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BirdOfPlay posted:Nope and don't have relevant work experience either. To be fair, it was this thread that supported the notion that a degree isn't strictly required. A degree isn't strictly required for many positions but hoo boy does it make things easier. And most people that don't have their degree traded it for a ton of experience - if you've got neither you're really at a disadvantage. If you're that close to a degree is going back to school an option for you? quote:Ha. I do have one, finally, and the aforementioned project will be the showcase piece of my account. Serious question, where do you put a link to your github on a resume? Just add it to the header with your other contact info? I do: Name Email | Github Phone Address Since you're going to hang your hat on yours, be sure to talk about any meaningful projects it contains as you would a job.
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Jan 16, 2013 13:05
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Mr. Crow posted:
Your questions are generally fine, but this happens to be a lovely question. Doing Agile development has nothing to do with TDD. You'll find out if they do TDD when you ask about unit testing, and besides, optimally no one would care if you do TDD as long as your code is delivered on time and meets the requirements. Asking if a place does Agile won't get you anything, a lot of places think they're doing Agile when they're not. Better questions:
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Jan 16, 2013 14:23
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Ithaqua posted:Your questions are generally fine, but this happens to be a lovely question. Doing Agile development has nothing to do with TDD. You'll find out if they do TDD when you ask about unit testing, and besides, optimally no one would care if you do TDD as long as your code is delivered on time and meets the requirements. Fair points, thank you!
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Jan 16, 2013 15:15
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I'm not really a newbie anymore, but my work experience to date has been in a start-up which apparently paid *ahem* somewhat below what I was worth, which has left me with rather warped salary expectations. There's a decent chance that I'll pick up some contract work with a well-known company soon, and I simply have no idea what a reasonable rate would be - I have 5+ years of commercial experience, so I feel a bit daft asking this  . The work will be mainly C++ and Javascript, though is reasonably technically demanding. I'm in the UK, and from what I can tell US and UK rates aren't necessarily commensurate even after allowing for the exchange rate, so responses from contractors in the UK would be most appreciated. itjobswatch.co.uk lists an average contract C++ programmer daily rate of £320, but I'm wondering if this site is skewed towards higher paid positions.
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Jan 16, 2013 16:23
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Mr. Crow posted:Job-hunting, put together a checklist to think about / ask during interviews, to many / not enough? Any other good questions? If you ask about 401k contributions, make sure you find out how long it takes them to vest. If it's like 5 years it doesn't really count as a benefit.
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Jan 16, 2013 18:17
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Che Delilas posted:If you ask about 401k contributions, make sure you find out how long it takes them to vest. If it's like 5 years it doesn't really count as a benefit. The gently caress? There are companies that put vesting schedules on 401(k) matches? That sounds questionable at best.
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Jan 16, 2013 20:26
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No Safe Word posted:The gently caress? There are companies that put vesting schedules on 401(k) matches? That sounds questionable at best. The example I used was from personal experience. And yeah, it's bullshit and just another way for a company to screw over employees. vvv Oh and we had to wait 6 months to start ours. That was formal policy. Che Delilas fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Jan 16, 2013 |
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Jan 16, 2013 21:32
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No Safe Word posted:The gently caress? There are companies that put vesting schedules on 401(k) matches? That sounds questionable at best. I haven't asked my boss how long it takes to be fully vested, but after three months of employment my discussion when like this: Me: Hey boss, I'd like to start paying into my retirement account. Boss: Well, usually we wait until 1 year of employment. But OK I guess.
