First, the project was described as "green-field, we're doing cool stuff writing MVC apps from the ground up." I was assigned to build SSRS reports.
Second, the shiny building with the sales people, recruiters, executives - I did work there, on a second or third floor, corner office with windows! For about a week. Then I was moved a mile down the road to the building they got through an acquisition. I was on the ground level (I think?) and I had a whole office! But the office was small, dark brown and had no windows. Even the door was solid dark brown. (The office wasn't all that old or terrible - the kitchen was kind of awesome. But the actual area where I worked was pretty dreadful.)
I don't exactly feel like it was intentional, or at least, it didn't occur to me at the time. But looking back, of course they didn't want to highlight that they really wanted someone to grind through reports. And they clearly didn't intend for me to spend my time occupying a corner office with windows!
I was there for about 4 months.
Had an office with a nice view and plenty of sun. Got moved into a cube that neither cellphones nor radio got a signal with this constant wind noise since I was up against the wall. I left in 8 months (for other reasons amazingly enough). I dearly wish that there were transcripts of the meetings that went into that project.
Yes, oddly enough I left because I started dating someone and looked for a job closer to her.
Show up, and everybody is working on firefighting old bugs with a fake Agile approach. The kind where the manager hands out tickets to folks and the only metric is how many trivial bugs have been closed this week.
Every time I spent any time looking into the code (million lines of crap) to see if anything could be done, I'd get widely criticized.
I put up with it for a few months and bailed.
I'm trying to get out, but not having much luck. I wonder if recruiters are turned off by the fact that I'm looking for another job again after just a few months.
Across the major markets in the USA and Europe I’ve never seen a hotter market. If you aren’t getting responses I would ask someone for help with how you are marketing yourself.
Post your LinkedIn profile if you’d like
The nice thing about remote though, is that it's easy for me to disconnect emotionally from how shitty my current job is.
I mean, one could say my city is also hot by the number of search results from the keyword software in the job portals but after closer inspection, if you've been around the block a few times, you can easily tell that over 90% of those jobs are shitty micromanaged fake scrum-driven burnout meat grinders.
Therefore, the remaining 10% are spammed to death with resumes so they can afford to be incredibly picky and wouldn't even look at you without seniority in other prestigious places that do exactly what they're looking for. And they don't care for leetcode either so the barrier of entry remains prestige.
IMHO that's not really hot.
3.5 years at gig X and then 5 months at crappy gig Y isn't an issue -- new gig wasn't a fit, easy to play that off. "I tried to make it work but it felt like a bait and switch" would be an acceptable answer.
But a track record of ~1 year or less at places says that you're the problem or you make a lot of bad choices.
But when talking to your future peers/team mates, I think you can expect a lot of honesty if you ask the right questions about how things really are.
I know I'm always 100% honest, because if they get hired, we'll be coworkers, and they'll know if I lied!!
PS It's weird that you didn't get the title in the contract
The most obvious one is usually “we’re on an agile process”, but there’s so many other ones more subtle and hard to get a grip on, short of reading interviewer’s clues when they answer the canned answer.
Sometimes the same words just don’t mean the same things to them. Sometimes they don’t realize how bad their situation is.
“Reality shock” in the first days at some workplaces is a thing.
1. Workspace/office not the one you were shown/told. This is the most common one, in my few data points. I think people know it's a factor in appeal of the job, so it's mentioned, but the followthrough doesn't always happen.
2. Person you interviewed with is leaving. (One of the people I hit it off really well with in interviews was a tech co-founder of the established company. When I arrive as a new Architect, he apologizes and says he had been looking forward to working with me (which is not something I normally hear), but he just got an offer for a supercomputer startup that he couldn't resist. Fortunately, some other great people remained, and I ended up working directly with one of the other tech founders. I supposed I might've been hired due to the company knowing that some people were looking to transition out.)
3. Job not as described. (I've mostly avoided this common pitfall, but once got bit by it. I was recruited as the Research Scientist who'd execute on an idea that was sorta outside the scope of two professors who'd come up with it, but that they wanted to see it done, and it was up my alley. But, subsequent to discussion, when I'd been told I'd be the sole person leading&doing, one of the professors' grad students decided to do the idea for their dissertation, and I didn't find out until the first day on the job. It got worse from there, but the saving grace was that an all-around great 3rd person was also an "assistant" on the team, so, morale-wise, I was able to complete the entire year-long appointment I'd agreed to. I declined when the PI renewed the appointment for another year, and both us assistants asked not to have our names on the papers. It was unfortunate, because we did some good work, and the PI was willing to help me get my own ideas funded, but I couldn't commit to another year of the accidentally-bait&switch project.)
