Employment Red Flags

How do we find a good job?

Regardless of how early or far into a career you are, this is a question you will have to ask yourself whenever you enter into the job market. Your work relationships will be some of the most important in your life. You will spend a big chunk of your life interacting with your employer and co-workers. You will be relying on your job to support your family, grow your skills and plan your future.

Working a bad job will take more from you than it will give. It might seem like a safe choice to take the first offer you get, or settle for a sketchy position when you are hunting for a new position. Research however shows otherwise.

Let's take a look at some of the concequences of taking a bad job: Research references

• Increase in mental health symptoms such as anxiety and depression.
• Less time to spend on family, hobbies, and self improvement.
• Increase in stress and burdens on social relationships.
• Difficulty finding quality employment later on.
• Decrease in quality and quantity of sleep.
• Stagnation in growth of skills.

If you've worked in a dead end job for any amount of time you will recognise the damage it can do to all aspects of your life.

Red Flags and how to avoid them.

On your job hunt you will run into a lot of people who want to benefit from your situation even if it hurts you. Wether it be recruiters from LinkedIn, connections you've made at events, or even well known companies- Watch out for these signs:

• NDAs:

Non disclosure agreements are very common these days, but are they necessary? In some situations it'd make sense like if you're working directly with government or on large scale projects. But a lot of the time NDAs are weaponised to make it more difficult for workers to share their experiences. The fear of prosecution and law suits can deter people from seeking help when they're wronged.

• Non-compete contracts:

If you work as a freelancer, or contractor you should look close at the contracts you sign, especially if they contain non-compete clauses. Malicious employers will often make their workers sign contracts that prevent them from working in whole industries.

Example: I am a blockchain engineer, an employer had attempted to make me sign a contract that would prevent me from working in my industry for a year after the termination of a 3 month deal! If I had signed that I would open my self up to a lawsuit when working in my field!

• Irregular payment structures:

Withholding a percentage of your first check, late payments, and delays should not be tolerated. If this is brought up or if it happens even once then you should stop work immediately to cut your losses. Bad employers will often use late payments to manipulate their workers and test their limits.

An example from my life: One of the jobs I've had delayed due payments for 2 weeks, I stopped working the day the delays began. While chasing down the employer for the payment I got in touch with one of the workers who's been working without pay for over 2 months! This worker had signed an NDA, preventing him from seeking help. He kept working because he had no other options.

• Excessive demands and unrealistic expectations:

Some employers either don't understand or don't care about the efforts involved in doing quality work. They will expect you to work unrealistic hours, they will force you to be available always on demand. They will underpay you and increase the scope of required work every chance they get.

An example from my life: "Our product can't have less features then salesforce." I once took a contract building a Public Private relations app that aided employers in identifying the needs of their workers. The irony is that the client didn't care about the needs of their workers. Infact they required the 2 person team to build a Salesforce competitor. The scope got unberable and caused me immense stress for weeks.

Pushy, unrealistic employers and clients will waste your time, and damage your reputation and self esteem.

Conclusions:

You are valuable, your time is important, there will always be a better job waiting for you. Don't settle for employers that don't care about you.