Shut Up And TAKE THE MONEY!! (How To Balance Software Engineering)

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all right so not a typical day uh it's not a office day for me and Crossfit this morning was going to be 40 minutes of cardio and uh right now I'm not in because I'm getting over my cold it's not going to be great for me to just go do that so I figured I'd do one from home I wanted to talk through uh something the coding lifestyle commented as a as a question that I think is a good one I think it's interesting um and the question is thoughts on leaving a healthy team for more money and growth at another company and I do think that's interesting and they said also these videos are awesome keep it up love it so thank you very much uh I appreciate you being here it's it's a lot of fun for me to do this it's uh

it's enjoyable so I appreciate all the questions um and with that said if if other folks have questions if you're watching this if you're listening uh leave a comment if you want me to talk through something related to career development software engineering I'm happy to go through it for my experience uh I have worked at startups I work at Microsoft currently as an engineering manager I've been managing engineering teams for over 12 years and uh I have opinions on things so I'm happy to share them uh and of course if you want things to be anonymous when you send them in you know want to comment that's fine just uh leave me or send me a message look for Dev leader on social media that is my main Channel um and I should I should be doing this more often but I should mention uh

my Dev leader channel does have a live stream so it's very much like what you're watching right now but you can literally chat with me and I'll answer questions um so that's on Mondays at 7 Pacific it's going to be kind of weird in the upcoming weeks here just because of holidays and stuff with Christmas and and all that uh I I'm at a computer I should check what Monday is okay it's a 23rd I I I'll still do a live stream on the 23rd if it was Christmas Eve probably not but we'll do one so let's get into it um so thoughts on leaving a healthy team for more money and growth at another company so this is of course something that I can't answer for other people um I think it's an important question I think people should be asking this question to

themselves to to think about where they want to be and where they want to be headed so I I know some people when they talk about um like money can be a touchy subject for people because like you know if there if say two jobs are equal or maybe you're trying to figure out if they're equal but one has more money like is it is it wrong to go after more money um you know some people it just it's I think a lot of it's based on people have different values or they're at different stages in their life different walks of life and when people talk about this stuff they get some people get very polarized or triggered by like oh like clearly if some place is offering you more money they're like trying to to trick you or um it shouldn't always be about

money other people are like hey money's everything like there's no such thing as like family at work like million different takes on this I can't imagine uh you know people in agreement about this kind of stuff so I realize with this question I can't answer this in a way where people are going to like I'm going to have everyone agreeing this is probably going to be one of those videos that I get a lot of thumbs down on because inevitably there's going to be a group of people that's like I disagree with that so I I just have to kind of give you my opinion but what I want to say as sort of a meta Point as I go through this is like I do fundamentally think that this is number one an important thing to ask yourself one sec still getting over the

cold I think it's important to ask yourself this and I think that this is something that can and will change for you in your career so just because one day say today you're like oh you know what money's not everything I love where I'm working and in a year from now five years from now maybe that flip-flops maybe it's the complete opposite for you right now but this is something that I do think that you should revisit periodically I don't know what the right Cadence is I don't think like I can prescribe one but think about this kind of stuff because your your life changes right um just to give you a very quick example on that so let's let's pretend you're the stereotypical Junior developer you are a single based on demographics probably single male that's young right um and if you're a woman

that's that's awesome too but if you're at this stage in your career where you're just starting off and you're younger perhaps you are single and you have the only maybe you don't even have school debt to pay off or maybe that's all that you have is like I went to school and I have debt to pay off for that your maybe your responsibilities are just that and early on in your career like you're hyper focused on just getting the job but maybe what happens over time is that like say you're in a relationship and now it's time to start making sure you can support your family all of a sudden this pressure mounts where you're like hey like I been loving work but if I'm looking at how things are going I'm not so sure that like life is comfortable right like there's a lot

of pressure to make sure that I can um you know support my family and all of a sudden now you're what you're valuing changes and maybe for some people too and I'm I'm just trying to walk through this example so you can see some different perspectives on it but maybe for some people they're like the pay is comfortable and if I were to try and get paid more and work more that means I have less time with my family right so one of the things that I think through with this kind of stuff in terms of like Comfort level um at a job and then Comfort level at home is it's kind of like this if you could find a job like this is kind of the in my opinion like the peak of being able to work is like you find a job that

you love doing so you love the work you love the people you work with the work is interesting you're growing like everything about work is like oh man like this feels like a rocket ship of growth and learning and the pay is good and also feels like it's not stressful by the way if you can find a job like this I mean good uh I feel like it's probably pretty rare but I do think that it's not impossible and there comes all the thumbs down right um I do think that it's totally possible to find something like this uh it may not happen right away maybe it never happens but I think it's possible but with that said if that work environment also allows you to have your personal life balanced properly where you have enough time with your family you don't feel like it's

