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So I just got off the phone with a person from Treyarch looking for a QA tester position, and it caught me off guard because I'm already planning to do a summer internship at Caltech for their Graduate Aerospace Laboratories. For a moment I kind of had second thoughts because the opportunity with Treyarch might mean getting myself in a position more related to my major as a CS student, but then when I probed the interviewer he told me that there was very little in the way of actual coding and it was all manual, not even the opportunity to do automatic scripts or other means of using my programming skills. Ultimately, I decided that since my main goal at this point is to transfer to a 4-year college, there wasn't a big difference between doing no programming for a summer temporary position at Treyarch and likely doing no programming for a summer research position at Caltech, the latter of which would be more relevant to transferring and would also get me familiar with professional , above-undergraduate-level research at universities. So I turned down the position with Treyarch. In my mind, I made the right decision, but was I wrong? I really should stop asking CoC these kinds of questions. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Jun 6, 2015 |
# ? Jun 6, 2015 04:54 |
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# ? Jun 13, 2024 06:52 |
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I had to google Treyarch. No, you did not want to work in video game testing rather than at caltech. How is that even a question?
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# ? Jun 6, 2015 05:27 |
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Steve French posted:I had to google Treyarch. No, you did not want to work in video game testing rather than at caltech. How is that even a question? Utlimately, even if the position didn't have as much prestige attached to it, it would be worth it if it could get me further ahead in obtaining a job as a software developer - that's why I'm in college in the first place. That would be personal statement material. But through what I've learned before I realized that the QA job had none of the above so I said no. And I ask dumb questions like these in CoC because there aren't a lot of people in my life that have gone through a similar experience of getting a Bachelor's Degree in CS, it's new territory for me and I had to decide in 20 minutes out of the blue because I thought the Treyarch job was dead in the water for months now. Sorry for not providing context, had my head up my rear end a bit I admit. I have asked somewhat similar questions in the past here. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Jun 6, 2015 |
# ? Jun 6, 2015 05:39 |
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You made the right call, don't sweat it.
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# ? Jun 6, 2015 06:35 |
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JawKnee posted:how many interviews actually end in tears? The last coop I did my boss told me they had a real problem with students bursting into tears at the questions they were asking. I did one interview that ended in tears. Poor guy was desperate for the job, but completely unqualified, I could tell just a couple questions in. I ended the interview early without calling in the next person. He broke down. Grabbed him a glass of water, told him to take his time, and I left. Awkward as gently caress.
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# ? Jun 6, 2015 15:23 |
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Gounads posted:I did one interview that ended in tears. Had a pretty similar situation. I worked for a university lab, the candidate was a guy who was in the process of being laid off from another lab within the university. His lab's grant funding took a hit and the PI had to make cuts. Central HR at the university was trying to match him to similar openings elsewhere before taking him off payroll altogether. After the usual opening questions there was that moment when everyone, including himself, realized he was unqualified for the position. He didn't totally break down into tears but you could tell he was having trouble holding them back when he said he'd just show himself out.
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# ? Jun 6, 2015 16:10 |
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Gounads posted:I did one interview that ended in tears. It sounds like you handled this pretty badly. When interviewing you should be trying to leave every candidate with a good experience even if they didn't do well. Even ignoring basic human decency, that bad programmer that you embarrassed then left alone in a room crying is not telling his good programmer friends nice things about your company.
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# ? Jun 6, 2015 19:46 |
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pr0zac posted:It sounds like you handled this pretty badly. When interviewing you should be trying to leave every candidate with a good experience even if they didn't do well. Even ignoring basic human decency, that bad programmer that you embarrassed then left alone in a room crying is not telling his good programmer friends nice things about your company. Well, it depends. Some people are really sensitive, and sometimes someone just knows they totally hosed up. I had one guy stand up about 30 minutes into the interview and say "I'm not doing very well, I know I'm not going to get this job, thank you for the consideration", shake my hand, and walk out. The worst is when someone bombs and asks "how did I do?" in a hopeful tone on their way out.
