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I have a question, and this seems like the most relevant thread to ask it in... right now I'm looking to start a career path where I can spend ~2 years learning and come out of it with the skills to get an entry-level job in programming (whether that means buying books and becoming a code monkey at home, or working on a degree in CS, or having a first-born son and sacrificing him to the gods), and go back to school part-time afterwards to move higher along a branch of this industry. I have zero experience with anything programming-related and a non-existent college education, so I'm starting from the very beginning. My question is, what's the first step here? Is it just a matter of learning how to program ASAP and getting some projects under my belt for my resume? Maybe a trade school? Or should I get started on a 4 year degree, and look to make the jump into an entry-level position halfway through? My long-term goals are a degree and everything that comes with it, but right now I'm looking for the quickest path to paying my bills and making a decent living with a job in this industry.
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# ? May 14, 2012 19:50 |
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 02:28 |
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DIEGETIC SPACEMAN posted:I have a question, and this seems like the most relevant thread to ask it in... right now I'm looking to start a career path where I can spend ~2 years learning and come out of it with the skills to get an entry-level job in programming (whether that means buying books and becoming a code monkey at home, or working on a degree in CS, or having a first-born son and sacrificing him to the gods), and go back to school part-time afterwards to move higher along a branch of this industry. I have zero experience with anything programming-related and a non-existent college education, so I'm starting from the very beginning. Here's a very important question: Do you like programming? If the answer isn't "i loving love programming", don't choose it as a career path. In my experience, people who got into programming because they thought it would mean a big paycheck are bad at it and miserable doing it.
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# ? May 14, 2012 19:56 |
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And if you don't know the answer to that question, go onto Codeacademy.com and bang out Javascript projects until you get bored.
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# ? May 14, 2012 20:02 |
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Ithaqua posted:Here's a very important question: Do you like programming? If the answer isn't "i loving love programming", don't choose it as a career path. In my experience, people who got into programming because they thought it would mean a big paycheck are bad at it and miserable doing it. I'm a huge nerd who's genuinely interested in programming (my mom laughs because my eyes light up when I explain what things like "programming drivers" mean to her), the big paycheck is just a nice bonus. Thanks for the CodeAcademy link, I'm going to put some time into that site and use it as an introductory course while I figure all of this out.
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# ? May 14, 2012 20:14 |
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> My question is, what's the first step here? Not trade school. > Is it just a matter of learning how to program ASAP and getting some projects under my belt for my resume? If you don't already know how to program you can't accurately say that you're interested in programming. > Maybe a trade school? Worse than a bad idea? > Or should I get started on a 4 year degree, and look to make the jump into an entry-level position halfway through? Maybe? I know somebody who got an associate's, got a job after that, and did great. It depends whether "getting started" lets you take C.S. classes or there are stupid general education requirements that take half your time. That depends on the school you attend and, more probabilistically speaking, the country you're in. > My long-term goals are a degree and everything that comes with it, but right now I'm looking for the quickest path to paying my bills and making a decent living with a job in this industry. Why is your long-term goal a degree? What do you mean by "everything that comes with it"? If you're talking about the education you get, a small but potentially important proportion of your education comes with that. If you're talking about the signaling you get from it, it doesn't really matter, in the sense that the poor signaling can be overcome (with a sufficiently large set of employers) by other evidence that you don't suck at programming. For example I know somebody who got her associate's and never felt she needed any degrees after that to help signal she was a good programmer. Of course, that's because it turned out she didn't suck at programming. Since your plan is to hop into a job part-way through a degree you'll probably find that the value of completing the rest of your degree is negative. General advice: If you find out you can actually code and like it, find out what the cheapest community college -> state college paths are and take it. Going any route other than community college / in-state tuition is kind of stupid, if you're going to get formal schooling in this.
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# ? May 15, 2012 03:01 |
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I'm really in the same boat as you Diegetic Spaceman, so thanks for posting that. The posted info so far has been very helpful(but more is appreciated) and this CodeAcademy.com website is great.
