Diablo 3: A Game (Kind Of) Worth Paying For

I took an unexpected break from blogging because some things started going on in my life that just made writing fall to the wayside. Not only was I dealing with some personal stuff and work had been kicking my ass, but there was one thing that started sucking up all my time at home.

In case you hadn’t heard, Diablo 3 (D3) was a highly anticipated game – but not by me. I hadn’t really played Diablo 2 at all so I wasn’t planning on loving this game. I wasn’t planning on buying it because it cost $60 and I have way too many games on my shelf that I bought and hated. On the other hand, after hearing how much my friends loved it, I might have given it a chance.

Either way, I didn’t have to make that choice because I had already bought World of Warcraft’s annual pass. What’s that? Well, World of Warcraft (WoW) is a game you pay for monthly. It’s about $15/month, depending if you subscribe to it monthly or pay for every 3 or 6 months. Blizzard (the creators) gave us the option of committing to pay for a year of WoW and we get D3 for free. Along with some other perks.

So, being the frugal people we are, we immediately agreed to do that. I still wasn’t planning on playing D3 much but when it came out, I figured I might as well try it. And I loved it way more than I expected.

A lot of gamers are actually hating on this game. They’re frustrated for a multitude of reasons ranging from one shot kills on inferno (the hardest level) to crazy auction house drama, etc. However, because my expectations were really low, I’m relatively pleased with this game. For me, the best part of the game is that Blizzard made it really easy to play with your friends.

It’s easy to add your friends by their email address and even easier to join their game. Up to 4 players can be in a game at once, and I find myself playing with people who I haven’t talked to in years. This is one of the reasons I love gaming and because D3 made it so easy to do just that, one of the main reasons I love the game.

Anyway, since this is a financial blog, here’s the bottom line.

Is Diablo 3 worth $60? Probably not, if you’re a hardcore gamer. On the other hand, if you are a hardcore gamer, you’ve probably already bought it, played it and now hate it. It’s definitely worth the $60 just to get the experience because you know gamers will be talking about this game for years to come.

But if you got D3 with the WoW annual pass, then of course it’s worth it. “Free” game? How can it not be? It’s been over a month and I’m still playing it every night – which is actually pretty huge for me. We’ll see how much longer this lasts but I’m still having a lot of fun in there.

Do you play any games? What are your favorite worth-the-money games?

10 Reasons Why You Should Leave Your Job

I read this article the other day that really struck home with me so I wanted to share it – especially after I wrote about how you need to find a job you love. Forbes broke down the top ten reasons why large companies fail to keep their best talent and these are all definitely things I’ve seen in my work experience so far. Here’s their list (and my comments):

1. Big Company Bureaucracy

Forbes explains that no one likes rules that make no sense. “When top talent is complaining along these lines, it’s usually a sign that they didn’t feel as if they had a say in these rules. ” This is exactly how I felt when I wrote my post (i.e. rant) about having to be “on time” at work. Rules that make no sense just make people resentful – especially if we have no say in it.

2. Failing to Find a Project for the Talent that Ignites Their Passion.

Luckily, this is one area I’m happy in. I like the project I’m working on right now but the company does view it as lower priority and I keep getting told that I need to finish it quickly so I can move onto their main project. It’s tough to hear because I feel like it’s a really important project – but they don’t understand that. Since I get to work on it anyway, I’ve learned to just ignore their complaints.

3. Poor Annual Performance Reviews

My manager was really good come review time but I found one process here that’s kind of strange – they don’t like to talk raises at the time of the review. Instead, a week later, they’ll come around with a card for each person saying thank you and what your new salary is. I asked my manager about it and he said that if you are unhappy with it, you can always bring it up afterwards. Not sure how well that conversation would go though.

4. No Discussion around Career Development.

This is definitely a must-have for me. I know I don’t want to be a developer forever even though I’m happy with it right now. If my manager wasn’t willing to talk about areas I could move into in the future, I would feel really frustrated. Good managers should encourage their people to grow and find out where their passions really lie.

