My advice would be to take the job and work your tail off. Really shine. If they take you for granted after six months of excellent work, start looking. But don’t look until you’ve honestly done your best at this company for a few months. You might like this job. When other offers come in, you can say to your boss, “Company X is offering me $60K. What can you do for me?” Then you can decide whether it’s worth it to stay.
“I work in the Boston area and this job offer sounds terrible, unless part of the pay is in equity like for an angel funded startup.”
I was under the impression he isn’t in Boston and the job isn’t in the Boston area.
@emilybee, I took that to mean that home is Metro Boston, and the job is around I-495, which is the ~25 mile sort of beltway around the Boston area.
@ClassicRockerDad, maybe the OP will come back and clarify.
And ditto on the learn how to drive part so there aren’t limitations on location.
I would think Boston would be an awesome place to find a startup. I think they have a lot of jobs in Boston on the Angel list. The way my older son found a software engineering job the last time, was by going to a tech meetup and listening to a speaker who was the CEO of a startup. After the talk, he went over to the CEO and told him that he was really interested in working for his company.
However, it is not completely unlimited, due to traffic jams and such. Also, driving a car imposes other limitations relating to the cost of owning and maintaining a car (including insurance, fuel, maintenance, registration, parking).
Will add that there are companies who have lots of open source code and are happy to have people contribute to it. S1 started doing this for one of the major players the summer after his freshman year and it was his ticket into the company. He was finding errors in existing code and writing new stuff. Did it all in his free time for no pay (and to the detriment of some of his classes, but…). He spent two summers interning there and went permanent after graduation.
It was also EXCELLENT practice for the on-the-spot coding tests that so many companies use in parsing new hires.
I would think game design is also a bit of a niche field and may be more start-up driven than working as a SWE at a larger firm.
Network, network, network. It’s the name of the game. S2 is in a non-STEM fleld and it took him a year and a half, but he landed a great job in his subject area that offers a self-supporting salary. He went to local conferences, asked questions at various presentations, got involved on listserves and chat groups in his field, etc. Got his job through one of the connections he developed. It’s a whole different ballgame than when I was looking for jobs after college.
I’d advise him to take it, but wow, that’s ridiculously low salary. I’d work 3 months and start looking for a better paying gig. I’m a software developer. No one stays put long. Often you have to move to work on the more desirable technologies.
Thanks for all the replies, though I don’t know if they make things any clearer regarding this particular job. “Take the job” does seem to be winning though. He hasn’t actually seen a job offer from the company, just the recruiter saying that it exists. Ds is kind of doubting. It is not at a start up.
To answer some questions:
He is not living in Boston now. We paid his post-graduation living expenses there until his lease was up at the end of August. I don’t think he made good use of that time. He is now living with us back in CT; the job offer is for a company near New Haven. He had his resume looked at by NEU career services after graduation and again last month when he was in Boston but other than that hasn’t taken advantage of the services or asked his professors for advice.
His main method of job searching has been using Indeed, applying to about 10 jobs a week. He gets a phone interview once every 2-3 weeks. He’s only had 3 in-person interviews in 6 months. We were hoping that using the recruiter would be a way to get feedback after interviews, but he just had the one and supposedly the feedback was positive. He doesn’t like the NEU career website so he doesn’t visit it very often. He hasn’t been to any job fairs. He has used his very small network, but hasn’t tried to expand it, and dh and I are no help there. He’s never been to a tech meetup, though I did some research and found one about 10 miles away that meets the last Monday of every month (so he just missed it).
His GPA is 3.7. His resume is broken out by relevant work experience, other work experience, academic projects, and computer knowlege; much of it is game-related. His favorite languages are C# and Python, but he also knows C++, Java, Perl, and SML. For the last few months he has been working on a game created by two friends, turning the single-player game into an on-line multi-player. The friends are displaying the game at the Game Developers Conference in S.F. this week.
