An Unemployed Data Engineer Declined an Offer Due to In-Office Requirements - My Thoughts on His Decision

It's only natural to do everything possible to hold on to our professional rank and status in our careers. Yet amid the continued labor market adjustment in the Information Technology industry, this is getting more and more difficult for a lot of IT professionals out there. I wanted to share a story about a backend data engineer who has been unemployed for almost six months and is beginning to realize some depressing emotions yet still declined an opportunity because of the in-office work schedule. At face value, I would expect 99% of my reading audience to agree with his decision. But that said, how about we explore this decision some and I do my best to present some insights on my end?? Let's call him Stefan...

Nine years experience doing mostly backend software engineering in Python but as the years went by, Stefan began to get some nice exposure to ETL technologies as well as PostgreSQL and MPP database architectures. And as you can imagine, from 2020 to 2024, Stefan's career was taking off like wildfire and he was in a very good place in life. Fully remote with his employer and making very good money. However, like a lot of software engineers out there, he experienced a reduction in force for the first time in his career. The layoff happened in early 2024. and even though he had three months of severance to provide some cushion, he probably could have processed the moment a little better so as to prepare him for what lay ahead.?

After taking a little time to unplug and exhausting his severance, Stefan started his job search in earnest and began submitting his resume to several companies around the country.? To his delight, he actually started getting quite a few responses. He did the introductory virtual meetings and then dove into the technical assessments that were presented to him. But over a short period of time, something very frustrating began to emerge and that was how almost all of the companies began to go quiet on him. Similar to what a lot of software engineers are experiencing right now, he was doing 2-3 rounds with companies, including technical assessments, only to receive no closure at all. The majority of the opportunities he was applying for were with established technology companies/Big Tech and he made sure to communicate to them that he was seeking a fully remote working schedule. The result from all this interviewing had started to take the winds out of his sails and Stefan was beginning to feel a bit despondent about his job search.?

For about a month, I had not been able to present anything to Stefan but finally, one of my Austin clients came to me looking for a data engineer and when I sent the job description to Stefan, he made it clear that he was a slam dunk match for the role. We knocked out three rounds in 1-1/2 weeks and at that time, my client started probing into the salary range that Stefan would consider. But in addition to that, they asked me to have a very real conversation about his willingness to accept their "in office" work schedule. While I want to make clear that I was not hiding this requirement from Stefan, I did want to get some positive momentum going with this opportunity and then discuss the experience of driving into work four days a week.?

My client, like a lot of companies, has started tugging their employees back into the office and their schedule, fully remote from June of '20 to October of '23, was now four days a week in office with Friday being work from home. To kick this discussion off, I asked Stefan how far he lived from the company and he immediately responded with, "28 miles". I immediately knew he was going to back out but we talked about it some more and he told me that he would sleep on it and message me in the morning. The next day, after opening up my lap top I saw Stefan's message and I'll paste it for you here:

So regarding your client's opportunity, I love what they’re doing but I really dislike the four days in the office. I don’t understand why non customer facing IT people need to be in an office all the time. It’s mainly the distance to drive. I’m not gonna go back to wasting two hours a day in traffic that I’ll never get back. So I appreciate them talking with me but I don’t think we’re a good match

Like I mention at the top of this post, I fully understand if my entire reading audience agrees with Stefan's decision. We all know what traffic was like in Austin in 2019 and what it's turned into today. So yes, at face value, Stefan's decline makes sense but let's dig into this a bit further.?

How far do we need to go before we make a concession in our careers and take a step down the ladder? In Stefan's case, I'm talking about driving back into the office. While the annual compensation packages being made in 2021 were astronomical, the fully remote/work from home benefit has turned out to be a luxury that a lot of IT professionals do not want to let go of. And in Stefan's case, even though he's beginning to experience moments of desperation in his job search, he does not want to give up working from home. While I'm no Psychologist, arguably the most challenging emotion we can experience in our professional careers is Despair. We're talking about a sense of hopelessness and aside from no upward mobility at all, we feel like we're barely getting by. About two weeks after Stefan walked away from my client's opportunity, he sent me a quick update on his job search,?

Well, it just happened again. I went through all the rounds at this company, including a final, virtual on-site and today they called and said they’re going to pass on me. So I’m not ashamed to say it but I'm just feeling very discouraged right now. I'm not doing well.

I did my best to keep everything positive and said that things would get better. That evening, I thought of a rather non-traditional approach I could have shared with Stefan about my client's opportunity. I completely understand if my reading audience finds this a bit crazy but what if Stefan found a room for rent in the Austin metro area for about 700-800 dollars per month and every Sunday evening, drove into Austin, stayed at this room and went back home on Thursday?? True, having to do this would be quite irritating but isn't irritation higher up the emotional ladder than Discouragement and Despair? And by living in the Austin metroplex, could he begin going to some technology networking events and over time, connect in person with some hiring managers here in Austin? In other words, would this approach have gotten him fully back in the game? But knowing how surreal everything was in the post-pandemic era for the IT markets, a lot of people would have furrowed their brow at such a suggestion. So I kept quiet and simply offered him my best wishes. That said, let me tell you about a really nice moment in my career where I took a significant step down in my career that resulted in a nice leap forward over the long-term.?

