064: Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

2 March, 2022

Transcript

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[00:00:00] Adam: okay. So how long she'd work at the same company go?

[00:00:03] Carol: six months.

[00:00:04] Tim: 20 years.

[00:00:06] Adam: Okay. So that's a

[00:00:07] Ben: Somewhere in between there.

[00:00:10] Carol: I'm a bouncer.

[00:00:11] Adam: still a 10 year average. So you're telling me I should quit.

[00:00:35] Intro

[00:00:35] Adam: Okay, here we go. It is show number 64. And on today's show, we're going to talk about quitting your job or not quitting your job. I don't know. We'll see. but as usual, we're gonna start with our traps and fails. And Tim, it's your turn to go first, man.

[00:00:47] Tim's Triumph

[00:00:47] Tim: So I'm going to go with a triumph. So I, few weeks ago I talked about, I had a sales demo fail where we were in front of a client and we're doing a demo and a technical demo and it just, it didn't work at all.

[00:00:58] Tim: And so lesson learned, I'm like, we're not doing this again and had another big, technical demo that we had to do today with a client. Very important. and I, I just made sure we got, I got up early, got the we're like basically mocked out. We took their existing system that they have and modified it to kind of show them how it can integrate with our APIs and the things that we have, that the product that we're trying to sell them, trying to just get them a feel for how it worked.

[00:01:26] Tim: And so, built a slide deck, just actually looked at some of my competitors information that they had and kind of copied a lot of what they did well that we don't do well. And, and had the sales demo today, everything went smooth, very smooth, worked great. And I was in sales and marketing for a period of time, and I know that there's certain things when someone sees a demo and they go, oh, thank you.

[00:01:47] Tim: We really appreciate it. We'll be in touch. The kiss of

[00:01:51] Adam: Yeah, don't call us. We'll call you.

[00:01:52] Tim: yeah, but when they start talking, okay, well, how long would it take you to implement or, what's the pricing look like? And we need to know the, are we start asking those buying questions? You're like, all right, they're considering this right.

[00:02:02] Tim: we're in the running. And so they started doing that, like half the conversation, an hour and a half long conversation, half of it was those questions over, right. They want us to like get statistics and stuff to show them, how this is gonna help them save money and things like that. And they start doing that.

[00:02:18] Tim: You're like, all right, we did good. We did good. So you know what? I hated failing that last time. But sometimes you need to failure to know you need to pick up your game and level up.

[00:02:27] Ben: Nice.

[00:02:28] Adam: it with Vandelay industries?

[00:02:32] Carol: I don't know what that means.

[00:02:33] Tim: It's a S it's a sign. It's a Seinfeld reference.

[00:02:36] Carol: Oh, okay. So I was going to piggyback on your failure thing. my son shall the class like two classes, actually, his first semester I call it. And I think what you said is very accurate. It sometimes takes like hitting a failure, like actually failing to understand the, you don't want to fail and that you need to do better.

[00:02:55] Carol: So it's a hard lesson to learn and it sucks when you're learning it. But on the other side of it, it is bright. So

[00:03:01] Tim: You're like, I don't like this taste in my mouth. I don't want to taste this again.

[00:03:04] Carol: that's pretty much where he was at. He's like, I'm sorry, I'm not doing that again. I'm like, yep. So

[00:03:10] Tim: All right. Well, Carol, how about you?

[00:03:12] Carol's Triumph

[00:03:12] Carol: I'm gonna go with you to you. I have a triumph. yeah, I run a scholarship pageant every year and This is my sixth year doing it. And I always stress out before it and don't want to do it and say, I hate this. And I don't know why I signed up to do with every year. And then once it starts, I get super excited and everything just kind of falls into place.

[00:03:33] Carol: Well, this year I've had a very hard time getting people the help it's just volunteers are non-existent. But somehow I just made a post said, please help. And people just are showing up last minute. I don't even care this last minute. And I can't really plan for you to be there, but it's last minute they're showing up, they're putting their hands in there and we're getting it all done.

[00:03:54] Carol: So not this weekend, but the following weekend is the actual pageant. So I'm excited to see, the final turnout and how it all goes. So yeah, it's all going together and working out. Great. So.

[00:04:04] Tim: So what is a pageant scholarship?

[00:04:07] Carol: It's a scholarship pageant. So it's a beauty pageant. it's okay. It's a high school kids. So they basically compete for, a $500 scholarship to college. So we just send it to whatever college to go to. So it's five hundred, three hundred and two fifty. So yeah.

[00:04:24] Tim: what do they have to do? What do they have to do?

[00:04:25] Carol: they have to sit in on an interview, so they write up an application that goes over their hobbies and what they're into and just their act like their activities, at school and stuff, and they get interviewed by three different judges.

[00:04:38] Carol: so it goes over their speaking skills, their ability to have a conversation it's a 10 minute interview, which is a long time to sit and talk to three judges when you're having to control the conversation for these girls. so that's 40% and then they have casual wear evening wear and then optional talent.

[00:04:53] Carol: So yeah.