5. Shifting Whims/Strategic Priorities.

Huge frustrations here. We get a lot of the “this new thing just came up, can we do it now?” type of questions and it becomes really hard to push back and explain to them about priorities. Luckily, the new director of web seems to be doing a good job of pushing back on these kind of things – I can only hope this helps us out in the future.

6. Lack of Accountability and/or telling them how to do their Jobs.

For awhile, my manager was very hands-off with me, letting to do my project by myself. This sounds nice but I really needed someone to hold me accountable and also to help understand the project I was working on (which he didn’t at that point). If I was working with at least one other person on this project, that wouldn’t have been a problem but as it was, I was working alone.

I ended up talking to my manager about it and explaining how stressed out I was because this was basically all on me. I needed someone else to bounce ideas off of and talk to about the methods I’m using to solve the problems. He completely understood and became a lot more involved in the project which really helped to take the stress off of me. He’s good about not micro-managing so I never resented the help at all.

7. Top Talent likes other Top Talent.

This is something I don’t feel we have at my company. At my last one, everyone (other than managers) were software developers so there were definitely senior devs to learn from. Here, I don’t feel like we have any senior devs – and we definitely are missing that top talent in our testing team. Our QA team does the best they can but they didn’t have any QA experience when coming in so that’s just a huge limitation. I wish we could have a senior dev – or at least a senior architect of some sort – so I definitely agree with this point.

8. The Missing Vision Thing.

My company has a vision and it definitely helps. I felt my last company didn’t have as much of a vision – they knew where they wanted to get to but their plan for getting there was all over the place. They kept dabbling in different areas hoping that something would stick but, of course, it didn’t. A company’s vision is definitely important as is a solid plan to get there.

9. Lack of Open-Mindedness.

This is probably my biggest thing I need to stay at a company. When I’m asked to do something, I tend to question it a lot so I can get a better understanding. I want to know what business problem it’s trying to solve, why is the solution this and not solution Y, how does it affect other areas, etc. If I had a manager who would not be willing to listen and explain it to me – and raise my questions up the chain if I poke holes in anything – I would not want to stick around. I need my opinion to be valued and if it isn’t, well, it’s not the right place for me.

10. Who’s the Boss?

I’ve been lucky here. I loved my first two managers, didn’t love my third but I didn’t hate her either, and I love my manager now. None of them are perfect but they could always be a lot worse. Honestly, if my current manager left and someone replaced him who was close-minded, micro-managing,  unsupportive, a bad leader, etc, I would be out of here ASAP. It’s just one of those things that I wouldn’t be able to deal with.

If you want to read more, here’s a great follow up article to this Forbes article.

What do you think of these points? Have you experience these things are your job? Do you feel like these are valid reasons why top talent doesn’t stick around?

Top 10 Financial Decisions Every Young Professional Should Make

Everyone has their own list of the top 10 financial decisions a young professional should make so I wanted to share mine. This comes both from experience as well as many articles I’ve read on the subject. If you’re just starting off in the workforce, here are some financial decisions to keep in mind.

1. Choose a job that you love – and if you don’t love it, find another job.

I count this as a financial decision because this could lead to a lot of differences in your finances later on. If you love your job, not only will you work harder at it thus increasing your chances to succeed and incidentally make more money, but you will also be more satisfied with your life. This leads to not needing as much materialistic things and therefore, increasing your net worth.

Okay, that might be an unrealistic description but really, you will be so much happier if you have a job you love. I’ve seen many people enter the workplace and not like their job – but not realize they should move on. Coming from school, you tend to think that you’re “stuck” because you made a choice to be there but you don’t have to be.

If there aren’t any huge problems that are making you miserable, give it a year or two. If you still aren’t happy, move on!

2. Create a realistic budget

Once you have a job, you’ll know how much income you can expect per month. After a month or two, you’ll also know how much your recurring bills will be. I’ll write a post soon explaining how I created my budget but for now, here’s a simple plan:

  • Sum up all of your necessary bills (water, electric, etc). These are your needs.
  • Sum up all of your unnecessary bills (cable, Netflix, gym, etc). These are your wants.
  • Subtract the first two totals from your monthly income. You should still have some disposable income left as well as be able to save a little. If you can’t, shave some off of your wants – or needs if you have to.

