How do you DRI your career in a bad market?

I started 2022 with a post in Qz – 5 signs it’s time to quit your job. The list is:

1. You’re not learning (and you want to be)
2. You’re learning coping mechanisms rather than skills
3. You feel morally conflicted about hiring
4. Your job is affecting your confidence
5. Your job is affecting you physically

I stand by this list, I do think this is a solid list of reasons to think about moving on. But three years later, the market is very different and there are two great reason not to quit.

1. How hard will it be to find another job?
2. Will that new job actually be any better?

A brief diversion that will make sense – I know I should do more weight training, but I really really love cardio. I keep meaning to do more but… the spin bike is right there, and so tempting. So I put off weight training, again.

I think tech workers in a good market, we often approached career growth that way. We know there are some set of things to do which might help us get what we want where we are, but recruiters are emailing and it’s easier to interview elsewhere instead. This goes particularly for under-indexed people, the latest McKinsey report on Women in the Workplace shows that advancement for women, and particularly women of color, is still moving slowly – and in some cases, regressing.

The current market is like… enforced weight training (or enforced spinning, if you have the opposite inclinations). It sucks, and it hurts, but it can also be an opportunity to expand your skills at maximizing the current situation rather than the skills to seek out a new one.

One of the specific things that I think is hard right now is the constraints we operate in. When organizations say “do more with less” that means individuals have more to do. When inflation goes up but wages stay stagnant, that means individuals – even those who are fine overall – have less discretionary income that can be used to save time, recharge, or invest in learning. When things overall feel risky, we’re more likely to be risk averse. If it was hard to do a side project before, when the market was better, it’s probably even harder when things are more difficult and more precarious.

Three suggestions to DRI your career in a bad market (without quitting):

• Take a longer view
• Get creative with what can you learn and where can you learn it
• Mine “opportunities” for Opportunity

Take a longer view

When you think about career goals, we often think about the external markers – we talk about getting the job title rather than doing the work, about publishing a book rather than writing it, about giving a talk rather than preparing a talk. This is totally fair – this is when the goal is “done” after all. But if you accepted that external markers are particularly hard to come by right now, that all the work you might do might come to nothing – what would you do?

• What would you prioritize just because you enjoy it?
• What groundwork could you lay for the future?
• What would you stop chasing – and where would you put that effort to better use?

In my book, I write about how this job is just a moment in your career. The same is true here – this market is just a moment in the overall arc of your career. Things may not return to where they were, but the way things are won’t last either. Software engineers have valuable skills that will continue to be needed. If you are in the fortunate position to be able to ride out this period, what do you want to be true at the end of it? What can be intrinsically motivating to you? Orient you? Find that, and hold on to it.

Get creative with what can you learn and where can you learn it

Before the pandemic, I used to love going to conferences. I enjoyed meeting people, I appreciated the insights I got, I liked the feeling of having given a talk (not so much everything that went up to that point, let’s gloss over that). I still like to attend the odd event, because I enjoy it, but in terms of professional development, it’s perhaps not the best ROI. Things that have better ROI for both money and time for me personally:

• Regular conversations with friends in the industry
• Books
• Podcasts
• More directed / focused learning (paid courses)

Maybe you also had your way of doing professional development, and now it’s more of a struggle to get it paid for or carve out the time, or whatever is holding you back. This doesn’t have to mean no more professional development. What it does mean is that you have to 1) be more clear about what you want to learn and why 2) get creative about how you do that, 3) navigate a possible (likely) lack of organizational support in order to prioritize the things that matter to you.

Yes, it will be harder, and yes it’s easy to be annoyed that your current employer isn’t supportive. But, your career is bigger than your current job, and it makes sense to prioritize accordingly.

Mine “opportunities” for Opportunity

Let’s get real, tech has always loved the trailing promotion, the whole “perform at the next level in order to advance”, and this has always generated bias in terms of the people who are allowed to do that, and those who have a harder time. For many of us, “do this and get promoted” was always kind of a gamble. In this market, you know the odds are even more stacked against you. Why bother?

In this market, there’s less Opportunity, and more “opportunity” – where you get the (additional) work, but not the job title, and certainly not the money. It’s easy – fair – to view this as a con, and not bother. That is certainly a valid option, and at times the correct one.

Sometimes though, the “opportunity” is an opportunity to negotiate, and to think about how to craft it in such a way that it furthers your career goals. This means you need to know what your career goals are. If you’re an IC with aspirations of being a manager that is a hard switch to make currently. But given the option, perhaps you can pick up some additional responsibility, and use it to build your resume in order to be in a stronger position when the market recovers. The trick is to do it in a way that does genuinely build your resume. So in this case, negotiation starts with looking at what is available to take, and crafting a piece of it with a clear narrative that you’re willing to take on. So less “I work as an IC and manage four random people my manager wanted to offload” and more “I run the sub team working on the $component, as a TLM”.

To be clear, I’m not on the side of organizations extracting labour they have not paid for. In my view, you can take the deal as long as it suits you to and you owe the organization nothing. Once you find a situation that will pay you for the work you’re doing, if you get a counter offer, remember you should also be owed back pay.

My bigger point, is that in this market, where down levels are rife, opportunity is scarcer and budgets are frozen, a moral stance might mean less progress for you overall. If that’s the right choice for you, great, but if you can get creative and make progress regardless, you can hopefully turn that progress into money down the line. Remember that job titles are inconsistent to the point of being meaningless, and you’re not obligated to reveal your salary when interviewing for your next job – I strive not to give advice but definitely don’t reveal your salary if you have reason to believe you’ve been underpaid.

Even in this market, some of us should still be very actively looking to move on. Remember the sunk cost fallacy – in good times when you can get what you want (title, money) elsewhere, but in bad times it feels more risky to give up “progress” – even if that progress is not rewarded. The meta point of all of these ideas is to figure out if you can make progress – even if it’s not recognized. If you can’t, then figuring out how to get yourself to a situation where you can make progress is job number one.

Coming back to external markers, these things are like the milestones by the side of the road. Occuring periodically, some places more frequently that others. The current market might be lighter on the milestones, but that doesn’t mean that you personally are making less progress. However in the absence of external validation, you need to maintain your own measures, and rely more on intrinsic motivation. This may be a bit harder, but that’s okay. You can do this. I believe in you.

If you liked this, you might also like my book.