In short, transitioned from a company with mostly state-level contracts to one with mostly federal-level contracts, which requires a higher level of clearance and more knowledge about security.
More specifically, the company I used to work for is a foreign conglomerate with many thousands of employees and a high turnover rate due to low pay. We would hire inexperienced people, train them up on complicated systems, and they’d leave for higher pay elsewhere, forcing us to start over. I begged HR, not to raise my pay, but to raise the pay of everyone under me because we were losing so many people. They refused. The VPs refused. I think they were under orders from overseas not to give a dime more than they had to. In the long run, it cost us millions in training. Our technical debt was through the roof. And I finally got sick of it.
My new job isn’t much more complicated than my old one, but all of the people are better, the culture is way better. Less than 100 employees. Less work to do on weekends, no on call. No outages because we follow proper DevOps practices, whereas I had to forcibly drag my previous employer into modern times.
If I have one suggestion, it’s to read The DevOps Handbook (2nd edition). Or listen to it, the audiobook is very good. It goes into great detail about how companies become like the one I left and how to implement practices that will prevent that kind of decay. Let me know if you have any questions. 😊
May I ask how you landed such a pay bump?
In short, transitioned from a company with mostly state-level contracts to one with mostly federal-level contracts, which requires a higher level of clearance and more knowledge about security.
More specifically, the company I used to work for is a foreign conglomerate with many thousands of employees and a high turnover rate due to low pay. We would hire inexperienced people, train them up on complicated systems, and they’d leave for higher pay elsewhere, forcing us to start over. I begged HR, not to raise my pay, but to raise the pay of everyone under me because we were losing so many people. They refused. The VPs refused. I think they were under orders from overseas not to give a dime more than they had to. In the long run, it cost us millions in training. Our technical debt was through the roof. And I finally got sick of it.
My new job isn’t much more complicated than my old one, but all of the people are better, the culture is way better. Less than 100 employees. Less work to do on weekends, no on call. No outages because we follow proper DevOps practices, whereas I had to forcibly drag my previous employer into modern times.
If I have one suggestion, it’s to read The DevOps Handbook (2nd edition). Or listen to it, the audiobook is very good. It goes into great detail about how companies become like the one I left and how to implement practices that will prevent that kind of decay. Let me know if you have any questions. 😊