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Jan 16, 2013 21:44
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Johnny Cache Hit posted:A degree isn't strictly required for many positions but hoo boy does it make things easier. And most people that don't have their degree traded it for a ton of experience - if you've got neither you're really at a disadvantage. I know, but I'm a cocky basterd and like to think of myself as one of those "good quote:If you're that close to a degree is going back to school an option for you? It's a vicious cycle, I need a decent (like $20k+) job to be able to swing going back and finish and getting a degree is the best way to get a decent job. EDIT: Previously, it was pretty bitter and I was projecting a little. BirdOfPlay fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Jan 16, 2013 |
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Jan 16, 2013 22:13
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BirdOfPlay posted:It ain't. I'm not "that close," as I'd be lucky to count as a sophomore at this point. What's preventing me is money, if anyone feels the need to ask. I was in a not entirely dissimilar position in 2010 (I had 3 normal semesters + 1 summer left). Between working 70-80 hour weeks at a manufacturing job while I was out of school and a Godsend of a sympathetic neighbor I was able to scare up the money to go back and finish, and I would up getting cold-called and offered a job right around graduation from a company that had hired a couple of people from my school in years past (they found my resume on my school's career center website). You may well be able to land some webdev stuff in the meantime for reasonable dosh, I recommend that if this happens you bank enough to finish school as the super-hot market for anyone who can sling code probably won't last forever. The situation you're in now blows, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Blotto Skorzany fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Jan 16, 2013 |
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Jan 16, 2013 22:26
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Otto Skorzeny posted:I was in a not entirely dissimilar position in 2010 (I had 3 normal semesters + 1 summer left). Between working 70-80 hour weeks at a manufacturing job while I was out of school and a Godsend of a sympathetic neighbor I was able to scare up the money to go back and finish, and I would up getting cold-called and offered a job right around graduation from a company that had hired a couple of people from my school in years past (they found my resume on my school's career center website). You may well be able to land some webdev stuff in the meantime for reasonable dosh, I recommend that if this happens you bank enough to finish school as the super-hot market for anyone who can sling code probably won't last forever. The situation you're in now blows, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Oh I know it. As I said in the edited post, I was just bitter from the comment and got set off. There's loads of baggage surrounding this thing that makes it easy for me to get discouraged from practically nothing. So thanks, kemo sabe. Truly, the plan is to get work and pull off either an Associate's or to go whole hog and go back to Pitt. And it isn't just to keep myself marketable, I'm even cocky enough to think that I could push for at least a Master's (probably in graphics) and might even end up in academia as an instructor or prof.
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Jan 16, 2013 22:35
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Che Delilas posted:The example I used was from personal experience. And yeah, it's bullshit and just another way for a company to screw over employees. Sab669 posted:I haven't asked my boss how long it takes to be fully vested, but after three months of employment my discussion when like this: I can understand a waiting period before matches start if turnover is a concern, but starting a match that you have to vest into over a period of years is stupid as hell.
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Jan 16, 2013 22:51
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No Safe Word posted:The gently caress? There are companies that put vesting schedules on 401(k) matches? That sounds questionable at best. I had a job with a 5 year vesting schedule on the match, and to make it worse they only matched 1% of salary. And then a year into my time there they took the match away altogether, which was my prompt to go look for a new job. Also, just because they took away the match did not mean they accelerated the vesting schedule or anything like that. That company can go to hell. kitten smoothie fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Jan 17, 2013 |
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Jan 17, 2013 04:19
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Cicero posted:I may be able to pass things along at Amazon. My team, which does the Kindle Reader app for first-party tablets (so Android-based) currently has 9 devs and we're looking to add a handful more in the coming year. Obviously it helps if you have experience with Android, or barring that, with either other mobile platforms or Java. We (and seemingly every other team at Amazon) are pretty desperate to find competent hires. Wow, this took a turn for the better. I guess HR slowness is universal. PM sent. Thanks!
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Jan 17, 2013 05:13
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BirdOfPlay posted:I know, but I'm a cocky basterd and like to think of myself as one of those "good I hear you, and I don't mean to bum you out. It just sounded like you were pretty close to getting the degree in your comment and I was wondering if finishing it quickly was an option. If it's not, no biggie. Hell, a few years ago I was in the exact same position you are in now  Otto's probably right, see if you can pick up some webdev work. I don't know if thats in your current skill set but you can probably learn it quickly. Look around for some digital agencies in your area and email your resume. The ones I have experience with tend to ignore degrees and past work and instead hire based on your portfolio. At the last place I worked some of the programmers had degrees, some were artists that learned Python, and almost all of ended up working there based on the strength of their side projects. It's a really nice hiring practice that I wish more places would use. If web development isn't your cup of tea, you might look at iOS development. Unfortunately it can be expensive to get started if you don't already own Apple everything, but it's ridiculously hot right now and if you can make iOS apps those digital agencies will hire you in a heartbeat. I've got a friend who taught himself iOS and he is getting calls from headhunters almost every week. Good luck, you'll get there.
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Jan 17, 2013 20:56
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awesmoe posted:Or he might be "pfft this guys salary expectations are unreasonable, NEXT". Just don't give a number: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ Successfully negotiated a significant % raise this week, up to where I wanted to be, but I'm always left feeling I got hosed and taken advantage of a couple hours after the fact, precisely due to the fact that the deal successfully went through with the other party.... does that make sense? How do I not overthink about these things.