[00:04:54] Tim: very cool. I can. I piggyback on that a little bit. So it just reminded me. So our school, the high school that my kids go to, they're having a, I think this is a really cool idea. It's I don't know who funds it, but it's. A cybersecurity kind of workshop.

[00:05:13] Carol: Nice.

[00:05:14] Tim: so what it is it's all extra curricular, they get a $500 win and they also can, if they advance, they can like get a scholarship for a significant amount of money.

[00:05:23] Tim: But it's really interesting. It's like they have to learn Python to like they give them stuff and say, all right, you need to figure out, go to call this API. And the key is between these numbers and figure out how to hack it so that you can get to the API because the API is not secure. and so they it's, and it's quite intensive.

[00:05:42] Tim: I mean, it's a legitimate, if they actually get to the end, they get a certificate in like cybersecurity that does good for college. And, and it's a competition, the top three people who place get $500 each. And so then the kids can all see their scores. So I think my son max, he started doing. And then he saw the scores you saw. He had like 20,000 and someone was above them had 30,000 and he's like, oh no, that ain't going to stand. So he's been going hard at it. I mean, like for hours on end and he's announced like 50,000 points and in the lead, he's like,

[00:06:17] Adam: And in intro valedictorian.

[00:06:20] Carol: I was going to say he's competitive.

[00:06:21] Tim: He's competitive.

[00:06:22] Tim: He's like, yeah,these folks, aren't going to beat me at this,

[00:06:25] Carol: So how long does the competition run?

[00:06:27] Tim: so it, they started it like about four weeks ago and it runs until April. So they have that time. So I think like the, like around the first week of April, they haven't. And so whoever has the highest score at the end of that,gets the money.

[00:06:39] Tim: But yeah, I don't see any. see anyone knocking him out of the top three, either way, he's going out and he's really enjoying it. And some of it, I mean, I, he started like asking me some questions like, Hey dad, how would I do this? I'm like, so I'm looking at, it's all PO most of it's Python.

[00:06:54] Tim: I'm like, I don't really know Python, but

[00:06:56] Carol: Yeah.

[00:06:56] Tim: like, I'm like, this is actually some pretty advanced stuff. So I'm just glad that the states are doing this kind of stuff to teach kids. Actually, they're teaching how to be hackers, which is kind of concerning, but they're hoping there'll be white hat hackers.

[00:07:10] Tim: So,

[00:07:10] Carol: It's really backend funded by the CIA.

[00:07:13] Carol: Don't

[00:07:13] Tim: yeah, exactly. Right.

[00:07:15] Tim: Yeah.

[00:07:16] Tim: They'll knock on our door and take them away.

[00:07:18] Carol: Yeah. Well, I'm glad that he's getting to learn that because that's really exciting.

[00:07:22] Tim: Yeah. And I'm glad you're doing the scholarship thing. that's

[00:07:25] Carol: yeah. Yeah. It's fun. I enjoy. All right. What about you, Ben? What you got going on?

[00:07:29] Ben's Triumph

[00:07:29] Ben: I'm also going to go with triumph, but, it's not so much a personal triumph as it is sort of a group triumph, at, yeah, at work. There's just like, everything is going wrong this week. And it's one of those to illustrate in my JIRA board, I have started to use the little red siren emoji in the titles of cards that are like top, top priority so that I can differentiate the like ultra top priority from the mega top priority.

[00:07:55] Ben: Like it's that kind of a week. And, and everybody's feeling this pressure. It just, it's just a confluence of bad timings things, breaking, dealing with customers that are migrating and they're having issues, et cetera. And the triumph is just. Everyone has taken it and really good stride. And it's kind of, yeah, it's, I'm on these calls with people and we're talking about how crazy everything is and we're all sort of just laughing about it and not in that, we're not taking it seriously, but we're just, everyone is just rolling with the punches.

[00:08:24] Ben: And, I don't know. There's something about that feels so healthy that it's not just chaotic evil and everyone is stressed out. It's more just, we know we're going to get through it. We just have to do it and not kill ourselves, trying to get there. Yeah. So that's, it's, what's made this week bearable because otherwise this has been a pretty stressful week, but,

[00:08:45] Carol: it has been so long this week has felt like it's never ending.

[00:08:51] Carol: It's been bad.

[00:08:52] Ben: definitely one of those weeks.

[00:08:54] Carol: I

[00:08:55] Tim: It flew by for me.

[00:08:56] Tim: So,

[00:08:57] Ben: You and your fancy sales demos.

[00:08:59] Tim: yeah.

[00:09:01] Adam: you're not eating

[00:09:05] Ben: Anyway.

[00:09:07] Adam's Triumph

[00:09:07] Adam: well, I'm going to round it out, for triumphs this week. And yeah. And So today, as this episode airs, at least in our public feed is going to be March 2nd and that is going to be my 10 year work anniversary.

[00:09:19] Ben: Dang.

[00:09:21] Tim: Congratulations.

[00:09:22] Adam: Thanks. assuming I don't get fired between now and then.

[00:09:28] Tim: Yeah. You jinxed it.

[00:09:29] Adam: Yeah. So I already have the blog post written ready to go the important stuff.