The dot.com bust was truly a special moment for me. In addition to the IT industry completely collapsing, I was quite stupid and had all of my money in technology stocks and lost everything. My business had shut down and I had three months of savings and after that, would have to foreclose on my house. I began applying for jobs in Austin but no one was getting back to me and at the time, the reality began to set in that I'd have to start waiting tables or pressure washing automobiles and driveways for a living. For an immediate financial bandaid, I brought in three roommates and began looking for jobs in Houston, Texas. After two months of an emergency job search, I was fortunate enough to land a recruiter role for a base salary of 40k and an estimated annual compensation package of 70k. Five days a week in office in downtown Houston so my week began on Sunday evenings with a drive to an apartment that I shared with a very strange roommate that I found in the Houston Chronicle. Friday evenings, I would make my way back to Austin. I was absolutely miserable and the drive back and forth on Highway 290 just had me thinking of how far I had fallen in both my career and personal life. Until I found a contract recruiting gig in Austin the Fall of 2002, I did this work schedule every week without one day off. Roughly about two months into this job, one of my employer's software consultants came into the office and as he was setting up his cubicle, he hung his Computer Science diploma from Rice University on the wall. No doubt, that got my attention and I went over and introduced myself and let him know that while I was a recruiter at this agency, I also had a small independent practice that helped startups and established companies find software engineering talent. We agreed to keep in touch for whenever he started considering a new job.??

Four years later, in 2006, he emailed me saying that he was finally looking for a new opportunity and as it turned out, he was also open to opportunities in New York City. At the time, one of the top High Frequency Trading firms in the country was allowing me to submit resumes on a "guest basis" which meant that while I was not on the vendor list, if I were to prove myself for being able to submit top 1% talent to them, they would bring me on as a formal vendor. So I submitted the resume for this software engineer I met while I was working in Houston and he crushed the entire process. He breezed through the code test and made it all the way to the final onsite.? This HFT liked him a lot and was ready to make him an offer. While this engineer did wind up taking another opportunity, the company was so impressed with this being my first submittal that they called me up and said these words to me,?

"Mark, given the caliber of the software engineering candidate you presented to us, we've decided to formally bring you on as a vendor. We are so excited to work with you!"

And from 2006 to present, my team has done close to 30 placements with this company. And along with the financial reward has come some great recognition for our recruiting agency in the NYC labor markets. When I think about how all of this came to be, I remember so clearly seeing that amazing software engineer hanging his degree in his cubicle and going up to introduce myself. And yes, this never would have happened had I not decided to take such a huge step down in my career and work for that Houston staffing firm.?

Allow me to make clear that while I am sharing this story with my reading audience, I did not communicate any of this to Stefan. In the immediate moment of partnering with him on his job search, I have to defer to his decisions and support whatever direction he chooses to go. It's just that when he shared with me how discouraged he was getting in his job search, I started having these thoughts about my story in the dot.com bust and how Stefan could have realized something similar in his career. Make no mistake, it would have been an immediate step down in his work/life balance but he would be back in the game, keeping his data engineering skills very sharp and working for a startup that is doing very well financially.?

In closing, when we try to hold on to something that is no longer there, over time, a sense of discouragement and even despair can emerge. If you are coming up on 4-5 months of unemployment and your emotions are beginning to damper a bit, for the next interview you land, can you do your best to discover the company's hard requirements for their job opening and let them know that you would be more than happy to accept those terms? And right now, the most difficult "hard requirement" for candidates to accept is going back into the office. While the labor markets have ticked upwards a little bit, we are still nowhere close from being out of the woods. And seeing the disappointing earnings reports from Intel and Amazon tell me that we need to prepare for at least another five to six months of choppy waters in the tech sector. Going back to my dot.com bust story, I did not take 1-2 steps down the career ladder. Instead, I completely fell off and landed face first on hard concrete. But again, look how nicely it paid off for me in the long run. For Stefan, while driving 28 miles one way to his job would have been a true irritation, emotionally, it would have been a clear step up from his feelings of discouragement and despair. And for someone of his talents and abilities, in the long run, he would have come out the winner.?

To be clear, Stefan is a great guy and I continue to believe that he will land nicely!

Thanks,?

Mark Cunningham

Technical Recruiter

512-699-5719

[email protected]

https://thebiddingnetwork.com

https://markcunningham91.blogspot.com

https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/markhc