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Infinotize posted:Crossposted from the CV thread. Posted a first draft of my resume now that I am job hunting soon. Any critiques welcome! FYI that email link still points to your actual email. Edly fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Jan 26, 2013 |
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Jan 25, 2013 23:55
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vertiginominal posted:FYI that email link still points to your actual email. Thanks, replaced it.
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Jan 26, 2013 00:06
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Implemented data stream and storage functionality in C and Perl in a Unix environment. How did you do this? List some techniques or some numbers to quantify your accomplishments. All this says is, "Hey I did some poo poo." Sounds impressive but it doesn't really tell me any details. Maintained and expanded toolsets used for performance testing, as well as for other developers and QA Great. Give me an outcome? Did your expanded toolset allow those other developers to increase performance by X? Maintained High Availability synchronization processes. How? Wrote new engine in C, replacing older engine written in Scheme. Broken record here, but what was the benefit of doing so? Real numbers?
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Jan 26, 2013 00:12
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Here's my real feedback now that I've looked over it: This article changed how I looked at writing my resume. If you don't feel like clicking, the "#1 question your resume should answer" according to the article is, "What did you accomplish in this job that someone else wouldn't have?" When I was unemployed after school, I went through a round of applications and got 0 interviews. I started reading Ask A Manager, and that article in particular, redid my whole resume from that perspective, and immediately got 2 interviews, one from a company I had applied to previously a couple months prior. So looking at it through that lens, my advice is to change your resume from a list of job duties to a list of accomplishments. Instead of "worked on software testing", say "took the initiative to implement an automated testing framework, which saved 10 hours per week of developer time on testing", or "implemented 500 unit tests in only X months, increasing code coverage from low% to high%". Instead of "wrote new engine in C", say "built new engine from scratch, leading to an average runtime performance increase of X% over legacy system". Obviously these examples and numbers are completely made up and probably have no bearing on what your accomplishments actually were, they're just examples of the kind of language I used and got results with. I'm also not advocating misrepresenting any of your work; if you didn't have any accomplishments like that on a project, then consider leaving it out. Your resume is your chance to selectively highlight your proudest achievements. Also, the top couple of bullet points start with "led development" - did you get a title change to something like "senior software engineer" or "development lead" at some point? If so you should definitely include that.
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Jan 26, 2013 00:20
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drat IT posted:Wow, this thread. I had a very similar experience to yours and even got offered the same salary at a large, respectable company a few days ago. But I did have a 30 minute phone interview about OOP questions and C++ trivia, and a 3.5 hour in-person interview a week later that involved a lot of white-board coding (but nothing too hard, e.g. write a function that takes a string and returns how many upper case characters are in it). Along with talking about my school projects and a simple design question. Pretty much all of it was doable by carefully and methodically reviewing through a Data Structures textbook. (Edit: Well, they also quizzed on a few more things like big O, XML parsing, and a problem using either recursion or caching in the iterative way.) Come to think of it, I probably should have asked for more... but I'm still happy about the offer. The Chicago area isn't that expensive. Devvo fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Jan 26, 2013 |
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Jan 26, 2013 00:22
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drat IT posted: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? edit: I mean I could change it to be "just chill and start looking for jobs after you graduate, no biggie" and "don't worry about technical questions none cuz you won't get any" but I prefer to err on the side of caution.
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Jan 26, 2013 03:35
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Do a lot of companies drill you on definitions of comp sci terms? Had 90 minutes of phone interviews today with Amazon and most of it was like "what is inheritance?" and "what's the difference between a vector and an array list?" It went on mostly like that and they only gave me 2 coding questions near the very end.
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Jan 26, 2013 07:36
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There are enough people even at 'good' CS schools who don't know poo poo about poo poo that a large company like Amazon may find it useful to ask super basic stuff like that to weed out the folks who bought their roommate beer to do their homework for them. That sort of thing is nowhere near universal, though.
