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Zero The Hero
Jan 7, 2009

There are positions that are entirely remote, yes. I interviewed for one even without any relevant experience at all. It was just the way the company operated. I don't think the job was going to be absolutely 100% remote, but it sounded like meetings were less than once a month. I think anyone should be able to handle that.

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down with slavery
Dec 23, 2013
STOP QUOTING MY POSTS SO PEOPLE THAT AREN'T IDIOTS DON'T HAVE TO READ MY FUCKING TERRIBLE OPINIONS THANKS

Thermopyle posted:

I'm not really looking for a programming job right now, but I might, on a whim, decide to in the future and I like to keep on top of things.

Is there any market for programmers who work entirely off-site and probably wouldn't even live within driving distance of any potential employers? Relocation isn't in the cards for me anytime soon.

I have no experience in a job whose sole purpose is software development, but I've done programming as a part of my job. I've got a lot of stuff on github with some minor contributions to fairly widely-used open source projects. I'm most experienced in Python, but I've got a decent amount of exposure to JS, Java, and C#. I can do frontend, backend. I can pick up most things pretty quickly. No formal education in CS or whatever.

http://www.weworkremotely.com

BirdOfPlay
Feb 19, 2012

THUNDERDOME LOSER

Ok, but that doesn't explain why they'd be interested in a dishwasher. :v:

Literally Elvis
Oct 21, 2013

For people without formal educations, how do you know if/when you're "ready" for a real job? There will always be something to learn, but I'd imagine enough of that learning would/could take place in a workplace environment, right?

wolffenstein
Aug 2, 2002
 
Pork Pro
You learn when you're ready when your potential employers give you a job offer. Degree matters not.

To bring people up to speed on my situation, I did get and accept a job offer. It's in my area, but the pay is poo poo even for here. Some pay is better than none, so I'll keep applying for jobs (which I should do anyway).

wolffenstein fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Jul 30, 2014

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA
May 29, 2008

Literally Elvis posted:

For people without formal educations, how do you know if/when you're "ready" for a real job? There will always be something to learn, but I'd imagine enough of that learning would/could take place in a workplace environment, right?

Just wing it. Seriously.

Analytic Engine
May 18, 2009

not the analytical engine

aBagorn posted:

So it's happened.

I'm on the other side of this thread now, and am reviewing resumes and scheduling interviews.

Everyone's resume looks like poo poo to me now after putting it through the mental wringer of what this thread has taught me.

I hate you all.

Anything in particular that gets your goat? Your frustration could help us on the other side.

Surprise T Rex
Apr 9, 2008

Dinosaur Gum

Literally Elvis posted:

For people without formal educations, how do you know if/when you're "ready" for a real job? There will always be something to learn, but I'd imagine enough of that learning would/could take place in a workplace environment, right?

I'm in that situation right now, I did a game development course and then moved onto visual effects at university, neither of which really did programming at all.

Once you're comfortable programming in one language, whether you think you're professional level or not, familiarise yourself a bit with the one a potential employer uses and then figure it out from there on the job.

Careful Drums
Oct 30, 2007

by FactsAreUseless
Do we do resume critiques here? here's my resume.

I'm not really looking for a new job right now but there is a company I'd like to work for in the future with open applications, so I want to at least get on their radar. If I can get an interview and a really nice offer I'd consider it, though. The company is a consultancy that expects its developers to be able to train-up on a new stack quickly, which is exactly the way I'd like to go despite most of my experience being in .NET. Any feedback is appreciated!

wolffenstein
Aug 2, 2002
 
Pork Pro
Trim it down to one page. You can cut what you delete from the resume and paste it into your LinkedIn profile.

Careful Drums
Oct 30, 2007

by FactsAreUseless
Not a bad idea. I originally had it at one and a half pages and decided to go for two instead of just one.

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Is it fair to put company projects (e.g. a client's website) on my resume as an example of my work? I did not come up with the design, but I did implement the markup and styling and put the application together. I work with the designers on the site, and I'd like to include it on my resume as something I've done. Is that okay, or should I not include things like that?

wolffenstein
Aug 2, 2002
 
Pork Pro
Hell yeah

Fuck them
Jan 21, 2011

and their bullshit
:yotj:

Tunga posted:

Make them do fizzbuzz.

