SWE's Network Provides Insurance Plan

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This post is part of a new series where I go over a job seeker’s personal situation and my advice for them on how to land their next job, or advance their career. I’ll be starting from my most recent expereinces and working backwards.

These stories are collected either from my coaching calls (link at the bottom of the post to sign up) or random folks I speak to for my day job.

Situation:

Recently I spoke to a SWE for one of my coaching calls.

• He was a senior SWE with 10+ years of experience

• Java based tech stack

• Located in DMV with good logos in the area known for financial services

• His company is in the middle of conducting layoffs

• While he is”fine”, he’s still worried and wants to get out ahead of it and apply to jobs

• He hasn’t looked for a job in 3+ years, and he’s only had 3 different employers his whole career

• His current LOB is in a main revenue driver at the company

• He believes his current manager and director are in good standing with him and have good political equity with higher level leadership

• He believes he’s “easily” in the top 20% performers in the tech org and says he is closer to top 5%

• IMO - for his comp - it’s high but not “unreasonable” where it should but a big fat X on his back.

• He likes working here, but just having trouble sleeping at night with layoffs.

• Biggest fear - getting laid off right now, being on the market for months at a time.

Action:

I advised him to do the following:

• Before looking for a job, take a step back and relax

• The last thing you want to do is jump the gun, assume you were going to get laid off, quit and put yourself in a completely new position to risk “last one in, first one out” somewhere else. Not to mention completely starting over political equity from scratch.

• But to ease your fear let’s test the market out a bit - slowly and passively.

• Optimized both his resume and linkedin

• He slowly reached to previous colleagues and managers from current company that moved on & from his other orgs.

• He applied to “a couple” of jobs a week, but extremely targeted where it would actually make sense for him to leave if it progressed to an offer

Result:

• He already had one previous manager tell him he would hire him back “in a heartbeat”

• This put him at ease pretty quickly and he has warm connections with a bunch of other folks

• In just a couple weeks he had 2 interviews but decided he’s not going to pursue them seriously, will move forward with one process just to see what the market is paying

• Going to stay put at his current job because now that his previous manager will hire him back, that provides him insurance on the doomsday scenario, plus it’s comforting that he got some interviews relatively quickly

….

If you’re looking to sign up for my coaching calls, you can click the link below!