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Steve French
Sep 8, 2003

Che Delilas posted:

Job seekers: don't feel bad if programming is not the #1 activity in your life. Some companies may weed you out because you don't spend your precious free time doing what you do at work. That's a good thing because they wanted you to spend 14 hours a day at the office and detected that you wouldn't be willing to do that. Bullet dodged.

But see, just because you have other things you want to do in your spare time, even that doesn't mean that programming isn't the #1 activity in your life. If you work a normal 40 hour week, that's nearly 1/3rd of all of the time you spend doing anything, including sleeping; certainly more time spent doing that than any other one thing (except probably sleeping). And somehow that's not necessarily enough? I love the poo poo out of programming; 40-50 hours of it a week is plenty, I'd like to spend, you know, maybe 10 or so of the other hours of free time in the week doing poo poo like biking or skiing. In other words, I spend like, an order of magnitude more time programming at work than I do on any of my other hobbies.

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School of How
Jul 6, 2013

quite frankly I don't believe this talk about the market
Just because you have a bunch of personal projects doesn't means you have to spend all day every day programming. Like I said earlier, just about every one of my projects in the past few years have been weekend projects. I may have the idea saturday evening, work until early Sunday morning, then finish up sunday afternoon, and then deploy by sunday evening. All while making time to go for a bikeride, or walk my dog.

Linus Torvalds released the first version of git a week after starting the project. Good programmers can get things done quickly, its the lovely programmers who think it has to take 50-60 hours a week to maintain a portfolio of projects.

KidDynamite
Feb 11, 2005

Bognar posted:

I would say the iterative and recursive solutions are just as easy in terms of difficulty. However, recursion is slightly more advanced than standard iteration and, sadly, a lot of people can't properly grasp it.

Wait what? People actually working jobs have problems with recursion?

Bognar
Aug 4, 2011

I am the queen of France
Hot Rope Guy

KidDynamite posted:

Wait what? People actually working jobs have problems with recursion?

There are a large number of "programmers" who have no business coding anything. Many of them started during the dot-com era since saying you knew a programming language was basically a free ticket to a high paying job. From there they went from "Learn PHP/VB In One Day" books to heaps of badly built applications. When the bubble burst, a lot of them started to pick up jobs at larger corporations who were hiring programmers without really knowing what to do with them.

When those corporations downsize, these types send resumes all over and we tend to get a lot of them. 13 years of experience sounds pretty good initially, until you get them into an interview and they don't know the difference between a class and a struct after working in .NET for 10 years.

Tunga
May 7, 2004

Grimey Drawer

Tres Burritos posted:

God I hope that I never get a question like that. I've never gotten one that's just "You need to have memorized this thing".
To be fair, I have no Android experience, limited recent Java experience, so they were mostly left asking me general CS questions. They didn't seem to be concerned with syntax and such, just the general principle.

I basically reeled off a quick in-place version of QuickSort, I had done some revision on it because I figured it might come up.

QuickSort is like fifteen lines of code so it's not exactly hard to memorise. I also understand and explained it, of course.

Safe and Secure!
Jun 14, 2008

OFFICIAL SA THREAD RUINER
SPRING 2013
All I remember about quicksort's implementation is you pick an element in a sequence, pivot that into its correct position, and then repeat that for each of the sub-sequences on each side of that correctly-positioned element. And that'll work because pivoting puts the larger elements on one side and the smaller elements on the other side. From that I could put most of it together in a few minutes and I'd only have trouble remembering edge cases, because I am almost comically forgetful. :(

FamDav
Mar 29, 2008

Bognar posted:

Fibonacci is in the same category as Fizz Buzz - it's a quick, effective filter to weed out the idiots.

That said, I always liked dividing Fibonacci up into 3 categories:

Easy - Provide an iterative solution to give the nth Fibonacci number
Medium(ish) - Provide a recursive solution to give the nth Fibonacci number
Hard - Provide a recursive solution to give the nth Fibonacci number in sub-linear time

Gundam-tier - explain why a sublinear solution doesn't exist unless you have a magical machine which can do arbitrary length integer arithmetic in constant time.