[00:09:34] Ben: Yeah. Very cool, man. That's so great.

[00:09:37] Adam: it's kind of exciting. And it's like, it's made me question it a little bit, right? Like is 10 years too long

[00:09:43] Carol: it's a good segue into our topic. Like.

[00:09:47] Adam: it's almost like we play in that.

[00:09:48] Tim: I know. Right? I do think we need to take a moment here. I do believe this is the first time we had four of a kind.

[00:09:54] Ben: For triumphs.

[00:09:55] Adam: Um, good. Be

[00:09:57] Carol: I'm going to go. I'm going to go buy a lottery ticket.

[00:10:00] Tim: I think, yeah, it's a good job. Good job team. We're winning. We're

[00:10:03] Tim: winning this

[00:10:03] Carol: wait a win.

[00:10:04] Audible

[00:10:04]

[00:10:04] Carol: Hey, y'all it's Carol here. I love to read, but I have no time to just sit with a book in front of my face and read. I always am multitasking to accomplish everything I need to get done in a day. So when I'm driving the kids around or I'm working out, I can use audible to get quality of reading time in while also achieving the goals I need to, to maintain my.

[00:10:30] Carol: When really cool thing about audible is they also include a wide selection of free books with your monthly subscription. And it's not just books. They also have podcasts. So you can listen to your favorite podcast like us over there as well. So, if you want to support the podcast and get a free month subscription head on over to workingcode.dev/audible and get your free trial, you'll also pick up a free credit for a book and you can browse all of that free material and see what I'm talking about.

[00:10:59] Carol: Again, that's workingcode.dev/audible happy book adventures. My friends.

[00:11:04] Adam:

[00:11:04] Pros Of Long-Term

[00:11:04] Adam: okay. So how long she'd work at the same company go?

[00:11:08] Carol: six months.

[00:11:10] Tim: 20 years.

[00:11:12] Adam: Okay. So that's a

[00:11:13] Ben: Somewhere in between there.

[00:11:15] Carol: I'm a bouncer.

[00:11:17] Adam: still a 10 year average. So you're telling me I should quit.

[00:11:21] Tim: I think a better question is what's the pros and cons of staying long-term right. Versus jumping on.

[00:11:27] Adam: Yeah, for sure.

[00:11:28] Ben: I think there's a lot to be gained from being at a company for a long time. I have I'm I think I'm coming up in my tenure as well in the not too distant future and, there's opportunity costs. I could have been learning some other technology, but I think there's something to be said about going really deep in a particular application and a particular set of technologies.

[00:11:51] Ben: And

[00:11:52] Adam: I have a very particular set

[00:11:53] Ben: yeah,

[00:11:54] Carol: Yeah.

[00:11:55] Ben: you get to develop,an instinct about an application after you've worked on it for a really long time. And you can,you can see things more clearly and you can see paths forward more clearly. And, I don't know, it's, I think it allows you to bias towards action, which is like one of my favorite phrases in the last couple of years, because you sort of have already done a lot of pros and cons of valuation.

[00:12:16] Ben: You're storing all that information in the back of your head. And, I do think that when you stay at a place for a long time, you get effective and productive in a way that probably takes years to really develop.

[00:12:31] Adam: I mean, I completely agree with everything you said, especially like the opportunity cost thing. Right. And no matter what decision you make, even in other things, right. Not just this particular issue, there's going to be pros and cons. There's that's what a decision is. and so you're, if it's, you're leaving money on the table to take a job that you like, or it has some perk that you like, or you're getting a bunch of money, but it means you got to wear a suit every day or whatever. I guess it's not something I did intentionally, but I feel like my path, it, at least in terms of like number of years at a company, seems very advisable. Right? So, my first job out of college and I worked there for three years and then I moved to another place and I worked there for three years and then it was bought by another company.

[00:13:16] Adam: So kind of another job. And I worked there for three years. Then I moved to another place and I worked there for three years and now I've been at this place for 10 years and I feel like those short stints were a good opportunity for me to like, start from nothing, realize how little I know when presented with a new domain and opportunity to grow.

[00:13:35] Adam: and then as you start to transition between jobs, obviously you're going to get a good pay raise between them. That's generally the advice, right? You're going to get a few percent per year on average as a cost of living increase or a merit raise. But on average, I would guess, just by virtue of changing companies, you're going to get at least two or three times that.

[00:13:57] Adam: 10 to 20% is kind of expected in most cases, especially early in your career. and then, so you do that a few times and you grow and you become like a senior developer sort of thing. And then this is what happened to me. I kinda got lucky. I found a place that I really enjoy working that has very few drawbacks.

[00:14:15] Adam: and it's, it's just been like easy for me to plant roots and stick around.

[00:14:19] Ben: Yeah.

[00:14:20] Adam: I think if you have the opportunity to follow a very similar path, I say it's worth it.

[00:14:24] Carol: Yeah, I will say leaving my last job when I was working with 10 leaving the roots was the. It was leaving the connections I had built with the people. And that, I mean, it really feels like your family, like when you've been somewhere so long, you know, the ins and outs of the people, not just the application you're working with.

