Hey, what's up?
John Sonmez here from simpleprogrammer.com.
Today, I have a question.
This is a good one.
It's not what you think.
I wish it was different than this, but the title is really, really good.
It's from Stephane.
I think it's Stephanie.
It's either Stephanie or Stephane.
I'm going to do a Stephane.
Stephane is okay he says.
It's okay.
Stephane is okay.
Looks or technical merits for career.
That's the title, but it's not what you think, like I said, but it's still good.
He says, "Hi, John.
What is the better career move: Choosing a job in a company/project which looks appealing
(good reputation, big name, shiny startup, big project) but technically not great, using
old tech, or not so sexy company/project but using a lot of great new tech?
To which point?
Not talking responsibilities here, just technical skills.
Is it worth quitting for the first or the second?"
I'll add some of the background he has.
"I think I have both on my resume and it feels like people/interviewers care more about shiny
company no matter what I did there than the other company where I worked on the latest
tech and did a lot of cool things with it, sometimes to the point where I can feel them
bored right when I say the name of the company.
I thought you needed to work with new tech to help your career but just having a good
name.
The resume seems to help more.
I'm actually trying to make a career decision facing the situation, choosing between sexy
story with little technical interest or experience on a great tech, not so sexy."
Not so sexy.
Okay.
I got a couple thoughts on this.
You've stumbled on important fact of life, my friend, which is that looks matter, which
is that the world is superficial, which is that appearances are sometimes more important
at a surface level than actual content and depth.
Oh, gosh.
Makes me sick to think that we live in such a world.
We should just burn everything down and pick it.
I'm sorry.
That's how it is.
That's how life is.
Where does that leave us?
I'm being a little bit sarcastic, but there's truth to this.
I mean don't judge a book by its cover, but everyone does judge a book by its cover.
If you want a bestselling book, you got to have a good cover.
By the way, want a book with a good cover?
You can check out my Complete Software Developer's Career Guide.
I spent a lot of money and time on that cover in order to maximize the sales.
It does matter, right?
Where do we go here?
There's a few different ways to think about this and to talk about this.
You're right.
Probably, if you have a Microsoft in your resume or LinkedIn, or a Google or an Apple,
people are going to assume that you're brilliant just because you got in there.
If you have a Harvard Law degree, that's probably pretty good than some other random university.
The question becomes, right, do you wear the Prada bag?
The Guccis?
Do you get the Prada shoes?
You know, the designer brand?
How much do you value the functionality, the value of a thing, versus the appearance of
it?
This is a tough question.
I mean this is definitely something that you have to think about in your career, but you
have to realize like that people's perceptions are mostly what's going to rule the day.
In my opinion, if I'm trying to rise up to ranks in the corporate ladder, honestly, I'm
going for the looks over the tech.
I mean I'm learning the tech on my—I'm trying to get the best of both worlds.
Just because—I worked at some kind of big shiny companies.
I worked at HP.
It used to be shinier than it is.
Now, it's not so shiny but you get a certain amount of respect if you worked at HP if that's
on your resume because it's a big Fortune 500 company.
At least it was a major player at one time.
It's not as much anymore.
When I worked there, sometimes we'd work on some pretty crappy tech and it wasn’t the
cutting-edge stuff.
It wasn’t the latest and greatest stuff, but I kept up to date.
I did side projects.
I've done some videos on doing side projects, which you can check out here, but I kept up
to date on that because that—because I know that I'm responsible for my own education
and my career.
I chose—maybe you choose a shiny company but you keep up on the latest technology yourself
so that you're cutting-edge.
You do a side project.
You do stuff like that.
Now, not everyone is going to judge you—judge something based on the name, but I'll tell
you that like having a Google or an Apple, or a Facebook or whatever on your resume,
that's going to benefit you in your career.
It absolutely is.
It's going to make it really easy for you to get any job you want in the future.
It's true.
It's a good career move to do that.
You only really need one of those darlings on there.
I mean once you have the Harvard Law degree, it doesn’t matter.
You don’t need to get Princeton and Yale on there too or professor emeritus at Oxford
University.
It doesn’t matter.
You don't need all of those things.
Yes, you'd have a strong resume if you had Google, Facebook and Yahoo on there.
Maybe not Yahoo, but maybe.
I don’t know.
You don’t need to like collect all these things.
Again, you going out.
I'll give you an example.
You're going out in Vegas.
You don’t have to have an entire wardrobe of Armani suits.
You just need one.
You go out for a night.
You got some Prada shoes and Armani suit or whatever, you look like a million bucks, but
you don’t have to have a whole wardrobe.
You don’t have to spend $200,000 on a wardrobe.
You see what I'm saying?
That's the same thing when you go to an interview.
When you go to an interview, you're just going in there one time to impress them and then
that's it.
Don't like devote your whole career in looking shiny.
That's silly.
That's ridiculous.
That doesn’t have any substance, but don’t neglect at the same time that people are superficial
and that they're going to judge by names and that the shiny is going to have appeal and
attract.
Have your one Armani suit.
You see what I'm saying?
That's your nice tailored fitted suit and when you go out on the town or you go to a
wedding, or whatever you're doing, like go and wear that and you'll look sharp and you'll
look pristine, but don't invest your whole life and everything on all of that stuff.
You see what I'm saying?
That's what I would say here and recognize that and it's still up to you to develop your
technical skills.
No matter what job that you're at, it's still up to you.
Spend the time regardless of whatever job you're at that you invest in your future and
your education, and you're always learning and you'll have the best of both worlds.
That's how I would mix this.
Other people might play it differently.
If you're highly skilled technically, if you have built your own reputation online and
stuff like that, then maybe you don’t care as much.
If you're not going to be a career developer, if you're like, "I just want to make some
money and learn, and then I'm going to build my own business," then don't worry about the
Google or the Apple.
Pick the technology that's going to serve you best.
There's different paths in life.
If you're climbing the corporate ladder, you probably want to have a little bit shiny on
there.
It will probably help you.
If you worry about job security, it's going to help you some.
Ultimately though, you got to have the skills to pay the bills.
That's what it's going to take.
Don’t sacrifice, like I said, don't sacrifice here and just get the veneers because you're
going to have problems in the future if you do that.
All right.
That's all I got for you today.
If you have a question for me, you can email me at john@simpleprogrammer.com and I will
try to answer your question.
It will probably come in the form of a YouTube video.
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Take care.