Zero The Hero
Jan 7, 2009

Cicero posted:

On to more important things:

We need more example resumes! If you have more than a year or two of software engineering experience and your resume is not an abomination in the sight of, uh, Guido? Then please donate it (in anonymized form, of course) for the benefit of fledgling goon coders everywhere. :911: :australia: :britain: :canada:

This is a pretty fantastic idea. If someone just got two or three example resumes that applied to tech jobs and put them in the OP, I think that would help out a lot of people.

no_funeral
Jul 4, 2004

why
I would definitely appreciate sample resumes.

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Tunga posted:

QuickSort is like fifteen lines of code so it's not exactly hard to memorise. I also understand and explained it, of course.

Tres Burriots, you could nail this question even without knowing quicksort.

If you're in that situation, start talking. You ought to know enough to put "sort(int[] array) {" in your language up on the board. If you're completely lost on the algorithm, start asking for hints. Interviewers don't want to sit there just looking at you, it's a waste of everyone's times. And for a RCG/junior employee, I'm expecting to give them work that they'll need to ask about. So the interview is a little mock session where you don't know how to proceed and I'm going to gauge how easily you pick up on hints and start working vs. if I have to explain where every semicolon goes.

Explaining what's going on inside your head is crucial. It doesn't matter if you're mentally doing Rubik's cubes and eliminating world hunger, if no words are coming out of your mouth talking about it I have to assume you're daydreaming about hitting the It's-it factory on the way back to the airport. Which might make you a great culture fit, but I really need a coder.

Posting Principle
Dec 10, 2011

by Ralp

FamDav posted:

Gundam-tier - explain why a sublinear solution doesn't exist unless you have a magical machine which can do arbitrary length integer arithmetic in constant time.

Do it with template metaprogramming and then dont count the compile time :q:

Tres Burritos
Sep 3, 2009

JawnV6 posted:

Tres Burriots, you could nail this question even without knowing quicksort.

If you're in that situation, start talking.

Explaining what's going on inside your head is crucial. It doesn't matter if you're mentally doing Rubik's cubes and eliminating world hunger, if no words are coming out of your mouth talking about it I have to assume you're daydreaming about hitting the It's-it factory on the way back to the airport. Which might make you a great culture fit, but I really need a coder.

Yeah, I make a conscious effort to never leave "dead-air" but then I get super conscious of saying "ummmmm" and "like" a lot. V:v:V. I also try to ask a lot of questions so I know I'm going in the right direction, but I probably don't ask as many as I could.

Pilsner
Nov 23, 2002

astr0man posted:

The whole point of questions like FizzBuzz isn't to make sure that you can write a for loop with if (divisible by 3)/elif (divisible by 5) plus the extra if (divisible by both) clause, it's to see your overall thought process and how you approach a problem.
I'd say it also about whether you can write a for loop, and most importantly, solve a problem. A newbie, a crappy developer, or a straight-up liar about their programming ability won't even be able to think as far as checking modulus on the numbers I bet. I'm pretty certain that solving the problem is the primary task of a coding interview question, and thinking out loud a close second. I mean, how would you rate a guy who talked and talked and tried all sorts of things to solve it, but ultimately wasn't able to solve FizzBuzz on the whiteboard?

Personally I also feel that I have an ability to very quickly spot how much flair and skill people have for programming by the way they talk and write code at the same time. I'm sure other people can do the same. By just having them write that simple chunk of code, an experienced dev should be able to weed out the bad, although they should of course give for credit for the fact that it's tough to code on a whiteboard, plus the stress of the interview situation.

Steve French posted:

This is what is amusing to me: people in this thread telling others that they should have a GitHub profile with personal projects on it so that they can get a job because some companies value that highly because it is an indicator of someone who doesn't just code for a paycheck... which is sort of what a job is...
Sorry I wrote it a bit wrong... I meant it's hopeless to force yourself to program in order to show off personal projects. It's not hopeless to still seek jobs, even if you don't. I should perhaps that said that only through motivation and joy of coding/problem solving should you write personal projects, else don't force yourself.

Zero The Hero
Jan 7, 2009

bonds0097 posted:

Excuse me if I'm mistaken but you seem to be assuming we're all web developers. If you write software for embedded systems, or do systems programming, or any number of other disciplines aside from Web Programming, what you're talking about isn't all that relevant.

This is actually something that bothers me, because I don't have the slightest clue how to create a tumblr clone, and it sounds incredibly complex. I have no idea what kind of project I could create that would look good to developers, and every time I hear something like this I feel like the answer is probably nothing.

