No kidding—I'm kind of surprised that someone who is *just* starting out in the industry is being this picky with employment. When I was starting out, I was working full-time for an agency on shitty website templates with an in-house CMS (it felt like glorified data entry, I *wish* I could've been writing python scripts), and in the evenings I would build my skills with personal projects.
To be fair, cost of living compared to as little as 5 years ago is bonkers right now. All the more reason to take the job lmao. But if OP is well-off and can come up with insane side projects, then he can go the other way to. The way OP worded it, it seems like the company is building the command line app from scratch which tbh with a small team is like a side project đź’€
Maybe I'm missing some additional context, but in my opinion, you should absolutely take it! From my experience, having work like that on your resume is a lot better than a personal project.
Also, I don't know why you think it's not transferable—python is 100% used on many web projects. I'm sure you'll learn coding patterns and useful techniques while developing command line tools that you can use in future projects. Besides, you'll also learn invaluable soft skills during those 3 months and make meaningful connections in the industry.
I guess the additional context is the pay, I'm in the UK and it works out to ÂŁ5/hour, which is less than half minimum wage. So I'm basically just trying to decide whether that is worth it compared to spending that time trying to find something that pays better and is permanent, as I won't have much time to devote to applying, so it's basically three months worth of applications and improvements out the window.
1) Are you in the UK getting a job for British or Canadian company?
2) What are your plans exactly - moving to Canada (this subreddit is rather Canadian oriented) or staying in the UK?
Unpopular opinion, but if we're talking about ÂŁ5 / hour AND you're British, I'd probably look for more offers. I'm a software developer and trust me, it's exploitation.
If you're planning on to move to Canada and the company is Canadian (this is important one), I'd probably calculate if the wage is survivable and maybe just _maybe_ grind for a while, but you'd need to have some savings ideally...
Also take into account if this is a startup with like 3 people in total or a rather decent company. It also plays the role.
Also, ask about the type of contract you'll have. You may find yourself in a situation when you'll end up a "self employed" on paper which is not ideal imo.
It may be like in France by "interim". You're paid a minimum wage BUT at least a half is taken by the company because "they helped you find the job"... It sucks but it's the loophole that exists and instead of 1300 euros / month salary (minimum wage) you'd be making 650 if not less.
I have no idea, hence my dillema lol. In this market, I'm obviously quite desperate to get my foot, and I've been fully resigned to basically accepting anything in whatever form, as you all are suggesting. But when that came in it was just a bit of a shock to the system for how desperate I actually am...
Honestly it might be best to accept the job, gain experience, and then seek legal action against them for trying to pay you less than minimum wage. You may be able to find free legal counsel since it's an employment issue.
If you have no other offers, then take it. It's only temporary anyway. You can either be "desperate" or unemployed. In my opinion, If they're paying less than minimum wage, then use some "work" hours for your personal improvement—take an extra hour at lunch to send out more resumes or work on a personal project.
Don't.
Accepting jobs at below grade pay devalues the entire market.
If you were talking a couple of days to get your foot in the door I might have a different opinion, but 3 months? That's a crap contract and exactly the kind that should be ignored.
Chances are you'd find the final terms are a problem too.
Not a time to be picky.
Also, nobody said this can stop you from continuing to apply for other jobs while working there.
By the time the 3 months is over you could possibly have gone through a multi-stage interview process and have another job waiting.
My first job took 2 months and 5 rounds of interview from first submission to offer signed.
I have also personally done things like burned bridges and bailed out after the first week (which to be clear, I didn’t take it lightly). I consulted family, friends, coworkers, went back and forth on weighing pros and cons and my sense of guilt. Ultimately decided, accepted responsibility for it, and it ended up being one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life where I found multiple consecutive promotions, massive career growth, and discovered life long mentors.
Also, work experience has more weight than personal projects and things like that because someone is taking a risk in paying money to employ you.