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Jan 20, 2013 08:28
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Pweller posted:Successfully negotiated a significant % raise this week, up to where I wanted to be, but I'm always left feeling I got hosed and taken advantage of a couple hours after the fact, precisely due to the fact that the deal successfully went through with the other party.... does that make sense? How do I not overthink about these things. Yep, it's human, don't sweat it - what's the calvin and hobbes quote? "A good compromise leaves everybody mad". Focus on the fact that you've _got_ a job which you sound excited about, and think about raises at your annual review or whatevs.
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Jan 20, 2013 08:55
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Heh thanks. You read up and talk to people, get lots of good advice and analysis of the techniques and conversation patterns, but gently caress is it ever a different story when you're in there sitting face to face, and you catch yourself making the occasional tactical error you know better than to commit (and then mull over the what ifs). I wish there were a good way to get experienced fast other than scheduling salary reviews on a frequent/unrealistic basis.
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Jan 20, 2013 09:04
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For someone with a C++ high level library background (JUCE if anyone knows it), what parts of computer science would it be worth sinking my time into learning to make myself employable as a junior programmer? I am thinking along the lines of data structures primarily along with 3d maths and some algorithms for work in video games, I am already familiar with audio systems having done a music technology degree but there isn't as much work in that field here in the UK. I was thinking of buying a processor and some breadboard bits and learning some embedded systems fundamentals. My problem solving is generally excellent and I have many examples of well written algorithms I have made for various things so I am fairly confident on that front. I presume I should be able to write a quick sort but what other algorithms are worth memorising?
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Jan 21, 2013 01:06
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You already sound employable. Memorizing algorithms doesn't really help with anything.
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Jan 21, 2013 01:56
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jiggerypokery posted:I presume I should be able to write a quick sort but what other algorithms are worth memorising? Many interview algorithms questions are designed to see whether you can identify a solvable pattern to a problem that you haven't necessarily seen before, and whether you can systematically design a solution around that pattern. Some problems will be solvable with a simple greedy algorithm, while others might need caching/dynamic programming, or maybe it's an NP-complete/NP-hard problem and they're just being a jerk. Being able to recognize the 'class' of problem and its corresponding 'class' of solution is often a big part of finishing the question successfully. These questions are usually meant to be weird enough that you haven't seen them before (thus defeating pure memorizers), but you may have seen something similar, in which case you can use that knowledge as a guide or starting point. So it can help to have a pretty good mental library of algorithms to solving various kinds of problems (sorting, tree/graph, combinations, caching) but you'll need to know enough about how and why they work to adapt them to solve the problem in front of you. At least I'd assume that's how it is -- maybe a lot of places just set their bar at people who can hammer out quicksort on a markerboard. And I'd assume they wouldn't be too hard on you for a junior position.
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Jan 21, 2013 04:37
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shrughes had a similar post a few pages back.
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Jan 21, 2013 05:38
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You guys are awesome. I am pretty comfortable with threading and aware of mutual exclusion but not fluent. Should I add this stuff to my list or is just being aware of it enough?
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Jan 21, 2013 16:13
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In general, the questions you'll have in an interview need to be short and simple enough to explain, design, write, test, and fix a solution from scratch within the duration of the interview. They'll also require relatively little background to understand, eg it might just be something like "given a two-dimensional array of integers with these qualities, do this". Note that the solution may need more knowledge (eg hash maps, sorting algorithms, recursion, caching/dynamic programming), but the description needs to be simple enough that the interviewee is able to understand the problem and start thinking of the solution right away. So given those constraints, threading stuff is unlikely to be a part of a coding question, but it's conceivable that, if you've claimed some background in writing multi-threaded applications (either on resume or elsewhere in the interview), you could be asked about how mutexes work, how condition variables work, what their pitfalls or costs may be, etc. But you probably wouldn't get any questions along those lines, unless a) they're determining how much you know and/or b) their current project has a lot of threaded code. But if you have some free time, it may be a useful project to read up on how to do threaded programming properly. I know a lot of people who understand the purpose of a mutex, but whose implementation of producer/consumer or of a threaded worker pool would involve a lot of busy-waiting or sleep()s.