Tunga
May 7, 2004

Grimey Drawer

JawnV6 posted:

Tres Burriots, you could nail this question even without knowing quicksort.

If you're in that situation, start talking. You ought to know enough to put "sort(int[] array) {" in your language up on the board. If you're completely lost on the algorithm, start asking for hints. Interviewers don't want to sit there just looking at you, it's a waste of everyone's times. And for a RCG/junior employee, I'm expecting to give them work that they'll need to ask about. So the interview is a little mock session where you don't know how to proceed and I'm going to gauge how easily you pick up on hints and start working vs. if I have to explain where every semicolon goes.

Explaining what's going on inside your head is crucial. It doesn't matter if you're mentally doing Rubik's cubes and eliminating world hunger, if no words are coming out of your mouth talking about it I have to assume you're daydreaming about hitting the It's-it factory on the way back to the airport. Which might make you a great culture fit, but I really need a coder.
This is really good advice.

Although the "burritos" comment is wasted on me (I guess it's a US thing).

One thing that came up in my interview today was using logical bitwise operators to perform a circular shift on a byte. I absolutely remember doing that at uni but it was six or seven years ago and I was drawing a blank so I just said "I remember doing this but it was years ago and I'm kind of lost on where to start." So we basically worked through it together.

You don't have to know all the answers and sometimes admitting that is just as valuable as if you had known it.

Tunga fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Aug 8, 2013

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Pilsner posted:

I'm pretty certain that solving the problem is the primary task of a coding interview question, and thinking out loud a close second. I mean, how would you rate a guy who talked and talked and tried all sorts of things to solve it, but ultimately wasn't able to solve FizzBuzz on the whiteboard?

Maybe not hire, but he's heads above the person who doesn't say a word while writing a solution on the board before returning to their seat, awaiting the delivery of their next work-unit for skills provenance beep boop. 100% coding all the time always is rare. More often, you actually have to communicate with other professionals. Architects, customers, other programmers, communication is a rarer skill than pure coding.

Tunga posted:

Although the "burritos" comment is wasted on me (I guess it's a US thing).

You don't have to know all the answers and sometimes admitting that is just as valuable as if you had known it.

I mentioned the name of another poster who could benefit from the advice. My old company would specifically ask questions that we expected a candidate to not know the answer to, partially to weed out the types who won't admit fault no matter how glaringly obvious, partially to see how someone reacts in that situation. It's not failsafe since interviews can be stressful, but it's handy.

Safe and Secure!
Jun 14, 2008

OFFICIAL SA THREAD RUINER
SPRING 2013

JawnV6 posted:

Maybe not hire, but he's heads above the person who doesn't say a word while writing a solution on the board before returning to their seat, awaiting the delivery of their next work-unit for skills provenance beep boop. 100% coding all the time always is rare. More often, you actually have to communicate with other professionals. Architects, customers, other programmers, communication is a rarer skill than pure coding.

If I actually had anything to express while doing FizzBuzz, other than my surprise and elation at having encountered the mythical fizzbuzz interview question, I'd feel like I bombed the interview, because I'd be wondering what kind of idiot the interviewer must think I am that I found fizzbuzz to require thought.

fritz
Jul 26, 2003

FamDav posted:

Gundam-tier - explain why a sublinear solution doesn't exist unless you have a magical machine which can do arbitrary length integer arithmetic in constant time.

Closed form solution, O(log n) square-and-multiply ops, you just need sublinear floating point multiply.

FamDav
Mar 29, 2008

fritz posted:

Closed form solution, O(log n) square-and-multiply ops, you just need sublinear floating point multiply.

doubles lose integer precision at 2^53+1, so that won't work.

the nth fibonacci number takes on the order of n bits to represent. again, unless you have a magical machine which can do arbitrary decimal math in sublinear time with respect to the number of bits, you cannot write a sublinear fibonacci algo.

its like you guys have never even touched a computer.

unixbeard
Dec 29, 2004

JawnV6 posted:

I mentioned the name of another poster who could benefit from the advice. My old company would specifically ask questions that we expected a candidate to not know the answer to, partially to weed out the types who won't admit fault no matter how glaringly obvious, partially to see how someone reacts in that situation. It's not failsafe since interviews can be stressful, but it's handy.

