Thanks for the affirmation :P It's true my tech mentor might have had good intentions. I usually trust him in that aspect. He's one of the founders of the software engineering school I attended. My sense is they had negotiated beforehand and settled on this number as what the company could offer some of his students. I just wish he were more transparent about it -- something like, "hey, this is what this company can offer you. It's not high by standards in this area for a full-time role, but it's a decent number for your experience. You can gain experience here and hope the salary may be adjusted down the road, but you should mostly take the role if you really like the company and the people there and what you will learn. Normally I advise students to negotiate but in this case I am pretty sure they would not respond well to it [for x reason]."
I think he said some but not all of those things as transparently as I would have liked, and I think based on incidents in the past it's a habit of his / the school in general to pick and choose what to disclose (because they feel they have to be sensitive) and sweep the rest under the rug. Anyway, I realized when typing the paragraph above that I haven't had as terrible a lot as the tone of my post may convey. This first job wasn't so bad an opportunity and given the choice, I would probably do it over again. I think most of my outrage relates to what my mentor commented about us being too focused on salary, because I still do think it's an important aspect and he was being too dismissive.
TMI, TMI. Don't worry about responding to all these small details... As for the mentor thing, I agree it can get kind of weird and nepotism is a thing in the tech industry. At the same time, I do think there are people who genuinely love their career in tech and want to help some individuals learn and grow in the same industry, just as they were helped out by kind-hearted strangers in the past. I've tried mentoring myself, but I overcommit quickly and get burnt out, so I'm refraining from that type of thing typically until I have more of my own life figured out.
I've applied to a few jobs and have two phone screens next week. It's been kind of hard to balance both working (close to a product deadline) and trying to prepare myself for this sort of stuff, which I'm not experienced with. And I've mostly been putting off other things, like dating, and only just going to some social commitments I feel I should not flake out of. I have no idea how normal people manage life normally, because like you hinted at, I usually just want to handle one thing at a time. X)
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It's true my tech mentor might have had good intentions. I usually trust him in that aspect. He's one of the founders of the software engineering school I attended. My sense is they had negotiated beforehand and settled on this number as what the company could offer some of his students. I just wish he were more transparent about it -- something like, "hey, this is what this company can offer you. It's not high by standards in this area for a full-time role, but it's a decent number for your experience. You can gain experience here and hope the salary may be adjusted down the road, but you should mostly take the role if you really like the company and the people there and what you will learn. Normally I advise students to negotiate but in this case I am pretty sure they would not respond well to it [for x reason]."
I think he said some but not all of those things as transparently as I would have liked, and I think based on incidents in the past it's a habit of his / the school in general to pick and choose what to disclose (because they feel they have to be sensitive) and sweep the rest under the rug. Anyway, I realized when typing the paragraph above that I haven't had as terrible a lot as the tone of my post may convey. This first job wasn't so bad an opportunity and given the choice, I would probably do it over again. I think most of my outrage relates to what my mentor commented about us being too focused on salary, because I still do think it's an important aspect and he was being too dismissive.
TMI, TMI. Don't worry about responding to all these small details... As for the mentor thing, I agree it can get kind of weird and nepotism is a thing in the tech industry. At the same time, I do think there are people who genuinely love their career in tech and want to help some individuals learn and grow in the same industry, just as they were helped out by kind-hearted strangers in the past. I've tried mentoring myself, but I overcommit quickly and get burnt out, so I'm refraining from that type of thing typically until I have more of my own life figured out.
I've applied to a few jobs and have two phone screens next week. It's been kind of hard to balance both working (close to a product deadline) and trying to prepare myself for this sort of stuff, which I'm not experienced with. And I've mostly been putting off other things, like dating, and only just going to some social commitments I feel I should not flake out of. I have no idea how normal people manage life normally, because like you hinted at, I usually just want to handle one thing at a time. X)