Asking for a friend as his Reddit doesn’t have 100karma yet.
Hi everyone, bit of a long one but I was just hoping to get some career advice and input from you all.
I’m currently working as a fully remote (we don’t have an office) mid level software engineer in Australia for a medium sized US based company (still working AU hours as we have a small <20 person engineering team here down under). I’ve been here for about 3 years (started here as an associate) and have moved around different areas of the business so feel quite comfortable both with the people and with the tech stack here (React/Next frontend, node and AWS backend). The culture here is not bad but also not great. I won’t name the company but in the past couple of years, we’ve experienced numerous layoffs severely impacting both the headcount and morale. Stability wise I do think it’s getting better as we had new investors, repaid our debt and the new CEO and leadership team seems to have a strong people/tech focus. My direct manager is awesome and the team I work with is supportive whenever I reach out, although, I feel like most of them are checked out and jaded from the past several rounds of layoffs so I feel like they do the bare minimum on top of their day to day work (e.g. they don’t volunteer to do brown bag / lunch and learn sessions etc. but are willing to help out if you ask for help directly) and are just here for their pay check which I don’t blame them at all after everything we’ve gone through. So overall, I’d say the engineering culture is poor..
Recently, I’ve been offered another mid level engineering role at an Australian Digital Bank. It’s also a remote role with the option to come into the office whenever I want (will definitely come in more at the start to get settled in / make a good impression) but I do feel like they might change it to a hybrid structure and force people to come in (just a feeling based on how other Australian companies are treating their employees post Covid). The team I’ll be in will be working on a migration project so I’m not really sure what to expect there (some input here would be awesome). The tech stack for the backend is also quite different being Ruby on Rails and GCP (both of which I’ve never worked on). This does worry me a bit as I’ve mainly worked on the frontend and don’t have much backend experience so this might hinder my chances of getting promoted / getting a pay rise quickly. The culture and people seem pretty good from my interview experience and asking some friends of friends who work there, although they did mention that the culture is changing slightly as they are now in the scale up phase and growing quite large and quickly.
Now my uncertainty comes from (surprise, surprise) the pay… The new role will be paying an annual base salary $16k AUD less than my current company. They also don’t offer benefits such as health insurance, and internet, education and health and wellbeing (gym, sports etc.) reimbursements (the dollar equivalent of about $500 AUD/month or $6k AUD/yearly). On top of that, if I take the new role, I will miss out on my yearly bonus payout from my current company which I estimate to be around $10k AUD so all in all, about a $30k AUD remuneration difference. Also regarding the stability, as I have been working for around 3 years, if I do get laid off I should get a severance of about 3 months.
I would say I’m in the more junior side of my career as I’ve been a mid level for about 1.5 years. I value learning and growing my skills and currently, I feel like I can only do this on my own as like I mentioned above, everyone at my current company feels checked out so there’s not a great engineering or learning culture. I do feel like the people at the new role are much more optimistic and they put more effort into their engineering culture (e.g. they have mentoring programs, learning sessions and overall everyone seems less jaded lol). I understand that at the end of the day, I’ll learn the most from doing my own side projects but I feel like it would be good and nice to surround myself with more positive and eager engineers who like to share tech news, and interesting things they discover and are working on.
One thing I have realised (and accepted) as well is that I don’t think any other AU company (with the exception of a couple of tech giants) will pay as much as my current company or provide as good of benefits as I joined when the market was hot and my awesome manager has always looked out for me throughout my time here. I have also tried negotiating the remuneration package and cannot delay my start date (to get my current bonus) for the new role.
So now I’m left heavily conflicted not knowing what to do. Should I make the jump and hopefully be surrounded by a new environment that can motivate me more or should I just ride out this current high paying gig which just lacks positive energy and can be depressing at times?