This was common for us as well. We'd just keep asking questions about more and more details, or getting lower and lower level. It was a good way to spot people who think they can bullshit their way around not knowing something, which is particularly prevalent in security.

Z-Bo
Jul 2, 2005
more like z-butt
Most programmers cannot code QuickSort correctly.
Incidentally, someone recently "improved" QuickSort to have two pivots, which reduces the total number of swaps on average and benchmarks on large data sets reveal significant performance benefits;

http://anshu-manymoods.blogspot.com/2009/10/dual-pivot-quicksort-in-java.html

Z-Bo
Jul 2, 2005
more like z-butt

DAT NIGGA HOW posted:

Just because you have a bunch of personal projects doesn't means you have to spend all day every day programming. Like I said earlier, just about every one of my projects in the past few years have been weekend projects. I may have the idea saturday evening, work until early Sunday morning, then finish up sunday afternoon, and then deploy by sunday evening. All while making time to go for a bikeride, or walk my dog.

Linus Torvalds released the first version of git a week after starting the project. Good programmers can get things done quickly, its the lovely programmers who think it has to take 50-60 hours a week to maintain a portfolio of projects.

We just moved into a new office, and the CEO bought us a VERY nice billiards and ping pong table. One of the developers built in 6 hours a very sweet Ladders application that uses Elo Rating to compare the strength and weaknesses of every player in the office, and then the following weekend he used HTML5 charts for the first time ever and figured out some awesome ways to graph trends over time.

Anyway, most of us work 40 hours a week. But we also get unlimited vacation time, and upper management is keenly aware when we put in extra time and effort. I am planning to take 3 weeks off in February. I could probably take the entire month off (other people have), but that would be a REALLY expensive vacation!

In 8 hours, I wrote an application to do master metadata management of SQL Server system configurations, and automatically highlight potential configuration issues across all clients databases. Some time in the distant future I will add cool features on top I already know how to implement, but just don't want to waste my precious summer weekends indoors coding. I've also played with ways to visualize XML query plans in the past, inspired by tools like SQL Sentry Plan Explorer and SSMSTools, and also have some ideas on how to make sense of SQL queries generated by LINQ. The code is in my head, I just don't want to use free time to write it so it can be shared with others.

I'll admit, in the past, I would revolve my life around programming, but not any more. I generally don't make design mistakes now and I generally just think up a great idea and implement it. What's funny is that when my life revolved around programming, I got very little done, because there was no sense of urgency. I'd do academic things like simulate Haskell typeclasses in C#, I read over 500 computer science/programming books in a 5 year span, ranging on topics from type theory, to OO, to numeric computing, to computer graphics, to network security, to system administration, to home automation, etc. Now that I am doing normal hobbies, like ballroom dancing and learning to cook, I am SO much more focused and aware of my time. A lot less theory, a lot more practice.

Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Z-Bo posted:

Most programmers cannot code QuickSort correctly.
Incidentally, someone recently "improved" QuickSort to have two pivots, which reduces the total number of swaps on average and benchmarks on large data sets reveal significant performance benefits;

http://anshu-manymoods.blogspot.com/2009/10/dual-pivot-quicksort-in-java.html
That's cool, but on the other hand, I'm surprised this wasn't discovered much, much earlier.

Janitor Prime
Jan 22, 2004

PC LOAD LETTER

What da fuck does that mean

Fun Shoe
Yeah I could have sworn that was discovered before the millennium

Don Mega
Nov 26, 2005
Did HOW just compare himself to Linus?

Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Don Mega posted:

Did HOW just compare himself to Linus?
Not really, he just used Linus as an example. It's basically just, "[Famous programmer] does programming thing X, so programming thing X is a good thing to do."

No Safe Word
Feb 26, 2005

e: wrong thread

rotor
Jun 11, 2001

classic case of pineapple derangement syndrome

Z-Bo posted:

1) I've worked with people before who only do programming to pay the bills. It is absolutely awful.

