
What to care about in a job - luu
https://www.benkuhn.net/job2
======
waytogo
Wrong question, wrong perspective. Even the very best jobs where everything
seems to be perfect still have significant setbacks because of the nature of a
job:

\- Employees suffer from one single dependency which can make their live
miserable—their manager; just compare: Entrepreneurs should be independent and
build as many options as possible (e.g. not just one client but many)

\- A job locks you in, means all side activities are forbidden or made
complicated (because of IP, time, etc.) which again harms you because you are
not able to build options outside the company

\- The urge to stay employable + get high compensations, means: seamless job
transitions with no gaps, min 2 years at one job, steady growth re titles,
headcount, responsibilities—all to show that you are a good hire and it
doesn't matter if your current employer is a pile of s __* and you just have 7
months and need stay some more months

Getting jobs and being an employee has opportunities, it's easy for many in
our industry to get 200K+ salaries but the price is high: reducing your
options until you hit a depression.

~~~
expertentipp
> seamless job transitions with no gaps, min 2 years at one job, steady growth
> re titles, headcount, responsibilities

> Getting jobs and being an employee has opportunities, it's easy for many in
> our industry to get 200K+ salaries but the price is high: reducing your
> options until you hit a depression.

This is not how it works in most of the EU, in particular DE/IT/AT/CH. There
they value loyalty the most and they assume something is wrong with person
changing an employer after couple of years. Frequent job hopping? Even worse.
At some point one hits salary ceiling (70-80k EUR in some regions, 30-40k EUR
in most of the EU) and that's it - changing job means the same salary or even
lower with the risk the new place will be full of assholes and going through,
humiliating at times for an experienced professional, vetting period as a new
employee. Sometimes I wonder perhaps there is some non-competing agreement
between companies? I have hard time understanding this deadlock situation.

~~~
jjevanoorschot
I am not sure how well this generalises over the entire EU. My experience in
the Netherlands is that job hopping occurs frequently and is a great way to
get on a higher salary. However, I do agree that there is a salary cap around
70-80k for software engineers. If you want to earn more than that you either
need to go into management or move to a better paying region (US/Ireland/UK).

~~~
badpun
Or go contracting. I've been contacted about 500-600 EUR/day contracts in
Amsterdam. Not sure how common they are, but the option is there.

~~~
passiveincomelg
very common, also in Germany ([https://www.gulp.de/knowledge-base/17/iv/mehr-
ist-mehr-3-pro...](https://www.gulp.de/knowledge-base/17/iv/mehr-ist-
mehr-3-prognosen-zum-stundensatz-2018.html))

------
foo101
I think one important factor to consider, that is not mentioned explicity in
the post, is: Manager.

Your immediate manager can have a lot of impact on job satisfaction. A good
manager would follow a bottom-up approach where he asks the team members what
they need (time, equipment, etc.) and would try to get those things so that
the team can succeed. This creates an overall higher job satisfaction.

An ineffective manager may enforce ridiculous deadlines coming from upper
management on his team or hog all the credit of the good work done by the team
or not be supportive which would lead to stressed, overworked, and unhappy
work life.

~~~
expertentipp
> A good manager would follow a bottom-up approach where he asks the team
> members what they need

> An ineffective manager may enforce ridiculous deadlines coming from upper
> management

This is not how it works in modern workplace. In large companies the pressure
mechanism is delegated to a whole group of employees in the same place in the
hierarchy - POs, PMs, Scrum masters, various process lunatics. In case of
problems they feed the line manager with negative feedback thus creating an
image of bad team player, the line manager itself is a divine being rising
concerns at most during friendly one-to-one conversations. Once it's clear you
are not a good team player, it's better for everyone if you'll be let go.
Ideally this process should be catalyzed during the trial period.

~~~
eikenberry
> In large companies...

You could have stopped right there. In large companies the politics have
firmly taken their place at the top of everything. And if you don't enjoy
politics, they are terrible places to work and you should avoid them like the
plague.

~~~
expertentipp
There are too many places in Europe (e.g. Dublin, Prague, Warsaw, smaller
cities with job market dominated by one company/industry) where local branches
of global companies are the only viable places to work in.