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# ? May 15, 2012 03:31 |
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So I've been working as a .Net developer for a little over a year now, and its become obvious that I'm not going to learn/grow any more from this company. I polished up my resume and I'm hitting the job boards. I've just been browsing jobs in cities I'd like to live in, but I'm having trouble figuring out which jobs are worth even applying to. They all seem stereotypical. What kind of stuff should I be looking for in a job posting?
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# ? May 15, 2012 04:34 |
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Most technical job postings aren't written by technical people
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# ? May 15, 2012 10:10 |
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Schroeder91 posted:I'm really in the same boat as you Diegetic Spaceman, so thanks for posting that. The posted info so far has been very helpful(but more is appreciated) and this CodeAcademy.com website is great. You guys should also check out Udacity.com, which has intro university level courses for CS for free.
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# ? May 15, 2012 14:46 |
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Careful Drums posted:So I've been working as a .Net developer for a little over a year now, and its become obvious that I'm not going to learn/grow any more from this company. I polished up my resume and I'm hitting the job boards. Here are some guidelines to find good .NET jobs: - Do they do unit testing as a matter of course? - Do they do CI? - Are they on .NET 4? Are they looking to move to .NET 4.5 as soon as possible? - Do they use good tools (like ReSharper!)? - Do they believe in continuing education for developers? I've been at jobs where it was a requirement for raises to attend some sort of technical conference at least once a year on the company's dime. - Do they do Agile? Like, real Agile, not "it's waterfall but we change requirements a lot"
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# ? May 15, 2012 18:51 |
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Ithaqua posted:Here are some guidelines to find good .NET jobs: Thanks! This is exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for. I've heard lots of horror stories about lovely .Net houses and I want to upgrade not make myself more miserable. Careful Drums fucked around with this message at 19:59 on May 15, 2012 |
# ? May 15, 2012 19:52 |
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shrughes posted:Not trade school. I mentioned trade schools because, at my previous job, I overheard someone talking about a brother-in-law who did an 18 month program at an ITT Tech-style school, did an internship through the school and turned it into a job as soon as the program was over. That made it sound like an attractive option, but obviously a formal education and degree would be more substantial and carry me further. quote:That depends on the school you attend and, more probabilistically speaking, the country you're in. I'm in the Los Angeles valley. I'm sure finding a good school within driving distance from my house won't be a problem. quote:Why is your long-term goal a degree? What do you mean by "everything that comes with it"? My long-term goal isn't just to get really good at, say, writing Windows software or web design. One of the reasons I'm attracted to this field is the potential to branch off in whatever direction piques my interest; one day I can write an Angry Birds clone and the next I can write firmware, make a bitchin' MySpace profile, work on a physics engine for Unreal 2020, or whatever the gently caress else comes up. So, I want to learn everything I can about everything remotely related to programming, while getting a good job and seeing my education turn into something that'll pay the bills ASAP. I'll heed everyone's advice on finding out just how much I like programming before diving head-first into this. It was something that I intended to do anyways, but I was wrongly focusing on "how can I make this pay my bills," instead of "is this actually something I want to do."
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# ? May 15, 2012 22:56 |
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DIEGETIC SPACEMAN posted:I'm in the Los Angeles valley. I'm sure finding a good school within driving distance from my house won't be a problem. That's great news. And later, when finding a job. It's always depressing to see people in this thread asking about getting a job, when it turns out they live somewhere like the middle of Montana.
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# ? May 15, 2012 22:59 |
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DIEGETIC SPACEMAN posted:One of the reasons I'm attracted to this field is the potential to branch off in whatever direction piques my interest; one day I can write an Angry Birds clone and the next I can write firmware, make a bitchin' MySpace profile, work on a physics engine for Unreal 2020, or whatever the gently caress else comes up. That's just not true. Learning to do any one of those things can take years of learning the ins and outs of writing that specific type of software.
