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Six months to land the right job holds for any job or field, remote or not. There's a lot of jobs available, but along with that you need to be picky - it can t

Six months to land the right job holds for any job or field, remote or not. There's a lot of jobs available, but along with that you need to be picky - it can take some time to find a competitive, ideal option.

gargarplex 9y ago
Let's say you take 6 months to find the competitive, ideal option. And you get an extra $20K in salary, going from say $100K to $120K (remote). So you sacrificed $50K in opportunity cost. End of year 1: job A $100k, job B $60K End of year 2: job A $200k, job B $180K End of year 3: job A $300k, job B $300K Of course if it's a startup, the odds are high that it would fold within three years. So unless it's a BigCo job that you are planning on sticking with... it's tough for me to make the argument that it's worth it to walk away from a decent but non-ideal offer. Employers know this and use this as leverage against you.
- wolco 9y ago
  6 months looking could mean someone is employed during this time period as well.
- cadab 9y ago
  Wouldn't the ideal be to keep working at the existing job, rather than quiting and looking for 6 months?
- TheCowboy 9y ago
  I agree with your point that it is wise for job seekers to consider these costs and that companies will take advantage of this. I also think it's a long-term mistake when companies do this. It's a problem because you end up with an employee who is now being paid below market rate. This is most effective against those who are not employed, but once they are employed they will be hearing from recruiters or start looking for the next job while still on the payroll. Because this company is unlikely to provide aggressive enough raises, their employees will be receptive to new offers. A year or two out, this employee gives 2 weeks notice. Was the win of saving the company a couple $10k worth it? Most likely not. If employers have trouble both finding and retaining talent, then this is a mistake to leverage this against unemployed candidates. If you don't have this problem you soon will once recruiters discover a company full of underpaid but qualified candidates. People leaving is also a signal to current employees that better deals exist somewhere else.
- RussianCow 9y ago
  You have a good point, but keep in mind that unemployment benefits help to cut back on the opportunity cost.
morgante 9y ago
I don't think 6 months is a typical developer job search, and that has nothing to do with being picky. Almost everyone worth working for is hiring constantly. Hence it's relatively straightforward to run a bunch of interview processes in parallel while still being quite picky about the offer you accept. In most cases, it's highly unlikely that a better option will materialize with additional time (in 99% of cases, it would have existed when you started).
- adrianN 9y ago
  It depends on where you live and how comfortable you are with moving to a different city. Not every city is San Francisco.
- fweespeech 9y ago
  Maybe I'm just a bad developer but it does take me 6 months to find any kind of pay/benefits bump. And no, it isn't easy to do it in parallel because I'm almost always employed so my bandwidth is about one interview a month.

gargarplex 9y ago

Let's say you take 6 months to find the competitive, ideal option. And you get an extra $20K in salary, going from say $100K to $120K (remote). So you sacrificed $50K in opportunity cost. End of year 1: job A $100k, job B $60K End of year 2: job A $200k, job B $180K End of year 3: job A $300k, job B $300K Of course if it's a startup, the odds are high that it would fold within three years. So unless it's a BigCo job that you are planning on sticking with... it's tough for me to make the argument that it's worth it to walk away from a decent but non-ideal offer. Employers know this and use this as leverage against you.

wolco 9y ago
6 months looking could mean someone is employed during this time period as well.
cadab 9y ago
Wouldn't the ideal be to keep working at the existing job, rather than quiting and looking for 6 months?
TheCowboy 9y ago
I agree with your point that it is wise for job seekers to consider these costs and that companies will take advantage of this. I also think it's a long-term mistake when companies do this. It's a problem because you end up with an employee who is now being paid below market rate. This is most effective against those who are not employed, but once they are employed they will be hearing from recruiters or start looking for the next job while still on the payroll. Because this company is unlikely to provide aggressive enough raises, their employees will be receptive to new offers. A year or two out, this employee gives 2 weeks notice. Was the win of saving the company a couple $10k worth it? Most likely not. If employers have trouble both finding and retaining talent, then this is a mistake to leverage this against unemployed candidates. If you don't have this problem you soon will once recruiters discover a company full of underpaid but qualified candidates. People leaving is also a signal to current employees that better deals exist somewhere else.
RussianCow 9y ago
You have a good point, but keep in mind that unemployment benefits help to cut back on the opportunity cost.

morgante 9y ago

I don't think 6 months is a typical developer job search, and that has nothing to do with being picky. Almost everyone worth working for is hiring constantly. Hence it's relatively straightforward to run a bunch of interview processes in parallel while still being quite picky about the offer you accept. In most cases, it's highly unlikely that a better option will materialize with additional time (in 99% of cases, it would have existed when you started).

adrianN 9y ago
It depends on where you live and how comfortable you are with moving to a different city. Not every city is San Francisco.
fweespeech 9y ago
Maybe I'm just a bad developer but it does take me 6 months to find any kind of pay/benefits bump. And no, it isn't easy to do it in parallel because I'm almost always employed so my bandwidth is about one interview a month.