Greetings! Philip Kiely here, which I hope you were able to gather from the picture of the young JFK impersonator above this post. John graced my email list with his humorous and insightful writing, which means you don’t get to read it here. Evil Laugh! Instead, you get some guest content. For more shameless self-promotion, or to understand my qualifications to write on this topic, check out https://philipkiely.com.
Part 1: How to Find a Good Job
John and I have intersecting views on what defines a successful career. Both of our chosen fields involve vast amounts rejection to alleviate the strenuous monotony of staring at a screen solving complex and abstract problems with nothing but our wit, experience, and the collective work of generations of experts in our fields to guide us. A fundamental difference is that very good writers often work caffeine-oriented service jobs while even a bad programmer can make a good living pretending to be a mediocre programmer. At the other end, the gap remains, the highest net worth programmer (Bill Gates) is worth approximately 100 times as much as the highest net worth author (J.K. Rowling), who at the time of writing doesn’t even crack a measly billion.
That said, I’m not here to flex (that would have been the post John wisely rejected: “How to have a lot of money and muscles”). I’m not here to depreciate John or his profession, he’s much better at that than I am ( “Top 19 Humblebrags” and “11 favorable comparisons to John Osler” were also rejected). Instead, I’m here for an Oslerian vulnerable and open discussion. My chosen topic is The Career, which despite appearances is an intensely personal topic.
Two recent events have me thinking about the topic. The first is September 1st marking the beginning of Summer 2019 internship application season for ambitious computer science students. This may strike you as early, but in a world of rolling deadlines and exploding offers being first pays. The other is reading Dying for a Paycheck, a brilliant book by Jeffrey Pfeffer (Stanford professor) about the immense individual and societal effects of workplace stress, especially among people in “good jobs.”
The junior year internship is pivotal. If I have a successful summer and enjoy the employer, I will likely work there for at least three years after college, making it the equivalent of selecting a graduate program while barely past halfway through undergraduate study. Fortunately, I have a decent amount of relevant skills and experience for my age, so this early in the process I have high hopes of landing an ideal internship. Rather than a prescriptive list of companies, let me describe the most important thing I’m looking for having lived through my single-spaced resume.
The most important thing I’m looking for is a stress-managed workplace. Stress is the main subject of the aforementioned book and the main cause of minor to moderate health issues for me. Note that I don’t say low-stress or stress-free. I experience and internalize stress very easily, partly due to the all-or-nothing nature of my profession (code works or it doesn’t) and that I generally care very deeply about solving whatever problem I happen to be working on. Therefore, a supportive environment where everyone acts proactively to manage stress is essential to maintaining happy productivity.
The most important thing I’m looking for is fulfilling work. I don’t need to be curing cancer or saving babies. In fact, I don’t want to try to do either at this point, because most entry-level software engineers don’t tend to save the whole world no matter how many hundreds of startups advertise otherwise. I do want a sense that the work that I’m doing is making the world better by any margin. If I’m going to be stressed and work hard, there should be at least some greater benefit from it.
The most important thing I’m looking for is a sense of professionalism. Robert Martin and many other computer scientists have described issues with how many programmers are seen by upper management and society at large and in turn see themselves. I want to act and therefore be treated as a professional. My contribution is ethical and honest working practices, high quality output, and full disclosure of any issues with my work. My employer’s contribution must be appropriate tools and training and an environment where such attitudes are supported and rewarded.
And, yes, the most important thing is making a lot of money. I have a lot of things I want to do that require moderate capital investment. Furthermore, making and saving extra money in my twenties will have a compounding reducing effect on the time it will take for me to achieve financial independence. I will not deny a component of materialism either.
(Credit where it’s due to The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks. See, I can reference famous books as well.)
This list will differ from person to person, but I would be surprised if anyone specifically avoids anything on this list. It is critical to understand what you want and need in a workplace, and that understanding will only come from experience.
Part 2: How to Get a Good Job
To read the second part, please join my professional service club for a special introductory rate of $19.99 for the first two months!
Haha, just a bit of harmless content-marketing humor for you there. The first step in getting a good job is realizing how many there are. In my field, they are innumerable, but for college students generally free from geographic constraints they should be numerous in most fields. Every big-name company has its handful of competitors and scores of suppliers and subcontractors. Every hip startup and indie publisher is landlocked by similar enterprises. There are millions of people working jobs that regularly meet every requirement on their list, and you can be one of them.
The second step is to apply for every good job you see until you get one. This should require no more than a hundred job applications, which after the first ten should take only minutes each. There is a wealth of information online about how to do it properly in your chosen field, but in every industry it comes down to statistics and luck at the junior levels. It is important during this application stage to never compromise on your list of essential attributes in a job and company. The third step is not getting your soul crushed by the second step. The fourth step is figuring out how to recover from failing at the third step. “Hope fatigue” is a real issue in applications of all kinds, the cycle of attempt and rejection buffets the spirit. The fifth step, interviewing and closing an offer, brings you back to the domain of career services centers and pithy blog posts by people who make ludicrous sums (or often nothing at all) as “management consultants.”
Finally, a word on salary negotiation. After this long cycle, you will be tempted to take whatever they give you then keep your head down for years before asking for more. Even at junior levels, no reasonable employer will get mad with you for having a calm and professional discussion about the value of your skills at the end of a successful job application or the merits of your contributions after six months or a year of work. They might say no, but often don’t. Remember, a business will offer you the minimum amount of money they think you will say yes to. In my three-year career I have thus far increased my total earnings by at least ten percent through a few brief negotiations and there’s no reason that you cannot do the same. As raises, promotions, and new jobs often base compensation off of your previous earnings, a small increase now can have compounding lifetime effects.
Thanks for sticking with me and best of luck in your professional endeavors.
Sincerely,
Philip J Kiely
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