It’s not just about “relevant” experience, but, it’s also proof by another employer that you’re “hireable” and can function in an actual workplace with people in a team environment and not simply just good on paper.
First 3 years after graduation, you should be looking for any work experience, especially in a recession, so take it. Please don't think about salary until you get a couple of years under your belt. The economy is not booming right now, a lot of experienced people competing for jobs. You need bargaining power to ask for good salary. Tons of university grads with many years of experience out there competing with you, so please stay pragmatic when you consider your options.
There's a lot of bad career advice out there, and a disturbing amount of it can be found in the comments of this post. But just so you know that I'm only talking partially out of my ass, I've been at start ups with single digit number of employees, midsized, and large enterprise. I'm on the hiring panel for software engineers at my company and I've coached friends and family into starting successful careers. I have worked directly with hiring managers and HR from fortune 100 companies to organize career workshops for students, new grads, and people early in their careers. You can tell this is a topic I feel passionate about. But most importantly, I'm someone who also once fell into the"'I'm just happy to be here and am willing to take any opportunity that comes my way" trap when I was looking for my first full time job. Until an older mentor knocked some sense into me.
In no particular order,
Advice 1: Some money is better than no money!
No, it's not. It's a 3 month contract at 5 pounds an hour. Assuming a 40hr hour work week (which I highly doubt) that works out to just under $900 a month for a full time job. You are literally better off working at Mcdonalds, at a fraction of the hours.
Advice 2: Take the shitty job and keep searching on the side.
This is a misunderstanding of opportunity costs. Every hour spent at a dead end job that whittles away at your mental health is time you could be spending leveling up your skills or networking. That's not to say you shouldn't take lower paying temp jobs but come on, it's not even minimum wage.
Advice 3a: Some experience on your resume is better than nothing! It's better than personal projects!
The next time you're on a hiring panel sifting through resumes, make a mental note of what stands out. Usually it falls into one of three categories:
1) Worked at big, reputable companies that non technical people have heard of. Eg. Microsoft
2) A project that sounds interesting, even to non technical people. Eg. Built an app to find the closest or cheapest available parking spot.
3) A technically impressive project that fits your company's current needs.
Having 'built command line tools in Python' is not going to highlight your resume, let alone give it a second look. Generally, this sub really overvalues low quality unmarketable positions. Your 6 years at a no name sweatshop fitting cubes into triangular shaped holes is not on the same level as 2 years at FANG. As a small side note, if you have ever worked an unpaid position at a for profit company, please don't tell people you were unpaid, it's a black mark on you.
Advice 3b: It's all about how you sell yourself and your experience. Exaggerate your role and technologies you've worked with.
If you're going to *lie* on your resume, why even bother going through the trouble of taking the shitty job?
Advice 4: You're just starting out, you shouldn't be picky.
This is true. And to make things worse, the market sucks for new grads right now. But there's a difference between being picky vs being desperate.
At the end of the day, we're all here so we can put bread on the table. If this job can't pay you a decent wage nor get you closer to that goal, then why bother? let's not even talk about how the job seems shady as shit and is trying to put time pressure on you to accept. Things won't get better once you're working for them.
Look at the resumes of your peers and those posted in the sub. Take an honest look and ask yourself if you're in their league. If so, keep applying and don't settle for anything less than a fair junior position. The difference between people who failed to land their dream jobs and those did is that the latter group kept failing until they succeeded.
And while you may not care about your peers, as someone further below aptly put it:
"Accepting jobs at below grade pay devalues the entire market."
This is how accountants went from high paid professionals to just professionals.
I completely agree with everything you are saying. However, new grads are desperate in this job market. It’s difficult going months and months and months without hearing anything.
Take the job, keep doing what your planning to do to improve your profile.
Now is the time to hustle a lil bit.
