As I was unhappy with my compensation at OANDA, I started exploring other opportunities. That’s when I first started working with agency recruiters.
As compensation was my main focus for this change, I was easily convinced by a very experienced recruiter to take the offer from PaymentUs, which came with a 44% increase in my base salary.
PaymentUs had much more of a traditional business setup, and its office was a bit remote, a 25+ minute drive from home. But these felt like worthy sacrifices at the time.
The Work
Software Engineer (Apr 2016 – May 2016)
I only lasted 3 weeks at the company. There were so many red flags from day 1.
Here are a few that stood out:
- They only allowed Windows laptops.
- They used git as version control, but most people didn’t know how to use it and were terrified of merge conflicts. Rebase was banned, no matter what.
- The way they did code reviews was to take a screenshot of the diff, and send it around via emails to recipients of the author’s choosing. 🤯
- Their software architecture involved a “core” component and an extremely large number of “plug-ins” which were “owned” by individual engineers and required no code reviews.
- They had a “Software Architect” person who went around the office and debated people who disagreed with him, using his days of programming on punch cards as the main argument for everything.
- They had a “Project Manager” person who would literally come by my desk every day to check in on my progress.
- They didn’t tell me there was a dress code, and gave me a serious warning when they saw me wearing jeans in the office.
Exit
As I discovered more and more of the red flags in my first couple of weeks, I handed in my two weeks’ notice on the Wednesday morning of my third week.
By noon, I was escorted out of the building by their VP. I drove straight to the beach to rest.
Takeaways
- Don’t make compensation the main goal in a job search.
- Agency recruiters can be extremely helpful, but ultimately I need to make my own decisions about my job. Their incentives tend to be one-sided, as they typically only get paid if you accept a job.
- I started developing a series of questions to ask the company during the interview process, which evolved into this list that I’m still using to this day.
- Be skeptical of people who brag about programming on punch cards.
People
I made one friend — Dennis, who introduced me to React.js.