Random Manager Blog

Bad Interviewers

2009-07-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

Continuing on my previous theme of who should do the hiring, I’d like to focus for a moment on the people on the other side of the table. You know, people like me, who actually conduct the interviews. And since there have been plenty of times when I’ve also been a candidate, I have some insight into what it’s like to sit on both sides of the table.

It’s all too easy for me to get wrapped up in telling candidates what not to do when interviewing, while forgetting that interviewers also do silly things – or that many interviewers are just plain bad at interviewing. Hence I’ll describe some interviewer profiles that bother me, both as a candidate and as a fellow interviewer.

Some interviewers view the process as a battle of wits. i.e., they need to display their superiority over the candidate by asking them obscure questions or presenting bizarre puzzles, and beating them over the head when they inevitably fail to provide the right answer. Call it what you will, but I see it as a personality deficiency.

Other interviewers just love to hear the sound of their own voice and will talk on and on about themselves and their own job given the chance. As a candidate I used to like these types of interviewers, as I would sweat less when I was listening rather than talking. However, this situation is a net loss for the candidate, as they will lose the opportunity to make a positive impression on the interviewer. And so when that interviewer is asked later for a thumbs up or thumbs down on the candidate, their recollection will be murky and their response is likely to be “ehhh”, which usually equates to a thumbs down.

Some interviewers come into the interview totally unprepared. You can tell this is the case if they ask for a copy of your resume, when they should have already reviewed beforehand. It’s obvious they think they have better things to do, and don’t really want to waste their time on this exercise. Another sign is if they ask you one or two throwaway questions and then say, “Do you have any questions for me?”

Finally, perhaps the most useless interviewer is the “face time” person. This is typically a higher level manager who for organizational reasons has to be injected into the interview process, even though they’ll likely have close to zero interaction with the person after they are hired. The interview with this manager is merely a formality, as they are not really qualified to probe the candidate technically, nor can they answer the candidate’s detailed questions. Hence there is no upside to the candidate to this interview, only a downside; if the manager ends up not liking the candidate for superficial reasons, they will exercise their veto power over the candidate.

Who Should Be a Hiring Manager?

2009-07-06T12:37:00.000-07:00

You might legitimately ask, what qualifies me (or anyone, for that matter) to be a hiring manager? Do I have some certificate from a Hiring Manager School? No, I do not. My only qualification for being a hiring manager is that I’ve been doing it for a while – which is a tautological argument.

I’ve seen lots of people conduct interviews, and usually at the start they are just as bad at running interviews as many candidates are at being interviewed. But most eventually figure out what works for them and settle down into a comfortable pattern. Of course, what works for one hiring manager doesn’t necessarily work for another manager, or even for the organization as a whole.

Ideally an organization should have clear standards on what is to be expected of the hiring manager and other interviewers. And it would be good to have a formal training regimen for such roles. Unfortunately, that is not the case at most companies, or at least the ones I’ve been at. It’s considered just another part of the job, and any training is to be gained on the battlefield.
My personal thoughts on hiring managers is that they should have the following qualifications:

1. They should have been at the company long enough to know what type of personality and skills are required to succeed there.

2. They should ideally have worked in both a development and management role, even if not at the same company.

3. They should be current on technology issues, even if only at a high level, so candidates cannot BS them.

4. They should have participated in interviews before (as interviewers, not as the ultimate decision maker).

5. They should have sat on the opposite side of the table -- i,e., as a candidate, multiple times in the past. For most people this is true, but there are those people who have worked at a single company their whole careers and don’t remember what it’s like to have to sweat bullets as a candidate.

6. Finally, the hiring manager should be the person the candidate will report to if hired. A manager should not make the decision on a hire if that person will ultimately report to another manager (you might be surprised, but this does happen!).

The Grass Is Always Greener

2009-06-12T10:26:00.000-07:00

You may hear disgruntled tech professionals complain about the decline of tech opportunities, and how it may be time to consider a new career. Perhaps they’re fed up with outsourcing, offshoring, H1Bs, etc., and may believe the difficulty in finding good tech jobs means that it’s time to look elsewhere.

But stop and think for a moment about that question. Presumably you’ve trained for a career in software development and have worked for most of your career in this field. What other type of work are you qualified for, which pays nearly as well?

Let’s alter the question a bit to ask what field a young person, presumably before college, should go into in this day and age. What would you recommend? The traditional answers are probably law, medicine, and business. They sound sensible at first, but things are rarely that simple.

Lawyers, despite the glamorous portrayals on TV and in the movies, generally do not make more than engineers, as a group. Sure, there are the superstar lawyers, the partners at private firms, or the chief counsels at large corporations, that make insane amounts of money. But they are a rare breed, probably as rare senior executives at top tech companies. In both professions there are countless people toiling away for moderate salaries – and the thing is, the ones working in law toil away much harder than the typical engineer. I don’t know of too many engineers, except perhaps at some startups, who regularly work 80 hour weeks like law associates often do.

Likewise, the medical field provides high salaries for top specialists, but with the rise of managed care and hard-bargaining insurance companies, a lot of doctors have to hustle to make barely six figures. Do you remember the last time you went to visit a doctor, how they had to constantly juggle several patients at once and spent only a few minutes with you? That’s what they have to do to survive on low insurance and Medicare reimbursement rates.

Then there’s the field of ‘Business’, which is quite a nebulous term. It could mean Wall Street, Corporate Finance, Banking, Sales, or any number of money-related careers. However, even in this field the number of superstars making big coin is naturally limited, and the hours can be long. And as we’ve seen with the credit crisis, this industry is also subject to major boom-and-bust cycles.

Perhaps the other route to big success is entrepreneurship. However, while the other professions above do not provide any guarantees of success, striking out on your own provides close to zero guarantees. And this is perhaps also the hardest road to take – harder than law, medicine, business, or tech. However, in some ways it can also be the most rewarding. Imagine not having a boss to report to – although effectively, your customers are now your bosses, so that’s effectively a wash.

So if we are to conclude anything from this little overview, my point is that there is no relatively easier path to success, and tech is just as good a path as any other, warts and all.

Extended Unemployment

2009-06-09T09:04:00.000-07:00

Continuing on a previous topic, some people may experience a protracted period of unemployment. In some cases it may take months, or even years before they find a suitable job. If this happens to you, try not to be discouraged. Yes, it’s easy for me to say that, but it’s still important to look at things from a clear perspective.

First of all, you should ask yourself whether the extended job search is normal. Fact is, it takes time to find a new job, and the higher you are on the salary ladder the longer it generally takes. The old rule of thumb was 1 month for each 10K of salary, and I think it still applies – more or less. Also, if your skills are more specialized, or if you live in an area that’s not a technology hotspot, you should expect an even longer job search. And finally, if the economic climate is poor, the search will naturally take longer (duh).

If your search extends even beyond what might be considered normal by these standards, you’ll need to start considering what extenuating factors might be in play. Are you getting interviews but not offers? Or are you not even getting interviews at all?

If you are not getting many interviews, it might be that there is a general tech downturn in your particular geographic area or in your particular field. In these cases, you need to ask yourself whether you should consider relocating to another part of the country (or the world). Or perhaps you should consider retooling your skill set, or even try another line of work altogether.

Personally I think relocating is a viable option for a lot of people, even those that would not normally consider it. However, it’s not a good idea to move to a new location before you have a job there, as there are no guarantees that you will land a job. Also, retraining for a new skill set sounds good in theory, but most employers will want actual hands-on experience in a technology, not just a training certificate. And changing careers to an entirely different field is definitely a last resort.

Hence my advice is to stick it out and keep looking for a job in your chosen field. Perhaps you might have to take a slightly different position, such as a Project Manager or Analyst or even QA instead of a Developer. Or you might have to take a cut in pay or title. But as long as the new position is related to the work you were doing, and the step back is not a huge one, you should consider it. Spending a year working as a junior developer is far preferable to spending it unemployed and on the sidelines.

If you are getting interviews but no offers, perhaps you need to review your interviewing skills and style. Too many people think that their skills should speak for themselves, and that the interview is an objective format for discussing those skills. Not so. There are many complex factors that play into an interview, many (if not most) of them subjective. Your interview skills can definitely be improved; try going to ‘practice’ interviews with jobs you aren’t really interested in, or else engage in mock interviews with friends and colleagues if you have to.

Finally, remember that you are not your interviews. To put it another way, you should not see successful interview outcomes (i.e., offers) as a validation of your personal worth, and vice versa. They are just auditions, and auditions do not always reward the best candidates.

Is Outsourcing to Blame?

2009-06-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

From the comments to my last post it looks like people are concerned about the trend towards outsourcing taking away their jobs. Rightly so, but things aren’t necessarily as bleak as some might imagine.

Outsourcing, or more correctly offshoring, has become the bogeyman for the software engineering industry, and has spread to other industries as well. However, from my perspective I have seen how outsourcing has worked (or not) at several companies. So here is my observation of how the process typically goes.

First, during boom times a company finds that it needs more people to handle its growing IT needs. It discovers that it either can’t find people to hire fast enough, or else the boom market has driven up salaries beyond what it wants to pay. Either way it looks to offshoring as a source of cheap, plentiful tech labor.

So the company starts outsourcing positions, typically working with a large Indian consulting firm like InfoSys, Tata, or Wipro. The company goes out of its way to reassure its employees that no, their jobs are not at risk; the company is merely supplementing its engineering capacity with offshore talent. The employees are naturally uneasy about this, but management is happy because they are getting additional bodies at a fraction of what it would cost to hire American engineers.

After about a year though the company starts to notice that productivity with offshore engineers is not what they had hoped. Challenges in communication, issues with remote management, and a wildly variable resource pool results in poor code, lots of bugs, and misunderstood requirements. Counting rework and time lost in cleaning up mistakes, overall net productivity amounts to perhaps a half or a quarter that of domestic engineers.

At this point one of two scenarios occurs. In the first, management is so giddy about the cost savings from offshoring that they start pushing American engineers out the door and replacing them with offshore labor. They either don’t understand the implications of reduced quality and productivity, or they just don’t care. They believe that if offshore engineers’ productivity is lower, their lower cost more than makes up for it

Hence these companies throw more bodies at the problem, adding more offshore engineers to while reducing domestic headcount. Productivity, turnaround time, and time to market suffer, but the bottom line looks better… at least for a while. These companies however often get addicted to the supposed cost savings, and enter into a spiral of costcutting and poor quality and never recover.

However, in the alternate, more positive scenario, the company decides that the lower productivity and poor quality from offshoring are not worth the cost savings. Hence they start to bring the jobs back to the U.S., and reduce their reliance on undependable offshore labor.

I have seen both of these scenarios firsthand, and am hopeful that the second scenario will become more common. I believe that eventually more and more companies will begin to see the benefits of having technical resources close at hand, where they can be closely supervised and where communication is more straightforward. This will take time, but I think the tide may be (slowly) turning.

Why Can’t I Land a Job?

2009-05-29T11:40:00.000-07:00

We have all heard stories about candidates who go on interview after interview but can never land a position. Or even worse, they don’t get interviews at all. Perhaps you know of someone like this, or maybe you are in this situation yourself. And you might be asking, “What’s going on? Has the market gone completely to hell? Or maybe is there something wrong with me?”

There could be several possible answers. Perhaps there are not many jobs in your desired field. Is your specialty in Artificial Intelligence with Lisp? Certainly there will be fewer career choices for you than if you are an ASP.NET, Java, or PHP developer. Ask yourself if you would rather continue in your area of expertise or learn more general and more marketable skills.

Also, there might not be the right types of jobs in your geographic area. Are you flexible about relocation? There may not be many ASP.NET/WCF or Java/Spring positions in Great Falls, Montana. Not that there’s anything wrong with Great Falls, but it might not be the place for someone with your skill set. Consider moving to a major metropolitan area if possible.

So let’s say that you’ve learned C#/ASP.NET and relocated to the San Francisco Bay area (don’t call it ‘Frisco’, by the way). Unfortunately PHP and Ruby on Rails are far more popular than ASP.NET in the Bay area, but let’s put that aside for the moment. There should still be a fair number of ASP.NET positions in the Bay area, so why hasn’t that great position come along? You may have gone on several interviews with great companies and thought you did well, but you have yet to hear back from any of the companies you visited.

It’s possible that in this situation your skills are not strong enough for the positions you are applying to. You should consider taking a position with a less prestigious company as a stepping stone. Once there you can improve your skill set and build up a track record of achievement that you can leverage into a new position.

Keep in mind also that finding a new job is never an easy process. In the past the rule of thumb was to allow 1 month of searching for each $10K of salary. That may seem extreme, but it does make sense that as you progress further in your career, there are fewer senior and advanced level positions available. So naturally it will take longer to find that matching position.

Finally, it is always pays to be introspective. Is it possible that all the companies you’ve talked to are staffed by bumbling, incompetent idiots who fail to see your true genius? Are they all just going through the motions of interviewing before they hire their cousin or an H1B? Are you just wasting your time with these clowns?

All of these things are possible, but unlikely. Remember that companies look for more than just technical skills. Your social skills, communication skills, and yes, even your appearance can play a factor. Do you enjoy interacting with other people? Or do you just endure them? Do you enjoy chatting people up? Or do you wish people would shut up and go away so you can do your work? Are you well groomed, or do you think dress and appearance are unimportant as long as you do solid work? Your answers to these questions will likely matter more than you might think.

Hiring Freeze

2009-05-21T15:09:00.000-07:00

What does it mean when a company is in a hiring freeze? Does it simply mean they are not hiring anyone, period? No, that’s not necessarily the case.

What a hiring freeze does mean is that managers cannot open new reqs to increase headcount. However, they can often open reqs to replace people who leave.

Also, even with a hiring freeze in place many companies make provisions for hiring essential personnel to fill key positions. In such cases the hiring freeze is a “soft” one in that each req has to be approved by senior management,

The moral? Even if you hear that a company has a hiring freeze, that shouldn’t discourage you from applying there, as there are always exceptions.

Handling a Layoff (or Other Involuntary Separation)

2009-05-15T08:32:00.000-07:00

Layoffs can happen to the best of us – and yes, it has happened to me in the past. Not through any fault of my own (of course!), but as they say, sh*t happens.

There are several stages in dealing with a traumatic event like a layoff. Different sources may have slightly different lists, but for me it goes like this:

1. Shock
2. Denial
3. Anger
4. Bargaining
5. Depression
6. Acceptance

Shock means it takes a moment for the news to sink in. “What just happened here?” is what you ask yourself, and you wander around in a daze.

Denial is where you tell yourself that this can’t be happening, that it’s all just a dream (or a nightmare). Or they surely must have made a mistake, and your name should have been on the promotion list instead of the RIF list?

Anger is where you curse your employer for having the gall to lay you off, after all you’ve done for them. All that hard work, the best years of your career down the drain.

Bargaining is where you try to negotiate with the company for a second chance, or more time, or at least a better severance package.

Depression is where you feel sorry for yourself, thinking that with this stain on your record you’ll never find another good job. How long will you be unemployed? How painful will the loss of income be?

Acceptance is the part where you basically decide to deal with it and move on. This is where you start polishing your resume and posting it online. The sooner you can move to this stage, the better off you will be.

I have gone through this myself, more than once in fact. And I think it's an experience that everyone should go through if only as a learning experience. Once you are the subject of a RIF you look at the job market differently; you learn that you, and no one elsehave to actively look out for your own career and well being.

Am I Being Pushed Out?

2009-05-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

I noted in my last post that California is an employment “At Will” state, so it’s virtually impossible to fire someone on the spot. Whenever I’ve tried to do so, HR has always slapped my hand. Except in cases of gross misconduct companies will almost never fire anyone on short notice.

It’s basically a liability issue. The employee may find an excuse to sue the company claiming they were unfairly let go. “At Will” employment rules do have exceptions, and disgruntled terminated employees (is there any other kind?) and their lawyers have habit of exploiting these laws to the fullest.

Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t have become an employment lawyer. They seem to be always busy either suing companies or sitting back and counting their money. Hopefully they won’t sue me for this post.

As a result of worry over legal action, companies are quite methodical and deliberate when they want to terminate someone. The manager has to build up a strong case and document performance problems with the employee. The employee will also typically be given at least one verbal warning and then a written warning.

So what does it mean if you are presented with a written warning? Well, to begin with it shouldn’t come as a total surprise. You will most likely have received verbal warnings already, though it might not have been explicitly stated as such. You might not even have taken them seriously, dismissing them as a cantankerous boss just venting steam.

However, when it gets to the point of a written warning, it’s definitely serious. Basically this is one of those few times where you’re justified in being paranoid. Your bosses really do have it in for you, and they are building up a case file to cover their backs.

At this point you’re on borrowed time – a written warning typically gives you 30 days to shape up or ship out. And it’s a rare situation indeed where 30 days is enough for a person to show dramatic improvement, which is what it usually takes to get your neck out of the noose.

Furthermore, in many cases your bosses won’t even care if you do show improvement, as they will have already made the decision to show you the door after the 30 days. So your best bet is really to polish up your resume and start actively looking for a new job.

“At-Will” Employment

2009-05-06T12:53:00.001-07:00

What exactly does it mean when a state such as California, has an “At Will” employment law?

Before you read any further you should realize that INAL – i.e., I’m Not A Lawyer. What I’m writing here is based on my fuzzy understanding of employment law based on the management training classes I slept through.

Basically the idea is that an employee can be let go at any time for any reason, except for a few reasons that are forbidden by law. Those exceptions include things like race, age, gender, etc. Of course, the idea works both ways; you as an employee are also free to walk away from the job at any time.

In practice though, firing someone is a painfully tedious process for most companies. That’s because companies will generally document pretty thoroughly the reasons why they are letting someone go. While such documentation is not strictly required, it is a defensive measure in case the fired employee sues for wrongful termination. In most cases the employee has an uphill battle proving they have been wronged, but companies don’t like to take chances.

That means that for most companies in most situations, on the spot firings are not really an option -- unless it’s for cause. “For Cause” is usually defined as gross misconduct, but again INAL, and the definition of misconduct will vary by company.

Hence it’s much easier for companies to push someone out as part of a larger layoff. In such cases the company generally does not need significant documentation as to why they let people go. In fact, they can even adopt the line “Hey, we really would have liked to have kept you onboard, but difficult times call for difficult choices…”

Corporate Belt Tightening

2009-04-28T13:02:00.000-07:00

It happens on occasion, and more often these days. Your company has a bad quarter, and senior management gets nervous and decides to trim the fat. Or the revenues don’t quite meet projections, the investors get antsy, and the burn rate needs to be reduced. Either way, you may get the sense the axe is about to fall.

At a larger company the warning signs are more evident, at least if you’re in management. The company cuts back on travel, expenses get clamped down, job reqs are trimmed, and finally a hiring freeze is put in place. Those are all pretty good signs that layoffs are just around the corner. Another is if mangers are asked to stack rank their employees when that’s never been done before in the company.

The signs are more difficult to spot at a smaller company (unless you work in sales), and the belt tightening often comes without much warning. Still, there should be clues you can pick up on to tell you whether the company might soon be downsizing.

Are the senior managers constantly huddled in all-day meetings, perhaps with outsiders? Do they avoid contact with employees and start cancelling regular staff meetings? Do the executives stop openly discussing company financials or prospects? And are key people suddenly leaving the company, voluntarily or otherwise?

If you pick up on any of these signs, it’s definitely time to polish up your resume. Of course, if you’ve been reading my blog you know that you should already have a current resume out there, anonymized if necessary. And as the financial advisors recommend, you should have at least six months of expenses saved up, more if possible. These days you really shouldn’t be surprised at all if the axe falls suddenly and without much warning.