[00:14:44] Carol: So leaving that and starting over with people who have no idea what's going on in my life or what I'm capable of, it's intimidating and challenging.

[00:14:52] Adam: How long were you there before you left?

[00:14:54] Carol: So I was at silver vine for six years. Then I went to a government job for a year and a half. And then I went back to silver vine for almost two years. And then I left a second time. So in that I've been here, a year and a half almost. Yeah.

[00:15:09] Ben: And for the people who stay. So it's one thing to be at a company and then leave and you have to sort of start over. But I think there's also something to be said about the people who stay and you're talking about losing those roots, but to some degree they're losing those roots also because now they have to redevelop that kind of relationship with the people who are coming in as replacements.

[00:15:29] Ben: And there's a tribal knowledge that starts to just leak out of the company. And no one can remember what it was like four years ago, because no one was here four years ago. Like you were kind of a

[00:15:39] Carol: Yeah, absolutely. The first time I left, I'll never forget sitting in my office at my new job. And one of my old coworkers called and said, Hey, there's this process that none of us can remember. And they're screaming at us right now because we don't know what we're supposed to do with it. And then like, oh yeah, here, this is what you have to do.

[00:16:02] Carol: I'm like, but get a pen and paper and write it down because you need to know how to do this. You need to remember it. So it is good that you still have those connections with people though, when you do leave that they can call and be like, what is that thing that

[00:16:16] Adam: we didn't know about?

[00:16:17] Tim: Yeah. I also, so there is also a level of institutional knowledge and Ben kind of talked about, knowing a code base and everything, but outside the code base, just kind of knowing, how company works, who the players are. Anytime you go into a new environment. There's traps that you don't know.

[00:16:33] Tim: Right. And no, one's going to tell you, there's sort of this sort of the hidden office politics that no one really knows about you haven't been really exposed to it. And you're gonna walk into those a tar pits if you've been around. Like, so for me, I started working at what is silver vine, 20 years ago. So, I mean, I've been in the same company. It's honestly, I work for myself. I had my own company prior to that. So as an adult, it's really the first, non self-employed job I ever had started in 1999.

[00:17:03] Tim: And as a part-time and then full-time in 2000, And so I made 20 years last year, so yeah. I, and I feel that there's a lot of advantages to it. Right. So

[00:17:14] Adam: Is that when they give you like the keys to the executive bathroom with the day and, uh,

[00:17:18] Tim: Yeah. All right. no, actually it says 20 years, they gave me like a $2,500 to spend on travel, personal travel so I can, yeah. So they gave us basically we can,go on a trip, personal trip then like we're gonna get reimbursed up to $2,500. So that's nice. But I think the advantage of me having stayed here for so long, because there's been tons of options, I get headhunted constantly.

[00:17:40] Tim: Right. And the money that they offered me is significantly more. but the reason I don't take it is twofold. One, the personal connections I have with the people that I work with. Right. I just feel a little. Loyalty to my workmates. and to, I feel like I'm really building something. So I'm not just a individual contributor.

[00:18:01] Tim: I was for a period of time. but, and now I feel like I'm really,I'm building products that I really believe in, and I'm sort of the defacto product, architect, right? So it's, I'm designing it. I'm seeing the need, I'm going out and making connections that I need to do that.

[00:18:17] Tim: And so I just really want to, I think, I feel like I'm on top of a really big market right now. That's completely untapped. And that if I can just get over this, these challenges that I've been going through the past few years to get it going, I just feel like it's just going to take off and it's going to be huge, personal upside, but also, upside for the company.

[00:18:38] Tim: And so when you're in that position, you've, to say, Hey, we can maybe give you $25,000 more a year. It's like, yeah, I would really like $25,000 or $50,000 more per year. But I would really like to see where I can make this. I am more interested in what I can create with my team.

[00:18:54] Tim: Then I can just, someone's just going to give me more money and just be another cog in the machine.

[00:19:00] Carol: Right.

[00:19:01] Adam: So money is great, but it's not a.

[00:19:03] Carol: It's not everything. Yeah.

[00:19:04] Tim: it's not.

[00:19:05] Carol: Yeah. I agree with

[00:19:06] Carol: you.

[00:19:07] Growth And Stagnation

[00:19:07] Ben: One thing that I was thinking about though, just being at a company for a really long time is you outlast a lot of your managers, I assume. And that can be an actually tricky situation in terms of your own career growth, because what happens when your, your longest live manager, hasn't seen you for the past, you've been there for six years, but your manager has been there for a year.

[00:19:31] Ben: And how do they really evaluate your progress over that time? And does every new manager that come in, sort of have to reset on what it means to be a Tim or a Carol at this time?

[00:19:43] Tim: that's the, that's a good point. Although, funny story. So our current GM, so the person I report to, she interviewed with me. When she was trying to get a job in our company and I did not hire her. In fact, she told that at the, at our latest, our annual company dinner, she was giving my 20 year award. She told that story about how she came in.

