Switching Tech Jobs: What To Consider As A Software Engineer

when it comes to switching software engineering jobs you know what they say the grass isn't always greener on the other side but is that always true hi my name is Nick centino and I'm a principal software engineering manager at Microsoft in this video I wanted to talk through three different considerations when it comes to switching jobs and then I wanted to talk about how we can reflect on these and make sure that we have a framework for thinking about them as we want to switch jobs in the future if that sounds interesting just a reminder that I have another YouTube channel called code commute where I focus on Vlog entries we have topics just like this one that users submit in and then when I'm driving to and from work I talk about these different topics so feel free to check that channel out if you're interested in this type of content in a different format the first Focus area that I want us to look at is Team Dynamics and this is going to VAR from Team to team company to company and every individual is going to find that they have different experiences in different types of teams but what I mean when we're thinking about this particular Focus area is how much you're enjoying it are you working with people that you really struggle to get along with are you working with challenging team members or is it something that you go into work and you're excited to work with the people that you're working with on a regular basis there's going to be a bit of a spectrum here right you might have some individuals you love to work with you might have some that you really don't like working with but ultimately we need to think about are we working with people that we enjoy working with and this isn't just your immediate peers this should also factor in your manager do you feel like you're going to work and you're getting micromanaged do you feel that you have someone who cares about your experience at work like they're looking out for you or is your manager very disconnected from what you're doing and you're sort of just left in isolation right these are different factors that we want to think about when it comes to our happiness in the workplace give you an example for myself I enjoy having autonomy if I have a manager that is micromanaging me then I feel like I really cannot be productive and I don't enjoy the work that I'm doing but if I'm given a clear goal and some autonomy and then my manager trusts me to get the work done then I feel very empowered to go be successful when I couple that working with other people that I enjoy working with right people that are collaborative as well people that are open-minded and people that are also very interested in doing a good job this really creates a recipe for success for me these are things that I look forward to when I'm thinking about teams that I'm going to be working on if I have managers that are micromanaging that's a big red flag for me if I have individuals that I'm working with on a regular basis and they're not very collaborative they're not very open-minded or they're really keeping to themselves and we can't really get work done together again this is going to be a big challenge for me so for me those are some of the things that I'm thinking about when it comes to Team Dynamics the next one that I want to talk about is growth opportunities and I've talked about this either in live streams or in different videos even in written posts that I put out on social media but when it comes to growth opportunities for me what this really looks like is putting myself into situations that I'm a little bit uncomfortable with that might mean a new technology a new domain or working with different individuals if I'm not regularly finding myself in these situations I probably find that I'm not going to be growing as effectively the challenging part with that is that it's uncomfortable and I think a lot of us look for comfortable situations right we enjoy being comfortable that's the whole point but being able to balance this effectively I think is really important and that's also going to look different for different individuals for example if you're an engineer you're working in a particular domain you might be building up expertise in that space you might be working on a particular project in a particular domain and overtime you start to feel like you are the subject matter expert right you might have other people on the team that are coming to you and you can answer questions for them because you truly understand what's going on in that particular space and if you remained in that exact same position for a year two more years and you continue to stay there that might be great in terms of building expertise there but you may find that you're not getting exposure to other different Technologies or other domains now in terms of being able to grow in your career this might be something that you want to factor in you might be saying great I have demonstrated that I can be an expert here in this particular area but what about these other areas if I were to diversify more could I get exposure to different Technologies different domains could I start finding that I can have a broader impact truly by having exposure to these other areas what does growth opportunity look like where you are versus perhaps another job position if you're interested in having more growth opportunities and you're having conversations with your manager but none of these things are really coming up over time you might start to feel like you're being a little bit restricted in terms of growth and for you that might be a really good reason to go start looking at other jobs that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to go jump to another company maybe that is just moving to a different team that doesn't have to be a totally negative thing that could just mean that truly you were feeling Limited in your career growth in the exact position that you're in in there's nothing necessarily wrong with that but these are factors that you'll want to consider in terms of your ability to continue to grow and finally the third one that I want to bring up is maybe the obvious one for a lot of people but it's going to be money right for where you're working at right now you may have a salary you may have stock options there might be bonuses there might be different parts of your total