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Ithaqua posted:That means "someone else accepted, you didn't get the job". If a company wants you, they'll let you know.
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Mar 28, 2012 19:16
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Just call them. You have nothing to lose by calling. And it will show your enthusiasm.
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Mar 28, 2012 19:23
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I would keep looking. If you get another offer you can call them back and say so, hoping they drop the guy taking too long to decide.
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Mar 28, 2012 20:03
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Master_Odin posted:Except I wasn't outright declined like a couple people I know. I don't have much hope of getting it, but I'd rather to get out of this stage of "I might get it, I probably won't" and just get a final decision, but I'm unsure of if I should send an e-mail at all about it. I would email them, and just ask them for a status. There is nothing wrong with asking for updates and sometimes they just forget because they are handling so many applicants. Keep looking though.
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Mar 28, 2012 20:26
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Master_Odin posted:Except I wasn't outright declined like a couple people I know. I don't have much hope of getting it, but I'd rather to get out of this stage of "I might get it, I probably won't" and just get a final decision, but I'm unsure of if I should send an e-mail at all about it. You made the cut, but weren't their first pick. Either someone else accepted, or they're working their way down the list and you'll eventually get a call. Sorry to be harsh, but it's time to abandon hope.
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Mar 28, 2012 20:59
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Ok well after applying to 3 different companies and getting 3 offers I finally decided on one yesterday. Even though I was lurking a bit this thread really motivated me so first off thank you. Secondly I took to the internet and wrote a fairly large post essentially about making programmers write code on the board and what you miss by using that as your test to see if coders can perform. http://www.lonestarprod.com/?p=22 I thought you all might have some feedback or at least tell me I am full of poo poo. It may not provide much use to the people who are actually going through these terrible interview processes but maybe when they are managers themselves they can apply what I think is a better solution.
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Mar 30, 2012 15:58
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Roloc posted:Ok well after applying to 3 different companies and getting 3 offers I finally decided on one yesterday. Even though I was lurking a bit this thread really motivated me so first off thank you. Hey this was really good. I was expecting you to leave off with "everything sucks, there's no answer. -end-" but the code review idea is a really good one. I've passed this on to a couple friends (one who actually hires at his company). Thanks!
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Mar 30, 2012 16:28
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poemdexter posted:Hey this was really good. I was expecting you to leave off with "everything sucks, there's no answer. -end-" but the code review idea is a really good one. I've passed this on to a couple friends (one who actually hires at his company). Thanks! Thanks! The job I ended up accepting was actually one that I convinced to try this on me! It was a compromise I sent them one of my side projects and then sat down with the team I am going to be working with and we talked about how it was wrong in parts and how I did good in other parts, just like a real code review would go. The other two where all whiteboard based. As a matter of fact they didn't even ask about design patterns, OO concepts or anything actually relevant. All character shifting, and mathematical programming puzzles. Which I did... and made it through obviously but I just couldn't kick this thought that they were screwing themselves and missing a lot about me and what I bring to the table with that being the only test. Which to me the whole whiteboard test lets in the door that extremely hard to work with guy who gets insulted and nerd rages all over the place in code reviews or when you ask about a section of his code. Yeah sure he banged out FizzBuzz in 5 lines but he is an rear end in a top hat! Which is more important and how can we test for that. The code review gives you a shot of exposing that guy and keeping a potential toxic but really good programmer off your team. Roloc fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Mar 30, 2012 |
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Mar 30, 2012 16:40
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It was a good article, but there's one thing I disagree on.quote:... That I would consider a poor test. If coding is your job, then in an environment where someone else gives you money to do what they want the code to accomplish, and potentially have other people relying on what the code does, independence is not a great virtue. A programmer may take a task without any objections and move to the Himalayan mountains for 3 months, to return with a perfectly functional piece of code... only to discover that it doesn't actually do even remotely what the customer wants or needs, so the whole effort is wasted. A programmer making assumptions outside of his immediate domain of code is bad, very bad, and asking clarifications if you don't fully understand the task or the problem is something a newbie programmer should definitely be expected to do. You can't offload or go lone wolf with the task of understanding what is required. It would only come to bite you in the rear end much harder later on.