Working with people who have no pride in their work sucks, but the idea that programmers should also spend their spare time programming is ridiculous. You want me to write a code, pay me. Otherwise I'll be in the garage puttering around as I am wont to do.

a github - or any other way to inspect code they've written - is a reasonable thing to ask a junior programmer for, because you're hiring someone based simply on their ability to properly work the machinery. After that, it's much more about how they interact with others, how they work within larger systems, how they architect those larger systems when given the chance and how well they respond to change, which is really just something you have to discover on your own after you hire them.

rotor
Jun 11, 2001

classic case of pineapple derangement syndrome
you know what's absolutely awful? This:

Z-Bo posted:

We will probably throw out and replace all our existing code a year from now anyway. It's just how we do things

tk
Dec 10, 2003

Nap Ghost

rotor posted:

you know what's absolutely awful? This:

You must not have heard how nice their billiards table is.

Zero The Hero
Jan 7, 2009

Cicero posted:

Take all the following with a huge grain of salt:

- Your indentation feels weird.
- Put at least a year on when you got your degree. Seems odd to have dates for work but zilch for schooling.
- If you didn't get a degree from that second university, why list it? Seems pointless.
- You really need to flesh out your work experience with details. Think of it from the employer's perspective; what kinds of things did you do that would be beneficial to them? Make it sound all businessy.
- Related courses section is just, like, a list. Feels generic. I would try to give some details; how did you use C#, what did you learn, how would it apply to a business, etc.
- "the understanding of development processes" sounds like something a sweatshop Indian IT outsourcing firm would write.
- "Contributed to open source projects through the internet" - Care to be specific? You seem to have a serious problem with details.
- What's a pseudo restaurant?

I read all the advice, but I'm just going to quote this post, to save space.

-I'm not sure how to fix my indentation. Someone suggested I find another template to copy, I'll probably do that. Looking at the example resumes that were linked in this thread, I don't actually know how to emulate them. I've just been using Google Docs.
-I'm not sure how to give details for my Verizon Wireless internships. Here's what I have now:

Verizon Wireless - Summer Internships (June - September, 2006 and 2007)
Field testing and analysis with Baseline Engineering
System design and analysis for optimization and growth with RF Engineering

Normally, interviewers ask me about this, and I go into detail, which is exactly what I want. I can actually explain the kinds of problems that required fixing and the types of solutions I applied to them. I can definitely agree that it needs more detail, but I just don't know how to give any relevant detail to people who aren't already familiar with the job positions within VZW. What I'm hoping with this description is that employers will get just enough of an idea to see that it's related to engineering through more than just the title and be more compelled to ask me questions; but when I look at it, it doesn't actually look any more descriptive to me.

-I'm not sure what else to do with related courses. Shouldn't it be a list? Should I maybe just structure it as one instead?
-I don't really have any code hosted anywhere to be very specific about. I did contribute some stuff for an open source server for a video game I used to play, but I'd rather not link it. The code is fine, I think, but the game was player-run, and so a lot of the developers were... immature. It's just not something I want an employer to associate with me. Am I overthinking things? Should I try to host this code externally and link it in my resume?

-I need a Github account.

Strong Sauce
Jul 2, 2003

You know I am not really your father.





Zero The Hero posted:

I read all the advice, but I'm just going to quote this post, to save space.

-I'm not sure how to fix my indentation. Someone suggested I find another template to copy, I'll probably do that. Looking at the example resumes that were linked in this thread, I don't actually know how to emulate them. I've just been using Google Docs.
-I'm not sure how to give details for my Verizon Wireless internships. Here's what I have now:

Verizon Wireless - Summer Internships (June - September, 2006 and 2007)
Field testing and analysis with Baseline Engineering
System design and analysis for optimization and growth with RF Engineering

Normally, interviewers ask me about this, and I go into detail, which is exactly what I want. I can actually explain the kinds of problems that required fixing and the types of solutions I applied to them. I can definitely agree that it needs more detail, but I just don't know how to give any relevant detail to people who aren't already familiar with the job positions within VZW. What I'm hoping with this description is that employers will get just enough of an idea to see that it's related to engineering through more than just the title and be more compelled to ask me questions; but when I look at it, it doesn't actually look any more descriptive to me.

-I'm not sure what else to do with related courses. Shouldn't it be a list? Should I maybe just structure it as one instead?
-I don't really have any code hosted anywhere to be very specific about. I did contribute some stuff for an open source server for a video game I used to play, but I'd rather not link it. The code is fine, I think, but the game was player-run, and so a lot of the developers were... immature. It's just not something I want an employer to associate with me. Am I overthinking things? Should I try to host this code externally and link it in my resume?

