Programmer career

In the article I describe my opinion on priorities when choosing an employer for programmers. The main factor I indicated was the size of the salary, justifying it by the fact that this leaves more time to live. Next, I cite my reasons why you should not get involved in processing. I continue the article with a look at the development of home projects, which, in my opinion, helps to keep up with the trends of the profession, and also brings pleasure. I came to these thoughts after working for 8 years as a full-time programmer.

Experienced people who know how to work and live, I urge to comment on my views, to express their opinions on issues with which discrepancies were discovered. For those who have recently started their career as a programmer, or simply never thought about such things, I recommend not to take the article as a serious guide. I described my attitude on these issues, hoping that someone might find useful ideas in case he feels despair working as a programmer.

Priorities

When choosing a job, I identified the following priorities.

1. The amount of cash income received. It's simple.
2. Comfort workspace. This is how convenient or uncomfortable that surrounds you at work: distance from home, people in the office, performance of the work computer, weather at the workplace, surveillance camera at your monitor, your monitor to the side, attitude with management, late fees and the like.
3. The possibility of your professional development. This includes your experience at work. This is the study of new technologies for you, sharpening the previously studied, the acquisition of new skills that are useful to you. Everything that makes you more experienced in professional terms.

Very few of this list can be found in advance about the company before applying for a job. But given the order of priorities, you can easily compare current work and other potential, knowing the size of the salary. Sometimes you can donate part of the second and third, for the sake of a good salary. Of course, for everyone this balance is different.

Some are embarrassed to speak out loud, but money is the first and main factor in choosing a place to work. If you get good, then you do not have to earn money and recycle, which means you will have more time to enjoy life. My point of view is this: if you are a programmer with more than 3 years of experience and you feel that you would like to receive more, start to achieve this without delaying later. Most likely, you have no reason not to receive more, if possible.

How to raise your salary

There is an opinion that you can simply ask your guide for this. It might work. But I suggest to start to find out how much other employers are willing to pay you. If you do not have ready-made job offers, then you need to start looking for vacancies yourself. Consider options that relate to your experience and salary higher than your current. Be ready to do test tasks, take a Skype interview or face-to-face interview. Consider this as a potential profit, do not shut out your self-conceit.

Consider not only employers in your city, but also distant work. There are many articles about the shortcomings of remote work, but if you have not tried it yourself, then you can still consider such options. Remember that remote work is not necessarily work from home. With the salary of a programmer, you can rent an office or go to coworking.

For the interviews you need to prepare. On the net you can find a list of questions that you may be asked. Take the time to study them, think about the answers. The interview procedure is important. Start with the employer whose conditions seem least attractive to you, then go on increasing the attractiveness of a potential new job. The meaning of this order is that it is much easier to fill up at the first interviews. At the first interviews, you are more likely to worry more, forget more, act less confidently. In addition, you can study and answer the following questions when receiving questions that you did not cope with at the same interview. Thereby, you will increase your chances of getting an offer from the most attractive company to you.

If it seems to you before an interview with any company that you definitely will not go there to work, still take this interview seriously, as a result, new details may be revealed that will make this employer more attractive. It is always worth remembering that you are choosing a new job, despite the fact that it all started with the goal of a salary increase.

If it starts to seem to you that you are taking the upcoming interview too seriously and are worried because of this, then the advice is reversed to the previous one: take the employer not as a potential, but simply as a means of increasing pay for current work, knowing that if it does not work out, then simply nothing will change. But find a balance in order to look like a professional, and not a sassy, ​​arrogant type.

Having received attractive job offers, do not leave silently from your employer. Discuss the situation with those who make the decision to raise your salary. This is a very exciting moment, the first time it may not be enough determination. If you do not feel confident enough discussing such moments, you can try to start a discussion by electronic correspondence. But, most likely, you still have to talk in voice.

If you have no idea how to make up your mind to ask yourself a salary increase, then I suggest you the following. Start for yourself to focus on all the shortcomings of your current job: how you don’t like that at lunch someone constantly warms the fish, that the air conditioner is working right above your back, how much you are upset about being late for your workplace for one minute, how do you tired of the implementation of features that nobody really needs, as you are tired of the current stack of technologies used, as you have not learned something new for a long time. But most importantly, imagine that you could receive + X% of money, but do not receive it because of your employer. Do you like that the employer keeps your money? Not? Go ahead and talk to him about it. Just do not have to go offended at work, somehow do your job, hoping that the manager will notice this and offer something himself. This is unprofessional.

If a manager refuses to raise and lets you go, then it's time to leave. How often can I ask for a raise? As long as you get offers, much better than your current situation. But do not try to cheat, you must have a valid job offer after going through all the interviews.

Overtime work

Full-time work means that you work 40 hours a week. If you are offered to work more than this, then remember that work already takes about a third of your entire daily life. If you apart from work and sleep have nothing else in life, then you can kill time and work. Otherwise, think about your priorities. Do not settle for overtime work if it is not paid enough. But even in this case, it may turn out that you simply have no time to spend your salary. You may think that now you will dig into the apartment, then into the car, then to rest for the family, and then life will go on. But life is already coming, and you are aging. Try, nevertheless, to start earning more for the same 40 hours a week, and not overworking. Spend free time on something that brings you pleasure, and on learning something new, to keep up with the trends of your profession.

Home Projects

There is a widespread opinion that looks like this: “I’ve been programming all day, I don’t have enough strength to come home and develop a pet-project or commit to open source.” I understand that not all big fans of programming for the sake of the process, and for them the above opinion is valid. But for some, the reason is that they simply did not try to program something interesting for themselves. Maybe they just didn’t think that something interesting could be created, and perhaps they didn’t even try to think.

If the question of whether you like programming at all, you answer positively, then you should try to come up with a project for yourself and start developing it. If earlier you did not develop large projects on your own, then you should not start with big ideas and plans for earnings. Let it be a very small project to begin with. If you have no ideas, I suggest trying to make a game. A game that you would like to play yourself, and which you would like to share with a friend. Just do not lure yourself into a trap, thinking about the rapid growth of users through word of mouth, selling the game to a publisher or something like that. Not for this you are doing your first home project. You do it for the pleasure of programming and for the opportunity to try the latest technologies that you read about on Habré or in the job description. The latter is especially important, because this is how you develop professionally.

It may seem that you will not have time for this. But the development of home projects has much more to do with creativity than the main work of the programmer. And about the time to work there is an excellent comic . The bottom line is that programming is fun, you fall into a rush, which makes it hard to stop, even to eat or sleep. But remember that in addition to programming in life there are other interesting things, look for your balance.

Conclusion

I described my thoughts as tips, but do I follow them myself? Not really. I enjoy programming home projects, learning new programming languages ​​and frameworks for me. I do not recycle, if I am not sure that the payment will follow decent. More precisely, in six months I processed about 8 hours. Almost a year ago, I changed my job for the sole reason - a good salary increase, and the bonus was the comfort of working space and professional growth. And now what's wrong. I have the opportunity to change jobs and get + 50%, but I find all sorts of excuses: I am comfortable here; recently came here, it will look bad in the summary; there may be deceived, but checked here; there they may be disappointed in me, and here they trust in such things. To change a comfortable place of work for a new one, you need courage. I try to save it.

Not once again will remind you that you should not take other people's advice on how to live, without strong skepticism. Especially if someone did something once, and he now recommends it to everyone.