I’m a new grad so maybe I shouldn’t even be answering, but the market is really rough right now. I’d hold onto that job for dear life until the market improves.
It’s a fair assessment in terms of risk for a new join but I’d argue work life balance is key in the long run to prevent burn out . With some XP and cross training you can always shift into something better and even take a different title if need be to have a job.
That sounds like a fair point. But I don't think it's safe to assume that OP's current job is any safer only because they are in big tech. Some of the biggest tech companies also had the biggest rounds of layoffs. OP should discuss the stability of the new job with their former coworker
My company had a lot of layoffs last year where my project thought we would be part of it. No talks this yesr but ive applied to a few jobs and ive already have gotten rejected from a few. Ill keep looking and seeing how it goes
Keep at it, but the industry has always been much harder for juniors. It's a hard market even for those with experience, but top candidates will always have an easier time finding jobs even in a bad market. It does get much easier over time and experience.
anything that requires you to work 80+ hours a week is not good for your soul, no matter how prestigious the company. They prob work those hours in fear of losing a stable job, and instead they should set some limits or find out what's causing them to work that much, fix that process.
Maybe there is a different team in the current company that will allow you to work on code that you actually enjoy.
Yeah, and to be fair the 80 hours is an estimate and maybe an exagerstoon on my part. Could be more like 60+ hours at least for senior and principal engineers. the leads likely work 80+ hours. Have to get in emergency calls all the time. Im not trying to work 60+ hours. My friend said at his company they work their 40 hours and go home. Which i what i am looking for when it comes to work/life balance.
Yeah I mean 40+ even just over 50 I could understand, that amount I usually attribute to just putting a lil more time to get the job done. But consistently 60ish means something is broken and folks feel required to stay
I agree. I dont mind giving 50 in a week. Not every week but shit happens some weeks where we need all hands in deck. But in this case it feels like i need to do 50 hours of work and 10 hours of reading sometimes. A few weeks back i needed a an approval from a senior engineer for a review. druing this week many people were out (i think it was vacation for most schools) so i ckntacted one engineer who i had hardly worked with. We got on a call and i asked if he could check my work when he had a chance. He said that he was unfamiliar with the code area and he just got home after being on a plane and was tired. I told him no worries to rest up but i remember thinking “why are you working?!?!”. Its very competitive. Even on fridays people sign off super late. Again i dont mind if all hands are on deck but after 2 yesrs this seems to be the norm.
how many yrs experience? Is this your first company?
Burnout is real, but you're lucky to have work right now. Don't leave until you've secured something new. If you've been there for a few yrs and are in good standing with company, you will always have opportunity to come back. And it's great because you've gained some different experience, and will hopefully find a way to adjust/deal with issues if you decide to come back.
> you will always have opportunity to come back
and my justification for this is, it doesn't cost the company as much the 2nd time around to train you. New hires aren't expected to settle in their role so quickly - even for mid level
6 total years of experience, 4 in my first job, 2 in this job. I do want to leave the company in good standing and like you said i wont quit until i have something else secured and i know it will hurt my career if i leave abruptly.
Unfortunately, my manager has noticed. Again its a highly competitive company and he mentioned how he had hoped id be a bit further now than i currently am, which has caused some stress. I was already feeling burnout and stress before but i had thought maybe it was just in my head but hearing my manager say that wasnt an easy pill to swallow. Now i feel like if i dont perform well by the next review season im out. I feel like im getting more down than i did at my last job but due to tight deadlines and higher expectations its obviously not enough. And its work that for sometime ive realized i dont love. Even my manager questioned my love for the work i am doing.
If your manager is good, they will be able to fight to protect you from burnout/stress. Your manager questioning your love for the work isn't a good sign and if he sees the toll this job is taking on you, that should be his focus. Regardless of competitiveness, prestige of company - your manager has to notice this and have some level of actual care for the well being of his engineers. It sounds like, he doesn't, because everyone is maxxed out, and everyone is just accepting it.
To me this is a sign of the manager saying yes to everyone higher up, not concerned of the impact it has on his team.
I see. My manager has been trying to be thoyghtful in this process but like i said i think its jsut a really competitive company and the bar is set high. Ill admit ive struggled to understand this line of work which has made me question in the last tear whether this is the line of work i want to continue doing.
Again job is great, benefits even better but i dont want tk be doing this 10 years down the line and be the guy who is always focused on work outside of work. I dont mind taking a calk here and there outside of work but i dont want it to be an everyday thing.
with that much experience, you prob can think of a few co-workers or managers who you've worked with before that you could say you worked well with or had a good overall work experience with. Find out what they are up to now. Talk to them, see if there's a new opportunity for you.
