Should I make this transfer?
December 10, 2015 2:36 PM Subscribe
I'm a software engineer who's thinking about transferring to another team at work that does way more interesting stuff, but now my current manager is trying to get me to stick around by making offers of more interesting work on this side. What should I do?
First, my company has a pretty liberal transfer policy -- as long as you're in good standing, you don't actually need approval from your current manager, just the manager of the team you'd be switching to. I've already consulted with the other team and they'd be interested to have me.
The current team is responsible for implementing services that handle business logic for various domains in our company. This is mostly done in high-level scripting languages, and most of the interesting work is already taken care of -- service provisioning, load balancing, discovery, monitoring, asynchronous task running -- all of that stuff already exists and just needs wiring up. That's not to say there aren't occasional in-depth design considerations around, e.g., optimizing database write patterns in a service or etc., but mostly the work here centers around data modeling and product concerns. That work is valuable, and I respect the people that care deeply about it, but...I'm not one of them. Most of the people on the team are like that, and while I don't want to discount the things I've learned from them in terms of thinking rigorously about that stuff, I don't feel like there's anyone around here with deep technical wisdom well beyond my ken. We all have similar backgrounds, and of the technical staff on the team I'm pretty close to the top of the list in terms of time spent working in this industry.
The new team is infrastructure-focused, and the work there would involve integrating and then making core contributions to a major open source project of considerable technical complexity in the distributed systems realm. It's a project I've had a hobbyist interest in for a while, in a domain that I've had a hobbyist interest in for a while, and it's systems-level coding in a non-GCed language, all things that I relish. Some of the people on that team have exactly that sort of deep wisdom I'm looking for in coworkers, and it's led by someone who was previously the head of a very visible, extremely large-scale and technically accomplished project at another large tech company, but they all seem quite humble nonetheless. The team is very new and currently very small (~4 devs). Coding exclusively for an open source project would also make me feel better about my corporate lackeydom, to be honest.
Anyway, I talked to my boss about it, and he's supportive either way, but is trying to convince me to stick around by talking about upcoming projects on this team and offering me the position of tech lead on one them, starting Q1 or Q2 next year. That would certainly be a solid career upgrade, and it would be more in-line with my interests (think something like an inter-service event notification framework).
So: developers, how would you approach the choices here? Stay where I am, but with a career bump along with maybe more-interesting work, or go, probably still under someone else's direct technical leadership over the project but taking on probably much-more-interesting and publicly-visible work in a domain that I'm a lot more interested in?
As a bonus question, how appropriate is it to use the possibility of an internal transfer as a bargaining chip for a raise if I were to stay with my current team? Obviously that's something you can do with an offer from another company, but this seems different, especially since final approval of a wage increase rests with the same people regardless of who my manager is.
First, my company has a pretty liberal transfer policy -- as long as you're in good standing, you don't actually need approval from your current manager, just the manager of the team you'd be switching to. I've already consulted with the other team and they'd be interested to have me.
The current team is responsible for implementing services that handle business logic for various domains in our company. This is mostly done in high-level scripting languages, and most of the interesting work is already taken care of -- service provisioning, load balancing, discovery, monitoring, asynchronous task running -- all of that stuff already exists and just needs wiring up. That's not to say there aren't occasional in-depth design considerations around, e.g., optimizing database write patterns in a service or etc., but mostly the work here centers around data modeling and product concerns. That work is valuable, and I respect the people that care deeply about it, but...I'm not one of them. Most of the people on the team are like that, and while I don't want to discount the things I've learned from them in terms of thinking rigorously about that stuff, I don't feel like there's anyone around here with deep technical wisdom well beyond my ken. We all have similar backgrounds, and of the technical staff on the team I'm pretty close to the top of the list in terms of time spent working in this industry.
The new team is infrastructure-focused, and the work there would involve integrating and then making core contributions to a major open source project of considerable technical complexity in the distributed systems realm. It's a project I've had a hobbyist interest in for a while, in a domain that I've had a hobbyist interest in for a while, and it's systems-level coding in a non-GCed language, all things that I relish. Some of the people on that team have exactly that sort of deep wisdom I'm looking for in coworkers, and it's led by someone who was previously the head of a very visible, extremely large-scale and technically accomplished project at another large tech company, but they all seem quite humble nonetheless. The team is very new and currently very small (~4 devs). Coding exclusively for an open source project would also make me feel better about my corporate lackeydom, to be honest.
Anyway, I talked to my boss about it, and he's supportive either way, but is trying to convince me to stick around by talking about upcoming projects on this team and offering me the position of tech lead on one them, starting Q1 or Q2 next year. That would certainly be a solid career upgrade, and it would be more in-line with my interests (think something like an inter-service event notification framework).
So: developers, how would you approach the choices here? Stay where I am, but with a career bump along with maybe more-interesting work, or go, probably still under someone else's direct technical leadership over the project but taking on probably much-more-interesting and publicly-visible work in a domain that I'm a lot more interested in?
As a bonus question, how appropriate is it to use the possibility of an internal transfer as a bargaining chip for a raise if I were to stay with my current team? Obviously that's something you can do with an offer from another company, but this seems different, especially since final approval of a wage increase rests with the same people regardless of who my manager is.
Best answer: If it was a surprise to him, he's not a good manager.
Of course you should transfer. Doing work that personally motivates you is worth a lot. Life is short, why waste it on projects you don't really care about?
