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What to care about in a job

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Re: What to care about in a job

#31

Post by toomanybeersies »

foo101 wrote: post #4

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 mana…

I'd expand that and say management in general.

It's not just your direct manager that can make your job shitty, it can be anyone on the management chain from your direct supervisor up to the CEO.

A good manager can mitigate the effects of poor management at the higher echelons, but it will still persist, hovering under the surface.

Re: What to care about in a job

#32

Post by cooervo »

foo101 wrote: post #4

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 mana…

this so much. I have had terrible micromanagers these are anxiety inducing. Also fake bro-managers, fakely imposing a friendship where there is none and trying to get more over time just by being friendly.

I prefer my manager to be professionally friendly, not a neck breather and treat me as an adult. Currently very happy with my manager :)

Re: What to care about in a job

#33

Post by thesimon »

some_account wrote: post #24
waytogo wrote: post #3

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 ac…

American culture seems to be incredibly bad for living a fulfilling life. Intelligent people on hacker news would do good to look at Sweden for a good balance between capitalism and socialism that actually works very well. Of course lately our politicians have allowed millions of immegrants to come in without having any sort of plan to give them jobs, so I expect Sweden to become pretty crap in the next 10 years. :)

Do you think the salary level reflects the high cost of living? 45k SEK pre-tax seems like a common figure, but appartments e.g. in Stockholm are around 12k SEK.

Re: What to care about in a job

#34

Post by expertentipp »

thesimon wrote: post #33
some_account wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American culture seems to be incredibly bad for living a fulfilling life. Intelligent people on hacker news would do good to look at Sweden for a good balance between capitalism and socialism that actually works very well. Of course lately our politicians have allowed millions of immegrants to come in without having any sort of plan to give them jobs, so I expect Sweden to become pretty crap in the next 10 years. :)

Do you think the salary level reflects the high cost of living? 45k SEK pre-tax seems like a common figure, but appartments e.g. in Stockholm are around 12k SEK.

45k SEK monthly is 54k EUR annually (what a beautiful exchange rate!) - not far from salary ceiling in other EU countries. Hitting it so hard my head spins. Salary fixing alarm!

Re: What to care about in a job

#35

Post by mattmanser »

expertentipp wrote: post #29
eikenberry wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

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

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...

EmydexLtd - https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/emydex-technology-l...

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

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

Re: What to care about in a job

#36

Post by elgenie »

thesimon wrote: post #33
some_account wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American culture seems to be incredibly bad for living a fulfilling life. Intelligent people on hacker news would do good to look at Sweden for a good balance between capitalism and socialism that actually works very well. Of course lately our politicians have allowed millions of immegrants to come in without having any sort of plan to give them jobs, so I expect Sweden to become pretty crap in the next 10 years. :)

Do you think the salary level reflects the high cost of living? 45k SEK pre-tax seems like a common figure, but appartments e.g. in Stockholm are around 12k SEK.

A $66k salary doesn't seem like enough to motivate someone from the US to uproot wholesale.

Re: What to care about in a job

#37

Post by expertentipp »

mattmanser wrote: post #35
expertentipp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 clien…

> 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.

Re: What to care about in a job

#38

Post by expertentipp »

elgenie wrote: post #36
thesimon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the salary level reflects the high cost of living? 45k SEK pre-tax seems like a common figure, but appartments e.g. in Stockholm are around 12k SEK.

A $66k salary doesn't seem like enough to motivate someone from the US to uproot wholesale.

hey but they culture the perfect balance between capitalism and socialism, want some?

Re: What to care about in a job

#39

Post by mattmanser »

expertentipp wrote: post #37
mattmanser wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 clien…

> 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.

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.

Re: What to care about in a job

#40

Post by codingdave »

waytogo wrote: post #3

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 ac…

> all side activities are forbidden or made complicated

I know many places try to make this true, but not all do. If that is an issue that you consider to be a deal-breaker, then by all means, break the deal if they ask you to sign contracts that would stifle you.

> get high compensations

This isn't a priority for everyone. "high enough" is... enough. There certainly is a minimum that everyone needs. But lowering the expectations of your lifestyle means you can lower your compensation needs, and be picky about everything else. If the personal cost of gaining a 200K salary is too much... then it isn't worth the 200K you are receiving. You need to approach your salary as a business transaction -- you are giving up a chunk of your life and freedom in exchange for money. Be sure that exchange is a good match for you.

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