Notes from the tech industry
Mar. 18th, 2005 05:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikOne of the interesting things around going back to school is that I've been spending time around young techies who've never actually worked seriously in the field. (Which makes me feel old.) But I've started thinking about the advice I've gotten, and maxims that have seemed to work, and how to write them up and describe them. So here are a few that come to mind...
Mostly, I'd like to hear which things have saved your hide and/or sanity... Or which ones of mine you'd dispute. I figure there's a lot of experience out there, between us all...
Bill every hour
Obviously, this one only applies if you're hourly. (Though it's important to sometimes look at your salaried job in terms of how much time you actually spend doing it -- and I'd recommend including commute time.)
This is the one that I feel like there's the most agreement on. And yet I hear about people not following it all the time. I'm not necessarily fond of slippery slope arguements, I tell you, once you start working for free, it's a slippery slope. (Okay, ironic for me to talk about this, since I'm doing volunteer research work right now.) If they wake you up in the middle of the night to come down and fix something, every moment between when you woke up and when you got back to sleep again should be billable time. We used to joke that if you wake up with nightmares from your project, that too is billable time.
During the recession we're just coming out of, it has become standard practice in some places to tell contractors that they aren't authorized to work more than forty hours a wekk, but then to give them more work than they can complete in that time. Basically turning them into salaried employees without any of the benefits of salaried employees. That's fricking illegal. Not only is it illegal, and not only are you being a dumbass if you go along, but you're making it harder for everyone else you work with. Your time is valuable. Make them bloody well pay for it. Do not let yourself be intimidated into thinking that you aren't doing things well enough or quickly enough, and therefore you shouldn't actually get paid for the time you work.
The Incestuous Geek Referral Network is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
I'm having trouble coming up with a way of explaining how general this next bit is. It's not just about referring your friends, and being referred by your friends. Look around you, both among your coworkers and your social circles, and think about who are the bright, competant people with whom you have at least a few skills in common. (It helps if they aren't complete twits. But they don't need to be your best buddies, either. And the skills can be general ones as well as specific ones.)
Now you can decide that these people are your rivals, or you can decide that they are your allies, and either way this decision is going to dictate your dealings with them. Now, I'm not against a bit of healthy competition. And there's nothing like being around people who are doing things well to get one off one's ass and trying to do better, too. But I think the world becomes a harsher dingier place for everyone who is in it if we allow ourselves to operate from the assumption that the best way to get ahead is to stab someone else in the back. Sometimes it's true, but it exacts a pretty hefty price.
So, refer people. Pass on tips. Help eachother out.
Or, perhaps, think of it another way. Are you actually good at what you do, or are you pretty darned mediocre? Because when you start looking at your colleagues as rivals, you're more or less admitting that you think you aren't good enough to stand up to them on your own merits. And I think it works both ways -- I think there's something pretty basic about the mindset of hoarding and holding things back, and putting people down that makes one much less than they could be.
Know Your Own Value
Okay, a lot of these should be filed under "further applications of the incestuous geek referral network" but darn it, they're important applications. This is one of the most important. Many times, you are obliged to promise that you will not tell your coworkers what you are being paid. This is often given out with the impression that you're getting paid better than everyone else, and that your coworkers are likely to both be hurt and resent you if they find out the truth.
One of the most important things you can do, for everyone, is to break this agreement. This is really important, because if people don't have an idea of what the going rate is for a person of your skills and experience, then no one knows what is reasonable to ask. A few people, who have good negotiating skills (but who may or may not have equally good technical skills) will do very well, but many more people will get screwed. It is obviously to the advantage of employers to pay people as little as possible. And they more they can keep you from talking to other people, and the more they can convince you that you're not worth very much, the higher a profit margin they make off of your time.
Now, I'm not saying how to go about breaking this agreement -- that's a matter of individual ethics. (It's fairly common, if you aren't comfortable naming exact amounts to give a range, or some other point for comparison.) And I'm certainly not saying that you should break it absolutely with everyone. You probably are in the best position to figure out how careful you need to be in your own situation, and who you can trust.