Should I Re-Apply at a Company?

2009-04-23T14:40:00.000-07:00

Some people wonder if a company turns them down after an interview, whether they should ever apply there again. Or are you Persona Non Grata forever?

Even in the extreme case most companies will have forgotten about you after a while. Turnover in the tech department and HR, along with recordkeeping difficulties, means that resumes have a half life of about a year. Much longer than that and they most likely won’t even remember that you had applied previously.

If you do decide to reapply within a year or less, you may be challenged to show that your skills have substantially improved since the last time. In most cases just another year of the same work experience won’t cut it, but some organizations may be more accommodating and let you interview again anyway.

My point? It’s perfectly okay to re-apply at a company where you’ve been turned down in the past. However, you should wait at least a year before doing so, and make sure you can demonstrate some growth in the meantime.

Interviewing with Multiple Companies

2009-04-15T18:26:00.001-07:00

If you are actively looking for a new job, it’s likely that you’ll be interviewing with several companies at the same time. You’ll also likely have a preference for some jobs over others. So how should you handle it if talks progress significantly with more than one company? Should you drop discussions with the companies you’re less interested in and focus on the ones that look more attractive?

My advice is to never do this. I can’t count the number of times when it seemed like I had several companies itching to make me offers at the same time, but then none of the leads panned out. It’s not necessarily the candidate’s fault when this happens; most often it occurs because there were other qualified candidates in the running.

Hence if you are deep into the process with multiple companies, even ones you aren’t necessarily crazy about, you need to do everything you can to get the offer(s). Once the offer is in hand you can decide whether it’s something you want to accept. But then at least then the decision is yours, not the company’s.

Can We Talk?

2009-04-10T08:20:00.000-07:00

This is not a reference to Joan Rivers’ favorite line, for those who can remember that far back. Instead, it refers to what happens when a recruiter calls you during the day at work.

At some companies I’ve been fortunate enough to have an office with a door I could close when I needed some privacy. Unfortunately, that has been the exception rather than the norm in my recent career. I’ve even been in so-called ‘open’ environments where there were not even any partitions between desks. Obviously in such situations you can’t freely talk with a headhunter at your desk.

So what are your options? Well, you might walk outside if that’s something you can do readily. Or you could duck into a conference room if one is available. Or you could step into a quiet hallway. And of course there’s the option of not answering the call and sending it to voicemail so you can reply at a more convenient time. That’s usually my preferred approach. The other options can make you look a bit suspicious when you rush away from your desk cradling your cell phone to your ear.

In fact when I post my resume online I usually leave out my phone number altogether. I’d much rather be contacted by e-mail so I can reply back to the recruiter at my leisure if I’m interested. Otherwise with my phone number out there in the open I’ll get lots of calls about positions I have zero interest in. If those inquiries come in via e-mail it’s easy enough to just delete them, but if I have to field a call for each one I’d quickly go crazy.

But whatever you do, I recommend that you absolutely NOT use your company phone or e-mail system for communicating with recruiters. I’ve known people who were lax and cavalier about this rule, even when they knew their phone calls and e-mails were being recorded as a matter of company policy. This policy may exist at your company as well, even if it's not explicitly stated. And as the saying goes, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

When to Look for a New Job

2009-04-07T21:23:00.000-07:00

The best time to look for a new job, or at least to be on the lookout, is when you are happily employed. The absolute worst time is when you’re being pushed out the door.

For me, the best approach is to always be open to new opportunities. That doesn’t mean you should have one foot out the door at all times, nor does it mean you should spend an hour each morning scouring the job boards. Rather, it means that you should be a passive candidate and have your resume out there, anonymized if necessary, as I discussed previously.

The next question then is when you should go from being a merely passive candidate to kicking it into high gear and going active. This decision to switch into active mode is one that each person makes deliberately by choice, and when it happens it’s pretty obvious. They mentally check out of their current job, and their focus switches to finding a new position.

Mentally checking out of your job however is not a good thing. You may tell yourself that sure, you can still do your job while keenly searching for a new position, but the reality is that your heart is no longer in your work, and the quality of your output will inevitably suffer.

Hence you need to mentally force yourself to stay focused on your current job. This is especially important since a job search can take a year or more (and considerably longer in a down economy), and you can’t stay mentally checked out of your job for that long. Your boss will definitely notice, your reviews will suffer, and it’s possible that you might end up being separated from your job – and not on your own terms.

Employee-Company Loyalty

2009-04-03T08:30:00.000-07:00

Does such a thing exist nowadays? Most people would say no, and they’d probably be right.

A company’s loyalty to its employees would imply a “No Layoff” policy. IBM was a famous example of this approach, at least until they started laying people off in the ‘90s. AMD is another example of a company that had to eat their words. But nowadays very few companies explicitly tout no layoff policies since they’re so difficult to uphold, especially in this economic climate.
In the absence of a company’s loyalty to its employees, is it reasonable for employees to be loyal to their employer? I think not. Loyalty has to be a two-way street; one-way loyalty is called blind faith.

So as an employee does this give you carte blanche to continuously job hob, renege on job offers, and use offers from other companies to demand raises from your boss? No, this does not justify any of those behaviors. But what it does mean is that you should not let your employer guilt you into staying due to some misplaced sense of company loyalty.

Your employer might pull the “I hired you when no one else would…” line. That only means that the company got you for a bargain, and now they realize your true value in the marketplace.

Keeping an Eye Out for New Opportunities

2009-04-01T08:52:00.001-07:00

When should you post your resume on the job boards and when should you take them off? My advice is to always keep your current resume online. You never know when that killer opportunity might come along. And even if you are happy in your current job, you might be even happier in a new one.

If you are concerned about your current employer finding out, you can always keep your contact information anonymous. You can also list your current employer as “Major Company” or something similar and tweak your responsibility descriptions to be somewhat vague.

Also, if you are contacted by a recruiter and are not looking to make a move at the moment, don’t simply delete the e-mail or dismiss the phone call; instead reply courteously and let them know that while you are not currently looking, you may be open to other great opportunities in the future.

In addition to keeping your resume online you may want to keep other channels open. Let your friends know that you’re open to referrals for great jobs and companies. Also keep up a virtual presence online. If you have the time, write some articles or at least keep up a blog. Participate in technical message boards and discussions. Acquire lots of contacts on LinkedIn and Facebook. Eventually if your public profile is prominent enough, someone may come calling.

Burnout

2009-03-24T13:58:00.001-07:00

Burnout can be caused by your evil boss cracking the whip, asking you to do more with less in difficult times. Or it could be self-inflicted because you are so driven to accomplish your own unrealistically demanding goals.

Most of us have been in situations where we have felt burned out. It can range from feeling a bit tired after a tough project, to exhaustion after a few too many 12-hour days, all the way to a near-death experience after an extended multi-month death march. In many of these cases you can end up being an ineffective zombie who can barely crawl into work, much less do anything productive.

Management tends to avoid the term “Death March”, preferring instead inspiration terms like “a Fast Pace” or “Crunch Time”. Too often they see an either-or choice between cracking the whip and slipping dates, and without exception slipping dates is not an option. However, this is an entirely wrong way of thinking and it points to an utter failure of leadership.

If you start seeing the signs of burnout around you, such as people coming into work later and later, circles under their eyes, listlessness and general lack of enthusiasm, it’s time to consider whether it’s the environment for you. And as obvious as that may sound, it really isn’t. Some people actually thrive in death marches, as they see it as a way to show their mettle and separate themselves from the weaklings.

My recommendation is to try and avoid organizations that are prone to death marches in the first place. Some such companies may include the following:

Large product companies that have fixed product delivery dates. Gotta ship before the fourth quarter or the stock analysts will kill us!
Startups, especially pre-IPOs. Famous for 80 hour weeks, but they might be worthwhile if you get significant stock options.
Consulting firms that do fixed-price contracts. The temptation to underbid to win contracts is immense, resulting in the need to accomplish more work with fewer developers.
Any company that stresses ‘SDLC’. This usually means the Waterfall methodology, where requirements changes are inevitable thrown in at the last minute and throw the whole schedule out of whack.

Will You Happier In a New Job?

2009-03-18T09:55:00.000-07:00

In my last post I discussed some things that influence happiness in your job. But if you are not currently happy, would you necessarily be any happier in a new position? Unfortunately the problems I discussed in that post will generally not reveal themselves for some time after you start a new job. Hence you will be engaging in a guessing game when you interview with a new company.

Still, there are some things you can investigate about the company, either during the interview process or through your own research, that may shed some light on whether it’s a place where you'd want to work. This approach is far from foolproof, but it may help you avoid making some bad decisions.

The first question is whether the team engages in CRUD development, and whether it’s a cost center or a profit center. I’ve talked about these topics before, but they're always worth keeping in mind when evaluating an employer.

Next, is the team engaged in new development, or are they maintaining an existing system?

Do the engineers that you interview with know their stuff? Do they understand the raw technology as well as architecture and design issues? Can they intelligently discuss the system they work on? Are they enthusiastic about the work?

Next, do they use source control, and have a formal team handling builds and configuration management? Do they properly use labels, branching, and merging? Some organizations may be too small to have a dedicated build team, but they should still use sound source control practices, and they should have a configuration management specialist.

The same questions apply for production, especially in a web environment. Does the company have dedicated dev, testing, and production server environments? Do they have a controlled production process with regularly scheduled releases? Avoid companies that try to do production releases on a daily basis, unless you want your hair to turn prematurely gray.

Does the company have architects? And by architects, I mean highly experienced engineers with 10+ years of experience whose job it is to advise teams rather than do coding day in and day out. If they do, it tells you two things: 1) that they take their technology seriously, and 2) that they value technical people enough to provide a purely technical career advancement path.

Does the company have product managers? It’s not necessarily the presence of product managers that results in better code, but having someone directly responsible and accountable for feature sets and requirements can help reduce uncertainty in planning.

Finally, does the company use Waterfall methodology? If they say don’t have an explicit methodology they’re probably using waterfall by default. Some organizations do actually manage to use Waterfall effectively, but chances are most Waterfall organizations will require a deathmarch as the deadline approaches.

Are You Happy In Your Current Job?

2009-03-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

Recruiters may ask you this question, and your own manager might ask it as well. It’s a simple inquiry, not a loaded or trick question. Still, you might not have a straightforward answer. After all, what exactly does it mean to be happy, anyway? Happy in a metaphysical or literal sense? Do you have to have a big grin on your face every time you walk into the office? Or does happy just mean that you are content, satisfied, glad to have a job in this economy? Here are some questions you might ponder to help answer the happiness question.

First of all, do you enjoy the work you are doing? Do you feel you are creating something of value, or accomplishing something of importance? Or do you wonder whether anyone will ever see, much less appreciate the results of your work?

Do you feel that you are uniquely qualified to do your job, or do you feel like an interchangeable cog in a big machine? Do you feel that your job is matched to your skills, or do you think that a trained monkey could do the work? Do you see a clear career path, or do you see yourself stuck in the same position years from now?

Do you look forward to coming into work in the morning to fix those problems left over from the previous day, and to take on new challenges? Or do you find it difficult to pull yourself out of bed in the morning and deal with the dreaded commute in to work? Do you rush through lunch at your desk so you can get back to work, or do you take long lunch breaks to escape from the oppressive office environment?

Is management receptive to feedback and new ideas? Do they listen to the developers, or just pretend to do so? Do you respect your bosses for their knowledge, experience, and wisdom? Or do you wonder how those clueless morons ever got their jobs? Are you inspired by their leadership, or do you roll your eyes every time they issue a silly directive?

If you need something done, can you talk to someone and be confident it will be taken care of? Or do people try to shift responsibility and give you the runaround? Do managers avoid making decisions and not respond to your e-mails? And are there people who try to insert themselves into the decision making process for no good reason?

Do you respect the people you work with? Are they are as smart as or smarter than yourself? Or are they idiots to whom you have to explain things over and over again? Do you find yourself learning new things from your colleagues, or do you have to show them how to perform the most basic of tasks?

Does your company provide rewards for performance? And are the rewards fairly distributed, and individuals properly credited for their contributions? Or are the rewards and kudos handed out only to a select few, the “golden boys”, while everyone else is neglected and left to stew?

Does your company provide you with the tools you need to do your job? Is it easy to order technical books and software with a minimum of hassle? Do you get regular upgrades of your computer? Do you get large or multiple monitors? Or does any procurement request have to get multiple signoffs and require lengthy forms to be completed?

Do you have a positive work environment conducive to productivity? Do you have enough conference rooms and gathering places? Does your company have any silly and arbitrary regulations? Do you have flex hours, or do you have to be in at exactly 9 am and stay until at least 6 pm? Is unpaid overtime mandatory? Can you telecommute?

All these things, though perhaps trivial individually, combine to determine your level of happiness at work.

Random Re-Orgs

2009-03-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

If you’ve been in a decent sized organization for a number of years, you’ve seen it – the (roughly) annual random re-org. It happens with clockwork regularity at some companies; in the name of improved operating efficiency and productivity, people and boxes are moved around the organization chart like checkerboard pieces. And yet somehow it seems the organization inevitably ends up more cumbersome than before.

Senior Management often turns to reorgs because it’s their favorite tool for (seemingly) changing the organization’s direction. It’s a blunt instrument, but it’s a lot easier than sitting down and actually figuring out a real corporate strategy.

Reorgs are also sometimes seen as a solution for low morale. When you see signs of low morale, such as people coming into work later, leaving earlier, and taking longer lunches, you know something needs to change. Sometimes there will be sweeping e-mails from senior management that seem detached from all reality, describing new directions and bold initiatives. You inevitably yawn and move on to the next e-mail, but these e-mails are often followed by a random reorg.

You may be affected in one of two ways by a random re-org: negatively, or not at all. Negative results may include being moved into a position with less interesting work or less responsibility, or placed under a boss from hell, or even being RIF’ed. In the name of efficiency, strategic maneuvering, or realignment to core values (or some other such management phrase) you may end up in a new role that makes little sense.

In 99% of cases however, the shuffling will occur well above your level and there will be little to no direct impact on your day to day activities. Life just goes on as before.

Management by Crisis

2009-03-06T08:44:00.000-08:00

I once worked at a company (only briefly, thankfully) where the dominant mode of management was firefighting. I like to call it “Management by Crisis”. Management’s attention was continually shifting from one priority to another, literally on a daily basis. The developers were being jerked one way and then another, always being pulled off of what they were doing to work on something else. Needless to say, this was terrible for productivity as well as morale.

How can you tell that a company suffers form this kind of dysfunction? One clue is if the company has high turnover, which is often associated with high-stress crisis environments. This may be the case if the hiring manager speaks ill of previous employees. Just as you as a candidate should never talk badly about previous employers, it should be a red flag if the hiring manager criticizes his current or former employees.

More specifically, check whether you are interviewing for a job that is vacant because the hiring manager has just fired the previous employee in that position. Of course people are regularly fired for legitimate purposes, but it may behoove you to inquire why the last person in the position was let go. It’s not a comfortable question to ask, but it might shed some light on what kind of a manager the interviewer is, and what expectations they have for the person in the position that needs to be filled. It’s better to understand the job requirements before you start rather than to find out later that the hiring manager had totally unrealistic expectations.

Types of Bosses

2009-03-04T10:45:00.000-08:00

You’re likely to work for a number of different bosses over the course of your career. And as the saying goes, it takes all kinds. Here are a few:

• Micro-managers
• Hands-Off bosses
• Perpetual crisis bosses
• Bullies
• Passive Aggressive bosses
• Bosses who organize everything into bullet points

Micro-managers are the ones who are constantly looking over your shoulder or asking for constant status reports on everything. That can get annoying real fast.

Hands off bosses can be great in that they let you do your work. However, when you boss takes three hour lunches or leaves early for his weekly round of golf, you may be expected to take up the slack.

Perpetual crisis managers act like everything is a top priority that has to be handled right away; they run back and forth from one crisis to another. Most people around them are jaded enough that they give lip service to addressing the crisis and then go back about their real work. The fact is that most of these so-called crises really are not crises at all, as evidenced by the fact the managers forget about each one as new ones crop up.

Even worse than the perpetual crisis manager is the bully, who revels in conflict and in belittling their employees. Some are just sadistic, but others actually think that yelling at and stressing out their people is a great motivator -- “Toughen ‘em up” is their motto. Think Steve Ballmer.

Then there are the passive-aggressive bosses who do not provide you with the information or support you need, and express disappointment at your poor performance. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t told or consulted about the issues leading to failure; you are still responsible. After all, you're an adult and you don't need to be constantly told what to do, right?

I will discuss these managers and some of their management styles in upcoming articles. Oh, and about those bosses who have a penchant for bulleted lists? Avoid them at all costs.

Boredom at Work

2009-02-19T19:07:00.000-08:00

We all have days when things are a bit slow. Perhaps your job requires you to run around nonstop for 8-10 hours every single day, but most people have periods when they’re sitting on their hands for a variety of reasons.

Personally I’d rather be too busy than too lightly loaded. Usually when I’m busy I feel like I‘m accomplishing something important, as long as it’s not just busy work. But when I’m bored twiddling my thumbs I feel like I’m wasting my time as well as the company’s, and not adding any value. And then there’s that nagging feeling that upper management is also aware of it, much to my detriment.

So at what point does boredom become a serious issue? If it’s a chronic problem, ask yourself why you don’t have more work assigned to you. Are you truly blocked in your work due to forces beyond your control, or does your manager not assign tasks to you?

If you are idle because of external factors, you should try to make effective use of your downtime. Perhaps the most productive thing you can do is to read technical books or browse technical web sites. Your employer may not be willing to spend money to send you to training, but by leveraging your downtime you can still learn new skills on the company’s dime.

If on the other hand you find yourself asking your boss for more work, and your boss pushes back, then you might want to be concerned. Perhaps your manager fears that you might not be able to handle important or complex assignments. In such cases it’s important that you go out of your way to earn your manager’s trust, by demonstrating whenever you get the chance that that you are reliable and can accomplish demanding tasks.

Probationary Hiring

2009-02-15T08:12:00.000-08:00

Some people claim that the traditional interviewing model is broken, that it is inefficient and has a poor track record of identifying top candidates. They advocate the idea of probationary hiring. i.e., try a person out for 30 days, and if they don’t work out, just say good bye.

Another way this idea is presented is as a “Contract to Hire” position. The employee works as a contractor for the first X days, and then are presumably converted to perm status if the company finds it agreeable.

Personally I think this is a terrible idea regardless of how you label it. First of all, you could argue that pretty much all hiring is already probationary, especially in an “Employment at will” state like California. Under such conditions a company can let an employee go at any time for any reason (aside from those reasons barred by law, of course). Hence having a 30-day probationary period is just a fig leaf.

Secondly, 30 days is hardly enough time for someone to prove their worth. Unless a person comes into a job with exactly the skills and experience needed for the position, there will inevitably be a ramp-up time involved, which can take from a few weeks to a few months. Plus the person will need to establish a rapport with the team and other stakeholders. This is not something that can be done overnight, and it’s questionable whether 30 days, or even 90 days, is enough.

My advice? Give a new employee at least six months to settle in and prove themselves. That’s enough time for them to learn the ropes and make a real contribution. And if they are still struggling at the six month point, make it clear to them they need to shape up or ship out. And if they still have not improved by a few months after that, there is sufficient justification then to show them the door.

Stuck at Above Market Pay?

2009-02-08T17:59:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, if you find yourself making above market pay for your position, that may not necessarily be such a good thing.