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Jan 26, 2013 07:49
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KNITS MY FEEDS posted:Do a lot of companies drill you on definitions of comp sci terms? Had 90 minutes of phone interviews today with Amazon and most of it was like "what is inheritance?" and "what's the difference between a vector and an array list?" It went on mostly like that and they only gave me 2 coding questions near the very end. I think it's not uncommon to get some questions about design patterns and assorted OO concepts, but anything beyond that tends to be a bad sign in my experience. "What is x?" is almost always a bad interview question. Also, the array list vs vector question isn't about computer science. It's about the Java standard library. I think questions like this are a really bad sign unless you're being hired for specific framework expertise, and this particular one isn't even a good library trivia question. That said, there can be a pretty big gap between the interview skills of different people at the same place. Getting a bad interviewer doesn't always mean you're interviewing at a bad company.
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Jan 26, 2013 07:51
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My first job out of college was at a fairly large company (maybe 3000-4000 employees or so) and in hindsight, my work and coworkers there were actually quite awesome. Many of my coworkers had been in the industry for a couple decades and were able to deal with my bullshit as a fresh-out-of-college engineer. My interviews at said company almost entirely consisted of me showing off a side project that didn't amount to anything but which sounded mildly impressive at the time; other than that there really wasn't much of a technical aspect to the interview process. This was in the heady pre-crash period of early-mid 2007 so perhaps things have changed since then. In any case it is indeed quite possible that if you're straight out of college then not much will be expected of you in your interview or otherwise, but if you want to get into a Fancy Pants Institution or if you're otherwise interested in developing your skills/career, then the tips provided in this thread may be useful for you.
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Jan 26, 2013 08:36
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Progressive JPEG posted:In any case it is indeed quite possible that if you're straight out of college then not much will be expected of you I see so many job listings in my area (NYC) that contradict this. So much of what I've seen wants familiarity with not only multiple languages, but multiple frameworks/APIs/etc. I've found the bigger banks and financial firms are a bit more lenient and willing to work with those who have less experience, at least from the few recruiting sessions I've attended and people I've spoken to.
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Jan 26, 2013 08:43
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I see so many job listings in my area (NYC) that contradict this. So much of what I've seen wants familiarity with not only multiple languages, but multiple frameworks/APIs/etc. I've found the bigger banks and financial firms are a bit more lenient and willing to work with those who have less experience, at least from the few recruiting sessions I've attended and people I've spoken to. The difficulty of learning a new API or framework pales in comparison to learning their codebase and otherwise adapting to such companies.
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Jan 26, 2013 09:13
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I personally subscribe to the philosophy that many languages are interchangeable and that most talented engineers would be able to quickly learn and deal with the constraints posed by their environment. But it seems most HR people don't follow this philosophy, resulting in job postings of "must have 20 years of obscure bullshit experience" or whatever. FWIW I have indeed heard that most of those requirements in the job postings are quite flexible, so if you see a position that otherwise looks interesting, it really doesn't hurt to apply even if you don't meet their ridiculous "requirements". Fake edit: shrughes beat me to it, and far more succinctly to boot
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Jan 26, 2013 09:15
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KNITS MY FEEDS posted:"what's the difference between a vector and an array list?" Had you claimed Java experience? If not this is a horrible annoying question.
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Jan 26, 2013 14:40
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One thing I have noticed is that for certain jobs some questions are universal. I've been interviewed by dozens of people for low level networking positions. Almost every single one has asked, "What's Nagling/What's Nagle's algorithm?" It's gotten to the point where: a) I have a polished answer that I stop and think about for a moment then rattle off. b) I ask myself when I interview people just to see their reaction since it's such a common question you should have at your fingertips.
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Jan 26, 2013 15:54
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Nagle's algorithm is probably the only thing related to low-level networking that i could explain well, since for a while disabling it was considered an awesome lag-reducing trick in WoW.
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Jan 26, 2013 16:34
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Progressive JPEG posted:I personally subscribe to the philosophy that many languages are interchangeable and that most talented engineers would be able to quickly learn and deal with the constraints posed by their environment. My personal experience is that it takes me about 6 months to become reasonably competent with a new language and framework. I believe there are some studies that agree with my personal experience.
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Jan 26, 2013 18:14
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Are you useless with the language and framework until then, though?
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Jan 26, 2013 18:25
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You can pick up basic syntax in a weekend, but real expertise obviously takes a while.
