TOTALLY COOKED?! No Progression As An Outstaffing Developer

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hey folks we're going to go to a question that was submitted on LinkedIn so just wanted to remind you before I dive into this one it's a it's a long one which is really good so if you want questions answered leave them in the comments or if you want to send something that's long like this be kept Anonymous um reach out to Dev leader on social media or just reach out to Nick centino on LinkedIn my profile should be open to send messages um we're going to go through a bit of background from this person's experience kind of what they're going through and give my perspective um of course like yes I am an engineering manager yes I have been doing this for over 12 years uh no I'm not going to be telling people what they should do so this is not like I

don't not like prescribing advice here but this is just my perspective and opinion so um the other thing is this person did send in their resume so I am trying to do a resume review series on my main Dev leader YouTube channel it's not yet made like subscription only so it's not like Members Only or like payal or anything like that so send in rums if you got them I'll try to get them scheduled in and then uh yeah you can watch the dev leader YouTube channel you'll see when you watch the resume videos how to send them in and then go from there so let's dive into it okay so this person is pretty young but they are working as a full stack developer um and sort of the scenario that might be interesting is that they're saying that they're working at an outstaffing

company it's been about two years so been able to work on several projects different Tech stacks and things like that so different Technologies um and then they're starting to feel undervalued and underpaid um so getting that kind of thing creeping in over roughly half a year or so so from my experience it's kind of interesting like sometimes this this starts to creep in and you're like you start to realize it for some people it might be very obvious and they're like I feel like I'm getting screwed over but I think for other people for myself I've had this kind of thing creep in in my in my career where it's like hey like I'm starting to feel a particular way and it's interesting because you for me at least it starts like becoming a like it creeps in more and more like it keeps uh

building so I suspect that's what's happening to this individual so they joined um either yeah when they're finishing University so they're fresh so basically it sounds like it's like their first kind of job at at of school um and they get to support a really large project which is great and there I mentioned some certifications um and I think I just wanted to mention for me that's not like a huge deal I think if you have certifications if there're specific certifications for um being able to work for I think what they're doing is like almost like a little bit of contract work and or the company has set up such that it's almost like contract work for customers um so if there's certifications that are required to do like to work for certain customers or that kind of thing then sure I think that can

be good but otherwise like my personal opinion is um if you if you find that being motivated to do the learning alongside a certification sful then I think it's great otherwise like only if you really need it for work um okay and then they're saying given their achievements they want they want more responsibility right so um he's saying that like it kind of seems like when he's looking around where he's working like it's pretty common that that most people like it kind of seems like they're stagnating in terms of uh being able to progress in their career he said not all some are kind of like exceeding but it kind of seems like the common theme is that there starts to be some stagnation um and then also yeah there like you know a lot of those individuals he's just kind of addressing like uh

families they're not really focused on improving their skills so this this person's pretty young and early in their career right so it sounds like they've been able to build up some experience and they're trying to ride some of that momentum and it's kind of feeling like like where like where is this going like it kind of seems like hitting a bit of a wall um and the those around them may have like excuses or their own sort of uh reasons for not trying to push and uh and grow as as sort of uh with as much interest as this person has so um he's starting to feel uncomfortable is what he's saying and feels like he you know kind of reaching this point like is there another company that I could be showcasing my skills and abilities like it doesn't feel like he's able to

at this place which I think is really interesting again I've I have found myself in situations at different points of my career where I felt like that like am I really operating at my full potential or am I kind of just like doing the things that have to get done and like I feel like there's more in me um so I I have felt like that um started sharing these thoughts with colleagues seeking advice but they don't offer concrete suggestions or change in soad they just agree saying yep we completely understand you you have to move forward well seems like they're offering some suggestions okay so trying to talk through and I think this is important and if you're as I'm talking through this if you're like hey I'm kind of feeling like maybe I'm in a similar situation I think this next part is

a good reflection so this person is addressing or reflecting on the things that make them unhappy so I can't fully perform as I'd like on my current project because um customer doesn't allow access to their infrastructure and only except planed task we complet so kind of like maybe not as much autonomy uh based on the type of work they're doing so I think for me autonomy is a big thing that's kind of what I get from their point here and then um management does not provide any growth opportunities no performance reviews no communication with a customer uh that they're working within um because so again this interesting working relationship right where they're kind of like they belong to a company but then the customer that they go work inside of there's also no like mentorship or or sort of uh coaching or performance kind of

