To keep a long story short, I have a friend who is in my graduating class.

He currently works for a research lab, doing scripting etc for them in various languages (he uses a lot of python/ruby iirc).

Apparently, when he originally went searching for full time employment, he actually considered the place I got hired at. Before he made any commitment though, he decided against it.

His reasoning was "It would be harder to find a job later down the line with the skills you would learn from that job."



It got me to thinking (a little bit), but I pose the question to you all:

Does the totality of what you will learn/do at a job majorly impact whether or not you want to work there?

At the current time, inexperienced me feels that it shouldn't matter terribly what you learn at a job, so long as you are learning something.

If you have the ability to pick up and use a language relatively easily, then will it really hurt you down the line if you spent x years working at some place that uses some niche language or framework?

Curious as to how you all feel.

it's a mix of factors. pay, environment, location, work, networking, etc. if something is a negative, you need extra compensation in the other factors.

i would be unlikely to join a company doing cobol/fortran unless they offered some serious compensation.

especially for your first job, work experience is important. if you graduated college in CS and have 10 years experience digging ditches or being a QA, it'll be hard to get a decent programming job.

how long you spend there and your background is another issue. if you already have 10 years of java experience, taking a 6 month or 1 year gig in something obscure isn't going to hurt you. or if you're gonna spend your entire career there, that's fine too.

the company i joined had me working on "obscure" java 1.3 for 5-10 year old windows mobile devices. i joined because they were going to be moving to android, but it never happened. only this past 1-2 years i got to work on some more interesting stuff. i've been learning stuff on my own time to make up for the lack of experience on the job. Nobody wants to hire a "senior" java developer who's done nothing but java 1.3 and AWT, you know?

That's a huge question with a lot of subjectivity. There are a LOT of potential variables. Keep in mind that I'm not a programmer/developer, these thoughts are coming from an IT mindset. I do a lot of automation work, but would never claim to do any more than some casual scripting.

I think it depends on what you want to do with your career. If you're into future planning and have a career ladder and progression planned out, then yes it should be a determining factor in whether or not to take a job. If you know that most of your job is going to be building custom macros to integrate with M$ office for a specific process, would you take it knowing that it's only useful to a select (rare) subset of employers? Or would you rather take a job knowing that you'd be doing a lot of different things, maybe for less pay, that would better prepare you for other, more advanced and better paying, roles in the future? Personally, with all other factors equal, I'd go with whatever looked more fun and challenging.

And this isn't just relevant to IT and programming, I think it applies to any career field. For a while, I worked scaffolding in NYC. The company I worked for had the contract with the public school system for Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. All we did were small, square, brownstone buildings, maybe 6 stories tall but usually smaller. However, the owner of the company was in contract negotiation for a contract that would have given us several churches as well. As rumor of this got around, we had an influx of guys who knew that union workers who had steeple and spire experience could command a higher salary. These guys took a lower paying job with us for the potential experience that would create a higher earning potential going forward.

Thanks for the replies. It seems that it does indeed appear to be a factor, but one of many.

This will be my first real world job, so pretty much any experience is new/exciting etc.

I don't believe I will be in QA, as they have specific jobs for those things. My actual title is software engineer.

The biggest reason I wanted to work there is because I knew a few of the employees already (one of them is a really good friend), and they always dish on how awesome the place is to work at.

My original 'goal' with CS was to eventually work for the NOAA/NASA doing something around weather, but over time I realized that the whole weather thing is more of a hobby. I might go back and get a degree in meteorology someday instead.

Assuming this place is as awesome as it sounds, I really don't have any plans to ever leave.

I can relate to that. I was about to go to school for marine biology but I decided on my other passion of computers. I can't tell which one is a hobby and which is a goal. Haha.

Good question mate. I look forward to reading more testimonials.

Keep in mind, experience is experience... That being said, its hard to get anywhere with none.

Some experience isnt as good as other of course, But, any experience is a major asset in climbing the ladder.

Sometimes you gotta start at the bottom and work your way up you gotta put the grind in.

I've been considering a few different positions to take after graduation this semester.

I've been offered a low paying web developer job (~37/year) and also an IT technician job (~45k/year).

Web Developers make much more money down the line after a few years of work experience. I could go from 37k to 60k in ~3-5 years. Whereas with a tech job I might slowly increase and jump from 45 to maybe 50k in a few years or 55k if I move up the chain quickly.

On the other hand, with the technician experience I could also go back and get my MBA in a few years and possibly become a Project Manager which would increase everything tremendously. Then again, web developers pay grows very quickly as well. In the end I'll probably be making the same amount of money on either track... so I'm just choosing the job that I will enjoy the most.

Dude, don't settle for that shit...37k a year? That is pathetic. Entry level is 50k+ If you are only making 60k after 5 years on the job then you have been scammed.

You can't generalize it like that, salary is dependent on a lot of variables. The biggest being market location. There are a lot of areas where salaries fall far below national average.

I understand that. There's a lot of variables. Like cost of living. But with all that considered, I still would not accept a position as a dev that pays slightly more than a waiter in any part of the country. It's appalling and demeaning. You can find a dev job anywhere in the country for more than 37k a year.