For instance, we’ve all heard stories about college seniors receiving six-figure offers straight out of college. Personally I’ve never seen this happen, but it’s not inconceivable. Still, it does point out that for whatever reason salaries can sometimes get out of whack.

Perhaps you’re really good at what you do, and perhaps you have a deep knowledge and understanding of your company’s systems that no one else has. Either way, your company has seen fit to reward you with generous raises. And now you think of yourself as having decent, but necessarily stellar pay.

So when you realize that your company doesn’t want you to grow beyond your currently very essential role, what happens? You’re surprised when you talk to recruiters and they only mention jobs with significantly lower pay than yours. And the jobs that do pay in your salary range are ones you’re not qualified for.

So what do you do in this case? It just so happened that while the great raises have fattened your wallet, they have also limited your career mobility. If your pay is too big for your britches at this stage in your career you have relatively few options. You could stay at your job, where your pay will eventually plateau and the market will catch up with your pay. Or else you could make a lateral move to another job that pays less than what you’re making, in the hopes that you’ll grow in that position and catch up to and exceed your previous pay level.

In my case, I once had a great job where I got double-digit % raises for several years in a row. Unfortunately all good things had to come to an end, and this company enacted a pay freeze (probably to make up for being so overly generous before). So when I decided to look around for new opportunities, I found that my pay was around 20% over market. I was a bit miffed, but there was not much I could do about it.

After much soul searching, I ended up taking a new job that paid about 10% less than what I had been making. And I did eventually catch up to my old pay level, but it took a couple of years.

Pay Disparities

2009-01-28T20:07:00.000-08:00

The person sitting in the next cube over from you may be doing the same type of work, perhaps even working on the exact same code that you are. However, she may be making 20% or 30% more than you. Sometimes the pay disparities are even greater. Of course, in most cases you won’t be aware of this since salary information is closely guarded.

Such disparities exist for a number of reasons. Technical skill sets, negotiating skills, etc. factor in, but often it’s just a matter of experience, or tenure if you will. The longer a person is at a job the more raises they’ll get. And even if those are just modest cost of living raises they can add up. If someone has the same job as you but they’ve been in that position for 10 years longer, with a 3% annual raise they could be earning 35% more. And with 4% annual raises the difference would be 48%.

But what if the other person has comparable levels of experience, or worse, less experience than what you have? What would explain the pay disparity then?

It’s possible that the other person may just better at their job. They could be more productive, writing more code with fewer bugs. They may be better at estimation and meeting their dates, and they may have more significant accomplishments. They may also work in a more high profile area and be more visible to management. They may also be better at advertising their accomplishments, as distasteful as that idea may be to some.

If you have accounted for all of these possibilities and still feel that you are underpaid, you need to look inward. Is there a reason why you might be underpaid? Or in fact, are you really underpaid at all? The only true way to tell is to test the job markets. You can probably get a feel for your market value from recruiters, or from doing a few interviews. You might very well find that you are already at market pay. And if not -- well, you already have a head start on finding new job options.

Performance: Perception vs. Reality

2009-01-25T21:16:00.000-08:00

When providing feedback to employees, you will often find that employees respond to negative feedback with surprise. It’s inconceivable to them that anyone could fail to recognize the brilliance of their work. And if there were any problems with their work, it was due to someone else’s mistakes.

Of course I’m exaggerating, but not by much. Fact is, most people have a fairly high opinion of themselves (and I suppose that would include me as well). Most people like to think of themselves as stars, or at the very least above average.

And yet, it’s been shown (sorry, no link handy at the moment) that the true stars tend to rate themselves more modestly than the less stellar performers. Why is this? Perhaps it’s because the top people are well aware of their limits and acknowledge them, whereas the lower performers have no idea just how limited their skills are. And when confronted with those limits, they often deny the charge, blame others for their failures, or deem those limits not important.

So as a manager, how do you reconcile an employee’s inflated sense of self with your somewhat less flattering assessment? You need hard facts: metrics, examples, data points. The employee will typically try and shift the blame, and you need to be prepared for that with hard evidence that is undeniable.

Providing Feedback

2009-01-16T18:12:00.000-08:00

Far too many managers fail to provide any meaningful performance feedback until it’s time for a review. It’s no surprise then that many employees are sometimes taken aback by critical reviews, as they never see it coming.

In an ideal world managers would provide continuous feedback and course corrections to their employees. However, most people, managers included, hate giving negative feedback. They worry about a conflict that may arise, where the employee takes the news badly, gets defensive, or becomes argumentative.

Perhaps these people have read Dale Carnegie’s seminal book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. In it he urged readers to never engage in criticism, which some equate with giving negative feedback. They interpret the advice to mean that if a manager has only negative feedback, they shouldn’t provide any sort of feedback at all. i.e., if you can’t say something nice about a person…

However, this is poor advice, or at least a bad interpretation of what Carnegie meant. Most employees in fact would appreciate feedback -- any kind of feedback, even negative -- over getting no feedback at all. At least with negative feedback they know where they stand with their manager.

As an employee, you should welcome feedback of any kind. Good feedback is always nice, of course, but aside from the ego stoking it’s not particularly valuable. More useful is negative feedback, as long as it’s constructive. In other words, what you want is feedback on what you’re doing poorly, and how you can improve your performance.

If you do receive negative feedback, it’s important that you not become defensive. If you do become defensive, your manager may also become defensive, and it can turn into a “He said, she said” type of blame game. Instead, you should take the criticism to heart, even if it seems unwarranted. Even if the criticism seems totally off base, you should take time to think about why your manager sees things in that way. It might just be a matter of perception, for instance, which might be remedied by keeping your manager better informed and engaging in a little proactive PR.

Productivity Ratios and Negative Producers

2009-01-13T22:40:00.000-08:00

Numerous management studies have found there can be a 10-to-1 ratio difference in productivity between engineers.

Of course, the widest performance spread can be greater than 10-to-1 if you take into account your worst engineers. Technically it could be 100-to-1, or infinity. In fact, the math can break down if your worst engineer is a net negative producer.

How does an engineer exhibit negative productivity? Typically they write awful code that causes breakages and which have to be cleaned up by teammates. Or they may waste time in meetings arguing contrarian positions just because they like to yank peoples’ chains.

As a manager it is your job to isolate these negative producers and insulate your team from them. Ideally you’d show these people out the door, but there are usually complicating factors that keep them at their jobs longer than you’d like.

Also, it’s important not to blind yourself to the possibility that it might not be the individual that’s at fault for negative productivity. It could be the environment, or the team chemistry, or the nature of the technical problem being tackled. As I mentioned previously, a person can be a star in one realm and flounder in another environment. It’s up to the manager to spot these problems and do everything possible to mitigate them.

Writing Software is a Lot Like, Well, Writing

2009-01-01T12:50:00.000-08:00

Continuing on the prior post’s theme of skills used in software development -- there are many analogies and comparisons between creating software and other endeavors. Putting up a skyscraper and designing an automobile are a couple of examples.

My favorite analogy for writing software however is writing a book. What type of book, specifically? Well, it would be easy to compare software to a nonfictional reference work. But I’ll compare writing a program to writing a novel, a piece of fiction.

In both software development and writing you have multiple threads or storylines that have to converge at certain specific points and in certain ways; otherwise the results could be disastrous for your characters and your application. Your characters might miss important developments in the story, and your program can end up deadlocked or crash.

There are differences, of course; with a novel the author may start writing freely without a predefined notion of where the story will end up. Sometimes the storyline works, and other times they may (figuratively) rip the page out of the typewriter and crumple it up, tossing it into a wastebasket that is already overflowing with crumpled up pieces of paper.

You generally can’t adopt such a haphazard approach to software development. In most cases you’ll start with a pretty good idea of what the finished product should look like. Still, some approaches to software development advocate the idea of ‘throwaway’ prototypes, or at least iterative methods of development where each iteration gets you closer to your ultimate goal.

There are other similarities I can think of between the two endeavors, tortured as the analogy might be. Authors of books need to flesh out the characters sufficiently so that readers can visualize them in their minds. Software developers also need to put a UI or ‘face’ on their applications, one that users can react to positive and productive ways.

Perhaps my favorite part of this metaphor is that both a book and software (say a website) are guided experiences. You have to anticipate and plan out what the user will see, and make sure the experience is a coherent and pleasant one. Of course, on a website a user may click anywhere and navigate at their leisure, while a book reader is unlikely to skip ahead. That just means the guided experience with software is more difficult to create, but it still remains a guided experience, as with a good book.

My point? Software is much more of a creative process than people recognize.

Are Engineers’ Minds Wired Differently?

2008-12-24T15:48:00.000-08:00

Back during the dot-com boom of the late 90’s a lot of people jumped into the IT field because they saw plenty of jobs offering good pay. And for a while they did fine, at least until the bottom fell out. Then many of those people washed out of the industry, leaving mostly the ‘core’ engineers with stronger technical skills and programming abilities. And in fact another version of that shakeout is also occurring today as I write this article.

So why did people who entered the field from outside ultimately not fare as well? Or more generally, why do some people succeed in software engineering, while others flounder? It can’t be a simple matter of comparative intelligence since smart people exist in all fields, and there are many smart people who just don’t ‘get’ programming. Even people you might think of as ‘nerds’ don’t always perform well in the programming realm. So what separates two people, both of them smart, but where one of them can program well and the other can’t?

It’s been said that engineers’ minds are wired differently than other (normal?) people, and this most likely applies even more to software engineers. Some will point to Meyers-Brigg and other personality tests to evaluate a person’s suitability for analytical tasks. However, just what does it mean to say that a task (or a person) is analytical?

I like to think there are two types of people in this world -- and I don’t mean those who like to categorize people and those who don’t. One group is interested in outcomes, and the other in the mechanics. Computer nerds might compare this to declarative vs. functional languages, if that makes any sense to you. An analogy is when a person admires a new car. Do they appreciate its aesthetics and comfort, or do they digest the specifications and performance numbers? Of course the two are not mutually exclusive, but people sometimes lean towards one or the other. Also think music fans vs. audiophiles.

Beyond the personality differences, there are also very real skills required to be successful in software engineering. Some of these skills can be taught, but others are innate. For instance, there is the ability to see patterns and complex relationships in large systems. Some people can easily juggle highly abstract, non-visual concepts in their head. They can read or hear about a concept and instantly see how it can be applied in a myriad of problems, and also understand where the approach might not be appropriate.

These people can look at a screenful of text (source code) and envision a program’s flow of control and spot logical errors. They can think of the possible potential and combinatorial ramifications of various decisions without resorting to a “let’s see what happens” approach. Like a good chess player they can foresee how various scenarios and branches will play out, evaluating them to a depth and level of detail that would overwhelm most people.

If you remember as far back as the 80’s you might recall the first time you saw a Rubik’s cube. Solving it (at least at first) posed an immense challenge, requiring the ability first to experiment, then figure out how the contraption worked. Thereafter you’d have to evaluate patterns and visualize how you would interact with the cube to get the configuration you wanted. Most people were so daunted by these things that they dropped the cube after a bit of experimental play, but others stuck at it and discovered its secrets. In a way, good developers have the vision, cognitive skills, and perseverance to stick with problems like these and solve them.

I hope this discussion makes some sense to you. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why some people have better aptitude for software engineering than others, but I still can’t say that I’ve fully cracked the code.

What Makes an IN-effective Engineer?

2008-12-17T07:27:00.000-08:00

When I ponder this question I think back to the various engineers I have worked with whom I would consider failures in their field. Unfortunately there is no single archetype of an ineffective engineer. Tolstoy once said that all happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Likewise, you could say that each failed engineer is a failure in his or her own unique way.

I had one employee who could not accomplish anything unless they had all the minute details of their project answered by management. How big should this button be? What should the exact text be for this label? Should I put this code into two files or just one? Perhaps they were trying to please, but they gave the impression of being unable to accomplish anything without excessive handholding.

Another engineer was an avid musician who did his day job just for the paycheck. He would do the absolute minimum work necessary to get by, and his teammates often found themselves having to fix his bugs and generally clean up after his mess. When confronted with the inadequacies of his work, he was a veritable fountain of excuses and blame. He refused to take responsibility for anything, and showed no accountability for his work.

There were also a couple of engineers who were just argumentative by nature. When there were the slightest little details that someone let slip by, these people would pounce on them. And where there were no controversies or disagreements they would manufacture them, just so they would have something to argue about. They did this in the name of generating healthy discussion, but in reality they just liked to argue and waste everyone’s time.

Then there was the fellow who had exhibited decent technical skills and quality, but who just rubbed everyone the wrong way. He was openly critical and dismissive of other peoples’ work and ideas. He was especially hard on non-technical people, all in the name of ‘honesty’. His influence was like poison on the team, and no one wanted to work with him – not other developers, product managers, project managers, QA, or anyone else.

Of course I’ve also had those employees who where well meaning and positive but yet just weren’t quite there technically. A few bricks shy of a load, as the saying goes. Not playing with a full deck. The lights are on, but nobody’s home. The elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top floor. A couple of fries short of a happy meal. But at least I could manage around these employees by assigning them simpler tasks and giving them more time to develop (hopefully).

You may wonder which of these people were eventually let go. Ultimately that’s not important; what is important is that you take away from these stories some qualities to avoid, both in yourselves and any people you might be involved in hiring.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Engineers

2008-12-11T21:06:00.000-08:00

I want to expand on my previous article and describe effective engineers in another fashion, one that borrows from Stephen Covey, author of “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”. I read the book a long time ago and while I couldn‘t tell you what all the seven habits were, it still seems like a good way to organize a list of positive traits I’ve seen in effective engineers.

Be Proactive – I’m pretty sure this was one of Steven Covey’s items. Rather than waiting for others to take care of things, do what needs to be done. Volunteer to take on new tasks, to help others, and in general do the things that no one else wants to do.
Follow Through – If you are asked to do something, follow through and report back on your success (or lack thereof). If there’s one thing managers hate, it’s requests that disappear into a black hole. If you are asked to do something, acknowledge the request and report back on it within a reasonable period of time.
Manage Up – Engineers are often notorious for being overly optimistic with work estimates. But they need to be realistic and let management know when too much is being asked of them. This is often referred in management-speak as “push-back”. Otherwise the engineer runs the risk of overcommitting and disappointing everyone.
Always be learning – Even if your job doesn’t offer a way to learn new skills, and especially if your job doesn’t offer a way to learn new skills, you have to work to keep your technical skills current.
Share your knowledge with others – Some think that keeping their knowledge to themselves, whether in the technical or business domain, is a means to job security. Instead, it makes you an impediment. Those who share their knowledge with others will be regarded as subject matter experts and people will turn to them for advice, making them highly valued.
Share the credit, accept the blame – Give credit where credit is due. Make it known whose hard work helped to make things happen. People will return the favor to you someday. Likewise, be wiling to accept the blame – if you screw up, don’t be afraid to fess up and fix the problem. And if you can’t do this because you’re in an environment where making mistakes is severely punished, well -- perhaps you shouldn’t be working there.
Be positive – this may sound trite, but it’s not. Negativity is infectious, and it spreads through the team like a poison. Fortunately, positive energy is also infectious. By this I don’t mean a Pollyanah-ish type of naivete, but rather a “can-do” attitude. Negative people are often quick with excuses why something is not possible, but positive people will find ways to make those things happen.

What Makes an Effective Engineer?

2008-12-08T20:35:00.000-08:00

Strong technical skills alone do not make for a great engineer. Believe it or not, coding is not necessarily the most important thing that an engineer does. It takes great communication skills, people skills, drive, and initiative to make a truly successful engineer.

This is not to say that technical skills are unimportant. Of course you need to understand the technology, and you need a solid foundation in the principles of computer science. But this is merely a prerequisite for success, not the full requirement. Technical skills alone are insufficient for true success.

Great engineers don’t just point out problems and expect others to fix them, or worse, just ignore the problems and hope they go away. Rather, they dive in and investigate the problems themselves, even if it’s in someone else’s code. They’re not hung up on finger pointing or on getting credit; they are just interested in getting things done. You can call it initiative, or call it being conscientious – I prefer the fancy term “a bias for action.”

Also, in any decent sized organization engineers will not be working alone in a vacuum. They need to work as part of a team developing features and products, and the entire team needs to be on the same page. To some extent such coordination is the responsibility of the dev or project manager, but each team member’s ability to work well with their teammates contributes to the overall effort. This is what people talk of as ‘teamwork’.

When I talk about teamwork I’m also referring to sharing information. Does the person speak up and volunteer information when they should, or do they stay quiet and withhold key knowledge? Or do they instead talk too much and soak up everyone else’s time? Are they able to split up a task and coordinate work with another engineer? These are important considerations in judging a person’s teamwork skills.

In addition, engineers will often have to work with other people outside of the team. This may involve other technical teams as well as product managers, senior management, sales, etc. These may be less technical or non-technical people, and the way the engineers interact with them can spell success or failure for the project (not to mention the engineers’ careers).

The best engineers are able to communicate with non-technical people in a productive manner, explaining technical issues in a clear and simple manner that everyone can understand. They are able to distill a problem down to the essential points instead of getting bogged down in technical details. i.e., they can explain clearly what the issues mean to the decision makers so they can take meaningful action instead of ending up confused.

Hence to be truly successful an engineer needs to work as part of a team, not just within their immediate group but also within the entire organization. They need to communicate well and spread understanding beyond just the engineering organization. This kind of interaction and communication skill set is not taught in school, nor is it necessarily innate. It’s something that can be developed over time, but unfortunately one that some people either do not understand or refuse to pick up.

Does Your Company Need Rock Stars?

2008-12-03T20:44:00.000-08:00

A lot of companies, if not most of them, think they need to hire rock stars. It’s perfectly legitimate to want to hire the best, but where do you make the cutoff? Many companies insist on hiring only the top 10%, or the top 5%, or even the top 1%. If all companies thought like this then it’s a wonder that most people get hired at all.

“The Mythical Man Month” is a seminal work in Software Project Management, written over 30 years ago. It contains many ideas, some of which are controversial, and some that are dated, but one that I like is that of a “Surgical Team.”

A surgical team is led by an experienced surgeon who is assisted by more junior surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and other supporting personnel. Transposed to software development, this model means that an architect or other senior engineer works on the most critical portions (i.e., architecture & design) while others support the architect by working on supporting tasks (i.e., coding & testing).

This model is attractive because it requires only a few rock stars compared to supporting characters. If you only need 1 out of every 10 engineers to be rock stars, that makes hiring a lot easier. Of course, the proportion of rock stars in the developer population is probably a lot less than 10%, but perhaps for some teams you could substitute a medium level star instead. So instead of a top rock act, you might have a good cover band instead.

Finally, consider the possibility that you may not need rock stars at all. CRUD development is a favorite whipping boy of mine, perhaps unfairly. But the fact remains that there are a lot of projects out there that do not require rock star level talent. And if rock stars were to work on them, they might quickly become bored and disillusioned.

Boredom in this case may result not just because such projects don’t use leading edge technology. It may also be because those projects actually rely more on other skills, such as project management, internal marketing & selling skills, political negotiation, and people management. Those are not necessarily the skills that rock star engineers possess, yet they may be essential to the success in the organization.

Are You a Rock Star?

2008-12-01T21:59:00.000-08:00

I sometimes like to say that many people think of themselves as rock stars when they are just roadies. And no, I don’t consider myself a rock star either.

“Rock Stars” are a phenomenon that is not unique to software development; politicians like Barak Obama are often called rock stars, as are some top professors, and even (gasp) rock musicians! If you are at the top of your profession, any profession, “Rock Star” seems to be the requisite title. But that’s not a title you can award yourself, alas. It has to be bestowed upon you by your peers.