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# ? Jun 6, 2015 20:17 |
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pr0zac posted:It sounds like you handled this pretty badly. When interviewing you should be trying to leave every candidate with a good experience even if they didn't do well. Even ignoring basic human decency, that bad programmer that you embarrassed then left alone in a room crying is not telling his good programmer friends nice things about your company. Clearly I should have kept going with the interview for another hour, and had the other people interview him for another hour. Then left him with a sense that he had a chance and we'd get back to him. Oh wait, no, what I did was far more professional and humane. So failing that, at the end, maybe I should have sat there watching him cry? Maybe I should have given him a hug? This was a guy I had just met in a professional setting not acting professional. Giving him some privacy and time to get his poo poo together was the nicest thing I could do. I'm sure I thanked him for coming in and wished him luck or something, but who knows exactly what I said at a time like that.
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# ? Jun 6, 2015 20:18 |
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Gounads posted:I did one interview that ended in tears. Agh, please don't do this. Interviews are as much about marketing yourself to candidates -- and not just the one you're currently interviewing. I've had applied to places specifically because colleagues told me that they had a good time interviewing there. It is, indeed, pretty obvious in a few minutes when someone's completely unqualified for a job. That's when you sandbag it. You've reviewed their resume before the interview, right? Keep a list of piss-easy questions in your mental back pocket that pretty much anyone with their experience can answer in 15-20 minutes -- or questions that sound technical on the surface but basically come down to "tell me about something neat on your resume in as much detail as you can manage." Give them a chance to rally emotionally. Take questions from them about your company; you're not selling yourself to them, but all their friends that they'll talk to after the interview. Then, as soon as your part of the interview is over, you write "1.0, DO NOT HIRE." and start sending emails asking how this loving moron got past the phone screen. If he's REALLY bad and you're the first person of the day on a multi-person loop, you give a phone call to the recruiter and see if you can get the rest of the loop terminated, so it doesn't waste more than 2 people's time. (This is also applied, sometimes, to people who are overqualified. I once interviewed someone for a senior position; he took the stance in the interview that he didn't want to answer any basic coding questions, because his resume's experience spoke for him -- and, "after all, I'd have directs to write that stuff anyways." I eventually did talk him into writing some code, after half an hour of design questions, but it was a challenge.) ullerrm fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Jun 6, 2015 |
# ? Jun 6, 2015 20:23 |
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ullerrm posted:Agh, please don't do this. Interviews are as much about marketing yourself to candidates -- and not just the one you're currently interviewing. I don't think you're going to get consensus on the right way to handle this. Some people would prefer to get a "no" email a few days later (or more likely: no contact at all) so they can handle the disappointment privately. I would always prefer to know that I failed immediately. Not only does it let me turn my focus to other companies right away, but hopefully I get a really clear picture of exactly what it was that hosed me so I can fix it for next time. I interviewed at a company where (I feel pretty sure) I was black-balled by the second interviewer out of 7. I could have spent the rest of the day in the park instead of answering their questions about my resume. My comments to friends about them have not been positive.
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# ? Jun 6, 2015 22:22 |
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I hosed up in/pre/post order trees with Amazon and was told "hey email me at $ADDRESS since we ran over time, and the recruiter will get back with you." No response to the email and no further contact with the recruiter. There's nothing wrong with "Ya blew it try again in a year, shitforbrains," particularly if the alternative is to string someone along or just not loving bother to respond at all after giving contact info.
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# ? Jun 6, 2015 22:36 |
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I'll be looking for a job when my post-grad OPT starts in August. My goal is to get the 17-month STEM extension and eventually get a h1b. I'm not really interested in a company that wouldn't want to apply for an h1b for me in the future. When should I mention this? On my resume? Start/end of interviews? When I get an offer?
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# ? Jun 6, 2015 22:55 |
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Most of the time I'm asked for my work status in the US very early in the process, first email or not long after. Id recommend a bigger company that knows how to handle OPT/h1b issues.
