Job Hunting

Alex

Still a Music Elitist
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The Senior/Principal/Master thing is just to show what level you are. It's very common in the tech world. They're basically promotional titles.
 

The_Black_Log Foler

Stock Pals Senior Vice President
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The Senior/Principal/Master thing is just to show what level you are. It's very common in the tech world. They're basically promotional titles.
I had never heard or "master" software engineer until C1. I've seen principal here and there. Ya I mean makes sense. Just kinda annoying.

I had an accounting friend telling me the other day I should have taken the C1 job since the title was "Senior associate engineer." I had to explain to him that titles don't really mean too much when you're looking for a job, it's the experience under if that tech employers look for.

Dude was like a deer in headlights. Guess it's a finance industry thing.
 

Noodleface

A Mod Real Quick
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Titles are just meaningless outside of companies. I think stuff like senior/principal/fellow is pretty standard though
 
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ZyyzYzzy

RIP USA
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Been job hunting this week because my current job has been slowly eating away at my soul.

Why do all these companies I'm looking at have rainbow logos?
 

Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
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Titles are just meaningless outside of companies. I think stuff like senior/principal/fellow is pretty standard though

Never worked anywhere large enough for tites mostly. You just worked in X department. Most business cards I've had and companies I worked for was just a name and the company. No title. The one time I got a real title it was so the people that were on the way out wouldn't know. I didn't see why it mattered. They were all at or nearing retirement age and they knew, everyone knew they had to bring in some replaements ahead of time.
 

Lenaldo

Golden Knight of the Realm
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The title thing is a result of millennials in the workforce. We used to have only a few titles for individuals (and each title signified the type of work the software developer would do.. architect, design, test, etc) but exit surveys taught us that millennials want to have promotions more often, even if they are just cosmetic in nature. So we have added a bunch of new "bs" levels so I can promote someone every 1.5-2 years although they continue to do the same job. It's similar to the "Sr Dev 1, Sr Dev 2, Sr Dev 3" crap a lot of companies have also started doing.

It's quite simply a way to provide a sense of "accomplishment" to people so they don't go looking elsewhere for a "promotion" because they have been stagnant longer than a yahoo news article tells them they should be.....
 
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Alex

Still a Music Elitist
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Leaving jobs is the best way to move forward though. Typically. That's not wrong.
 

Noodleface

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That's what I found. I hopped 3 times and my bosses now 'know' what I was doing and bring it up. I'm at the point where If I try to hope again it'll definitely be a problem.

Doing those 3 hope each netted 20+% each time. You know, as opposed to the 3-4% yearly raise. Or even.. on top of that in the case of Raytheon since I just had gotten my raise
 
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Lenaldo

Golden Knight of the Realm
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Companies Are definitely catching on to the jump every 2 year thing... it all depends on the demand for your skills, but we hesitate to interview people with 15 years experience but never more than 3 in anyone spot.
 

Pescador

Trakanon Raider
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Pretty bent out of shape right now. I've had a very successful last couple of years, raised millions of dollars for my company and made some real scientific breakthroughs for our product.

I've been at this job for 4.5 years, got a promotion 2 years ago but have been basically doing work above my pay grade for a while now. I'm fairly young (32) so I was OK sticking around to prove myself and I was ready for it all to pay off. I make $100k with a performance bonus (15% last year) which is below market value in my field (San Diego, pharma), and I was really considering that the next promotion to senior management would be an inflection point for my career.

My boss (Senior VP) and said she'd be promoting me in July. Well now it's the end of June and the company just initiated a hiring freeze, likely layoffs soon, basically cost cutting across the board to re-focus on core needs to get the product to market.

Anyways, I'm meeting with my boss tomorrow and I've already been told that a promotion I had planned for one of my employees is no longer going through, so I'm pretty sure I'll be informed that my promotion is also getting cancelled. I understand the rationale. However, I do need to figure out how to respond. I wonder if now is the time to get a bit pushy and try to squeeze some sort of a raise / title bump out of this. Or I can maintain the nice guy role, say I understand, and start the job hunt and use these guys as a reference since I've built a very positive reputation here. I don't want to poison the well but I feel like I sacrificed a couple years to grind to the top and then got the rug pulled from under me.

This is kind of just a rant but any advice is appreciated on handling this. Seems like cutting my losses and moving on is the right answer though. I know it could be worse, but I'm still pretty salty and the job itself is fantastic so it'll be a shame to leave.
 

Alex

Still a Music Elitist
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I would look to leave any company facing downsizing. That's not a positive environment to be in. I left my last company immediately after they laid off a bunch of people. Working for a winning company is much more healthy mentally.
 
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Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
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Have your resume in order and get it out before everyone else if you plan on making a move.
 

Fogel

Mr. Poopybutthole
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Pretty bent out of shape right now. I've had a very successful last couple of years, raised millions of dollars for my company and made some real scientific breakthroughs for our product.