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Mar 30, 2012 17:11
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Roloc posted:Ok well after applying to 3 different companies and getting 3 offers I finally decided on one yesterday. Even though I was lurking a bit this thread really motivated me so first off thank you. The reason you have candidates write code in front of you is not (just) to make you perform under pressure, it's to see your thought process. It's okay if you're questioning yourself as you're doing stuff, and in fact, it's often a good thing. The problem with your proposed solution (overnight coding problem followed by code review) is that you miss this process, and of course the more obvious problem that folks can "game it" to an extent, by having outside help and coaching. To address the things you say live coding tests accomplish: quote:It tests how nervous the person gets when asked to “perform” on the spot for a total stranger. quote:It shows you if they have good hand writing. quote:Generally shows the person knows what the structure of one simple function looks like and if they can write a loop. quote:Are they good at writing code on the whiteboard/napkin/paper. That said, I don't think there's any reason to not do the code review idea you've presented. But I would still contend that there is value in the live coding test as well.
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Mar 30, 2012 17:38
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pigdog posted:It was a good article, but there's one thing I disagree on. Point taken. I think you could simply give a more detailed problem and more defined requirements for them to solve if that is the case. In my line of work which has been mostly consulting type of work we want people who we can say "Here is the project we just won, now go to the client site and do it well". So that independence is something we are looking for. YMMV pigdog posted:It's not just about writing code on the whiteboard, it's about presenting your ideas to your peers in a semi-informal fashion. I would like to hire people who can do this so that I can have collaborative teams. Yeah I certainly agree that the thought process is what you are trying to get at with the whiteboard, I just disagree that having them do that on the whiteboard is the only valid test of thought process (not that you implied that, just that it appears to be the gold standard in the industry). If a person can sit down and explain to me why they chose recursion over doing it procedural, or if they made a new object instead of just including it as a property in another object I can tell what the person was thinking when they wrote it. The problem with the whiteboard is not that it isn't a valid test, I think it is to a certain extent. Hell I just had to go through about 10 of them and did ok. The problem is when that is the ONLY test of your coding ability. If you don't have a way for the extremely shy yet potentially brilliant programmer to make his or her way on your team then I think you may be doing your company some harm. The last time I checked most coders are not required to stand up and perform under pressure and most of them simply are not used to it and a few of them are just not capable, that doesn't make them bad and it potentially makes them a good teammate once they feel comfortable. Now... do you need to weed out the people who can't write FizzBuzz... yes absolutely. In my opinion this should be done in the screening calls with questions about access modifiers, OO concepts, scope, and "tell me how you would iterate over a collection". Then you follow up with a code review and you get to see all of the other characteristics that a simple whiteboard grilling session misses. Also I am glad you brought up collaborative teams. I don't know about you but in my experience I have never really written code on a white board outside of an interview. Everything we do when we are collaborating loosely resembles UML and maybe some pseudo code. Most of the time it is more mathmatical equations and things like that that we end up writing on the white board. This is another great point because I don't think this process actually gets addressed in either of the tests. You basically go in blindly with an employee on the value they will add in a design session. Maybe as a part of the code review you can try to incite a discussion that will require some diagramming and overall architectural design of the solution. Roloc fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Mar 30, 2012 |
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Mar 30, 2012 17:49
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Hey guys, just had a technical skill test, how did I do?  Test: http://i.imgur.com/zzRdv.jpg 8) Difference between logical and syntax error Answers: http://pastebin.com/701N6MEj
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Mar 30, 2012 20:37
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Knyteguy posted:Hey guys, just had a technical skill test, how did I do? I'm going to assume that you've already sent your answers off and this is purely academic, not "help me cheat". I'm not going to comment on the PHP (I know fuckall about PHP) or the HTML / jQuery. 5) That's a terrible schema. You have 3 pieces of data: A student, a semester, and a score. You should have a table defining your student, a table containing your semesters, and a table that contains a student ID, a semester ID, and a score. You need to brush up on the concept of database normalization 9) quote:MVC or Model View Controller is an all encompassing programming tool or rather a model that helps programmers and developers understand and improve the origins of the design or patterns of software. Nothing you wrote there answers the question asked. It sounds like you're talking out your rear end, or maybe you're a spambot and the text was randomly generated. Keep it simple. Explain the purpose (separation of presentation and business logic), and then give a brief explanation of what the model, view, and controller's purposes are. New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Mar 30, 2012 |
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Mar 30, 2012 20:51
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Ithaqua posted:I'm going to assume that you've already sent your answers off and this is purely academic, not "help me cheat". I'm not going to comment on the PHP (I know fuckall about PHP) or the HTML / jQuery. Thanks. Yes it's purely academic at this point. As far the schema goes, I thought it might be somewhat terrible. Thanks for the link, I will brush up. The MVC model is a new one for me. It was the most succinct answer I could find with my Google-Fu. I understand what it does now though. Also the jQuery answer was unfinished. That's at least 3 out of 15 answers that aren't very good. Luckily I start a contract that may lead to a full time position on Monday. Thanks Ithaqua.