constantly taking you away from that then I think that that's like a good spot to be in I think the reality for us for most of us most of the time is that we don't have all of those things balanced in a way that feels perfect and that's I mean it's life so I feel like it's it's rare to find like a perfect balance so what that might mean is that you're going through periods like I'll give you an example early in my career when I was single and didn't have like debt to pay down from school and I was like okay like like I don't have responsibilities I told myself I will work and I was being sort of compensated and rewarded for the effort I was putting in so I had a very positive feedback loop and that regard so the more I

worked the more I found sort of success or um when I say success I don't mean like put in more work and all of a sudden like dollars just start piling I mean like I felt more accomplished I was being compensated like it was just like you put in effort and good things happen so I I kept doing it um and because I didn't have other responsibilities didn't really matter like I could just do that um so I I like hyperfocused on my career early on like to a fault I would say but that's what I did I hyper focused on it and if I if I imagine myself today like I still do a lot of focus on on my career whether that's at you know at Microsoft or personal branding like the fact that I'm it's 8:30 in the morning before work and

I'm trying to make a video online so I can help other people but this you know doing this is personal branding for me right the fact that I'm getting in front of people and being able to share my experiences and stuff like that like hopefully you're watching this and you're like hey this is kind of interesting I'll come back or maybe some of you are already you know repeat Watchers and you're like I come to watch this guy I can you know play it in the background while I'm doing stuff like for me that's part of what I'm doing is personal branding for myself so this is like like work um no one's paying me for it but you know so I focus on these types of things because I am trying to invest in myself but the tradeoff with doing all of this type

of stuff is that it takes away from family time it takes away from Hobbies like I love playing video games guess what I'm not doing right now I'm not playing video games before I was recording this I was doing some work on brand ghost which is again it's a business so I'm I'm dedicating my personal time into that not playing video games not spending time with my wife not spending time with the dogs and the cats so I know that at this point in my life I it's not wise for me to do as much um sort of look uh as much time investment into things like business things like work that I would have done as uh someone that was younger I'm in my mid-30s now I don't I don't consider that old but I mean I don't got any hair left I mean

it comes in but I'm it's by choice now I do that on purpose I got white in my beard I got no hair um you know so I'm in my mid-30s I've been been working for a while but when I was fresh out of University like you know I I could literally stay up super late programming for work and wake up early and program for work come in to work manage teams all day and then repeat it every day seven days a week and I loved it I cannot do that now I cannot not only do I not have like the call it like the energy for that but also like I have I do have other responsibilities so these types of things change over time and I think that you need to do that kind of a introspection for yourself so specifically the coding

lifestyle in his comment was asking thoughts on leaving a healthy team right for more money and growth in another company when if I were to look at this scenario specifically um and for myself right I think that I am the kind of person that is I've talked about this before um probably less of a risk taker so if I were already comfortable healthy team right if I had some amount of growth like that didn't feel like it was stalled so like it's at least some growth and I thought that I was being paid fairly I would I would probably not personally move and that's not necessarily my advice but I know for myself like the um the amount of change that that would introduce the amount of stress as a result of that might make me go ah like it's not worth it but what

I don't know from this person's comment is like how much growth and how much uh compensation are we talking about because that could change a lot of things so I'll give you an example if someone all things cons like if all other things were equal like if someone came to me and said we could double your income I don't think I would think twice if all the other things were equal and it just meant hey you're going to have to change jobs hey it's going to be ramp up time again because it's a new domain new team new stuff if someone told me we can double your income and I mean obviously this is a very contrived hypothetical situation so go along with me for a moment but if everything else were equal right so the growth that I would have at whatever other team

or company would be the same the area The Domain in terms of difficulty complexity would be the same but I have to kind of start over and ramp up if it meant twice the income and I'm working the same amount I would go do that 100% now if you change this scale again let's keep all the other variables the same if someone said it's 50% more yep I'm probably not thinking twice right 25% more probably not thinking twice but once we start get like like let's go the other direction if someone said 2% more no the overhead the activation energy for me to go okay like I got to I'm switching my frame of mind it's going to be a new domain for me I have to go through this learning process not worth it 5% more probably not 10% more like I don't I

don't actually know what my my percent number is all the other variables considered so again when I'm looking at this question I'm trying to see if I fix a couple of variables here I don't know what my my percent number is I have no idea but like I should like if I take my own advice I should go through this exercise because the reality is like I love working for Microsoft but if tomorrow someone put an offer in front of me and said we could double like and obviously I can't just like trust this blindly but I hope you get where I'm going with this if someone could say hey look and even if it was Microsoft right if another team in Microsoft said we can double your your income I'm like I should probably take that opportunity but here's the thing like I'm giving

