|
Bob Morales posted:Would you hate the support job more than your current gig? If so just stay where you're at. I'm not sure. I think my biggest gripe with my current job is honestly dealing with customers, because of project creep out the rear end. So on one hand it sound dumb to me to go to a job focused on supporting users. But then again, aside from fixing their problem, that's probably all my job would entail. At the end of my shift I don't need to worry about reporting back to the customer on my progress on a certain aspect of a project or due date. Bob Morales posted:Why don't you start learning <interesting technology x> during your free time, and then try to get a job working with that? There's really not much that interests me enough to hold my focus. Ideally, I'd love to be a success indie game dev, strike it rich and then quit life but that's such an unfeasible pipe dream that I ask myself, why bother.
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 21:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 23, 2024 19:38 |
|
|
Chances of you becoming a successful indie dev if you dedicate yourself > 0% Chances of you becoming a successful indie dev if you don't bother == 0% "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" Just have fun and program some dumb games no one will ever play. Maybe some day one of those dumb games will actually be real good and make you rich, maybe not. The worst way to go through life is not trying anything because you are afraid of failure. Don Mega fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Mar 26, 2013 |
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 22:07
|
|
|
Better to regret something you did rather than something you didn't do.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 22:23
|
|
|
wolffenstein posted:Better to regret something you did rather than something you didn't do. Murder?
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 22:28
|
|
|
Not to that extreme obviously.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 22:31
|
|
|
seiken posted:vvv what's your ldap If you are where I think you are, isn't there an internal goon group? I didn't bother joining because it didn't look very active. Should I have? Sab669 posted:Should I take this new job Isn't Accenture a consulting firm? Will yours be a consulting position? Just be aware that a consulting position would be different from a dev job, if that's what you had before. Not necessarily good or bad, but different. If you don't know what consulting is like, it might be worth it to give it a shot just to see what it's like. (Disclaimer: I've never worked at a consulting gig. I almost did and talked to a lot of the guys there, but ultimately decided that that lifestyle isn't right for me.) Also, financial consulting (or whatever) is vastly different from tech consulting, so be careful when trying to get advice from "consulting friends" about what life is like. I almost made that mistake 
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 23:27
|
|
|
facepalmolive posted:If you are where I think you are, isn't there an internal goon group? I didn't bother joining because it didn't look very active. Should I have? Oh, maybe there is, I didn't look to see.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 23:43
|
|
|
Is craigslist a legitimate way to send out resumes? I just want to get out of the midwest and I don't have any companies in mind so I've been thinking about just searching ".NET" on whatever regional craigslist tickles my fancy and then applying to the ones that look fun.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 23:46
|
|
|
Yes but its a pretty nonstandard place for programming jobs so usually the offerings are pretty slim and the employers involved are kind of clueless. If you see something you like don't hesitate to apply though.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2013 00:38
|
|
|
Tres Burritos posted:Is craigslist a legitimate way to send out resumes? I got my job off craigslist.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2013 01:21
|
|
|
My first job was off CL. If you ignore the stupid postings it's pretty decent.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2013 01:35
|
|
|
Sab669 posted:Just hoping anyone can offer some input/advice...
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2013 01:35
|
|
|
hieronymus posted:I got my job off craigslist. I got a job off of Craigslist. It was a pretty good job!
