Why I won’t apply to your job offer.

TL;DR. That might appear bold at first glance, but I’d like my next job to let me *learn* … Clojure, or Haskell, or NoSQL, or whatever. Obviously, I must have something to offer in return!

I’m currently looking for a new job.

For a few days now, I’ve been looking on careers.stackoverflow.com, on github jobs, on linkedin, on weworkremotely, and so forth.

The least I can say is that there is a kind of mismatch here. Maybe it’s just me, but I doubt it (well, maybe forget a minute about my research background if it helps. I’m a developer, too).

You are all looking for passionate developers who know (Java / Rails / C# / HTML5 / Git / Ruby / Scrum / XP / AWS / … you name it) very very very well. Avdi nicely discussed about the “passionate” part of it a few weeks ago, so I won’t repeat his arguments here.

Am I such a (passionate) developer? Probably. To cite only a few, I know Ruby & SQL very, very, very, very, very well. Will I apply? Probably not.

Why is that so? Because I’m a low profile (I’ve been learning self-promoting for years now, but it’s still kind of hard for me), and hence probably much too honest. Roughly, your job offer and I end up in complete mismatch.

Before explaining this further, let me make an aside and tell you why I leave academia (you can also skip the next section, but I had to write it down).

Why do I leave academia?

If I had decided to pursue in academic research, I would have liked to switch my research interests to something new (I’ve been doing my research work in a specific area for about 10 years now and feel cramped).

I’ve discussed it with other researchers, colleagues, family and friends. They all agree:

“Don’t do that. You have no publication in that new area. You won’t be taken seriously. You won’t get a position if you say so. You won’t get research funding if you say so.”

Discussing further, we generally (dis)agree on the way to go. The most common advice I’ve received goes along these lines:

“Well, don’t *say* it. Just say that you will pursue your current research. Get that position, get that funding, and *then* do whatever pleases you.”

In short “Just lie”. Sorry, but no, I won’t lie.

When I heard that feedback, I seriously wondered whether academic research (maybe research funding in particular) is not broken. In short, a necessary chain of trust seems lost here.

Anyway, I’m a researcher at heart (maybe not a good academic one). That simply means that I have a very deep questioning about my domains of interest (software engineering, databases, formal languages & modeling) that I’d like to investigate further to find a few new answers that make sense and a lot of new questions. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do it outside of academia too (?). Bit I digress.

Your job offer

I’ve got the same kind of feeling when it comes to job offers. Where is that chain of trust?

Am I really supposed to send you an email that tells you how great your startup or idea is? How passionate I am about (online marketing / analytics / facebook / iPhones / … you name it). How nice your work environment looks like? How confident I am that I’ve got all the very precise desired skills you mention?

Well, sorry, but I won’t lie. Why not engaging in trust instead? It all starts with honesty:

• I’m not sure that you’re startup/idea (say) is as great as you think it is. That does not mean I don’t have respect for you, though. I wouldn’t be surprised to get proven wrong, though (I’m very bad at betting on ideas and thought facebook wouldn’t work). Anyway, I’m not passionate about your idea because (until further notice) it’s yours.
• In contrast, I’m confident that you must have very nice problems to be solved that I will be deeply interested in. Otherwise, I would not even think about asking you for a job. And trust me, when I have interest in something, I just get results.
• No, I don’t have all the skills you ask for. Maybe I don’t feel very comfortable in C, or in Rails. Maybe I have not even tried that shiny new technology you plan to use.
• But let me be brutally honest here. I’d like to learn Clojure or Haskell, or some NoSQL stuff. If your job could provide me the opportunity to get started, you’d be astonished how quickly I learn.
• In return, I also know a lot of things that you probably don’t, and that could be very useful too. Speaking of which, if you need anything I know, a library I built, a paper I wrote, anything … just ask.

Well, I’m not sure this kind of honesty pays off. I just hope that there are still a few places where it works that way.