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# ? May 15, 2012 23:07 |
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shrughes posted:That's great news. And later, when finding a job. It's always depressing to see people in this thread asking about getting a job, when it turns out they live somewhere like the middle of Montana. On this topic: I'm currently living in metro Detroit and I guess the 'scene' for developers here is blowing up. However, I've lived in all corners of Michigan and I like the idea of going to the east or west coast. Are there any cities that are particularly good for programmers? Or is it just kind of "go to a drat population center"?
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# ? May 15, 2012 23:23 |
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These days programmers are needed basically everywhere that isn't the middle of nowhere. If I had to rank places though, maybe Silicon Valley, then NY, then Seattle? It really depends on what type of software development you want to go into. Like, if it's finance, NY is #1 by a mile, then maybe Chicago. It'd be pretty hard to go wrong with any large metropolitan area, and many (most?) companies are willing to pay to fly you out for interviews and then for relocation anyway, so you're not tied down to where you start. Cicero fucked around with this message at 01:22 on May 16, 2012 |
# ? May 16, 2012 01:19 |
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Careful Drums posted:On this topic: I'm currently living in metro Detroit and I guess the 'scene' for developers here is blowing up. However, I've lived in all corners of Michigan and I like the idea of going to the east or west coast. Are there any cities that are particularly good for programmers? Or is it just kind of "go to a drat population center"? It really kind of is that, as long as you don't consider Philadelphia or Phoenix or Washington, D.C. to be population centers. So actually the answer is that certain cities are particularly good for programmers. I'd consider living in NYC, L.A., Chicago, SF, south SF Bay Area, or Boston, as worthwhile choices, personally -- but most of them are too cold (that's why I left Boston) and the south SF Bay Area stands far above the rest in terms of having a plethora of companies I'd be happy working for operating less than 5 miles away (NYC might have that too, mostly out of pure density, but no companies that I can think of) and in a wide variety of industries, from companies like El Goog or Apple or Mozilla to chip designers, small fab shops, defense contractors, NASA, a whole bunch of other companies that you've never heard of, all sorts of bullshit photo sharing startups. You can't loving walk down the street without walking past the offices of some goddamn photosharing startup.
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# ? May 16, 2012 01:19 |
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shrughes posted:It really kind of is that, as long as you don't consider Philadelphia or Phoenix or Washington, D.C. to be population centers. So actually the answer is that certain cities are particularly good for programmers. NYC has Spotify and DE Shaw (computational chemistry / finance) off the top of my head, which are both interesting places to work. LA's demand for Rails devs has loving exploded recently if web development is your cup of tea.
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# ? May 16, 2012 02:32 |
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I have sort of an odd question. edit: Come to think of it, I'm not actually sure this belongs in this thread so let me know if it needs moving. Didn't feel it deserved it's own thread though. I'm a stay at home Dad working during spare time on a fairly decent sized project, a online based Planned Maintenance System for ships and mines and the like, targeting customers that wouldn't be able to afford much more expensive offerings out there. For example a ship a mate of mine worked on bought a fugging Excel spreadsheet based offering for $80,000, and that's basically a 'cheap' one. I think I can blow these sort of operators out of the water with a good approach, using modern web dev techniques, but my business plan isn't what I'd like to ask a question about. Say I screw up horribly and my business plan is a failure, how do I know if I'm any good as a programmer? I don't want to go back to ships, I did that for 10 years, and I really enjoying building products from the ground up, but I've got zero formal training. What metrics can I use? I've built this project 1 and 1/2 times now, the 1st was cobbled together as a proof of concept, and I used it to demo the idea. Try not to make fun of that too hard , I got some very good feedback from businesses with that video. Now I'm going through a full rewrite, and I've done a much cleaner job I feel. I have great confidence in my code from my results of unit tests plus code review. I'm using version control, I don't 'break the build' as it were, leaving half done poo poo all over the place. I guess what I'm getting at is while I feel confident in my own ability to be productive and reliable as a programmer (at least in the current domain of web deb), I also know that programming is an excellent field for misplaced confidence due to incompetence. Funnily enough, I'm not too worried about being a poo poo coder if my business DOES pick up, because I know I'll be able to shore up my weaknesses as I grow with employees and consultants. The main worry is that if I have to walk away with only what I learned, the it's the right stuff. Maluco Marinero fucked around with this message at 13:38 on May 16, 2012 |