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Jan 26, 2013 22:21
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shrughes posted:The difficulty of learning a new API or framework pales in comparison to learning their codebase and otherwise adapting to such companies. Zhentar posted:My personal experience is that it takes me about 6 months to become reasonably competent with a new language and framework. I believe there are some studies that agree with my personal experience. My experience is that it can take a couple of months (often ~6) for a new employee to be able to work confidently on the product/code base without mentoring or guidance. It can be a little quicker if the employee has experience in the tools, frameworks used, but they still need time to get to grips with the code that exists and deployed. If the product is documented, and divided into smaller stand-alone chunks, this can be faster still. Employees in this ramp-up time are productive, but you will always lose a bit of time from the older employees to get the new people up to scratch. In very rare cases i've seen people waltz in and fix problems, but they had more experience with the tools than the development team.
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Jan 27, 2013 09:29
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It depends on the project. If your codebase is a 2 million line disasterpiece, then yes, expect any employees (even the superstars) 6 months before they can contribute anything useful. On the other hand, if you use a framework like Rails or Django and you do it the "$framework way", then expect much less time. One of the advantage of using a framework is that the framework is documented, therefore your application is documented. "What is this code doing?" If you did it the Django way, the Django documentation will tell you whats going on. If you didn't do it the "Django way", then who the gently caress knows what that code is doing? I worked for a company recently that had this very problem. Their code was this huge mess of code. If they had been using Django or any other respectable framework, I could have contributed code on day one. But they weren't, so I basically told them you're not going to get anything out of me until I can grok this piece of poo poo.
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Jan 28, 2013 02:52
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how!! posted:It depends on the project. If your codebase is a 2 million line disasterpiece, then yes, expect any employees (even the superstars) 6 months before they can contribute anything useful. OK you're trying too hard how!! now get out you're boring us.
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Jan 28, 2013 02:57
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how!! posted:It depends on the project. If your codebase is a 2 million line disasterpiece, then yes, expect any employees (even the superstars) 6 months before they can contribute anything useful. Exactly. They might as well pay you to rewrite the codebase for 6 months. At least then they'd have brand new clean code. The databases can probably be re-used though - those are the most important part.
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Jan 28, 2013 03:16
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how!! posted:It depends on the project. If your codebase is a 2 million line disasterpiece, then yes, expect any employees (even the superstars) 6 months before they can contribute anything useful. On the other hand, if you use a framework like Rails or Django and you do it the "$framework way", then expect much less time. One of the advantage of using a framework is that the framework is documented, therefore your application is documented. "What is this code doing?" If you did it the Django way, the Django documentation will tell you whats going on. If you didn't do it the "Django way", then who the gently caress knows what that code is doing? I worked for a company recently that had this very problem. Their code was this huge mess of code. If they had been using Django or any other respectable framework, I could have contributed code on day one. But they weren't, so I basically told them you're not going to get anything out of me until I can grok this piece of poo poo. Can't wait till you get to a company in the real world where part of the onboarding experience is committing code and seeing it pushed to production on your first day.
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Jan 28, 2013 04:48
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tef posted:My experience is that it can take a couple of months (often ~6) for a new employee to be able to work confidently on the product/code base without mentoring or guidance. Maybe "reasonably competent" isn't the right word choice - writing working code without guidance comes much earlier, but you're still losing a fairly significant amount of productivity for a while after from areas where your understanding is still too shallow.
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Jan 28, 2013 05:56
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Please don't post in this thread. You don't give good advice and you don't listen to advice.
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Jan 28, 2013 15:11
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Is there any good way of getting a feel for the job market in different cities? I don't have the experience/credentials for companies to fly me out for interviews. I'm making a bit of a career change.
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Jan 28, 2013 22:30
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wide stance posted:Is there any good way of getting a feel for the job market in different cities? I don't have the experience/credentials for companies to fly me out for interviews. I'm making a bit of a career change. The job market for what with what current skills?
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Jan 29, 2013 00:59
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wide stance posted:Is there any good way of getting a feel for the job market in different cities? I don't have the experience/credentials for companies to fly me out for interviews. I'm making a bit of a career change. Are you trying to decide between a couple cities? Or trying to move to wherever you can get a job? What's your background that makes you sure that nobody would pay for your travel? I would just start applying. If you get to the point where they want to do an in-person interview, talk about it then.
