THE NEGATIVE REACTION

Enough time has passed, here's the facts

I've been told several people are waiting for me to post about my old job at FindLaw. I have a lot to say, and will make come comparisons to my current job at Best Buy.

It all started well

When I first started at FindLaw, life was pretty good. Our monthly goals were pretty low, the process was very straight forward and in general, all the developers I knew were pretty happy. Then starting in June of 2009, every month suddenly became a "production push". This continued for 7 straight months. I started looking for another job in January. A lot was going on, and I knew several things. First, I would probably never be considered for a "specialized" role (these were all the rage at the time and will be explained in more detail later). My best bet would be to move up the management ladder into a lead role, then manager, then director. Unfortunately, once you set out on the management path, your days as a developer were over. Since I had just started in web development, I had already decided management was not for me. It was then I knew there wasn't much else for me to do, but to sit around and do my job (for a LOT less than the industry standard) and continue to be unhappy. It was at this point I started looking around, getting in contact with recruiters and seeing if I really could find a job outside of FindLaw.

The bad and ugly

At the time, the country's economy was not doing well. The housing bubble had burst, companies were cutting jobs and losing their homes. The vibe I continued to get from management was, "You should be happy you have a job." and thinking at some point just having a job isn't good enough. Shouldn't you enjoy the work you do and like to come to work everyday? As the months turned over, I continued to have conversations with people who were extremely unhappy with their jobs, unhappy with management and flat out frustrated. It wasn't just a few people on our team, it across the whole company. Designers, content writers, SEO people, the sickeness was everywhere. People were burned out and if management knew it, they were doing little to help subside people's resentment. 1 on 1 meetings become an exercise in counseling. And yet, goals continued to go up.

Jailbreak and reflection

In one week I had several interviews with companies. I knew if I was going to get a job at a different company, I needed to be honest. I told myself not to BS anybody. Tell the interviewers you know CSS, HTML and some basic Javascript. Nothing more. Focus on your strengths.

It worked. I had two offers and accepted a job at a company in Minneapolis called Reside. They were a salesforce.com partner and built applications and websites on their platform. It was a short stint (why will be covered at a different time and day) only about 6 months, but I realized a few things when I get there.

This is what I learned while I as at FindLaw - the BAD

• They have a flat hierarchy. There's no where for developers to go who want to advance and do anything beyond being in management.
• All the developers are very underpaid for what they do and what they have to put up with on a daily basis. All of my job offers were 10-13K MORE than what I was making at FindLaw, and I didn't get a raise two of the three years I was there!!
• It's very process oriented. Once you've learned how to develop and integrate 20 sites a month, you pretty much know everything you're going to know. In the end, I really felt like a Ford plant employee putting hubcaps on cars as they came down the line.
• Lack of originality. Even at Reside I was able to try new things and think outside the box to get stuff done. Not the case at FindLaw. The majority of their sites all look the same. then again, you can't be original when your goal is put out 4,000 sites a year.
• Lack of collaboration within departments. Developers were kept isolated from the designers. For me, there's a HUGE opportunity to create some really unique stuff with designers and it's just not happening when you keep those people separate. It was a delight working at Reside where the designers would ask me if I wanted to try something new, and vice versa.
• Hiring outside candidates unfamiliar with the culture at FindLaw. This was a biggie when I was leaving. There were several high profile hires of people into high positions. They were external candidates and all came in and wanted to make seismic waves in the company on the backs of the people who work there. They ruffled a LOT of people's feathers and lost a lot of respect and buy in from the employees. As a result, a lot of people left.

You might be thinking why would anybody work at FindLaw after reading those points, but fret not people, there are some good things I realized after I left.

This is what I learned after I left FindLaw - the GOOD

• The code their sites use is straight forward and rock solid. They taught me to be a code snob. No sissy hacks, no crazy stuff. Standards compliant, clean, fast code.
• You learn to code fast and code well. The one site I used in my interview as a recent example of my work impressed everybody who saw it. You should have seen the eyes when I told them I whipped it out in about 2 hours. Hard to imagine someone could code so well, so fast.
• No bugs. Since the code is so good, there's rarely bugs you have spend time trying to figure out. Having to code for IE6, you'd think this would be a nightmare, but it wasn't. The developers knew all the tricks and after a few hundred sites, you knew them all. This was not the case with the salesforce.com platform. The salesforce.com code sucked so back, most of my time was spent trying to figure out what the hell they were thinking when they laid out their CSS.
• The work is straight forward. You sit down, hammer out a few sites and go home. It's not rocket science. You basically work by yourself and you don't need to have a lot of contact with other departments like the project managers or designers. One thing I found out when I was at Reside was there were a LOT of meetings I didn't need to go to, but since I was the "front end" guy, I needed to be there. At FindLaw, you could "blend in" and do your work, whereas in a project setting, you were constantly being asked to do things other than code.

Not what you expected?

Yeah, the last few months I was at FindLaw sucked pretty bad. Am I glad I got out? Completely happy. I've learned a lot (both good and bad) now that I'm no longer working at FindLaw. With my new position at Best Buy, I'm drawing on all of my experiences and processes which were used at FindLaw. Best Buy is currently in the process of moving a lot of their development back in house and as such, do not have a lot of processes in place. There's a lot of opportunity to have input, and many of the ideas I've spoken to my manager about are already being considered. I had a six month hiccup at Reside and now am back in my comfort zone. I do miss FindLaw for what it;s worth, but I'm also glad I was able to move on. I'm making a LOT more money now (almost 30K more than what I was making at FindaLaw) and my stress levels have dropped considerably.