feedback so it's almost like the worst of Both Worlds like seems like they're not getting performance reviews from their direct manager and then I don't think I would expect a client to do this kind of thing but maybe based on the working relationship um we have this kind of thing that we might call like a dotted line report where it's someone like they might not be the person that promotes you or is directly responsible but they can still kind of like give you some mentorship and like career kind of uh focused kind of conversations but um and then so I think this person is kind of like I'm looking for looking for a path four but they had a couple of questions I'm going to read out um am I doing something wrong am I misunderstanding something so we'll talk about that um why don't

outstaffing and maybe other companies invest resources in their junior Specialists good question is it true that outstaffing companies generally have little to offer growing developers who want to advance um I don't have I'll be transparent I don't have a ton of experience on this I have some thoughts but it would be totally unfair for me to try and speak about this particular thing from the perspective of outstaffing um as an authority so I want to be very transparent about that because I think that's important if I'm going to be sharing my perspective um if I want to look for a new job is it a good idea to aim for pro uh Product Company or startup as a junior to midlevel full stack developer or any other advice on where to look so maybe let's go through these am I doing something wrong slash am

I misunderstanding something I don't it's hard to know I'll say that um my my suspicion is that on the surface probably not but again it's hard to know um so instead of maybe trying to answer the question are you doing something wrong or misunderstanding um maybe let's talk about like kind of what I think is happening and then maybe some things that if you're interested in staying like what at least some next steps so um yeah cuz like to answer this in like a helpful way like I don't actually know if I can answer those two questions like right are you doing something wrong maybe I don't really think so but maybe are you misunderstanding something probably but like that's not it's just not helpful I don't think so um I think the first thing that you are definitely doing right is having this reflection

and I this is why like for other people watching this I'm trying to encourage like I've talked about this in other videos but I think you know I think it's important that you find it's it's might sound cheesy but I think you need to find that happy where you're working and I can understand that not every project or you know not every day is going to be awesome talking about how this uh period for me right now like I'm burnt the hell out but that doesn't mean that like I look at my current role and I'm like well I hate this this is the worst this is a dumb team a dumb company like nothing it's not like that um and even the project that I'm on I'm not like this is the dumbest project or something it's just like I I understand sort of

the scenario and what's kind of putting me through this so not every day is going to be awesome but I think it's important that you are finding opportunities for yourself where you're you are trying to maximize that and it does exist so I you know that's why I said I know it sounds cheesy to say but it does exist you know where I used to work I had a lot of autonomy uh I was in a position where I was having a really big impact not only in the work I was doing but like the mission of the company um and I could wake up every day and be like this is awesome right so these opportunities do exist I'm not saying that everyone ends up finding it but I think it's important because your career is a large part of your life trying to

work towards finding that and it may take you a while to really understand like what things like get you energized get you engaged because it could be about how you carry out your work it could be the mission that you're trying to get behind right so when I talk about mission where I used to work we were building digital forensic software and it's like oh that sounds kind of cool like sounds kind of fancy it's kind of interesting and it was but like what's even more cool cool in my opinion is like the impact that it was having and it's not just like oh great you're selling software to like police officers and stuff it's like no it was really impactful because we were helping save children right so for me that's like that means something and that's like something that I can get behind

now not every job is going to be like that kind of mission but I think it's important that you try to find something you like so being able to do what this person's doing and have that reflection even if they're kind of in this phase of like I don't know exactly what I want but I know this doesn't feel right I think that's important um I think one thing like maybe an action to try CU it's not really called out here I don't think unless I I glossed over it but like you're saying there's no performance reviews and it sounds like there's not a lot of focus on like career conversations what does your manager say right like what one thing I don't know from reading this is like what have the conversations with your manager look like when you've brought this up when you've

shared the feedback with them hey like I am trying to make make sure that I can grow in my career I want to be able to have career conversations I want the feedback what does that look like because if it hasn't happened I think that's step one if you're trying and saying like hey this is what I this is what I would like or something in this direction to help me grow and then you're not getting that support I think you have your answer right but I think you need to at least try I know that um if I were to think about like characteristics of a good manager or what do good managers do I would say they probably should be having conversations with you regularly about career progression right the Cadence will look different for different people but you should have clear expectations