Detecting a potential rock star in a job interview is very difficult. Just because someone can answer all the technical questions in an interview does not mean they are a star; it just means they are knowledgeable. And as to whether they can learn their job quickly and perform all the duties of that position to a standard that significantly exceeds expectations, that’s something that only time can reveal.

That doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people consider themselves to be rock stars. And certainly just about everyone considers themselves to be above average, just like the kids in Lake Wobegon. But of course that's statistically impossible, just as no more than say 10% can be stars, and no more than 2% can be superstars. And yes, I just pulled those numbers out of a hat – but I think I’m accurate to within an order of magnitude.

So how can you tell if you are truly a rock star? Here are some signs:

Are people constantly coming to you for help or advice? (on technical matters, not just to shoot the breeze)
Is your calendar filled with appointments, half of which you cannot attend? (technical and design discussions, not pointless BS meetings).
Is your boss always giving you more work than you can handle? (and not just busywork)
When a crisis occurs, are you the first one they ask to troubleshoot? The go-to person? (and not as the fall guy)

Any of these qualities could be meaningless on their own, but combined they might point to you being the next Mick Jagger -- or Keith Richards. But hopefully not Ron Woods.

If these things don’t happen to you, you can kid yourself all you like but you’re not a rock star. Alas, you might even be a great performer worthy of the title but stuck toiling away in obscurity – rock stars unfortunately don’t thrive in caves. You should learn to sell your achievements to others, or at least get a good promoter.

What Qualifies Someone as ‘Experienced’?

2008-11-24T21:52:00.000-08:00

The term ‘experienced’ is a nebulous one. I call to mind former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (no hate mail please), who claimed that she had “35 years of experience in government.” Which was strange, since I seem to recall that as of 2008 she had only served eight years in either elected or appointed office.

Likewise, just saying you have 5 years of .NET experience doesn’t make you an experienced .NET engineer. You might have spent all of those 5 years on CRUD apps moving controls around on WinForms. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that kind of work does not make for a well rounded .NET engineer.

To me, someone experienced with a technology has had enough depth and variety in assignments to have explored most of the features available in that technology. For instance, if you say you are experienced with.NET, does it mean .NET version 1.0? 1.1? 2.0? 3.0? 3.5? Have you used, or at least understand, collections? generics? multithreading? delegates and asynchronous I/O? garbage collection? If not, you can’t truly call yourself experienced in .NET.

Some may quibble that I’m using a trivia contest to the question of whether someone is experienced in a technology. However, there’s experience and then there’s experience. To me you’re only qualified as experienced if you can confidently discuss the technology in depth and apply it readily to problems. To do this you have to know the ins and outs of the technology, what it’s capable of, and what its limitations and weaknesses are.

Also just as important, if not more so, than the number of years with a technology is what you have done with it. Did you maintain an existing system and fix bugs? Play around with scripts? Or did you actually participate in specing out, building, releasing, and supporting an actual system? There is a huge difference between designing and coding up something from scratch versus just patching holes in it. You will most likely not be considered ‘experienced’ unless you have gone through at least one full development cycle, and preferably several.

What Makes for a Senior Engineer? An Architect?

2008-11-17T06:46:00.000-08:00

At larger, more established companies an architect is typically a highly experienced engineer who has distinguished himself/herself during at least 15-20 years of work experience. At other companies, typically smaller, younger ones, the architects may be engineers in their 20s who developed the original systems, however good or bad those systems might be.

So obviously you cannot compare a 45 year old architect with a PhD who has worked at six companies to a 23-year old architect who wrote the first version of their company’s website using Perl and SQLite. The first architect is likely to have a wide breadth of experience in a variety of technologies and design approaches; the second architect will likely have superb in-depth knowledge of how his company’s site operates and the tweaks needed to keep it healthy. Both skillsets are important, but they are not equally transferable.

The same issues apply to the title “Senior Engineer”. An engineer may achieve that title through many years of experience, or because they just happen to be among the most senior members of a very young team. In both cases they are likely relied upon to provide leadership for the more junior engineers, which may be more important than the actual number of years they’ve been working. Still, giving a “Senior Engineer” title to an engineer with 2 years experience is somewhat of a silly game.

The bottom line? Do not place too much weight on titles. An architect or senior engineer at one company may have less experience than a junior engineer at another firm. Just remember that titles are relative, and a fancy-pants architect at one company may flounder at another company. It’s kind of like how someone who skis black diamond runs in the Midwest might get themselves in way over their head trying to do the same in Colorado.

Job Titles

2008-11-13T20:43:00.000-08:00

I talked earlier about the term ‘IT’ being used in different contexts. This can be a problem because people often have different notions of what IT is. It can be a general term to describe the technical field, which is how I use it, or it can also refer to internal corporate IT departments. I tend to refer to such departments as ‘IS’ or ‘MIS’ rather than IT.

Similar confusion abounds when it comes to job titles. What exactly is the difference between a computer programmer vs. a software engineer vs. a developer? Or an analyst vs. a systems analyst vs. a programmer analyst?

To a large degree this is a game of semantics. In theory all people who write software should be considered software engineers, in the sense that engineers are people who apply scientific and technical knowledge to real world problems. However, in practice there are real distinctions between the various titles that can lead to differences in pay, prestige, and more than a bit of elitism.

A (business) analyst (or systems analyst) is commonly one who translates business needs into software requirements. This type of position exists mostly at internal IS organizations; software companies in comparison tend to have product managers who fill such roles. At any rate, analysts and product managers both tend to stay out of the purely technical realm, except perhaps for those designated as “programmer analysts”.

As for programmers vs. engineers, that distinction came about in large part due to the different educational programs that many universities provided. Students often had a choice between undertaking a computer science degree offered in a school of engineering versus a CS degree from a math or liberal arts college. If you undertook an engineering track, you were exposed to more hard sciences (think chemistry / physics / calculus); in comparison, the math/liberal arts curriculum was seen as a less hard core approach (think more ‘softer’ classes like English Lit.).

To some degree this is an unfair distinction between two very similar programs, but the distinction has still stuck in many people’s minds. So much so in fact that some people saw a ‘programmer’ title as being inferior to an engineer title. As a result, even people who did not have a true engineering degree started calling themselves “software engineers” just for the added prestige. Some saw that as a cheapening of the title, but others felt entitled to the designation due to the nature of their responsibilities.

As for the term ‘developer’, it gained popularity with the advent of the web when people who put together static HTML pages started being called web developers. Some of these people eventually moved on to write some Cold Fusion or PHP code, but the title of web developer stuck with them. Unfortunately this has led to the term becoming somewhat ghettoized in certain circles, such that a “web developer” is thought to be someone who doesn’t write any ‘real’ code, at least not in the classic O-O sense.

My point of view? Call yourself what you like – developer, engineer, programmer. I don’t care, as long as you produce results. But if pressed, I’ll use the term ‘developer’ to avoid the programmer / engineer title controversy.

Thankless Tech Jobs

2008-11-03T20:19:00.000-08:00

I’ve mentioned working in a CRUD position at a cost center as a job you should avoid. But there are plenty of other jobs that are likely much worse than the one you’re in now. So the next time you feel tempted to tell your boss where to shove it, you may want to pause and thank your lucky stars you don’t have one of the tech jobs below.

IT Helpdesk – answering phones all day helping corporate lusers open Outlook or change their password is not my idea of a career.

Customer Support – Neck and neck with Helpdesk in terms of mindless work dealing with clueless people. Often a stepping stone to QA Analyst.

QA Analyst – Repetitively testing the same software day in and day out and pointing out problems is probably not what you had in mind when you spent four years to get your computer science degree.

System / Network Administrator – The only time you hear about them is when something is broken, and then it’s always seen as their fault.

Project Manager – Often a role where you have the responsibility to get things done but not the authority to get people to do the work. You need influencing skills, otherwise known as cajoling, begging, pleading, pestering, conniving, threatening, yelling, and bribing.

Game Developer – Working 80+ hour weeks is expected in this field, and the pay’s not even that great. If you like games, then play them; don’t throw away your youth making the game companies rich.

Junior Recruiter – Despite the negative feelings I may sometimes have for hungry junior recruiters, I fully understand it’s really a high-pressure sales position. Usually it’s sink or swim in the first 90 days. Their choices are to cold-call prospects who hang up on them or else get yelled at by the managing partner who sees them as dead weight.

CRUD Jobs

2008-10-24T18:59:00.001-07:00

If you’re not familiar with the term, ‘CRUD’ is an acronym for Create / Retrieve / Update / Delete, which are the basic database operations performed by a typical internal IT system. From that history the term has evolved into somewhat of a pejorative for boring, monotonous development jobs, typically involving applications with forms tied to databases with nothing much else interesting going on.

Of course, there are plenty of people happily doing CRUD work, so the stereotype is not always accurate. Still, the conventional wisdom is that CRUD work is not where you want to be if you are interested in leading edge technologies.

BTW, this contrast of CRUD vs. non-CRUD systems is analogous to my earlier cost center / profit center discussion, and it just so happens that most CRUD development is done in cost centers.

Unfortunately, the cold truth is that the vast majority of software work out there is done on CRUD systems. You see it everywhere – payroll, CRM, ERP, loan processing, etc. These types of applications far outnumber the more glamorous Google / Facebook type positions (although websites like Facebook could also be considered CRUD applications!).

Note also that some people use the term ‘IT’ or “Information Technology” to refer to CRUD jobs in general. However, I like to use the term IT as a broader description of the software engineering industry. So when some people put down IT as a dead-end function, make sure you understand what they’re referring to. Chances are they’re referring specifically to CRUD jobs in internal MIS departments (i.e., cost centers).

As a candidate you may have a choice between a seemingly stable CRUD job vs. a faster paced position at a software company or website. In these cases I’d generally recommend you choose the software company, all other things being equal. You’ll most likely learn more, have a more rewarding career path, and work with more challenging and leading edge technologies.

Working for a Cost Center vs. a Profit Center

2008-10-21T07:56:00.000-07:00

Being an organizational profit center means the work you do generates revenues for the company. Conversely, being a cost center means you are costing the company money; i.e., you amount to overhead. So obviously it’s better to be thought of as a money maker than a money loser. Companies tend to invest heavily in profit centers, whereas they’re always trying to cut costs in a cost center, especially in an economic downturn.

So what kind of developer jobs will land you in a profit center? Typically, product development in a web or software company is associated with a profit center. To put it another way, if your company’s customers pay money to use what you are creating, or if your work generates revenues in some other way (e.g., advertising), then you are part of a profit center.

On the other hand, if you write systems that are used internally, whether by Accounting, Sales, or anyone else, you are most likely working in a cost center. It would behoove you to transfer to another department or to a new job that is associated with a profit center. Even if your internal customers are singing your praises, it may only take some downturn in business before the company decides to engage in belt tightening and the grim reaper visits your department with pink slips.

OOP and Programming Language Snobbery

2008-10-16T12:28:00.000-07:00

I grill all candidates on Object-Oriented Programming skills even if they are purely front end developers. After all, ASP.NET does provide a separation between markup and logic (and also presentation, via CSS). Hence the logic portion in the C# codebehind needs to be written with proper object oriented design principles in mind.

Unfortunately some people who got their start in classic ASP have bad habits as they were accustomed to writing snippets of C# or VB.NET code directly within the ASP page markup. <% This is bad! %> They may have never needed to use O-O principles or design patterns, and hence never felt the need to develop such skills.

If candidates do not have direct experience with C#, I look for experience in C++ or Java -- languages with OO characteristics. That’s not to say that Smalltalk, Lisp, Pascal, etc. are not OO languages, but they are more academically oriented and less directly relevant to the kind of development we do. Even VB.NET, which is pretty darned close to C# nowadays, is often looked down upon, fairly or not.

Does it really matter whether a person has programmed in the O-O paradigm, or more specifically in a C++ style language? Or that they can properly describe a C# class, an interface, or a delegate? Perhaps some will see such questions as a trivia contest. However, it really does matter that developers know this stuff, so that they don’t make wrong decisions such as passing parameters by value instead of reference, making unnecessary copies of objects, calling components out of proc vs. in-proc, etc. These things do matter, and wrong design decisions have consequences.

Some people may also wonder whether this is a case of language snobbery. What’s wrong with a candidate having a background in something like VBScript, Python, or Perl, if those languages can get the job done? Why, nothing, of course. But the more (non-O-O) spaghetti code that’s created, the less maintainable the code base becomes. Plus, such an approach definitely does not scale. And maintainability and scalability are the key requirements of successful software engineering.

Generalist or Specialist?

2008-10-14T09:08:00.000-07:00

Continuing on the topic of learning new technologies, should you learn as many skills as possible or should you specialize in a few? Which will make you more marketable?

In my world view there is no such thing as an IT handyman. Actually, come to think of it that’s not a bad analogy. If you are constructing a skyscraper would you want a team consisting of an architect, a general contractor, and skilled tradesmen – or would you hire a bunch of handymen? The obvious answer is that you’d want specialists who are experienced in their fields. There’s no way that a single person can be an expert architect, draftsman, mason, carpenter, plumber, electrician, etc., all in one, regardless of what they might like to believe.

The situation is not too different in the technology world. In fact, IT presents an even wider array of skills for people to learn and master. While it’s true that good engineers can pick up new technologies fairly quickly, it still takes years to become an expert at most of those skills. So when I see a resume from a candidate that claims expertise with ASP.NET, J2EE, LAMP, Ruby on Rails, C#, C++, VB.NET, PHP, Perl, Python, TCL, Flash, SQL Server, Oracle, etc. -- naturally I’m more than a bit skeptical.

My recommendation is to pick a single track and become as good as you can with that skillset. You can (and probably should) supplement those skills with other technologies, but when the rubber hits the road you need to show real competence in a particular area. The tracks might include:

Front End Web Development:

ASP.NET / C#, or
PHP, Python, or Perl, or
Java / JSP / Struts / Spring MVC, or
Ruby On Rails

Middleware / Data Services:

C# / WCF / ADO.NET / SQL Server, or
Java / Spring / Hibernate / Oracle, or
MySQL + various ORMs

Infrastructure

IIS / Windows Server, or
Apache / Linux / Solaris

This is obviously not a complete list, and there are many possible technology combinations, but it does highlight a number of possible specialization tracks. Many of the tracks are complementary, but it’s unlikely most people could be experts in more than one or two of them.

You might be wondering, does this advice conflict with what I said earlier about learning lots of different technologies? Not at all; my philosophy remains the same -- you need breadth as well as depth. Show that you are familiar with a range of technologies, but pick an area of expertise and learn that set of technologies inside and out.

Following ‘Hot’ Technologies

2008-10-10T09:27:00.000-07:00

To maximize your marketability, should you learn .NET or LAMP? Or Java? C# or VB.NET? PHP, Perl, or Python? Flash/Actionscript or Silverlight? Ruby on Rails? Or something else? What technologies will be hot a year or two from now? Or in five years?

There is no easy answer to this question. The marketplace is littered with corpses of technologies that were once considered ‘hot’ but which are now shunned. I’m thinking for example of (in no particular order) CGI, EJB (v1), MFC, TCL, etc. Going back further, you might remember such fallen stars as Delphi, PowerBuilder, and Sybase. Heck, if you go back far enough, I still remember when Turbo Pascal was considered hot stuff.

Even now there are technologies which were recently hot but which are on the wane. I’m thinking of things like Cold Fusion and classic ASP. There is still some demand for these skills, but I foresee that declining in the future as companies transition to other technologies.

Looking ahead though it’s impossible to see what technologies will ‘prevail’. Most likely there will be several technologies that thrive within their respective segments; there’s no reason that a single technology has to dominate everything.

Right now, I’d say that .NET, Java EE 5, and LAMP are all good choices for a career in web development, with the ‘P’ in LAMP being PHP, Python, or Perl. Internal IT departments seem to favor .NET and Java, while most startups lean towards PHP. Ruby on Rails is also becoming increasingly popular, though a lot of people remain skeptical about Ruby for large scale applications. Of course in five years the picture may be very different.

My advice? It’s similar to what I posted last time. Pick an area of specialty, whether it’ s.NET, Java, LAMP, or RoR, but read up and stay current on the other technologies. In this fast-moving technology world (and a fast-changing economy), you want to hedge your bets wherever possible.

Keeping Your Skills Up-To-Date

2008-10-07T07:36:00.000-07:00

How do you keep current on the latest skills when you are not exposed to it in your day to day work? I suggest you get good books on new technologies and read them at work or home when you can. If you don’t have much free time you could read a chapter during lunch or other breaks.

It’s important that you keep up on new skills even if your job has you working on the same things every day. In fact, learning new things is especially important if you work with the same technologies every day, as your job won’t provide you with much learning opportunity.

To illustrate, let me recount my own story (Warning! Old fogey nostalgia alert!). Over the years I’ve had to learn a new set of skills and technologies every few years. The progression went something like this:

BASIC: This was ‘classic’ BASIC, not the ‘Visual’ kind, and certainly not VB.Net. This was how I learned to program back in my high school days, tinkering on an Atari 800. There was also a bit of 6502 Assembler thrown in for fun.
Pascal: I learned this in my first college programming class, using Sun UNIX workstations. Some old timers still remember when Turbo Pascal was the hottest language around for PC development.
C: I learned this in on the job, in fact in my first job out of school, reading Kernighan & Ritchie. We were still using Sun UNIX boxes at work.
Windows (3.x) development: Around 1990 I taught myself this using the original Petzold book, the bible of Windows programming. Back then we still had to worry about programs fitting into 64K in the small/tiny/medium memory models.
C++: In the early to mid 90’s I taught myself this language using books like Stroustrup’s ARM (not the best learning material, BTW).
Win32 API, MFC, Sockets, SQL, VB: I learned these standard tools for desktop & client-server development during the mid 90’s.
COM/OLE, STL, ATL – Thick books taught me these highlights(?) of traditional OO design and programming in the late ‘90s.
C# / .NET, ASP.NET, HTML, CSS, JavaScript – Re-tooling my skills for the web and .NET after 2001.
XML/XHTML, AJAX, WCF – The latest and greatest .NET stuff circa 2007. Also learning Java EE5 on the side.

I would consider each of these to be distinct generations (or epochs) of technologies. That means that I’ve gone through nine or so different generations of skills, and I’m most likely not done yet. In a few years I might have to learn a whole new set of technologies; perhaps it will be LAMP or Ruby on Rails, or it could be a new set of technologies that have yet to be invented.

The point here is that you need to constantly update your skills every few years as they will inevitably become outdated over time. Hence as a software engineer you can never really afford to stop learning, unless you want to exclude yourself from the jobs that demand the most current skills.

Considering a Position with a Startup

2008-10-02T07:49:00.000-07:00

Earlier I discussed valuing stock options for a startup. Your mileage will vary, of course, but how exactly will it vary? Joining a startup may provide you with tremendous opportunities, but it could also leave you out on the street within a year. Hence you need to go in with your eyes open.

An early stage startup may have less than 10 employees and you may very well be one of the first technical people brought on board. You will likely get a pretty good stock option package but only a modest salary. The company at this point is probably running off on seed or angel funding, or possibly financed by the founders themselves -- so there’s not a lot of excess cash floating around. The company needs desperately to make the first version of its product work well enough to attract additional rounds of funding. And of course it goes without saying that you’ll be spending the vast majority of your waking hours chained to your desk.

Joining a startup at this point is undoubtedly a risky proposition, but it also offers the greatest potential reward. As the company grows you will likely benefit from several promotions, and if you have a successful exit you may be able to cash in your options for a healthy profit. On the other hand, it’s just as likely, if not more, that the company will wither on the vine or crash and burn spectacularly.

