I rejected my first job offer

I finally got a job offer as a junior developer! But I said no.’Tis true. Literally, just over a month ago, I got offered a job as a junior developer. I turned it down. It sort of broke my heart that I had to say no, but let me tell you what, there wer…

I finally got a job offer as a junior developer! But I said no.

’Tis true. Literally, just over a month ago, I got offered a job as a junior developer. I turned it down. It sort of broke my heart that I had to say no, but let me tell you what, there were so many things that were… so questionable.

FYI: Throughout this article, you may see a red flag 🚩. This indicates an observation or instance that made me pause, and take a mental note of whatever I thought was potentially weird or problematic. I found a lot of “🚩” as I continued through this interview process, and eventually I decided there were too many to justify accepting the job. We’ll tally these up at the end.

The Job Description

So, at the end of January, I get a notification for a Junior Web Developer position. I read the job description, and it goes something like this:

  • Collaborate with design team ✔️
  • Support existing sites (sure)
  • Good knowledge of HTML, CSS ✔️
  • Experience with JavaScript is a plus ✔️
  • Some familiarity with CMS’s like Wix (sure)

I won’t lie that I had a couple of gripes with this job description. But they were minor. Firstly, the company is an agency, and based on the opinions of my tech friends who have done this type of work, client and agency work can be challenging. It’s like everything is the most important thing, it all needs to have been done yesterday, and you’re constantly context switching from project to project. Secondly, the company is also requiring employees to come into the office. It seemed odd for a company that was founded in 2020, has lived most of its life through COVID, and does mainly work that could be done at home.

Other than those 2 things, I felt like I nailed the requirements. I haven’t worked on a dev team, but I have worked within my teaching team. I can support existing sites. I have good knowledge of HTML and CSS. I have experience with JS. I’ve used WordPress and SquareSpace in the past, so Wix couldn’t be that different. I totally fit this job description! I thought it would be a great first job where I would learn a lot.

I get my application in, write a cover letter thanking this company for being open to hiring junior developers, and I ended up getting an interview! It’s been hard for me to even get interviews, so getting an interview was exciting! I prepped pretty heavily with my husband. I got brave and asked another developer friend for question ideas, and she sent me all of these resources. I’m totally prepared, like honestly, probably over-prepared, but I frickin’ wanted to nail this interview.

Interview 1

Interview day comes, I get to this place, and it’s actually this brand new office. Most of this space is empty. 🚩 Weird, but ok. They’re new and growing. I meet with the lead developer and the lead designer. Both are really cool, they go through my work and are pretty up-front about how much they like it all. I’m in and out of there in 26 minutes. 🚩 Pretty fast, but it was only scheduled for a half an hour. Once I got home, I debriefed the husband, told him I felt really good about it, felt really confident in my answers, liked the ladies I interviewed with and the office.

2 thumbs up!

The next day, I get a call to set up a second round interview with the CEO. 🚩 Second round with the CEO already? Regardless, it was the first time I’ve made it past a screening round. I was pumped! I took that as a good sign.

I began researching the CEO. He’s only in his mid-twenties, has mainly worked for himself (from what I found, he didn’t have much experience actually being an employee somewhere), and 🚩 “he likes to be involved at every stage.” I felt a little less confident going into this one, only because…like what is the CEO going to ask me? This would be pretty high-level stuff right? He’s not a developer, so it’s not like he’s going to be able to ask me technical questions.

Interview 2

I get to my second round interview, and apparently, the CEO got caught up with a client, so he wasn’t quite ready for me. Instead, the ladies I met with the first time took me around, and showed me the office a bit more.

The lead designer then asked me “when’s your first day?” 🚩 Uhh, I only interviewed once. That wouldn’t be a very thorough process to hire someone after only one interview, right? I thought it was weird that she didn’t know that I was there for a second interview. Anyways, there I was, just waiting and making sure I observed things. Here’s was I noticed:

  • 🚩 Everyone has beautiful new iMacs. That’s awesome, but why not just get everybody laptops, like most other agencies? The iMacs made it feel like that’s how management makes sure people have to come to the office. Can’t take an iMac home as easily as a laptop if you’re sick or want to work from home.
  • 🚩 The CEO’s office is a giant, raised, glass box. You have to go up some steps, open up his glass doors and enter the glass office. The way it’s situated gives him this grand view of the whole office and all the employees. That felt a little icky.
  • 🚩 It’s completely silent in there. Obviously, this might be because people have on headphones or need to make calls, but from what I saw, not everyone had in headphones. And nobody made any phone calls.
  • 🚩 There’s not actually much of a development team here. It’s the lead dev I spoke with, and potentially me. Those would be the developers. Everybody else is a “designer,” but why are there like 12 designers to only 2 developers?