from your manager on that kind of stuff but at the same time I can't sit here and say so just assume it's going to happen because guess what it ain't always going to happen so I think that um the best advice I can give there is like just remember that the person that cares the most about your career is you so so I got something oh no my head's just shiny I thought there was like a big white fluff on my head because we got dogs and cats and I thought how embarrassing would that be to do this whole video with something I've done that with a YouTube video and I had like fluff in my beard don't do that um so yeah what is that like what are those conversations looking like with your manager because if they're not do it and then the

other thing is if you're saying like hey like I'd like some feedback hey like some feedback if they're struggling to give you anything useful try to ask more specifically for feedback not just hey can I have some feedback on how I'm doing say hey there was this interaction with the customer or on this particular project like the this piece that we delivered like what did you think about my interaction in that meeting with the customer or leading that design like try to have more targeted um sort of questions about feedback and that way number one you can kind of guide like where you want feedback and number two you're more likely to get something that's useful because if your manager is already kind of like you know being a little soft on the feedback part like just being able to give them that little nudge

in the direction of like I'm looking for feedback on this like what are your thoughts that'll help so um overall you know I think that if you're feeling this way and you're not feeling supported like making it known that this is an expectation you have so um I think that's important um next part like why don't outstaffing maybe other companies invest resources and their junior specialist so again I can't comment on the Outsourcing stuff there is um a person if you want to go look on uh LinkedIn I can't remember his podcast his name's uh Matt Watson uh Matt Watson runs sort of like a a Dev agency like this I'm gonna forget the name this is the problem with live streaming stuff um and the only thing that's coming to mind is full stack it's it's I think it's full scale anyway Matt Watson

check him out on LinkedIn um I think full scale is the name of his company but that's what he does um so he would have lots of different perspectives on this but I don't think like I think Matt Watson is an awesome guy and I don't know how he runs his company but I don't imagine that he has this kind of perspective I think it would be quite the opposite so my point here is that I think that the observation is that this is a company that seems like they're not investing in their people in general and that's kind of like that's crappy um so I don't know if it's specific to outstaffing maybe just to kind of you know to I try to think through this like again I I don't have experience without Staffing so maybe the idea is that they're looking at

it like more um what's a good way to put this more like resour right like more like numbers on a sheet because they're like hey um you know we're building clients and you're getting ex developers and here's the project scope and like people more easily become numbers on a spreadsheet I'm I'm speculating maybe that's how this company ends up doing it again I'm not saying all uh like companies that operate like this would do that but maybe that's why right I'm kind of I'm just kind of going out on in here um and that would still be like a way to look at it because if even if you were like hey like it's all about just like cost savings and how to like minimize all of that okay well you realize if you make your people better then they can become more efficient like

um so seems kind of weird um but again I think that I think that companies can fall into this trap and I don't it's hard for me to say because I don't feel like I have I'm trying to like go through this in my head I'm like I feel like every place I've worked uh we have tried to support uh junior developers we have tried to support everyone right and we understand that like investing into people's careers is helpful um and even I'll explain why this is difficult for me because I'm I'm so like against it like to to not support people in their career growth that what I'm trying to do is think through my head have I observed at companies I've been at other managers like statistically just being like we don't really care like we're just trying to move things along and

I haven't seen it like I'm that's this is why I'm kind of pausing here and like uh uh because I'm trying to think about scenarios like that I think the only time I have seen that kind of stuff is just like manager that were crap and not because it was a like a systematic thing at the the organization like the organization didn't want Investments it was just like managers that couldn't actually do their jobs effectively and maybe that's what's happened right maybe the people in in leadership positions have never really had that kind of thing and they don't see the value in it which is a big missed opportunity right um I know that personally and again I've shared videos on this before um personally when I look at developing and helping people and growing their careers like I would go uh as far as

to say that ultimately I want to help people progress in their careers to the point where like I fully expect that I will not be able to provide them the opportunity like sort of underneath me right like I want people to be able to grow in their career where it no longer makes sense that I manage them which might sound funny um ideally I'm also getting promoted and growing in my career which by the way I mentioned this and I'm going to keep bringing it up periodically but I have to this day I have never been promoted in my 12 and a half years of working after University I have never once actually form nor Al been promoted interesting but my point is that I want people to be able to grow to the point where the opportunity within the team is kind of limiting

them right unless our team is growing and we're all growing with it which is a great spot to be in but if that's not happening then I want to make sure that people are like hey like ultimately I need to go find another team or I might have to leave the company to go find another opportunity I would like to be in a position it's hard right it's always hard when people need to leave for growth and in my career I've had two I've had two people leave both were um relatively Junior one was just like an obnoxious pay raise and it was like you know we we talked about it and it was like Hey like I understand they they were getting paid uh if I'm not mistaken it was like more than I was getting paid and I was like just yeah like