But... as a whole, the incestuous geek referral network is nourished and strengthened by information. And it's pretty hard to only take that information, without giving it, too.
Keep your Skills Current
This is obvious, but a lot of people tend to forget it when times are going well. You can't afford to sit around and do the exact same thing year after year. No matter how good you are at it, no matter how sure you are that it will always be in demand. This is most true for work with a lower specialized skill requirement (over this last recession, for instance, when test jobs largely dried up, the difference between testers who had some coding skills and those who didn't came to the fore) but it's true everywhere.
This doesn't mean you constantly have to be knocking yourself out taking night classes, or studying this and that on your own. (Among other things, not everyone has that kind of time, and some people simply can't learn effectively on their own out of a book. That's a learnin style thing.) It can be as simple as making it a priority, every time you're looking for a new job, to work with some kind of emerging technology. It can mean volunteering to be the person in your team who takes on the new stuff. And yeah, sometimes life will get in the way. And you can get away with letting things slide for a while. But not forever.
A Resume is a Creative Medium
I'm not by any means proposing that the information in your resume shouldn't be accurate. It should. I have nothing but contempt for people who represent themselves as having skills that they in fact do not.
But a resume isn't some standard job appllication where you just fill in the blanks. It's a much more flexible form, and it allows a much broader range of expression than most people realize. Most people feel locked into a format, and locked into providing very little informaton. And I'll tell you, "Responsible for X, Y and Z" doesn't really tell an employer all that much about whether you'd be a good employee. Figure out what they need to know about you so that they want to hire you, and then work it in there. Do you have absolutely fabulous trouble-shooting, thinking fast on your feet skills? Then make sure in your descriptions of jobs you've had that's in there. Are you the person who can hammer out some kidn of consensus between the opposing factions on a project -- well, for heaven's sake, they need to know it. Are you the absolutely stolidly reliable one, who's always in on time, always gets things done, etc etc? Again, make sure that's there.
And for a technical resume, make sure your technical skills are called out. Ideally, have both a bulletted list, and then some verbiage describing how you've used those skills under job descriptions.
I'll stop now. I could write forever about resumes.
A Good Recruiter is Worth their Weight in Gold
This can be another sub catagory of the incestuous geek referral network. Most people in the computer industry do end up moving around. If you've worked with a recruiter, and had a good relationship with them, and feel that they understand your skills and value your work, keep in touch with them. Keep in mind that recruiters tend to move around a bit, too, so it may well be worth your while at ask for a personal email address for them (so that you can still contact them if they leave their current agency) or at least make it clear to them that you would like to stay in touch.
A lot of times techies don't respect recruiters very much. And there are a lot of bad recruiters out there. But if one has been a good advocate for you in the past, that's a relationship that's worth maintaining. Don't overlook it.
Get Out Before You Hate Yourself
If there's one thing I've seen too many times, it's people who are in jobs they hate, who've become so demoralized by their jobs that they are convinced that they can't get a better job, and maybe don't even really deserve the one they have.
The best thing you can do is get the fuck out of there before it gets that bad. But things happen, and often these things creep up on you.
So, some things to do if you hate your job:
Take some time off. Especially if you haven't been taking any time off because you don't feel like you can afford to. Hello, your health, both physical and mental, is worth more than that.
Start looking at job boards. And asking around your circle of friends. Maybe you won't hear about anything better, but then again, likely enough you will.
Update your resume. Preferably, do this with a good friend. You need your resume to be current, and you probably need to be reminded of your professional strengths.
Call up a few recruiters. I swear to god, wth the right recruiter this is both better and cheaper than therapy. Nothing is more cheering than having someone tell you about how many opportunities there are out there. Now, admittedly, this requies a good recruiter, and that you can admit to having some skills. So you have to be in the right head space. Still, a great tool.