Fine. Maybe I started looking too harshly at some of this stuff. I couldn’t help it, though! I know what my friends have, I know how they like to work, their preferences and I know all about the bad experiences they’ve had. I was on the lookout.

After about 10 minutes, 🚩 the CEO makes a PA call to the lead developer. I couldn’t contain myself, but I asked her if this was the real life version of Michael Scott from The Office! She said that was how she felt now that he got the PA system installed.

She takes me over to the glass box, opens up the doors for me, but like, doesn’t introduce me. Just lets me go in and leaves. 🚩 Fine, whatever, I can introduce myself, I’m a teacher, I do it all the time. The CEO and I start our interview, and I had a few takeaways.

  • 🚩 He is clearly doing things on his computer. (This could have been him taking notes, or looking at interview question prompts. But it didn’t feel like it.)
  • 🚩 He took a call during my interview. (I guess at least he tried to cut that conversation short.)
  • 🚩 There are two giant TV’s (probably 42" each) with looping security cam footage. Live footage. Most of it is of the parking lots, but every now and then, the office and employees from a few different angles would flick through.
  • 🚩 He brought up compensation in terms of dollars per hour. (Wait, what? Was this an hourly position, or one with a salary and benefits like the job description and my first interview said it was?)
  • 🚩 He openly compared me to another candidate, dropping enough information about that candidate that made me think, “why are you telling me all of this?”
  • 🚩 He didn’t leave me any time to ask my questions.
  • 🚩 Even though we started 10 minutes late, I was still out before my original, allotted 30 minutes was up.

Overall, he was nice enough. But very much the CEO type: sales-y, thought highly of himself and his business, clearly very smart, borderline overly confident or arrogant, had big ideas but perhaps hasn’t thought about the small details.

Anyways, he decides that he wants to give me a technical task before moving forward. He tells me that the lead developer will send me a task tomorrow.

Great! Through to another round! My first technical task!

Honestly, I was excited! At this point, I still felt good. I could definitely feel some weirdness after meeting with the CEO. I saw the red flags starting to peak out at me. But dang it, I wanted this to work. I wanted to get this job just to get some real experience.

The Technical Task

The next day, I got my technical task. The lead dev emails me, and thanks me for coming in to meet with the CEO. She says I should be encouraged because he usually gives these tasks to people he thinks can bring a lot of value to the company. I looked through it, and I felt…deflated. They sent me 3 links of different pages of their live websites, and all I had to do was recreate one of them 🚩 in Wix within a week.

That was it. I wanted something a lot more challenging. I won’t lie that I was a bit disappointed. Maybe more than a bit. I got started anyways.

And I did not like it. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

I purposely chose the page that was the most complex, but it was still really easy to recreate because it was a live websites. I opened up DevTools and found whatever I needed. EVERYTHING was an image, even the background colors. 🚩 I didn’t do any coding at all. It was all drag and drop. What I tried to do was fix a bunch of stuff. I fixed spacing (as best I could considering everything was sort of by eye). I fixed fonts. I fixed menus. I adjusted styles that got missed or overlooked. But I wasn’t developing. There was no coding involved. I wrote about 6 lines in Velo to do a typing animation, and I didn’t even bother to finish it all the way. The whole thing took me a couple of hours.

After working on this task, I knew I didn’t want the job. I never felt like I built anything during that dev task. I did not enjoy working in Wix.

Discussion

Thank goodness I have people in my life that are amazingly good listeners. It was unanimous from all of them — my husband, my friends, my parents, my mentors — don’t take that job. Some of those “quirks” could be signs of deeper issues. That technical task was a glimpse into what I’d be doing on a daily basis, and if I didn’t like it now, I wasn’t going to like it in the future. I couldn’t count on the job changing into something I wanted. I wasn’t going to be coding much. I wasn’t going to get the experience of working on a team.