~~~
mattmanser
My local home town (20,000) had several small software vendors 15 years ago,
so not buying you on that one. I also then lived 30-45 minutes from a large
town (might be called city in the US, 200,000+) which had tons of them. I now
live in a city smaller than the ones you list, Nottingham, and work with 3
different local companies as clients, 2 of them are 5 minutes walk from me.
And I haven't tried to get a new client for like 2 years. Our job market is
"dominated" by global companies like Capital One and Equifax, but I personally
know of a bunch of local software companies crying out for devs, who ask me
every time I meet them at a meetup if I know anyone.

There are also tons of digital agencies these days in every locality, which
employ lots of programmers.

On top of that, a lot of businesses now need software internally, whether
these are shitty positions is entirely dependant on how good the company is.

A quick SO jobs search shows that Dublin has plenty of non global company jobs
going.
[https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?sort=i&l=Dublin&d=20&u=Miles](https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?sort=i&l=Dublin&d=20&u=Miles)

Within 10 seconds I find 2 Dublin founded companies looking for software devs
in the last 2 weeks:

Datahug - [https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/144383/start-building-a-
socia...](https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/144383/start-building-a-social-graph-
product-datahug?so=i&pg=1&offset=5&l=Dublin&u=Miles&d=20)

EmydexLtd - [https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/emydex-
technology-l...](https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/emydex-technology-
ltd)

2 Dublin companies are on this month's who is hiring:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16282819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16282819)

Have you considered that it could be that you're not great at job hunting and
networking?

~~~
expertentipp
> Have you considered that it could be that you're not great at job hunting

Among the few places I haven't yet applied to are Russian intelligence agency
and South Pole Station.

> and networking?

Beat me to it. The best I'm able to do in this domain is arguing with
strangers on the internet.

~~~
mattmanser
Honestly, it's just turning up to dev meetups for a year. A lot of local CEOs
or CTOs will go to the meetups to try and meet new devs, as well as you meet a
bunch of other devs and they'll never be resentful if you ask if there are any
jobs going. Lots of companies do internal referral bonuses of a few hundred
£/$/€ if an existing employee refers someone, so they're often keen to refer
you!

I actually got my first client at the first meetup I ever attended with
virtually the first words I said to anyone. I sat down next to someone and the
conversation went, "Hi, I'm Matt, I'm a C# dev looking to start freelancing",
"Oh, hi, I'm Jon, we need a C# freelancer".

Like I could list 5 local companies right now I know of off the top of my head
that are always looking for devs and I personally haven't even been to a
networking event for like 2 years.

I've had some great nights too, some long interesting chats. One that always
sticks in my mind is someone who'd just setup his own ML cluster on AWS and
him telling me all about Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence, which had just come
out (wow, 4 years already). Or sometimes just having fun and a few drinks.

------
Seol
I particularly like the "anti-priorities" section. You can't optimise for
everything, and it's refreshing to see someone be upfront about the things
which they're prepared to let be sub-optimal.

Of course, it's important to read that section as "what _I_ don't prioritise",
not "what _you_ shouldn't prioritise".

~~~
vodkhang2
Yeah, I think everybody need to always think about what to say NO

------
saul_pako
Love the fact and the way that the topic presented. I find it hard to apply to
other lines of work though, especially classic working class jobs and for
example healthcare and teaching. How would you guys modify the list? I for one
would rate the security much higher even tough I understand that it's not as
important for everyone. For physically demanding jobs (practical nurses,
nurses, construction workers etc.) I'd also rate long term health very high

~~~
hycaria
Not hard to get a job in healthcare (at least where I love) so I wonder why
you'd rate security so high.

~~~
saul_pako
It's not hard to get a job, by to get a job that you can be sure to still have
tomorrow when you wake up is another cup of tea. Working on day to day
contracts and filling in for ordinaries does not grant you and your family a
stable income. The physically demanding aspect of nursing for example often
lead to premature retirement due to injuries or worn out joints and backs. The
security aspect for me reflects the ability to stay healthy and being able to
continue working in the long run. It also reflects the need for a job that
doesn't disappear over night or cease to exist - family matters you could say

------
OscarTheGrinch
Are the problems that this company is trying to solve actually worth solving?

------
the_tardis
Aren’t we all just maintaining legacy code at some level?

------
Harrisonbans
Do your perfect 100% just simple.

