Halfway There…
Offer accepted!
After having started to apply to software engineering jobs on March 31st, 2022, I accepted an offer with klarx on May (Friday the) 13th as a Junior Backend Software Developer. That’s almost exactly six weeks! Not bad. Now I have about seven more weeks before the job actually begins on July 1st. This was unexpected. However, with the financial uncertainty removed, we can make it just fine, in spite of the urgency I had expressed earlier.
So, how did I manage it thus far? Upon receiving advice to this effect, I put creating an attractive portfolio project way down my list of priorities, given my time constraint. That left me with nothing to show anyone in terms of code on Github or the like. Instead, I played a hard numbers game. Using this book and this resume maker, I eliminated most of the things from my resume that I otherwise would have put in. Later I started including two glowing references with my applications: one from my former boss in translation, one from a study buddy from Launch School. Looking at my records on this handy job application tracking app, I applied at about 160 companies, primarily through Indeed, because it has the most to choose from. I also created profiles on eight sites where recruiters could find me, solicited the help of two headhunters, and generally made it known that I was looking for work. I interviewed with twelve companies, with two of them being sourced from profiles, the rest from applications. Seven of them rejected me, five did not. I received two offers, with a third quasi-offer: “we can do a little better than [the first offer, once you complete the (easy) last step in our process].” The first offer came from a profile, the other one and the quasi-offer came from applications. The latter two had intense, multi-part assessment processes (e.g. technical interview, take home project, behavioral interview), while the former did not.
Worth mentioning is that both of the companies with the more involved assessment processes put challenges before me that I reckoned I had done a sub-par job at. For example, the consultancy had an initial technical challenge with two coding problems to solve. There was no interviewer present, but it was being recorded for later review. I failed to solve the first of the two problems in the time allowed. It looked something like this, and I was given 30 minutes for it. It took me a good 20 minutes or so to hack my way through the terminology. As I told a friend later, if they had explained it like I was five, I could’ve solved it in ten minutes… I think. I assume that they were satisfied enough with my PEDAC (the Launch School approach to problem solving) to send me to the next step. With klarx, I had a take-home project using Ruby on Rails. The thing is, I had basically just gotten to the “hello world” level of skill in Rails when I was given that task. I think that the wonderful folks at klarx took this into consideration in evaluating what I managed to come up with. The senior dev who reviewed my code with me seemed much more interested in my ability to explain my reasoning or to deal with curveballs (“What if I did this to your code? What would happen? How would you fix it without removing my change?”) than my knowledge of Rails. Launch School does a tremendous job preparing graduates for that.
In terms of the non-technical side, given that I have 0 work experience — and don’t hide that fact — and I also have no snazzy portfolio project, what was my strategy in presenting myself? Basically two things: 1) be a joy, 2) praise Launch School. Launch School’s reputation is what I had to show. I practiced talking about it, and it seems to have worked.
The first offer came from a company that had developed a suite of products for small-to-medium businesses using Microsoft’s Power Apps. It is kind of a customizable, smaller version of Microsoft Dynamics designed for the German way of doing business. I would’ve had the option of making my way into a technical consultant position. If I had had no other options, this would have been fine, though it isn’t what I’ve been preparing myself for. The quasi-offer came from a giant consultancy with an Early Careers program for taking new grads up to the Senior Developer level over the course of three years. This was an excellent option. Klarx is a growing start-up employing about 100 people currently. They are also planning to rewrite their entire codebase on a new stack (still using Ruby). I am coming in at the very beginning of that process, so I will be learning the new technologies along with my superiors. It is damn near perfect.
One thing I didn’t anticipate in the job search was that I got almost no response for two weeks, although I had sent out something like 100 applications during that time. After the two weeks had passed, however, things really picked up. At the end, after I had gotten my first offer, I could have played off companies against each other, as Haseeb Qureshi talks about here. It was really striking the effect it had to tell potential employers that I had an offer in hand!
However, I decided to moderate my ambition and end the suspense. The short of it is that I found the company, and the people, I want to work with, and an essential characteristic of that is that I can be authentic with them. Authenticity is real if you maintain it when something is at stake. Especially things like power, love, and money. Although it seems like the entire internet is full of advice about how to win the arm-wrestling match of salary negotiation, I don’t want to work with people that I would feel comfortable doing that to, or that I think would do that to me, at least not if I am fortunate enough to have another workable option.
This isn’t to say that I failed to communicate my desires and perspective. That wouldn’t be authentic either. I looked at the average starting salaries for graduates of Computer Science in Germany. This was variously reported from about 42,000–51,000 Euros, from what I could find. I offered this as a basis for discussion and, to ensure that my counterpart didn’t make the mistake of thinking that Launch School was inferior to a Comp Sci degree, I let them know that here in Germany there is a Launch School graduate who got a PhD in Comp Sci before he went to Launch School. It’s just that Comp Sci graduates are the closest thing that we can find statistics about.
I shared with the tech lead from klarx who was my main contact that I had a number in mind that I would be happy taking on the spot from klarx, even if I found out that other companies wanted to give me more. Klarx offered a bit below that at first, and I told them what I was thinking as transparently as I would tell a friend. They then came back with an offer for almost that amount, and I took it. So, there was a bit of haggling I suppose, but just not the mini-spy-wars kind that seems to be what grown ups do.
And now I have seven weeks to do what exactly? Two main things: give my wife a break, and hit the ground running at the new job. That means helping out taking care of our beautiful boys (1 and 3 years old) more, and making progress with my skills in Git, Ruby, Rails, and maybe getting started with Hanami. I also plan on getting to a few odds and ends that I’ve been putting off.
Thanks to all the companies that invested their time in considering me! And to the mentors, friends, and family who supported me through this process. And to Launch School, without which I almost certainly wouldn’t be in this field at all.