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#jobs-discuss
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2021-10-30
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mattly16:10:49

As someone who loves Clojure and misses working with it professionally, but gave it up to work for one of the companies consistently rated a “best place to work”, my take is that there’s a lot more about being an employee for a company than simply choice of language you work in

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mattly16:10:46

I think there’s a lot more that goes into “being happy at a job” and I’ve come to realize that “primary coding language” doesn’t even make my top 10

mattly16:10:14

because I’m friends with a bunch of people who have religion about ruby on rails and have been griping about how opportunities for that seem to be dwindling, I actually compiled that list

mattly16:10:12

• flexibility of work hours and schedule • compensation (without getting into it, having RSUs on top of a great salary has greatly improved my quality of life) • company’s values/work align with my values • pace of work and quality of planning • generally aimiable immediate team members • opportunities for growth and feeling like the company wants to invest in me • interesting problems to work on • being empowered to solve those problems (lack of bureaucracy, timely code reviews, good product management, etc) • having a feedback cycle with the people I’m building software for (I tend to do front-end work, this is important for me) • feeling the impact of my work and what it accomplished

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mattly16:10:36

that said, if I found an opportunity to use Clojure at a place that I was certain had these qualities in the way my current employer did, it’d be really tempting

mattly16:10:55

Go is not bad, but it’s quickly becoming the new lowest common denominator language, and there are a lot of things about it that would make most clojurists cringe

mattly16:10:06

javascript continues to be terrible

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mattly16:10:03

but otherwise my current employer has provided by far and away the best working enivronment I’ve ever had, and that makes the language quibbles seem minor

futuro18:10:16

I agree 100%, and also finding a workplace like that seems, in my experience, to be the hardest part of any career.

futuro18:10:17

I'm not really sure how to suss this out from interviews, though. How have you gone about finding such a place?

mattly19:10:51

Luck in that I got referred in by a colleague

mattly19:10:15

and then seeing that the company had been near the top of this list for several years in a row https://fortune.com/best-companies/2021

mattly19:10:38

as far as “values align with my own” I did some research beforehand about their commitments to the environment, diversity inclusion & equity, and whatnot

mattly19:10:54

as far as compensation goes, I’ll defer that to https://www.levels.fyi/

futuro21:10:23

I suspect the lucky referral is the strongest factor. That's been my experience so far, at least.

futuro21:10:05

Having a broader network means a higher likelihood that someone has found this kind of environment, and it doesn't have to be just you.

Aleksander09:10:47

The top company on the list is usigng Clojure. But they don't seem to pay particularly well.

gklijs06:11:08

Offering a high pay, often seems a necessity for some companies. If it's the number one reason for people to work at a certain company, it gets me worried.

Martynas Maciulevičius14:11:57

@U26FJ5FDM What if you worry whether you're paid enough?

gklijs14:11:46

Enough is very relative.

mattly16:11:55

I’ve turned down an offer at a FAANG (or is it MAANA now?) for nearly twice what I was making at the time, because I felt the company’s values didn’t align with mine

mattly16:11:09

That said, even since leaving the Clojure world, I’ve fielded recruiter inquiries from Clojure-based companies and when I bring up compensation expectations they’re invariably shocked by what I set based on what I’m making now

mattly16:11:49

Roughly half my compensation this year though is through RSUs and how they’ve increased in value since they were granted

mattly16:11:52

so I got lucky

mattly17:11:15

remember Google is now Alphabet