-I need a Github account.

Besides Cicero's advice...

Your resume isn't very scannable and seems to assume that the person reading your resume is a mind reader and already knows about you. Your indentation is weird, but even worse is when I initially did my lazy scan all it looked like was you had one job doing data entry. Never saw that you did 2 summers worth of internships at Verizon.

It should be very simple:

quote:

Verizon Wireless (in bold)
Summer Intern Jun 2006-Aug 2006, Jun 2007-Aug 2007
- Worked in various engineering departments doing _X_ where X is the primary reason you were interning, e.g. "programming", or more specific, "C++ programming", "hardware design on Y chip", "testing functionality for the 'Z' system", etc.
- Other poo poo you did, starting each line with an action verb.
Other things I notice: There are zip codes on your resume. You're not sending a letter so it doesn't need that amount of detail.

The reason I point out this weird nit-picky detail is because it all adds up. You need to look like you know what you're doing. If I was a .NET guy, I'd be annoyed that you use "LinQ" instead of using LINQ. I'm just guessing that LinQ is not a common styling of LINQ. If I was reading a resume and it read, "HtmL", "CsS", or "PhP", I would already be very negative about the person. It's a flag that you're not really someone who has actually used the technology which leaves some doubt in my head of whether or not you actually worked on the project or just let everyone else do the work and copied the technologies/languages they used.

Resumes don't have to be perfect but they're a reflection of your organizational and communication skills so any flaws the company (either HR or the technical person who's going to interview you) can pick out already puts you below all the other applicants. They have no idea who you are (or you could have just skipped the resume) so your resume needs to show them that you're legitimate.

Another thing is, unless you are applying for a job that has a heavy math emphasis, I would nix out all the math stuff in the Related Course Work section. If you are applying to jobs with a math focus, you need to have a separate resume with much clearer descriptions of your math related work.

You should be describing the courses and programs that you wrote for all the classes that "required teamwork" in detail. Everyone says they were in team settings at their school, like wow great you chatted with some of your friends during class and "collaborated" on that homework assignment!

Strong Sauce
Jul 2, 2003

You know I am not really your father.





Tunga posted:

I have an interview this afternoon for an Android dev role, it's exactly what I want but it sounds like they're looking for someone more senior than me. I'm six years out of uni with a BSc in CS (UK) and have been working at a software company ever since as the only technical person in a 4-7 man sales office, doing customer support, custom projects, product triage, prioritisation, some internal IT, and recently a bit of actual product dev. Our HQ is in Seattle so I work with them a lot to make sure the UK arm gets what it needs. I know our software and industry inside out, unfortunately it's kind of niche (mail sortation/data quality) and I really want to get into mobile dev.
You've already done the interview but you shouldn't assume that you're not qualified if they want to talk to you. You should let them figure out whether or not you're qualified.

quote:

I've written quite a lot of code during that time, mostly on bespoke projects for customers which I specced, designed, wrote and supported from scratch. Nothing huge, maybe 2-3 thousand lines at most. But it was 95% done in C# because we were a complete Windows shop.

Some concerns I have are that I haven't used Java much since university, I've only been messing around with Android for a couple of weeks, and most of my coding experience has been solo projects without very much code review. I feel like I make bad architectural decisions because nobody has ever been there to say "hey, do it this way instead".

Oh, I guess fake it 'til you make it?

quote:

Obviously I can try spin this in a positive way: I had to teach myself C#, I'm well practised at find solutions to problems by myself, and I'm good at working on ten different things at once if needed.

I got this interview through a friend who works there so I'm keen to impress. It's the first interview I've had in five and a half years and only my third interview ever (and the one for my current job contained almost zero technical questions because my boss is the sales manager), so I'm pretty sure the guy is going to ask me some question about trees or something that I've had no reason to use for the last five years. Welp.
Again, don't know how the interview went but you should probably brush up on data structures and algorithms.

quote:

Something I'm not really sure about is salary. I earn £35k right now but I have a lot saved up and I don't really care about money as much as I do getting a job that I enjoy. I would happily take a pay cut to get something in mobile dev but people tell me that I shouldn't ever take a pay cut. I hate that everything is so money focused. Admittedly those people are mostly non-technical so I'm hoping it's fine if I say "I earn this much, I'd be happy with the same, but also that isn't my motivation here so I wouldn't want that to be a sticking point."
Unfortunately a lot of companies are expecting this exact state of mind when they negotiate with software developers. I want to slap you because every developer that doesn't fight to get more money is devaluing everyone else in the field. Gain some courage and fight for your worth.