I had an interview where they asked to watch me research how to do something I had not done before, but was simple enough I wouldn't run a risk of getting totally stuck because of my unfamiliarity.

They also did the "poke and suggest" thing with something I was passingly familiar with to see if I had any intuition.

While this is probably harder to pull off than "can you fizz a buzz or pass muster with what's on your resume" it was enjoyable for me as the interviewee and might be more fair to people who haven't had a copy of CTCI on their desk.

Hiowf
Jun 28, 2013

We don't do .DOC in my cave.

Careful Drums posted:

Not a bad idea. I originally had it at one and a half pages and decided to go for two instead of just one.

It depends on the locale, though indeed USA seems to prefer shorter resumes. Personally I don't mind extra information. Your resume isn't in my area so only a few things jump out at me:

"He specializes in written communication"

This sounds a bit weird, i.e. I'm not sure what it really *means*.

"Trained two new team members up to produce revenue within two months of employment."

This falls under the "doing your job" category.

"Write articles for a software development blog, often written in an intentionally funny or controversial tone."

Maybe you cleaned this up for anonymity, but if I'm reading the resume I'd love to see what it was and check out the articles. You mentioned your writing skills earlier, I'd love to check them out by this point. Good writing is a big plus for a programmer.

"Open Source Developer/Tester"

You've been involved with this project for >1 year and got 1 patch accepted (in what language/stack?). Apparently using software and checking what's in new versions is a big deal. Don't get me wrong, you should mention this, but this is both exaggerating what you did and not mentioning what actually matters.

"Write unit tests in C++"

You don't mention C++ in the skills so I presume you had a bad time and don't want to come near it again?

shrughes
Oct 11, 2008

(call/cc call/cc)

Careful Drums posted:

Do we do resume critiques here? here's my resume.

> Careful Drums is a fast-learning and energetic Software Engineer with over three years professional experience,
mostly working within the .NET framework but has branched out and enjoys doing so.

You're referring to yourself in the third person?

> He is well-rounded and enjoys learning new frameworks and technologies in his spare time by reading about
them, discussing them, and writing projects with them. He aspires to be language-agnostic in his career.

> He specializes in written communication and is skilled at working with stakeholders to gather project
requirements and deliver projects on time, under budget, and within scope.

This is just kind of... chatty.

Despite that I think it generally feels like you are a real programmer of some kind, just seeing work experience with details.

> Methodolgies: Agile, Test-Driven, Waterfall

There's a typo there. Fix all the typos in your resume please. That includes inconsistent use of whitespace.

Also, why do you have Waterfall listed???

Looking further you come across as a bit of a scrub. The reason is, you go and list what text editor you use, you bother to mention version control systems, the choice of words "Major" and "Minor" programming languages, and other things that you say (like "Waterfall"). This might not affect your ability to get interviewed but it affects the perception people will have of you when, say, negotiating an offer. On the other hand there's allegedly a tier of the industry where people unironically have certifications and knowing how to use a version control system is a major accomplishment, so what do I know? Maybe you should keep the version control systems.

Two pages is fine, it doesn't look like it's filled with fluff. It fills out the second page nicely which makes it look like you trimmed some fat to get it there.

You should change the mention of a "Christian Church camp." Maybe I'm just surrounded by hippie coastalites (I'm not) but people look askance at unnecessary mentions of a religion on a resume and there's a chance it'll just be dropped because of HR paranoia. You could describe the camp without saying it's a Christian Church camp. (Call it a summer camp, or a summer day camp, or whatever it actually is.) The fact that you unnecessarily mentioned the camp's religious affiliation will affect people's perceptions of how much of a worldnoob you are, if they even read that far. It certainly affects my perceptions, churchboy! Also, generally speaking, websites are not really "powered" by Git or BitBucket. I don't know what you're talking about. (Are they hosted by Bitbucket?)

I'm not sure why you're name-dropping the technologies of a blog that you're merely writing articles for.

> Develop and Maintain Online Banking Solutions for over 200 credit unions serving

This is English, and the word "Maintain" is not a proper noun, so it should not be capitalized. Nor should a whole bunch of the other words that are capitalized. (All of the ones that are not proper nouns.)