The seasonal job he had before Christmas was doing production (factory-type) work and he enjoyed it. That’s why he’s saying that he would take a non-CS job in Boston, if that’s what it takes to get back there.
I’m sure I’m missing a lot, sorry. I’m a very slow writer. Again, thank you all.
Is he using a Boston address on the résumé? If not, it is tough to attract attention of Boston employers looking for entry-level folks.
Thank you for filling in some of the blanks, kappie. Sure you’ll get some good suggestions. He had a
really great GPA, must be a smart kid.
One answer I didn’t see…is this job he’s looking at something that he would want, if the pay and location were better? Is this job going to help him get to the next one, or not?
I highly suggest he reach out to NEU alumni in his field. Pound the pavement a little, even if its just doing it in an online fashion. That’s what alumni networks are for.
Is this game likely to be widely distributed (free or pay)? Is his role in developing it on his resume?
NEU’s career center will have listings more focused on entry level new college graduate jobs, so he may have a higher hit rate there, particularly for Boston area jobs. For other area jobs, he may have to look on his own to find employers and look on their web sites to see if they have entry level new college graduate jobs.
Interview skills or basic personality issues? He seems too well-qualified, on paper, to be in this situation.
^^It sounds like he’s not getting many calls for interviews, so I doubt that’s the issue. I think the problem is that it’s tough out there, and somehow you need to go from a name to a person, otherwise you’re putting your application into a huge dark hole.
Companies post jobs in different places - you need to check linkedin, the company website, the school job database, the NEU alum website, etc. These are all things that the career center can help you with. It is not far to travel back to NEU from Connecticut to get their assistance (and not far to travel for interviews, etc.) When companies list on places like Indeed they use programs that shift through resumes to weed them out - his may be getting cut immediately for reasons you may never figure out.
I am not a big fan of recruiters (especially for entry-level) - your career center is a better recruiter with your interest in mind not their own commission.
Could you please explain this? What kind if a recruiter is this? When did he interview?
If he hasn’t seen an offer from the company…how did he get an increase in the salary he hopes to be offered.
Tell him when he sees a job on Indeed, to then go to the Company website and apply there. He will have a better chance of getting noticed.
My first suggestion is find a different recruiter. I am in NYC and when the right candidates come available there is a feeding frenzy and frequently the company goes to the recruiter’s office to make multiple interviews efficient for the applicant. HH firms are no different in that they have customers that favor them, and fill jobs for those customers, so if your son’s profile does not fit the needs of the customers that firm has, he will not get the call. If you want to PM me I can tell you the firm I use, they have offices in multiple cities and each rep specializes in disciplines (one rep for C#/ASP, other for mobile dev, etc.) You would find it on a Google search too.
Another method I would recommend is if there is a company he really wants to work for, find out which recruiters they use and pester them. You can’t really hurt yourself by being a polite PITA to a headhunter. FYI I used this method about a billion years ago to get a job offer at a very tough place by finding out which temp agency they used and getting my foot in the door that way.
He could also be using this time to sharpen his skills into more desired disciplines. Right now Big Data analysts and enterprise Android developers are in great demand. I am sure there are others too but that is what I see.
Lastly a few unsolicited tech interview tips:
- bring code samples to the first interview. Offer them if they are not asked for
- talk more about what you want to learn than what you already know, and mention you know that will take long hours and great effort. "I'll work harder than the next guy" always works.
- if asked problem solving questions don't be afraid to take a minute to think before answering them unless you are 100% sure your answer is a good one. Thoughtfulness is an asset.
- Illustrate your knowledge of process, code versioning, and most importantly, QA. QA is a great foot in the door.
- Programming teams are cultures. Know the culture where you are interviewing and show how you would fit in. Don't wear a tie to a startup but do wear one to a bank. And don't discount banks, insurance firms, etc. They pay a lot more for a lot less work!
- When asked if you have any questions, don't ask about vacation policies or health plans -- ask the interviewer what they love about working there and whatever their answer is, say "wow that sounds great, I would love that too!"
Good luck.