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Jan 21, 2013 17:55
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Does anybody in this thread have any experiences working in a remote office? I just got off the phone with a company based in New York (I'm out in the SF Bay Area), and they're looking for people to either work in their established office in New York, or to start populating their remote office out here. The company and product seem really cool and something I wold be interested in working on, but I'm just curious if working on the opposite coast from the other developers would be detrimental. I'm not really in a position to move to NY as cool as it would be, but I would hate to potentially fly out, have the interview go well, I accept an offer and then find working remotely sucks. Do you feel it hinders communication with your team, or that you are so isolated it's hard to feel like you're a big contributor to the product?
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Jan 22, 2013 00:04
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lmao zebong posted:Does anybody in this thread have any experiences working in a remote office? It depends enormously on who your coworkers are and on everyone's commitment to making it work. I had a job with a government contractor where everyone on my team (including boss) was at a different base than I was. They had made no plans beyond giving me the number for a weekly 4-hour phone meeting. I talked to various IT and security people to find a chat system that was acceptable, but nobody else in my group wanted to use it. They also didn't like talking on the phone more than once a week. It was really awful, and I could not leave that job fast enough. In my current job, we have only one office and everyone's fairly local, but we all work from home frequently. Everyone is on Jabber all the time (even if we're all in the office together) and the Jabber chat rooms have logging (so when you sign in, you can see the conversation that went on the day before after you left). If more than a couple of us can't make the short weekly meeting, we do it over video chat (Google Hangout). Everyone's got their phone number posted on our wiki, and I don't have any problem calling one of the other developers to chat about some complex code. It works well and if I ever wanted to move out of state, I'd strongly consider asking to be remote-only. It's a lot easier if you start out local and can bond with the rest of the group first, of course. Tell them you want to talk about the remote-office option and see what they've got to say. They should already have a plan for how you'll keep in communication with everyone else. If it sounds plausible, go talk about it more in person and try to make sure they're all serious about making an effort to keep the remote office intimately involved (because it's not an easy thing to do). You might also see how they (and you) feel about flying out to New York every so often to get in-person time with them. Or having them rent you a New York apartment for a couple months near the beginning so that you can try to make friends with everyone.
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Jan 22, 2013 05:23
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As Mniot says, you need your coworkers to pull their weight in including you. The other problems you'll likely run into are: - Cabin fever (i.e. spending too much time at home) - make sure you have an out-of-the-house activity scheduled at least twice a week, preferably every couple of days if you can manage it. - Not being able to get into your work, or alternatively not being able to let it go. If you've got space, I'd recommend setting up a 'work desk'. You sit there, you do your work, then when you've done your 8, stand up and forget about work.
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Jan 22, 2013 05:32
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lmao zebong posted:Does anybody in this thread have any experiences working in a remote office? I just got off the phone with a company based in New York (I'm out in the SF Bay Area), and they're looking for people to either work in their established office in New York, or to start populating their remote office out here. The company and product seem really cool and something I wold be interested in working on, but I'm just curious if working on the opposite coast from the other developers would be detrimental. I'm not really in a position to move to NY as cool as it would be, but I would hate to potentially fly out, have the interview go well, I accept an offer and then find working remotely sucks. Do you feel it hinders communication with your team, or that you are so isolated it's hard to feel like you're a big contributor to the product? I'm not sure how hard I would consider a job in which I would be the only one working remotely. I've never done the remote thing, but I have been on the other side of the situation, and about all I can say is that I can't even remember the names of the people who worked remotely. It's just too easy to forget, ignore, or dismiss the one person that nobody ever sees. A team that was all/mostly remote I might consider. Or a complete team in a remote office, as long as they operate fairly independently of the mother ship. tk fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Jan 22, 2013 |
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Jan 22, 2013 05:40
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Thanks for the replies. I should clarify a bit that I wouldn't be working from home, they have a physical office out here in the Bay Area with a couple people working out of it already. However I am talking to them about a mobile development position, and I believe the developers out here are more backend people. As far as I know I would be the only mobile developer out here in San Francisco, with the rest of the mobile team being in NY. We also talked about if it did come to the point of me accepting an offer that I would stay out in New York for two or three weeks to get to know the team and see how they like to run things. I appreciate all the points made though. There are obviously a decent amount of concerns working in a situation like that, and some things will need to be clarified before we proceed, both for me and the company. I'm currently in the middle of the interview process with a couple places so we'll see what options I have when it comes time to accept an offer.
