. Colours such as purple, shit brown, etc (oh and I forgot to mention my boss is also colour blind). This also meant having to change tex
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That first one would have saved me a lot of grief. I graduated from a university where I would correct CS professors on a daily basis and brought an ego the size of Jupiter into a shop with some very, very smart UNIX devs with 15+ years experience. When the dot-bomb hit, there was no question of who should go. It was a humbling experience and probably the most useful to me. No matter how smart you think you are, there is always someone smarter. Be quiet and listen before you speak. You might learn something
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I have every .PST file from almost every job going back nearly 20 years. Just this year, my current company activated group policy in Exchange force-deleting emails after a set period *AND* mandated no local archiving. Even without local .PSTs I considered some sort of VBA script to save out all emails in HTML or XML for local reference.
/smdh
But the policy forbids that as well.
Couple *THIS* atrocity with the fact our online storage works out to about six week of email, assuming fe
The cliches are right (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The cliches are right (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to own your career.....no one else will do it for you.
From what I have seen posted here so far, this one gets my vote. Also, spend time and keep spending time on thinking what kind of career you actually want, then plan and act accordingly. Make yourself invaluable to your company if you are happy to stay where you are for a while (and there's nothing wrong with that!). Being invaluable to your boss is a good way to keep from getting fired... or transfered / promoted. If you want to keep moving however, starting looking for and training your replacement from day one. Of course, start training and lobbying for your next position at the same time. Think about what you want your next assignment to be, and when you'd want it.
Another piece of advice: work on your social skills from the get-go. Network. Network! Even if you start out as the resident basement dwelling nerd, get to know everyone you get to meet. If you're helping a VP with a tricky spreadsheet, chat with him while you fix his issue. Make a point of remembering names, and be sociable (but without being an obnoxious kiss-up). Especially in larger corporations, a good network is invaluable in any job, and good social skills are always well regarded. Some people are better at this stuff than others, but anyone can learn and improve themselves.
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You have to own your career.....no one else will do it for you.
Say that stronger. You have to own your own career. Anyone who wants to do it for you should not be trusted. Your manager will happily guide you to what the company needs, to what he needs, but not necessarily what is best or most lucrative for you. I've had several employers "guide" young college kids down the path of engineering management and schedule keeping, and in 5 years these people were unhireable and "stuck" at their employer, until
DANGER WILL ROBINSON, DANGER! (Score:5, Informative)
Personal finance knowledge (Score:5, Insightful)
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Save more on 401k, Roth-IRA; leads to tax reduction. ... And set your goal to be financial independence.
Do you (or anyone else) have suggestions on how to get started on this? I'm still pretty early in my career and have taken some of the easy obvious steps to saving, but feel like finance planning is full of dark and twisty passageways (likely filled with grue).
Is it worth trying to find a local personal finance adviser you can sit down with face-to-face? Where would you look for someone like this? Suggestions for types of investment and retirement accounts, and how much you should put away?
I realize it's
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Your company has to provide the option for a 401k. If they don't, and they also don't offer any other retirements savings plan, there are self-directed ones that require more research. If they do offer a 401k, you need to at least withhold enough to fully get the company match, or you're throwing away money.
The next step is to max out Roth IRA contributions (general $5500/yr, last I knew). These are both tax-deferred and tax-free upon withdrawal, and there's an income limit on contributions--so investing in
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Never Ever Trust managers or the company. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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I've worked for more than one company that treated their employees well even when it wasn't directly in their best interest. Companies are run by people and not all of them are greedy sociopaths.
Maybe that's a bit of advice for the OP: "Don't accept that things are always as bad as what cynical
The best future... (Score:3, Interesting)
Is the one you create.....Start your own business. Even if it's a failure financially, it will be a success long term.
investing in your future (Score:5, Insightful)
Being right (Score:5, Insightful)
Being right isn't enough. You have to be popular to effect change.
Play well with others (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Things I wish I knew.... (Score:4, Insightful)
* 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.
Be very, very when careful dating co-workers (Score:4, Insightful)
Practical List (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Some random things I would tell myself (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
document your work (Score:4, Insightful)
know when to move on. (Score:3)
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 [wikipedia.org] as you can along the way, they will come in handy...
One Very Important Thing (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
be a good "new" employee (Score:4, Interesting)
- 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?... [youtube.com] (Millenials in the Workplace)
After every phone call, Email the participants (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Corporate psychopaths (Score:3)
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.
my father told me (Score:5, Insightful)
It's OK to Quit (Score:3)
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
Dilbert is real (Score:4, Insightful)
Be Ruthless Just Like Them (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Co-Workers are jerks (Score:3)
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
Added responsibilities = added compensation (Score:3)
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.
Office sex (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Two things... (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Start saving early... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Unfortunately the people who need to read this are not the programmers/developers/engineers, and instead are the managers and project managers.
Re: (Score:3)