I keep reading this paragraph of yours and I want to just slap you over and over. I hope you did not actually say that last line. What in the loving gently caress, "happy with the same" are you loving kidding me?

You're killing me Smalls.

quote:

Edit: here's my CV:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oqRJjLOvdQjEvfIbjfijNMx7zhOYHhc-SZ7EwcaRrl4/edit?usp=sharing
Yeah, this isn't exactly anonymised since it's on my Drive but whatever.

Reduce your info at the top into two lines. First line is your address, Second line contains phone and email.
I didn't read that opening paragraph of your resume and no one else will either. Just get rid of it.
Same thing with that intro paragraph for your first/current job.

Almost any section where you write in a complete sentence probably needs to be eliminated and reduced to lists or if its about what you did at the job, a short action verb description of what you did. This isn't an essay.

All your action verbs for your current job are in the past tense. But your other "jobs" as a Java Workshop Demonstrator and Volunteer Award Leader are all in the present participle. Yet you haven't worked at those positions in 7 years and 3 years respectively.

Overall there are some grammar issues that you can probably solve yourself by speaking your resume out loud.

Edit: Just found your other posts about the interview. Please, I must know that you did not say "happy with the same"

Strong Sauce fucked around with this message at 10:19 on Aug 8, 2013

Tunga
May 7, 2004

Grimey Drawer

Zero The Hero posted:

-I'm not sure how to fix my indentation. Someone suggested I find another template to copy, I'll probably do that. Looking at the example resumes that were linked in this thread, I don't actually know how to emulate them. I've just been using Google Docs.
Right, here's my CV:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oqRJjLOvdQjEvfIbjfijNMx7zhOYHhc-SZ7EwcaRrl4/edit?usp=sharing
Note that I'm in the UK so some things may vary a bit but a lot of the general advice that you'll see applies anywhere. Personally I aim for two pages, some people will tell you that it should be one but I think two is fine.

My CV is not the greatest ever but it seems to get pretty good results and it looks a lot better than yours for a few critical reasons.

What you need to do is make use of formatting instead of (or, as well as) indenting. See how I have my dates and companies in italic, for example. Use bold, italic and text size in consistent ways to highlight the types of information that you are presenting.

Secondly, bullet points are awesome. Include both prose and bullets so that someone can skim the key points and then read the detail. Prose not only provides important detail but it also shows that you are articulate, so a mixture is a good idea.

quote:

-I'm not sure how to give details for my Verizon Wireless internships. Here's what I have now:

Verizon Wireless - Summer Internships (June - September, 2006 and 2007)
Field testing and analysis with Baseline Engineering
System design and analysis for optimization and growth with RF Engineering
I don't understand any of these words but that's probably not an issue if you're applying for a similar job to this. But even then, what you need to do is include some detail about what you actually did, what you learned, why you were important to the company, and how the knowledge you gained will be useful for you in the future. Try to identify a few key achievements from your time there, maybe you learned a specific skill or you worked on a project that showed some quantifiable result for the business.

Don't bullshit, but be creative. The line on my CV about triage, for example, is true, I created that process. But what that actually entailed was me saying "hey can we have a meeting every week to talk about UK specific bugs?". And then we did. And suddenly they started getting fixed because it turns out if you talk about a thing, stuff happens.

quote:

Normally, interviewers ask me about this, and I go into detail, which is exactly what I want. I can actually explain the kinds of problems that required fixing and the types of solutions I applied to them. I can definitely agree that it needs more detail, but I just don't know how to give any relevant detail to people who aren't already familiar with the job positions within VZW. What I'm hoping with this description is that employers will get just enough of an idea to see that it's related to engineering through more than just the title and be more compelled to ask me questions; but when I look at it, it doesn't actually look any more descriptive to me.
Try to answer questions like "how did I save the company money", "how did I make things more efficient", "how did I save myself time". The specific details of what you did might not apply elsewhere but the fact that you identified a problem and applied a solution is really what people are looking for on your CV.

