Labor Market Notes

Often, articles about the labor market in IT come down to clarifying the relationship between job seekers who “know nothing” and employers who “cannot give anything to a valuable specialist.” This post is a happy exception, because in it I would like to share my observations with the community about finding a job, rather than looking for the right and the wrong ones.

IT differs from other industries in its chronic lack of specialists, high entry thresholds, high salaries and, as a result, a high cost of errors on the part of applicants and employers, the first rule follows from here.

No point in a hurry

Even if you have already left your previous job, this is not a reason to be nervous and clutch at the first offer as a life buoy. We are engineers, we have a calculator, so let's calculate: getting a new job you plan to stay on it for at least a couple of years, right? Two years is 24 months, therefore, even if it takes you a month to find a job and this month you will find a vacancy where your skills and experience will be at least 5% more beneficial for the company and 5% better paid, this will meaning and your efforts will pay off. This simple arithmetic works the better, the higher the level, and also true for employers. From the first rule follows the second.

You need to be ready for everything

We work in the industry and on projects where the most unexpected and unimaginable changes are possible, caused by both external and internal reasons, and your working conditions can change as quickly as the requirements change, therefore, just like any competent developer anticipates and is ready for the most crazy changes to the requirements, he should be ready to change the project. The planning of personal finance should be treated as carefully and carefully as you relate to architecture in order not to lose balance in case of unforeseen circumstances and achieve good results in the long term.

It’s worth refreshing your knowledge in advance

Starting a job search, I came across a not-so-pleasant fact - in order to at least just refresh my knowledge of the technologies that are indicated in my resume, I needed to read about three thousand pages of technical literature. However, an even more unpleasant observation was that employers still ask at interviews what is the difference between a clustered and non-clustered index (I’ll explain: this is as obvious as the difference between a chair and a stool), for example, about fashionable things like the same REST, about the features of the architecture of cloud applications, or at least in general terms about MVC (we, affiliates, MVC is still considered extremely stylish, fashionable, youth) have never been asked. Therefore, to some extent, this advice can be considered useless,

Inflation is not the same as rising wages

Returning to monetary issues, I would also like to comment on the frequently encountered misconception about indexing and recounting salaries. If you once received X rubles, and inflation during the period of your work in the company was Y, this is not a reason to indicate the sum of X * Y in the CV. Firstly, consumer inflation is a rise in prices for goods and services and, strictly speaking, the employer is not obliged to pay you for the fact that today bread costs more than yesterday, and a new bubble is inflating in the panel box market, which the employee is in a hurry to finance. However, the good news is that we live in a developing country where wage growth on average so far exceeds inflation, so when you multiply X * Y, you most likely do it at a loss. By the way my attempts to find historical information about the growth of real wages specifically in IT and specifically in my city were unsuccessful, although it would be interesting, especially in terms of technology. Secondly, when the applicant comes for an interview, he offers a very specific examination, which may be either in demand in a particular project, or completely unnecessary, and given the wide range of tasks that are solved in our industry, the number of possible tools for solving these problems as well as the skills of a single IT specialist, it turns out that statistics are not our method. Hence the conclusion: it is impossible to accurately calculate the new salary based on the old. which may or may not be in demand in a specific project, and given the wide range of tasks that are being addressed in our industry, the number of possible tools for solving these problems, as well as the skills of a single IT specialist, it turns out that statistics are not our method. Hence the conclusion: it is impossible to accurately calculate the new salary based on the old. which may or may not be in demand in a specific project, and given the wide range of tasks that are being addressed in our industry, the number of possible tools for solving these problems, as well as the skills of a single IT specialist, it turns out that statistics are not our method. Hence the conclusion: it is impossible to accurately calculate the new salary based on the old.

Caution Seasonality

Despite the fact that any analyst will tell you that IT and Telecom are financially stable industries with low volatility and blah blah blah, it seems that both global downturns and booms in the economy and seasonal factors affect the labor market and IT specialists no worse than others. If you subscribe to the vacancy newsletter, you will very soon notice that there is some benefit in looking for work in spring or autumn, and in summer and winter, for example, to relax and not think about changing jobs, if only because employers also have summer all on vacation and no one to mess with you. Yes, this advice is capitanism, but I decided to leave it here for those who, for some reason, do not yet know about it, for example, for juniors.

It’s worth trying to understand the employer

Mentioning the juniors, I remembered how my career began. As a student, I once was politely sent to wait for me to be called back, but I got out of it, offering to learn the necessary technologies myself. The guys sent me a list of what they need to read, gave me links to Training Kits, and within a few weeks they happily accepted me for work - before that they were just too lazy to mess with the junior, and I was too lazy to deal with something before I was sure that it would be useful to me in my work. From this story we can conclude: it is never harmful to try to understand the employer. For example, you should rationally treat a phenomenon such as HR, which does not offer you the most suitable options. Think about where they come from - maybe the thing is that in the resume you wrote that you worked with something five years ago, What are you being offered to return to now? It is worth emphasizing exactly what you are interested in, and describe the old experience briefly. And if you are called and offered a job clearly below your level - check the price tag, maybe it is understated and HR will classify you according to it. There can be many similar situations, but each of them is quite amenable to analysis.

That’s all for me, but if you also have some observations that you could share, welcome to comment.

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