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Jan 29, 2013 01:28
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wide stance posted:Is there any good way of getting a feel for the job market in different cities? I don't have the experience/credentials for companies to fly me out for interviews. I'm making a bit of a career change. Most big tech companies will fly you out for an interview even with little to no experience. It may not be easy to get into the interview process without a referral, but it never hurt anybody to apply. They have to get entry level employees from somewhere.
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Jan 29, 2013 01:47
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Well this is a new one. One of my Amazon applications seems to have spontaneously transmogrified from software developer to research scientist, and the new minimum qualification is a PhD. Although, at the rate the process is moving, I guess I've got 4-6 years to go get that doctorate.
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Jan 29, 2013 07:41
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dingy dimples posted:Well this is a new one. In any case, prepare yourself for a 90 minute phone interview and study some old compsci vocab. They really seem to like Java over there too.
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Jan 29, 2013 09:43
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How difficult will it be to break into the gaming industry when I have a large gap of doing nothing programing related on my resume? I screwed up and did everything possibly wrong. I didn't start applying for jobs until well after graduation (took a break) and I've let my programming skills degrade. I was trying to decide exactly what type of programming I wanted to do, found out that its still video game programming, and now it feels like I've wasted a year. Right now, I'm re-familiarizing myself with C++ and creating new projects. I just got off the phone with a game company and they liked me a lot more than interviewers at business software companies. Of course, didn't get it because of the no recent experience or projects but they want to keep in touch with me. So, a good thing did come out of it.
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Jan 29, 2013 17:40
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Kimaka posted:How difficult will it be to break into the gaming industry when I have a large gap of doing nothing programing related on my resume? I screwed up and did everything possibly wrong. I didn't start applying for jobs until well after graduation (took a break) and I've let my programming skills degrade. I was trying to decide exactly what type of programming I wanted to do, found out that its still video game programming, and now it feels like I've wasted a year. Your story sounds a lot like mine out of college. In my case, I got a low-paying job at a tiny (and doomed) VPN startup, where I managed to get a bit of experience. The day after they laid us all off, I got a call from a recruiter for a contract position working on a sequel to my favorite racing game. Your mileage will definitely vary, but the point is that a year in pretty much any dev job will make a huge difference for your prospects. And if you think your position sounds bad, I didn't get my first programming job until four years after I graduated (I was teaching English in Japan for two of those years). Keep in mind that even within the game industry, there are a ton of specializations, many of which coincide with non-game skill sets. Even game companies need a database guy, for example. Of course, gameplay is what everyone imagines they want to do, but that can be a tough gig. The fact that it's a dream job for many means that competition is fierce, and the rewards aren't quite what you'd imagined. If you specialize in something obscure but ubiquitous, however, the world is your oyster. In my case, my work on the VPN client segued nicely into doing data-driven UI and network services.
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Jan 30, 2013 09:38
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Kimaka posted:How difficult will it be to break into the gaming industry when I have a large gap of doing nothing programing related on my resume? I screwed up and did everything possibly wrong. I didn't start applying for jobs until well after graduation (took a break) and I've let my programming skills degrade. I was trying to decide exactly what type of programming I wanted to do, found out that its still video game programming, and now it feels like I've wasted a year. You won't be getting callbacks for Console development, but there are tons more jobs in the mobile space that it's possible to break in that way. Of course some people don't consider mobile to even be gaming so YMMV.
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Jan 30, 2013 15:08
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You could spend a month or less making a dinky game on droid/IOS and I feel like it would increase your chances of getting an interview greatly. If you are interested in going the mobile route of course.
