In today's episode, listener Summit asks about how to search for a new job while being employed, and how to keep from getting to exhausted. This episode is sponsored by Intuit. Check out the developer sandbox and API explorer at http://intuit.me/DevTea to get started building apps for millions of small business *today!*
In today's episode, listener Summit asks about how to search for a new job while being employed, and how to keep from getting to exhausted.
This episode is sponsored by Intuit. Check out the developer sandbox and API explorer at http://intuit.me/DevTea to get started building apps for millions of small business today!
Hey everyone and welcome to Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell and today I am answering a listener question. The listener's name is Summit and Summit sent in a question about searching for a new job while at his current job. So here's Summit's question. Do you have any advice on searching for a new job while working your current one? I'm currently in the process of interviewing with companies as I work my regular day job as a dev and it's been tough. I'm no stranger to hard work, but lately I've just been feeling mentally exhausted after coding for 8 hours and then going home to do my phone screens, coding challenges, and personal projects to beef up my GitHub for employers. Another thing that's been kind of weird for me is responding to emails or phone calls while I'm at work. It almost feels like I'm cheating. Do you have any thoughts on that? Well Summit, I have quite a few thoughts about this subject actually and I'm really excited you asked this question because I think quite a few people are in this same position. Now even if your current job is not as a developer and you're looking for a new job as a developer, a lot of what we're going to talk about today is also applicable to you. So my very first thought for you Summit. My very first piece of advice that I have for you and really for anybody who's listening to this show, even if you aren't looking for a job, this is just in general, just general advice I guess, is to rest properly. If you don't, getting back on track is much more difficult than if you were to have rested properly in the first place. The work you will be doing at your current job if you aren't resting properly and in your job search will suffer. It's much better to get a good night of sleep, eat a decent diet. Maintain a healthy level of exercise and let your brain decompress from a long day of strain, of mental strain and a long day of output. So make sure you're resting. If you don't, you will suffer. That is the unfortunate truth. You can't go at 100 miles an hour. We are not made like a machine. Even machines can't maintain a full on sprint all the time. So if you feel like you are sprinting every day. Eventually you're going to burn out. Make sure that you take proper rest. That means sleep. Sleep well. And there's some advice that I have for sleeping well. Very simply, don't look at your phone for about an hour, maybe two hours before you go to bed. Stop drinking coffee earlier in the day. Make sure you're sleeping somewhere between six and a half and eight hours a night. These are all really simple pieces of advice that are based on the most empirical research. There's some people who are doing sleep hacks. Or whatever. And they found that they can bring their sleep, their hour count for sleep per night down to like three hours. I would say go with the empirical research. See how it does for you. More rest typically, especially if you are running at a crazy pace like it seems like you are, Summit. Make sure you are getting more rest. Maybe even than you think you need. My next piece of advice for Summit and for everyone else once again. That's listening to the show. Is to maintain a high level of integrity at all times. Summit mentioned that he feels like he's kind of cheating on his employer. And the reason for that is because you feel a tinge of guilt that is natural. Because you feel like you're hiding something. Or maybe you feel wrong for leaving your job. And in fact, you are not wrong for leaving your job. It is totally within your rights to leave your employer. And go and find. A new employer. But maintain a high level of integrity. This will never steer you wrong. If you're taking calls or emails while you're at work. Make sure you tell your employer that you're doing that. Make sure you tell them that you are on a job search. The worst thing that can happen if you do this. Is you get fired. And eventually you're going to quit anyway. So it's just a matter of time, right? The best kinds of things that happen when you maintain integrity. Is that your current employer might help guide you along the way in your new job search. They are no stranger. Unless they are very new to the business. They're no stranger of career shifts. They know how people eventually will move between jobs. It is a very common thing. So they might help you along the way. They might give you recommendations. They may even give you a flexible schedule. Or even severance pay to help you transition out. Where you have two weeks where you actually don't even have to come to the job. Some people. Now this is a very common thing. Some people. Some people. Some people. Some people. Some people. Some people. This isn't like the most common case. And treat it with discretion. If you have rent coming up. Maybe you should wait until after rent. To tell your employer. That you're searching for another job. So use discretion. But overall integrity always wins. The possible damage that you can do. If your employer finds out. That you've been searching for another job. While they are paying you to work for them. The possible damage is. That you burn bridges with them. And they shame your name. To future employers. employees. Imagine a situation where a future employee is asking for a reference from your previous job and you have to tell them, well, I can't give you that reference because that boss doesn't like me. That's a bad sign. And so maintaining a high level of integrity for your current boss is the best way to communicate to your future boss that you will have integrity with them as well. My next piece of advice for Summit is to not overestimate how much work you need to show to be considered a worthwhile candidate. Unless you're seeking a niche position, the most important thing you can do is show that you care about your craft enough to have quality work and that you are competent. So it's much better to show three good projects than to show 10 okay projects. So you don't have to go and try to just stack your GitHub profile with tons of commits and pull requests to all the different open source projects, that you want to be a part of or something like that. That's overkill. And in general, that is not going to be the thing that gets you the job. So instead of beefing up your portfolio with as much work as possible, focus on the most visible work that you have and the most obvious quality work that you have. In other words, focus on the things that are designed well and that have been in the public sphere. These are the kinds of things, that employers will look for to say, okay, this person knows what they are doing, and they can do it well. Now, these are my personal recommendations. Of course, every employer is different. Some employers