There are many reasons why an early stage startup can fail. A poor product is certainly one obvious reason, but it’s only one factor of many. Poor management is another common one, along with a lack of clear product vision, or a poor understanding of the market. And of course luck and timing also plays a factor. Woe to you if you launched your Internet startup in early 2001!

Hence when you interview with an early stage startup you should ask hard questions to the top management (whom you’ll definitely meet). Ask about their previous experience managing startups, the funding situation, the investors (both angels and VCs) and their connections, the board of advisors, etc.

With a later stage startup, the organization will likely have gone through a few rounds of financing and should have a product already in the marketplace. This type of company probably has 20-100 employees and is looking to bolster its engineering capacity to ramp up product development. They should also have a marketing and sales organization in place, or the beginnings of one.

With such a company you should be able to get a fairly decent sense of how well they are doing. When you interview the senior managers they should be willing to tell you outright whether the company is profitable. If they hem and haw, or say “that depends on how you define profitability”, that should raise red flags.

Still, a company at this stage has shown that they are capable of raising funding, and they should have a decent revenue stream, even if they are not exactly profitable. Hence just by virtue of the organizational inertia your risk of being laid off six months after starting is low. However, your chances of getting rich off stock options are low as well, since at this point they will most likely start getting stingy with their stock option grants.

Larger Company vs. Smaller Company

2008-09-30T07:36:00.000-07:00

Another career choice you might face is whether to go work at a smaller company, perhaps a startup, versus a larger established company. If you have not worked for both types of organizations, here are some gross generalizations of the differences you can expect.

True to the stereotype, larger companies often do have lots of red tape and organizational inertia. It can take a long time and many approvals to get anything done, and you might find yourself fervently negotiating with various people to get the tools, accounts and machine permissions you need to do your job.

On the other hand, large companies often have larger budgets for hardware, software, etc., and can afford to throw more bodies at a problem (for better or worse). In most large companies you’ll see large numbers of business analysts and project managers, whose job it seems sometimes is purely to create and manage red tape (I jest… maybe). But they can also be a useful resource and help you deal with the red tape and bureaucracy.

Large companies also typically pay better, at least in terms of starting salaries. They also provide more opportunities for advancement just through their sheer size and natural turnover. However, large companies also typically have strict guidelines on things like salary raises and promotions.

Smaller companies are more flexible in many ways. They may not have as much of a process in place, which can be both good and bad. Such an environment may give you the freedom and speed to do your work more efficiently, but it can also lead to chaos without close coordination, especially as the organization scales up. Not to mention which, resources may be tight, in terms of both money and people.

So which type of organization should you pick if you have a choice? I’d recommend that you get experience in both types of companies. Only then will you be in a position to decide which environment is the right one for you.

Job Hopping

2008-09-25T09:07:00.000-07:00

It used to be that being labeled as a Job Hopper was the kiss of death. If you had too many stints of less than 2-3 years each you were considered unreliable and a risky bet. Perhaps you couldn’t hold down a job, or maybe you were just flighty. Both attributes were frowned upon by hiring managers, and your resume was more likely to end up in the circular file. But times have changed.

More and more I see resumes where people have been in their current or most recent jobs for less than a year – and I’m not referring to contractors, either. I last saw this phenomenon during the dot com boom of the late 90’s, when it was the norm for people to change jobs every 12-18 months. Some say that we’ve been going through another boom with Web 2.0 (though the recession may have spoiled that party).

During both booms there were more opportunities than qualified people, and the candidates that were in demand found it rewarding to change jobs more frequently. The goal was not just to increase their pay, though that was certainly a factor, but also to find better companies and more challenging opportunities. Of course this was not good for the companies that spent time and money hiring and training people, only to see them leave just when they were becoming most productive.

So here we are in 2008 and I’m faced with resumes of people with multiple short stints. Do I think any less of such candidates? That they might develop wanderlust and bolt after a year? Of course that’s a concern and a risk, and certainly one that I have to weigh. But If I believe that my company is an attractive one, and that it’s likely to continue to be attractive vs. other companies, I think it’s worth taking a risk.

So how have my gambles played out? My record is probably subject to selective recall and analysis, but I believe that the vast majority of my hires have stayed on for at least two years. If they stay for only one year I’d consider it a failure, but after two years I’d say we’ve gotten a clear net benefit from them.

Lateral Moves vs. Stepping Stones

2008-09-23T07:45:00.001-07:00

In general, making numerous lateral moves is not good for your career. It makes recruiters and hiring managers think your career has not been moving forward.

Still, there are cases where lateral moves are warranted. For instance, one obvious possibility is if you lose your job, or are on the verge of losing your job. Any port in a storm, as the saying goes. But let’s put that scenario aside for the moment. What other reasons are there for making a lateral move?

One is when a lateral move is not just a lateral move but a stepping stone. Perhaps you have a certain desired job in mind, but it’s difficult to get there from where you are at the moment. For instance, you’d really like to become an ASP.NET web architect, but you are currently a C++ desktop application developer. Realistically you are not going to achieve your goal in your current job, or most likely, even in your next job.

In a situation like this you may have to take one or more baby steps. Fist, you’ll need to transition out of your C++ desktop environment to a .NET web development shop. And since not too many web shops will take someone with minimal experience in the area, you may have to make a lateral move into a position at a less than stellar outfit, just to pick up the skills.

Once you’ve earned your chops at web development you might set your eyes on the prize, that of web architect. But then, your job as a CRUD web developer at JoeSchmoe, Inc. may not provide a path to a Web Architect position. In fact, your CRUD web shop may not even have architect positions at all. Hence you’ll have to try to land a position at a more attractive web organization, one which has an architect track.

But wait, that glamorous web company obviously won’t hire you on as a web architect, coming as you are from some no-name CRUD shop. They may take you on as a web engineer, however – another lateral move. But now at least you’re in the major leagues, there amongst the pros – and you have a chance to prove yourself. So all you have to do now is show you’re smarter and better than everyone else there, people who’ve been doing serious web development for half their lives. Piece of cake, right?

Other Career Tracks

2008-09-17T10:41:00.000-07:00

If the senior developer /architect and dev manager tracks don’t appeal to you (and assuming you don’t want to go into QA), there are still a couple of other career tracks you can pursue: Project Management and Product Management.

Project Managers, aka Technical Project Managers, aka Program Managers, are the ones who ‘drive’ projects. They create schedules, track progress, coordinate with other teams, and identify and mitigate issues and risks. Typically however they do not have any technical resources reporting to them.

The actual scope of responsibilities for the various flavors of Project Mangers varies widely between organizations. At Microsoft for instance Program Managers are quite technical and behave more like Dev managers; at other companies Project Managers may be non-technical people who have never coded a day in their lives.

Project Managers often have a difficult and thankless job. Not only do they lack direct authority over the people they need to do coordinate, but many people see Project Managers as unnecessary overhead. Still, some people thrive in a role juggling spreadsheets and Gantt charts. And if they’re fortunate, they might end up in an agile development organization where Project Managers can take a more central, albeit nontraditional, role (e.g., Scrum Masters).

Product Managers by contrast determine product requirements. They may or may not have coding experience, often coming from a creative or business background. What’s important for them is having their finger on the marketplace and being able to see things at a higher level. They are often the ‘face’ of the product or its features to the public and to top management.

Product Managers can specify what needs to be done without worrying so much about how it is to be done, though feature negotiation will still be required with Project Managers and Development Managers. So in many ways a Product Manager position is easier than a Project Manager one, and carries with it more glory and exposure with less of the accountability.

That’s not to say that Product Management is all milk and honey. Product Managers usually have to field countless questions from developers, questions they often cannot answer. And at smaller companies Product Management is often considered a niche position without a full career path like development or even Project Management positions.

Of course, it’s possible for you to move back and forth between the developer, dev manager, project manager, product manager, and even QA (gasp!) roles. This happens more often than you might think, especially at larger software companies.

So my recommendation if you have to make a career decision away from development? Choose Product Management if possible. It’s good work if you can get it.

Development Track vs. Going Into Management

2008-09-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

At some point in your career you will face a choice: continue on a technical track or move into a management role. Some people express the desire to do both, but generally that’s not possible, at least not in the long run.

At less desirable companies the technical track usually stops at something like a “Senior Engineer” level, and to advance much further in pay you have no choice but to become a manager. But the better companies will provide a purely technical track with plenty of advancement potential so that engineers not interested in management can still continue to grow.

The advanced technical track may go something like this:

Senior Engineer
Principal Engineer
Senior Principal Engineer
Architect
Senior Architect
Chief Architect

The exact structure and titles will vary by company; many places skip the Principal Engineer grades altogether. Also, the relative equivalent of an architect position to a management position will vary by company. At some places an Architect title is comparable to a Director level management position, with comparable pay; however, at other places an Architect may be nothing special – kind of like how at investment banks everybody and their brother is at least a Vice President.

If you are torn between continuing on a technical track vs. a management one, you should ask yourself what really interests you. Are you drawn towards learning new technologies, coding for hours on end, and solving complex technical problems? Do you love to whiteboard and talk tech with colleagues? You might want to aim for an architect track.

If on the other hand you enjoy the idea of building up a team, assigning resources to tasks, working with product managers, and in general dealing with the bigger picture, management might the path for you. Oh, and it helps if you have pointy hair.

QA vs. Development Track

2008-09-11T10:25:00.000-07:00

If you are a fresh college graduate, or even a few years into your software engineering career, you may be faced with a fork in the road: go into development or QA.

There is sometimes a sense of superiority amongst developers since they are not ‘stuck’ doing testing like the QA people. Hence QA is sometimes seen as a dead-end field, and there is a bit of truth to that stereotype. Once you start in QA the tendency of most companies is to keep you there, and it’s not so easy to switch over to actual development. Which is not to say that transferring out is not impossible, of course -- but you shouldn’t count on it.

If you do decide to go into QA, bear in mind there are often two separate tracks. In one, you’ll do feature testing, usually manually. You run programs, click on buttons, fill out forms, etc., and check that the system behaves as expected according to a set test procedure. This is called “Black Box” testing. It can be rather tedious and unglamorous work. If you’re lucky you may get to write some scripts to automate some of your testing. This position is commonly called a “SQA Analyst”.

Another track is where you are actually involved with the source code. You may review and critique code written by the developers, and you may write test harnesses to exercise the components the developers write. This is called “White Box” testing. You may also be heavily involved writing automated testing tools and scripts. This type of position is sometimes called a “QA Engineer”, and is more highly regarded; it can and often does lead to positions on the development side.

Certifications

2008-09-05T07:52:00.000-07:00

Some web developer candidates think that getting a professional certification (e.g., MCP, MCSD, MCSE, etc.) will be the golden ticket into that great job. They may spend hundreds or thousands of dollars preparing for and taking these exams. So are the certifications worth it?

Personally I’ve seen many candidates with certifications and many without. And frankly, I can’t really tell that the people with certifications know any more than those without them. It could be that people take coursework or study for these exams and then promptly forget the material afterwards, kind of like what I did all throughout college. Hence I’ve learned to pretty much discount certification on resumes for the most part.

My advice? The certifications may be a good approach if you are a new developer just starting out and need to learn the material anyway. Or else if you are an experienced engineer but have no real distinguishing characteristics on your resume, the certifications may make a difference with some hiring managers. But if you are an experienced engineer with a solid work history, you shouldn’t bother with them -- they’re just window dressing.

Diploma Mills

2008-09-03T08:34:00.000-07:00

In case you’re not aware, a Diploma mill is a place that will give you a Bachelor’s degree (or beyond) with only the barest pretense of a formal education process. Often it’s Cash & Carry for a degree.

Some diploma mills are online operations, but that doesn’t mean that all online degree programs are diploma mills. Still, online degrees often carry a bit of a stigma, fairly or not, of being degrees in name only.

There are also some brick & mortar schools which technically are not diploma mills, but which provide something less than the 4-year college experience. I’m thinking of places like DeVry, ITT, and the University of Phoenix. It may be unfair to lump these organizations in with diploma mills, but that’s a common perception, for better or for worse. I’m not addressing those institutions here, only the true diploma mills.

Fact is, the looser the standards at these institutions the more risk you’re taking by putting them on your resume. When I skim your resume I may not recognize the school name (e.g., “Central Intercontinental School of the American Pacific”), shrug, and move on. But the lack of a real education may come through in the interview. And even if you pass the interview, the true nature of the school will likely be revealed during the background check.

My advice? If you want to put a degree on your resume, you should make the commitment and sacrifices necessary to graduate from a well recognized school. If you can’t do that, you should not bother at all with the diploma mills. You’re ultimately only fooling yourself.

Should I Get an MBA?

2008-08-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

Some technical professionals wonder if they should get an MBA to kick-start their career. But unless you are specifically looking to go into management (dev management, product management, or project management), it’s largely a waste of time and money. In fact, even if you do decide to go into a management field it may still be a waste. And this is coming from someone who holds an MBA.

Some may claim that having an MBA from a prestigious school looks great on your resume and opens doors. Sure, that’s certainly the case – if you’re looking for a job in investment banking or consumer product marketing. Otherwise it’s just another shiny star on your resume that attracts attention, but which usually won’t help you make the sale.

So then is an MBA valuable for the things you learn in the program? That depends on whether you actually end up using the material taught there, which is a combination of the following:

Economics
Finance
Marketing
HR & Organizational Behavior
Information Systems
Corporate Strategy
International Business

If you come from an engineering background you may be surprised by how lightweight most of the MBA coursework is. Perhaps the most difficult classes are in Economics and Finance, and even they do not begin to approach the difficulty of a freshman Computer Science class. Back in business school I found it funny to see Liberal Arts graduates complaining about how difficult our classes were; obviously they did not stay up nights in college trying to digest 1,200-page engineering texts full of partial differential equations.

So if the value of an MBA is not in the coursework, what else is there? Well, some people talk about the added perspectives they gain from the broader business education, but that is a nebulous benefit at best. Nay, the real benefit is something they don’t necessarily tout up front; it’s the interaction skills that you gain from group assignments, and the relationships that you develop with your fellow students.

The value of such skills and networking is difficult to measure, but it is definitely tangible. Still, is it worth the significant opportunity cost of taking two years off of work and going hopelessly into debt? Only you can answer that question. But if you can manage to take an MBA program part time, or better yet, have your company pay for it, that will make the decision much easier.

Do I Need an Advanced Degree?

2008-08-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

I’m seeing more and more candidates with Master’s degrees, and even a few with PhDs. Does it make a difference to the hiring manager?

Not a whole lot. I evaluate candidates based on their performance, not what degrees are on their resume. If their Master’s Degree of PhD helps them answer the questions better, then great, but otherwise it doesn’t make much of a difference.

One possible exception is that with H1B candidates with foreign degrees, I may look more favorably upon people who have completed a Master’s Degree in the U.S. I think the more time they have spent in the U.S. the better, as it helps them adapt to the cultural aspects of this country. And if that time was spent studying technology in a degree program, all the better. I don’t particularly care that they might have done it just to get a visa.

Some people feel that there is a kind of degree inflation in the market. At one time you were considered well educated if you had a bachelor’s degree (or even an Associate’s), but now since everyone has a bachelor’s degree, you need a Master’s to stand out.

I don’t fundamentally disagree with the notion that Bachelor’s degrees are becoming commonplace. However, if a Bachelor’s degree is sufficient for a career in software engineering (which it is), then there is really no need to try and distinguish yourself with an advanced degree. It can be expensive, it takes a year or two of your life, and in the end that same amount of time spent in a job may look just as good on your resume.

Do I Need a Degree from a Prestigious School?

2008-08-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

If you are reading this blog chances are you’re far beyond the age where you have to decide what college to attend. Still, you might have kids who are facing that situation, or young people might be coming to you for sage advice (hardly likely in this day and age, but you never know).

I once worked at a company that only hired people from the top schools. Places like Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Brown. Which made me wonder how I ended up there, as my Ivy League credentials were nonexistent. But in any event, what was the result of such selective hiring? Was the company a stellar development shop?

Not really. In fact, it was a dysfunctional organization that produced rather mediocre code. That was the result of their policy of hiring the smartest people from the best colleges regardless of their degree, resulting in physics, math, and psychology majors doing software development. Sometimes that worked okay and sometimes not so well. Pair that with a lack of formal processes, and you had a mess on your hands.

Anyway, as for the pedigree of your educational institution – the fact is, the longer you are out of school the less your alma mater matters. You can still highlight it on your resume if you’re proud of attending that top notch school, but at some point your experience and work accomplishments begin to matter much more.

Still, this doesn’t mean that getting a degree from Podunk State is just as good as a degree from Cal Tech. Your choice of school will matter earlier on when you are just starting out your career. Since you don’t have much of a track record by that point, companies will ask you where you went to school, what your major was, and inquire about your GPA. Any advantage you can wield at this point can be important in getting a first great job and laying a good foundation for your career.

Do I Need a Degree in Computer Science?

2008-08-22T08:46:00.000-07:00

Some people ask whether they should get a degree in Computer Science, or perhaps a comparable degree like Computer Engineering or Information Technology. Or would a Math degree be sufficient? How about one in Physics? Or Civil Engineering? Or for that matter, English Literature?

I have seen plenty of successful engineers with degrees in non-computer related fields. That shows that CS-type degrees are not strictly necessary to do well in this field. Software Engineering is not a tightly regulated field like accounting, law, medicine, or even architecture. Software Engineers do not need a license, nor do they need to pass any exams to work in the field. There are certifications they can get, but the value of many certifications is questionable. Hence it’s fair to ask whether people with degrees other than CS can be just as qualified as CS graduates. There is no simple answer.

On one level, some companies, especially large ones with formal training programs, like to take in the smartest people regardless of their college majors and train them on their approach to software development. For the type of relatively standardized work these companies do, this may be a perfectly valid approach.

At other companies however, formal training is a luxury and new employees are expected to come up to speed quickly. And in these environments the lack of a formal computer science education can be a distinct disadvantage.

Why is this the case? After all, aren’t there lots of teenage kids hacking away and even starting their own Internet companies, all without a CS degree? So why can’t a smart, college educated Political Science major do just as well in software development?

Well, my answer is that people who have focused their studies in non-CS fields are not likely to have the grounding in basic computer science concepts that are necessary to be successful right away in a software engineering environment. Sure, they can pick up these skills and knowledge on the job, but typically that happens in dribs and drabs, and they never get the solid grounding they should have had in the first place. I’m talking about skills and knowledge like the following:

Data structures: linked lists, queues and stacks, B-trees, graphs, etc.
Algorithms: Sorting, Searching, Recursion, Design Patterns, Big-O notation
Object oriented design (Encapsulation/Abstraction, Reusability/Inheritance , Polymorphism)
Databases (Table design, Normalization, Indexing, SQL Queries)
Discrete Mathematics (Switching theory, Binary logic, Numeric algorithms)

These are not necessarily esoteric, ivory tower concepts; many of them are things that may be used in the context of a developer’s daily tasks. You’d be surprised how many people I interview who have 10+ years of programming experience but do not understand these basic concepts. And not surprisingly, many of them do not have a formal CS education.

Do I Need a College Degree?

2008-08-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

Many large companies will list a B.S. or similar 4-year degree in Computer Science or a related field as a job prerequisite. No CS degree and you don’t get to play, for better or worse.

At smaller companies the requirements are often not nearly as strict. I’ve seen startups with senior employees (even executives) who never even completed college – and I’m not just talking about Microsoft, either. And in fact not too long ago I hired a fellow who did not have a college degree (but was working on it part time).

