I'll consider some liquid courage down that chute when I commit to nairing my nads. There's gotta be a tiktac achievement for that...
4th and I hope final interview at the unicorn company today. Also 3 calls with recruiters today and two interviews for $$$ contract jobs tomorrow. The top 3 dollar offers I'm seeing so far are from Children's Hospitals, for some reason. This has been an interesting, exciting and exhausting exercise.
I have three. First one was for an IT recruiting firm in Reston, Virginia. For those of you unfamiliar, Reston is the farthest you can travel into Virginia on the DC Metro. They insisted it be an 8:30 interview. I woke up at like 5 AM, showered, suited up and traveled to the station, ubered to the office...which was nowhere near the metro stop (at that point I should have just canceled, but I had just graduated college a week ago). Anyway, I get there, and they're not expecting me. They put me in a tiny conference room. They don't have coffee, and while I could do a 5 AM wake up time without coffee today it would be hard, so you can imagine how a 22 year old still on a college sleep schedule is handling it. There's a massive argument in the room next door, someone pops in and asks if I want anything to drink. I ask for a class of water...he goes somewhere and I hear a loud "****!". He comes back and says we have Sierra Mist and Dr Pepper. The office does not have running water or even cups. It's a generic interview, then they take me to shadow someone. I watch as he just searches on Monster and doesn't explain anything. I never hear back. The second one was actually my first full time job and is another place I should have turned around before I got there. It was a for-profit, vocational school that was very predatory in the basement of a run-down office building. I got up to shake the CEO/Founder's hand when he came in and he barked at me to "sit down!". I took an excel test that was just adding two columns together. They told me I was "too professional" but then hired me when someone else quit. Final one was right when COVID was dying down and I needed money. Just a job anywhere before grad school. Another staffing firm, that was around the block from the room I was renting at a friend's house back in Jersey. It's a straightforward interview, very small firm. Typical place in that it's a lot of young people right out of college. Whatever, it pays decent and it's around the block from my house. I'm not crazy about recruiting, but I am good at it. He sends me an offer letter. Decent salary plus commission. There's one catch though...the first 60 days are all unpaid. I suspect their MO was to basically hire anyone. I ended up working retail for 8 months instead.
Got a job offer from the unicorn company. It's a little lower than I anticipated but the compensation package overall is awesome. I twisted the screws a little and the CEO went up another 5%, and he mentioned that I would be the highest paid (new) person at that job in the company, which showed some commitment. The bonus structure is based on company impact and I have no qualms there. Just an observation: What I'm finding is that the Indian headhunters have the worst jobs to offer, pay and job-wise. I still hear them all out and some of the Indian recruiters do match some of the better offers, but very few of them are knowledgeable about the positions or companies they're pimping and just go back to reading the job description when I ask pointed questions. Most of the recruiters in the states know their customers and have at least some base knowledge about the job duties. On the other hand, there are some real dumbasses in the states. It's an interesting dynamic to observe. I've had about six calls with recruiters today but nothing that stands out. Honestly, at this point I'm sort of losing track of what is being offered. I need to convert my notes into a spreadsheet and grade everything. I'll probably take the unicorn job but I have a couple of big whale paying interviews tomorrow that I want attend to see if they're worth it.
I feel your pain on those and remember those mickey mouse interviews and fly by night companies when I was younger. You wonder how they keep that **** together. Sixty days free....wtf? My wife worked at the Art Institute as a librarian back in the late 2010's. They are all just utterly scummy. She ended up gravitating towards the leadership group so she got to see the inner-workings of the place. The 'Dean' was just a 60 year old slimy sales guy named Teatman who had man boobs and wore those shiny sports type polos. The 'counselors' were just commission based salespeople. The aptitude testing computer was in the library and my wife said they would bring in borderline 'special needs' people who didn't even know how to turn the PC on just to get them enrolled. They also had a fast track pitch for anyone on the GI bill- they would straight tell them they only needed to come in one day a semester and their bills were covered. I felt terrible for the kids who where there to actually learn. Ultimately we agreed that she needed to leave because that level of slime doesn't come off easy. No educational institution should be for-profit.
After I left I tried reporting them to any and every one I could think of. They're still open. Look up Prospect College in Washington, DC
After a short amount of consideration I accepted the job at the unicorn company. It's just too awesome a place to pass up, even at a slightly lower salary than I wanted. I just hope it isn't a NXIVM cult situation. I guess my body is ready? I do get $2k to buy my own laptop, so I'm going to do some looking tonight. I still have interviews lined up tomorrow that I'm going to go to just to see what is up. They could absolutely blow me away although I'm not counting on it. These jobs are more of the same of what I do but with institutions with far deeper pockets. I talked to my supervisor briefly this afternoon and let him know I'm resigning. He was pretty bummed out and even talked about looking around for a new job himself, since the place we work won't give him the resources he needs to build his department. I'm the second person to leave in a month, and that's at no fault of his, Rockstar guy to work for.
Word is out at my current job. Interesting reactions: Wow Holy **** ****! Aw hell Nooooooo WOW No way OMG They’re ****ed How can they let this happen They can’t replace you God dammit And so on.
They might do a counteroffer. I was going to leave at my current job and then they realized they weren't being competitive with their pay (the reason I was leaving). My move caused everyone to get a 10% raise hourly with a bonus. They call me William Wallace
So the catalyst for me putting myself out there is that I made a detailed proposal for a raise and promotion based on market, internal review scores (always top), and company policy. They were adamant that they just didn't have the budget. I told the director the first round that he could do better and to talk to the CIO. He came back and said the same thing. I told him that it was crap and that I was disappointed in him because I had seen my current job find money for people. One of the other directors (actually the #2 guy in the department) is a good friend of mine and he confided that this guy is sort of a wimp when it comes for pushing for money for his people. All of that said, it would be massive crow to eat for them to suddenly find money for me. I have a counteroffer ready that's really a hail Mary which includes me being promoted to director level, having an entirely new department under me, etc, but it's the only way I'll stay. They're playing a dangerous game with the employees this year not taking care of them and hoping that they won't look at the market. We've been losing 3-5 people a month but it's mostly younger folks. This might be the catalyst of a big brain drain.
I've joked with them and told them I'll threaten to quit every year from now on to get my yearly raise.
It's almost never in your best interest to stay at a company after you've put in your notice. You will be marked as a liability and they will begin searching for your replacement immediately. You will get passed over for promotions and effectively blacklisted. If you're that underpaid, just leave. The trick is properly weighing your potential earnings vs. the comforts you presently enjoy and your current trajectory. IMO the tipping point is somewhere around 30%. And even then a lot of it depends on the health of the company and department you are going into. Edit: I should note that turning in your notice vs. producing a compelling offer letter from another company are two different things. The former burns the bridge outright, the latter you should only do if you have a very compelling offer and have a lot of goodwill to fall back on as capital. Even still, you may end up regretting it.
I was couch surfing in DC, waiting to finalize my summer sub-lease. I don't travel for interviews unless it's in my field or they're paying. I will say though, my experiences right after college- both interviewing and then working at shitty, dysfunctional firms - really made me depressed about life in general. It wasn't until a few jobs until I liked what I was doing and started to enjoying being a working adult. That lasted for about a year, then COVID hit.
One piece of advice I'd give to my younger self (and current students/recent grads). If your boss is consistently drinking wine on the job, and declaring the weekend starts at like 1 PM on a Friday...it's not cool. It means your boss is an alcoholic and everyone in your office is clearly miserable. That was my second job out of college (in staffing).
Is this why you're at UGA post-grad now? Shoveling **** is normal for like... the first 10 years in the job force.