I've been at this job for 4.5 years, got a promotion 2 years ago but have been basically doing work above my pay grade for a while now. I'm fairly young (32) so I was OK sticking around to prove myself and I was ready for it all to pay off. I make $100k with a performance bonus (15% last year) which is below market value in my field (San Diego, pharma), and I was really considering that the next promotion to senior management would be an inflection point for my career.

My boss (Senior VP) and said she'd be promoting me in July. Well now it's the end of June and the company just initiated a hiring freeze, likely layoffs soon, basically cost cutting across the board to re-focus on core needs to get the product to market.

Anyways, I'm meeting with my boss tomorrow and I've already been told that a promotion I had planned for one of my employees is no longer going through, so I'm pretty sure I'll be informed that my promotion is also getting cancelled. I understand the rationale. However, I do need to figure out how to respond. I wonder if now is the time to get a bit pushy and try to squeeze some sort of a raise / title bump out of this. Or I can maintain the nice guy role, say I understand, and start the job hunt and use these guys as a reference since I've built a very positive reputation here. I don't want to poison the well but I feel like I sacrificed a couple years to grind to the top and then got the rug pulled from under me.

This is kind of just a rant but any advice is appreciated on handling this. Seems like cutting my losses and moving on is the right answer though. I know it could be worse, but I'm still pretty salty and the job itself is fantastic so it'll be a shame to leave.

I've been in a similar situation and I'd say get ready to cut bait and jump ship. Was due for promotion to QA supervisor and a few weeks before my promotion I find out a new position was magically created - ASSISTANT supervisor. Yeah, fuck you guys. Companies need to reward their A players or expect them to leave, and downsizing/layoffs is a bullshit excuse. These companies know where to find the funds necessary to continue to run whether its to pay talent, pay bills, or buy materials. If they're doing this to you this time, they'll do it again the next time you're up for promotion review.

In my case I went from a job that never payed bonuses to getting 10k in bonuses my first year on top of 20% more base salary.
 
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ZyyzYzzy

RIP USA
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I've been in a similar situation and I'd say get ready to cut bait and jump ship. Was due for promotion to QA supervisor and a few weeks before my promotion I find out a new position was magically created - ASSISTANT supervisor. Yeah, fuck you guys. Companies need to reward their A players or expect them to leave, and downsizing/layoffs is a bullshit excuse. These companies know where to find the funds necessary to continue to run whether its to pay talent, pay bills, or buy materials. If they're doing this to you this time, they'll do it again the next time you're up for promotion review.

In my case I went from a job that never payed bonuses to getting 10k in bonuses my first year on top of 20% more base salary.
This why I'm looking right now. I've been doing half of the responsibilities my former senior manager did, which has lead to much better budget execution on our client side, the government. When my appraisal came around I got 3% and was told it was better than most people got. Motherfuckers there is a 3% increase clause for rates in our fucking contract with the Government. Thanks for the generous fucking "raise".

On top of that, the team who had worked for my VP at his previous company and now does several research efforts, always tell him without me, the government portfolio they do research in and that I manage by myself because the 2 Gov slots meant for it have been vacant for over a year, is doing great, even better when the previous civilian was there who I worked with. VP sent me an email saying thanks for the good job. Motherfucker, give me a bonus or even lunch or something. Your fucking government client tell you how much I'm needed to make sure things run smoothly. And to add I'm the youngest manager and advisor in my department but a good decade or so, so even though I make a decent salary, I know some of the worthless older sacks of shit make well over 200k.

What pissed me off the most recently was the government director (a 2-star equivalent) giving a bonus to some random govi guy for managing that portfolio. He's literally done nothing with it and couldn't even name 1 research effort under it.
 
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Noodleface

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My last raise was the 3% too, after they praised me for mentoring virtually every new hire and doing great work. Thanks guys, I'll take my 25% raise for leaving. Gee I wonder why you guys can't hire college grads or retain anyone.
 
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Lenaldo

Golden Knight of the Realm
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108
Ya im considering switching to a new compnay now too after being promised a gigantic promotion that is now "still in the works". I'm doing more than just my job and its getting exhausting.. especially at a large company where your title does mean something when dealing with people outside of your reporting structure.

With the hiring market like it is, companies are stupid to lose their top talent.
 

Khane

Got something right about marriage
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Most of the companies I've worked for let HR dictate who does and doesn't get hired. So much so that the technical staff doesn't even see resumes until they've been passed on by HR, as if they have any experience or knowledge of what the applicant's resume even says about their qualifications. To make matters worse they usually have contracts with specific recruiting/staffing firms who are equally as incompetent at vetting before presenting said resumes. It's bureaucracy and since there are so many software developers in the generic sense talent isn't really valued or understood by the people who are in charge of staffing the company.

"He wants how much money? Just hire someone cheaper" As if there isn't an enormous cost associated with training new hires. And the tech staff is usually powerless to stop it and their opinions fall on deaf ears.
 
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