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Mar 30, 2012 21:11
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Knyteguy posted:
I'd brush up on design patterns, people seem to like asking questions about it and they aren't hard, but they require you to have seen it recently.
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Apr 1, 2012 04:30
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Is the original Design Patterns book still the best source from which to learn about design patterns?
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Apr 1, 2012 05:18
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Safe and Secure! posted:Is the original Design Patterns book still the best source from which to learn about design patterns? The GoF design patterns book is seldom read (at least compared to how often it is claimed to have been read). Head First Design Patterns is much more readable for most folks. You should probably augment either with some reading critical of design patterns (esp. as done in C++ circa 1996 or Java) to keep you from becoming a kool-aid drinker; Norvig's "Design Patterns in Dynamic Languages" fits the bill well.
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Apr 1, 2012 05:33
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I think a lot of the reason people ask for whiteboarding problems when they know of the downsides is that they'd rather have candidates that are so good even when handicapped and under pressure and all that they can still come up with working code and decent designs for problems. This unfortunately gets into the adverse selection problem we tend to have in hiring and well... if not all of us can make $370k+ / yr, not all of us can randomly recall different ways to do variations of the knapsack problem off the cuff, but we should be able to frame it properly and give some basic analysis that you'd expect someone to figure out in the time of the interview. Side projects indicate a level of passion that goes beyond your day to day job oftentimes. Writing projects is one thing (some great guys I know went home and took care of a stressful family situation and did just as well as those that spent all day and night in front of a computer), but I think it's totally fair to ask what they read about. I'm a bit slightly wary of anyone that doesn't at least browse for new stuff outside their job and can tell me about what "those cool people" are doing. This is a bit more relevant for folks in the DC area where most coders are employed in defense and their skills & experience are oftentimes irrelevant or incommunicable to industry (say, you worked on Stuxnet doing the PLA exploit - who the heck in industry would care about that work?). Ithaqua posted:That means "someone else accepted, you didn't get the job". If a company wants you, they'll let you know.
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Apr 1, 2012 16:17
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e; woops.
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Apr 2, 2012 15:57
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necrobobsledder posted:In much of private industry this is true, but wife just got an offer after two weeks from the date they said they'd respond just from sheer internal delays in the paperwork and people going on vacation. This is also fairly common in federal jobs to take forever even to accept a candidate. I'll say that if it gets delayed this much, that's a bit of a warning flag too. Fair enough. In my private sector experience, once they want to hire you, they will be up your rear end incessantly until you give them a yes or a no.
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Apr 2, 2012 16:21
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Rejection e-mails hurt deep, yo  .EDIT: But interview e-mails heal even the deepest wounds  .
FamDav fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Apr 2, 2012 |
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Apr 2, 2012 19:20
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How should I account for cost of living vs. salary? I don't think a straight division of salary by cost of living index is accurate...
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Apr 2, 2012 19:25
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Otto Skorzeny posted:How should I account for cost of living vs. salary? I don't think a straight division of salary by cost of living index is accurate... What's the offer and where would you be based?