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2013 02:12
|
|
|
facepalmolive posted:Isn't Accenture a consulting firm? Will yours be a consulting position? Just be aware that a consulting position would be different from a dev job, if that's what you had before. Not necessarily good or bad, but different. If you don't know what consulting is like, it might be worth it to give it a shot just to see what it's like. (Disclaimer: I've never worked at a consulting gig. I almost did and talked to a lot of the guys there, but ultimately decided that that lifestyle isn't right for me.) I would say the tech consulting gig is not a half bad option at all. You can see how business is done in a lot of different places in a short period of time, which is valuable experience elsewhere later on. There's a reason the big consulting houses have "alumni associations" - they know full well that the career path for a lot of people is that you get in, rack up lots of experience, and move on to the next thing. Not everyone wants to make partner. The caveat there is that the travel involved basically means you will have no social life at home, and honestly this is why it's kind of a self-limiting gig at some point. You will need to constantly remind your friends when you are around or else they will assume you are out of town. You will likely only get to see your significant other on weekends, provided they don't break up with you. If you have this sort of job while you have young kids, they are likely to resent the hell out of you for the rest of their lives because you weren't home to help them with homework or play outside. But when you're in your early to mid 20s, it's great. You can also save a crapload of money doing this, considering your living expenses for most of every week are on an expense account. For instance, I had a colleague on one project team who "lived" with his parents rather than rent a place he'd only see on weekends. Food and fun on weekends were the only thing he had to cover out of pocket, so he was able to cram nearly all his salary into savings and after doing that for a couple years was able to make a very sizable down payment on a house.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2013 05:42
|
|
|
facepalmolive posted:Also, financial consulting (or whatever) is vastly different from tech consulting, so be careful when trying to get advice from "consulting friends" about what life is like. I almost made that mistake Can you elaborate a little more on that? I was a bank examiner for the government, but I liked the IT audits we'd done and I'm shifting my career towards a more technical path now. Unless you're talking along the lines of "financial consulting" involving having to meet sales quotas and hustling vs "consulting" being a weekly in/out frequent flyer? (in that case - I do understand the difference there) Just miss that traveler lifestyle and I'm eyeballing places like Accenture or similar positions.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2013 20:36
|
|
|
Sorry, I guess I actually meant management consulting. Places like McKinsey and such. So yeah, nothing close to tech stuff. I still don't understand what management consulting actually entails. The sense I get is that they tailor to companies who have problems, don't actually want to solve them, but still want to look good to investors, so they try to pretend they care by throwing truckloads of money at these management consulting firms. Here's a very angry, frothing-at-the-mouth article from a kid who interned at one of these places. From his writing, I frankly think he's a little bit full of poo poo (and hyperbole), but there you go. But yeah, that won't be what you're gonna get for tech-ish consulting. Of course, I'm in the Bay Area, so the consulting gig I was considering was all like "yeah, go visit these other tech companies somewhere else in the Bay Area!" There wasn't as much travel involved, so I kind of forgot about mentioning that. Another plus about tech consulting is what kitten smoothie alluded to -- networking. You get to work with a lot of people in a lot of different companies, so it's a great way to get your name around. I get the sense that it's definitely not easy work, though, as you're constantly overwhelmed with "learning new things" -- either for your own field, or crash-coursing on understanding how your client's environment/infrastructure works. My mentor guy (who has done consulting) told me that the average tenure for a consultant is around 2-2.5 years because it's easy to burn out. He described the job to me as a "boot camp" for your field. And that's all inbetween all the travel and not-sleeping-in-your-own-bed that you'd have to do if you don't live in a tech hub somewhere. But as kitten smoothie said, it's a great way to get a ton of experience in a short amount of time. Couple that with getting your name out there, and many consultants end up leaving for other "normal" companies to take up senior-level positions, such as VPs and architects. (In fact, I got referred to applying to Consulting Firm in the first place by a brand new VP of Normal Company who was an alum of Consulting Firm. He turned me down for Normal Company for a lack of experience, and a consulting job is a great place to earn that.)
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 02:11
|
|
|
From that link above: quote:Despite having no work or research experience outside of MIT, I was regularly advertised to clients as an expert with seemingly years of topical experience relevant to the case. We were so good at rephrasing our credentials that even I was surprised to find in each of my cases, even my very first case, that I was the most senior consultant on the team. He's also pretty dead on about burnout. It can be as bad as startups and game companies for our profession. If however you are looking to do software for a while and transition to another career (particularly one with more business acumen) consulting is precisely where you want to be.