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Jan 30, 2013 16:19
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Firstly, I want to sincerely thank everyone that gives advice in this thread and subforum. Navigating the job search after graduation is sometimes confusing and difficult, and I don't think I would have gotten to the position I'm currently in without all the guidance and advice here. From resume tips to interview advice, I felt fully prepared and confident going into technical programming interviews, and every inperson interview has gone very well. I'm at a position where two companies have extended me offers, and I have to make the difficult decision within the next day or so. Since I've gotten such great advice in the past here, I wanted to run the two offers by this thread and see if my thinking on this is good. Both offers are for a mobile iOS development position in San Francisco, with both companies very well established and with a large user base. Some attributes about both: Comany A Generous base salary (85k) + benefits Shorter commute (~45 min on BART + a short walk to the office in downtown SF) Nice equipment (27" iMac and Macbook Pro) Pay for lunch every day Met the team and felt I meshed with them very well both in personality and as developers Lots of opportunity to have a voice in the design process 3 weeks time off accrued each year + 5 'flex' days Nicer office with lots of toys to mess with during breaks (arcade cabinets, ping-ping and pool tables, punching bag, monthly poker games after work, free beer, etc) Company B Generous base salary (85k) + slightly worse benefits but a stupid high 401k contribution plan Yearly performance review for potential raise Higher quality application (in my opinion) with a larger user base Even larger opportunity to have a voice in the design process Better work/life balance Doesn't pay for lunch Met part of the team, and while they seem very smart and capable developers they were also a bit abrasive during interview process Longer commute (~1 hour on BART + ~1 mile walk from the station) 2 weeks time off accrued in the first year, with 3 weeks accrued each year after that Not as nice equipment/no laptop to take home After typing this out, I'm leaning a bit towards Company A because of the commute and how I got along with the iOS team, but obviously this is a decision I don't want to rush into. Any advice? Another issue I'm struggling with is telling a company that I want to turn down their offer. I do understand this is a business and a huge career decision, but I felt like I got along so well with both companies it is going to be hard or awkward calling and saying I don't want to accept. Any advice on how to effectively phrase it so that I don't burn any bridges?
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Jan 30, 2013 19:12
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lmao zebong posted:stuff Depends on your personal needs, but Company A sounds good to me. Though I've been annoyed in the past with teams I didn't work well with, so similarly compensated I would choose the better workmates almost always. Though you can't really know that from an onsite visit or two, so consider that. Other things to consider which you didn't list are things like performance management (how do they do employee evaluations, what's the career path like, will I be stuck in a position forever), and the fiscal footings of the companies themselves. Are the companies growing steadily? Are they startups that only have funding through a specific amount? Are there things like profit sharing? Other things that can add up and can tip the balances one way or another. You do seem to have done a fair bit of homework (especially for a fresh graduate), so even without these I'd say you've done pretty well at narrowing your choices. lmao zebong posted:Another issue I'm struggling with is telling a company that I want to turn down their offer. I do understand this is a business and a huge career decision, but I felt like I got along so well with both companies it is going to be hard or awkward calling and saying I don't want to accept. Any advice on how to effectively phrase it so that I don't burn any bridges? It's still rough to tell them "thanks but no thanks", but as long as you're not combative about it, nothing should be held against you. As you said, it is business after all.
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Jan 30, 2013 19:23
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As someone who commutes 40+ minutes on BART and walks just under a mile to my office, it is brutal. Buy a Kindle/iPad/Android tablet to pass time. The only thing I can say I like about my commute is I've actually started to read again. From your description it sounds like Company A seems more enticing. If they are both paying you the same, and you feel like Company A is a better fit team wise, then I would just go with your gut and go with Company A. You can also call Company A and tell them you are considering Company B and maybe if there is something they can do to sweeten your deal with them so you accept. Probably just mentioning you have another offer is enough. When you call Company B, they will probably make a direct counter-offer right there, or ask you what it would take to get you. So decide whether you are calling to decline them completely or if you're willing to work at Company B for X more benefits. Also keep in mind that if either of those companies didn't want you, they have no problem dropping you like a fly, so be cordial but don't feel too bad about rejecting an offer.
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Jan 30, 2013 20:04
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lmao zebong posted:stuff Maybe this is me being older, but I'd actually choose B. - You're working on a product that you feel is higher quality. You wouldn't believe the hit to your morale when you go in every day working on what you feel is a bad product, and trying to sell people on it with a straight face. - You feel like you'd have more say in the design - Better work/life balance and 401k. The extra 30 minutes on the train does suck but it seems like the other stuff offsets that. The 2 miles of walking to the BART stop and back is free exercise. I personally could not give a poo poo about ping-pong in the office, because you're not getting paid to play ping-pong. And a take-home company laptop just means an implicit expectation that you will take work home. In my mind it's bad form to mix business & personal stuff, so it's not like that take-home laptop is a no-strings-attached free laptop for home. kitten smoothie fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jan 30, 2013 |
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Jan 30, 2013 21:38
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