# ? May 16, 2012 06:16 |
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Ithaqua posted:Here are some guidelines to find good .NET jobs: This is the best list. Taken all together it's pretty much a perfect litmus test. One thing I'd stress is that I'd almost consider the unit testing/framework version items to be immediate deal breakers, barring only major extenuating circumstances - while the tooling/CI/developer education stuff can be positive indicators, no automated tests and/or targeting an outdated framework are big red flags. Trust me, you do not want to find yourself on project pushing a .NET 3.5 app with zero test coverage. You're almost guaranteed to be working on an application that hasn't been refactored since 2004 and is actually just one massive code-behind and is so tightly coupled that NDepend takes half an hour just to load it up and UGGGHH. I really ought to update my resume.
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# ? May 16, 2012 09:07 |
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DIEGETIC SPACEMAN posted:My long-term goal isn't just to get really good at, say, writing Windows software or web design. One of the reasons I'm attracted to this field is the potential to branch off in whatever direction piques my interest; one day I can write an Angry Birds clone and the next I can write firmware, make a bitchin' MySpace profile, work on a physics engine for Unreal 2020, or whatever the gently caress else comes up. Ithaqua hit this, but it bears (harsh) repeat; this is a key misunderstanding of the IT/SWDevelopment industry that almost everyone outside it shares. (huge enough a misconception that those outside the two industries might not have noticed I glued to disparate industries together back there!) In particular the physics engine and the firmware development are really very niche areas to work in. To make it clear I use this analogy: Imagine I'm a qualified Dentist. Would you suggest positions for a General Practitioner to me? Orthopedic Consultant? Forensic Pathologist? Vet? Because that's what suggesting a good, experienced PHP developer apply for C/C++ Device Driver development posts is like. But hey; its all medical and biology, right? I've done the "swap strands" thing twice, from embedded C/C++ and assembler (actually did write some device drivers!) to web development. And now from that to (hopefully, seems to be successfully happening!) Java. Its a case of 6 months+ of your spare time cross-training yourself, and then being prepared to take one step back to take several forward in future, career-wise. Worth it if you get to swap away from something you're burned out on to something you (currently) enjoy though.
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# ? May 16, 2012 11:46 |
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I was told at an interview yesterday that the company had no real time frame for doing new hires. This seems like a polite 'no', but they also made multiple mentions that the 'next step' would be another interview with some members of the particular dev team that I'd be working with. It was a weird interview. My math background is a lot stronger than my programming background, and I ended up spending more time talking about an obscure numerical methods problem that I had been working on last year than anything else, despite no-one in the room knowing a whole lot about about numerical methods. I have no idea whether it was a weird interview. It was the first interview I've ever done :/. Gah. e: There is a guy sitting in the row in front of me in my school computer lab who is filling out an application on the website of the company I just interviewed at. Should I murder him? Newf fucked around with this message at 13:53 on May 16, 2012 |
# ? May 16, 2012 13:44 |
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Malacola posted:This is the best list. Taken all together it's pretty much a perfect litmus test. Yup. There aren't a lot of good reasons to be on .NET 3.5 still. An exception would be "Yes, we really want to move to .NET 4, but we're stuck on 3.5 because of <weird legacy application reason>, but we're in the process of taking care of <weird legacy application reason>" Not writing unit tests in this day and age is inexcusable. It's okay if they're not doing full on TDD, but developers should be writing tests. And not lovely tests where they run a method, grab the output, and then build a test against the output blindly. That's how you end up with useless tests that don't assert correct behavior. Here's another one, actually: - Source control. Do you use it? What kind of branching structure do you use? If the answers are "No", or "yes" and "we don't branch, we just check everything into main", run. Their releases are going to be nightmares.