Told you it would be a simplified plan.

3. Choose a place to live that is within budget

Hopefully, you’ve already done this. But in case you just calculated your budget and realized that you can’t afford the place you’ve been living in since college – or you just want to move out now – it’s time to figure out how much you can afford. A good rule of thumb is that you should be spending less than 25% of your take-home monthly pay on your rent or mortgage payment.

4. Automate your bills as much as possible

Once you figure out what all your bills are, automate them as much as possible. If you’re comfortable with it, set your electric, gas, cell phone, etc. bills to all be automatically withdrawn from your account. Personally, I don’t like this because I like to see how much my bill fluctuates every month.

I “automate” it by setting a monthly reminder in my calendar and having a separate folder with all my bills bookmarked. When that reminder goes off, I click through each bill and pay it right away – because of course, you should only be spending what you can afford.

5. Automate a savings plan

Now that you have your budget set up, it’s time to start saving! I recommend using ING (feel free to e-mail me if you’d like a referral link). They have a great automatic savings plan you can set up and just have money transferred weekly/bi-monthly/whenever you get your paychecks to targeted savings accounts.

6. Contribute the max to a 401K to get the employer match

If your company offers a 401K and the company will match a certain percentage, this is the best retirement plan you can do. Basically, it’s free money! Always at least put in the minimum needed to get the maximum match. For example, my company offers a 4% match if I contribute 5% of my income. So of course, I set my paychecks to take out 5% before I even get it and put it in my 401K. Since I never see it, it makes it easier to deal with – plus, I know I’m getting extra money contributed by the company.

7. Open a Roth IRA

Once you contribute to your 401K, the next step to ensure you’re set for retirement (the best time to start planning for this is as a young professional), it’s time to open a Roth IRA. I’ve talked before about my reasons for opening one and there’s a lot of good information out there about why you should have one.

8. Figure out a payment plan to pay off all debt

Chances are you have student loan debt. If you don’t, congratulations but I hate you right now. A great way to be able to do #1 (find a job you love) is to not have to feel like you are completely dependent on your salary. Therefore, you should strive to be debt-free. Student loan debt might seem like a lot but break it down. Figure out which are your high interest loans and if you can consolidate them to get a lower interest rate. Calculate how long it would take before you are rid of that debt if you keep paying the minimum payment – or if you bumped your payment up a little. Create a plan and stick to it from the very beginning when you have to start paying it back. It’ll make it easier to feel like that’s the “necessary” amount to pay.

9. Understand credit card debt – and why it’s important to not have any.

Start living by the mentality: if you can’t afford it, don’t buy it. I’ve known a lot of people who will start putting things on credit cards just because they can – and then be horrified at the repercussions of having to pay all of that back. This can keep you in debt for years to come (see #7) with extraordinary high interest rates – not to mention the hit your credit will take.

If you have extenuating circumstances (e.g. medical problems), look into other options. If you have to take out a personal loan, that still most likely will be a better option than trying to put those bills on credit cards. Find something with a low interest rate that you can pay back in a reasonable amount of time.

10. Don’t limit yourself too much.

I know they say the mentality of “you’re only young once” is bad but that’s easier said than done. Sometimes, you just really want to take that vacation to Cancun or that cruise through Mexico. And as long as you have a budget (see #2) and can afford it (#8), sometimes you just have to splurge on yourself. It helps keep you motivated to work harder and do better so you have the financial means to do these things in the future.

It’s true, you’re only young once. However, it’s not an excuse to be financially irresponsible. If you make the right financial decisions, you can still spoil yourself and enjoy finally making money – instead of just having student loans to live off!

These are some heavy rules to follow but, over time, they are something to strive for. Do you agree that these are important financial decisions to make? What have you done so far that’s on the list? Do you have any other rules that should be included?

Link Love: MBA, Toilets, Shopoholics And More!

Things are finally starting to get back to normal at work – or at least I’m starting to get over the punching a clock issue. It’s been a really busy day so here’s just a quick Link Love:

Most frequent commenters:
Top Referring sites:

Thanks everyone for visiting and for all of your great comments!