I said you know I can go have a conversation to see if we can counter and they're like honestly like it's totally cool I just wanted to let you know like like okay I I get it um so that's great uh great for them and that's uh you know that's their choice that's totally fine no hard feelings there um and then another person uh they were very transparent with me they were saying like I'm just they said because I'm so early in my career I like need to go try other things they said I don't want to stay in one spot and then feel like I you know like they're like it's great here but it feels like I'm doing myself an injustice and I get it because I had six internships so I was like I'm going to go explore um but otherwise I've

had I've had two people tell me like either they have offers or they're considering leaving where they're at but they want to come work under me and I've had other other people since then that were following up with me going hey like do you have like positions I'd like to come work for you so uh my point is that I want to make sure that people can grow I've had people that have worked under me uh you know one person's a VP uh at a startup I have two other guys that are directors um where I used to work so they you know they exceeded the position I had and currently have and and they're like they're doing amazing so that's my goal right like my goal as a manager is to be able to support people my next goal as a manager is to

support other managers because I've been doing it for a long time now like that's the next progression for me so for this person it's hard for me to understand why a company would not want to do that but ultimately if they're not investing again that's a red flag this just ties back to my you know the previous point it's like I think if you're not having the conversations about trying to have this type of feedback from your manager like I wouldn't expect it um and if they're not going to put in the time and effort and maybe that's a cultural thing within the organization yeah might not be a good spot and then the next question that was here is like outstaffing companies generally have little to offer growing developers who want to advance I don't know unfortunately um I'm trying to even think again

if there's anything about like the number of like levels of developers they need to have like again I'm trying to think are outstaffing companies trying to treat developers more like just like pure resources on a spreadsheet and maybe like I would think if they had more senior developers that they could charge more like so wouldn't that be a good thing they can say hey like who this project you're going to need like more senior developers on it so like yes like that will cost you more and we have the people to do that like so yeah it it feels kind of weird to me I don't have a good justification for it last question though is if I want to look for a new job is it a good idea to aim for a product company or a startup as a junior mid full stack

developer or what other options um yeah honestly um in terms of like a startup or something like that I think that um that's going to be well any job is going to be some amount of like risk assessment I've made lots of videos talking about this um there are recorded live streams on dev leader if you want to check out that channel and go through the live streams you can kind of poke through um but I've absolutely talked about like weighing out the pros and cons I think it's kind of like the gr I titled it like the grass is greener or something there's code commute videos because the code commute video like gave me the idea for the live stream so I've talked about this before every person's going to be different right your motivation for where you want to go is going to

be different in this person's case I don't even see compensation coming up right so maybe maybe that's part of it I'm kind of just like scrolling through I'm sure like you know compensation can always be better sure but this person is like I'm not growing they don't have growth opportunities that's their motivation so like put that like when you're trying to consider your opportunities weigh that out if you're going to start looking at other places that's a thing you need to go understand when you're interviewing and applying to places so try to go uncover that right talk to people that work at these companies if you land the interview and you you have questions that you can ask like ask about how that looks do your research on these places because that will need to be in my opinion like factored into your decision-making process

like because why are you going to go to another company if you only heard bad things about how they have like um career advancement or why are you going to go to another company and not try to find that out and just kind of take a risk because there's going to be other companies that don't do this either so if you're going to do it I would say like go like go answer these questions I think that's really important but again different people will value different things for some people they might say like you know I'm like pretty comfortable at the level I'm at but like I just want to get more pay so like can I find that great go do that or you know I like the amount of challenge I have in terms of like Tech I feel like things are uh