As to whether college is worth it for the personal edification – well, I can’t really answer that. It’s true that in many ways you can learn more on the job than in school; however, pursuing the right kind of college education will teach you the fundamentals of computer science that are all too easy to gloss over if you are self taught.

So if you are weighing whether you should head off to college after high school, or return to school after some time off, or just stay in school and finish up that degree, I would heartily recommend it. It opens up more doors for you, and if you don’t do it now you might regret it later in life. And as you get older it becomes exponentially less likely that you’ll actually go back and finish up a degree.

So my bottom line? If you have a chance to get or complete a bachelor’s degree, do so if at all possible. It may open many doors for you that might otherwise be closed, and you’ll also make yourself proud.

Advice for Those Just Starting out of College

2008-08-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

If you are a new or recent graduate, you might ask yourself whether you should work for a large, established company or take a chance on a smaller company or startup.

If you have a large, well known and respected company like Microsoft / Google / Oracle / Sun on your resume, you are more likely to stand out than if you worked for “JoeSchmo Savings & Loan” or “Mom & Pop’s Web Shop”. Also, the fact that you were employed by such respected companies means that you’ve already passed through some tough screening processes. And finally, you may also learn more at the larger companies, especially since they are more likely to have formal training programs and knowledgeable employees.

Also, larger companies typically pay better to start with than smaller companies, as they have more financial resources.

On the other hand, people who work at smaller shops are more likely to acquire a wider range of experience. For example, at Microsoft you might work on one small component for Internet Explorer; however, at a small web shop you might be responsible for writing the HTML and CSS, the ASP.NET codebehind, JavaScript on the client side, and ADO.NET in the business layer, as well as setting up and maintaining a SQL Server box and an IIS box. You would never get that breadth of experience at a large company, as that work would likely be divided up amongst at least four or five people.

Plus, at a smaller company it’s possible that you’ll advance faster – if the company grows, that is. Larger companies often have more prerequisites for advancement, such as time spent in a position, advanced degrees, etc. Larger companies may also have restrictions on things like pay raises. Smaller companies are less likely to be burdened by such policies.

So the choice is yours: a better looking resume, or more hands-on experience. Not an easy decision by any means.

Back to Blogging (and rambling)

2008-08-15T08:11:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm back after being on break for a couple of weeks. Anyway, starting next week I'll resume blogging about recruiting, interviewing, and management issues.

In the meantime, I realized something the other day. Among my circle of friends I do not know of a single smoker. Not a one. Of course some of those people might have smoked back in the day, but none of them do now. And I don’t think I’m a statistical oddity in this, either, at least here in California.

And yet, at my last company I saw a lot of our engineers hanging out in front of our building and puffing on cigarettes. Many of them were people I never expected would be smokers – not that there is really a smoker profile, of course. Still, in my experience most engineers I have met do not smoke, as far as I'm aware. So it was a bit surprising to me that so many of my colleagues liked to take a drag every few hours. And not only that, they were some of the brightest people at the company!

You might ask, what does this have to do with recruiting? Well, very little, actually. Except that once I ran across a company that required candidates to sign a statement that they were not smokers. I think it had to do with getting a discounted group rate on health insurance. Now INAL, and I don’t know if this is legal. It’s entirely possible someone might claim that a smoking habit is a disability and is federally protected. Still, the company seemed to be not so subtly discouraging smokers from applying.

Anyway, I began to wonder why people smoke nowadays, especially engineers. It should be abundantly clear to everyone by now that smoking can cause serious medical harm; even the tobacco companies have admitted it. And I expect that engineers are pretty smart people as a whole. So I asked myself why they would make a conscious, rational decision to continue smoking in the face of all the evidence that smoking is bad for them.

Then I finally realized (after someone bluntly pointed it out to me) that there might be an upside to the smoking habit. Our smokers regularly gathered outside the building and spent time not just smoking, but also shooting the breeze about what was going on in their respective parts of the organization. And in a large(r) company, current information about what was going on organizationally was like gold. And perhaps this information, and the relationships built with their fellow outcasts, was in some small part a contributor to their success within the organization.

Now of course I'm not suggesting that anyone should take up smoking just to build connections and improve their knowledge acquisition process. But this example points out how social networks (the in-person kind) can form under perverse conditions and create bonds that might not have existed otherwise. And it also shows that trying to screen out smokers in the recruiting process may be a bit counterproductive.

Interview Suit Advice

2008-07-31T09:15:00.000-07:00

Earlier I blogged about my recommendation to wear a suit to interviews. However, not everyone may be familiar with the intricacies of wearing suits, especially since most of us technical folks rarely have occasion to dress up in our daily lives. So if you do decide to get all decked out, how can you best dazzle the interviewer with your keen fashion sense? Well, to keep you from having to pick up a copy of GQ, here is my “Interview Suit” advice. Of course, if such metrosexual topics don’t interest you, or if you just don’t’ believe in wearing suits to interviews, feel free to skip this blog post.

As I noted earlier most of us wear suits only to interviews, weddings, and funerals. This means you really only need one suit. Or possibly two, if you do lots of interviews or go to lots of weddings (but hopefully not lots of funerals).

Your suit(s) should be dark. Black, dark blue/navy, and charcoal gray are good options. These colors are the most traditional and most reliable. Avoid bold pinstripes and loud patterns.

The jacket should have a conservative cut with two or three buttons. Three is typically considered more traditional and two more stylish. The fashion industry seems to go back and forth over time on the two vs. three button question, but you really can’t miss with either.

I prefer no vents in the jacket but some people prefer a single center back vent. No problem either way. Just don’t go for two side vents; that just screams, “Bond, James Bond”.

The suit material should be wool. No polyester or other man made fabrics. The difference is obvious in the drape, the way the garment hangs. And besides, wool garments last much longer than synthetics.

No matter where you buy your suit you should have it altered to fit. Not just the sleeve length and pant hems, but the jacket itself as well. A lot of young people tend to be lean (yes, even engineers), but jackets are generally cut fuller to accommodate a variety of body types. You should have the jacket taken in so it doesn’t look like a tent hanging from your shoulders.

Here is a page with some good advice on how to select a suit for your body type:
http://www.ev-said.com/2007/08/men-suit-your-shape.html

Now here’s the important part. If at all possible, don’t buy your suit off the rack! Considering that your suit (or suits) is an important investment, you should consider getting a custom tailored suit. Not bespoke, necessarily, but custom tailored (aka “made to order”).

What’s the difference between the two? Well, a bespoke suit involves a tailor who takes your measurements, cuts custom paper patterns, and brings you back for one or two fittings where the suit is tweaked to perfection. Such a process results in a wonderful suit, but it also costs about $4,000 and up, which few people can afford.

The alternative is to go to a tailor who will take your measurements and send them off to lower cost cutters and tailors in Hong Kong, who then assemble the suit to your dimensions. The intermediate fittings are skipped, and you get back a ready made suit in a couple of months. The fit won’t be as perfect as with a bespoke suit, but it will still be far better than anything off the rack, even those that have been altered for you.

These (semi) custom made suits will cost in the neighborhood of $1000, which is within reach for a lot more people. And $1000 is really not that bad for a suit, especially if you are only going to have just one or two made. These suits will last you for years, possibly decades, so you can consider them an investment rather than an expense. And remember, for comparison there are some off the rack designer suits that can cost $2000-3000 or more.

One last piece of advice – if you do decide to shell out $1000 or more for a suit, be sure to keep it stored in a tightly sealed garment bag. Otherwise the moths might decide to feast on the fine wool (which they love), and you’ll be left crying over the newly found holes in your most expensive garment.

Blogs I Read

2008-07-30T09:36:00.000-07:00

Here are some blogs I read for my own edification, inspiration, or just plain amusement. This is not an endorsement of the points of view on these blogs; I just find myself reading them regularly.

Joel On Software: http://www.joelonsoftware.com

Hiring Technical People: http://www.jrothman.com/blog/htp

Recruiting Blogosphere: http://www.ere.net/blogs/recruiting_blogosphere

Manager Tools http://www.manager-tools.com

Mini-Microsoft: http://minimsft.blogspot.com

High Scalability: http://highscalability.com

TechCrunch: http://www.techcrunch.com

The Old New Thing: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing

The Dilbert Blog: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com

Why I Blog

2008-07-29T09:16:00.000-07:00

I see plenty of blogs by recruiters and HR, but I have not seen many blogs that represent the hiring manager’s point of view -- or the candidate’s for that matter. I have been both a hiring manager and a job candidate many times, so my goal is to share my war stories and lessons learned for the benefit of others.

Having said that, I don’t want to completely give away all the secrets of the hiring manager’s trade. I won’t say what I think a fair wage is for an X, Y, or Z position, as that information is highly subjective and dependent on many factors. I also try to avoid naming specific companies I’ve worked for or recruiters that I’ve worked with. Although, depending on how you got to this blog you may have figured out much of that information anyway.

Still, if you’d like to read about specific topics I haven’t covered, or want me to go into more depth on a topic I have discussed in passing, please let me know.

Just What Does HR Do, Anyway?

2008-07-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

Someone who has been waiting anxiously for an answer after an interview might be justified in wondering what exactly it is that HR people do all day. After all, how long can it take them to make a decision and process the paperwork? For that matter, is it even in HR’s hands at this point? Probably not.

In most cases HR is only a conduit, a partner with the hiring manager. They may do some light screening of resumes, schedule the interviews, and yes, handle paperwork. And if you do not hear back from the company, it’s most likely because of corporate policy and not the fault of an individual HR person.

I’ve said earlier that if you don’t hear back from a company it’s not because they’ve forgotten about you. Some individuals claim that such things do indeed happen, and that it has happened to them. I won’t dispute that; I can imagine that key people might go on vacation or leave the company, and paperwork might get lost. But I would say that if a company is careless enough to let an applicant fall through the cracks, chances are the candidate is not at the top of the “must hire” list anyway.

Some people have a dismissive attitude towards HR. They consider HR to be clueless gatekeepers who stand in the way of your getting to the hiring manager. And this attitude is seen in both candidates and outside recruiters. This is unfortunate and an unrealistic view of most companies.

At most tech companies HR generally does not consist of technical people. Some of them may have a technical degree, but most are far removed from technology. Still, they are not drones; they are key resources critical for implementing and managing the company’s strategy, work environment, and internal policies. They are often called “HR Business Partners” for good reason; they help technical managers navigate the often treacherous waters of hiring and managing employees.

Not Hearing Back After An Interview

2008-07-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

Sadly this practice is becoming more and more commonplace. It used to be in the old days that you would actually get written rejection letter from companies; back when I was in school we’d almost proudly show off the “Ding Letters” as badges of honor. Alas, most companies no longer send even an e-mail rejection letter.

There are two primary reasons companies do not get back to candidates. One is simply that it’s uncomfortable to tell someone they didn’t make the grade (although this was apparently not a problem in the past); another is potential liability. Personally I’ve never heard of a company being sued specifically for sending a candidate a rejection letter, but in our litigious society it’s easy to imagine it happening. People feel aggrieved and victimized for all sorts of reasons, and based on the wording of the rejection letter some candidates may see themselves as victims of discrimination.

My rule of thumb is that if a week goes by after your last interview and you haven’t heard anything back from the company, you should write them off. It might make sense to stretch this to two weeks if you know they are interviewing lots of candidates.

Waiting much longer than a couple of weeks to hear back is fruitless and likely to give you an ulcer. If that much time has gone by and you haven’t heard a peep, they’ve most likely decided to pass on you. If they had been interested in keeping you in the running they probably would have e-mailed you with some apology about the process taking so long.

Some people wonder whether it’s okay to contact the company if they do not hear back after an interview. Generally it’s fine to do this, but I’d predict that 99% of the time you’re not going to like the answer you get.

Signing Documents Before Starting Work

2008-07-24T09:10:00.000-07:00

Most companies will require you to sign various agreements before you start work. Before you blindly scribble your John Hancock on anything put in front of you, you should take a moment to see what you’re signing and what rights you’re giving up. And don’t forget, INAL – so this advice is worth precisely what you are paying for it.

Non-compete clauses are a silly business, especially since they’re generally not enforceable -- at least in California. Generally they are only meant to scare employees away from running into the arms of a competitor. Still, if non-competes concern you, you should ask at the time of the offer whether you’ll have to sign any such forms to work there.

Intellectual Property Protection is where you promise you will not take IP from the company when you leave. The IP can include source code, designs, specifications, and any other documents that may reveal the company’s secrets. This should be reasonable enough; the general understanding between companies is that departing employees can walk out the door with only what’s in their heads.

The Company will also likely want ownership of all your work while you are employed. Beware this can also include your side projects if they are relevant to your company’s field. So for instance if you work for a pest control firm and you design a better mousetrap on your own time, hoping to strike it out on your own and make it big – well, that design may actually belong to the company.

Many companies also forbid working on other for-profit ventures while you are employed with them. This may include consulting gigs on the side, running a micro-ISV (Independent Software Vendor), or serving on boards of directors. However, most will accommodate you and grandfather in any side ventures you already had before joining the company.

Finally, while this is not specifically a document to sign, some companies will ask you to submit to a drug test. This is a sensitive topic, and one that some people have strong feelings about. Personally I’ve worked at a couple of such companies and done drug tests for both of them, so my view should be clear: I wouldn’t let a drug test keep me from taking a job with an otherwise great company. Others may disagree, and I respect their views. But this being a free country, companies are free to test for illegal substances, just as candidates are free to walk away from nosy companies.

The Exit Interview

2008-07-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

Some companies conduct exit interviews and some don’t. Some do it purely as an exercise. Some do it religiously but only to cover the logistical details, such as ensuring that all company property has been turned in, that they have the person’s mailing address, etc. In all of these cases the companies are missing out on some useful information.

In my experience it’s not at all uncommon for departing employees to hold a grudge against their former employer. Perhaps it’s even the norm at some companies. It would behoove those employers to find out what’s eating away at these employees, as excess turnover is expensive and disruptive.

Some companies have the departing employees do the exit interview with their managers, which defeats the entire purpose of the exercise. The employees really need to have such discussions with HR or some other third party to ensure that they can be forthright and candid about their experiences.

As a departing employee, what should you say or not say in an exit interview? Well, there’s really not a whole lot of damage you can do at this point since you’re already leaving the company. Of course there is a slight possibility that you might return to work there again someday, but that’s not likely for most people. Still, you should remember what I’ve said about burning bridges. What you say to HR seemingly in confidence may very well get back to your manager, so avoid the temptation to incinerate that bridge, no matter how strong the urge.

If you really must get some things off your chest, I’d recommend that you genericise your complaints and not associate them with people, especially your old boss. Refer to them as organizational issues that should be addressed, not personal faults to be thrown back in the face of your superiors. You want your parting comments to sound like constructive feedback for the company, not the mad ventings of a disgruntled troublemaker.

The Good-Bye e-mail

2008-07-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

When you do leave your job it’s customary to send out a good-bye e-mail. I’d recommend that you trim the distribution list to just the people you know personally. And be sure to BCC: everyone instead of listing out their names so as to avoid any whiff of politics or favoritism. Keep the letter professional, thank everyone for all their help, and provide a permanent e-mail address where people can contact you.

Keep in mind that just because you’re providing your contact information it doesn’t mean you’re offering to answer people’s incessant questions or provide free consulting. It may be courteous of you to answer some basic queries, but don’t feel bad about turning down any requests for extended help.

One thing the good-bye e-mail should not contain is a list of grievances. If you have to things to get off your chest, leave that for an exit interview.

I once had a colleague who wrote us a classic goodbye e-mail, although it’s not one you should necessarily emulate. It went something like this:

“When I left my last job, my teammates gave me as a parting gift a bowling pin with the label ‘AMF’ on it. They told me the letter ‘A’ stood for ‘Adios’, but wouldn’t tell me what the ‘MF’ stood for.”

“I wish I had a bowling pin for each of you.”

Giving Notice & Burning Bridges

2008-07-21T12:16:00.000-07:00

I recommend people not give notice at their current employer until they have a written offer in hand from the new company. This may seem a bit silly, since 1) In most cases a verbal offer should be sufficient, and 2) Even with a written offer the new company can terminate your employment at any time, at least in an Employment At-Will state. Heck, they can even withdraw the offer before you start; it’s been known to happen in cases where companies suddenly engage in belt tightening. Still, having a written offer in hand can give you the confidence to psychologically break with your current employer.

Once you give notice it’s natural to mentally check out of your job. However, it’s important to stay focused on your responsibilities during the transition process. Your boss will likely want you to do a brain dump to fellow employees, or perhaps document everything you know.

It may be tempting at this point to thumb your nose at your employer, particularly if you feel like you have been mistreated in the past. However, it’s important to not burn bridges. And this applies not just to your boss but also to the colleagues you work with. Even if you only have light contact with a coworker they may still remember you when you cross paths again in the future. And you want them to recall you in a positive light.

Not burning bridges also applies outside of the resignation scenario. In this industry it’s not uncommon for someone who reports to you to one day to later become your boss, or vice versa. At one job I had a fellow team member who was a sort of my mentor, then became my subordinate, and later became my boss. It’s important to keep on good terms with as many of your co-workers as possible. Or at the very least, don’t piss them off.

Having Second Thoughts

2008-07-18T09:07:00.001-07:00

I’ve discussed in the past what a bad idea it is to renege on an offer or accept a counter-offer from your current employer. However, people do sometimes still have second thoughts. And as flaky as people can be (especially here in California), I’ve seen candidates slip away even after accepting an offer. Hence the hiring manager cannot rest easy with a new hire until they actually start on day one.

Speaking from the hiring manager’s perspective here is a list of things candidates can do, ranging from merely annoying to the most truly obnoxious:

Trying to start a bidding war (before accepting an offer)
Trying to renegotiate the salary after accepting
Reneging on the offer for a better offer
Reneging on the offer for other reasons (e.g., didn’t want to relocate after all)
Accepting a counteroffer from their current employer
No-show on the start date – yes, I’ve had this happen!

Some of these actions, especially the ones lower down on the list, are likely to ruin any chance you might have of being hired at the company again in the future.

The Counter-Offer

2008-07-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

If you are at all valuable to your company they will most likely try to keep you onboard by making a counter-offer. However, career advisors are nearly unanimous in that you should never accept a counter-offer. It won’t change the things you were unhappy about at your old company, unless the source of that unhappiness was your salary.

And even if money was the issue, and even if it’s addressed by the counter-offer, your boss will immediately start looking for a replacement for you. Make no mistake about it, you have been tagged as disgruntled, disloyal, and unreliable, and you are living on borrowed time. Your employer just wants to keep you on to reduce any disruptions until they can find someone else to fill your shoes.

The fact is, you will most likely be out of that job within six months one way or another. That’s how it is with most people who accept counter-offers. Even if you think the company won’t hold a grudge, chances are you’re less likely to get promotions and big raises in the future, which will only cause you to start looking again.

Accepting the Offer

2008-07-16T09:38:00.000-07:00

Most companies these days will give you a day or two at most to accept an offer, or perhaps the weekend. They generally will not give you much more than that out of fear you may shop the offer around.

So what do you do if you a better offer comes in after you’ve accepted? That decision is up to you. There are no hard and fast rules about reneging on an offer. Obviously it doesn’t look good, and it reflects poorly upon your character. Most likely you can kiss any possible future employment at that company goodbye. You will also embarrass and alienate your recruiter as well, if you worked through one. Only you can determine whether such ostracism is a cost worth bearing.