Also, that's not how verbs work. Here, take a conjugal visit to Wikipedia.

> with CEO

Also, don't omit articles, not inconsistently. If you want to do that then be consistent about it and tastefully arrange your sentences so that it isn't grating.

Also it's "on time", not "on-time". And it's "train up", not "train-up", a hyphenation which might be appropriate if that were a noun. But it's a verb.

shrughes fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Aug 1, 2014

Hiowf
Jun 28, 2013

We don't do .DOC in my cave.

shrughes posted:

Also, why do you have Waterfall listed???

I'm guessing it's his way of saying "I worked at places with a lovely process and still got stuff done". It ties in with:

quote:

On the other hand there's allegedly a tier of the industry where people unironically have certifications and knowing how to use a version control system is a major accomplishment, so what do I know? Maybe you should keep the version control systems.

Careful Drums
Oct 30, 2007

by FactsAreUseless
Wow, thank you guys for pointing out just how :v: the whole thing is.

Skuto posted:

It depends on the locale, though indeed USA seems to prefer shorter resumes. Personally I don't mind extra information. Your resume isn't in my area so only a few things jump out at me:

"He specializes in written communication"

This sounds a bit weird, i.e. I'm not sure what it really *means*.

"Write articles for a software development blog, often written in an intentionally funny or controversial tone."

Maybe you cleaned this up for anonymity, but if I'm reading the resume I'd love to see what it was and check out the articles. You mentioned your writing skills earlier, I'd love to check them out by this point. Good writing is a big plus for a programmer.

I only anonymized the header and summary section.

I'm not sure how to sell the 'I actually know how to write things!' aspect. I wasn't sure if putting a hyperlink in the middle of an email would be weird? I could add it to a CV as well.

Skuto posted:

"Open Source Developer/Tester"

You've been involved with this project for >1 year and got 1 patch accepted (in what language/stack?). Apparently using software and checking what's in new versions is a big deal. Don't get me wrong, you should mention this, but this is both exaggerating what you did and not mentioning what actually matters.

"Write unit tests in C++"

You don't mention C++ in the skills so I presume you had a bad time and don't want to come near it again?

Yeah, I really am overplaying that. I really want to have 'I do open source things' on my resume because that's what all the cool kids do, and I guess I was kind of lying to myself that one measly pull-request matters. I don't know how I missed even mentioning that its all NodeJS stuff. I think I'll have to do some more open-source work for this to even be relevant enough to put on a resume.

And yeah I'm not a big fan of C++/lower-level programming nor am I any good at it so I don't want to play it up.

shrughes posted:

:words:
Firstly thanks for finding so many grammatical gotchas. I was capitalizing buzzwords/non-proper nouns because someone in college told me once that it was a good idea but now that I think about it, yeah its dumb.

The 'Christian' thing is totally acceptable where I am but also not worth the risk to leave it there. I'll take it out.

I want the 'summary' to be the attention-getter because that's what the poor soul who has to carve through a thousand resumes is going to read and decide if the rest of the resume is worth skimming.

I want it to have the effect of 'heres some poor shitlord who knows .NET, can write and communicate, and can learn new poo poo fast' but in business-speak. I was afraid it was sounding chatty so thanks for confirming that. Maybe the 3rd-person thing isn't the way to go. I figured that the whole resume technically is written in third person, just with the subject (me) left off the first part of every bullet point.

shrughes posted:

Despite that I think it generally feels like you are a real programmer of some kind

shrughes posted:

Looking further you come across as a bit of a scrub.

Okay so the resume gets worse as we go, good to know. Thing is I am kind of a scrub programmer, in that places I've worked it's been a big loving deal that I was the guy who knows SVN (I had never used it before that job I just was the only one with the initiative to learn it) and can set up IIS to actually run the app on a dev box. Its exactly what you described where having certs is taken seriously. I'm in Michigan, not the west coast. I'm having a hard time finding my way out of that and into a 'real programmer' position.

