The ultimate career reality check for developers
This has nothing to do with code
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A job isn’t just a job, it’s a relationship, you give your expertise, and you get a salary + bonuses that is based partly on the industry standard and on how much ROI your boss can get from selling your work to his customers.
A business’s only goal is to maximize revenue and minimize expenditure.
You’re an expenditure, in fact, most people in the company are. If your boss had a way to get rid of all of you, he would. The only reason you’re there is because they need you. And the only reason you’re paid is because there’s legislation in place.
They need your skills, without them they cannot make solutions to sell, but they also aim to pay as little as possible for them, that’s a minimized expenditure right there. You need to leverage the fact they need you to your advantage.
Your goals and how much you want them will predict how good you are at negotiating. If you have no ambition, small goals and low self-esteem, you’ll be taken advantage of very often. This will eventually build enough resentment to make life very frustrating.
Before the job search
Find out what you want
You need to know where you want to go, or it’s impossible to optimize your actions. Do you want to code forever? Do you want to stay in a hamster wheel of changing programming languages and frameworks? Do you want to move onto management? Do you want to eventually own a business?
If you’re really not sure where you want your career to go, focus on learning as much as possible(not just code stuff) and having a good time. The rest will come.
As you gain more experience you will be able to create more value by being closer to the business side of things, but this is a career change, it’s no longer coding.
Job search
Don’t browse jobs in the same website you use to look for used furniture
It attracts the shittiest of shit employers and is full of the shittiest of shit jobs.
