How to Intentionally Search for a New (SWE) Job

Stub • 958 Words • Career • 11/13/2025

⚠️ This post contains a rougher cut of my thoughts on the topic and may be updated in the future. Please forgive any mistakes or lack of polish!

Background

I despise job seeking and that’s why I don’t really plan on doing it anytime soon. With that being said, I do believe it to be an interesting problem to think about, and it is one that a lot of my friends have started to think about.

This article is written from the POV of a SWE, but most of it could be utilized for any job seeker. I am also someone who is early career and has only worked at one company so a lot of my POV will probably reflect that.

Metrics and Prioritization/Optimization

The order of priority of your metrics will drastically change your search.

  • If you’re already committed to a Location, you would look across Industry and see what is there. Maybe what has similar enough pay.
  • If you’re interested in a particular Industry, maybe you would zero in on certain companies regardless of the Location.
  • Some metrics you might not even care about at all and in that case then you don’t have to even think about it! It could maybe be used in a tie break but at that point I would just say go with your gut rather than bringing in something that you didn’t really care about before.

Some metrics have sub-metrics that will change how you think about it.

In an Epicurean manner I would probably want to minimize backsliding on the things that I care about.

  • You want positive changes in the metrics that you value.
    • You don’t want to backslide on these.
    • Staying the same is fine.
  • You shouldn’t care about negative or positive changes in the metrics that you don’t value.
  • The space of possible outcomes is: Big Up, Slight Up, Same, Slight Down, Big Down
    • I think only really Big Down stands out as a bad option, but of course a Slight Down as something you value more will hurt more.
    • Unless you’re pivoting careers entirely I wouldn’t expect to be many Big Downs, unless it comes with symmetrical Big Ups.

Metrics:

  • Location
    • Cost of Living (COLA)
      • This is tied to compensation/pay.
      • If you want to actually buy a house this is something to heavily consider as well.
    • Transit Options
      • Not only public transit but also what the roads are like, proximity to a major airport, etc.
    • Proximity to Friends and Family
      • If you are moving you really should know someone there or maybe get on dating apps to meet new people. Or go to community events to make new friends because it can be otherwise pretty hard to build your social network back from scratch.
      • Even if you like visiting your family, the further you are the more temporal and monetary obstacles you have to seeing them.
      • Depending on location your friends may or may not visit you frequently. They might try at least once or twice a year though.
  • Attendance Policy
  • Tech Maturity/Excellence
    • This is something that you can only really figure out by looking it up online or talking to people who already work there.
  • Culture
  • Company Prestige
    • prestigehunt: “The most prestigious tech companies. Ranking is updated daily and completely community-driven by head-to-head prestige matches.”
  • Job Title
  • Company Size
    • At a startup you’ll get to touch more things but may sacrifice the amount of organization there is.
    • With increasing company size there is increasing bureaucracy.
  • Industry
    • What top industries have you seen in software over the last few years growing? | r/ProductManagement
    • eCommerce (Shopify, Stripe)
    • CAD (Autodesk, VectorWorks)
    • Service/Support (ServiceNow, Zendesk)
    • Design (Figma, Squarespace)
    • Payroll or HR  (Workday, ADP)
    • Marketing/Sales (HubSpot, Salesforce)
    • UCaaS (RingCentral, Zoom)
    • EdTech (Canvas, Duolingo)
    • Cloud/ML/AI (Google, Microsoft)
    • Entertainment (Netflix, Disney)
    • Retail (Target, Home Depot)
    • FinTech (Robinhood, Venmo)
      • Quantitive Finance (Jane Street, HRT)
      • Banking (BoFA, Capital One)
      • Crypto (Block, Coinbase)
  • Compensation and Benefits
    • levels.fyi
    • Salary
    • Stock
    • Education
    • PTO
    • Insurance
    • Retirement
      • 401(k) Match
      • (Mega) Backdoor Roth
    • You could have lower compensation but better benefits. Or do you count benefits in compensation? As long as your pay can still support your lifestyle I think that this isn’t as important.
    • How much is too much of a pay drop? | r/PersonalFinance
    • You may have to budget a bit more but how much will your happiness increase with an increase in salary? (diminishing marginal returns?)

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