The 30 Day Subway Challenge

So G and I love to do mini challenges – where for a month, we challenge ourselves to do something. We’ve done no junk food challenges, spending challenges, exercise challenges, etc. This time, we’ve been talking about doing another challenge…but I can’t decide if this is a good idea or not.

G has some weight to lose (about 50 pounds) and I wouldn’t mind losing a few either but the main goal of this challenge is for us to become healthier. We’ve been exercising pretty consistently and trying to eat healthy but it’s the latter point that’s hard for us.

We were watching Biggest Loser the other day and Jared came on to talk about his experience with Subway. Basically, by eating Subway for lunch and dinner, he was able to lose A LOT of weight. So for fun, I proposed this idea:

30 Day Subway Challenge

The Rules:

  • For lunch and dinner for 30 days, you can only eat a 6″ low-fat sub (think: their Fresh Fit menu).
  • Snacks have to be predefined as “healthy”. Things like baked chips that Subway offers, yogurt, fruit, etc.
  • We can define our exceptions at the beginning of the month. For example, we already have a commitment in June to go to a party where we would be allowed to eat (not gorge obviously). But any new plans that come up, we’d have to say no to it involved eating anywhere other than Subway.

The nice thing about this challenge is that it’s actually really cost effective. A lot of 12″ subs only cost $5 – even at $7 if you splurge, we’re talking about $7 per day for each of us. That works out to be $210 for the month which is less than I spend on food alone. Typically, my eating out budget for the both of us is $300/month and groceries are $300/month (I rarely hit this). I don’t count the money he spends on us eating out. So $420 for both of us for a month would be great financially.

What do you think? It definitely would be a challenge since I have a hard time eating the same thing for 2 days straight but that’s what these kind of things are supposed to be about. Obviously, this isn’t a lifetime change but it seems like a fun sort of challenge.

Do you think you would be able to eat Subway for 30 days straight? Would you want to?

How Do You Feel About Punching a Clock?

I think this has been my longest absence since I started this blog. I’ve been dealing with some work issues and now I come to you guys to get other opinions. I know sometimes I can be stubborn and feel like I’m in the right when I’m not so let me know your opinions on this.

Let’s start with the question so you can form an opinion before hearing my point of view:

The Issue

What do you think about companies that require you to be “on time” even as a salary employee? For example, the company says you must have a shift (like 8-5) and be there at 8am. If you’re going to be more than 10 minutes late, you must contact your manager and they have to send out an email telling the department you will be late. Of course, they’ll also notice if you are even those 10 minutes late so really, you have to get to work on the minute – or early.

Here’s the catch: you are also expected to stay late, work nights or weekends as needed to either finish projects or fix issues.

Do you feel like it’s okay for the company to request you to be “on time”?

My Point of View

My last job was too flexible. People would come into work anytime between 6 and 11 and leave anywhere from 3 to 7. It made scheduling meetings really difficult and was rather annoying. I liked it here at first because everyone has a general time they come in. Little did I realize that these are actually EXACT times we have to be in.

I start work at 8am and I typically arrive sometime between 8 and 8:20. If I’m going to be any more than 20 minutes late, I message my manager who doesn’t send out an email because honestly, he doesn’t give a crap. He’d be fine if I arrived anytime between 8 and 9am. I don’t like to rush in the morning and don’t feel like I should stress because I’ve put a lot of overtime in so to me, there’s no need to try to get here right at 8am.

However, yesterday, the COO (Chief Operating Officer) who has infiltrated our department to try to “help out” apparently saw me coming in late (8:15). She told her assistant to talk to my manager to talk to me about getting here on time. So my manager pulled me into his office yesterday and told me that he felt really bad about having to talk to me about this because he doesn’t care about this whole being on time thing – and he knows I’m working hard to get my stuff done.

