Good Being the Enemy of Better

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Nord podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season where we're looking at mistakes, we're looking at errors, we're looking at ways that those were stepping stones to success. Looking at lessons that we've learned from errors, most of it has been lessons learned. This one is a nice little combo. I refer to it as, I think we'll look at it as good being the enemy of better. There's sometimes we talk about perfect being the enemy of good or good enough, because sometimes you are too strongly pursuing perfection when good is plenty. We can talk about the 80-20 rule and things like that. Sometimes we just, we overdo it. This is a situation where we, we underdo it, where we settle. Now in this particular situation, at least the story that's going to go for this, I have a person that I worked with. At this point, I'd been working even for years with him on and off through number of different projects. I worked initially when I met him, I worked for him as an employee where we were both employees at a company. And then over the years, he had a company that he brought me in as a consultant on regular basis. It felt like probably about every year around the time that we were working together. July or August, maybe even as late as September, I could expect a call from him that said, hey, what are you doing? I've got some work to do. And it would usually be that end of the third quarter, fourth quarter kind of work. So we'd probably worked several years together over a period of several more years by the time this happened. We were, we are friends as well as work colleagues and things like that, and have also served as references for each other. Numerous times over the years for various projects and jobs and all that kind of good stuff. And that's where we get to this one specifically. Now, at this point, I was working with a recruiter for a company and she and I had probably been working together for a year or two, looking at different positions and opportunities. And I'd help them do some tech screens and things like that. So this was a recruiter that I had a pretty good relationship with as well. And we were pretty close to straightforward about what's going on, what the opportunities are, what I'm looking for, feedback from both references and interviews and things like that. So it was a, this is one of those things that's sort of a unique kind of relationship between all the people involved. But it in itself is maybe a good lesson that if you treat people right and nice, it's amazing how well that comes back and you end up having good relationships more often than not. In this situation, the recruiter came to me and said, hey, you know, we've got this position. I think you'd be a good fit for it. Do you want to apply for it? And I did. And I think I'd even gone through an interview and they said, that's great, but we want to check references. And so I gave references, including this guy that I'd worked with for a long time. And I checked with him, said, hey, I'm going to use you as a reference. Is that okay? This is who's going to call probably this time. He said, yep, great. And they called him and use them as a reference. And a couple others. And so a couple of days go by and I ended up talking with the recruiter and I said, you know, okay, well, how are we doing? Where did all the guys able to contact all the references? And I think they got like two of the three or something like that. And this is where it became interesting. One of the things they asked as part of their reference check was basically, are there any glaring, I think it was like, are there any big strengths or weaknesses for this person? Just to sort of, you know, get an idea of what kind of people they're working with. And not everybody answered it. In this case, my buddy did. And on the weaknesses, he said, you know, yeah, one of his weaknesses is that he never asks for as much as he's worth, which is a really interesting good as the enemy of better. Being that, yeah, I could have asked for higher rates and apparently could have gotten them. And I think we've all been in these situations too, maybe not quite as, you know, direct as that. But there are those situations where maybe you, you know, there's some sort of bargaining or negotiation going on and, you know, say, hey, I'll pay you a dollar for that. And they jump on it so quick. You're like, I probably could have gotten away with 90 cents, you know, or something like that. And, you know, we've run into those or even we asked for, like we're looking at salary negotiations and stuff like that. It's always, it's always a challenge because we know sort of what we're worth based on what we have earned to this point, but we don't know how much we may be paid, what we're worth overpaid or underpaid, unless we really do some research. And one of the things that you can do is push, is keep pushing on those things, particularly when you have multiple opportunities. So if you've got, let's say you're, you know, you're looking at several jobs and you're looking for job offers and you go in and the first place you go, they want to make an offer and you talk about a salary and they jump right on a lower salary. Well, maybe the next one is, you know, you go for a higher salary or actually, you know, same kind of case. Any time you move from one job to another, I would say, start with asking for a raise. Don't say specifically, I want to raise, but just say, this is what my salary requirement is and make it higher than what you are making now. Now there are going to be situations where they say, no, not going to do it. That's too much. We can't afford it, which usually means they couldn't have afforded you at the, at the other price, at whatever you were making, unless you're doing something like, doubling it or something like that, then okay. You may be asked for too much. But I think if you, you know, even if you knock it up, you know, five or 10%, that should be within the range of discussion. If they just shut you right now, then no. And if they don't say no right away, then that means that, okay, now we've got some wiggle room and we can work with it. The last thing you want to do, or probably the last thing you want to do is underbid and get a job and then be sitting there going, darn it, I could have gotten more. And now that's what I ran into for a pretty good stretch of time. And by that, I mean, probably several years, well, several, probably three to five years, somewhere in there. And this was about at this time period where I basically asked for the same rate over and over and over again, even though I had, you know, and I was consulting and I had multiple jobs and was successful at them and things were going well and people like me and all that kind of stuff. And they kept coming back for more. And I had sort of a stagnant rate, which was good. I mean, it was, it kept me busy. I actually kept me busier, probably than I needed to be. I was over, you know, billing over 40 hours a week, basically every week. Because there's just so much that I was able to do at