This is the same reason I always feel compelled to put things like 'Visual Studio, Vim', 'Git, SVN, TFS', and 'Waterfall' on my resume, because I've been at places where those things aren't taken for granted. For a big-boy job, I could just leave them off! If I go in that direction I could probably get the whole thing down to one page but I'm afraid of how sparse it would look.


Skuto posted:

I'm guessing it's his way of saying "I worked at places with a lovely process and still got stuff done".

Exactly.

Bognar
Aug 4, 2011

I am the queen of France
Hot Rope Guy

Careful Drums posted:

The 'Christian' thing is totally acceptable where I am but also not worth the risk to leave it there. I'll take it out.

Technical/high-skill professions tend to have lower religiosity than other professions, so even if it's acceptable in your area the person hiring you might count it against you.


Careful Drums posted:

I figured that the whole resume technically is written in third person, just with the subject (me) left off the first part of every bullet point.

I always assumed it was second person with "I" left out, e.g.:

(I) Maintained the lovely legacy application
(I) Organized the buttes
(I) Leveraged dongues to increase revenue by 15%

Hiowf
Jun 28, 2013

We don't do .DOC in my cave.

Careful Drums posted:

I'm not sure how to sell the 'I actually know how to write things!' aspect. I wasn't sure if putting a hyperlink in the middle of an email would be weird? I could add it to a CV as well.

Stuff it in the resume near the "software programming blog" thing. URLs are fine especially if they're so relevant (people stuff github URLs in there all the time, do they!). The "freelance technical writer" thing is already selling your writing ability, and you've got sort of a "portfolio" to back it up, so do that by putting the link there. And yeah, the technology of the blog is irrelevant unless you work on that for example by extending that site. I noticed it's also Ghost, and ironically it does say that it's NodeJS *there*, but not where you talk about contributing to Ghost in relation to your own blog...

quote:

Yeah, I really am overplaying that. I really want to have 'I do open source things' on my resume because that's what all the cool kids do, and I guess I was kind of lying to myself that one measly pull-request matters. I don't know how I missed even mentioning that its all NodeJS stuff. I think I'll have to do some more open-source work for this to even be relevant enough to put on a resume.

No, put it on there. It's good. I've dealt several times with people working for well-known big internet-related companies from SF submitting patches and not being able to avoid thing such as remarking all files as executable, loving up the existing indentation, including Windows line endings in Unix source code, and so on. And still failing to get it right after a week.

You'll need some rewording and maybe some thinking about how to lay things out how to get it there without overplaying it, though.

quote:

I want the 'summary' to be the attention-getter because that's what the poor soul who has to carve through a thousand resumes is going to read and decide if the rest of the resume is worth skimming.

I can't speak for companies where HR drones do the first level filtering, but I'd basically skip immediately over it because such summaries tend to be effectively content-free. The list of skills and the work experience to back it up (or make me question it) is what matters.

quote:

I want it to have the effect of 'heres some poor shitlord who knows .NET, can write and communicate, and can learn new poo poo fast'...Thing is I am kind of a scrub programmer, in that places I've worked it's been a big loving deal that I was the guy who knows SVN (I had never used it before that job I just was the only one with the initiative to learn it) and can set up IIS to actually run the app on a dev box. Its exactly what you described where having certs is taken seriously. I'm in Michigan, not the west coast. I'm having a hard time finding my way out of that and into a 'real programmer' position.

For what it's worth I found that the resume communicated that well.

Edit: To clarify, it communicates well that you're in that situation and want to get out by broadening your skill set.

quote:

Okay so the resume gets worse as we go, good to know.

I'm not sure that's what his remark meant, i.e. some of the issues he points out are early in the resume.

Hiowf fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Aug 1, 2014

New Yorp New Yorp
Jul 18, 2003

Only in Kenya.
Pillbug

Bognar posted:

Technical/high-skill professions tend to have lower religiosity than other professions, so even if it's acceptable in your area the person hiring you might count it against you.

It's true. There's a guy in the .NET community who knows his poo poo and writes interesting things all the time, but I can't stand him on a personal level because he's a preachy evangelical Christian... every bio/profile I've come across of his has some smug comment about how he "knows he's going to heaven".

Meanwhile, Jon Skeet is also very religious (I believe he's a minister), but he's quiet about it and doesn't mix it in his professional life except in passing.