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Jan 22, 2013 06:06
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Thel posted:As Mniot says, you need your coworkers to pull their weight in including you. The other problems you'll likely run into are: I've been working from home for a year now, and both of those are very real problems. I'm pretty good about keeping regular hours since I work with clients a lot of the time, but I also have no qualms about saying "gently caress it" and taking a nap in the middle of the day and finishing up my work in the evening. There have been a few days when I've looked up and said "poo poo, it's 8 pm. I thought it was 5:30," but I usually have a live-in alarm clock in the form of my girlfriend. If she's home, she'll start bugging me to put work away and spend time with her. I find the prospect of being unemployed to be utterly terrifying (even though I'm pretty sure I could land a new job within a few days if I got fired), so I have fear-based motivation to actually get poo poo done properly and ahead of schedule. Your mileage may vary.
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Jan 22, 2013 06:10
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Hey guys, I have a bit of unorthodox background, though maybe less so these days, I'm just graduating with my masters in architecture (physical architecture), I was in a graduate research group focusing on the integration of technology, media, and architecture, and my own interests and projects focus on design tools. I'm curious if anyone has suggestions on how to better prepare myself to get into a position where I could work on software for designers. I'm interested in creative coding work ( media / art coding), technical art, inhouse toolbuilding etc. I'm fairly capable in python and c# I'm currently building some level design tools for the unity3d game engine as a resume project. ideas, thoughts, things to definitely study or be an expert in? my website is at https://www.archiwaredesign.com portfolio = http://issuu.com/mjk.kirschner/docs/michaelkirschnerportfolio2
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Jan 22, 2013 22:28
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Wow, this thread. New grad here. I read all 80+ pages while preparing for job interviews and was scared shitless. Then I breezed through an interview and got an offer 2 days later. $65k + benefits for entry level software engineer at a large and respectable company. I didn't: * Start applying for jobs 6 months before graduation. I started a week after I graduated. Now its 4 weeks later. * Get drilled on any technical questions, no programming problems, no quizzes, etc. I did: * Shave my neckbeard. * Dress nicely in a suit. * Talk confidently about myself and my past experience (one internship and one independent project). So am I a lucky idiot? Or is it really possible to get a job without going through the terrible gauntlet of things I've read about in this thread?
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Jan 25, 2013 19:26
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Yeah, my friends went through similar experiences and got job offers for $60k right out of school working on internal software at a large non-software company in an area with a low cost of living.
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Jan 25, 2013 19:37
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drat IT posted:* Get drilled on any technical questions, no programming problems, no quizzes, etc. You will have retarded coworkers.
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Jan 25, 2013 19:38
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drat IT posted:Wow, this thread. That was basically my experience, except less cash (contractor) and at a 20-person company. I have no idea what my next job hunt will look like, or if worrying will even be necessary once I have a ~real job~ on my resume.
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Jan 25, 2013 19:39
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shrughes posted:You will have retarded coworkers. There's no guarantee of that, but the likelihood is way higher. They might demand more when hiring more senior folks.
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Jan 25, 2013 19:41
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shrughes posted:You will have retarded coworkers. Possibly, I hope not. I did get sent to a lunch with an engineer and we talked shop, informally. He prodded me for some info like what languages I liked best and why, that sort of thing. Maybe that was the "technical" interview and they were trying to make it low-stress.
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Jan 25, 2013 19:44
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drat IT posted:* Get drilled on any technical questions, no programming problems, no quizzes, etc. Yeah I agree, this is a bit scary. I guess the question you should ask yourself is if you didn't know programming and lied on your resume, could you still have gotten the job? I mean enjoy the pay but you'll figure out sooner or later how bad the company is if they don't ask anyone anything technical.
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Jan 25, 2013 19:45
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I just got hired on for a similar salary and I got drilled pretty well. They had me do your basic programming quiz questions, including embarrassingly recursive stuff to see if I would pick up on that. They had me design classes and interfaces in a logical hierarchy, on the fly, as they specified attributes and requirements for the data model. They had me design a basic database schema including many-to-many relations. They had me solve a simple problem on JSFiddle to see how I would tackle it and whether I would choose the obvious algorithm and implement it correctly. It was all pretty low-stress and left me feeling that my coworkers were generally smart people overall.
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Jan 25, 2013 23:01
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Crossposted from the CV thread. Posted a first draft of my resume now that I am job hunting soon. Any critiques welcome! http://userpages.umbc.edu/~drewg1/BlankedOutResume.pdf
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