[00:20:03] Tim: She and I had already picked someone to hire, cause I was looking for developer and she came in, she had a lot of good skills, but I just like, you seem more like a project manager. I only took the, cause they already scheduled, I didn't want to cancel on her. and so I was like, I didn't hire her now.

[00:20:16] Tim: She's my boss.

[00:20:18] Carol: She's not just your boss. She's everybody's

[00:20:20] Tim: She's everybody's boss. Yeah. So that's kind of funny,

[00:20:24] Tim: but yeah, no, I get what you're saying. It's like, if you're, if the person you're reporting to doesn't realize your history there, they might not, they may, well, I don't know, Ben, maybe they'll need to rely on you for some, for some background, right?

[00:20:35] Tim: If you can make yourself available to say, you're new here, kid, let me explain, let me explain what's going on.

[00:20:42] Carol: I'm Tim. I win. Thank you. No.

[00:20:47] Adam: You can just put exceeds expectations and all the things

[00:20:49] Tim: Yeah. Yeah. There you

[00:20:50] Adam: These other boxes, they don't work yet. Um,that sounds familiar.

[00:20:57] Ben: One thing that gets brought up on various podcasts is, the idea that someone has a career for 10 years and is their career 10 years long, or have they essentially relived the same year, 10 years in a row, in terms of skill level in general, understanding and proficiency. And, and I wonder if that the idea of. Growing your skills is at odds sometimes with changing jobs. Because if you have to imagine there's a ramp up time and you have to get familiar with the system and maybe familiar with a new language and a new application architecture, a new front end architecture, a new build tools, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:21:30] Ben: are you fundamentally growing your skills or are you sort of reliving that same six months that you lived at the previous company before you can really start to enhance your understanding of how computer systems work? I'm not saying that's true. I'm just saying, I'm wondering if there's a, if there's something about staying at a place where you really get to put your pedal to the metal and grow those skills and not have to worry about catching up with what other people are doing.

[00:21:57] Carol: So I feel like I do have the opportunity to learn skills and advance what I'm doing when I'm starting something. I have found myself sitting at a job for a long time and feeling like I couldn't go anywhere else. And I didn't have time to learn anything else or advance what I'm doing, because I just had to support what was already there.

[00:22:17] Carol: So the burnout prevented me from advancing anything outside of exactly what I had to do every day to get through that day. Whereas when I do start something new, I have that six months ago, I am so focused. I'm so motivated. I'm going to learn, I'm going to do better. I'm not going to let burn out from before impact my ability to do better here so I can see the correlation.

[00:22:41] Carol: I can see like what you're saying, but I don't personally feel like that. I have that happened to me. I feel like I grew each time I made a transition.

[00:22:51] Ben: That's great.

[00:22:53] Adam: Yeah. And I mean, I think it, the exact same thing could be true on the other side of the coin, if that makes any sense. So you were talking about stagnation because you changed jobs and you're just kind of repeating that on-ramp and off-ramp over and over. I think it's also entirely possible to have stagnation because you're not facing any new challenges.

[00:23:14] Adam: That was the first thing I thought of when you were saying like reliving the same year over and over. if you just, get a new project and it's like create some crud forms to update some tables in that database and display some reports and then next year you get another project and it's crude forms and reports, and then you're not growing, right.

[00:23:30] Adam: You're not facing new challenges. and that's a different kind of stagnation.

[00:23:33] Staying Connected

[00:23:33] Tim: I don't know if there's a pro or con, so I'll just call it an aside. some advice I would say, so I mentioned earlier, I do get headhunted pretty regularly and I as probably most programmers and people who are in technology do

[00:23:45] Adam: I wouldn't know. I have all LinkedIn emails sent straight to spam.

[00:23:51] Carol: Oh, they call me,

[00:23:52] Tim: Oh yeah. They call yeah. Personal emails.

[00:23:56] Carol: they've called my bosses before.

[00:23:58] Tim: Yeah. personal email work email. No, I,

[00:24:00] Tim: Yeah.

[00:24:02] Tim: so I don't know how I got on some list somewhere at some point, but I say don't ignore that. and the reason is like, so you never know, you might be loyal to your company. You're coming to, might be loyal to you that is rare these days.

[00:24:14] Tim: But if you're in that position and it sounds like. we have several people here talking on this podcast that are kind of in that position. Now, what happens if your company fails, right. you fail or, economy, goes really bad and people have to get laid off for reasons that outside of your control or outside the company's control, having those relationships with the recruiters and with people that have offered you jobs in the past is good to just kind of keep those up if you can.

[00:24:38] Tim: so that way, that kind of takes the fear away. When that call comes in and says, Hey, w we're having to close shop, or, we're have to lay some people off and maybe we'll get back to you later. And whatever, at least you can, you have those connections.

[00:24:51] Carol: Yeah. You can reach back out. Yeah.

[00:24:54] Adam: I think that's another good reason to attend conferences and network with your peers, not just with, recruiters,

[00:25:01] Tim: And speaking of which we do have a jobs channel in our Discord is so if you want to join our Discord listeners, please do you can post some jobs or look for jobs

[00:25:09] Adam: yeah, absolutely.