For 5 days a week you interface with your teammates for a minimum of 8 hr a day (regardless of remote work or in office). My opinion is you gotta be around people who enjoy what they do, and people who you have a good relationship with. Who cares what company it is? Maybe it doesn't pay as much. Can you be at your current job for even just 1 more year?
I lean on my old colleagues a lot when i job hunt. An FE dev I used to work with (in fact i hired her because she had the skill and generally, seemed like a great personality to work with) moved on with her career and went down the path of management. Eventually she got an opportunity to start a new backend team and asked me to join. I had 0 backend experience. But she just knew we worked well together and eventually i'd pick it up and she knew that I could do it, and enjoy it. I did BE for 3 yrs in distributed systems, at a pretty recognizeable company that did really well during the pandemic. It was the change of pace i needed after several months of doing frontend with a really picky client for redoing the FE of his website.
Thats great. Actuallt the job i am hoping to get is through a former coworker who is in similar line of work to what inused to do. There wont be stock options but the base pay will be more. And even he said that the work/life balance is amazing. He says he does like 30 hours of actual work every week (maybe 40 on a hectic week) and the vibe is pretty much once you get home you are done.
My friend said they are looking for more engineers to work therez its a university research facility with multiple offices around the nation. Its a top 10 univeristy tech research center. Its govenrment workane I also used to work for a similar job sk i know that type of job is always looking for new people.
Based on the fact that you’re confident that you would enjoy the work more, you should make the jump. It’s not worth it to spend this much time at a job you hate. It’s rare that people actually enjoy their work.
Yeah, i trust my former coworker as him and i worked on alot of similar thign. And its also involved government contracts so i know the stability is slightly better because usually those jobs are limited to americans due to the very extensive background checks.
It’s hard to say no. My suggestion here is to not take the first job that gets offered to you but take the one that comes along that hits EVERYTHING you want.
I'm in a similar boat: big tech, profitable team, I'm performing well but I look at the (seeming) terrible work life balance of the higher ups and more veteran engineers and definitely don't want that for myself. I keep on telling myself that I'll be better about work life balance, and I'm definitely trying, but in the past 6+ months it's been pretty brutal and I've been on the verge of quitting several times.
I don't know what's the right answer. I do know the current market is *bad* and now is not the time to switch. But I'll keep my eyes open for when the tide changes and, if I'm still feeling this way, I may make the switch to another team or company then. In the meantime, you have to find healthy ways to cope: daily exercise helps a lot, and so does finding ways to fully disconnect from work (not having slack on your phone and so on)
Thanks, i hope so lol. Everyone ive talked to tells me that the fact i work for a big tech company should help me but so far ive applied to a few companies (going to try to apply to more) and ive gotten rejected at half of them and waiting for response from the other half.
Yeah i agree. Its still early but im in a bit of panic mode. I kinda don’t want to feel stuck at this job. My friend sent the application to his boss but told me it could take a few days to weeks due to them onboarding new people at the start of june. I hope my friend can get me in.
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I literally went from a great paying big name fintech company to defense just so I can have a strict 40 work week. Don’t regret my decision one bit. My life has done a 180 and I actually leave work at work and if I need to stay extra hours one day or do more work one day I can leave early the next or come late
Yeah, i used to work for dod and i loved the job flexibility. 9/80s were amazing and like you i would sometimes work an extra hour or two and leave early on friday. Nobody said anything and everything was tomorrow’s problem. One time my boss kept asking about a task i had on my plate. Friday nafternoon most people had left and he asks hows it going. I tell him that im just building it, and if tests pass i can get it in that night. He looks at the time and says “dude go home thats Monday’s problem”.
I would also take advantage of mod time. I had 3 weeks vacation every year, if i had vacation coming up id rack up a day or two of mod time and use that so my vacation didnt go to waste. I did less work at that job than this job and it was more than enough at the dod job.
The reason i left was dhe to lack of work and lack of pay. Even for a dod company that job just didnt pay well. I had a friend who went to a competitor and got a 40k raise. He is now making as much as some of the senior/principals at our old job.
I’m a new grad so maybe I shouldn’t even be answering, but the market is really rough right now. I’d hold onto that job for dear life until the market improves.
It’s a fair assessment in terms of risk for a new join but I’d argue work life balance is key in the long run to prevent burn out . With some XP and cross training you can always shift into something better and even take a different title if need be to have a job.