Although I was disappointed, I came to terms with needing to reject the job if I got an offer. I could just see a bad experience coming. I am making a major career change, and I didn’t want to put myself into a position where my first job experience is crappy, and I don’t really learn enough to get a better job later on. I felt confident in my decision to say no.

Then I actually got the offer.

The Offer

It was there, in an email! They said they liked my “methods” when recreating the design. My methods? The CEO was going to “make good” (his words!) on his salary offer. 🚩 No offer contract to review. No talk about benefits. No paperwork for me to review. And I could start the next Monday.

All of the sudden, I had terrible doubts about rejecting this offer! I had been applying to jobs for almost 6 months at that point, and this had been only the third company to bring me in for an interview. I thought, “But this is the first offer! I know it will be kind of terrible, but I can just keep learning more on my own! All I need is to get my foot in the door and then the next job will come easier, right?!”

Right?

I emailed back, said that because this was a career change decision, I wanted to make sure this was a good fit, and I needed time to weigh my options. I told them I’d have my decision in 2 days. Like I said, I already knew I was going to say no, but seeing that offer email made things a lot more real. It made me feel a little desperate, that doubt crept in hard, and I wanted to rethink the whole interview process again.

It really did break my heart a little. I wanted that job to work out SO BADLY. I thought about all the rejection emails I’ve already had. I thought about my fruitless screening interviews. But I knew it wasn’t what I wanted. I wasn’t going to learn enough to prepare for the positions I eventually want. All of these reasons were totally staring me in the face, saying no, but it didn’t make it any easier.

I had to say no. And I did.

The Rejection

After my 2 days, I emailed them back. I told them I had other interviews coming up, with more established engineering teams working on custom development projects, and I wanted to pursue those (all of which were true). I felt really depressed as I sent that email. The company wished me luck, which I appreciate, but man, I was really sad.

I had gotten so close to finally getting into the development world, but I knew I didn’t want to get in with that job. Without the advice and guidance from all of the people around me, I probably would’ve just taken that job. I feel like that is a perfect example of a place that claims it’s progressive, it’s cool, it’s not corporate, but then…sort of takes advantage of its employees. It preys on their lack of knowledge about how tech companies can/should/do work, has terrible benefits, forces employees to stay “productive,” and is secretly ultra-corporate. How is that even possible when the CEO is in his mid-twenties?! That’s a different conversation for a different time but…y’all I said no to this place. As much as I wanted it to work, I just couldn’t justify it.

That’s ok though. Somethin’s comin’, somethin’ good, if I can wait. Somethin’s comin’, I don’t know what it is, but it is gonna be great.

10 points to Gryffindor if you can name that tune 🙂

total 🚩: 31


I rejected my first job offer was originally published in Level Up Coding on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.


Print Share Comment Cite Upload Translate
APA
Marissa Huysentruyt | Sciencx (2024-03-29T06:33:01+00:00) » I rejected my first job offer. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2022/05/05/i-rejected-my-first-job-offer/.
MLA
" » I rejected my first job offer." Marissa Huysentruyt | Sciencx - Thursday May 5, 2022, https://www.scien.cx/2022/05/05/i-rejected-my-first-job-offer/
HARVARD
Marissa Huysentruyt | Sciencx Thursday May 5, 2022 » I rejected my first job offer., viewed 2024-03-29T06:33:01+00:00,<https://www.scien.cx/2022/05/05/i-rejected-my-first-job-offer/>
VANCOUVER
Marissa Huysentruyt | Sciencx - » I rejected my first job offer. [Internet]. [Accessed 2024-03-29T06:33:01+00:00]. Available from: https://www.scien.cx/2022/05/05/i-rejected-my-first-job-offer/
CHICAGO
" » I rejected my first job offer." Marissa Huysentruyt | Sciencx - Accessed 2024-03-29T06:33:01+00:00. https://www.scien.cx/2022/05/05/i-rejected-my-first-job-offer/
IEEE
" » I rejected my first job offer." Marissa Huysentruyt | Sciencx [Online]. Available: https://www.scien.cx/2022/05/05/i-rejected-my-first-job-offer/. [Accessed: 2024-03-29T06:33:01+00:00]
rf:citation
» I rejected my first job offer | Marissa Huysentruyt | Sciencx | https://www.scien.cx/2022/05/05/i-rejected-my-first-job-offer/ | 2024-03-29T06:33:01+00:00
https://github.com/addpipe/simple-recorderjs-demo