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# ? Jun 6, 2015 23:20 |
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I know putting much school stuff on your resume usually isn't terribly kosher, but my work experience (Senior in computer science, currently participating in a summer capstone to graduate this August) is tissue-paper thin and I was wondering if it would be worth it to include my programming homework from my networking class. We had nine or so programs that all basically built into a single project. Wrote a client and a thread-pool based server that used TCP sockets to run a few simple functions - for example, the client sends "Guess" and begins an exchange of messages with the server to play a simple high-low number guessing game, with cookies keeping track of each client's score across multiple executions. The server also ran a separate thread that kept track of how often each of the server's functions had been called as well as the timestamp of the most recent execution, and used UDP packets to respond to clients requesting that information. Lastly, the semester concluded with a pair of assignments asking us to re-write our server to be more scalable to multiple clients - first using Selectors and then using Asynchronous IO. All done in Java. We also had to write our own data structures for cookies, cookielists, and the various types of messages our protocol used, with accompanying JUnit tests. I had it working pretty well by the end and I'm reasonably proud of it, so I was wondering if it would be worth describing on my resume in lieu of serious work experience.
Spiritus Nox fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Jun 7, 2015 |
# ? Jun 7, 2015 06:58 |
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UnfurledSails posted:I'll be looking for a job when my post-grad OPT starts in August. My goal is to get the 17-month STEM extension and eventually get a h1b. I'm not really interested in a company that wouldn't want to apply for an h1b for me in the future. When should I mention this? On my resume? Start/end of interviews? When I get an offer? Try real hard to get work at MSFT/Google/Facebook/Apple.
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# ? Jun 7, 2015 11:10 |
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Spiritus Nox posted:I know putting much school stuff on your resume usually isn't terribly kosher If you are just graduating, it's somewhat expecting you won't have much work experience to show. Problem is, you and all your classmates are in a similar situation, so your network guessing game doesn't stand out much.
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# ? Jun 7, 2015 15:02 |
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Serious question: Given two candidates for an entry level job... Candidate A just graduated with a CS degree. Candidate B is a self-taught programmer with some personal projects and open source contributions, but no real-world programming experience. Who the gently caress would hire Candidate B?
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# ? Jun 9, 2015 02:27 |
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PongAtari posted:self-taught programmer with some personal projects and open source contributions, but no real-world programming experience. How is this not a contradiction? To answer the question I think you're trying to ask: many, many companies would.
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# ? Jun 9, 2015 02:46 |
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Pollyanna posted:How is this not a contradiction? By "real-world experience" I mean, "programming experience gained at a programming job" rather than "hobbyist" programming. I've heard a lot of conflicting information and I'm basically trying to figure out whether I should keep trying to learn on my own or bite the bullet, take on a few more tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and find a way to get a CS degree while working a full-time job.
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# ? Jun 9, 2015 02:54 |
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PongAtari posted:By "real-world experience" I mean, "programming experience gained at a programming job" rather than "hobbyist" programming. I've heard a lot of conflicting information and I'm basically trying to figure out whether I should keep trying to learn on my own or bite the bullet, take on a few more tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and find a way to get a CS degree while working a full-time job. I can't tell you anything except my own experience, but I got the job I'm currently at by teaching myself programming and web dev over the course of a year and a half, and I don't have a CS degree - just a half-biology, half-engineering BS. It's up to you, but I've managed to get somewhere relying on my skills and portfolio, without a CS degree. That reminds me of my latest fuckup! We've recently (as in just this sprint) started handling escalation tickets on a rotating "hero" basis, and I've been having a rough time of it. I've had lots of misdirection on what the real problem is, organizing all the triage vs. non-triage tickets, making sure my sprint doesn't blow up in scope, etc. In response, I've started to sort of direct the system into a pattern that makes it easier for me to handle - escalations/"bug tickets" are separate from "dev work" tickets, where the goal of the former is to figure out what is broken, and the goal of the latter is to fix it. The role of the escalation handler is to determine the root problem of the bugs, and either pass them off to teams that should handle them, or put it on the backlog if their team is the most appropriate. I've commented on our ticket boards asking the bug submitters to understand that an escalation ticket being completed does not mean that the bug has been fixed, and to watch for a matching dev ticket being completed for that. I was told today that asserting this change to the system was considered a little too aggressive. (A system which, let me remind you, is about a week old.) On the one hand, yes, it is aggressive, because this system is currently hard to handle and I needed to set boundaries and rules to make sure things didn't get too out of hand. On the other, it wasn't intended to order people around or anything, and it's really about changing the system rather than acting out against anyone. I probably acted like an rear end in a top hat somewhere down the line, either way. I can't be the one to say whether I was "in the wrong" or not, and it's not really about that, anyway. Question is, was I out of line or did I act inappropriately?
