I’ve heard this before, but my thinking is that if I can’t get jobs in my wheelhouse of skills, how do I have any chance at all with something different?
You’re in academia, right? If so, the pool of jobs in your specific area of expertise is pretty small, which ends up creating really tough competition.
I had a similar problem, and ended up expanding way out of my niche. I was told by the people who hired me that my previous experience will help them diversify their team perspectives and how they approach solving their problems. Granted, this is not how most companies think, but in this case it worked out for me.
Sorry for length
I’ve been at my company for a little over 4 years. At my 1st review in early 2019 I got high praise and moderate bump and was given a stock grant, something most people at my level don’t get (apparently). It vests/vested over 4 years and at the time was worth maybe 10k a year.
Since then the stock has gone up ~3.5x though bouncing around now. 2nd review in 2020 was also good and I got some refresher RSUs to vest in next 4 years etc but no where near the volume I got in previous year which was fine of course, same stuff for 3rd review.
Maybe 1.5 years ago I got a new manager and the project got a new director. While not terrible I really disagree with what they’re having me do (write and maintain a bunch of fucking integration tests that fail all the time which takes up at least 1/3 of my time overall) and what the team now has to do (mandatory not-on-call support rotation where we basically spend 1 out of 8 weeks answering slack questions the whole time) and I’ve let them know I don’t want to do this and they basically really don’t like me because of it.
So this is crap and it makes me unhappy but on the other hand I really only work for maybe 25 hours a week and all from home. I put the computer down at 3pm basically every day. With the stock my pay is what I think really high for living in the midwest (my manager let it slip during this years review that I’m one of the highest paid for my level and I didn’t say anything but man what a dumb thing to say) and getting the same comp may be difficult elsewhere, not super sure, emails I get from recruiters aren’t really promising but may be able to get better pay working for out of state companies.
I had my 4th review a couple months ago and not surprisingly did not get a great one (though not “we’re going to fire you” bad). Raise/bonus whatever but what really ticked me off was no stocks. I don’t know how they can just cut those off. In 10 months my big vest is done and without that being replaced I lose like 10-15% of my comp the next year.
Its new job time isn’t it? Or just suck it up/phone it in? Maybe do that until March for the last of the stonks (also 15% annual bonus at same time period)? I could probably switch teams internally but doesn’t solve the comp problem.
I doubt this was a slip, this is the kind of thing managers want their reports to know (or think)l
Yeah, but I’ve still been applying to jobs in administration, etc. that I am certainly qualified to do. They’re just being filled with PhDs, even if the listings require a bachelors. There just aren’t many jobs in science where I live, so anything that gets posted that is even remotely adjacent is a cage match. It seems so much worse lately though.
I don’t really get the issue with spending time on integration tests. If they are failing doesn’t this mean you’re catching bugs with them before things get to production? Otherwise, if you’re good the majority of developer jobs are going to involve 25 hours or less of real working time, so that’s not a reason to stay.
In general it seems like a bad idea to stay in a job where you dislike you boss and your boss dislikes you. That’s likely to lead to a lot of unhappiness leaking into other areas of your life. But rather than deciding it’s new job time why not just see what the market is for your skills right now and decide once you have a good offer in hand
Can you apply to remote jobs as well? Some places are open to a hybrid situation where you spend a week at their headquarters and the rest of the time it’s remote. Depending on your location (Vermont iirc?), you could have access to good science hubs like Boston that way.
How long until your grants run out? Are you the PI or do you have any control over submitting new grants? My previous job was at a company funded by NIH grants, I know how much of a grind that can be and how uncertain things can get when funding is running out.
It sounds like you don’t like your job and the only thing keeping you there is comp. If that’s the case, it seems like there’s no downside to interviewing and seeing what else is out there and what they’re willing to pay. There’s plenty of FAANG-adjacent companies that are hiring fully remote.
I can’t imagine what remote jobs I’d be qualified for, to say nothing of how competitive those are right now.
About a year. Maybe 1.5 years.
I’m not a PI, and don’t have a doctorate so can’t become one. The PI I’m under is 70 and won’t be getting any NIH grants. (He’s a replacement role for someone else who had to stop working.) Because of this we’ve actually been getting most of our money recently from being a subcontractor.
Over the 20 years I’ve been here, the funding situation outside of one iffy time has actually been fine the whole time. The PI I have has some connections with a few people, but the really good ones are at other institutions.
So I’m not super-desperate at this point. I’ve still got job security until at least next summer.
But I’m still looking for stuff that’s more secure, so when I see something I’m clearly qualified for and don’t even get an interview, it’s disheartening. I’ve only been rejected outright like that 3 times. I understood the first two; this one baffles me.
Employers are still just completely not getting it.
This reminds me of that dude on 22 who gave people work to do as part of an interview so they would have someone to do the work.
I might have a few details wrong on that.
Theres nothing wrong with setting a task as part of the application process. But you should be paid.
Yeah, they were paid, but I think it was a joke amount for the work required.
Again, I could be way off here. It was a long, long time ago.
This is straight up Upton Sinclair stuff. A huge chunk of the managerial class has spent their entire career in an environment where employers had all the leverage, and bullying employees was considered standard operating procedure for employee relations. Those people don’t understand that employees have more leverage now because their salaries depend on them not understanding that.
Arguably, way more interviewing should be based on testing people with hypothetical projects and seeing how they do. It’s way more instructive than picking based on 95% bias and 5% smooth talking interview skills.
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In the long gone time of the early 2000s when I entered the workforce, companies just hired 20 kids of out college and put them to work. Throw them at the wall and see what sticks. I think that system is the kind of thing that works great in practice but in the abstract an MBA looks at it and says, no, that can’t be right, it’s so wasteful! Managers will convince themselves they can design exactly the right hiring process to pick only winners and avoid all this “wasteful” overhead like staffing and training.
The reality I see in my daily life is that good employees will mostly not push back on much of anything if you’re just nice to them and give them autonomy.
However, the kind of people who want to be bosses can’t get it through their heads that simply not being an asshole is among the most valuable boss traits, not from a morality standpoint but a productivity one.
If you think about it, the amount of waste from assholes being in charge is staggering. It’s basically the entire staffing industry, where it is completely standard to pay a years salary to a search firm to find people who hate their bosses, generally in a game of musical chairs working for these douchebags.
Which is a long winded way of saying if you aren’t stressed and like your boss think long and hard before leaving. If the opposite is true, GTFO. I’ve been in both spots.
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So true, but also reflective of organizations being so shitty at choosing bosses. Which is mainly because humans are seemingly hard wired to interpret confidence as a proxy for charisma and leadership ability and thus always end up with a bunch of narcissists running things (due to Dunning Kruger it is actually helpful for the boss to be a know nothing as long as they can slip through the hiring process without appearing completely incompetent).
Yes. BUT, it should be obvious that it’s a total hypothetical and not “do some free consulting for us” - if there’s any way they can reuse that work product, I would instawalk.
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