you a very contrived scenario right so I'm saying we're going to fix the other variables that's not realistic there's no guarantee and I think that's one of the biggest challenges with this kind of stuff is like the um you could see that right now for for the coding lifestyle in his question on a healthy team I don't know in this context when it says for more money is the money that you're getting already good if it's already really good let's pretend it's really good right now on a healthy team getting paid really well and there's some reasonable amount of growth that they feel good about for me the thought I would have is am I risking going somewhere else where I'm not going to enjoy work and is that risk sort of less uh less of a an impact or can I tolerate that risk

given that x amount of money I would be getting more and perceived growth opportunity more again there's risk to that is going to sort of allow me to change my lifestyle that I'm like everything else is okay still because for some people the extra money might mean I have less stress outside of work right depends on the amount of money some I'm just going to give you an example some people might say month to month I feel like I have a lot of stress trying to pay the mortgage or uh the car loan come up with whatever bills you might have right and and if that is contributing a lot of stress on a regular basis I don't again I don't know what the number needs to be but if someone said here's an extra $2,000 a month and now you're in your head you're

going okay like if I had an extra $2,000 a month we're not talking pre-post tax whatever imagine two $2,000 in your pocket you can go do whatever you need with so post tax um imagine you have that and you're going okay like I don't have to stress about the mortgage now like if that is a significant amount of stress that's in your life and it's worth taking on a potential risk that maybe the next team you go to is a little bit more stressful then maybe it's worth it because overall the net value like the net impact on your quality of life is better but again we don't we can't guarantee that we don't know that maybe again let's take this example you're like cool now I've gotten rid of my mortgage stress so this extra stress that I've been carrying with me every I

don't know if it's every day you feel it whatever but carrying with me outside of work and now I'm at work and every day feels super stressful and awful like maybe that's not worth it because maybe that's like eight hours a day every day now maybe it's also on weekends or something because you're stressing so much about work and you're like man it was actually less terrible to be stressing about the mortgage that I seem to be able to pay anyway every month so I think these are the types of things like these thought exercises that people should be going through um I know I get this from my wife that uh I I basically go through a lot of scenarios in my head trying to look for like the worst case scenarios um and this is the type of thing that I do right

like I like to go say okay let's pretend I'm going to go onto this team and I will play out all these different scenarios and basically if I only see like say every bad scenario that I can think of is still good in the end then like it's probably a like for me it's probably a great decision then if there's only a couple of like potentially bad scenarios and they seem like a very low likelihood it's probably a good decision that I would make but if I'm starting to notice like hey look like I have like a 50/50 chance of this being better based on what I'm seeing like I don't know if I would take that I would need to dig in more and try to figure that out so um I think some things I've heard about this kind of stuff anecdotally from

other people is like um and this is just me I'm not again this is not my opinion this is literally things that I have heard I have heard more often than not that people that left a company that they felt pretty good at but were promised more money um either boomeranged back so they went they were getting more money and they're like a man like I don't think so and then we're able to somehow get an offer back and and come back maybe for maybe making more money than they were making originally but perhaps less money than the company they switch to they Boomerang back because they're like wasn't worth it um but I have heard this more often than not and if it's not a boomerang back it's like I tried this other job out for a bit not great um without mentioning names

there's an individual I know that I used to work with that went to a company again in this case my goodness um in this case if we're thinking about this example right they were on a on a healthy team let's call it uh they might have been starting to feel like growth opportunity wise maybe feeling stagnant so okay good good thing to say hm maybe there's something else out there for me um paywise what they would have been getting was I assume greater I don't know that for a fact but I am pretty confident greater so they're going to be getting paid more they have this potential for more growth in their role and then basically what I've been hearing from them consistently for quite a while now is this is terrible I can't believe that I'm stuck in this position I hate it so

again I'm not I'm not trying to tell you like hey it's always going to be bad I'm just telling you like here's one scenario where someone was looking at an opportunity like this and it didn't work out now what does that mean right so my advice to this person was like if you're not happy there if you are trying to sort of influence the change that you would want to see for it to be better if that's what you're trying to do and it's not going anywhere I mean I think you have your answer if you don't think that it's worth putting the time into I also think you have your answer but I would say if you're putting in some effort to try and drive the change that you need to see and it is improving maybe it's maybe it's just a matter of

like you needed to kind of put something forward and and like either your manager the situation can improve and that's great maybe you uh keep putting in that energy and things change and things improve and that's great and you can stay but ultimately it's like I would say people going back to this original question we need to cons like I don't want to say constantly periodic Al some interval some Cadence that's good for you reflect on our situations and say like am I content with this I if I could give myself advice it would be to be less less comfortable I think and that's because if I reflect on my career any time that I've been put in and I've talked about this a ton anytime I've been put into a situation that's that's uncomfortable in terms of like oh this feels risky or I