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Apr 2, 2012 19:27
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Low 60s, near Bridgeport. I'm waiting on another offer from a firm in Allentown and I want to know what the rough equivalent would be before I weigh other factors. e: they're both embedded/uC work if it makes a difference Blotto Skorzany fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Apr 2, 2012 |
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Apr 2, 2012 21:10
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Had a follow up phone interview just now and we mostly talked about stuff like salary ranges and relocation benefits. No official offer yet but I'm 99.9% certain its coming 
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Apr 4, 2012 22:33
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astr0man posted:Had a follow up phone interview just now and we mostly talked about stuff like salary ranges and relocation benefits. No official offer yet but I'm 99.9% certain its coming  Good luck, man I just had another meeting with this small software shop today, I thought it was going to be more technical but it was mostly just me and the owner talking wages (it's an internship), full time work when I graduate, and just shooting the poo poo. So in two weeks I can leave this pseudo-helpdesk crap for a huge pay raise and actually writing code! Can't wait to start. Good things come in threes? vvvv Sab669 fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Apr 7, 2012 |
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Apr 6, 2012 17:34
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Accepted an offer today. Things seem to be coming up roses around here.
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Apr 7, 2012 03:13
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It sure is a swell time to develop software!
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Apr 7, 2012 08:46
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Hey goons, I'm looking for your thoughts on my career situation... I graduated with a BA in Journalism in the Fall of '09. Since then I've held two jobs, the most recent of which being a decent-paying, good benefits job doing graphic design/some HTML/CSS development. Since I got this job I had a career crisis, and now I'm going back to school part-time for another BA in CsCi while still working full-time at my current job. At this rate, I'll graduate in Spring of 2014 or Fall of 2014, at 25 or 26 years old. I'll want to go to graduate school too if I continue to get good marks in upper level classes, but that's a maybe. I guess my question is, am I handicapping my ability to get a good job upon graduation by not getting any programming or DB-specific jobs or internships before I change my career? Right now I work for a non-technical boss. Also, any language practice I pick up will have no practical use where I work, so if I picked up PHP in my spare time I would only be writing whatever things come to my head. Should I quit my full-time position and get an internship or should I be OK?
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Apr 7, 2012 14:01
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unsanitary posted:Hey goons, I'm looking for your thoughts on my career situation... As long as you complete some decent projects doing whatever it is specifically you want to be doing as a full time job, you should do fine interviewing later. It's worth exploring quitting and getting an internship or two. I quit and went back to school mid-twenties and ended up with internships that paid as well as I had been making fulltime anyways. e: are you being realistic with your expectations of graduating in less than 2 years as a part time student?
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Apr 7, 2012 14:11
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Pweller posted:As long as you complete some decent projects doing whatever it is specifically you want to be doing as a full time job, you should do fine interviewing later. I'm going back to the same school, so I've already finished all my generals, and I've already been back for a couple semesters now, so I'm partway there. The only thing that concerns me about hitting the reset button and getting internships from scratch is money. I don't really have any, and can't afford a minimum wage internship.
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Apr 7, 2012 14:21
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You shouldn't take a minimum wage dev internship. Companies are willing to pay, and have grants available to them for hiring students. Is there someone at your school you can talk about this with? Might be a nice hookup there.