We bitched about it for a bit and the only thing that helped was that he was on my side but felt he had no “power” to talk to the higher ups about it – which is something he’s pissed about. I was really frustrated about this for a lot of reasons. Here are my points:

  • Salary and hourly employees need to be treated differently. Of course, hourly employees need to clock in/clock out but they also aren’t expected to work overtime (or they get paid for it). We, however, are expected to work overtime as needed.
  • It feels like they don’t trust their employees. By saying we HAVE to be here at a certain time (without being hourly), it feels like we’re being treated as children. From what I hear, they think that if they say we can be here any time in like a half hour window, they think we will take advantage of that and come in whenever we feel like it.
  • There is no good argument for me being here at 8 vs 8:15. Nothing happens in those 15 minutes that is so urgent if I’m not here. I’m not in customer service, people aren’t waiting for me to get something started, etc.
  • I know other tech jobs are not like this.

The last point is one of my hardest things to deal with. In developer jobs (or most tech jobs), there is no concept of having to be “on time”. Hours are flexible because they know things come up. I posted on Facebook asking for opinions and got plenty:

Question:
To all my Facebook friends who have technical jobs: are you required to be at work at a certain time? Or is your job more flexible (can be 15 minutes late, anytime between certain hours, etc)?

Answers:

“Our work is pretty flexible, i typically get in anywhere between 9 and 10, but usually work the hours. Once in a while though we are required to get in earlier/stay later for various things.”
“Flexible I can show up anytime before 10 am usually”
“Must be in by 9:30am, preferably lunch between 12pm to 1:30pm. We can be a bit late for special circumstances, out for errands/appointments, work from home upon notice to the team/boss.”
“Flexible. I get in to work somewhere between 8 and 9.”
“In my position we do what makes the client(s) happy. We can work from home when appropriate but sometimes have to get reallly dressed up and be very punctual.”
“He works on “flex time” has to make 80 hours in a 15 day period but it doesn’t matter how he does that. He can come in as late as he wants, early, etc and work as long, or little, as he wants.”

The hard thing is knowing that other tech jobs wouldn’t be like this – and it makes me not want to stay here. It seems like such a small thing and in most jobs, being on time is expected. However, the stress of trying to get here on time makes me stubborn in wanting to leave on time as well and not work any overtime. I feel like I’m being petty because I feel like saying, “Ok, you want me to be here at 8am on the dot? I’ll be leaving right at 4:30 on the dot and don’t expect me to log in from home at night to help out.”

Not to mention the fact that we HAVE to take a lunch from 12-12:45 and you better not be a minute late coming back from that. That’s something I really hate – when I’m coding, I don’t like to stop if I’m in the middle of something. But I have to stop at 12 because otherwise, when am I going to get a break? It’s not like I can work through lunch and then leave at 1pm. It’s just another frustration.

I think it comes down to management style but I just can’t wrap my head around this mentality. I asked one of the COO’s lackeys about it and she tried to explain to me how they can’t treat departments differently (e.g. customer service/warehouse gets here on time, so should we). I tried to explain that they treat us differently anyway because they don’t ask those departments to stay late to fix issues that come up and she just kept trying to be like, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal to ask people to be here on time. It’s hard to argue that.

So friends, please help me understand this. Do you agree with having to figuratively punch a clock even when you are salaried and expected to work overtime? Would you be ok with this?

Link Love: Buying a Car, Keeping Food Costs Low And More

I haven’t done a Link Love in awhile now but since it’s part of my May Goals to keep doing this consistently, here’s the next edition! This features posts that I’ve enjoyed from the last few weeks.

Most frequent commenters:
Top Referring sites:

Thanks everyone for visiting and for all of your great comments!

May Goals

I totally forgot that I need to check my April Goals – and set new goals for May until I saw similar posts on a lot of other PF blogs. See, this is why blogging helps you keep your priorities straight.