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 03:36
|
|
|
Hey Goons thanks for all the input regarding resume ratios and internships. You've all motivated me to start throwing my resume out there to try to snag an internship, or maybe even a part-time job while in college. Does anyone mind giving me a quick resume critique?code:Thanks again  E: Added one more sample, it's not an open source project but I'll invite them if I get an interview or something. Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Mar 28, 2013 |
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 06:41
|
|
|
Knyteguy posted:Hey Goons thanks for all the input regarding resume ratios and internships. You've all motivated me to start throwing my resume out there to try to snag an internship, or maybe even a part-time job while in college. Does anyone mind giving me a quick resume critique? A few quick tips: 1, Git isn't an acronym. Only capitalize the first letter. 2. It's a lot better to give specifics for things like "increase the amount of customer revenue" if at all possible. If you can be more specific about what you did than "maintenance" and "improvement", that's even better. 3. Your github project isn't in good enough shape to use as a portfolio. At a bare minimum it needs a readme file to explain what it's supposed to do and where the relevant code is. I clicked through several files that didn't have much in the way of code, then I found one file that seemed like it had the bulk of the application in it, but it was full of stuff like this: code:
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 07:05
|
|
|
greatZebu posted:A few quick tips: Alright thanks for the tips, I've been dreading refactoring the code but I guess it needs to be done. I use that class like once in the code, so yea it's pretty worthless. There's also a lot of commented out code I didn't end up using. I really wish I could make my bitbucket project open source. It's setup for http://yui.github.com/yuidoc/ but I plan on making it a revenue generating project. I'll make sure I go over what you've stated and fix it up before I send it out. Unfortunately I don't have the exact statistics on the revenue increase from the contract job. We couldn't export the statistic database when we migrated the site over. Thanks again for the help .
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 07:49
|
|
|
Knyteguy posted:I really wish I could make my bitbucket project open source. It's setup for http://yui.github.com/yuidoc/ but I plan on making it a revenue generating project. What is going to generate more revenue, the project or the job your potentially not getting by only making substandard projects open source? If it is the project why are you applying for jobs and not working on it full time? If it is not why not open source it and work on it for fun?
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 10:09
|
|
|
kitten smoothie posted:I would say the tech consulting gig is not a half bad option at all. You can see how business is done in a lot of different places in a short period of time, which is valuable experience elsewhere later on. There's a reason the big consulting houses have "alumni associations" - they know full well that the career path for a lot of people is that you get in, rack up lots of experience, and move on to the next thing. Not everyone wants to make partner. I did initially apply for a traveling position with the company but didn't get it. I'd be okay with traveling, as I have no SO, kids, or social life outside of my roommates! Woo! Anyways, had the interview for that help desk position. They're looking for someone who knows Java really well, which I do not. I assumed it would be C# as it's generally a .NET company. Oh well. She referred me to another department within the company though...
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 14:23
|
|
|
Hey guys, have been reading this thread for quite a while as I prepared and started my job search, and now I'm presented with the following options. I am a Junior Developer with practically no industry experience, and I have interviewed with two companies, Company A and Company B. Company A: - software development company - contacted me out of the blue, having seen my video resume and portfolio - invited me into their offices for a chat, and then back for drinks the next day, and then made me an offer - completely flat structure (structure is per-project based, anyone can choose to lead a particular project and then choose their team) - corporate and government clients - $80,000 (offer made) Company B: - large construction company with a small software development department - looked at nothing other than my resume, didn't read my cover letter, ignored my portfolio and video resume - had me travel to Sydney (around a 5 hour drive) for an interview "sometime this week", postponed the interview, made me make a second trip - answering to a single senior developer, who, admittedly, is a pretty cool guy, used to work for both Microsoft and Google - internally facing systems (ie creating systems to be used by the staff of the construction company) - $45,000-$55,000 (estimated offer pending) Company B has told me they'd like me to come back for a second interview, claiming that I was the "strongest of the candidates they saw". That's all well and good, but mere hours after I received notification of the interview, Company A made their offer. I still do not have an interview date set for Company B. Although I've made Company B out to be pretty awful, they didn't do anything wrong - they just weren't particularly considerate. I'm sure they're completely unaware of the fact that I'd booked a hotel and travelled to Sydney to make myself available for the interview that they'd assured me would be within a week, before postponing it at the last minute (all while unemployed, mind). I've made the decision to sign with Company A - I had a great first impression from them, they work on super-interesting projects, they treated me like a human being, they offered me $20,000 more than I asked for, and even offered to cover my costs in travelling (which I refused as I met with them during my "limbo" time with Company B and didn't feel I could throw that on them). Obviously I don't want to continue with Company B, but I don't want to be a dick about it. Again, Company B haven't done anything wrong, Company A have just been a hell of a lot more interested in getting me on board and therefore did their best to look after me. So, my question is this: given that I'm still waiting to hear from Company B regarding the date of a second interview, what's the best way to say "thanks, but I have now accepted an offer with another company", given that I will almost certainly receive a phone call from the recruiter asking me why? Company A has even said to me "we'd like you to be content with your decision, we'd like you to attend your other interview just so you're 100% sure", but for me, the decision's been made. It's a better team, it's better money, it's more interesting projects, and more people will get to see my work. How do I tell Company B, essentially, "I don't want to waste any more of either of our time, so I'm going to cut it short here"? Stobbit fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Mar 28, 2013 |
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 16:19
|
|
|
Stobbit posted:So, my question is this: given that I'm still waiting to hear from Company B regarding the date of a second interview, what's the best way to say "thanks, but I have now accepted an offer with another company" "Thanks, but I have now accepted an offer with another company." It happens all the time and you don't owe anything to Company B. If you receive a call from the recruiter asking why you can say "Company A is a better fit for me" and that really is the end of the conversation.