work life balance right now is really difficult and I just want to like see if I can keep my pay the same maybe even take a step back and pay I would take a pay cut and I want like a better work life balance that's not what it sounds like for this person it sounds like growth opportunities some challenges startups will be filled with challenges my personal experience was going to a startup after school and doing that for eight years not my own but another person's startup so like I again I'm not going to advise or prescribe anything I thought startups were the like an excellent way to go learn things because you have to go learn so much stuff you have to if you're not the kind of person that likes working really hard and you know kind of like having little guidance and

trying to figure out everything with you and like your colleagues and like it's just kind of chaotic it might not be for you and that's totally okay I'm not like it's not like a gatekeeping thing I'm not saying oh you're not cut out for it I'm just saying you legitimately may not like it and that's totally fine because at larger companies and this isn't like a unique thing but you might have more opportunity just by volume of people to be around more expertise like statistically there may be more experts per you know per person or something just because the or I shouldn't say per person even if it was per person equal yeah that's what I mean to say if it was per person equal in terms of the amount of expertise you would have more of those people there we go um so you

increase your surface area to interact with these individuals or have the opportunity to reach out so maybe that's what you want so um it's hard to answer this but um you can find like that kind of startup Vibe at uh at larger companies as well so if you're going to say interview at Microsoft or meta or Amazon or Google you may find that they have like these smaller product teams and they're like hey we're just getting started in here and like that could be a cool opportunity because it might feel like a bit more of a startup Vibe but you have like all of the support from this enormous organization um also potentially risky with layoffs and stuff because they might say hey this thing's a brand new idea and like it's not making money so if we need to cut costs which is shitty

I'm not trying to defend it it's something to think about so I realize that's maybe not a super helpful answer but I do think that uh if you've been doing outstaffing and you've kind of had the customer which is the person that you're doing the work for going to a product company would be awesome because you'll have a little in my opinion a bit of an advantage for like kind of thinking through how the customer things right this is something that a lot of people miss when they're going for their first jobs because they're like I have never had to do this I've been doing lead code and school assignments what's a customer right um and it's you can't blame people they haven't had to do this I work on for context at Microsoft I work on platform teams and I've been doing that for

just under five years now I literally have a hard time compared to like a more product focused team where it's like hey C uh you know users are sending this feedback yes we have users yes uh we have responsibility to external users but as a platform team it's like the other developers internally and what I have found is that and I don't mean for this to sound harsh it's like the unfortunate best way I can describe it sometimes it's like a thankless job because like no one comes by and they're like hey awesome work just having things working like you guys are great it just works no they come by when things don't work so it doesn't feel so good A lot of the time whereas you might have end users that are like and you know I had this a lot with the forensic

experience where we would have people coming in contacting salespeople tech support and being like I used your product we help catch uh bad people or um you know basically the opposite like you know allow people that we had evidence you know this person was uh you know was not guilty and having that kind of impact and you would be like I made that feature they used like that's a cool thing so I really like that kind of experience and um yeah I do think that if you have some exposure to interacting with other stakeholders that aren't just the developers on your team that can be a big advantage that you can lean into so I would think you know again not prescribing anything if I were in this position what would I do uh I think that if I really liked what I was doing

I would have a conversation with my manager first say hey like this is my expectations for being able to try and grow in my career like are we able to have career conversations depending on the interest level and how much I want to stay if I don't see any movement on that okay time to start interviewing um and then I would probably look for I would probably look for a small company in an area uh like a product area that seems interesting to me the reason I'm not saying a big company is because I feel like statistically you may have a similar type of problem just like statistically I'm just thinking that like the this is more like anecdotal from hearing people say like hey I just work in a place with tons of bureaucracy okay like if we can cut that down like do

you have more likelihood of having a manager that wants to support you perhaps so something to think about but I think that's what I would recommend so I hope for this person that was helpful I realize it might not be sort of the focus they were hoping for on the outstaffing stuff but I just don't have um a ton of experience with that so I do want to remind all of you right like if you're realizing that you're not happy somewhere try to understand like what it is about where you're working or the type of work or how you're being managed or or what like do some of that reflection for yourself try to understand that this thing says it's overheating okay I'm GNA wrap this up because apparently this camera is overheating um yeah I hope all of you the best and if you're

kind of struggling going through this stuff then do some of that reflection ction okay if you have questions leave them in the comments or send them to Dev leader on social media and I'll see you folks next time when my camera is not overheating take care