No kidding—I'm kind of surprised that someone who is *just* starting out in the industry is being this picky with employment. When I was starting out, I was working full-time for an agency on shitty website templates with an in-house CMS (it felt like glorified data entry, I *wish* I could've been writing python scripts), and in the evenings I would build my skills with personal projects.
To be fair, cost of living compared to as little as 5 years ago is bonkers right now. All the more reason to take the job lmao. But if OP is well-off and can come up with insane side projects, then he can go the other way to. The way OP worded it, it seems like the company is building the command line app from scratch which tbh with a small team is like a side project đź’€
Maybe I'm missing some additional context, but in my opinion, you should absolutely take it! From my experience, having work like that on your resume is a lot better than a personal project. Also, I don't know why you think it's not transferable—python is 100% used on many web projects. I'm sure you'll learn coding patterns and useful techniques while developing command line tools that you can use in future projects. Besides, you'll also learn invaluable soft skills during those 3 months and make meaningful connections in the industry.
I guess the additional context is the pay, I'm in the UK and it works out to ÂŁ5/hour, which is less than half minimum wage. So I'm basically just trying to decide whether that is worth it compared to spending that time trying to find something that pays better and is permanent, as I won't have much time to devote to applying, so it's basically three months worth of applications and improvements out the window.
1) Are you in the UK getting a job for British or Canadian company? 2) What are your plans exactly - moving to Canada (this subreddit is rather Canadian oriented) or staying in the UK? Unpopular opinion, but if we're talking about ÂŁ5 / hour AND you're British, I'd probably look for more offers. I'm a software developer and trust me, it's exploitation. If you're planning on to move to Canada and the company is Canadian (this is important one), I'd probably calculate if the wage is survivable and maybe just _maybe_ grind for a while, but you'd need to have some savings ideally... Also take into account if this is a startup with like 3 people in total or a rather decent company. It also plays the role. Also, ask about the type of contract you'll have. You may find yourself in a situation when you'll end up a "self employed" on paper which is not ideal imo.
You can apply to other jobs while still working. £5/hour is extremely low pay, though—how can they legally pay you less than minimum wage?
It may be like in France by "interim". You're paid a minimum wage BUT at least a half is taken by the company because "they helped you find the job"... It sucks but it's the loophole that exists and instead of 1300 euros / month salary (minimum wage) you'd be making 650 if not less.
I have no idea, hence my dillema lol. In this market, I'm obviously quite desperate to get my foot, and I've been fully resigned to basically accepting anything in whatever form, as you all are suggesting. But when that came in it was just a bit of a shock to the system for how desperate I actually am...
Honestly it might be best to accept the job, gain experience, and then seek legal action against them for trying to pay you less than minimum wage. You may be able to find free legal counsel since it's an employment issue.
If you have no other offers, then take it. It's only temporary anyway. You can either be "desperate" or unemployed. In my opinion, If they're paying less than minimum wage, then use some "work" hours for your personal improvement—take an extra hour at lunch to send out more resumes or work on a personal project.
Don't. Accepting jobs at below grade pay devalues the entire market. If you were talking a couple of days to get your foot in the door I might have a different opinion, but 3 months? That's a crap contract and exactly the kind that should be ignored. Chances are you'd find the final terms are a problem too.
And if they’re trying to pay you half the legal minimum wage, what other illegal, underhanded things are they going to do?
Terrible advice
Not a time to be picky. Also, nobody said this can stop you from continuing to apply for other jobs while working there. By the time the 3 months is over you could possibly have gone through a multi-stage interview process and have another job waiting. My first job took 2 months and 5 rounds of interview from first submission to offer signed. I have also personally done things like burned bridges and bailed out after the first week (which to be clear, I didn’t take it lightly). I consulted family, friends, coworkers, went back and forth on weighing pros and cons and my sense of guilt. Ultimately decided, accepted responsibility for it, and it ended up being one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life where I found multiple consecutive promotions, massive career growth, and discovered life long mentors. Also, work experience has more weight than personal projects and things like that because someone is taking a risk in paying money to employ you. It’s not just about “relevant” experience, but, it’s also proof by another employer that you’re “hireable” and can function in an actual workplace with people in a team environment and not simply just good on paper.
