I’ve been sitting in a lot of interviews and working with new hires lately and I’m beginning to notice a few alarming trends about folks that are coming from the freelance world to the full time world. None of these are real show stoppers in any sense, but it’s just some things to look out [...]
I’ve been sitting in a lot of interviews and working with new hires lately and I’m beginning to notice a few alarming trends about folks that are coming from the freelance world to the full time world. None of these are real show stoppers in any sense, but it’s just some things to look out for if you’re considering making the switch from freelance development to full time development (at a company)
If you looking at going to an agency then some of these points won’t be applicable, but if you looking at going big business like a company on a Fortune 40 list, these are things you might have to adjust to
1. Some companies don’t use in FTP
That’s right, some companies don’t fire up CuteFTP, Filezilla, or Transmit when it comes to pushing files to the live environment. Most of your larger corporations have multiple servers to maintain their web presence and if you had to FTP the same file to 100 servers, it could take a while.
Most of the larger companies will use some type of automated tool or deployment tool that will handle pushing the file to live server and sometimes this tool won’t be the most intuitive thing OR it may require 30 clicks to push something live, depending no the tool.
2. Some companies don’t use GIT or SVN
Those trendy web freelancers with their Macbooks (more on that in a second) and their GitHub accounts, changing the world one commit at a time. Larger companies may use some type of version control, and a lot are married to CVS (SVN’s dirty cousin).
As scary as it is, some companies use NO version control what-so-ever. So you may have to wrap your head around that as well.
3. Some companies don’t give you Admin Access to your PC (that’s right: PC)
See that nice new shiny MacBook? There’s a 75% change that you won’t get that if you sign up for big business. Now granted some do, but most don’t. Largely because they’ll have deals with Microsoft or use some type of proprietary software that runs on PC only.
But the biggest thing is that alot of bigger companies will lock down the access you have to these computers. Want to use a thumb drive? Can’t. Want to install Chrome? Can’t. Want to install GIT? Can’t, no administrator password.
4. Sometimes you can’t touch the Back End (or see the Database)
If you were hired as more of a Front End Developer (CSS/JS/XHTML) then chances are you probably won’t have access to anything resembling back end (ie: server side code). Most larger companies maintain release schedules and various other types of internal processes that would prevent the front end folks from getting access to the server side code.
This could be a determent to some freelancers looking to make the jump as in the freelance world you sometimes have to play switch hitter and code some backend code to get you over the crunch
5. Sometimes a 5 minute fix takes 5 years
Going back to the mention of release schedules a lot of larger companies will have code freezes during certain times of the year (maybe around holiday times if you’re a commerce site) that will not allow any new code to be promoted to the production environment
On the other hand some companies do weekly releases but code is ONLY allowed to go live on those release days. Make a fix on Monday? It can’t be promoted until Thursday.
All of this isn’t to dissuade anyone for looking for opportunities in a big corporate environment, there’s a lot of perks as well and the opportunity for advancement is great, not the mention that the salary base may be a touch higher than a small startup.
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