4. Famous culture broken. (My anecdote wasn't a first-day reality shock for me, but first-year. A successful with-revenue early Web tech company in a university town had a locally well-known policy slogan about how you advance, which seemed much more widely quoted than the "don't be evil" of another company, and was repeated to me when I interviewed. Long story short, while I was working there as a Senior Engineer, someone in company leadership was willing to spoil culture and morale, to let someone's nephew (or similar) break the slogan. I went and talked with the head of engineering, who normally had amazing poise and charisma, but he had no good explanation for that one. This was when other dotcoms were hiring the then-rare experienced developers like crazy... but companies sometimes do things that employees don't understand, creating new reality shocks.)
5. Representative from new parent company, walking around with representative from offshoring company, talking to employees about what they do, for multiple days. A bit like in "Office Space", but at an advanced Web tech company. (Also, I was concerned when they started asking me about an elaborate 3D puzzle that someone had assembled near my workspace before I was hired, they seemed skeptical when I said I didn't know anything about it, and then one of them asked where they might buy such a 3D puzzle, which I happened to know, and I couldn't resist being knowledgeable/helpful, even as I suspected it was just a trick.)
Reality shocks like these are another reason I'd rather talk with prospective employers, and get as much sense of the team and company as I can, rather than get distracted with one-way leetcode whiteboarding.
It's not even uncommon to be hired for one role and end up in another role for whatever reason.
Another thing is, policies change. Your interviewer could be grandfathered in and not know it (or know it, but don't mention it...). Or they could simply mention the last policy they remember, which isn't the current policy.
Some people also would rather just make up an answer rather than say "I don't know."
>It's weird that you didn't get the title in the contract
Job titles are not always correlated with job responsibilities. Hence we have "senior engineers" with a year experience. Title inflation is a real thing.
At least you can put the title on your resume!
I've been lied to by every manager I've ended up working for. Too be fair, they've all been soft social questions, so I am partly to blame on that front. I've been terrible at identifying company culture until after I've taken the job.
http://www.shakelaw.com/blog/lying-on-your-resume/
Mostly it's just the risk that you'll be found out and fired (which is similar to the risk on the other side of the table— that the employee will find out and quit).
In principle but not magnitude, especially if you've relocated.
Usually you cancel any other pending offers once you've accepted a position if you're nice, and that could close some doors because someone else takes those jobs. Might even get you red-flagged if you go back to them and say "this company lied to me so I quit" (the other person has no way to verify that's true or you blew up on someone verbally the first week and got canned).
Someone correct me if HR can give the termination reason, I don't remember.
Asking a prospective employer what your references said about you if they pass on you sounds like a tall order. I'm lucky if I can even get a response to a cover letter + resume, definitely have never been given feedback about a sample project solution or interview (other than hired or not).
Am I wrong and it's actually one of the easier pieces of feedback to get?
[1] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/pdfs/ukpga_20060...
[2] https://cdn.prospects.ac.uk/2.0.9/pdf/Graduate-Employment-Fr...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1260901/Woman-lied-...
Normally they probably get around with:
And any other duties, bla, bla, bla
So it's hard to see a shift in the onesidedness of the relationship
What about what they say on the interview? Verbal contracts are valid in some circumstances ... Record the interview ... :)
Someone more left/anti-capitalist might argue that this is disproportionately in favor of the employer. The employee is depending on this job for food/shelter. Replacing the employee is much less disruptive to the employer than the employee. Especially considering the employee may have had to move to the area for that job.
Even if it's only verbal, it's a contract; contract law applies, and if you can prove the conversation happened, you can enforce the contract in law.
This is the same in the USA and in the UK. But of course, it's much better to get a written contract before starting work (or moving home, if that's what it comes down to).
And (of course) it's much harder for an employee to enforce a contract against an employer than v.v. Contract litigation can be very expensive.
Most people summarize this as "you can be fired for no reason", because that's the most commonly discussed scenario. But, your employer doesn't have to terminate your employment to terminate your employment agreement.
http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/at-will-em...
> At-will also means that an employer can change the terms of the employment relationship with no notice and no consequences. For example, an employer can alter wages, terminate benefits, or reduce paid time off.
Now, they can't do this retroactively, but they can do it with zero notice.
Source: used to be a trade union official. If there was a union for tech jobs, they might be able to pay for tribunal costs, but when I did it we only took them on if there looked to be a greater than fifty percent chance of winning.
