Choosing Your Next Programming Job — Perl Or .NET?

[marto]

Some of you may be interested to learn that over at Slashdot someone has posted Choosing Your Next Programming Job — Perl Or .NET?. Questions like this get asked around here every so often, either in the CB or in posts. There are some interesting arguments in the replies.

Martin

[Anonymous Monk]

One for the money
Two for the joy
Three for the spirit rock and roll

Moral, professional should focus a lot on the money.
Being paid more, in your 2nd job, raises your rates for your third job, and so on .... in the future he may find another Perl. And I wouldn' take seriously something who pick a workplace because they play more games there, you can always do that after hours. But the extra money wont come after hours for playing games

[BUU]

I agree one hundred and ten percent. Who cares if the work is soul crushingly boring and fills you with a permanent dread of something you used to live, as long as you get paid a few thousand more? I mean, when you get right down to it, a life time of joy and wonderment at programming isn't worth anywhere close to the 10 grand he could make at his new job.

[runrig]

The 120 mile commute would be the deal breaker for me. Unless it was a 120 mile helicopter commute :-)

[Anonymous Monk]

Maybe I was not too clear the first time.
In job one you are paid X
In job two you are paid X * 1.6
In job three you should expect to be paid (X * 1.6) * 1.N
And so on ... so a higher paid job, raises you rate in the future, and in the future he may find more Perl jobs if he loves Perl so much

The other point was, you always have fun and play games after work.
Finally, why is working with C# so much worst, dont exagerate, it can be a fine environment.

[radiantmatrix]

I don't see a lot of interesting arguments. Most of what I see that specifically recommends one job or the other are simply representations of the poster's values.

What I found helpful in deciding between many job offers (esp. while contracting) is a system for evaluating the various things I value in my work. Each thing is essentially a weighted vector.

The point of this whole exercise is to figure out what will make you satisfied with your job choice, and compare jobs based on that (wholly subjective) criteria.

Let's take a simple example. Imagine I find the following things important in a job:

• Opportunity for advancement
• Distance of site from home
• Compensation (pay+benes+vacation)
• Type of work
• Work environment (e.g. comfort, quality equipment, etc.)
• Work culture (nice/competent people to work with)
(There are more, but let's keep it simple).

The first step is to assign these weights. I use ranges of 0-1 in 0.1 increments, with 0.5 being the default, and larger values indicating greater importance. That gives me this:

Opportunity	Distance	Compensation	Type	Environment	Culture
0.5	0.3	0.7	0.7	0.6	0.3

I then assign a score to each category based on how that job compares to my best possible job. This is a percentage, where the best job I could get would score 100%. For a hypothetical job, that might look like:

Opportunity	Distance	Compensation	Type	Environment	Culture
0.35	0.95	0.60	0.40	0.60	0.40

Adding in the weights and totaling:

Opportunity	Distance	Compensation	Type	Environment	Culture
0.85	1.25	1.30	1.10	1.20	0.70

For a total score of 6.40 and a mean value of ~1.07

I make sure to do this with my current job as well, then I simply compare scores. If there are a few that are very close in score, I might re-score them with more careful thought, or after asking the potential employer/client some additional questions.