Can you really afford to uproot your life for a new developer job offer? With the alarming trend of companies, including big names, rescinding signed offers, please listen to this if you're looking for your first or next developer job.
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Can you really afford to uproot your life for a new developer job offer? With the alarming trend of companies, including big names, rescinding signed offers, please listen to this if you're looking for your first or next developer job.
Disclaimer: The following may contain product affiliate links. I may receive a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these links. I will only ever provide affiliate links for apps that I've used and highly recommend.
Do not move for your next developer job offer until you consider some of the things that I'm going to be talking about. Listen, I've seen way too many companies rescind offer letters and, honestly, like even seeing one rescinded offer letter and seeing that companies can do that, it's kind of messed up and it makes me fearful. But this has been happening pretty frequently too, where companies have rescinded and especially some of the larger companies and you hear about this with even FANG companies have rescinded offer letters where people signed an apartment contract to be able to move to this area and they're locked into this contract and their offer letter is no more and they're locked into this contract and their offer letter is no more. Now I honestly don't know what company policies exist or even state protections exist for employees that do get their offer letter rescinded. I personally have not seen any successful lawsuits in this case, especially with Atwell contracts, but I'm not an attorney. Maybe some of these employees are able to sue these companies and be able to pay for the apartment contract that they signed. I don't know. I just haven't personally seen that. So if you have you know, I would love to hear about that. I truly would. But from what I've seen. I think you should expect to have your offer letter rescinded even after you sign an apartment contract to move and there's very little you can do about it with at-will contracts especially, so expect that to potentially happen and that's scary, right? You know you feel like there's security in a company finally offering you a salary and benefits and you sign on the dotted line and now you're out of the weeds, right, you are safe, you're no longer in the job search and you can just feel like you finally won and relax and that weight is off your shoulders and in this market I don't think that's the case and that that sucks, but that's the reality.
Don Hansen:
Now here's what I'm proposing you can negotiate a lot of things in your contract when you are final stages of the interview. Right, like you've probably at this point, gotten to like a base salary range and and you could a lot of people just like focus on negotiating that base salary range, home life balance, where maybe you negotiate one more day at home versus in the office because they weren't willing to meet your base salary needs. You can negotiate benefits. You can negotiate a bunch of different things, including your willingness to move right away, and there are going to be plenty of examples that you can reference of even larger companies just rescinding their offers after people have already had their contract signed, and that's a legitimate concern that a good company will empathize with. So you should be negotiating at least three months worth of remote work. Now I know that sounds crazy and, to be frank, you're not always going to be able to get that, but I feel like three months is really fair. If you are willing to move, especially if you have a family and uproot and put your roots elsewhere for this brand new company, you're taking a risk. They aren't even willing to give you three months of remote work to make sure that it's a good culture, fit right.
Don Hansen:
You can also get a feel for the company's financials. You might have like all hands meetings every week or every month or bi-weekly like whatever, but to get a feel for how the company is doing and look for signals of layoffs, or look for layoffs they're happening, um, because that is a reality. Sometimes you will still get hired while the company is laying off other people, but you can look for those signals and you can get a feel for the team and if they enjoy your company and if they're frustrated with, like how slow you're moving, especially at an entry level. Um, you know, some companies don't have all the resources to be able to ramp these junior developers up. And how resourceful are you? Are you willing to put in extra hours to be able to ramp up quickly? I mean, like I know these things don't sound great and you feel like you shouldn't have to do these things and spend extra time outside the workplace to ramp up your skills. And the market says otherwise and your job's in the line. If you're not considering these things, like I don't know what to tell you, it's just rough.
Don Hansen:
But I do think you can negotiate a little remote time to get a feel for it and make sure that it's going to be a good long-term fit. I think this is a completely fair thing to negotiate and if a company isn't considering this, they're not empathizing with you know the risk that you're taking. Is that a company you want to work for? I know you guys are really desperate for developer jobs. I know a lot of you are. But man, you, you don't really think about these things when you have, like a huge financial burden on your shoulder and you got to get a job quickly. That's why I'm trying to encourage people like get part-time jobs to pay the bills, like go back to an old job, don't quit your job. Like do what you can to be able to sustain yourself while you continue to learn to code, while you continue to apply for dev jobs. This is just the reality of the market right now.
Don Hansen:
So, but I do think it's worth trying to negotiate some remote time and don't move, especially across states or long, uh like far away locations for companies. And you got to keep in mind like a lot of you are considering moving to big cities and I know a lot of you don't want to, and I understand that. And man, would it be horrible for you to sign a contract, get a department contract, a year long contract in the city and you don't even want to live there and you lose your job, you get laid off. That just sounds like a terrible time and I know you want that dev job right away, but I I think you need to make sure that it's a good fit and wait a little bit. So a couple of other things to consider, like your own personal financial runway. You know some of you have like two to three years of savings. You've been in a career for a while and that's it's a really great thing. So you don't have to worry as much as some people that might only have like three months worth of savings or they're just living month to month. Heaven forbid, you're going, you know, just barely paying the bills each month and they ask you to move. I feel like that is an incredible risk, at least for me, I would never, ever want to take.