Here’s how I did on my April Goals:

  1. Activate my credit card - Fail. I’m done putting this one on my list. Obviously, I don’t need this credit card anymore and I’m not really going to use it even if I do activate it.
  2. Sign up for a 5K - Fail. I forgot. I’ll sign up this month.
  3. Change from Bank of America to Schwab - Pass! Kind of. I did sign up with Schwab but then I really didn’t like how difficult it was to link external bank accounts so I also signed up with Ally. Although I haven’t changed over completely, I figure I can take my time since I’m not eating any BoA fees yet.
  4. Get an Alexa ranking below 400,000 - Pass! I’m actually really surprised by this – I’m at 278,648 right now. I can’t believe it went down so much. Thanks everyone for all the support!
  5. Spend only $300 eating out this month - Pass! This one was tough but I managed to do it although it’s because I was sick and then G was sick. Fun stuff. I only spent $243 this month.
And time for my May Goals:
  1. Get an Alexa ranking below 200,000 – Going for the gold this time! When I started the Yakezie challenge, I actually didn’t think I could do it but it finally seems in reach!
  2. Sign up for a 5K - See April Goals. I’m definitely signing up this month.
  3. Workout 3 times a week – I’ve been going to the gym once a week for Zumba and occasionally a second or third time but I really want to get in the habit of doing this.
  4. Donate clothes –  As I mentioned in my tax refund shopping spree post, I have clothes set aside to donate now. I know they’ll just sit in my closet forever so I really want to donate them this month.
  5. Post at least 3 times a week - Work has been so busy lately that I haven’t had a chance to write as much as I’d like. Hopefully, this goal will help me get my act together. Even if I just post twice and have my Friday link love up, that would be an improvement over this month.

What are your goals in May?

Tax Refund Shopping Spree

I decided to try really hard to stick to my budget in April unlike when I completely fell off the bandwagon in March. But then yesterday, we decided to go shopping. I haven’t been shopping in a really long time but luckily, I had already decided that $300 of my tax refund would go towards buying some new clothes. So off we went to the outlets for a tax refund shopping spree!

I ended up spending about $200 total – $150 at Old Navy and $50 at Aerosoles. Here’s my haul:

4 Workout tops (2 for $20):

1 pair of workout pants ($22):

2 dresses ($15 each)

And as a bonus, a picture of me trying on the (wrinkled) pink dress:

2 pairs of flip flops (2 for $5)

1 pair of wedge sandals ($8)

1 bikini ($30)

And from Aerosoles ($50):

In order to feel better about buying so much, I decided to go through my closet and put away old clothes that I don’t wear anymore. I put it in bags for now and will leave it for a few weeks – if I find I never go in and get anything, I’ll donate them. Here’s my new donation pile:

Overall, I think my tax refund shopping spree went pretty well. I stuck to the outlet versions of my favorite stores and although I don’t think I hit any huge sales, I’m happy with what I ended up with. My goal was to buy more workout clothes (I barely have any), some dresses that are not low cut (stupid old dresses) and summer shoes – and I got it all! And I still have an extra $100 left for a future shopping trip.

When’s the last time you went shopping? What is your favorite store?

The Difference Between Tech and Non-Tech Companies

There’s a lot of different things to consider when looking for a job – and as a software engineer, a lot of differences to be aware of when deciding to work for tech vs non-tech companies. I used to work at a large tech corporation as a software engineer and now work at a retail company as a web developer. When I was first interviewing for this job, I never really thought of the fact that this wasn’t a tech company. If you’re trying to make a similar decision of whether to work for a tech or non-tech company, these are some things to consider (While these might not be true in every case, this is my experience.)

Lack of a Flexible Attitude

Tech companies tend to have very flexible attitude about when you come in to work, when and how long your lunches are, taking “breaks” (i.e. talking about non-related work stuff throughout the day, randomly going on walks/coffee runs in the afternoon, etc) and so on. Non-tech companies can have a different attitude about this – because a lot of the employees may be hourly, they don’t have the same flexibility. Since the company can’t really treat hourly and salary employees differently when it comes to all of these things, you end up having to follow the “rules” more.

For example, at my last company, we could take our lunch whenever we wanted and for as long as we wanted (as long as there weren’t important meetings we were missing). We would sometimes go out to lunch at 11:30 and not be back until 2pm. We would go for walks in the afternoon around 3 for half hour – or longer if we decided to walk to Starbucks or Yogurtland.