might look for a large volume of work or a lot of contributions to open source or something like that. But ask yourself the question, if you want to work for an employer that cares about the volume of work more than the quality, and I'm guessing, Summit, if you're like me, that you would prefer to work for an employer that wants you to write less good code. Not less good code, but less code overall for the sake of the quality of that code. Now, I'm going to take a quick break for our sponsor, and then I'm going to come back and give Summit two rules, two very simple rules to follow while he is still working and searching for a new job. So let's get started. Summit, if you're like me, that you would prefer to work for an employer that wants you to write another job, these are rules that you can benefit from as well, whether you're searching for another job or if you're just trying to make the most of your time, just like Summit is. But first, a word from today's sponsor. You've probably heard of QuickBooks, and you might even use QuickBooks every day in your small business. But did you know that QuickBooks has an API? Intuit has built the API with developers in mind using standards like OpenID, OAuth, and REST API calls. And with millions of businesses already using QuickBooks, you've got a customer base that's ready to use your app. And you can even publish your app on apps.com, Intuit's application marketplace built specifically for QuickBooks users. And here's the best part of the QuickBooks API and apps.com. It's all free. Intuit doesn't take a royalty share from the applications that you publish. You can get up and running in just a few minutes using the developer sandbox and the API Explorer. Just go to developer.intuit.com and you can get up and running in just a few minutes using developer.intuit.com today to get started. There will also be a link in the show notes to let Intuit know that you're a Developer Tea listener, which is a huge help to the show. Check it out in the show notes on developertea.com. So Summit, there are two rules that I want you to follow while you are still working and searching for another job. And these are more principles than they are rules. The first one is very commonly known as the 80-20 rule. That is, what is the 80-20 rule? And what is the 80-20 rule? And what is the 80-20 rule? And what is the 80-20 rule? And the thing that you can do with 20% of the effort to get 80% of the effect. What is the most potent work that you can do? What extra work can you do that will provide the most benefit? For example, a personal portfolio and an online presence like a blog or something will provide much more benefit than a bit of contribution to an open source project, unless you are specifically trying to get a job in open source contributions. Your personal portfolio is going to be much more visible, much more accessible to more people, and higher up individuals at a given organization will understand that more than they are going to understand a pull request, most likely, unless they are developers themselves or unless they work with developers very closely. So focus on the things that have the highest impact on your business. And if you're a developer, you're going to have to have the highest impact on your business. So focus on the things that have the highest impact on your business. And if you're a developer, you're going to have to have the highest impact on your business. That's the principle. That's the rule. The things, some people might even be able to get away with a 90-10 rule where you would only do 10% of the effort and get 90% of the effect. So keep that in mind. The least effort for the most gain, focus on those things first. And then if you have the time and the energy, and if the first 80% didn't cut it, then you can add more energy into trying to get more effect. You can do the other 80% in the effort. So if you're a developer, you're going to have to add more energy into trying to get more effect. So keep that in mind. The least effort for the most gain, focus on the things, some people might even be able to get away with a 90-10 rule where you would only do 10% of the effort and get 90% of the effect. So keep that in mind. The least effort for the most gain, focus on the things, some people might even be able to get more effect. Okay, so the second principle is the principle of compound benefit. So this goes right along with the 80-20 principle, and that is to do things that benefit you in more than one way. So can you use some of the work that you are doing at your current job, for example, to show your competence to a future employer? Is there some kind of project or script that you've built at your current job that you can leverage by open sourcing, throwing up on your GitHub account? What kind of evolution may you have in your future career? So if you have a producer, What kinds of things can you use to your advantage in more than one way? Another great example of this would be writing for a tutorial site. This both shows your authority over a given subject and you can get paid to write for that tutorial site. So consider things that give you a compound benefit, something that gives you more than one singular benefit. An example of something that doesn't give you compound benefit is actually something like a coding challenge for a singular employer. Now you might have a little bit of learning experience that comes along with that. So there is some benefit there. But the benefit that you have putting towards a single employer, a single potential future employer is going to be much less than the things that you do that are going to be applicable to all potential future employers. So I hope that some of this information and some of these ideas resonate with you. I hope that you have a good transition out of your current position and that your boss is understanding and will help you make that transition. And I hope that you will get the rest that you need. Remember, get rest. It is totally important. You can't go through life without energy. You can go for short periods of time where you do all-nighters or whatever it is that you need to do to get through. But don't make it a habit. You're working. Work will suffer. Make sure you get rest. Thank you so much for sending in your question. I'm sure there are many people who are listening to this episode that are encouraged by the things that you are going through because they themselves are going through them as well. And I hope that you listeners, even if you aren't looking for a job right now, I hope that you gained some insight into how best to use your time. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you have a question for Developer T, you can send it to me on Twitter. At at Developer T. Or you can email me at Developer T at gmail.com. If the show has provided value to you in some way and you would like to give back, the easiest way that you can do that is to just go to iTunes and leave a review. I know a lot of people don't use iTunes and that's okay. But there are still a lot of people who haven't found Developer T and who would find it through iTunes or through the iTunes review system. So that is a huge help to the show. And it's a huge help. And to helping other developers just like you find Developer T. Once again, thank you so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.