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# ? Jun 9, 2015 02:59 |
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PongAtari posted:Serious question: Given two candidates for an entry level job... Candidate A just graduated with a CS degree. Candidate B is a self-taught programmer with some personal projects and open source contributions, but no real-world programming experience. Who the gently caress would hire Candidate B? Let's up the stakes here and suppose that Candidate A graduated with a CS degree, or whatever they call it, from MIT. It is totally plausible that Candidate A is unhireable and Candidate B is a definite hire. The reason is, you can interview them and find out that Candidate A can't write a simple recursive function or do anything useful really, and Candidate B is capable of teaching themselves things. In place of B's personal projects, A has school projects. In place of B's open source contributions, A has nothing. And A sucks at programming while B doesn't. My candidates A and B here are based on real people. This shouldn't even be surprising. The majority of CS-degree-havers are no-hires (for my standards). There exist self-taught people in industry. Therefore, it's perfectly possible for B > A. You mention that Candidate B has no real-world experience (well, actually, that would depend on the nature of their open source contributions) but forget to mention that A doesn't either. sarehu fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Jun 9, 2015 |
# ? Jun 9, 2015 03:05 |
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PongAtari posted:By "real-world experience" I mean, "programming experience gained at a programming job" rather than "hobbyist" programming. I've heard a lot of conflicting information and I'm basically trying to figure out whether I should keep trying to learn on my own or bite the bullet, take on a few more tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and find a way to get a CS degree while working a full-time job. It's possible to get hired without a CS degree, but it's an uphill battle. Especially if you don't already have an ITish job where you can claim some real-world experience. While both A & B can be equally terrible or great on their own merits, most companies will err on the side of caution and go with A, in the absence of real information. Also, a lot of places will require CS degrees for their developer positions simply as a first line filter, regardless as to any actual efficacy of such a filter.
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# ? Jun 9, 2015 03:51 |
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Skandranon posted:It's possible to get hired without a CS degree, but it's an uphill battle. Especially if you don't already have an ITish job where you can claim some real-world experience. While both A & B can be equally terrible or great on their own merits, most companies will err on the side of caution and go with A, in the absence of real information. Also, a lot of places will require CS degrees for their developer positions simply as a first line filter, regardless as to any actual efficacy of such a filter. Actually the real answer is that most companies will go with neither candidate for a full-time position. Some companies will take people on as interns and see if they're good enough to go full-time, some companies will hire contractors or H1bs. A CS undergrad at a good school that makes connections and interns well will likely get a full-time position somewhere, but you don't really need to be a CS undergrad to weasel your way into a development internship position. Bruegels Fuckbooks fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Jun 9, 2015 |
# ? Jun 9, 2015 03:56 |
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I feel like I'm in the opposite position, where I graduated with a degree but feel like I am not hirableable because I have no experience out of school. I'll just study my rear end off for the technical interviews for the next 2-3 months and do some side stuff and go for it.
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# ? Jun 9, 2015 04:01 |
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Pollyanna posted:I can't be the one to say whether I was "in the wrong" or not, and it's not really about that, anyway. Question is, was I out of line or did I act inappropriately? Let me try rewording this to see if I'm following you: the software group is switching to a system where high-priority bugs get handled based on whose turn it is, and you said "no, how about the engineer who's up just investigates and triages the bug but doesn't try to fix it." Is that about right? If you want to work in start-ups, that attitude of "I have a better idea so I'll just do it" can work well, but you have to be right more than you're wrong. Say "ok" and try to figure out why your idea didn't go over well. In larger companies, this same attitude is usually much more disruptive (the bad kind, obviously) than it is helpful. I think a rotating schedule for handling high-priority bugs sounds dumb (every bug will have a small number of people who are best-equipped to fix it and may be the ones responsible for writing it). I think having younger developers do the initial investigation sounds great: it's not a lot of fun but it gets you some good experience with the code and with debugging. From your description, though, it sounded like you were de-prioritizing bugs. Also, closing a "bug" ticket to open a "work" ticket sounds really annoying and I'd be upset by this either as someone working on tickets or someone opening tickets.