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# ? May 16, 2012 14:13 |
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KuruMonkey posted:Because that's what suggesting a good, experienced PHP developer apply for C/C++ Device Driver development posts is like. But hey; its all medical and biology, right? Well I basically did that. Only without lots of experience. I know somebody who did it with virtually no experience in any professional programming, straight out of high school. It worked out great.
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# ? May 16, 2012 19:47 |
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shrughes posted:It really kind of is that, as long as you don't consider Philadelphia or Phoenix or Washington, D.C. to be population centers. So actually the answer is that certain cities are particularly good for programmers. If you can get past the winter, NYC has lots of great companies to work for – small, large and Google. Plenty of goddamn photosharing startups too.
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# ? May 17, 2012 00:17 |
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shrughes posted:It really kind of is that, as long as you don't consider Philadelphia or Phoenix or Washington, D.C. to be population centers. So actually the answer is that certain cities are particularly good for programmers. There are a lot of jobs for programmers in the DC area, especially with defense contractors.
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# ? May 17, 2012 00:21 |
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Heyo so I'm trying to move from one company to another and need to polish up the ol' resume. Thing is, the job I'm at now is database stuff and a whole lot of SQL, with me doing a lot of the SQL because I was a college hire. I'm applying to a place that is more java/OOD oriented, the stuff I originally wanted to do, but it's been a year now working with SQL instead of Java and so I am wondering: 1) What will employer think if I haven't been working on java professionally for so long? Is the experience from working now instead of being fresh out make it come out a wash? I tinker still from time to time on my own but I need to brush up so 2) Any OOD book recommendations? I sold all my textbooks for food, and I don't know what to go with.
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# ? May 17, 2012 02:42 |
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astr0man posted:There are a lot of jobs for programmers in the DC area, especially with defense contractors. Yeah, that's why D.C. is a terrible place to be a programmer. It's a bad place to be a human, generally speaking.
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# ? May 17, 2012 03:24 |
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Waverhouse posted:Heyo so I'm trying to move from one company to another and need to polish up the ol' resume. Thing is, the job I'm at now is database stuff and a whole lot of SQL, with me doing a lot of the SQL because I was a college hire. I'm applying to a place that is more java/OOD oriented, the stuff I originally wanted to do, but it's been a year now working with SQL instead of Java and so I am wondering: I think if you were searching for entry-level jobs, they would mostly only care it your "knew OO" and had experience in the particular libraries they use. quote:2) Any OOD book recommendations? I sold all my textbooks for food, and I don't know what to go with. I believe the recommended texts (and someone correct me if I'm wrong/these are actually lovely) are: Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (Martin Fowler) Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Gang of Four) They aren't really language specific in nature, although the one I have, Refactoring has all the syntax shown in the patterns done in Java. I've only made it through a couple chapters and it seems like a good read, a lot of stuff comes acroos 'common sense' that you might not think about at first. It also has a table of contents that gives the name or description of the patterns in the book so you jump to whatever it sound like you need. I like the book and the reviews are/were glowing, but I'm sure a search through Stackoverflow could find you 100 more suggestions that might be viable. Neither of these are "Intro to OO" books, they are more for teaching you how to be better at it once you have the basics down. text editor fucked around with this message at 05:02 on May 17, 2012 |