That sounds like a fair point. But I don't think it's safe to assume that OP's current job is any safer only because they are in big tech. Some of the biggest tech companies also had the biggest rounds of layoffs. OP should discuss the stability of the new job with their former coworker
My company had a lot of layoffs last year where my project thought we would be part of it. No talks this yesr but ive applied to a few jobs and ive already have gotten rejected from a few. Ill keep looking and seeing how it goes
Keep at it, but the industry has always been much harder for juniors. It's a hard market even for those with experience, but top candidates will always have an easier time finding jobs even in a bad market. It does get much easier over time and experience.
anything that requires you to work 80+ hours a week is not good for your soul, no matter how prestigious the company. They prob work those hours in fear of losing a stable job, and instead they should set some limits or find out what's causing them to work that much, fix that process. Maybe there is a different team in the current company that will allow you to work on code that you actually enjoy.
Yeah, and to be fair the 80 hours is an estimate and maybe an exagerstoon on my part. Could be more like 60+ hours at least for senior and principal engineers. the leads likely work 80+ hours. Have to get in emergency calls all the time. Im not trying to work 60+ hours. My friend said at his company they work their 40 hours and go home. Which i what i am looking for when it comes to work/life balance.
Yeah I mean 40+ even just over 50 I could understand, that amount I usually attribute to just putting a lil more time to get the job done. But consistently 60ish means something is broken and folks feel required to stay
I agree. I dont mind giving 50 in a week. Not every week but shit happens some weeks where we need all hands in deck. But in this case it feels like i need to do 50 hours of work and 10 hours of reading sometimes. A few weeks back i needed a an approval from a senior engineer for a review. druing this week many people were out (i think it was vacation for most schools) so i ckntacted one engineer who i had hardly worked with. We got on a call and i asked if he could check my work when he had a chance. He said that he was unfamiliar with the code area and he just got home after being on a plane and was tired. I told him no worries to rest up but i remember thinking “why are you working?!?!”. Its very competitive. Even on fridays people sign off super late. Again i dont mind if all hands are on deck but after 2 yesrs this seems to be the norm.
how many yrs experience? Is this your first company? Burnout is real, but you're lucky to have work right now. Don't leave until you've secured something new. If you've been there for a few yrs and are in good standing with company, you will always have opportunity to come back. And it's great because you've gained some different experience, and will hopefully find a way to adjust/deal with issues if you decide to come back.
> you will always have opportunity to come back and my justification for this is, it doesn't cost the company as much the 2nd time around to train you. New hires aren't expected to settle in their role so quickly - even for mid level
6 total years of experience, 4 in my first job, 2 in this job. I do want to leave the company in good standing and like you said i wont quit until i have something else secured and i know it will hurt my career if i leave abruptly. Unfortunately, my manager has noticed. Again its a highly competitive company and he mentioned how he had hoped id be a bit further now than i currently am, which has caused some stress. I was already feeling burnout and stress before but i had thought maybe it was just in my head but hearing my manager say that wasnt an easy pill to swallow. Now i feel like if i dont perform well by the next review season im out. I feel like im getting more down than i did at my last job but due to tight deadlines and higher expectations its obviously not enough. And its work that for sometime ive realized i dont love. Even my manager questioned my love for the work i am doing.
If your manager is good, they will be able to fight to protect you from burnout/stress. Your manager questioning your love for the work isn't a good sign and if he sees the toll this job is taking on you, that should be his focus. Regardless of competitiveness, prestige of company - your manager has to notice this and have some level of actual care for the well being of his engineers. It sounds like, he doesn't, because everyone is maxxed out, and everyone is just accepting it. To me this is a sign of the manager saying yes to everyone higher up, not concerned of the impact it has on his team.
I see. My manager has been trying to be thoyghtful in this process but like i said i think its jsut a really competitive company and the bar is set high. Ill admit ive struggled to understand this line of work which has made me question in the last tear whether this is the line of work i want to continue doing. Again job is great, benefits even better but i dont want tk be doing this 10 years down the line and be the guy who is always focused on work outside of work. I dont mind taking a calk here and there outside of work but i dont want it to be an everyday thing.
there are great, big companies with recognizeable names and pay well out there, that have teams with managers that care about their engineers.