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# ? Jun 9, 2015 04:03 |
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Pollyanna posted:I can't tell you anything except my own experience, but I got the job I'm currently at by teaching myself programming and web dev over the course of a year and a half, and I don't have a CS degree - just a half-biology, half-engineering BS. It's up to you, but I've managed to get somewhere relying on my skills and portfolio, without a CS degree. Also having a biomedical engineering degree is very different from having no degree as far as entry-level resumes go.
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# ? Jun 9, 2015 04:16 |
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Mniot posted:Also, closing a "bug" ticket to open a "work" ticket sounds really annoying and I'd be upset by this either as someone working on tickets or someone opening tickets. Typically if I log a bug in someone else's project (or my own) it means I have some interest in following the issue to completion. Especially if I log a bug against something because it's blocking my own work. If you close that and then open up some new ticket to actually "fix" the problem, that means now I have to do more legwork to stay on top of things. I also have a hard time thinking why it would even justify a second ticket to fix the problem at all. You run through the debugger, figure out what the issue is, write a comment on it. Then you put it in the queue of a developer responsible for fixing it. Now since I filed the ticket I can automatically see who is working the issue, and I can work with them if they're blocking my work.
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# ? Jun 9, 2015 04:18 |
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e : nm
BlackMK4 fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Jun 9, 2015 |
# ? Jun 9, 2015 09:35 |
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I'm probably going to quit my PhD and as such am interested in getting into industry. I'm working on some projects to put on my github but figured that I might as well be applying in the meantime. Or is it worth putting a bunch of half-finished stuff on there just so that they can get an idea of my coding style? If somebody has any suggestions on my CV I'd love to hear them. gonadic io fucked around with this message at 11:48 on Jun 9, 2015 |
# ? Jun 9, 2015 11:45 |
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gonadic io posted:If somebody has any suggestions on my CV I'd love to hear them.
Tunga fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Jun 9, 2015 |
# ? Jun 9, 2015 11:56 |
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Tunga posted:<snip> Will do all of these things, thanks.
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# ? Jun 9, 2015 12:02 |
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Also: Skills, Experience, Qualifications, is generally the order you should have the sections in. Other poo poo like hobbies or whatever at the end, if you have space. Given this is a UK CV it's fine for it to be two pages but put everything that you want people to read on the first one.
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# ? Jun 9, 2015 12:07 |
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Thanks for advice, guys. I don't really know what I'm doing. I just know that these past few weeks of work have not been very enjoyable and I'm not sure if I'm in a position where I'm improving or "getting better", plus I've gotten really frustrated with some parts of our system (ticket tracking, all the misdirection and annoyance when hunting down bugs, etc.). I don't want to quit or anything, but I do want to know what I'm doing wrong. I'll take a step back and chill out a bit.Cicero posted:Didn't you also work as an intern at a startup accelerator and go to a coding bootcamp? That's not the point. The point is that I didn't have a CS bachelors when I was told I could do nothing without it by my financiers (read: parents). I proved them wrong. I think. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Jun 9, 2015 |
# ? Jun 9, 2015 12:36 |
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Mniot posted:Let me try rewording this to see if I'm following you: the software group is switching to a system where high-priority bugs get handled based on whose turn it is, and you said "no, how about the engineer who's up just investigates and triages the bug but doesn't try to fix it." Is that about right? I think what happened is that the original idea of the escalation/triage expert/hero/whatever didn't quite get across completely when I had it explained to me. I don't have a problem with fixing bugs, it's the sheer amount of it at once that overwhelms me. I just don't really like getting a huge stream of them and being expected to fix them all within a certain amount of time, especially when I don't have enough background or history on the app to know where something lives or why things are done a certain way. It gets worse when I have to ask people who have been around longer than me for help and I feel like I'm just annoying and distracting them and that I've failed to even understand what I'm working with. As for the "doesn't try to fix it" bit, I shouldn't fix every bug that comes my way unless the problem is on my team's side, it's not like I'm trying to shirk work. Man, I don't know. I've just become paranoid and worried about my performance and it really shows. I'm now very stilted and nervous when speaking to my manager (more akin to team lead, but he hired me sooo). I speak less to my coworkers and get way too caught up in my work, yet feel like I'm not doing nearly enough to offset being ineffective. I don't write tests first as much as I used to, because I often don't even know what's wrong before I've delved a good bit into the issue I'm working on. It's very different from how I learned things (building from the ground up) and I don't know if it's me being weak or me just needing to buck up. I can't seriously be jaded already, can I?