Unison has few places it represents at (probably more for historical reasons).
How ever apart from the costs we would only take a case to tribunal if it was a good chance of winning - as the pressure on the member going through a case is considerable.
> Where do you see yourself in 3 to 5 years?
I gave my typical response of technical lead, driving projects from the engineering side of things. His response was interesting.
> What would you think about not working here after 5 years?
The way they were able to run their shop was to use turn over to their advantage. They were custom software/hardware company that basically used as contract workers to make the widgets a company either has no time to make or doesn't know how to make. Their business model was to have you work on the project to the point where the contractor decides to hire you on full time to support the thing you helped make.
It was an interesting idea but showed they had no concept of stability for anyone besides upper management. Opted not to work there.
At my last job, I was told several lies (even during negotiations) that made the job sound far far better than it was. And this wasn't just from HR/recruitment. These were answers that I got from the many levels of upper management that I had to interview with.
I tried to reconcile those lies after settling in and having outstanding performance reviews. No dice. Ultimately ended up just leaving the company.
Lesson learned - Don't let them negotiate you into their range. Companies will lie to make their company sound like the shiniest, best place to work in the world.
> and I was absolutely not going to be leading anything
This scenario has been basically my life for the past several jobs. Companies will lie just to get you in the door. Never ask "Will I ...", because the answer is always yes. NEVER trust what a company offers.
A lot of it is just the usual Internet bragging mixed with the “shortage of engineers” meme that just wont die. Everyone can get a new job in 7 days, just like they all make $250k, drive Porsche 911 GT3s, and have supermodel partners. It’s just part of the Hacker News zeitgeist.
Now back to the real world, my experience is close to yours. My last job took 1.5 years to find, with about 100 applications sent, 10 phone screens, 3 companies seriously interviewing, and 1 offer. So you’re not doing too bad, really.
The only people who could really say, won't.
I've landed a fairly good spot now, might actually stay longer than my usual 1-2 years.
I'll ask for what I want, invariably get told some version of "no", and start looking for a new job.
You offer letter should have the title in there, what did that say?
Exactly what I came here to say, albeit quite a bit softer.
Without having had the benefit of reading TFA yet, the problem is that you are never asking "the company" questions. You are asking your interviewer questions. Their answer, like all non-sociopaths, will be internally true or mostly true to themselves[+], but be colored.
The mitigation for this is that you have to ask every interviewer the same few questions.
[+] Read any book on how to suss out liars and you'll see that everyone who is not a sociopath, has many "tells" that they actually cannot resist. ie, normal people are uncomfortable with lying.
It helps that places that are awful also usually can't imagine that you would want to leave. Good places, ironically, worry a lot more about employee satisfaction. Bad places typically believe that everyone is really worried that they might not get promoted/have a long career at company XYZ so are very weak at spotting employees that have checkedout. The stick they wave is usually "you won't get promoted next year if you don't play the game!"
Of course this depends a lot on how much energy the job drains from you, but if you can still learn some stuff during the day and don't feel drained when you go home, a year is not such a bad sentence to serve for a nice bump to your savings... just don't make a career out of it.
By the way, didn't you get that memo? mmyeah...
Got similarly cat-fished. Companies always conduct interviews in their best offices, not the ones you'll be working in.
I once interviewed with a company that brought me into a new, shiny, well-appointed building on the corporate campus for an interview.
I did well answering their questions. And they answered my usual questions correctly. Stuff like "Can developers here choose their own tools?" and "My title is going to be Lead Engineer, will I actually be a Lead Engineer?"
After I was hired, I found out everybody uses Eclipse, no exceptions, and I was absolutely not going to be leading anything (I was basically going to be used like an overpaid junior engineer).
The best part: "Oh, you won't be working in the new building..." and was taken to an old, windowless, leaky, mold-smelling building with peeling paint and flickering fluorescent lights (think the opening scene from "Joe vs the Volcano"). My office was a supply closet that was being converted into an office (by that I mean, "we just pulled most of the stuff out of here, but otherwise just rearrange the furniture however.") I was given an old 70s vintage desk that was too low, a sort-of broken chair, and a laptop and left to my own devices for three weeks while waiting for my new project to get started. Then I was suddenly moved to even worse accommodations - a cubicle, which belonged to an employee who had recently died (his stuff was still there, and it was a month before anyone came to take it away).
I started looking for a new job about 2 days in. Took me a year to find something else (I eventually had to move to a new city).