My first year was in 2006. The economy was not doing well and nobody wanted to hire me, despite having coded for the past 20 years and graduating with a 4.0 GPA. I eventually got a Java job as a contractor at a large telecommunications company writing back-end automated systems.
I discovered pretty quickly that the culture didn't like contractors, that the organization had done massive waves of layoffs in the past, and that the recruiter who placed me there was pocketing an immense amount of my billable rate. I wasn't happy, but I liked my boss and coworkers.
6 months in, the recruiter who placed me auto-renewed my contract at the same billable rate for me without discussing it with me first. My boss gave notice and moved to a startup and recommended I take a look at a .NET startup he encountered while interviewing.
I left and have largely avoided recruiters since. I loved the .NET role and serving a smaller company and was almost immediately promoted from junior dev to a mid-level developer role with a nice salary bump to boot. The rest of the year was full of late nights and some weekends with the occasional trade show or major demo we were involved with as we tried to gain traction.
So, in summary, my first job made me feel small, unwelcome, and betrayed by the recruiting industry, and it was hard to see myself in the business world, but I kept at it until I found something better. It was a lot more work, but it was a lot more fulfilling as well, and I loved every minute of it.
I wrote a bit more about that adjustment process earlier.
My first year was in 2006. The economy was not doing well and nobody wanted to hire me, despite having coded for the past 20 years and graduating with a 4.0 GPA. I eventually got a Java job as a contractor at a large telecommunications company writing back-end automated systems.
I discovered pretty quickly that the culture didn't like contractors, that the organization had done massive waves of layoffs in the past, and that the recruiter who placed me there was pocketing an immense amount of my billable rate. I wasn't happy, but I liked my boss and coworkers.
6 months in, the recruiter who placed me auto-renewed my contract at the same billable rate for me without discussing it with me first. My boss gave notice and moved to a startup and recommended I take a look at a .NET startup he encountered while interviewing.
I left and have largely avoided recruiters since. I loved the .NET role and serving a smaller company and was almost immediately promoted from junior dev to a mid-level developer role with a nice salary bump to boot. The rest of the year was full of late nights and some weekends with the occasional trade show or major demo we were involved with as we tried to gain traction.
So, in summary, my first job made me feel small, unwelcome, and betrayed by the recruiting industry, and it was hard to see myself in the business world, but I kept at it until I found something better. It was a lot more work, but it was a lot more fulfilling as well, and I loved every minute of it.
I wrote a bit more about that adjustment process earlier.
Impostor Syndrome and Outliers
Matt Eland ・ Sep 3 ・ 6 min read