Not quite what you're asking, so sorry about that, but it's my answer to the general question
Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
361–370 of 505 posts
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
Use this One Weird Trick to keep employees: pay them money. With the exception of my current gig, my early career was hopping non-stop. My shortest stint was literally 4 days, my average was probably about 1 year. Each time, pretty simple, you look at the paltry 2-4% increase being offered by your current employer versus the 20%+ increase from hopping literally anywhere else, and, well, you surely see why people hop…
But that really only helps low pay was the reason for hopping. The comment that sparked this discussion talks about a bad environment etc. as a reason for hopping. Wads of cash won't help retain an employee that's obviously bad at judging whether they'll be a good fit at an employer.
Employer runs a business and will do w/e is best for him money wise. If ppl want to work for 50% what they are worth - employer will alow it (bad employer).
Ppl tend to quit such places because they see no options to advance.
Employers rarely learn from such cases. For me its the issue of poor middle management not managing career of pupils correctly.
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've refused to hire people who job-hopped every year or two. With a record like that, there's zero reason to expect they're going to stick around. Why invest in bringing them up to speed if they're just going to leave?
Frankly speaking you really shouldn't be hiring anyone with the expectation that they'll be in their role more than a year or two. Ideally, you're working with them to move into a position with more responsibility and then you need to backfill their position anyway. What does it matter if their next role is with you or somewhere else? It's a lot to ask for every company to have a role available for every employee whe…
This chap had about 10 jobs on his resume, 6 to 18 months in each, on average less than a year.
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
Last I checked, nearly everyone in tech hops jobs frequently. In fact that’s common advice for comp advancement. In my personal experience that advice holds true, even though I change jobs much less frequently than most of my peers (which means my comp tends to lag behind theirs).
I've refused to hire people who job-hopped every year or two. With a record like that, there's zero reason to expect they're going to stick around. Why invest in bringing them up to speed if they're just going to leave?
People don't job hop for fun, they do it because they find better opportunities elsewhere. The way you say it, it sounds like you're holding back everyone you employed from getting a better deal.
If you truly offer competitive compensation and work conditions, than that person wouldn't have a reason to leave, but if 2 years down the road you didn't keep up with what others are offering them, I mean, the question is, why wouldn't they hop?
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#365I decided to study electrical engineering instead of computer science because I was dead certain there was no money to every be made writing software.... in the 1980s! I chose the wrong school because they accepted me, and my high school counselor thought I had zero chance. I couldn't afford it, and dropped out. I would have gone much farther studying computer science at Purdue Calumet, and could have had it all paid…
Making gears, like literally assembly line work? Or do you mean modeling/designing them in solidworks or similar?
It turns out that gears have a rolling contact surface, never sliding (unless you did it wrong), which is why they can last decades. I learned a ton of interesting things about small scale manufacturing. I want to make them on the small scale (4" or less) as a hobby, once I get employed again.
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#366I decided to study electrical engineering instead of computer science because I was dead certain there was no money to every be made writing software.... in the 1980s! I chose the wrong school because they accepted me, and my high school counselor thought I had zero chance. I couldn't afford it, and dropped out. I would have gone much farther studying computer science at Purdue Calumet, and could have had it all paid…
long haul covid-19?
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on the company you’re interviewing with and (IME) region you’re looking for work. In my 26 years since graduating university, I’ve had 13 jobs. So an average of 1.8 years per job. My longest was 6 years at Amazon (ironically enough considering they have such a high turnover) and my shortest was 3 weeks (I knew during the interview it wasn’t a good fit, but I was young and they threw a stupid amount of money a…
> “You’re going to give me a year and then be gone. Why should I hire you?”. Never had a good answer when I was in my 30s. Now that I’m in my 40s, I have a pretty good one. What's the answer?
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#368My biggest mistake, that I made again and again, was not leaving a job when it was time. I thought I had something to prove, but there was never any point to it. You don't owe anything to an employer. You can't prove anything to an employer. They have absolutely no loyalty to you, and care less than nothing about what is right or wrong, wise or foolish. So: If you ever think things might not turn out as well as you h…
I made this mistake once in my first proper job. It took me 2.5 years to leave a place where I was really unhappy. So, move on from bad jobs, move on from meh jobs, and be quick about it. Eventually you'll find somewhere you enjoy and you can stick around for a while.
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#369I worked in a large corp you know about in California.. as a loner with few colleagues, I was deep in some assembly language and other nerdy topics, and not great with culture and certainly still a visible rebel. Meanwhile, my colleague from Big School Nearby was hired as staff engineer. There was serious IP on the table and security was an issue always. It turns out that my colleague had an appetite for money beyond…