In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I’m working for minimum wage as a full Systems Administrator at a State University while I’m taking classes. I really like working here, but I need to make at LEAST 40K /year to justify this level of effort for much longer. I just got offered a job two hours away for 80 - 100K as a System Administrator at a smallish ISP. The same day my boss told me he got approval to hire me on at 45K in 3 - 4 months.

   If I wait and stay I’m not making what I feel I’m worth, but if I leave I’ll make WAY more money and probably won’t finish my bachelor’s degree.

   I already have 5 years of experience as a ““system admin”” but I want to move over to technical project management in the next 10 years.

   I think I should stay, make less money, continue growing my relationships in the Scholastic Network, and finish getting my Bachelor’s degree. That way I can get past HR checks to become a Project Manager somewhere else.

   What should I do?

2. I’ve recently become the technical lead at my company. I need to build my team more but am struggling with one thing. How do I overcome the fear of hiring someone better than me who could potentially overtake me as the team lead? Is this a common fear among leaders? I want to build an effective team of high caliber developers. But I can’t do that if I let my ego and insecurity get in the way.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hey guys, I love the show! Thanks so much for keeping episodes coming every week.

   Some background:

   I work for a small, established company based in a small city with a growing tech scene. We have about 20 employees, 5 of which make up the engineering team and it’s been a great experience. My role is primarily being a full stack developer working on our web application, but since we’re a small company, I’ve been able to explore some other responsibilities like analyzing data for the marketing team and working with the sales staff to build custom solutions for select clients. I started working here as an intern while still in college almost 6 years ago. I feel my initial salary out of college started a bit low, but I’ve received an 8-10% raise each year I’ve been a full time employee (without having fight for them)–so I think I’m catching up.

   My question is, will I be stunting my career or making myself seem less hirable by staying here too long? I’ve clearly found a great place to work so leaving here would be difficult. I’m also concerned that I’m beginning to run out of skills to acquire here. It sounds easy to leave a job you hate, but how/when should you leave a job that’s this good to you?

2. Hi Jamison and Dave,

   tl;dr:

   The role I was originally hired for is slowly being eroded - what should I do?

   Longer version:

   I have been working for my current company for a little over a year now. Things were going really well at first, I liked the team I was on, the work (backend) was interesting and I was learning a lot from my colleagues.

   Unfortunately, due to corporate machinations, my team was dissolved as part of a reorganization and scattered to seperate, mostly frontend focused, teams.

   Originally I was told that I would still be doing effectively the same type of work on my new team as on my old, and this has been mostly true. However, over the course of the last few weeks my new manager has gradually been announcing changes in the direction the team is taking as a whole and talking to me specifically about working more on frontend related tasks and upskilling, as I have almost no frontend experience.

   I have tried to make it clear that I have no interest in doing this but my manager is still pushing for it. I am currently still doing mostly backend work with a little frontend, but I feel like my days are numbered. There are other teams with a more backend focus, but I feel that my manager partly wants to keep me in the short term for some necessary backend work and in the long term is hoping I will acquiesce on doing more frontend work.

   How should I navigate this situation? It feels like I sinking in quicksand

   Thanks

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. One of my friends recently was hired at a salary 20k more than my own, even though we are at the same level. This caused me to re-think whether or not my company is paying me fairly and planted seeds for making me leave for something better.

   So the question is: how does one gauge “average salary” (other than at say for example glass door.com) for one’s city and should I interview for a higher salary and come back and ask for a counter offer? How will I be viewed if I did such a thing?

2. I’ve been an engineer in the video game industry for 10 years. I’ve worked for 4 large game studios and at each one the story has been the same. Once it comes time to release our game, the crunch time kicks in.

   Often the need to work overtime is implied, but on my current project the company president directly spelled out that ALL engineers would be working a minimum of 60 hours per week for AT LEAST six months. In the past I’ve chosen to jump ship before it gets that bad, but I really wanna see this project through to the end.

   We’re all salaried employees and so far we’ve received no compensation for our overtime hours. No comp time or anything. The only carrot that has been dangled is that ““it will be taken into consideration during bonus time””.

   How much is reasonable to expect as a bonus for this much overtime? 10% of my annual salary? 50%? A firm handshake and a swift layoff?

   Thanks guys for any advice you can give!