Your religion has no place on a resume. It's not a qualification, it's personal trivia.

New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Aug 1, 2014

shrughes
Oct 11, 2008

(call/cc call/cc)

Careful Drums posted:

The 'Christian' thing is totally acceptable where I am but also not worth the risk to leave it there. I'll take it out.


Yeah nobody anywhere's going to say "Oh, this is a Christian, gently caress Christians." Or if they were like that, well gently caress them, they probably suck in general. But religion is a protected class w.r.t. employment and some companies don't want to elevate the chance that somebody they engage with and reject will sue them because of their religion, so they'll just ignore your resume. The HR department has to add value somehow...

(edit: HR aside, a reason it's bad to go out of your way to say it's a Christian Church camp it emphasizes how new to the working world you are. Also, resumes that mention religion get a significantly lower reply rate everywhere in the country, unless you're Jewish.)

shrughes fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Aug 1, 2014

Bognar
Aug 4, 2011

I am the queen of France
Hot Rope Guy

Ithaqua posted:

It's true. There's a guy in the .NET community who knows his poo poo and writes interesting things all the time, but I can't stand him on a personal level because he's a preachy evangelical Christian... every bio/profile I've come across of his has some smug comment about how he "knows he's going to heaven".

Stephen Cleary?

New Yorp New Yorp
Jul 18, 2003

Only in Kenya.
Pillbug

Bognar posted:

Stephen Cleary?

Yup.

Fuck them
Jan 21, 2011

and their bullshit
:yotj:
So I'll be working with the city, woo. No more contractor poo poo :yotj:

Benefits are good, though the recruiter, predictably, loving lied about salary. That or budgets (politics, also being Jacksonville) being what they are. Lots of people have not had raises in a while and bla bla bla. It's greater than salary.com's median for my area and experience level, which isn't saying much, but in context isn't bad at all.

DO ALWAYS HAVE SAVINGS, OTHER OFFERS AND A LEG TO STAND ON TO NEGOTIATE. I'd much rather have pressed hard for what I was told initially. Given that I really can't, well, a lack of a paycut in addition to my parking being covered for and getting great benefits means I can sit here until it's time to leave this area without kicking myself.

Still, worst case, 6mo to a year from now I'll be out of here, and I'm in a very comfortable place now. Can't complain too terribly.

null gallagher
Jan 1, 2014

Skuto posted:

I'm guessing it's his way of saying "I worked at places with a lovely process and still got stuff done". It ties in with:

What's the best way of getting this across on your resume? I'm in the same situation and want to get out.

Hiowf
Jun 28, 2013

We don't do .DOC in my cave.

null gallagher posted:

What's the best way of getting this across on your resume? I'm in the same situation and want to get out.

If we're talking about technologies:

Have a list of boring .NET Java ASP MVC SQL Enterprise applications that are really glorified CRUD forms as your main work experience, with a whole bunch of hipster technologies as your personal projects and open source contributions.

If we're talking about process (Agile/Scrum/TDD/Distributed version control) something similar applies, though "personal projects" will change to "introduced foo" in your main job. (Not your fault it didn't take on - I hope)

I might be a little biased here.

Careful Drums
Oct 30, 2007

by FactsAreUseless

gently caress them posted:

So I'll be working with the city, woo. No more contractor poo poo :yotj:

Benefits are good, though the recruiter, predictably, loving lied about salary. That or budgets (politics, also being Jacksonville) being what they are. Lots of people have not had raises in a while and bla bla bla. It's greater than salary.com's median for my area and experience level, which isn't saying much, but in context isn't bad at all.

DO ALWAYS HAVE SAVINGS, OTHER OFFERS AND A LEG TO STAND ON TO NEGOTIATE. I'd much rather have pressed hard for what I was told initially. Given that I really can't, well, a lack of a paycut in addition to my parking being covered for and getting great benefits means I can sit here until it's time to leave this area without kicking myself.

Still, worst case, 6mo to a year from now I'll be out of here, and I'm in a very comfortable place now. Can't complain too terribly.

Congrats! And yes your advice on having alternatives is very smart. One funny way I got screwed into this was by a contract-to-hire position. I worked for three months at a new job and when it came time to hire me, they offered $2k less than what I was contracting for. I didn't have a leg to stand on, so I didn't negotiate.