But be careful: when I worked at Google, which claimed to have a similarly liberal transfer policy, the reality turned out to be substantially more subtle, and botching the politics of my attempted transfer from a boring project to an interesting one ended up costing me my job.
posted by Mars Saxman at 2:58 PM on December 10, 2015 [6 favorites]
Of course you should transfer. Doing work that personally motivates you is worth a lot. Life is short, why waste it on projects you don't really care about?
But be careful: when I worked at Google, which claimed to have a similarly liberal transfer policy, the reality turned out to be substantially more subtle, and botching the politics of my attempted transfer from a boring project to an interesting one ended up costing me my job.
posted by Mars Saxman at 2:58 PM on December 10, 2015 [6 favorites]
Best answer: For me, it would be a quality of life issue. You have to go to work every day. In one job, you get to go to work and do interesting stuff that you can be proud of (open source - making the world a better place) and learn from people who know more than you (learning cool stuff is a big motivator for me) versus going to work and doing your job. I also believe that you will do a better job (and therefore have more recognition in the long run) if you are doing a job you care about.
YMMV but I would jump.
posted by metahawk at 3:00 PM on December 10, 2015
YMMV but I would jump.
posted by metahawk at 3:00 PM on December 10, 2015
Best answer: You should transfer. If the old team had any interesting work for you they would already have given it to you. Go to the new team and don't look back. I was in a situation roughly like this one time and it was scary to make this kind of move, but the result was SO liberating and I was frustrated, afterwards, that I had wasted so much time before taking the plunge.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 3:12 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 3:12 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: did he know you were bored earlier and do nothing? if he's only making a move because he's being forced, i would move. but if this was a surprise to him, i would consider staying.
I've been pretty open in the last ~9 months when asked about goals in one-on-ones, across several managers, that this is the sort of thing I want to work on. This is the first time I've gotten an actual concrete response to that.
It's maybe also worth noting that this team is organized around splitting out these services from a legacy monolith, which is well on the way to being deprecated but is still pretty relevant to a lot of our work, makes for a bear of an on-call shift, and will probably live for at least another six months. Dealing with legacy code is part of the job, I know, but that doesn't make it practically less awful.
posted by Two Stranger at 3:21 PM on December 10, 2015
I've been pretty open in the last ~9 months when asked about goals in one-on-ones, across several managers, that this is the sort of thing I want to work on. This is the first time I've gotten an actual concrete response to that.
It's maybe also worth noting that this team is organized around splitting out these services from a legacy monolith, which is well on the way to being deprecated but is still pretty relevant to a lot of our work, makes for a bear of an on-call shift, and will probably live for at least another six months. Dealing with legacy code is part of the job, I know, but that doesn't make it practically less awful.
posted by Two Stranger at 3:21 PM on December 10, 2015
Best answer: I'm a former dev and if it were me, I would transfer, based on what you said in your last reply.
posted by matildaben at 4:24 PM on December 10, 2015
posted by matildaben at 4:24 PM on December 10, 2015
Best answer: If such "better" work was actually available on your current team, it sounds like you'd already be doing it. By staying, you'll always be "just 1-2 quarters away" from starting on it....
Transfer, and enjoy the new work. Changing teams periodically is good for everyone - more learning for you and cross-pollination for the company.
posted by jpeacock at 5:08 PM on December 10, 2015
Transfer, and enjoy the new work. Changing teams periodically is good for everyone - more learning for you and cross-pollination for the company.
posted by jpeacock at 5:08 PM on December 10, 2015
Best answer: I think "never accept the counter-offer" applies internally as well.
Go do interesting things, and enjoy your work. Sounds like your current manager is more worried about losing your knowledge of the legacy monolith than he is about your being fulfilled by your work.
posted by bashos_frog at 9:55 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Go do interesting things, and enjoy your work. Sounds like your current manager is more worried about losing your knowledge of the legacy monolith than he is about your being fulfilled by your work.
posted by bashos_frog at 9:55 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Definitely transfer.
Not to say your boss will, but often times that breezy talk about upcoming Cool(er) Projects and Important Work that you'll get lead on end up as vaporware. Meanwhile the other team has found someone to fill their gap and the opening isn't open any more. You can get strung along for up to a couple years that way, with just enough intermittent rewards/promises to keep you on the hook.
This new team has cool work for you now without having to make compromises or wait.
posted by bookdragoness at 8:34 PM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
Not to say your boss will, but often times that breezy talk about upcoming Cool(er) Projects and Important Work that you'll get lead on end up as vaporware. Meanwhile the other team has found someone to fill their gap and the opening isn't open any more. You can get strung along for up to a couple years that way, with just enough intermittent rewards/promises to keep you on the hook.
This new team has cool work for you now without having to make compromises or wait.
posted by bookdragoness at 8:34 PM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Best answers for everybody (I suppose this is an instance of Syndrome syndrome, but it seemed fair)! I made the switch and it was definitely the right choice. The interim period was a little scary -- my current manager kept me on as long as possible, which of course comes with the risk of not being needed on the new team by the time the transfer happens, but I kept in touch with the new boss, and we're hiring a bunch anyway, so it wasn't too much of a threat. Thanks all for the input!
posted by Two Stranger at 10:46 PM on February 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Two Stranger at 10:46 PM on February 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
Awesome! I'm glad it's worked out for you!
posted by bookdragoness at 3:17 PM on February 10, 2016
posted by bookdragoness at 3:17 PM on February 10, 2016
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