Back at my former employer, I had the great fortune of making a lot of friends my age (they hire a hundred plus each year out of school) and so we did (and still do) quite a bit of emailing back and forth every single day, sometimes up to 300 emails a day. What’s funny is that my group of friends were always wary of using foul language, using punctuation to replace letters in an attempt to confuse any automated detection methods (as if putting an @ instead of an ‘a’ would actually trip it up), but few censored the content of the message itself. Think of any hot button topic and we’ve discussed it - immigration, welfare, finance, weapons control, etc; and we’ve had the entire spectrum of opinion represented from the apologists all the way to the fervent activists on either side of any issue. But ,if you think about it, most business probably don’t care if you swear… they’re more likely to be interested in the other things we didn’t censor and whether you’re revealing company secrets in the process.

Now, let’s tackle the two issues separately. The first is whether you hold an opinion that is contrary to either the company’s position, if it has one, or is too extreme in either direction. Take illegal immigration for example, what if you said you hated all illegal immigrants and wanted them all to die? Is that worse, from a company’s perspective, than saying a swear word? I would hardly think so. Now let’s play a little Minority Report, what if some filter saw that and flagged the email, would the employer be compelled to act?

Now, let’s say you’re selling company secrets and being all super covert about it, well according to an article in Fortune, email analysis software is much smarter than you because it looks for intentionally vague language, uncharacteristic behavior, etc. If you never come into work earlier than 11 AM and you suddenly start sending emails to an outside source about “meetups” at 6AM, well… zap, they might have gotten you.

Either way, I think that one should always be careful in any sort of communication, whether its stored forever or not, because you never know.

Mapgirl wrote about what she’d do if she lost her job and I thought it was a great idea for a post and tagged along. So, what would I do if I lost my job?

If I lost my job, my first move would be to tap the network of individuals I know in the area to see if their companies were hiring. The majority of those folks, at least the ones working for companies that would be looking for a software engineer, all work at my former employer, who would likely not be averse to hiring me back because I left on very amicable terms. Beyond that, there are a few other folks in the area that work for similar employers and since software engineers are usually in relatively strong demand, my best bets would be with one of them.

However, beyond that, I think I would start considering pursuing a career in another field, perhaps into something in the business management arena and less in engineering. If I were to go in this direction, I’d probably tap into the employment services department over at Johns Hopkins, where I’m pursuing an MBA, and see if they could put me in contact with folks looking to hire. I knew a lot of people out of school with engineering degrees that scored finance jobs because of the analytical skills they acquired in school, even though it was a different field.

I don’t think I would consider going the self-employment route and work on websites or anything like that. While it is certainly fun, it’s fun because I put in a limited amount of time on my own schedule. If the blog thing were elevated to my main source of income, I think that would ruin the allure and entertainment of it all. To write because I enjoy it and because I’m trying to share the things that I learn is fun, to write because it’s my job… I think that would ruin it. In addition to the enjoyment aspect of it, the unpredictability of it would also be a problem for me. Whatever it makes this month, there’s no guarantee they would make the same next month, or the next month. There are just too many unpredictable aspects involved for me to rely on it full time… plus it doesn’t come with health benefits.

Fortunately for me, my fiancée is employed and I have no dependents, so the pressure to immediately find income is not as high; but if my fiancée didn’t have a job or I had children, I’m sure I wouldn’t have the latitude to be casual about finding a new job. Either way, I don’t like being a bum so I suppose that’s enough self-pressure to find some gainful employment.

So, what would you do if you lost your job? Find another one in the same field? Different field? Or would you use it as an opportunity to do something completely different?

If there is one universal fact in the world, it’s that human beings are by nature very curious creatures and in no other place is this more evident than in one of the most inaccurate means of productivity and usefulness analysis - the work interview. I’ve personally never been asked any particularly strange questions and I’ve had my fair share of interviews but I’ve certainly heard of some strange questions being asked (I’m not talking about those “how many gas stations are there in the United States” questions, I’m talking out there questions) and I wanted to know if you all had any particularly eyebrow raising queries.

The strangest “question” by far, and this is more of a request than a question, was when my friend went to interview with an engineering firm and they made him take a personality test. Now, I doubt the usefulness of a personality test but if they put one in front of me, I’m going to oblige… if it wasn’t going to take me three hours to finish! My friend took the test (not realizing it would take three hours, he just thought it was long) even though he wasn’t all that sold on the job. If a company every put an SAT test in front of me, I’d thank them for their time and politely excuse myself. That wasn’t really a question but that’s certainly the most unusual question/request I’ve ever heard of.

Do you have a question or request that can top a three hour personality test?

As a part of my new job, I’ve had the chance to review a few resumes to try to find good software engineering candidates (let me know if you’re looking for a job, can develop software well, are in the Baltimore region, and you aren’t Rob :)) and I’ve seen more than a few interesting resume bullets in my time. The top candidate, and I argue that you probably aren’t going to find anything to rival this, has to be when someone put on their resume that they were the leader of a 6,000 member clan (guild?) on World of Warcraft. That isn’t, by any means, a negative at all (it shows leadership skills, interpersonal skills, and a whole host of other attributes that are very positive in a candidate) but it was surprising to see it on a resume because, at least I think, World of Warcraft is a means of entertainment.