Neo_Reloaded
Feb 27, 2004
Something from Nothing
I received an offer this week, but it was for a job that was less interesting to me than maybe some others.

There's one job in particular that I've been waiting to hear from - it seems like a fantastic fit in a lot of ways, and I know I was still in the running as of very recently at least. It had been awhile since my final in-person interview, but last week I received a request to take a C++ programming test to "help them decide among the many quality applicants." I took the test last Wednesday, and I feel extremely confident about my performance - I know my code provided the correct answer for all feasible cases, and I was very happy with the O() runtime and memory requirements.

Is it appropriate to email the company I'm really interested in and politely ask for a decision timeframe, including telling them that I have another offer expiring soon but they are who I am passionate about working with?

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA
May 29, 2008

I would.

Bognar
Aug 4, 2011

I am the queen of France
Hot Rope Guy
Definitely do that. Chances are decent that the first company might offer you more money, if you didn't strongly negotiate over the initial offer. And if they don't, then they're not going to reject you just for sending a reasonable e-mail. So, even if you don't get the other job that you find interesting, it could work out well.

gnatalie
Jul 1, 2003

blasting women into space
I finally started a job search and managed to get a phone screen with the hiring director at a local health care billing company- they're moving their legacy coldfusion system to MVC 4. I'm supposed to hear back from them by the end of the day.. but I'm worried that I won't get far because it was literally the first interview sort of thing I've ever done for a software job and they have a lot of (imo) good thinking as far as the development process goes- TDD, continuous integration, pair programming, 1 week sprints, etc. On top of that it pays quite well for where I live. I'm just anxious that a great opportunity slipped by because I wasn't doing this earlier.

Enough complaining-an actual question: after putting my resume (which I should get around to posting here for constructive criticism) on dice and indeed, I got bombarded by calls from recruiters- 1 or 2 and sometimes 3 a day. Is this normal? And more importantly, how skeptical should I be? One of them is Robert Half, the others are all in the Portland/Beaverton area (Mainz Brady, VanderHouwen, Cinder Solutions, and a few others). They all seem like nice people- not suggesting a PHP dev job when I'm all .NET, etc, and after badgering me for salary options I always give them a high estimate of what I'm looking for. Any good tips for this? I don't really want to get played and be lowballed when it comes to potential jobs.

gnatalie fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Aug 1, 2014

Bognar
Aug 4, 2011

I am the queen of France
Hot Rope Guy

candy for breakfast posted:

Enough complaining-an actual question: after putting my resume (which I should get around to posting here for constructive criticism) on dice and indeed, I got bombarded by calls from recruiters- 1 or 2 and sometimes 3 a day. Is this normal? And more importantly, how skeptical should I be?

Very normal. I do zero self-promotion and have tiny profiles on websites liked LinkedIn that don't have any personal information, but recruiters still manage to call me at my work phone or send e-mails to my personal account. I'm convinced that people are handing my card to recruiters in hopes of a kickback. If I were actually trying to find a job, I can't begin to imagine how many calls would come in.

I personally have never used a recruiter, so I don't know how much they help or hurt the process. That said, I've never had a problem finding jobs. The demand for software engineers is just continually growing faster than the supply (and the demand for good engineers is enormous).

Best tip for salary is to get a couple offers from a few different companies, and possibly play them against each other once. That should give you a good idea of what people are really willing to pay. Never, ever, ever (ever) give the first number in a salary negotiation with a potential employer, nor admit your previous salary. Google for some articles on how to deflect those questions.

And finally, pay attention to the interview thread in this forum. It's got a lot of good advice.

EDIT: Oh wait, I'm in the interview thread :doh:

Bognar fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Aug 3, 2014

OctaviusBeaver
Apr 30, 2009

Say what now?
e:wrong thread

Careful Drums
Oct 30, 2007

by FactsAreUseless
Don't trust a thing a recruiter says. The ones that spam you and seem sketchy, probably are. Trust your gut on that one.