don't know what I'm doing anymore or whatever every single time lots of great growth in terms of my career in terms of my learning and understanding so um if I were to listen to that I should be saying hey Nick every time that you're feeling like very comfortable it's Pro like you're probably already missing out on some other opportunity um so it feels kind of weird to say because I think that as humans we're always trying to look for this place of comfort um there's probably some I don't know some slick saying that I could put together or someone's already said about like you know growth is not where there's Comfort I don't know I'm not good at this stuff but I think that um if I could give myself some advice it would be to be less um conservative in some of my choices

and stuff like that so a little bit more risk I think would be would have been and will be more beneficial for me but um it's hard right it's hard when you start becoming comfortable like I I love the team I work with I work in a very interesting space I get paid well it would be very difficult like I the example I was giving you like someone could double my income like okay I don't see that like you know falling out of the sky and landing on my lap so it needs to be pretty significant to get me out of my comfort zone but maybe I guess what I'm trying to say is maybe it shouldn't be like that maybe I should be like hm an extra 5% great like and that's a whole new other learning opportunity in a different domain maybe I

should be going to do that even if let's say the pay was the same maybe it is worth going to these other spaces and being like okay this is going to be a really difficult learning opportunity but I know every time I do this I am going to learn and grow and it's going to be awesome so I think everyone has to figure out that right balance for themselves I know like I was saying for myself I should probably take a little bit more risk in that regard um and I and I think that I'm fortunate enough to be in a position where I could do those types of things maybe not everyone is and that's that's okay um but I think this is a very personalized thing that people need to reflect on so uh the coding lifestyle for your question specifically um I

would say do this analysis for yourself right um something that's important to acknowledge too is like if you were to leave your Healthy team for more money for for more growth opportunities if that doesn't work out that's not that's not the end of the road right it's not like there's no more opportunities it's not like you'll never find success or happiness or balance again these are things that we can continue to look for and maybe the next time it doesn't even happen but that doesn't mean that it's never going to happen right so uh I think the the most dangerous part here is being complacent in a spot where you're not uh on a healthy team not getting growth and not being paid well I think periods of time where you're not getting some of these things not great but like kind of part of

the journey and then trying to look at your current state and saying hey based on the quality of life that I would like to have do I feel like I'm getting enough growth do I feel like I'm being paid fairly and do I feel like I am sort of enjoying or like my stress level is is sort of at the right level and if you're feeling like these one of these things is lacking or multiple or lacking it's probably an opport like probably a good sign to say I got to do something about this and you might have other factors that you want to consider too so um keep that in mind keep doing this reflection and I think that you know just try not to be too comfortable and accept that like things can't change because things won't change unless you drive the change

so I hope that's helpful um I think that's all I got for today on this topic I I love this question though I I wish I wish I could sit here and just say oh the answer is simple but I think it's so situational so I try to give you my perspective on it I hope when I give you my perspective I don't want you to say oh that's what Nick would do therefore cool um I want you to think about the questions I'm asking myself why I'm asking them and that way you can change that for your own situation like what do you actually value what is your current situation and keep in mind that's going to change over time um so I think that's it um I'll put this one out this will go out today is Thursday so I'll put this out

for tomorrow morning uh maybe you can listen to it on your drive to work but if you're hearing what I'm saying right now maybe you're already done your drive to work so it's kind of a weird thing to say um but yeah live stream I will try to do on Monday the 23rd at 7.m Pacific that is on my Dev leader YouTube channel so do check that out um if you're curious I know newsletters are not for everyone believe me I understand that as a content creator I know there's different formats of uh of content that people either love or they want nothing to do with but if you want to tune into the live stream on dev leader I have a newsletter that will go out on Saturday and 95% of the time my Saturday newsletter will be the topic for the live stream

so uh something to keep in mind you don't even have to subscribe the newsletter if you want to check out the live stream and you want to follow along with something that's kind of like a written format of it um definitely just it's weekly. deev leader.com I'll keep blabbing just like I'm doing right now if people have questions I like to wrap up my thought answer the questions in the chat if the if the chat was super active and I couldn't even talk through my newsletter that's the best situation in my in my opinion um and it's been really cool there's been I think there's been more people from code commute so you guys coming over to the dev leader live stream and it's been really fun to hear from you uh people kind of laughing at how I you know get angry at tra

trffic and stuff like that so uh you get to see some of the real me so thanks for being here um and a reminder submit your questions and stuff I'm happy to go through them so take care and I'll see you next time