that rate. Had I gone for a higher rate, I may have ended up in a situation where maybe I had a little less work, but because of the higher rate would have ended up making as much money and would have been probably better off all around because I'd be more fresh and able to do even higher quality work in those lower, you know, that lower time period. I don't know where the cutoff is. For me, it's probably, you know, once you go north of 50 hours a week. But I think a lot of people, it's in that 35, especially like truly working hours, not like show up at work for 40 hours a week where you, you know, you're really only getting, you know, typically what they say is about five or six hours of work in a day. But when you're doing something like contracting where, particularly if you're remote, like I was, you tend to have very little distractions. So those hours are focused hours. And if you have 40 focused hours a week, a lot of people, that's a good limit. That's where you're starting mentally to be, you know, a bit tired. And so you want to, you want to find something where you can hit your peak, but also get paid your worth during that. And that's what I could have had had I pushed up those rates. And there's other things that I could have done. Not to mention, there may have been opportunities that I missed because my rate was, I asked too low. Sometimes, and I have been on the other side of this where somebody's rate is so low, that's like, no, then you don't understand what the, you know, what the job is, or you're obviously not up yet to the level of what we need. And when you want to push your career forward to advance your career, that's one of the things you want to do is you want to take on bigger projects, bigger responsibilities, do, you know, solve tougher problems and all those kinds of things that are the progression of a career. I don't think anybody wants to start their career at a certain level doing certain things. In 20 years, still be doing the same things at the same level. You want to advance. And of course, you almost, I think in a light case, you almost need to advance so that you can be worth more, get paid more, and move forward like that. Now, yes, there are some careers where that's not how it works because everything is set by, you know, some sort of a standard or prior negotiations or whatever. But in technology, that pretty much doesn't exist unless you're in a, I guess you could be in a, like some sort of a union shop or government job or something where you have some of those restrictions. But even then, you should be able to progress by like title advancement or moving into management or higher level, like a senior developer or architect or something along those lines. So you do want to progress. And that means that you have to ask for more, whether it's more work, whether it's a bigger assignment, whether it's a, you know, a different title, whether it's more money, more compensation, is go into things and don't allow yourself to get comfortable. Don't allow yourself to get in a situation where you say, oh, hey, I make, you know, whatever it is, I make a dollar an hour and I can, I'm great making a dollar an hour. That doesn't mean that it's, you know, your work is just worth that dollar an hour. That means you're comfortable with that. But that means that, hey, if you make a buck 10 an hour, then you've got that extra 10 cents an hour that you can go do other stuff that you can afford to do things that maybe you otherwise wouldn't be. Or you can, you know, invest it in others. You can be charitable, whatever it is. There's a lot of different things that you can do with that. And I think some people, and this is all culture-based too, but I think some people get into this. Some of it is the idea that I don't really deserve this. I'm not working that hard but then there's others that are, they have sort of that view that if you ask for more, it's somehow greedy. But it's about being paid what you're worth. The value that you provide, you deserve to get something of that, you know, get paid for that. You deserve to get paid for your labor. And if you bring a high value, then you would expect that you would be paid more. Now, bottom line is a company still, you know, essentially needs to be able to make money off of you. You know, they need to, whatever they pay you, they should be able to, with your skills and your time and whatever you provide to the company, they should be able to get more from, they should get more value out of it. So if they pay you a dollar an hour, they should be essentially getting a dollar five an hour, a dollar 10 an hour, or a dollar 50 an hour, or two dollars an hour out of you. But the farther it gets, the more they get from you over what they pay you, the more you can also be paid more. And so that's why I look at it as good being the enemy of better as sort of the topic for this one, is that we look at something and say, yeah, we can do that. That'll be okay. But if you want to be better, which is part of the title of this, you know, better developers, one of the things that you want to do is you want to push, you want to ask for more, you want to see where those limits are. And honestly, if you get in a situation where you are overpaid, which can happen, you know, people can say, yeah, I think you're going to bring a great value and you're not quite bringing that value, then find a way to bring more value. Whether it's, you know, doing some extra work, finding some extra ways that you can contribute, whatever it is, you are going to be better off career wise and becoming a better developer by pushing yourself to go find those ways that you can bring value versus being in a situation where you know that you are bringing way more value. And then you just sort of, you know, coast. I've referred to it sometimes as semi-retirement or partial retirement, where you, you can go in and you can knock that job out and there's really no effort that goes into it. And you could do that seven days a week and not even blink an eye because it's just not taxing you. It's not pushing you at all. It would be like a runner going for a walk where you can walk all day. But if they, you know, want to become a better runner, they've got to run further, faster, things of that nature. I think that's a good place to stop here. Yes, I could say that this is good enough and instead I'm going to push it to try to make it better, but I'm going to allow you to work on that for yourself today. So go out there, take some time and maybe look at some things that where you aren't pushing yourself, maybe where you're not asking for that additional compensation or respect or responsibility or project or taking on something that doing so would push you, maybe get you a little bit out of your comfort zone, but would also in the end make you a better developer, maybe even a better person. Who knows? That being said, it's time to get out there and enjoy the day. So go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. One more thing before you go, Develop-a-Noor podcasts and site are a labor of love. 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