If you really want a job, apply to ten others, just for luck
There are several reasons to do this, but most of it just comes down to sanity. No matter how much you want one job in particular, you can't afford to get tunnel vision.
Mostly, I'd like to hear which things have saved your hide and/or sanity... Or which ones of mine you'd dispute. I figure there's a lot of experience out there, between us all...
Bill every hour
Obviously, this one only applies if you're hourly. (Though it's important to sometimes look at your salaried job in terms of how much time you actually spend doing it -- and I'd recommend including commute time.)
This is the one that I feel like there's the most agreement on. And yet I hear about people not following it all the time. I'm not necessarily fond of slippery slope arguements, I tell you, once you start working for free, it's a slippery slope. (Okay, ironic for me to talk about this, since I'm doing volunteer research work right now.) If they wake you up in the middle of the night to come down and fix something, every moment between when you woke up and when you got back to sleep again should be billable time. We used to joke that if you wake up with nightmares from your project, that too is billable time.
During the recession we're just coming out of, it has become standard practice in some places to tell contractors that they aren't authorized to work more than forty hours a wekk, but then to give them more work than they can complete in that time. Basically turning them into salaried employees without any of the benefits of salaried employees. That's fricking illegal. Not only is it illegal, and not only are you being a dumbass if you go along, but you're making it harder for everyone else you work with. Your time is valuable. Make them bloody well pay for it. Do not let yourself be intimidated into thinking that you aren't doing things well enough or quickly enough, and therefore you shouldn't actually get paid for the time you work.
The Incestuous Geek Referral Network is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
I'm having trouble coming up with a way of explaining how general this next bit is. It's not just about referring your friends, and being referred by your friends. Look around you, both among your coworkers and your social circles, and think about who are the bright, competant people with whom you have at least a few skills in common. (It helps if they aren't complete twits. But they don't need to be your best buddies, either. And the skills can be general ones as well as specific ones.)
Now you can decide that these people are your rivals, or you can decide that they are your allies, and either way this decision is going to dictate your dealings with them. Now, I'm not against a bit of healthy competition. And there's nothing like being around people who are doing things well to get one off one's ass and trying to do better, too. But I think the world becomes a harsher dingier place for everyone who is in it if we allow ourselves to operate from the assumption that the best way to get ahead is to stab someone else in the back. Sometimes it's true, but it exacts a pretty hefty price.
So, refer people. Pass on tips. Help eachother out.
Or, perhaps, think of it another way. Are you actually good at what you do, or are you pretty darned mediocre? Because when you start looking at your colleagues as rivals, you're more or less admitting that you think you aren't good enough to stand up to them on your own merits. And I think it works both ways -- I think there's something pretty basic about the mindset of hoarding and holding things back, and putting people down that makes one much less than they could be.
Know Your Own Value
Okay, a lot of these should be filed under "further applications of the incestuous geek referral network" but darn it, they're important applications. This is one of the most important. Many times, you are obliged to promise that you will not tell your coworkers what you are being paid. This is often given out with the impression that you're getting paid better than everyone else, and that your coworkers are likely to both be hurt and resent you if they find out the truth.
One of the most important things you can do, for everyone, is to break this agreement. This is really important, because if people don't have an idea of what the going rate is for a person of your skills and experience, then no one knows what is reasonable to ask. A few people, who have good negotiating skills (but who may or may not have equally good technical skills) will do very well, but many more people will get screwed. It is obviously to the advantage of employers to pay people as little as possible. And they more they can keep you from talking to other people, and the more they can convince you that you're not worth very much, the higher a profit margin they make off of your time.
Now, I'm not saying how to go about breaking this agreement -- that's a matter of individual ethics. (It's fairly common, if you aren't comfortable naming exact amounts to give a range, or some other point for comparison.) And I'm certainly not saying that you should break it absolutely with everyone. You probably are in the best position to figure out how careful you need to be in your own situation, and who you can trust.