Contrary to what some people in tin foil hats believe though, there is no industry blacklist that companies share about people who have reneged on offers. Some recruiters might keep track of such things internally, but most companies have better things to do than to maintain such lists. So I wouldn’t worry about word spreading too wide about your ill behavior. Still, the more often you pull such this type of stunt the more people are likely to hear about it. Consider it a cumulative stain on your reputation.

In any event, when push comes to shove I would not recommend reneging on an offer unless there is something clearly superior about another offer. If the two are similar except for a few thousand $$ in pay I’d say it’s not worth it, especially since things will generally even out in the long run. But if you are genuinely excited about the second offer and really dreading reporting to work at the first company, then you may just have to go with your gut.

So here’s another scenario; what if you are in the process of interviewing at another company when an offer comes in? Assume that the offer is okay, but you’re really more interested in the other company that has not yet made a decision. You can try asking the offering company to give you a week or two to decide, but most likely they’ll balk at that idea.

In this case (and I’m ABSOLUTELY NOT ENDORSNIG THIS IDEA) you might accept the offer and ask for a delayed start date. This will give you time to complete the interviewing process with the other company, and if you ABSOLUTELY have to, you can accept the other offer if it comes in and renege on the first offer. However, this would be VERY BAD behavior, and one I would not expect the readers of this blog to engage in – right?

The Background Check

2008-07-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

If you are fortunate enough to earn an offer many companies will make you a verbal offer first, contingent on a background check.

Along with reference checks, companies are increasingly relying on background checks. Usually this is contracted out to a third party; they will check things like your employment history, education, criminal background, and less commonly, your credit history and salary history.

In my company’s case our candidates are told up front they will be put through a background check. They also have to sign a consent form that outlines just what will be checked, and I believe that includes salary history. That may or may be sufficient to extract salary information from previous companies - I don't know since INAL (I’m Not A Lawyer). However, people can't say that they haven't been warned. They are free to decline the verbal offer before the background check begins.

Some might claim this is a violation of privacy, but I don't think it's any worse than Intellectual Property Agreements, Non-Compete clauses, or even affidavits that you are a non-smoker (for insurance reasons). These are all things that many companies require you to sign before you can work there.

And besides, if you really want to talk about a violation of privacy consider that some companies expect you to take a drug test before you start. Fortunately for the 420-friendly readers out there drug tests are becoming less and less common amongst employers.

In any event, the increasing use of background checks means that you can no longer blatantly lie on your resume or exaggerate your salary. This may seem Big Brother-ish, but it should really be seen as a good thing -- at least for those who are trying to stay honest.

References

2008-07-14T11:56:00.000-07:00

More and more companies are doing reference checks these days, and it’s a cause of nervousness for some. Still, you should not be too worried about this.

For one thing, companies will generally not contact your references until they are ready to extend an offer. So your references won’t be bothered until the very last stage.

One exception is if recruiters ask for references up front. They have no business doing this, and often they do it to go fishing for new candidates and leads. In those cases you can simply tell them that you can provide references when you get to the offer stage.

Another thing to keep in mind is that reference checking is in most cases a mere formality. Companies do it just to cover their behinds (aka “Due Diligence”), and will usually ask very little of substance to the reference they’re contacting. They might ask how they know the candidate, the candidate’s dates of employment, etc. But if they try to ask about the candidate’s performance, most companies will stonewall the questioner out for fear of liability. In fact, many companies have a policy of referring reference requests directly to HR, who will in turn only confirm things like dates of employment.

So if you are asked for references, who can you turn to? Obviously you wouldn’t want to ask your current boss (although I’ve actually heard of that happening, believe it or not). I’d instead recommend looking to a trusted colleague, or else seeking out a boss from a previous job, one you’re still on good terms with. Generally the hiring companies will not accept your brother, pastor, or drinking buddy as legitimate references – how annoying.

Cost of Living Adjustments for Relocation

2008-07-11T09:31:00.001-07:00

I often get candidates from low costs states who insist that the higher cost of living in Southern California warrants a 40% increase in salary. Clearly that’s not practical, or even justified in most cases.

When people talk of a higher cost of living some think that most every purchase will carry a higher price, but that is not so. When comparing the cost of living between two areas, the biggest element by far is the cost of housing. And in that respect, living in SoCal is undoubtedly expensive. Even with the housing bubble bursting around us and a recession in progress, houses here are still far more expensive than in the rest of the country.

Still, the majority of candidates will likely rent instead of buy, at least initially, and apartment prices here are not quite as outrageous, relatively speaking, as housing prices. You should be able to rent a 1-bedroom in most decent parts of SoCal for $1000-1500, which may seem like a lot but is still modest compared to what a mortgage would go for.

So if you are considering relocating to SoCal, or any other region for that matter, I recommend you check Craigslist to get a feel for housing prices in the area before you accept an offer.

Life Insurance and Long-Term Disability

2008-07-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

Many companies offer Life Insurance and Long-Term disability (aka LTD) as benefits. However, in most cases you’ll likely get only bare minimum Life Insurance coverage by default, and LTD may be something you have to pay for out of pocket. So is LTD and additional life insurance worth it? You might think, “I’m young, I’m healthy - nothing could possibly happen to me. Why waste the money?”

I actually got my first management job many years ago when my own manager went on Long-Term disability for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. It turned into a permanent disability, alas, and I was promoted into that management position. And not only that, another person from that company later went on LTD for the same Carpal Tunnel issue. So it just goes to show, you don’t have to be a skydiver to be at risk of an LTD.

BTW, that company had provided free LTD insurance until then, but as soon as my manager started collecting benefits the premiums for the company apparently shot up, and we had to start paying out of pocket for the coverage.

The same goes for Life Insurance. You may not lead a risky lifestyle, but as they say you never know when you might get hit by a bus. If you are single with no dependents you might think that life insurance is superfluous. However, your parents might have sunk a ton of money into your college education and might be expecting a return on that investment in their old age – so don’t’ forget about them. And of course if you are married or have other dependents, adequate life insurance should be a no brainer.

401K Plans

2008-07-09T09:29:00.000-07:00

Personally I think the 401K is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It’s one of the few legitimate ways you can reduce the taxman’s bite. And yet many people still don’t participate. Why is that?

Participating in a 401K allows you to defer taxes on your contributions. Even better, many companies will match some portion of your contributions, typically up to about 3-6% of your pay. That’s free money you’re throwing away if you don’t participate. Some companies will make a small contribution on your behalf even if you don’t participate, but even then you’re still missing out on most of the employer match.

Some people claim that putting your money into a (Roth) IRA is a better investment than a 401K. But there’s no reason you can’t do both; first put enough money into your 401K to get the full company match, then put the rest into a (Roth) IRA.

For instance, say your employer matches 50% of your contributions up to 6% of your salary. In that case you should contribute at a 6% rate to get the full 3% company match, then start putting any extra money you have left over into your IRA. And remember, you can always roll your 401K over to an IRA when you leave you current company.

Another anti-401K argument is that when you start drawing on a 401k in retirement you’ll pay taxes on your withdrawals at regular income tax rates (perhaps 28% or so), whereas if you invest in a taxable mutual fund instead, you might only pay 15% on long term capital gains over the years and nothing on the withdrawals. But this argument ignores the tax-free compounding aspect of a 401K. Also, if you put money in a mutual fund you’re paying taxes twice: first in your regular payroll taxes, and then again in the 15% capital gains taxes.

Given these benefits of 401Ks then you can see why I’m amazed that some people still don’t participate. Certain companies have taken the initiative to automatically sign up new employees for 401Ks without requesting their permission. But while I’m a big supporter of 401Ks, I have a hard time agreeing with this approach. It smells too much like Big Brother to me.

Relocation Costs

2008-07-08T10:38:00.000-07:00

If the company offers you relocation assistance it may be a in the form of a lump sum payment or a selective reimbursement. There are tax differences for the two approaches; you (probably) won’t be taxed on reimbursed moving expenses, but a lump-sum relocation payment will most likely be taxable, though many moving expenses can be deducted from your taxes. But keep in mind, INATA (I’m Not A Tax Attorney).

If you have to sell your house the company may also offer to pay for closing costs, or in a poor market they may even buy your house outright. This is a significant benefit that may be worth tens of thousands of dollars in many cases. However, this type of benefit is more the exception than the norm unless you are an executive level candidate.

You should be aware that the costs for transporting household items can be outrageous, especially for heavy items like furniture. It can easily cost thousands of $ to move a few rooms of furniture across the country. Hence unless you have high quality furniture it may be better to sell it before you move and buy new furniture at your destination.

Finally, keep in mind there are many other costs involved in moving that might not be obvious at first. You should account for these things when considering relocation.

House / apartment hunting trips
Temporary housing while you find a new home
Security deposit and first & last month’s rent at new apartment
New furnishings at new home
Lost / broken items during the move
Lost income while your spouse finds a new job

Other Benefits

2008-07-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

Continuing on my previous post, I want to discuss a couple of other non-salary components of the offer.

First, the medical plan. If you are young, single and healthy, you might not care much about medical coverage. If you have a choice you could select the cheapest option (which is always the HMO) and be done with it.

For anyone else, and especially those with families or dependents, I recommend a PPO. Sometimes you might have a choice of two or more PPOs, in which case you should examine the plan details:

Medical Premiums. Often it’s $X for an individual, 1.5 - 2X with a dependent, and 3X for a family.
Deductibles – Typically you’ll pay around $250-500 each year before insurance kicks in.
Coinsurance rate – i.e., the percentage of the insurance covers after the deductible. Typically 80%, or 90% with the better plans.
Doctor visit co-pays – The better plans have a fixed amount you pay out of pocket for each visit to a doctor for basic outpatient services. Other plans cover at the standard rate (e.g., 80%).
Prescription Drug Coverage – Some plans charge you a fixed amount, as in $15 for generics and $30 for name brands. Others charge a percentage, as in 10% of the total cost for generic s and 20% for name brands.
Out of pocket limit – this caps the amount you have to pay out of pocket in a given year; after that the insurance picks up 100% of covered expenses.

Dental and vision plans are usually simpler, and you typically won’t have a choice in those plans – although some companies also offer a dental HMO, which I have never tried.

You may also want to check whether the company offers medical coverage for domestic partners. Plans may also have varying coverage for things like mental health and acupuncture.

Secondly, you should examine the company’s Paid Time Off policy. Many companies still provide unlimited sick leave, but some combine vacation days with sick days. For instance, company A might give you two weeks of vacation and unlimited sick days, and company B might give you 15 days of PTO (Paid Time Off) which you can use as either vacation or as sick days. Hence if you exceed 5 days of sick leave, you’d be better off with the unlimited sick leave option; however, if you rarely take sick days, the combined PTO option would let you take the unused days as vacation time.

Finally, a vanishing breed is something called ”Comp Time” or “Time In Lieu Of”. This is more common at non-tech shops, and it means that for each hour (or two) that you work overtime, you’ll get an hour of vacation time. Alas, in the tech world this benefit is now as elusive as the abominable snowman.

In reality you won’t be able to negotiate the details of most of these benefits since it will be the same package for everyone. But in some cases you might be able to negotiate for more vacation or PTO time.

Evaluating the Stock Option Package

2008-07-03T09:09:00.000-07:00

How should you value stock options that are dangled as part of an offer? To a large part it depends on whether the company is an established public corporation vs. a pre-IPO startup.

If the offer is from an established corporation, you’re not likely to be offered very many options unless you’re an executive. So going in as an engineer you might be offered a token amount, perhaps a couple of thousand shares. And given that an established company’s stock is generally not likely to shoot up like a rocket, the value of those options is likely to be modest at best.

If the offer is from an early stage startup (i.e., pre-IPO), you should value the options differently. You should look at the potential size of the company if it’s successful, and the likelihood that it will go public (or be sold). This of course is very difficult to judge, especially for an early stage startup. Hence you may want to pull some numbers out of thin air (that’s what I usually do).

Consider that a hypothetical situation where you are granted 5,000 stock options with a strike price of 10 cents. Such a grant would not be out of line for a midlevel engineer joining a pre-IPO startup.

Say that after four years your options have vested and the company has gone public at $10 a share. Your capital gain on each option would be roughly $10, for a total of $50,000. After capital gains taxes and state taxes your net take might be $40,000. That’s about $10,000 per year for four years of work, which is a nice bonus but not enough to change your life. And it’s certainly not enough compensation if you had to work like a dog for those four years.

And remember, this is in the case of a positive outcome for the company. There are many companies that burn out spectacularly, and many more that just quietly fold.

My conclusion? Consider stock options to be a perk and not an essential part of the pay package. The only exception is if you come in at the executive level and are offered hundreds of thousands of options.

Non-Salary Components of the Offer

2008-07-02T09:25:00.000-07:00

An offer is more than just the salary. It may also include the following:

Bonus or Profit Sharing plan
Stock Options
Discounted Stock Plan / ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan)
401K with matching employer contribution
Medical Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Coverage
Relocation
Vacation
Holidays & Floating Holidays
Sick Leave / PTO
Educational Reimbursement / Training
Gym / Health Club benefits
Free or discounted meals
Commuting allowance or discount

A few of these items may seem frivolous, but others are significant and merit additional attention. Don’t be afraid to ask HR for more detail before you accept an offer.

For instance, regarding the Profit Sharing or Bonus, you might want to know the following:

When the bonus is paid? Is the payout fixed or is it variable?
Is payout based on individual or company performance?
What is the historical payout rate?

Likewise, you should get details about the stock option plan if they have one:

The total # of shares - and for a startup, the % ownership the stocks represent
The vesting schedule for the options (typically 4 years)
Any selling restrictions (e.g., a “freeze period” after an IPO).

For a 401K, you should look at the following:

What percentage of your contributions will the company match, if any? Some companies will contribute a certain amount even if you don’t’ contribute anything.
What is the vesting schedule for the company’s match?
What is the maximum % of your pay you can put into a 401K? Some companies limit this to 10% or so.

Receiving an Offer On The Spot

2008-07-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

Surely all of us have imagined scenarios where we so impress our interviewers that they flat out offer us the job right then and there. But it never happens. Or at least I’ve never seen it happen in any company I’ve worked at.

I have heard of situations where a candidate is told up front (and I was told this myself once) that they might be offered a job at the end of the in-person interview, but then they’d have to accept it or reject it right then and there. That’s a terribly unfair situation to put the person in. Usually the practice is to give a candidate a day or two, or possibly the weekend to accept an offer.

Sometimes the interviewers will say things to make you think you’ve landed the job. But don’t be fooled. They may indeed be impressed with your qualifications, but they will most likely interview multiple candidates, and the next person to sit in your cahir may impress them even more.

My advice? Never assume you have an offer until you have it in writing. Definitely do not stop interviewing elsewhere just because you think you aced an interview, or worse, because you were sweet-talked to by an interviewer.

Just How Negotiable Is the Salary?

2008-06-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

As a candidate you may wonder just what flexibility the company has in meeting your salary requirements. If the job and the company look great, but the salary is not quite what you’re looking for, what options do you have?

Some people believe that companies are generally out lowball you. That is, since your goal is to get the highest offer possible, their goal is conversely to offer the least money possible. That’s not exactly true. Factors such as prevailing pay levels within and outside the company play into the calculation, but mostly it’s a matter of how much money has been budgeted for the position.

Hence in most cases the company has a certain figure in mind they want to pay, and they may be unwilling to go above that amount. However, this does not preclude the possibility of negotiating a higher salary. If they like you as a candidate, chances are they can find some way to meet your requirements.

For one thing, the company may have determined the salary based on what the previous person in that position was making. Or if there was no previous person, they may have based it on an estimation of the market pay for the position. And in both cases they will generally undershoot the market, because the market price tends to run ahead of most internal pay structures. Hence when the company starts interviewing candidates and seeing that most of them have salary requirements above what they are expecting, they may come to their senses and be more flexible (though then again, they might not).

Regardless of the company’s attitudes towards market adjustments, they may still be willing to stretch for a great candidate. Sometimes the salary cap might be a soft one, requiring only senior management approval to exceed. In other cases they’ll leave a little bit of room below the ‘actual’ cap when making an offer, in anticipation of forthcoming negotiation.

Even with a hard salary cap the company might be able to reclassify the job req as a higher level one (e.g., from “Software Engineer” to “Senior Software Engineer”), with a commensurately higher pay cap. Also, if they have several job reqs open at once, as is typical at a larger company, it’s relatively easy to swap one job req for another. They may even be able to combine two low level job reqs into a single higher level one.

The point here is that you should not view the company’s offer as a take it or leave it proposition. In most cases there is room for negotiation, and if the company really wants you they can get creative in finding you more money.

However, one thing you should never do is to accept a mediocre salary with the promise of an early salary review to bring the pay back up. I’ve been told this story at least twice in my career, and the early reviews never materialized. People forget, or else they make these promises without the ability to fulfill them. So you know what they say about the bird in the hand…

Negotiating the Salary

2008-06-27T09:19:00.000-07:00

Some people dwell incessantly on the salary negotiation process. Some see it as an example of game theory applied in practice and posit a variety of strategies. I’ve seen a range of advice from various folks, much of it contradictory:

Never be the first to quote a number
Ask for a salary range for the position up front
Instead of a number, provide a range for your desired salary
Say you’re looking for a ‘Market’ salary
Look for an X% increase over your previous/current pay
Ask them to make their best offer
Let the recruiter negotiate for you

Some of this advice makes sense in some situations and not in others. Some people are happy to just take a reasonable salary and be done with the negotiating. These may be the same people who hate shopping for cars.

If on the other hand if you see salary negotiation as a game, let’s examine what is possible within the tight restrictions of salary negotiation. For instance, it generally makes sense to ask for a salary range for the position up front, just to make sure no one’s time is being wasted. Of course, it’s within the company’s rights to withhold that information, just as you are free to withhold your own salary history.

Assuming though that you are willing to quote a desired salary when asked, what should your strategy be? I’d say that depends on whether you consider yourself to be currently underpaid, fairly paid, or overpaid. If you are unemployed you should probably put yourself into the underpaid or fairly paid brackets depending on the length of your unemployment.

If you feel you are underpaid, you should shoot for what you think is a fair (i.e., prevailing) market salary and de-emphasize your current pay. As I’ve noted previously, you can say that you are leaving your job to look for a fair market rate; that would sound perfectly reasonable to the hiring manager.

If you feel that you are fairly paid, you should state that you’re looking for an increase over your current pay. Then you are free to wrangle over the increase amount.

If you feel that you are overpaid (uh, sure…), you could state that you are looking for at least as much as your current pay. That signals to the hiring manager that you’re open to receiving the same pay if necessary, but it’s an absolute floor on what you’ll accept. If however you’re willing to even consider slightly lower pay than what you’re making, say that you are ‘open’ or ‘flexible’.

If you have no idea whether you are underpaid or overpaid, you can rely on your recruiter to haggle on your behalf. If you are not working with a recruiter, I recommend that you simply ask the company to make its best offer.

Thoughts on Salary Negotiations

2008-06-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

Let’s face it, most people are terrible negotiators. That’s why so many people dread shopping for a car; they don’t like the thought of haggling with a tough, experienced salesman. They are outmatched in that game; it’s like bringing a dull butter knife to a gunfight.

It doesn’t get much better when you are negotiating a job offer. At least when you’re shopping for cars you can consult fairly accurate pricing guides on the Internets; for the job market however the online salary guides are outdated at best and grossly misleading at worst. So candidates often have very little to go on when they consider whether an offer is a good one.