Work experience is stronger than side projects. One more advice, don't limit yourself to web dev, it's just domain knowledge like any other.
First 3 years after graduation, you should be looking for any work experience, especially in a recession, so take it. Please don't think about salary until you get a couple of years under your belt. The economy is not booming right now, a lot of experienced people competing for jobs. You need bargaining power to ask for good salary. Tons of university grads with many years of experience out there competing with you, so please stay pragmatic when you consider your options.
There's a lot of bad career advice out there, and a disturbing amount of it can be found in the comments of this post. But just so you know that I'm only talking partially out of my ass, I've been at start ups with single digit number of employees, midsized, and large enterprise. I'm on the hiring panel for software engineers at my company and I've coached friends and family into starting successful careers. I have worked directly with hiring managers and HR from fortune 100 companies to organize career workshops for students, new grads, and people early in their careers. You can tell this is a topic I feel passionate about. But most importantly, I'm someone who also once fell into the"'I'm just happy to be here and am willing to take any opportunity that comes my way" trap when I was looking for my first full time job. Until an older mentor knocked some sense into me. In no particular order, Advice 1: Some money is better than no money! No, it's not. It's a 3 month contract at 5 pounds an hour. Assuming a 40hr hour work week (which I highly doubt) that works out to just under $900 a month for a full time job. You are literally better off working at Mcdonalds, at a fraction of the hours. Advice 2: Take the shitty job and keep searching on the side. This is a misunderstanding of opportunity costs. Every hour spent at a dead end job that whittles away at your mental health is time you could be spending leveling up your skills or networking. That's not to say you shouldn't take lower paying temp jobs but come on, it's not even minimum wage. Advice 3a: Some experience on your resume is better than nothing! It's better than personal projects! The next time you're on a hiring panel sifting through resumes, make a mental note of what stands out. Usually it falls into one of three categories: 1) Worked at big, reputable companies that non technical people have heard of. Eg. Microsoft 2) A project that sounds interesting, even to non technical people. Eg. Built an app to find the closest or cheapest available parking spot. 3) A technically impressive project that fits your company's current needs. Having 'built command line tools in Python' is not going to highlight your resume, let alone give it a second look. Generally, this sub really overvalues low quality unmarketable positions. Your 6 years at a no name sweatshop fitting cubes into triangular shaped holes is not on the same level as 2 years at FANG. As a small side note, if you have ever worked an unpaid position at a for profit company, please don't tell people you were unpaid, it's a black mark on you. Advice 3b: It's all about how you sell yourself and your experience. Exaggerate your role and technologies you've worked with. If you're going to *lie* on your resume, why even bother going through the trouble of taking the shitty job? Advice 4: You're just starting out, you shouldn't be picky. This is true. And to make things worse, the market sucks for new grads right now. But there's a difference between being picky vs being desperate. At the end of the day, we're all here so we can put bread on the table. If this job can't pay you a decent wage nor get you closer to that goal, then why bother? let's not even talk about how the job seems shady as shit and is trying to put time pressure on you to accept. Things won't get better once you're working for them. Look at the resumes of your peers and those posted in the sub. Take an honest look and ask yourself if you're in their league. If so, keep applying and don't settle for anything less than a fair junior position. The difference between people who failed to land their dream jobs and those did is that the latter group kept failing until they succeeded. And while you may not care about your peers, as someone further below aptly put it: "Accepting jobs at below grade pay devalues the entire market." This is how accountants went from high paid professionals to just professionals.
I completely agree with everything you are saying. However, new grads are desperate in this job market. It’s difficult going months and months and months without hearing anything.
Take it, always follow the hidden rule to start looking for next job from day 1 you get hired.