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# ? Jun 9, 2015 13:24 |
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PongAtari posted:By "real-world experience" I mean, "programming experience gained at a programming job" rather than "hobbyist" programming. The catch is that it's really difficult for people to independently teach themselves and master the skills needed to operate at this level, especially without some kind of mentorship. Hell, most people who do go the education route don't come out with those skills, and there the hope with education is that they have just enough exposure to the field that they can be successful in a junior position while they develop their skills further. But if you're already a really good hobbyist, then yes, it's usually not that difficult to find someone to pay you to continue your work.
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# ? Jun 9, 2015 16:13 |
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I am paid to work on open source software by a government, so my code is all available on github. Best of both worlds, if you ask me, since I have "professional-level" experience that is fully publicly available. I have no education or training beyond what I taught myself.
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# ? Jun 9, 2015 16:23 |
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Wouldn't mind a quick CV check if anyone is willing: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oqRJjLOvdQjEvfIbjfijNMx7zhOYHhc-SZ7EwcaRrl4/edit?usp=sharing I just added the most recent role and tweaked a few other bits. I'm mostly happy with it but feels a bit bullet-heavy. Last time I used this I had a profile/statement/abstract thing at the top but I've dumped that because it felt generic and worthless. Is there anything else that I should put before launching into a list of skills? and should the skills list be more a more succinct list of keywords or is it fine as I have it? (Note that it also has my contact details at the top on the regular non-anonymised version, just removed them to post it here.)
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# ? Jun 10, 2015 15:46 |
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"Monitise (Content) provide ticketing and customer reward solutions to large financial and corporate clients, as well as operating consumer-facing services in these same areas." "Apptivation are a mobile development agency operating primarily in the financial services sector." "Satori provide address quality and mail management software solutions for the US and UK markets." These sentences all have the same grammar mistake. The first has another.
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# ? Jun 10, 2015 16:39 |
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# ? Jun 13, 2024 06:52 |
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I'm an artist in northern Mexico, as in I have a BFA, and have worked making paintings, digital art, and so forth. Shortly after graduating, I wanted to be in game development, so I joined a some old high school buddies' game/app startup when mobile games were starting. We won a few awards, but none of our games ever made any money. We stayed afloat with lovely salaries for years doing mostly contract work, and I learned a lot more management skills and so forth. Eventually, we were absorbed by a pretty big local company to make bigger games for them. We started out with a small trivia game, hoping to move into larger games after that, but instead got stuck making more trivia games, and eventually just started making social apps. The salary was good, but while I had always been more of a UI designer in my old company, I was hired as an Art Director, and they were definitely paying me more than what a graphic designer would charge. So eventually, a month after my first child was born, I was let go. So now I'm 31, salaries here for graphic designers are basically unlivable since there's a huge offer surplus, and have been job hunting for 5 months, with most final communications after interviews being "how negotiable are your salary expectations" (they're not even high). I've been getting by with some freelance work and learned AutoCAD to help my dad with some projects, but I think it's time to look elsewhere, since my degree and experience doesn't seem to be helping much. I've programmed a little, done a little web development, and worked very closely with programmers during my time, so I can at least pseudo-code my way out of problems and have learned some scripting for random projects. I even coded a few horrible projects in TorqueScript a long time ago. For every design job posting I've seen about 8 or 9 development ones (offering twice to three times the salary for entry level positions, no less), so this seems to be one of the best job markets around. Some of the hires I've seen at the companies I've worked at have been terrible and had little to no knowledge, or relied on visual programming systems like Kismet for most of their work. I have maybe the rest of the year where I can get 2-3 hours a day outside my work schedule to learn some usable skills. How seriously should I consider trying to make a move into CS in something like web/app development at 31? I'm definitely "late to the game" at this point.
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# ? Jun 10, 2015 16:51 |