HondaCivet
Oct 16, 2005

And then it falls
And then I fall
And then I know


Careful Drums posted:

Congrats! And yes your advice on having alternatives is very smart. One funny way I got screwed into this was by a contract-to-hire position. I worked for three months at a new job and when it came time to hire me, they offered $2k less than what I was contracting for. I didn't have a leg to stand on, so I didn't negotiate.

Er, is that not normal? Don't contractors make more cash in exchange for fewer/no benefits and less job security?



candy for breakfast posted:

I finally started a job search and managed to get a phone screen with the hiring director at a local health care billing company- they're moving their legacy coldfusion system to MVC 4. I'm supposed to hear back from them by the end of the day.. but I'm worried that I won't get far because it was literally the first interview sort of thing I've ever done for a software job and they have a lot of (imo) good thinking as far as the development process goes- TDD, continuous integration, pair programming, 1 week sprints, etc. On top of that it pays quite well for where I live. I'm just anxious that a great opportunity slipped by because I wasn't doing this earlier.

Enough complaining-an actual question: after putting my resume (which I should get around to posting here for constructive criticism) on dice and indeed, I got bombarded by calls from recruiters- 1 or 2 and sometimes 3 a day. Is this normal? And more importantly, how skeptical should I be? One of them is Robert Half, the others are all in the Portland/Beaverton area (Mainz Brady, VanderHouwen, Cinder Solutions, and a few others). They all seem like nice people- not suggesting a PHP dev job when I'm all .NET, etc, and after badgering me for salary options I always give them a high estimate of what I'm looking for. Any good tips for this? I don't really want to get played and be lowballed when it comes to potential jobs.

There's no use worrying about what you didn't do soon enough, it's already done. Just be glad you didn't wait any longer. It's also super useless to stress about failed interviews. Take what lessons you can from it and move on.

Yes it's normal for recruiters to come after people, that's their job. Some recruiters really aren't that bad. They care about maintaining good reputations with both the companies they work with and the hiring pool in the area and thus can't be total pieces of poo poo. But yeah there are plenty of recruiters that really don't give two shits about any of that and see you as a walking dollar sign. The difference between the two is fairly obvious in my experience.

Are you in the Portland area or thinking about moving there? I'm already here, you can PM me if you want to ask any questions. :) Not that I'm an expert but I've used at least one of the firms you mentioned.

Gounads
Mar 13, 2013

Where am I?
How did I get here?

Careful Drums posted:

Congrats! And yes your advice on having alternatives is very smart. One funny way I got screwed into this was by a contract-to-hire position. I worked for three months at a new job and when it came time to hire me, they offered $2k less than what I was contracting for. I didn't have a leg to stand on, so I didn't negotiate.

Always negotiate.

But if you were 1099 going to a w2 with benefits, a reduced base pay is completely normal. Some companies cheat, and call a temporary w2+benefits employee a contractor (the IRS would disagree), if that was the case it would seem odd if there was nothing else added.

tetracontakaidigon
Apr 21, 2013
Any advice about writing cover letters for tech companies? Checked the OP and didn't see any relevant links.

Also: How long does it take for Microsoft or Facebook to get back to you about your application? I'm a few months from graduation, if that makes a difference. I heard back from Google within two days, but I know someone there...

Thanks!

Gounads
Mar 13, 2013

Where am I?
How did I get here?

tetracontakaidigon posted:

Any advice about writing cover letters for tech companies? Checked the OP and didn't see any relevant links.

The Googles and Facebooks, no idea.

When writing to lesser known companies, make sure to write about why you want to work there. Do 5 minutes of research on their products and mention one.

I hired a lot of people in a tech-ed company. Anyone half qualified who mentioned they like the idea of working to help kids or an interest in teaching got at least a phone interview from me.

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Careful Drums
Oct 30, 2007

by FactsAreUseless

Gounads posted:

Always negotiate.

But if you were 1099 going to a w2 with benefits, a reduced base pay is completely normal. Some companies cheat, and call a temporary w2+benefits employee a contractor (the IRS would disagree), if that was the case it would seem odd if there was nothing else added.

The implication was that my salary wouldn't change, but tbh I don't remember the details but I did get two separate w2s, one from the agency and one from my company after they hired me. So I duno. Point stands though, always negotiate.

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