Thank you all in advance for reading this long post and I appreciate all your inputs, advice and thoughts!
submitted by /u/_loslobos
[link] [comments]
r/cscareerquestions Asking for a friend as his Reddit doesn’t have 100karma yet. Hi everyone, bit of a long one but I was just hoping to get some career advice and input from you all. I’m currently working as a fully remote (we don’t have an office) mid level software engineer in Australia for a medium sized US based company (still working AU hours as we have a small <20 person engineering team here down under). I’ve been here for about 3 years (started here as an associate) and have moved around different areas of the business so feel quite comfortable both with the people and with the tech stack here (React/Next frontend, node and AWS backend). The culture here is not bad but also not great. I won’t name the company but in the past couple of years, we’ve experienced numerous layoffs severely impacting both the headcount and morale. Stability wise I do think it’s getting better as we had new investors, repaid our debt and the new CEO and leadership team seems to have a strong people/tech focus. My direct manager is awesome and the team I work with is supportive whenever I reach out, although, I feel like most of them are checked out and jaded from the past several rounds of layoffs so I feel like they do the bare minimum on top of their day to day work (e.g. they don’t volunteer to do brown bag / lunch and learn sessions etc. but are willing to help out if you ask for help directly) and are just here for their pay check which I don’t blame them at all after everything we’ve gone through. So overall, I’d say the engineering culture is poor.. Recently, I’ve been offered another mid level engineering role at an Australian Digital Bank. It’s also a remote role with the option to come into the office whenever I want (will definitely come in more at the start to get settled in / make a good impression) but I do feel like they might change it to a hybrid structure and force people to come in (just a feeling based on how other Australian companies are treating their employees post Covid). The team I’ll be in will be working on a migration project so I’m not really sure what to expect there (some input here would be awesome). The tech stack for the backend is also quite different being Ruby on Rails and GCP (both of which I’ve never worked on). This does worry me a bit as I’ve mainly worked on the frontend and don’t have much backend experience so this might hinder my chances of getting promoted / getting a pay rise quickly. The culture and people seem pretty good from my interview experience and asking some friends of friends who work there, although they did mention that the culture is changing slightly as they are now in the scale up phase and growing quite large and quickly. Now my uncertainty comes from (surprise, surprise) the pay… The new role will be paying an annual base salary $16k AUD less than my current company. They also don’t offer benefits such as health insurance, and internet, education and health and wellbeing (gym, sports etc.) reimbursements (the dollar equivalent of about $500 AUD/month or $6k AUD/yearly). On top of that, if I take the new role, I will miss out on my yearly bonus payout from my current company which I estimate to be around $10k AUD so all in all, about a $30k AUD remuneration difference. Also regarding the stability, as I have been working for around 3 years, if I do get laid off I should get a severance of about 3 months. I would say I’m in the more junior side of my career as I’ve been a mid level for about 1.5 years. I value learning and growing my skills and currently, I feel like I can only do this on my own as like I mentioned above, everyone at my current company feels checked out so there’s not a great engineering or learning culture. I do feel like the people at the new role are much more optimistic and they put more effort into their engineering culture (e.g. they have mentoring programs, learning sessions and overall everyone seems less jaded lol). I understand that at the end of the day, I’ll learn the most from doing my own side projects but I feel like it would be good and nice to surround myself with more positive and eager engineers who like to share tech news, and interesting things they discover and are working on. One thing I have realised (and accepted) as well is that I don’t think any other AU company (with the exception of a couple of tech giants) will pay as much as my current company or provide as good of benefits as I joined when the market was hot and my awesome manager has always looked out for me throughout my time here. I have also tried negotiating the remuneration package and cannot delay my start date (to get my current bonus) for the new role. So now I’m left heavily conflicted not knowing what to do. Should I make the jump and hopefully be surrounded by a new environment that can motivate me more or should I just ride out this current high paying gig which just lacks positive energy and can be depressing at times? Thank you all in advance for reading this long post and I appreciate all your inputs, advice and thoughts! submitted by /u/_loslobos [link] [comments]
Asking for a friend as his Reddit doesn’t have 100karma yet.