compensation your total compensation you have to think about the effort and time that you're putting in and if you feel that you're getting the proper value for all of your skills and time that you're providing for some people they may feel like they're getting very fairly compensated you might feel that you're getting overcompensated or undercompensated but this is something that you have to think about for the work that you're doing and I think that it's important that you also understand what comparables look like around you because you might be totally content doing thing X and you're doing some amount of effort some amount of work and you're getting paid some salary but if you start to look around at comparables you might realize that maybe you're making twice as much or half as much but if you're not looking at what's comparable you might not realize that perhaps the work you're doing is being undervalued there might be something available to you that does pay higher and is comparable across all the other aspects of your career again that's going to be Nuance we'll get into that a little bit more R after this but I think the important part here is truly thinking about how you're being compensated and if that is fair from being an engineering manager and of course being someone who has also paid a salary I think it's very common for most of us to say well hey look I think we always want to be getting more so if we can be doing anything to saying hey I would like more money because I would like to be earning more for the work I'm doing I think that it's totally fair that people are trying to ask for this it's very common and people are always going through this mental exercise of saying hm if I'm getting paid X shouldn't I be asking for X plus whatever percent right we always want to be receiving more and when we're thinking about other jobs that are out there we might be seeing higher compensation figures something that I want to talk about in terms of you know is the grass greener on the other side necessarily purely from the perspective of money is factoring in how that compensation is broken down because I think for some people that have not experienced that you can have other things that go into total compensation it may not be as obvious for many of you that are watching this you may have done your homework on this kind of thing you understand that it's maybe not just salary but other things to be factored in that might be totally obvious to you but for some others if you're seeing a total compensation number and the total compensation is $250,000 the very first thing that you might be think thinking of is whoo I can't believe that someone would be making $250,000 a year for their salary but that might not be the reality it might be that their salary is something like $100,000 still a great salary but the rest of that total compensation maybe that is a cash bonus for signing up to be working at the company right so they've onboarded you here's your cash bonus and then there's stock awards but those stock awards maybe those are backloaded so you have to be there for four or five years before you really start seeing the stock compensation coming in these are all things that you need to factor in when you're looking at compensation because sometimes when we just see one number printed out and we go holy crap that's a big number like I want that jaw position if you're jumping ship from where you're at chasing just that number without understanding How It's Made Up and the nuances regarding that compensation that could be maybe a recipe for a bit of a shocking surprise I know in conversations like this I've heard different perspectives some people will be saying look you know your career and stuff like the what the work you're doing shouldn't only be about money right like there's more important things and just money like we want to make sure that we have those growth opportunities that we're working with people that we love to work with that we're having a meaningful impact on society all of these things are great right but at some point there is this conversation about how much work you're doing and how much you're valued and I personally think that for every individual that number that they might have in their mind for being fairly compensated is going to look different and I don't think that there's anything wrong with trying to go after something where the compensation's higher the way that I like to think about this is going to be about balance and that's going to sort of transition us into this final part of the conversation before we think about how we can reflect on these things what I mean in this particular case when it comes to compensation is what's that going to mean if you receiving more or less and how that impacts the other things that we've talked about it sounds a little bit complic so let me take a step back for all of the things that I discussed ultimately if we could find the perfect job it's going to mean that we're able to work less get paid more work with more awesome people work with more interesting technology it's sort of like if we're looking at things on a spectrum we're picking everything at the one end of the spectrum where everything's awesome that is the ideal situation to be in but the reality is that if we're looking at all of these different things it's going to be very rare that we find every single thing all the way at the best end of the spectrum here it might mean that we are making tradeoffs for some of the things that we want to balance out for example if we're looking at total compensation I'm just going to make up a contrived example here so please bear with me perhaps you're looking at a job opportunity and the compensation is going to be 50% higher than what you're getting right now let's pretend you're making $100,000 a year and there's a $150,000 a year opportunity and let's also assume that the way that that compensation's given is exactly on par to what you're getting now in terms of the salary and bonus and all of that what you might be thinking is hey look I have this extra $50,000 a year coming in now the question that you might want to be asking is if that's going to mean perhaps that I have to be working more or maybe that I'm working on more challenging things or I might be more stressed at work as a result of this career transition so if you're going to be working in a situation that's