# ? May 17, 2012 04:56 |
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shrughes posted:Yeah, that's why D.C. is a terrible place to be a programmer. Eh, my whole career has been in DC with 7 of it working with DOD, and while there's a lot of grindy, "ENTERPRISE SHOP" type of stuff with government contractors (although in fairness, most of the programming is done somewhere else, and the management/oversight is done here) there's just a lot of jobs period and not all of them are bad. - For the web programming crew, there are a huge for non-profits and trade associations and they all need web development so there's a good bit of freelance that's not "Crazy Joe's local plumbing" - There's a very large amount of federally-funded scientific research/labs in the area (e.g. http://www.jhuapl.edu/, http://www.nvl.army.mil/ where I used to work) - a big focus on cyber security (my current gig) thanks to a lot of bank headquarters and all the homeland security stuff - Mythic Entertainment and Bethesda Softworks are local and I know/knew a few folks there - yes, there's a lot of defense contractors and sub-contractors, and some of them a code mills. But there are a surprisingly large of amount of 10-12 person startups that make good software that brings in a lot of money (right before they get acquired by a prime contractor. Think of it as this area's IPO equivalent) reasons NOT to live in DC: Hot and humid all summer, spring and fall are both like two weeks While there can be really great food, it's as expensive and not quite as good as a San Francisco or NY You've hosed up somewhere and aren't going to pass a background check for security clearances (clearances do open up a lot, especially in DoD) you' could be looking at $1000-$1200 rental with 2-3 roommates for a room/townhome rental out to ~50-60 minutes in traffic from the city ~50-60 minutes in traffic translates to 15-20 miles reasons to consider living in DC if you're looking for your first job: there are a LOT of young people who move to DC for a couple of years or so (then move somewhere else) thanks to a congressional staff job, or military, or public service, etc. So it's not hard to find people in that age bracket who are doing social things practically zero hit from the recession in both real estate and unemployment despite my earlier comment about food, there's a lot more here than dozens of other places I've visited or lived, so still a plus (with that one reservation about price) Edit: should add that yes, there are a lot of jobs that aren't in the city, so that affects the commute. For example, I work in Reston. Lurchington fucked around with this message at 13:09 on May 17, 2012 |
# ? May 17, 2012 04:59 |
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shrughes posted:Yeah, that's why D.C. is a terrible place to be a programmer. Our jobs site definitely leaves something to be desired but our HR rep has been actively looking for people who might qualify on jobs sites and the pickings are really slim. I haven't ruled out the possibility that our HR rep is terrible, but I haven't had any active reasons to think that so far. I think there's just a dearth of unemployed talent and a lot of the employed programmers aren't looking to jump ship in light of how the economy's been in the last 10 years. (at some point in the near future I may write up a post here or in the coding horrors thread with some examples of the staggeringly awful code we've received in response to our simple programming assessment, but I haven't had time) (PS, if anyone is interested in applying for such a job feel free to contact me via PM/IM) edit: Lurchington posted:While there can be really great food, it's as expensive and not quite as good as a San Francisco or NY het fucked around with this message at 05:19 on May 17, 2012 |
# ? May 17, 2012 05:17 |
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shrughes posted:Yeah, that's why D.C. is a terrible place to be a programmer. I spent the last 5 years working in the DC area, 3 years with DOD and then the last 2 with a large prime contractor and enjoyed it. I am moving to Chicago now, but it's for personal life reasons not the work. Not all the work that gets done is large enterprise garbage, I was doing some very interesting embedded C development. If you are looking at jobs with the bigger contractors and you just say "I don't want to do enterprise <insert technology here>" they will find you something that you enjoy doing. Also, there are plenty of small subcontractors that specialize in pretty much any technology you can think of. The climate in the DC area kind of sucks, but other than that I think it's a decent area to live. It's expensive I guess, but it's not terrible. Also, if you are clearable, the bump in pay for doing cleared work will more than make up for the cost of living. edit: Also, working for the government sucked after a while, but I don't know of any companies that offer better continuing education benefits than the options I had at DOD. astr0man fucked around with this message at 07:23 on May 17, 2012 |