[00:25:10] Legacy Technologies

[00:25:10] Ben: One thing that I think is very interesting about staying at a place for a long time. Is that likely the tools and technologies that you'll be using will start to feel a little outdated. You'll be using the old XYZ and you're seeing everyone on hacker news talking about the new ABC kind of stuff.

[00:25:28] Ben: Um,

[00:25:29] Tim: ColdFusion.

[00:25:31] Ben: but what I think is fascinating about that is that if you then stick to it and you continue to do your job and you continue to build your product or products or do client work, you start to realize that it's not the tools that hold you back, right? Because you find ways to make the tools work and you evolve your understanding, and you start to think about different ways to architect within the confines of the tools and the build systems and whatnot.

[00:25:55] Ben: And you start to realize that they're not nearly as limiting as you maybe first thought they were. And that can really give you a very, I think, enlightened perspective on the technology landscape and.

[00:26:06] Adam: Yeah. I mean, for sure there, I just saw an article not too long ago, about how, COBOL developers are kind of like a dying breed. There's not very many of them left, but there's so much code, especially throughout the government that like, nobody's going to know how to maintain and let alone port. So it's a, a whole new sort of like Y2K crisis, except it's that just the, when the last cobalt developer dies.

[00:26:32] Carol: they literally set their own salary.

[00:26:35] Adam: Yeah.

[00:26:36] Carol: they get paid, whatever they want. Yeah.

[00:26:39] Tim: I used a program. COBOL let, maybe she get back into that.

[00:26:42] Adam: there you go.

[00:26:43] Carol: yeah. We had a coworker at my government job that just picked up weekend contracts and made almost as much as he was making in his salary from just a contract work, because he was charging ridiculous amounts to have to deal with that because he knew it was going to be legacy and the pain.

[00:26:59] Tim: wow.

[00:27:00] Carol: he also knew there was nobody else to do it.

[00:27:02] Carol: So they had no choice.

[00:27:04] Tim: Yeah, I picked up cobalt when I was like 14, 15 years old, just for fun.

[00:27:09] Adam: You didn't invent COBOL.

[00:27:10] Tim: Shut up,shut up at him. So here's another one that could be a pro. It might be debatable. People could argue this, but that's fine. When I hire people, if I see that they like jump around, like every year, that's a red flag for me, unless, unless they're in sales is hard and salespeople are completely different breed, but we're talking to developers.

[00:27:30] Tim: If they're like jumping around, they're like eight months here, a year and a little bit there. And it's like, they just kind of move constantly. This is either a person who is just they're going to do the same to me. And I don't want to spend the time training them, and not get anything out of them or they're just incompetent.

[00:27:49] Tim: And they just work for a period of time, collect a salary and go somewhere else. Right.

[00:27:54] Adam: Yeah. Hang out as long as they can, until they get fired.

[00:27:57] Tim: But then at the same time, if I see someone who's like, 10 years at one place and they, the title stays the same, I kind of wonder, well, are they not? are they not a person who is willing to progress? So my advice is, if you do have to put it on your resume, at least list the company you're at, but also lists like things that changed, even if it's not a title change, like, right.

[00:28:17] Tim: So I, I was on this team, and delete shows some level of progression inside that long period of time where you're at one company. so that can be a pro con, could be a con.

[00:28:26] Ben: It reminds me of that. There's that scene in a Silicon valley when they're doing interviews for hires and they're looking at one guy's resume and they're like, it says here that from 2010 to 2011, you crushed it. And then from,and then from 2012 to 2015, you also crushed it. So we to believe that from to 2013, you were not crushing

[00:28:46] Carol: crushing it.

[00:28:51] Ben: The guy that's funny, the guy that they're treated, he's like, well, yeah, I had some personal issues going on that did not allow me to crush it at my usual capacity, but rest assured by the end of the year, I was back to crushing and full time.

[00:29:07] Making The Jump To A New Position

[00:29:07] Ben: I'll tell you. I have an emotional thing, which is that I, as I've talked about many times on this show, I am on the legacy platform at work and it's with technologies that I know like the back of my hand. And,and today that allows me to move really quickly. And I know the data structures extremely well, and I know the database schema is like extremely well.

[00:29:27] Ben: I know everything. and I know that's going to come to an end soon and I'm going to have to move to another team. And it's, I'm going to go from a big fish in a small pond, to a small fish in a big pond. And that's a,

[00:29:39] Tim: You're going to go from the only fish in the pond.

[00:29:45] Adam: and that's a, that's really gonna be very emotional. Difficult for me. I know. I know for sure it is. Does it help to think of it as a local maximum? Do you, are you familiar with the terminology? So if you're climbing mountains, right. And you're, so you're proceeding up the side of the mountain and you get to the peak. Good. you're at the peak of that mountain, but then you look and the next mountain is over.

[00:30:07] Adam: It's like twice as high, right? So you kind of go down a little bit and you don't go all the way back down to the bottom, but you go down a little bit and catch up to the other mountain and then you just go up even further. So you can kind of think of like, you've gone as high as you can go here.