Don Hansen:
But also, how resourceful are you in situations of the past where you have? But also, how resourceful are you in situations of the past where you have? I guess you dove a little bit too deep. Did you sink or swim? How did you handle that situation? If you have a track record and you're confident in yourself that you can handle these sink or swim situations a lot better, and you know, if you do lose your job and this is how I go through scenarios in my mind of how I would approach different opportunities in my life I always try to go with the worst case scenario, or some of the worst cases, like what happens if I move and I did the remote for three months, in that I got an apartment contract like everything seemed good and then month four I get laid off.
Don Hansen:
What do I do? How much have I built up, based off of the salary and based off of my expenses and everything that I calculated? How much of a nest egg of savings do I have saved up? Do I, you know, like they used to say, three to six months worth of emergency funds? I feel like most of us can agree. That's just not enough nowadays where you want to boost it well over a year, if you can and I know not everyone can. But when we're talking about uprooting yourself and moving that emergency savings needs to be, it needs to make you feel very comfortable, and I don't think six months makes a lot of people feel very comfortable, but maybe it does for you. Maybe you're someone that will jump into part-time work and you'll get whatever job you need to in the city.
Don Hansen:
And you research other positions that maybe are coding adjacent in the city and how much do they pay? And you know you can look at linkedin. How many applications are people putting in for these tech adjacent positions. You got to realize like these traditional, like front-end, back-end roles, especially in the web development space, a lot of people are applying for those positions, definitely for front-end, and you get hundreds of applicants that you're potentially competing with, but for these coding adjacent positions, what about like an email developer, shopify developer, wordpress developer, software engineer and test? What about these positions? From what I've seen, they're not as competitive as a lot of the traditional software engineering rules in web development. So look at these positions and look at how much am I in reality going to make waiting tables or working at McDonald's.
Don Hansen:
These things are things you need to like. What are you guys doing? Like you guys are taking? Some of you are taking just way too much risk, and I know you want a dev job, but you have to just understand that things are not good. The market is not good. Stability is not there. It is there a little bit more for developers with professional experience, but it's still rough for them. So I think you should consider a lot of this before you just up and move, and that's my big concern. I don't want you to just uproot, leave, get your offer letter rescinded and then you are just screwed because you're not resourceful enough to handle that situation. I dread that and I hate seeing stories like that.
Don Hansen:
And I want to touch on one more thing remote jobs. Remote jobs are, have always been very competitive and they were usually for people that had, you know, three to five years of professional experience and some that transitioned from you know in office to remote at the company. But then they applied for other remote positions when they switched companies and they just had a track record of working remote, or at least it was like mostly hybrid, or like four days out of the office and they just met with or they went to the office and they met their team once a week. Right, they have a track record of being very productive and being a great communicator. And most people aren't great with remote work. They're not as productive in the office or they're not as productive at home as they are in the office. That is very true and I don't think most company cultures are equipped and set up to have a successful full remote culture. I think that's a really hard thing to do and I think a few companies can do that very well, but I I think most companies can't.
Don Hansen:
So the expectation shouldn't be that you're going to be able to get a remote position, but anyways, like these remote positions used to be, say, for developers with quite a bit of experience and a track record of just you know, productivity and great communication. And in 2000, basically during the pandemic, we had some years where remote work was way more accepted. And in 2021, kind of going into early 2022, the market companies were desperate to hire developers. They were desperate. It was a buyer's market for developers and we were the buyers. And that was temporary. And as soon as the market started shifting, jobs started lessening and there were more and more developers that were desperate for jobs. Of course, companies tossed that offer out the table. They were forced to do it when they weren't forced to do it extremely hard thing for you to get. It's going to be really hard to get that type of position. They are very competitive now for professional developers.
Don Hansen:
So, listen, I hope you do get a remote position if that's what you're seeking and you're just starting out in the industry. But I would not expect that to be the case and you're going to find a lot of people just arguing whether it's on LinkedIn, reddit, twitter that dev jobs can be done through remote Like. That's a whole other conversation and most people again are not successful with remote. You can make it work, but stop listening to people that are just virtue signaling and basically just saying companies owe employees. Remote culture, like, just stop listening to them. That's not the reality Companies do. The ball is in the company's court right now. They have all the power in the dev world and I wouldn't expect a remote position.
Don Hansen:
But the one thing I want to share with you you, if you have a track record for remote work in the past even if it's like non-dev work, if it's qa, it's kind of like tech related, and you are able to effectively communicate with the tech team, you should highlight that. That is a great thing to highlight even in your cover letter when you apply for remote positions, because companies just want you to reduce the how risky they see you, as companies are always trying to assess the risk of hiring you and especially for remote, the risk is going to be much higher with you being able to onboard quickly, ramp up quickly and fit into the company culture because you're very effective with your communication and productivity. Like if you could show that from an old position, that's awesome, but I wouldn't expect it. So most of you are probably even for in-person positions. Please consider what I said about not accepting to move immediately for that position.
Don Hansen:
Negotiate a little bit of remote time, but listen, I want to hear what you think. Have you had this conversation in an interview? How did it go with the company? I think three months is fair, but let me know what you think. Anyways, leave it in the comments below. I'll see you in the next video.