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Apr 7, 2012 14:49
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How is my resume? https://docs.google.com/document/d/18fq1UaTbH2FOMdM3_iiuLxrqhO_BydgIL8evG8ZjF1k/edit I think the section "academic achievements" should be moved down to just above "community involvement". I also think that "Extensible hashing, AVL trees, B-Trees, Java", being simple homework, should be removed entirely, but several of my classmates think it should be left in "so they know youre not one of the morons who couldnt do that poo poo". I left out a section on references because I don't have any. I could ask the professor who hired me as an RA, though. I also list my GPA before my graduation date because someone online told me that most recruiters don't care about when I'm graduating. I'm also not sure if it would be handy to put in somewhere that I'm comfortable with regular expressions, and where/how I would put it in there. I also worked on a kind of crappy project with two other people that used basic API calls to find, report and save information about a user's PC hardware in C#. Not sure if I should put that in since it was a couple of years ago and if asked, all I could really say about it is that we did it. It was really straight-forward. As for team projects, the third and fourth projects I listed were also done as part of teams. Should I state that? Edit: What I most want to know is whether I should feel comfortable sending this out after addressing the above things. Safe and Secure! fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Apr 8, 2012 |
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Apr 8, 2012 02:35
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I'm assuming that you're only looking for an internship since you haven't graduated yet. I would take out the "extensible hashing..." like you said since it's not a project. If you apply for something where that matters bring it up in an interview. As far as references go, you can always just add a "references available on request" blurb at the end of your resume. Honestly, I think you're resume looks fine for someone who hasn't graduated yet, but maybe you should give an example of what "modern threat modeling tools" means. astr0man fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Apr 8, 2012 |
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Apr 8, 2012 02:56
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Put your work experience first. When I read resumes, I care way, way more about your actual experience than your classes or even your classwork. Remember, you want to stand out. Listing the same classes that everyone else at your university / college took doesn't help that. I'm not saying leave it off entirely, but I am saying that when I read a resume, I barely pay attention to those unless it's something really unique. Ditto class projects. I can't tell you how many resumes I've seen where I think, Wow, you wrote an elevator control system / ATM backend / other project? You don't say! So did these 10 other folks. What makes you stand out? If you were on a team, list that it was a team project. Personally I like to know if you've worked on a team before; I like to ask about it and what you contributed to it. Also seconding removing the line about extensible hashing and trees. Would you put that you know quicksort and mergesort as well?
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Apr 8, 2012 03:23
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Chasiubao posted:Put your work experience first. When I read resumes, I care way, way more about your actual experience than your classes or even your classwork. Remember, you want to stand out. Listing the same classes that everyone else at your university / college took doesn't help that. I'm not saying leave it off entirely, but I am saying that when I read a resume, I barely pay attention to those unless it's something really unique. Students put all that garbage on a resume because the career center folks tell them that their resumes must be exactly one page. No more, no less! If you insist on putting that algorithm stuff on there put in quantum bogosort. Might get you a callback if it makes someone laugh...
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Apr 8, 2012 03:49
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hobbesmaster posted:Students put all that garbage on a resume because the career center folks tell them that their resumes must be exactly one page. No more, no less! Sure, but that doesn't mean we should tell them that it's okay to do so 
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Apr 8, 2012 03:59
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Yeah it is good to have just a little more info on the projects, for example what were the goals/how were they met. So instead of saying "Whitted-Style Ray Tracer", have something like "Whitted-Style Ray Tracer, traced all the rays so fast Whitted himself stood up and started clapping" It gives the interviewer something to ask you about as well, instead of them saying "hmm so you wrote a ray tracer" they can ask "what techniques did you use to make your ray tracer so exciting" and you can talk about all the smart stuff you did. The point of your resume is to highlight areas where you are super cool at doing stuff, justifying why you should be hired over all the other applicants. You don't wanna lie, but if you did something particularly well or know lots about certain areas you need to show it so they want to get you in for an interview. "Controller Area Network communication, Temperature Sensing, Motor Control" used x and y in environment z to detect this and that and do blah blah. Doesn't have to be long but just add in some context.
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Apr 8, 2012 04:00
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I just wanted to thank everyone in this thread. Reading about interviews and all the example questions really helped me be more prepared and confident with my interviews. I'll be accepting an offer tomorrow. I don't want to say what company it is till I start (I need to get a security clearance first), but it's a small office of a really big company so I'm really excited to start there since there'll be a lot of room for advancement. Also, I totally wore a suit for my in person, and felt overdressed (one of the guys I was introduced to wasn't even wearing shoes), but I really like wearing a suit so whatever.
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Apr 9, 2012 01:25
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Last Thursday I had a manager email me about chatting about an open position they have. He said he would call on Friday but he ended up never calling, probably because he is busy. My question is how long should I wait before sending a friendly email with updated availability to chat? Edit: I actually went ahead and emailed him. Turns out he forgot he was off for Easter so all is good. Don Mega fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Apr 9, 2012 |
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Apr 9, 2012 17:21
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