[00:30:19] Adam: And now it's time to make a little bit of a lateral move and start that neck to adventure up.

[00:30:25] Ben: Yeah, I know. I mean, and it'll it'll be like people who've had a stroke and then they have to know, and then they have to

[00:30:32] Ben: relearn how to.

[00:30:33] Carol: now.

[00:30:34] Ben: They have to relearn how to,walk and talk, depending obviously on the level of the stroke, but it's like their brain, they know that they can do to do these things and they're telling their body to do it.

[00:30:45] Ben: And the body's just not responding. And it's like, that's what it's going to be. Like. I'm going to get into situations where I'm like, I know I should be able to do this. History tells me I should be able to solve this problem really easily, but I'm looking at the syntax. I don't understand it. I'm looking at this, event stream API and I don't know how to use it yet.

[00:31:01] Ben: And it's like, I'm telling my body and my hands to do the things on the keyboard, but it's not happening. And it's going to be that. It's going to be very frustrating.

[00:31:09] Tim: Um, and can be humbling.

[00:31:11] Ben: Oh, it's gonna be super humble.

[00:31:13] Tim: I mean, this past month. So I have a developer that,he's worked a little bit in Scala, but not a whole lot. And normally he's dot net. And most of the stuff I've had him work in the past is.net, but I had to move them over to do some scholar work and it was frustrating for him.

[00:31:28] Tim: Right. So he was used to. Crushing it as Silicon valley references, he's used to crushing it and now he's like a functional program is completely different than object oriented programming. And he was just having a really hard time wrapping his head around it. I felt bad for him. I didn't let them struggle.

[00:31:45] Tim: I got some consultant to come in and kind of help them out a little bit and he got over it. But yeah, I think it's a little humbling to go into something and realize, you're now no longer the expert in the field. Right. And you're gonna, that's a little humbling, but it's also, it makes you hungry.

[00:32:02] Tim: Right. It makes you hungry to become that expert.

[00:32:06] Carol: That's where my passion, the learning. And that drive to go figure it out, takes over the fear of not getting it right. Or the fear of not knowing it or, letting it get the best of me, my passion to learn something new really like shines then.

[00:32:22] Tim: Yeah. And to his credit, Yeah, I don't, I never expect people to work on weekends. I don't think that's fair to ask people to work on weekends. I've actually never done it. My entire career never asked people to work on a weekend, but he, on his own he's like he was so frustrated. He's like was just doing, study and research and work on Saturday to figure it out.

[00:32:39] Tim: needlessly. So, cause he didn't figure it out. he spent an hour with the consultant that I had hired to help him. And he figured it was unlocked. But, yeah, I think sometime you just need that little bit of, of humility and a little bit of a hunger in your belly to get over that hump.

[00:32:52] Ben: I'm a big book learner, sorry, total

[00:32:55] Ben: tangent

[00:32:55] Ben: for a second. I love reading books to learn stuff. Like if I'm going to approach a new technology and there's a book on it that feels to me like one of the easiest ways to just get started. and I don't do they do are our technology books, are they being written anymore?

[00:33:12] Ben: I mean, they are, but I feel like I used to walk into a Barnes and noble and there'd just be shelves and shelves of programming books and,

[00:33:20] Carol: Now

[00:33:21] Carol: the

[00:33:21] Carol: section's very small.

[00:33:23] Adam: there's just tumbleweeds

[00:33:24] Carol: The, yeah. the section is very small. It's like Python for Denny's. Yeah. It's

[00:33:27] Carol: like

[00:33:28] Carol: Python for dummies. Yeah.

[00:33:29] Tim: pops now. It's all it is. Funko pops in D and D games. There's like little look like cartoon characters, but they're like little bobblehead kind of looking things.

[00:33:44] Adam: I don't have any Funko pops, but I do have this Obi wan Kenobi bobblehead.

[00:33:48] Carol: yes.

[00:33:50] Tim: Yeah. I think books are all electronic now in an audible.

[00:33:54] Carol: And I cannot learn that way. I can't pick up a book and just read it. Like I have to be, hands-on doing something and interacting. So I do really well with like you Timmy, because it's very interactive and there's someone talking to me, but just trying to focus on just a textbook

[00:34:09] Adam: yeah,

[00:34:10] Carol: lady D does not like that.

[00:34:12] Adam: I think video tutorial courses kind of killed tech books. You know,they're not dead, but in terms of who has the majority of Mindshare.

[00:34:20] Tim: I can't copy and paste out of a paper book.

[00:34:24] Adam: Okay. What do you mean you did that as your whole childhood?

[00:34:27] Tim: Oh, I can't, I it's atrophied man, but you're right. That was my entire childhood computer magazines and basic programs.

[00:34:36] Ben: so I think, to pull it back into the topic, one of the things that makes me nervous about joining a new team, joining a new company and being thrust into a whole new set of technologies is I feel like my old learning strategies, which was sitting on the couch and reading a book all weekend. I don't know if that's as relevant anymore.

[00:34:57] Ben: And so it's not only do I have to learn new things, but I have to learn new ways of learning those new things. And I don't, I haven't had to flex that muscle in a really long time.