But... as a whole, the incestuous geek referral network is nourished and strengthened by information. And it's pretty hard to only take that information, without giving it, too.
Keep your Skills Current
This is obvious, but a lot of people tend to forget it when times are going well. You can't afford to sit around and do the exact same thing year after year. No matter how good you are at it, no matter how sure you are that it will always be in demand. This is most true for work with a lower specialized skill requirement (over this last recession, for instance, when test jobs largely dried up, the difference between testers who had some coding skills and those who didn't came to the fore) but it's true everywhere.
This doesn't mean you constantly have to be knocking yourself out taking night classes, or studying this and that on your own. (Among other things, not everyone has that kind of time, and some people simply can't learn effectively on their own out of a book. That's a learnin style thing.) It can be as simple as making it a priority, every time you're looking for a new job, to work with some kind of emerging technology. It can mean volunteering to be the person in your team who takes on the new stuff. And yeah, sometimes life will get in the way. And you can get away with letting things slide for a while. But not forever.
A Resume is a Creative Medium
I'm not by any means proposing that the information in your resume shouldn't be accurate. It should. I have nothing but contempt for people who represent themselves as having skills that they in fact do not.
But a resume isn't some standard job appllication where you just fill in the blanks. It's a much more flexible form, and it allows a much broader range of expression than most people realize. Most people feel locked into a format, and locked into providing very little informaton. And I'll tell you, "Responsible for X, Y and Z" doesn't really tell an employer all that much about whether you'd be a good employee. Figure out what they need to know about you so that they want to hire you, and then work it in there. Do you have absolutely fabulous trouble-shooting, thinking fast on your feet skills? Then make sure in your descriptions of jobs you've had that's in there. Are you the person who can hammer out some kidn of consensus between the opposing factions on a project -- well, for heaven's sake, they need to know it. Are you the absolutely stolidly reliable one, who's always in on time, always gets things done, etc etc? Again, make sure that's there.
And for a technical resume, make sure your technical skills are called out. Ideally, have both a bulletted list, and then some verbiage describing how you've used those skills under job descriptions.
I'll stop now. I could write forever about resumes.
A Good Recruiter is Worth their Weight in Gold
This can be another sub catagory of the incestuous geek referral network. Most people in the computer industry do end up moving around. If you've worked with a recruiter, and had a good relationship with them, and feel that they understand your skills and value your work, keep in touch with them. Keep in mind that recruiters tend to move around a bit, too, so it may well be worth your while at ask for a personal email address for them (so that you can still contact them if they leave their current agency) or at least make it clear to them that you would like to stay in touch.
A lot of times techies don't respect recruiters very much. And there are a lot of bad recruiters out there. But if one has been a good advocate for you in the past, that's a relationship that's worth maintaining. Don't overlook it.
Get Out Before You Hate Yourself
If there's one thing I've seen too many times, it's people who are in jobs they hate, who've become so demoralized by their jobs that they are convinced that they can't get a better job, and maybe don't even really deserve the one they have.
The best thing you can do is get the fuck out of there before it gets that bad. But things happen, and often these things creep up on you.
So, some things to do if you hate your job:
Take some time off. Especially if you haven't been taking any time off because you don't feel like you can afford to. Hello, your health, both physical and mental, is worth more than that.
Start looking at job boards. And asking around your circle of friends. Maybe you won't hear about anything better, but then again, likely enough you will.
Update your resume. Preferably, do this with a good friend. You need your resume to be current, and you probably need to be reminded of your professional strengths.
Call up a few recruiters. I swear to god, wth the right recruiter this is both better and cheaper than therapy. Nothing is more cheering than having someone tell you about how many opportunities there are out there. Now, admittedly, this requies a good recruiter, and that you can admit to having some skills. So you have to be in the right head space. Still, a great tool.
If you really want a job, apply to ten others, just for luck
There are several reasons to do this, but most of it just comes down to sanity. No matter how much you want one job in particular, you can't afford to get tunnel vision.