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 16:27
|
|
|
Stobbit posted:"thanks, but I have now accepted an offer with another company" You already answered your question. Don't worry about it. It happens all the time and won't be unexpected.
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 16:28
|
|
Stobbit posted:what's the best way to say "thanks, but I have now accepted an offer with another company", Edit: I was beaten!
|
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 16:28
|
|
|
Stobbit posted:How do I tell Company B, essentially, "I don't want to waste any more of either of our time, so I'm going to cut it short here"?
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 16:30
|
|
|
Congrats on the offer, by the way. I'd kill to be making $80k right now 
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 16:58
|
|
|
Sab669 posted:Congrats on the offer, by the way. I'd kill to be making $80k right now I never realised having someone killed was so expensive.
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 17:55
|
|
|
csammis posted:If you receive a call from the recruiter asking why you can say "Company A is a better fit for me" and that really is the end of the conversation.
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 19:14
|
|
|
Cicero posted:Yup. Get used to hearing the word "fit" a lot when it comes to hiring. It's used a ton as a general purpose buzzword to cover up motivations that would sound tactless spoken aloud ("I took this other offer because you suck and the other guys are giving me way more money" becomes "the other company felt like a better fit"). Or conversely "We think you're totally unqualified for this job and you came off as an jackass during the interview" translates to "We appreciate your skills and experience, and enjoyed interviewing you, however we have decided to pursue another candidate who represents a better fit for the position."
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 19:32
|
|
|
So 2 months into this (predictably) suckfest corporate job on a 3 month contract; I ask and realize to myself as I hunt for new jobs, all corporate coding jobs are probably god awful from a programmer perspective? Are small (prosperous) companies developer paradise? How do you find these jobs though (what with them being small local companies)?
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2013 14:56
|
|
|
Mr. Crow posted:Are small (prosperous) companies developer paradise?
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2013 14:58
|
|
|
Mr. Crow posted:So 2 months into this (predictably) suckfest corporate job on a 3 month contract; I ask and realize to myself as I hunt for new jobs, all corporate coding jobs are probably god awful from a programmer perspective? Are small (prosperous) companies developer paradise? How do you find these jobs though (what with them being small local companies)? Corporate jobs will tend towards higher pay and better benefits, but you have more bureaucracy to deal with.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2013 15:11
|
|
|
Mr. Crow posted:So 2 months into this (predictably) suckfest corporate job on a 3 month contract; I ask and realize to myself as I hunt for new jobs, all corporate coding jobs are probably god awful from a programmer perspective? Are small (prosperous) companies developer paradise? How do you find these jobs though (what with them being small local companies)? For starters, you're going to have to elaborate on what makes your current job a suckfest. People have different preferences. It's also hard to tell whether you have complaints that could generally be addressed by a different type of job, or if you're how!!ing out about having to work with other people and you'll just have to suck it up. There are going to be some generalities that we can trot out here (e.g. corporate jobs have more bureaucracy to deal with), but all companies are different. Even within an otherwise fantastic company you could get stuck on a lovely team with a lovely manager doing lovely work sitting next to a guy that smells like poo poo. This applies for all companies, big and small.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2013 15:37
|
|
|
Mr. Crow posted:So 2 months into this (predictably) suckfest corporate job on a 3 month contract; I ask and realize to myself as I hunt for new jobs, all corporate coding jobs are probably god awful from a programmer perspective? Are small (prosperous) companies developer paradise? How do you find these jobs though (what with them being small local companies)? It depends on what kind of programmer you are. If you don't really care about programming, then stick with big companies. If you really love programming, then you're best to stick with smaller companies. If you're self taught, or have lots of personal projects, you probably are a great programmer, and working at a big company will drive you crazy. If you just chose Computer Science as your major because you "heard they make lots of money", you probably suck as a developer (but are too stupid to admit it to yourself) and you'll have more fun working with other miserable bastards such as yourself. Most employees at big companies don't care at all if they do a good job or a crappy job so its very common to see the most hosed up ugly crap you have ever seen. That said, there are some lovely small companies. Small startups generally are either incredibly terrible, or incredibly awesome. Its really dependent on the personalities of the people who already are involved with the company.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2013 16:59