At first I thought this was a peculiar item to put on your resume but then I thought about how we have a double standard here. If you saw someone was the captain of a mainstream varsity team sport, like basketball or football, would you react the same way? Definitely not. You’d think the candidate was a good leader, had good interpersonal skills, hard working, etc. I’d argue that being the leader of a clan in World of Warcraft (granted I’ve never played but I can imagine the hierarchal structure there isn’t that much different than any other game) is probably much harder than being the captain of any sport. If he joined after the clan started, he had to ascend past the other 5,999 members. If he started it, he had to, in some way, shape, or form, recruit 5,999 other players to join his clan. I don’t know how many players there are on a high school and college football team (though it’s under a hundred, probably under seventy) and there are only 12 players on a basketball team (again, not sure the limits at the high school and college level), so 6,000 trumps that by several orders of magnitude.

Anyway, what’s the most remarkable resume bullet you’ve ever seen?

I really do enjoy seeing the annual numbers for new hire pay because it gives me some blogging fodder and since I’ve been doing it for a little while now I can really look back at historic number to see how this year compared to last year and this year is especially juicy. According to the National Association of Colleges & Employers (NACE), practically every field saw a jump led by marketing majors who saw starting offers increase a whopping 10.3%. Now, sometimes this is a result of languishing salaries and this may be the case here as the average salary was $41,285, which ranked second to last on the chart displayed. Computer science grads saw a mere 2.5% while the Mechanical engineers can expect a 5.7% increase and Chemical engineers saw a healthy 5.6% increase.

Last November, we saw Information sciences and systems major salaries increase by 7.5%, the highest increase, and marketing major degrees didn’t even make the list. Accounting saw a 4.6% in 2005 compared to 2.7% this year. Chemical engineers saw another “higher than inflation” increase with 4.9% - I’m sure oil prices with the continued prosperity of chemical engineers. Here’s another salary comparison list too if you want more data points.

Source: CNN Money

Hmmm… when I saw this article on finding out if you’re underpaid by discussing salaries with coworkers, it really piqued my interested because salaries are usually held really close to the vest. The article even starts off explaining why sharing salaries sharing salaries is dangerous, how feelings can get hurt, and how if done incorrectly can derail friendships. So, how does Money recommend you go about finding out salaries and talking money with coworkers?

First, do some online research with salaries databases. While they won’t be keyed in on your specific company, they will give you a general range for your demographic and geographic location. The next step is to find a mentor that will be able to sneak you some salary information without getting into specifics. Now, your mentor will have to be in the know because if they aren’t, they’re not going to be able to give you any useful information. After that, turn it into a game where people can anonymously share their salaries. Money illustrates a “game” where people put their salary on a slip of paper and look at the numbers.

Okay, did you think that was a weak answer with such a big buildup? Yeah, me too. Play a game? Honestly, the only way you can talk salary with a co-worker is if they won’t get worked up over hearing the numbers and can understand that by sharing numbers you’re only gaining more information to go into battle with against your employer when it comes to talking money again. Now, that means only a small subset of your co-workers are going to be okay with talking dollars and see it from that perspective. These aren’t the folks that you only see at the office every day, these will have to be people you hang out with at the bar on a weekly basis, and they will have to be able to check their ego’s at the door in this sort of talk.

Anyone have any tips to share?

This is a psuedo-Devil’s Advocate because it’s not generally assumed that one should always roll over their 401k’s when they leave their job but a lot of folks have recently been asking me, since I had just gone through the process, who they should roll their 401k over to (I wish with Vanguard). The troubling aspect of that question is that they’ve already decided to rollover their 401k before they’ve answered the crucial questions leading up to that decision. See, you should rollover your 401k if it makes sense - that is if you can get better options, better pricing, and better management elsewhere. By asking “where” to go after “if” you should go, you can’t analyze the differences. There are many reasons why you should stick with your 401k administrator even after you leave your job, here they are:

Employer institutional funds may be superior
Depending on how big your company is, you may be dealing with your company’s own special institutional funds that aren’t available on the open market and they could be awesome (or awesome in certain aspects). This was the case at my former employer who had about a dozen actively managed funds (they weren’t index funds) with fees under the average expense ratios of typical actively managed funds and performance on par with its benchmarks - so you get actively managed while paying near index fund prices. Now, if you don’t have many good options with your current administrator, the fact that they’re cheap doesn’t help (but cheap is better than expensive).

Custodial fees and balance requirements
Your 401K funds probably don’t have any balance requirements and reasonable custodial fees, that’s usually not the case with major brokerages. Vanguard doesn’t have low balance fees for retirement accounts but it does have initial minimum investments (usually $3,000 to $5,000) and Fidelity does have low balance fees though it’s phrased as they “may” charge a $12 fee for a balance under $2,000, so be sure to check whether the brokerage you choose has this low balance fee. The same applies for custodial fees, be sure to double check those before you roll over.

You can roll it over whenever you want
You are thinking about rolling over your 401k because you just left your job (otherwise you wouldn’t have this opportunity in the first place) and that usually comes with a whole host of other issues you have to deal with. You may have been fired or you left of your own free will but either way, don’t feel like you need to worry about whether you should roll your 401k within a certain short time frame. Some plans give you three or five years (check with your administrator) to roll it over, don’t think you have to do it in the next month. I waited six months before I rolled mine over and I could’ve waited even longer if I wanted to.

Rolling over your 401k, especially if its because you just lost your job, can be a very complicated and somewhat confusing time, don’t feel that you should, 100% of the time, always roll it over to an IRA. Most of the time, you will probably want to roll it over to open up your options, but don’t feel it’s a forgone conclusion. Also, remember that you have plenty of time to weight your options, perhaps after things have settled down, so don’t make any rash and hasty decisions.