Regardless of all the inefficiencies however, the job (pricing) market is remarkably efficient in practice. Most of the candidates I see have salary expectations that are fairly close to what I would consider to be their fair market value. Perhaps it’s because they have interviewed at many places and have developed a feel for the market; it might also be that recruiters have given them some indication of their market value. And recruiters should have as good of a pulse on the market as anyone.

We do get outliers, of course, where weak candidates ask for outrageous salaries, but most likely they will get the message after they’ve interviewed with a few companies. Conversely we also get great candidates who are accustomed to a low salary and have no idea how much more they might get in a fair market – though that tends to be the rare exception.

It’s interesting that the job market in Southern California for .NET web engineers is large enough to provide sufficient liquidity for predictable pricing, yet small enough that each transaction can affect the overall market price, if only subtly. Each offer I make can influence what other candidates and their recruiters expect to see offered on the next job.

Anyway, the more interesting topic for you as the candidate is obviously how you can maximize the salary component of your offer. In a way that goal is a bit short sighted, as the salary is often not the most important component of the offer. The job’s responsibilities, career path, technologies used, company reputation & prospects, benefits, etc., may affect the attractiveness of the job much more than the salary.

Still, if you are interested in maximizing the salary component of the offer, that will be the subject of my next blog post.

Evaluating the Offer

2008-06-25T09:28:00.000-07:00

I already noted that previous salary is just one data point I look at when formulating an offer. If possible we'll try to top it, but only if the result is still around the market rate for the job. And keep in mind this is not an exact science.

Some companies try to make the process more predictable by defining job grades such as “Engineer I” or “Engineer II”, but how do you determine which grade a candidate falls into? Or where they should fit within that grade? Years of work experience is not a reliable indicator of competence, nor is their education level.

In my company the hiring manager generally negotiates the salaries (subject to executive approval), rather than HR. I don't know whether that's how it works in other companies, but that's how it was done in all the companies where I was a manager.

Hence as the hiring manager I have to make a judgment call based on my evaluation of the candidate’s skills. That call may mean a significant swing in the offer by thousands or even tens of thousands of $ in either direction. I'm trying to arrive at a fair salary that both the candidate and the company can live with. I know that if I overpay for a candidate, it will upset our salary structure and potentially bust our budgets. Conversely, if I lowball somebody they'll just be unhappy and sulk, and probably bolt for another job the next chance they get. That will cost us tens of thousands of dollars in lost productivity and recruiter fees.

So what does this mean to you as a candidate? Well, when you’re first quoted an offer your reaction may be elation or disgust. Possibly “Holy, cow, I‘m rich!”, or “What the hell, are they kidding me? Is this a slave galley?” But more likely it will be somewhere in between, a ‘meh’ kind of reaction.

But before you dismiss the offer, keep in mind that most offers are negotiable. Not all of them, but many are. Unless you come in at the very top of a company’s desired salary range it’s usually possible for them to bump up the offer by a few thousand $. It won’t make a huge difference to them, but to you it may mean the difference between a mediocre offer and an attractive one.

So it doesn’t hurt to ask for more; the worst that can happen is they’ll say no. I’ve never heard of, and can’t imagine, a company simply retracting an offer because they were offended that a candidate tried to negotiate a higher salary.

Next time: More on the Negotiation process.

Should You Lie About Your Current Salary?

2008-06-24T09:40:00.000-07:00

The answer to this question should be obvious, but I’ll discuss it anyway.

When you are asked by a recruiter or a hiring manager about your current salary, how should you answer, particularly if you are currently underpaid? Some people feel tempted to stretch the truth and state what they feel they should be making instead of what they’re actually making.

What are the possible ramifications of such a little white lie? Well, there are a couple of things. First of all, companies can in many cases verify your previous salary through means both legitimate and otherwise. Background checks may include a salary investigation, and of course they could ask you directly for your past W-2 form or pay stubs. And Murphy’s law being what it is, if you don’t want them to verify your salary, they will.

So if the company discovers your fib, they’ll think – if the candidate misrepresented his previous salary, what else might he be misrepresenting? Hence if you bluff about your pay, it's a gamble and you should expect to be called on it. It's no better than saying that you're still employed when you’re not. In both cases you're jockeying to make yourself look better and being dishonest in doing so.

Secondly, previous salary is just one data point when a company considers what salary to offer. For instance, in my case usually I'll just offer the candidate what I think they're worth. Although, if that amount is less than their previous salary, I usually won't bother unless there's reason to believe the candidate will take a pay cut.

Conversely, if it looks like the candidate was underpaid at their previous position, I will not exploit that fact by offering them less. We try to have a reasonable amount of pay parity around here, at least in terms of starting salaries for various positions. And after all, if we do underpay a candidate, chances are they will be disgruntled and are more likely to bolt for a new job shortly.

To further make the case for honesty, let me discuss a hypothetical situation. Say that you're currently making $60K, but feel you should be making closer to $80K. So you interview for a new position and claim that your current pay is $80K and you're looking for $80K+. But it turns out I think you're worth maybe $75K, so I pass on making you an offer that seems to be less than your current pay. But fact is, you might have been happy with a jump from your current $60K up to $75K! Too bad.

So what should you do if you feel you are underpaid, and that divulging your pay will adversely affect your negotiating ability? Well, for one you can point out your benefits package if it’s particularly generous. You can also point to any stock options or profit sharing. And if you have a relatively predictable bonus, you can include that as part of your “total pay” – unless the recruiter asks you to break down your pay between base and bonus.

The Salary Question

2008-06-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

Companies often ask you for a salary history or your salary requirements up front. If you are working through a recruiter they will ask you early on what you’re currently making and what you’d like to make. You may also be asked this question again at the end of an in-person interview.

Some people think it’s a mistake to reveal your desired salary, but I think they’re wrong. Fact is, virtually all companies have a salary range in mind when they open a job req. Even if the salary is listed as ‘open’, there are limits that the company won’t exceed. So before you waste your time and the company’s time (and the recruiter’s time), the parties involved need to know whether you fall within the company’s expected pay range.

If you really do not want to commit yourself, just let the company know of your current or most recent salary and say that you’re looking for a competitive offer. Presumably your old salary will be something of a floor and the company will be challenged to work off of that. If you are willing to go even below your current pay, you can note that you’re ‘flexible’.

Some of you might feel that you are currently underpaid, and that revealing that information might put you at a disadvantage and hamper your efforts to get a market rate. You could try not revealing your current pay, but chances are the company will find out one way or another. So the best strategy in this case is to say that you are looking to leave your current job because you feel underpaid and are looking to obtain a fair market salary. That will implicitly discourage the company form trying to lowball you.

Why Should I Work Here?

2008-06-20T09:35:00.000-07:00

This is a perfectly valid question, though I probably wouldn’t phrase it this way. Remember, the interview is as much about you learning about the company as it is about the company learning about you. When you leave the interview you should have the information you need to decide whether you want to work there.

Many people make the mistake of not asking enough questions about the company and the fit. For instance, they are afraid they might get answers they don’t really want to hear, and that it will result in a negative vibe. For instance, the candidate may ask, “Do you use Microsoft tools?”, and the interviewer may reply, “No, we hate Microsoft; we only use open source tools around here.” That should not necessarily make a candidate look worse for asking the question, but the candidate might see this answer opening a gulf between them and the company.

In fact, if there are any obstacles that might prevent you from working at the company, you need to expose them up front and as early as possible. If you do indeed want to work only with MS products, or only with open source, or whatever, it’s better to know the company’s position on the matter before you accept the offer. Likewise, if you prefer to work on new products rather than on maintaining existing ones, you should find out about the nature of your intended responsibilities if at all possible.

All too many people focus on getting the offer first to the exclusion of all else, then wonder later whether the job is the right one for them (in fact, many recruiters preach exactly this strategy). However, taking a job without sufficient information up front and then gauging the quality of the fit after you start is a bad idea.

Assuming that you are a good candidate (and of course we all are, right?), you have choices as to where you will work. You have a right and a responsibility to yourself to find out what a company has to offer before you commit yourself.

Do You Have Any Questions?

2008-06-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

Usually at the end of the interview the interviewer will ask the candidate whether they have any questions. Some candidates just say no, they don’t have any questions. That is the wrong approach.

You won’t look good as a candidate if you say you don’t have any questions. It might look like you’re not really interested in the company and the position, or that you’ve just given up on getting the job. You need to probe further about the things you’re curious about that weren’t fully covered in the interview.

Sometimes the interviewer will ask whether you are familiar with the company. If you show that you are knowledgeable about the company and its their products, the interviewer can skip talking at length about the organization. However, that does not mean you can skip the Q&A portion entirely; rather, it should lead to your asking more intelligent questions.

Also if you get the sense that the interviewer is uncertain about you as a candidate, you should use this time to reiterate your skills and qualifications. If you feel that you’re strong in a skill that may be important in the job but which the interviewer has not covered, feel free to point out your strength in that area. And don’t’ be afraid to ask the interviewer if they have any other questions for you.

If you truly have no questions you can think of to ask the interviewer, try asking about the work environment, tools used, size of the company, etc. These are all relatively straightforward (if dull) questions.

How Many Candidates Do We Interview?

2008-06-18T09:25:00.000-07:00

We interview lots of candidates. During hiring season I may do up to 8 interviews per week, split between phone and in-person interviews. My record is four in-person interviews in one day, which unfortunately has happened more than once. I was pretty pooped at the end of those days. But then again, as a manager I don't do any other real work anyways, right? Seriously, I feel that finding good talent is the most important part of my job, so I don't mind spending so much time on it.

In doing so many interviews you may wonder how we exactly we winnow the candidates to the ones we hire. Some companies may interview 10 candidates for a position, then trim the list down to 2 or 3 and bring them back for another round of interviews. Or heaven forbid, they might decide they don’t like any of the finalists and start over with a fresh set of candidates.

Fortunately that’s not how we do things at my current company. We are growing at the moment, and we typically always have a number of positions open. So if we bring in 10 candidates and see 5 good ones we’ll make 5 offers.

Alas, we rarely see that kind of success rate; our typical ratio is perhaps 1 offer for 4-5 in-person interviews. And each of those in-person interviews is the result of 4-5 phone interviews, and each phone interview is in turn culled from any number of resumes. And there is no way for me to know how many resumes were filtered out by the recruiter or culled by our own HR department, though we try to limit the filtering at the early stages.

Flipping the Bozo Bit

2008-06-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

The expression “Flipping the Bozo Bit” means you are dismissing someone as an idiot and refusing to take them seriously. It’s a major step and is usually not reversible. It’s not constructive either, because the ‘Bozos’ are often your colleagues whom you’ll have to work with again in the future.

In rare cases in my interviews I will cut the discussion short. Sometimes it becomes clear early on that the candidate has no clue, making me wonder how they ever passed the phone interview. Still, ending an interview early is a major decision and not something I do lightly.

It’s probably all too easy to flip the bozo bit on a clueless candidate. After all, it’s been said that we usually make a judgment about people we meet within the first 15 seconds of the encounter. That process may take longer in a job interview, but I suspect that within the first few minutes many interviewers will have formed an opinion about the candidate. This practice of course is not ideal, but it’s only natural and perhaps unavoidable.

Hence what we need to do as interviewers is to try and suppress this natural tendency to jump to conclusions about a candidate. Perhaps the candidate is inarticulate or a poor English speaker, but we cannot let those factors alone drive our impression of them. We need to talk with them in detail before we start to form any conclusions.

So let’s say we’ve gotten past the greetings and chitchat. As the interviewer I’ve asked the candidate some technical questions and they have missed every single one, even in areas they claimed to be strong in. Then what?

Usually I’ll try to cover all the bases and ask them questions in each of the technologies we use. It’s possible they performed poorly in the early skill questions but may redeem themselves later on. This has happened in the past where I’ve found candidates who were clueless about OOP and C# but displayed strong HTML/CSS/JavaScript skills, just because of the nature of their previous experience. And I’ve ended up hiring several of them.

But what happens if someone is clearly lacking in all the important knowledge they claim on their resume? Is it safe to flip that Bozo bit and thank them for coming (even though they’ve just wasted your time)? Usually the more people there are involved in the interview the earlier I try to wrap things up. But if by some scheduling oddity I’m the only person they’re interviewing, I’ll grit my teeth and try to give them every opportunity to redeem themselves.

Behavioral Interviews

2008-06-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

Personally I’m ambivalent about Behavioral Interviews (henceforth referred to as BI’s). I took a two-day class on BI once, so I’d like to think I know something about the subject. I have tried out BI’s myself in person, and I still try to throw in some type of BI question here and there in my interviews.

Still, I have doubts about an interview format that’s focused primarily or entirely on behavioral questions. It might be useful in jobs like sales or general management where the focus is on human interaction, negotiation, and building relationships. However I think it’s less effective when the key traits being sought are technical knowledge and analytical skills.

At the risk of gross simplification, a behavioral interview involves asking a candidate about situations from their past where they had:

1) a Goal,
2) an Impediment, then
3) took an Action, achieving
4) a Result.

The exact mechanics of the questions and answers may vary. Still, the idea is that if used properly, BI can be used to unearth the candidate’s competencies and interpersonal skills in ways that more traditional approaches cannot accomplish.

In reality though, BI answers can be meaningless. Either the candidate may not have good situations to recount, or they can simply make them up. During my BI training class we conducted mock interviews, and I made up most of my anecdotes on the spot by tweaking the details of real life experiences. It wasn’t difficult to do, and the anecdotes sounded pretty impressive.

Additionally, applying a BI template to technical situations does not always work well. Describing a nontrivial technical problem and its solution may require discussing complex technical issues in significant depth, which is not what BI was intended for.

My point is that BI is sometimes presented as a silver bullet to successful interviewing when that is simply not so, at least in the tech world. Conducting successful tech interviews requires a number of different tools, and BI is just one of them. The others include technical quizzing and whiteboard exercises, both of which are likely more effective at determining a candidate’s technical aptitude.

Handling ‘Soft’ Questions in the Interview

2008-06-13T09:10:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the interviewer will ask a “Tell me about yourself” type of question. It might also be phrased as something like “Why should I hire you?”, but the idea is the same. Some candidates freeze at this point, but you should really look at such questions as freebies, opportunities to discuss your strengths in an open format. You should have your talking points prepared for just such a case. This is commonly called an “Elevator Pitch”, a convincing story you can deliver in 30 seconds.

Another question is one that’s becoming less common as it’s practically been rendered a cliché, but you might still be asked about your biggest weakness. I always roll my eyes when I hear the question, but you should have an answer prepared just in case it comes up. Remember, the interviewer is not trying to probe you for weaknesses here; they just want to know that you are aware of your own limitations and are able to deal with them.

A variation of the ‘weakness’ question is “What do you like / dislike about your work?” There is no right or wrong answer here; the interviewer is just looking for an intelligent sounding answer. Just don’t say something stupid like “I like getting paid” and “I hate debugging”.

You might also be asked “What motivates you (i.e., as a professional)?” This is a fair question, and one you should not have to think deeply about. If you can’t answer this right away, you need to take a vacation and ponder the question in depth.

Illegal Questions in an Interview

2008-06-12T09:21:00.000-07:00

Let me preface this post by stating that INAL – I’m Not A Lawyer. Even so, I know as a result of countless management training classes that certain questions are off limits in interviews. Topics like age, race, ethnicity, gender, marital status, etc., are simply lawsuit bait. But not everyone knows this.

For instance, we sometimes pull in random engineers to help conduct technical interviews, and they typically have not had anything resembling interview training. So they might ask questions that they think are perfectly okay, but which come close to the line:

“Do you like Indian food? I find it too spicy.”

“Can you repeat that? I have difficulty understanding foreign accents.”

“You sound Russian – are you? So is my girlfriend”.

“’Beltran’ – Is that a Spanish Name?”

“I don’t see your college graduation date listed on your resume. When did you go to school?”

“Do you have any requirements related to child day care?”

“Would you have any concerns with working on Saturdays or Sundays?”

(*) “If you relocate here, will your spouse need to find a new job?”

(*) “Do you own or rent your home?”

These questions may seem harmless to some people, but others might raise an eyebrow. As an interviewer it’s best to avoid such questions altogether; conversely as a candidate it’s best to deal with the matter diplomatically since the interviewer may not know any better.

(*) As a candidate I have myself been asked these questions by recruiters, who should really know better. But perhaps they can get away with as they are independent agencies rather than a hiring company. INAL.

What Not to Do In an Interview

2008-06-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

There are some common sense things about interviews that you’d think candidates would remember, but that’s not always the case. Hence a reminder is warranted.

First, remember to turn off your cell phone before the interview. I’ve had several candidates’ phones go off in the middle of a conversation, and it’s distracting. And whatever happens, do NOT pick up and answer your cell during the interview! (Although, I must admit I’ve answered my cell phone once or twice while interviewing candidates; I admit it was rude, but it’s the interviewer’s privilege).

Avoid talking about personal matters. Interviewers are not allowed to ask about things like your age, marital status, religion, ethnic background, etc., so just don’t go there. However, if any of these matters might affect your work (e.g., you have to leave early every day to pick up your kids from day care), you might want to bring it up yourself in a discreet fashion.

Likewise, do not probe the interviewers for personal information. You can ask them about their work, what they like about their jobs, etc., but don’t dig much deeper. Assume that the questions that are off limits to the interviewers are also off limits to the candidates. If either you or the interviewers accidentally drift off topic onto questionable terrain, tactfully steer the conversation back on course.

If you find yourself struggling in an interview, don’t just give up. Typically you will be quizzed about a number of topics, and you might just be weak in the first few things the interviewer asks you about. You might just redeem yourself later; it’s happened several times in my experience.

Finally, avoid saying anything negative about your former jobs or bosses. Giving off a negative vibe is something you want to avoid in an interview. If the interviewer asks you what you didn’t like about your previous jobs, try to stay general and vague. Saying that it was a “difficult and challenging environment” is probably a safe bet.

But, I Really Do Know This Stuff…

2008-06-10T09:07:00.000-07:00

Whether it’s in verbal Q&A or in whiteboard exercises, people often bump up against the limits of their technical knowledge. It’s to be expected, after all; we can’t know everything, and it’s the interviewer’s’ job to probe the extent of our knowledge.

I’m reminded of a quote from a former Secretary of Defense. To paraphrase: we know what we know; we know what we don’t know; but we don’t know what we don’t know. And when people go into an interview, they often don’t know what it is they don’t know until it’s pointed out to them.

So how do people handle it when they realize they can’t answer a question? Some people deal with it better than others. Some simply say, “I don’t know”, which is usually the best answer. However, others may guess or try to be more creative.

However, saying that you can simply “Google” the answer to a question is not being clever. Neither is saying that you rely on IntelliSense. I roll my eyes and groan (silently) whenever I hear those responses from candidates.

Don’t ever say, “I can’t answer that, but I really do know this stuff.” You’re not fooling anyone, and you’re just making yourself look bad. The reality is that you may think you know the subject matter, but you may be rusty. Just because you knew something five years ago doesn’t mean you still know it now.

Perhaps the worst kind of response is where the candidate rattles out a bunch of different answers hoping that one of them will stick. It’s kind of like one of those games on “The Price is Right”, where contestants have a few seconds to guess the price of an item. Whenever they get close they’ll start blurting out prices in succession, hoping they’ll hit the right number before time is up. But an interview is not “The Price is Right”, and offering up a dozen different answers hoping that one of them is correct will not win you any prizes.

Finally, keep in mind that if at the start of the interview an interviewer asks you to gauge your skill level in a technology, don’t say you’re an expert; they’re just setting you up to shoot you down! That’s why when asked, I never rate myself as higher than 7/10 in any technology. It’s better to set expectations low and impress than to build up and then disappoint your audience.