Hi all, I'm a senior director of new product engineering and devops, after many years of being a senior engineer and I have not found the elusive work life balance because I am working on a project I enjoy, where deadlines are aggressive and I can obsess. ;-) just like any other senior dev I get a ton of requests - so many emails it's hard to ignore them. I get at least one phone call a day although I have not posted my number out there. To keep my productivity high I respond with a single question: "What is the salary range?" I do this because if the recruiter is for real they will understand and respond. Then I ask a more important question: "is this your client exclusively". I haven't needed to take an interview in 3 years and I don't expect to any time soon although one of my colleagues recently accepted a job at a start-up for two reasons: 1) my company hired him as a contract-to-perm but did not keep their end of the bargain with him and 2) he was offered a title of 'architect' at the new role on a project 'adjacent' to an AI project.
I am intrigued by his situation enough to answer some emails and take some calls but it is unlikely that I would switch as I can walk to work, take a 20 minute Subway ride home, watch the boats on the Hudson River through 12 foot windows, eat lunch with colleagues on the lawns of the river or the Highline during good weather, play pool, giant chess, arcade games on various different floors of my building when I need to stretch my legs and best of all - I am respected at my workplace as the go to person for new projects as I regularly give lunch lectures to the tech leads.
Emails are the best way to reach me. I do not take calls and if by chance a call gets thru I will immediately request an email with the details. I do not post on boards or Stackoverflow although I am a voracious reader and I do not network anymore at meetups. I suppose I would start doing all these things if I was looking. I do not add anyone on LinkedIn as a rule of thumb and I would not change that but I have interviewed once in the past as a result of an excellent article by someone working at a big name company offering an awesome outlook on his philosophy. He and I had an excellent conversation as a result and then he asked me to interview and I was tempted. So I guess I would say get someone to write an interesting article as a draw and then talk to the people who are interested and ask them to interview if they are a good fit. Let me know if this works for you. Sorry for the run-ons; I am running to the gym. ;-)
Salary level, project type, title, PTO, benefits are imprtant to me in that order. Work from home is strangely not important as a really nice office space, easy commute, beautiful location, good colleagues are more important. I think I am also attracted by better weather now that it's getting colder in NYC ;-)
Darius thanks for an interesting post. I read voraciously but I don't usually reply to posts or even post on Stackoverflow due to the lack of time. I took time out to respond as it was helpful to think thru this interesting
and challenging problem you face.
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Hi all, I'm a senior director of new product engineering and devops, after many years of being a senior engineer and I have not found the elusive work life balance because I am working on a project I enjoy, where deadlines are aggressive and I can obsess. ;-) just like any other senior dev I get a ton of requests - so many emails it's hard to ignore them. I get at least one phone call a day although I have not posted my number out there. To keep my productivity high I respond with a single question: "What is the salary range?" I do this because if the recruiter is for real they will understand and respond. Then I ask a more important question: "is this your client exclusively". I haven't needed to take an interview in 3 years and I don't expect to any time soon although one of my colleagues recently accepted a job at a start-up for two reasons: 1) my company hired him as a contract-to-perm but did not keep their end of the bargain with him and 2) he was offered a title of 'architect' at the new role on a project 'adjacent' to an AI project.
I am intrigued by his situation enough to answer some emails and take some calls but it is unlikely that I would switch as I can walk to work, take a 20 minute Subway ride home, watch the boats on the Hudson River through 12 foot windows, eat lunch with colleagues on the lawns of the river or the Highline during good weather, play pool, giant chess, arcade games on various different floors of my building when I need to stretch my legs and best of all - I am respected at my workplace as the go to person for new projects as I regularly give lunch lectures to the tech leads.
Emails are the best way to reach me. I do not take calls and if by chance a call gets thru I will immediately request an email with the details. I do not post on boards or Stackoverflow although I am a voracious reader and I do not network anymore at meetups. I suppose I would start doing all these things if I was looking. I do not add anyone on LinkedIn as a rule of thumb and I would not change that but I have interviewed once in the past as a result of an excellent article by someone working at a big name company offering an awesome outlook on his philosophy. He and I had an excellent conversation as a result and then he asked me to interview and I was tempted. So I guess I would say get someone to write an interesting article as a draw and then talk to the people who are interested and ask them to interview if they are a good fit. Let me know if this works for you. Sorry for the run-ons; I am running to the gym. ;-)
Salary level, project type, title, PTO, benefits are imprtant to me in that order. Work from home is strangely not important as a really nice office space, easy commute, beautiful location, good colleagues are more important. I think I am also attracted by better weather now that it's getting colder in NYC ;-)
Darius thanks for an interesting post. I read voraciously but I don't usually reply to posts or even post on Stackoverflow due to the lack of time. I took time out to respond as it was helpful to think thru this interesting
and challenging problem you face.