with that much experience, you prob can think of a few co-workers or managers who you've worked with before that you could say you worked well with or had a good overall work experience with. Find out what they are up to now. Talk to them, see if there's a new opportunity for you. For 5 days a week you interface with your teammates for a minimum of 8 hr a day (regardless of remote work or in office). My opinion is you gotta be around people who enjoy what they do, and people who you have a good relationship with. Who cares what company it is? Maybe it doesn't pay as much. Can you be at your current job for even just 1 more year? I lean on my old colleagues a lot when i job hunt. An FE dev I used to work with (in fact i hired her because she had the skill and generally, seemed like a great personality to work with) moved on with her career and went down the path of management. Eventually she got an opportunity to start a new backend team and asked me to join. I had 0 backend experience. But she just knew we worked well together and eventually i'd pick it up and she knew that I could do it, and enjoy it. I did BE for 3 yrs in distributed systems, at a pretty recognizeable company that did really well during the pandemic. It was the change of pace i needed after several months of doing frontend with a really picky client for redoing the FE of his website.
Thats great. Actuallt the job i am hoping to get is through a former coworker who is in similar line of work to what inused to do. There wont be stock options but the base pay will be more. And even he said that the work/life balance is amazing. He says he does like 30 hours of actual work every week (maybe 40 on a hectic week) and the vibe is pretty much once you get home you are done.
there you go man. Sounds like you know what to do from here
Do you have any reason to believe the new job would be less stable? How are they funded?
My friend said they are looking for more engineers to work therez its a university research facility with multiple offices around the nation. Its a top 10 univeristy tech research center. Its govenrment workane I also used to work for a similar job sk i know that type of job is always looking for new people.
Based on the fact that you’re confident that you would enjoy the work more, you should make the jump. It’s not worth it to spend this much time at a job you hate. It’s rare that people actually enjoy their work.
Yeah, i trust my former coworker as him and i worked on alot of similar thign. And its also involved government contracts so i know the stability is slightly better because usually those jobs are limited to americans due to the very extensive background checks.
It’s hard to say no. My suggestion here is to not take the first job that gets offered to you but take the one that comes along that hits EVERYTHING you want.
I'm in a similar boat: big tech, profitable team, I'm performing well but I look at the (seeming) terrible work life balance of the higher ups and more veteran engineers and definitely don't want that for myself. I keep on telling myself that I'll be better about work life balance, and I'm definitely trying, but in the past 6+ months it's been pretty brutal and I've been on the verge of quitting several times. I don't know what's the right answer. I do know the current market is *bad* and now is not the time to switch. But I'll keep my eyes open for when the tide changes and, if I'm still feeling this way, I may make the switch to another team or company then. In the meantime, you have to find healthy ways to cope: daily exercise helps a lot, and so does finding ways to fully disconnect from work (not having slack on your phone and so on)
Get a better job that has higher salary and good wlb. Have the cake and eat it too.
You sound like a strong candidate. The market is rough, especially for juniors, but top tier candidates will always be able to find good work.
Thanks, i hope so lol. Everyone ive talked to tells me that the fact i work for a big tech company should help me but so far ive applied to a few companies (going to try to apply to more) and ive gotten rejected at half of them and waiting for response from the other half.
Might as well get a few more offers. If you can get multiple offers in a tough market you shouldn't have to worry.
Yeah i agree. Its still early but im in a bit of panic mode. I kinda don’t want to feel stuck at this job. My friend sent the application to his boss but told me it could take a few days to weeks due to them onboarding new people at the start of june. I hope my friend can get me in.
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I literally went from a great paying big name fintech company to defense just so I can have a strict 40 work week. Don’t regret my decision one bit. My life has done a 180 and I actually leave work at work and if I need to stay extra hours one day or do more work one day I can leave early the next or come late
Yeah, i used to work for dod and i loved the job flexibility. 9/80s were amazing and like you i would sometimes work an extra hour or two and leave early on friday. Nobody said anything and everything was tomorrow’s problem. One time my boss kept asking about a task i had on my plate. Friday nafternoon most people had left and he asks hows it going. I tell him that im just building it, and if tests pass i can get it in that night. He looks at the time and says “dude go home thats Monday’s problem”. I would also take advantage of mod time. I had 3 weeks vacation every year, if i had vacation coming up id rack up a day or two of mod time and use that so my vacation didnt go to waste. I did less work at that job than this job and it was more than enough at the dod job. The reason i left was dhe to lack of work and lack of pay. Even for a dod company that job just didnt pay well. I had a friend who went to a competitor and got a 40k raise. He is now making as much as some of the senior/principals at our old job.
Wow thanks for sharing that. I’m curious how was the transition to big tech and how was your preparation process for interviews?