Tunga
May 7, 2004

Grimey Drawer
So while I was typing that out, the post above it appeared!

This might be a double post but whatever, the one above is huge enough so I'll reply separately.

Strong Sauce posted:

You've already done the interview but you shouldn't assume that you're not qualified if they want to talk to you. You should let them figure out whether or not you're qualified.

Again, don't know how the interview went but you should probably brush up on data structures and algorithms.
I revised all of that stuff and it's exactly what came up, so it actually went really well. Not certain if I'll get an offer but I'm feeling a lot more optimistic about going to similar interviews in future and being able to show that I know my poo poo.

When you've had two interviews in your whole life and they were both five plus years ago, it's kind of terrifying doing the first one. Honestly I feel so much better about the whole prospect of interviewing after doing that one.

quote:

Unfortunately a lot of companies are expecting this exact state of mind when they negotiate with software developers. I want to slap you because every developer that doesn't fight to get more money is devaluing everyone else in the field. Gain some courage and fight for your worth.

I keep reading this paragraph of yours and I want to just slap you over and over. I hope you did not actually say that last line. What in the loving gently caress, "happy with the same" are you loving kidding me?

You're killing me Smalls.

Edit: Just found your other posts about the interview. Please, I must know that you did not say "happy with the same"
Money didn't even come up, but I spoke to a couple of friends beforehand and everyone agreed that I can expect more money from this new role anyway.

The reason I feel like this is because I really want to get out of my current role. It's toxic and going nowhere. Long-term I want more money, sure, but right now I just need a foot on the dev ladder.

You're right though, I shouldn't downplay my value and the fact that I am super-valuable to my current employer should tell me that I can be a super-valuable employee for someone else as well.

quote:

Reduce your info at the top into two lines. First line is your address, Second line contains phone and email.
I didn't read that opening paragraph of your resume and no one else will either. Just get rid of it.
Same thing with that intro paragraph for your first/current job.
These parts definitely need a bit of work. Most likely going to dump the top part entirely and cut down the job description though I do feel that a bit of prose there is not really a bad thing.

quote:

All your action verbs for your current job are in the past tense. But your other "jobs" as a Java Workshop Demonstrator and Volunteer Award Leader are all in the present participle. Yet you haven't worked at those positions in 7 years and 3 years respectively.
I don't see this at all. Everything is in past tense. The Demonstrator position is maybe worded in a slightly odd way, it's almost lacking tense entirely, I might tweak that. Everything else is absolutely past tense.

Sab669
Sep 24, 2009

Is it feasible to live on your own with an entry-level position in Silicon Valley? I'd love to move out there, found a few job postings, but I'm afraid with a junior salary it would be tough?

Don Mega
Nov 26, 2005

Sab669 posted:

Is it feasible to live on your own with an entry-level position in Silicon Valley? I'd love to move out there, found a few job postings, but I'm afraid with a junior salary it would be tough?
Living on a 80-100k salary won't be "tough" anywhere.

Don Mega fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Aug 8, 2013

Bognar
Aug 4, 2011

I am the queen of France
Hot Rope Guy
Rent in SF can run you $1-3k per month, depending on which area you're in and how many roommates you have. Meanwhile you'll be pulling in $5k+ per month after taxes with a junior level job in the Bay area. So no, it wouldn't be tough.

Good Will Hrunting
Oct 8, 2012

I changed my mind.
I'm not sorry.
So I had an interview today. It went really well and I like the culture, size, etc. I'm just a little concerned with the technology they use. They're using some Java technology (EJB/JBoss/JSP) that others have told me is "outdated" and while it fits the product they make, this was a little disconcerting to hear. This will really be my "first" dev job, so I'm not sure what to make of it. How much is it going to impact my career by starting off working with these things that may soon die?

Forgive me if this is a retarded question.

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JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Safe and Secure! posted:

If I actually had anything to express while doing FizzBuzz, other than my surprise and elation at having encountered the mythical fizzbuzz interview question, I'd feel like I bombed the interview, because I'd be wondering what kind of idiot the interviewer must think I am that I found fizzbuzz to require thought.

Just to demonstrate that an interviewer can probably migrate a question into an area you'll have to ask about, did I mention it was in MIPS assembly? I'd find it very odd if someone had syscall syntax for an obsolete processor and unknown OS memorized and didn't have to ask about it.

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