new job criteria, prologue

Journal Bill Dog's Journal: new job criteria, prologue 1

Journal by Bill Dog on Sunday October 05, 2014 @09:31PM

As with any job, there are some plusses and minusses at where I currently slave away. A pro is that our newish sys admin pushes us onto newer versions of things software. In contrast to our senior developers, who don't want the group to move to more modern development practices.

I plan to start looking for a new job after the raises come out next year, which happens beginning of March. This is also in part timed to the graphic in this FA that shows what the biggest hiring months have been. I've reordered it chronologically, and see that I really need to try to get in somewhere before the beginning of summer:
Jan 110,480 Feb 101,120 Mar 111,480 Apr 118,040 May 134,760 Jun _87,125 Jul _94,400 Aug _61,875 Sep _95,840 Oct 108,000 Nov 109,750 Dec _91,667

I'm mostly looking to leave over money. I do C#/.NET web development now, and was hired there based on prior web dev experience in classic ASP, and having completed a certificate program in .NET at the local university's extension program. And this after being out of work for two and a third years, being laid off at the beginning of the Great Recession, and seeing zippo employment action (in my area) going on with my old Win32 C/C++ desktop application skills.

So despite being a senior software engineer, I hired in to a level II position, and probably near the bottom of the pay scale for it at that. And don't get me wrong, I'm damn glad to have gotten the opportunity at all! But my raises have averaged 1%, and we seem to be kind of a low budget shop as it is, and the boss is not (the kind of guy who would be) impressed with me, and I'm 48 and burned a bunch of savings during the downturn, and have only been (able to be) putting away the bare minimum to take maximal advantage of the 401K matching.

So it's not like I'm greedy or I live extravagantly, and I'll wait and see, to be sure, but I'm not exactly expecting a boost in my income from this place any time soon. And at my age and how I've been only able to sock away a modest amount for retirement in my career so far, and how I can only afford to put away very little with what I'm making now, it comes to the point where it seems like it would actually be financially irresponsible to remain at my current job, if I could find better.

But better for me isn't just more money, but then lesser learning, say. In the mid 2000's I was paid well, where I was able to do most of my retirement saving, but I had a lot of down time between projects, and my skills atrophied. And I stayed almost 7 years, and lost touch with what was going on in the job market.

I really like getting experience on the newer versions of things and don't want to give that up in a job change. (For example a place I had interviewed at during the recession ran an ad recently, and they're *still* stuck on 2005's MS technology. Which would be giving up a lot, i.e. 9 years of nicer features and better ways of doing things.) And I want to get into newer development practices, which is what the follow-on will be about, but I don't want to be at a place where they exercise those development chops sporadically.

I.e. it's not really worth it to me to be paid more, but then be in danger again in my next job search.

So what do I want in a new organization, besides recent versions of things and steady development work, and how am I going to select for that in the portion of the interview where I get to ask a few questions? That's next.

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