|
|
|
tk posted:For starters, you're going to have to elaborate on what makes your current job a suckfest. People have different preferences. It's also hard to tell whether you have complaints that could generally be addressed by a different type of job, or if you're how!!ing out about having to work with other people and you'll just have to suck it up. Posting from my phone so I'll try to keep it short, but my biggest gripe is a "get it done" mentality and having to do hoola hoops around bureaucracy. There's no quality control; no peer review, we have one tester I know of, that basically verifies the feature works then we ship it off, no regression testing on and on... It's also a joy that designers, writers and any other job description related to developing a product have no direct interaction or "architecture". Designer gets done with a new page? Hands me a zip file with just a raw html f file and all the necessary folders /files structure in whatever dreamweaver decided that had nothing to do with the solution or actual website structure. Now I get to figure out what already exists, what's new, figure out where to put it, break the page apart into separate asp. Net components that are all over blah blah blah. Oh and the point of contact that assigns the ticket, "use all the existing tracking information". Wait what? Half of this doesn't make sense for this, go back and forth for a week trying to clarify the requirements with a guy that doesn't know anything about analytics or code. Finally go talk to one of the analytics guys directly. ."what? We've stopped using that entirely, ya just GA is fine for this page." Cool. Also good to know we stopped using that tracker cause its still everywhere in the code and website! Also IT/Help desk bullshit. They hired an Internet manager a week after me and hosed up his laptop with no ide. He's harassed them weekly and still uses the free express versions (he can't open half the projects). I have no doubt I was spoiled by my first job (small 40~ person software company), and that this company is just exemplary lovely, but I can see everything I hate about this job being much more likely to occur in any other corporate environment. Edit: haha maybe not, guess you can tell how much I love this place! Apologize for the partial rant.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2013 17:09
|
|
|
So I graduated in December of 2012 and rather than immediately go into the workforce, I decided to take some time off and travel around Europe. I'll be getting back in early May and plan to start sending out feelers for jobs a week before I return but now that I'm actually starting to focus on looking for a job, I've got a couple of questions that popped up for me. First (and I realize this is a little late for this), does taking such a large chunk of time with no employment or projects really to show for it seriously hurt my chances of finding a job? Second, the places I want to look for jobs are all out of state by a longshot and while I'm not worried about the interview phase etc. once I actually land an offer how long would you say is reasonable to ask for sorting out a housing situation?
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2013 18:17
|
|
|
I see that how!! is knocking it out of the park with his advice again. I'll let all the guys at Google, Amazon, et al. know that they are, in fact, terrible programmers.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2013 19:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 23, 2024 19:38 |
|
|
how!! posted:It depends on what kind of programmer you are. If you don't really care about programming, then stick with big companies. If you really love programming, then you're best to stick with smaller companies. If you're self taught, or have lots of personal projects, you probably are a great programmer, and working at a big company will drive you crazy. If you just chose Computer Science as your major because you "heard they make lots of money", you probably suck as a developer (but are too stupid to admit it to yourself) and you'll have more fun working with other miserable bastards such as yourself. Most employees at big companies don't care at all if they do a good job or a crappy job so its very common to see the most hosed up ugly crap you have ever seen. Do you know this for a fact, having experienced big and small organizations, or are you just divining this insight from Slashdot comments and Dilbert comics?
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2013 19:37
|
|