causing more stress at work is the $50,000 a year going to offset and make your life outside of work that much better and again this is going to look very different for everyone I know on the surface of someone could come to me and say hey look if you're going to do the exact same work and we could double your salary obviously I'm going to be interested in that job but the guarantee about having the exact same setup and just getting more money I don't think anyone can really guarantee that so there's a bit of a risk aspect baked into this that's going to mean if I were to take such an opportunity at which point am I going to be so stressed out at work that it's not worth the extra income and when it comes to money I think personally this is one of the biggest things to factor in there should be some baseline that you have in your mind for being able to have the lifestyle that you would like and that would mean being able to support your family you know having food shelter and then some base level of Lifestyle where you can still have some amount of enjoyment and not just feel like you have to wake up go to work just to be able to pay bill bills eat and be able to sleep again some level and then you go a little bit above that to have some pleasantries in life and that might be your Baseline however there might be other things like on a month-to-month basis or week toe basis maybe you're a little bit stressed about whether or not your mortgage can be paid or some other things coming up because now you want to go travel or something like that if you're having these other stressors come up outside of work again if you're able to have higher compensation and that might mean that your work life balance is a little bit disrup because of that the question you want to be asking yourself is it going to be worth sustaining that to make these other things outside of work more enjoyable if we were to take a step back and think about all the things we've discussed here it's going to be your enjoyment working with the people that you have at work it's going to be your growth opportunities in terms of the technology the domains that you're in and then it's also going to be your compensation and when we try to think about all of these things and you can break them down into smaller you know different areas that are more GR Lear depending on how you want to do this reflection if you're thinking about what's a good mix for you I want you to consider that this is probably and very likely going to change over time and in this final part of the video I just wanted to give you an example of how that's changed for me early on in my career I didn't have much student debt I was able to have internships very fortunately and then when I graduated I was able to quickly pay off my University bills and that meant as someone who just graduated University young single male that meant that I didn't have really any other responsibilities to worry about I could just start saving money I had some luxuries to kind of do what I would like to do so that meant that I could go buy the condo that I wanted to buy I could go save up a little bit of extra money and go buy a fancier car because I wanted to go do that but I was in a fortunate position where I didn't have other responsibilities and as long as I was taking care of myself I could kind of go do what I would like to do now that also meant that I was working a ton my work life balance was probably the worst it's ever been in my entire life but I was able to make that decision for myself again I didn't have other responsibilities so I was able to say hey look if I just want to work around the clock let's go do it I don't have other responsibilities we fast forward about 10 years later even less if we consider when this started to happen when I was with my wife my girlfriend at the time things started to change it meant that I was also now spending more time with someone else I can't just go work around the clock now that I'm supporting us we live in the US we're moved in together how I spend my time how I spend my money my ability to be able to support us as a family unit looks very different that means that when it comes to making decisions like changing jobs I have to factor in many different things than I wouldn't have before yes of course making sure that I'm working somewhere that I enjoy and keeping my sanity that's of course very important because if I'm not having a good time at work if I come home home from work and I have to spend time with my wife and I'm miserable that's not going to be good for our relationship right so I need to make sure that's good I need to make sure that I'm being compensated fairly and that means that if I'm looking at the lifestyle that we have and the lifestyle that we would like to have are we on track to be making progress towards that because if we're not if we're starting to move in the other direction that might mean that for me I have to think about different opportunities this type of thing has dramatically shifted for me over time and that's in the course of say 10 years and I would imagine for you and the different life experiences that you're going through this type of conversation even for yourself is going to change over time I do highly recommend this isn't a conversation you have with yourself just one time it's not maybe not something you have to have a conversation with yourself every week or every month necessarily but I do think it's important that you periodically reflect on this what things do you value what direction are you heading in and how are things changing for you in terms of what you value I hope that this is a helpful conversation for you to kind of think through the different things that you might want to consider when switching jobs and of course the grass isn't always greener on the other side but that doesn't mean that it's not going to be greener or that there's no chance that it could be better so if you're doing the analysis and you're thinking through this I think that you'll be set up to make good decisions for yourself and remember not every decision is going to be final if you end up transitioning to a different role different company that doesn't mean that you're stuck there for forever so don't worry if you end up making a decision that wasn't wasn't ideal you can continue to looking for more opportunities in the future thanks and I'll see you next time