# ? May 17, 2012 07:15 |
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The funny thing is that there's a crapload of horrible lol enterprise and defense work to be had in Silicon Valley as well (Lockheed, Northrop, etc. all have a sizable presence in south bay). I was slinging lol enterprise code when I was there (but it was way easier for me to find a gig doing something actually interesting with offers flying at me all the time). I had the damnedest time looking for a commercial software company in the DC area that wasn't something started by an MBA-toting sales exec that wanted to dip into tech and all marketing and advertising centric. The pay winds up being pretty freakin' mediocre too (mid-level dev for most commercial places here is maybe $5k / yr higher than what an entry level grad would get at a defense contractor). Most of the stuff here from the traditionally-acceptable companies like Amazon or even Google are in IT operations essentially because of the Ashburn datacenter, which is mostly about hitting up the government dollars crackpipe as far as I'm concerned. Even for the IT guys if you're not minding doing just EMC SANs, have done it for maybe 5 years, and you have a TS clearance, you'll get $160k+ / yr no sweat. The area had a bit of a fall-out with AOL / Time Warner having lay-offs recently and the last mega-huge private sector company here being Enron... well I kinda don't blame people for hating on private companies in the area. DC area is incredibly awesome as a sales and customer-facing managerial / executive professional if you're in the commercial sector aside from niche companies like aforementioned Bethesda and Mythic. But sales is like the opposite of this subforum and generally not considered a first-pick. het posted:I think there's just a dearth of unemployed talent and a lot of the employed programmers aren't looking to jump ship in light of how the economy's been in the last 10 years.
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# ? May 18, 2012 21:25 |
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Is this the right place to get a cover letter critiqued? I never know what to write on these things... http://pastebin.com/0Qn9UjcP It's for a senior developer position, so they kind of expect someone at that level to know how to write cover letters, I suppose... Does mine read like something that sounds like it was written by a senior developer?
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# ? May 21, 2012 01:58 |
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how!! posted:Is this the right place to get a cover letter critiqued? I never know what to write on these things... http://pastebin.com/0Qn9UjcP There's a lot of pontificating in there about software development but it doesn't tell me why I should hire you. Tell the reader about yourself and why your experiences matter to the position. Do something like: quote:Dear Sir/Madam:
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# ? May 21, 2012 04:47 |
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kitten smoothie posted:There's a lot of pontificating in there about software development but it doesn't tell me why I should hire you. Tell the reader about yourself and why your experiences matter to the position. I'm not sure the "pontifications" convey the right attitude - they don't seem borne of experience. For example: quote:- I believe the hardest problems should be highest priority. Hard problems never go away by themselves, but easy ones often do. quote:- There is no sense in investing time on an inferior solution quote:- The job should contain more thinking than doing. quote:- A perfect product is only possible if the code (going all the way back) is perfect. quote:- Truly innovative ideas are inherently more valuable to a company than the code that implements those ideas. quote:- Since engineers do more thinking than doing, it is essential to have regular meetings where ideas and problems are shared with one another.
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# ? May 21, 2012 05:12 |
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hieronymus posted:Are you on drugs? I used to spent eight hours a week in meetings with senior software engineers, and I've cut that down to four. I get way more out of emailing a single dev with a specific question. Meetings suck and usually deliver no value to most people in the room. Furthermore it takes everyone another hour to get back into the zone after the meeting is over. I work on a team of 20 people. So a one hour team meeting means you've soaked 40 hours of productivity. If everyone in the room is a software developer making $75K then that means that one hour meeting cost you almost $1500. I bet it wasn't worth it.
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# ? May 21, 2012 05:24 |
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how!! posted:It's for a senior developer position Also, fix your typos. shrughes fucked around with this message at 06:07 on May 21, 2012 |
# ? May 21, 2012 05:47 |
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how!! posted:Does mine read like something that sounds like it was written by a senior developer?
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# ? May 21, 2012 06:26 |
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 02:28 |
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het posted:Seriously, it sounds like a junior developer imagining how a senior developer might think. Sounds like a a college student who never had a programming job to me.
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# ? May 21, 2012 06:28 |