At my current company, there’s no way we could do this. Our lunch is set from 12-12:45pm and everyone follows that. Luckily, my manager is flexible so he doesn’t mind if we come back a little late for lunch – but for the most part, we have to follow it. Whereas before, I came in anywhere between 9-10am, now I have a set schedule and I’m suppose to be in by 8am (although usually I can’t seem to make it in until 15-20 minutes later).

It’s a lot more rigid than I like but in some ways, it’s also nice. For example, at my last company, people would come in around 11am and others would leave at 3pm. This made setting up meetings impossible – our available time frame was so short.  I do miss being able to take a walk in the afternoon though as I feel like with programming, you have to take breaks like that to be productive, but I’ve offset that a little by taking a walk during lunch.

Lack of Understanding Technical Challenges

While the first issue is more of an inconvenience that I can learn to work with, this is something that I think management at non-tech companies needs to work on. Here are some examples of this I’ve seen:

“Here’s a new feature we’ll need done. *shows a mock-up* How long do you think it will take?”

And they hold you to that estimate. If you explain that there’s no way you can know without detailed requirements or try to give them just a range, they don’t like that. Same goes with bugs; if there’s an issue, they will come to you and ask how long it will take to fix it – before you even have a chance to look into what the cause is.

I’m sure some non-tech companies have management that is more knowledgeable about these kind of challenges, but at my company, this is the analogy we use:

“They think in terms of manpower. If you can have one guy unload a truck in an hour then 6 guys can unload the truck in 10 minutes. They think it’s the same for development – you can estimate the time exactly for each task.”

We’re trying to help them understand why we have those kind of challenges but it’s a hard mindset to change. It’s something to have in mind when you’re looking at non-tech companies, something I never thought of during the interview process.

Lack of Progress

The main attitude I’m seeing is this:

“We already can do it so why put more effort in/buy new technology just so we can do it with less errors/more efficiently?

They very much are the business users who only care about the end result – not so much the process that goes into getting there. So if the process is inefficient or causes you to make a lot of errors along the way, as long as you fix them before you give them the end product, they won’t care.

Our platform we are using was created back in the late 1990s. They actually bought it in early 2007 which blows my mind since it should have been obviously out of date by then. But from what I hear, they didn’t really have a technical person at the time so they didn’t know that. And now, 5 years later, they are reluctant to upgrade because what we have works – at least the visible end-product works.

We’re slowly pushing them to understand that we need better technology underneath but it’s a long and frustrating battle. Sometimes, it doesn’t even seem worth it but I know in the end it will be.

Lack of Technical People

This one may seem obvious but I didn’t really think about it before joining the company. In non-tech companies, chances are the amount of technical people is pretty small. We’re limited to an IS department and Web department (where I work), and even in the Web department, we only have 5 developers. It’s a small team and not only does this mean very few people to get the work done but also very few people to talk to about programming issues.

In development, you really need to work with someone else on a project to throw ideas back and forth and make sure the path you are taking is the best one. Working on a project by yourself is difficult for a multitude of reasons but it is something that’s hard to avoid in an environment like this.

I don’t want to be completely negative about non-tech companies so here are some of the positives:

  • Variety of departments – I didn’t work at headquarters so maybe this is just me but my last job consisted of technical project teams and some salespeople. This one has all kinds of departments – marketing, merchandising, vendor relations, accounting, etc. It’s so interesting to see what other departments do.
  • Variety of people – I have to admit, developers are a certain kind of people. I’m learning how to work with all different kinds – especially non-technical business people that I didn’t really understand before. It’s a great experience.
  • Variety of projects - I love the products that my company produces which is one reason I love working for them. I believe in the products so I can put up with a lot more crap. The products aren’t technical at all but I wouldn’t have this experience if I didn’t take the chance.
  • Variety of experiences - Part of having a good career is having all different kinds of experiences. I’m not sure if I have to stay at this company for a really long time but I know that I’m becoming a better developer and a better team member due to this experience.
There are many differences you should consider when deciding what kind of company to work for. These are just a few frustrations to be aware of – and some great things to ask the company that you are considering. Just remember, experience means a lot so sometimes it’s worth it to take the chance and just do it.