>One of my most successful life-hacks is to avoid people I don’t like or don’t trust.
following this advice would have made most of my professional life impossible, what a luxury it would have been to be able to.
following this advice would have made most of my professional life impossible, what a luxury it would have been to be able to.
A lot of people get wrapped up in pursuing compensation opportunities or prestige brands as their top priority, only to burn themselves out or wallow in a domain/culture that doesn't suit them, but if you're willing to deprioritize pay or dinner table cred, you often end up with a lot more flexibility on other work factors. And sometimes, flourishing in those better-fit environments pays off bigger in compensation and career growth in the end anyway.
Granted, Fowler was able to do very well on more axes than many of us, but most competent mid- or late- career people have plenty more flexibility on worklife than they admit to themselves.
Never thought I would say the day, when I joined this career all I wanted was to work on interesting problems and not work more than 40 hours per week. These days the interesting problems are always solved in the worse ways possible and I am often swamped with work that I don't even have the time to do any improvements out of my personally-assigned backlog.
Also in my experience lower pay places tend to eventually suck because they tend to get into financial difficulties much more easily.
High compensation can also bring more freedom and happiness, since it’s more costly for your employer to replace you. It’s cheaper to keep an existing employee happy than to spend a lot of time and money to bring a new person on board. If your compensation is lower, it’s not as big of a factor.
I wouldn’t take a job if it clearly doesn’t fit me at all, but within the band of “acceptable jobs” aiming for highest compensation is the way to go in my opinion.
In my 20’s and early 30’s i wanted to work places where I felt this cultural and work fit since work was a bigger part of my life — but now I’m in my 40’s that shifted just want to get paid as much as possible and provide for my family.
Don’t much care about who I work with, although I do draw the line at crypto, porn and harmful stuff.
Your personal development surely did, but people of all ages ended up in that mindset, and there are countless anecdotes of people talking about the reverse... Both older and younger then you.
I would totally accept a job for a legit porn company. Regarding harmful stuff... "harmful" is such a broad definition, because it heavily depends on the culture. Having "volunteered for an LGBT organisation" on your resume would've killed your career not so long ago.
Just make sure that if you aren't born into wealth and status you know how to code switch into it, lie if you need to, as long as people think you are from the wealth class they won't begrudge negotiations around compensation.
Is that one of those situations where having a wide network comes into play? About the only way to know with someone is to have someone you trust vouch for the workplace culture.
> Also in my experience lower pay places tend to eventually suck because they tend to get into financial difficulties much more easily.
I'm not sure if the tradeoff is explicitly and consciously "lower pay for better conditions." It's probably more like "conditions a good enough that there's less pressure to increase pay."
I actually work at a place that had pretty good conditions (based on everything I've heard) until a few years ago (when a long trend of offshoring and other site-shifting reorgs brought the site below a critical mass of upper-level representation to maintain its culture). My gut feel is a big factor was the business was pretty lucrative and predictable for a long, long time. Once there was customer-driven pricing pressure and competitive pressure, things started to deteriorate.
Not that luck doesn't have a role, but everybody gets it.
the ability to enter such lotteries is where success lies. either through connections or ability.
> [...] which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable [...]
"Avoid strong coupling between modules" v. "Never upload raw keys to a git server."
Plus, I've been on the receiving end, too. Is this not simply adulthood?
If your professional life has required you to spend enormous amounts of time working very closely with people you don't like and/or don't trust, then -unless it has made you enough money to retire after a few years' work- please accept my condolences.
Yes, that's what I said. "To the best of your ability." often means "You have to occasionally spend small amounts of time working with really shitty people.". OP said:
following this advice would have made most of my professional life impossible...
Or adapted for modern life in America: 'the king shits in their diaper'