Hi everyone, bit of a long one but I was just hoping to get some career advice and input from you all.
I’m currently working as a fully remote (we don’t have an office) mid level software engineer in Australia for a medium sized US based company (still working AU hours as we have a small <20 person engineering team here down under). I’ve been here for about 3 years (started here as an associate) and have moved around different areas of the business so feel quite comfortable both with the people and with the tech stack here (React/Next frontend, node and AWS backend). The culture here is not bad but also not great. I won’t name the company but in the past couple of years, we’ve experienced numerous layoffs severely impacting both the headcount and morale. Stability wise I do think it’s getting better as we had new investors, repaid our debt and the new CEO and leadership team seems to have a strong people/tech focus. My direct manager is awesome and the team I work with is supportive whenever I reach out, although, I feel like most of them are checked out and jaded from the past several rounds of layoffs so I feel like they do the bare minimum on top of their day to day work (e.g. they don’t volunteer to do brown bag / lunch and learn sessions etc. but are willing to help out if you ask for help directly) and are just here for their pay check which I don’t blame them at all after everything we’ve gone through. So overall, I’d say the engineering culture is poor..
Recently, I’ve been offered another mid level engineering role at an Australian Digital Bank. It’s also a remote role with the option to come into the office whenever I want (will definitely come in more at the start to get settled in / make a good impression) but I do feel like they might change it to a hybrid structure and force people to come in (just a feeling based on how other Australian companies are treating their employees post Covid). The team I’ll be in will be working on a migration project so I’m not really sure what to expect there (some input here would be awesome). The tech stack for the backend is also quite different being Ruby on Rails and GCP (both of which I’ve never worked on). This does worry me a bit as I’ve mainly worked on the frontend and don’t have much backend experience so this might hinder my chances of getting promoted / getting a pay rise quickly. The culture and people seem pretty good from my interview experience and asking some friends of friends who work there, although they did mention that the culture is changing slightly as they are now in the scale up phase and growing quite large and quickly.
Now my uncertainty comes from (surprise, surprise) the pay… The new role will be paying an annual base salary $16k AUD less than my current company. They also don’t offer benefits such as health insurance, and internet, education and health and wellbeing (gym, sports etc.) reimbursements (the dollar equivalent of about $500 AUD/month or $6k AUD/yearly). On top of that, if I take the new role, I will miss out on my yearly bonus payout from my current company which I estimate to be around $10k AUD so all in all, about a $30k AUD remuneration difference. Also regarding the stability, as I have been working for around 3 years, if I do get laid off I should get a severance of about 3 months.
I would say I’m in the more junior side of my career as I’ve been a mid level for about 1.5 years. I value learning and growing my skills and currently, I feel like I can only do this on my own as like I mentioned above, everyone at my current company feels checked out so there’s not a great engineering or learning culture. I do feel like the people at the new role are much more optimistic and they put more effort into their engineering culture (e.g. they have mentoring programs, learning sessions and overall everyone seems less jaded lol). I understand that at the end of the day, I’ll learn the most from doing my own side projects but I feel like it would be good and nice to surround myself with more positive and eager engineers who like to share tech news, and interesting things they discover and are working on.
One thing I have realised (and accepted) as well is that I don’t think any other AU company (with the exception of a couple of tech giants) will pay as much as my current company or provide as good of benefits as I joined when the market was hot and my awesome manager has always looked out for me throughout my time here. I have also tried negotiating the remuneration package and cannot delay my start date (to get my current bonus) for the new role.
So now I’m left heavily conflicted not knowing what to do. Should I make the jump and hopefully be surrounded by a new environment that can motivate me more or should I just ride out this current high paying gig which just lacks positive energy and can be depressing at times?
Thank you all in advance for reading this long post and I appreciate all your inputs, advice and thoughts!
submitted by /u/_loslobos
[link] [comments]