[00:35:07] Carol: So you're going to learn to write COBOL cause there's lots of books on that out there that you can pick up and read.

[00:35:12] Adam: just go from one super outdated language to an even more outdated

[00:35:17] Carol: There's probably not a single video explaining.

[00:35:20] Tim: Yeah,

[00:35:22] Adam: How many videos are there

[00:35:23] Tim: what you're talking about, Ben though, it's like, it's so it's not just, if you're moving teams or moving companies and you're changing languages, every company is going to operate differently

[00:35:33] Tim: and and how they deploy, how they code, how they lent, how the unit test.

[00:35:38] Carol: Yes. Then they lent.

[00:35:40] Tim: They lent and unit test, is going to be different from maybe what you're used to, and you're gonna have to learn those things. And this is the top I suggested for our topic today, talking about training and developers, because it's something I'm not very good at of training people. I'm more of the school of just throw them in the deep end and go figure it out sucker.

[00:35:56] Tim: but yeah, I mean how well someone can train you and as I look, here's how we do it, here's our methodologies, here's some documentation, here's how you deploy things. Here's how here's our code standards and things. how well you do it, that depends on how well they are at transferring that knowledge to you.

[00:36:10] Ben: Yeah, I believe that.

[00:36:11] Adam: So another challenge. I mean, I, this is definitely pulling something from way earlier in the show, but another challenge of sticking with the same tech for a really long time. So then this was something you said, like the not changing your stack and trying to glom onto the new hotness, the wherever the bandwagon is going, has advantages.

[00:36:30] Adam: you get to know the language really well, but, at some point the problem becomes nobody has ever heard of this language and, coming out of school people who've never heard of it. And they have no interest in. Learning it using it. And so you start to, not be able to hire anybody to work in that stuff.

[00:36:47] Adam: So, it's like it's a double-edged sword, right? You kind of have to, you want to wait it out and make strategic investments in a platform and technologies that are gonna stand the test of time. And hopefully you pick the right horses and you want to ride it out for as long as you can.

[00:37:00] Adam: And then, do it all over again.

[00:37:04] Carol: Or you do like Tim. Maybe, I don't remember who it was. I'm going to blame it on Tim. You go to the local college and tell them that we're recruiting out of your school. So you should be teaching this language. So then they start teaching the language.

[00:37:17] Tim: That's exactly what I did.

[00:37:19] Carol: So now these kids are coming out of school knowing ColdFusion

[00:37:22] Tim: Although they stopped teaching that class, unfortunately, but yeah.

[00:37:26] Carol: Like, Hey, we want to recruit, but there's no tech for us. So DJ and they're like, cool. We'll teach it.

[00:37:32] Tim: Yeah. Adobe had this initiative where they had like college courses set up and they, I mean, they actually did a pretty good job setting it up and then they just completely abandoned it.

[00:37:40] Ben: It's a bummer.

[00:37:41] Tim: Yeah. It was a bummer. Cause I mean, but I think they abandoned it because there wasn't a whole, I mean, I think me and maybe two other people actually successfully got into colleges, they just didn't have good college outreach on it.

[00:37:51] Tim: So in summary, should you stay or go? I mean, it is completely up to you. There are pros and cons to both. definitely pros of just, having connections, deep knowledge is cons of opportunity costs, possibly lower salary people. Aren't going to give you, if you jump around, you're going to, you're going to get better pay usually, but ultimately is what works best for you, right?

[00:38:12] Tim: I mean,

[00:38:12] Adam: Yeah, I think early in your career, what you need is a mentor who hopefully is like outside of your company. So this person is looking out for you as a person and for your career, not necessarily what's best for the company. And that outside perspective can be really useful, which again is another great reason to attend conferences and meet ups.

[00:38:33] Adam: local technology meetups are a great place to meet somebody.

[00:38:36] Tim: Or join our Discord. We have tons of opinions that we can give you about your career.

[00:38:40] Adam: No shortage of opinions.

[00:38:42] Tim: Yeah.

[00:38:43] Patreon

[00:38:43] Adam: So this episode of Working Code was brought to you by quitting your job and listeners like you. If you like what we're doing here, you should consider supporting us on Patreon. We have a bunch of really great people that help us out over there, and we appreciate every single one of them special.

[00:38:56] Adam: Thanks. Go to our top patrons, Monte and Peter. If you'd like to help us out, you can go to patreon.com/WorkingCodePod, all patrons get early access to an ad free version of new episodes, and they get our after show.

[00:39:10] Adam:

[00:39:10] Thanks For Listening!

[00:39:10] Adam: Are you staring angrily at your phone because you could have contributed something valuable to the conversation that we missed. It sounds like you should join our discourse so that you can go talk to a bunch of other like-minded coders and share your knowledge. Go to workingcode.dev/discord to join.

[00:39:25] Adam: That's going to do it for us this week. We'll catch you next week. And until then

[00:39:29] Tim: Remember your heart matters regardless if you stay or if you go downtown

[00:39:39]

[00:39:58] Bloopers

[00:39:58] Adam: That's gotta be blooper material.

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