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I was curious about this thread's opinion. I currently work in engineering operations at Yahoo! though, I have no degree or any related schooling; I have maybe a handful of credits from a fake school (art institute--gently caress that place). I'm nearly thirty and have contemplated going back to school...but with five years experience developing and maintaining server clusters; about 2-3,000 I'm responsible for, would there be much benefit to going back to school? Would certification more than likely be a better choice for me? I'm curious if anyone has been in my position and gone back to school and what their experience was going back.
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Apr 9, 2013 20:02
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evensevenone posted:This isn't true for CS/engineering, I was fully supported throughout my MS. I had to TA but that was normal for PhD track people in their first couple years. The only thing is that it's harder to get NSF GRF grants and other external funding, and professors are less likely to pay you out of their research budget. I wouldn't say at all that it isn't true for engineering, or at least I wouldn't say that it is universally untrue; my advice was largely based on the experience of my fiancee, who is currently a graduate student in chemical engineering at Penn State, and the only master's students they pay for are the ones that were formerly PhD candidates. I know my alma mater, which is purely an engineering school, doesn't pay for terminal masters degrees either despite a generous funding environment otherwise. I am curious now whether your experience (getting a terminal masters paid for by the school) is typical; I wonder if there is any data out there on this?
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Apr 9, 2013 20:17
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Winkle-Daddy posted:I was curious about this thread's opinion. I currently work in engineering operations at Yahoo! though, I have no degree or any related schooling; I have maybe a handful of credits from a fake school (art institute--gently caress that place). I'm nearly thirty and have contemplated going back to school...but with five years experience developing and maintaining server clusters; about 2-3,000 I'm responsible for, would there be much benefit to going back to school? What do you want out of it? You want to find a new job in the long run or you want to actually learn things or some combination? If you just want to learn Stanford have their entire CS course on line. Have a flick through some of the lectures bear in mind that it is literally the best of the best in CS teaching and see what you think. Coursea also has online 6 week modules in specialised fields you wont have been exposed to at work, AI, cryptography and the like so maybe have a browse there too. I am not a recruiter/employer and am in no position to talk on how it will affect your options if you want a change of job but I suspect with 5 years experience going to collage wouldn't be worth it on that level.
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Apr 9, 2013 20:29
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jiggerypokery posted:What do you want out of it? You want to find a new job in the long run or you want to actually learn things or some combination? I was thinking that I'd like to be less operations and more doing code stuff. I certainly get the opportunity to write a lot of code, but it's almost exclusively PHP, Perl and Python with some nodejs newly thrown into the mix. I am just not sure if actually being a software dev is different enough that it would be difficult to make the transition without a degree, if that makes sens.
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Apr 9, 2013 20:56
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Ugh, I'll be applying because my wife may get a job in the area very soon, but the pay is extremely low tier: http://tinyurl.com/d3butfz (tinyurled to stay out of the search engines). I mean, I know it says junior, which I like to think I'm past that point, but $15.00/hr as a contractor? That's almost criminal, especially for a position in the SF bay area. I almost want to put this in coding horrors.
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Apr 9, 2013 22:10
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Knyteguy posted:Ugh, I'll be applying because my wife may get a job in the area very soon, but the pay is extremely low tier: http://tinyurl.com/d3butfz (tinyurled to stay out of the search engines). I mean, I know it says junior, which I like to think I'm past that point, but $15.00/hr as a contractor? That's almost criminal, especially for a position in the SF bay area. I would not even bother applying. But if you do, be sure to ask what their opinions are on red, orange, green, purple, yellow, or pretty much any color other than blue.
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Apr 9, 2013 22:22
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tk posted:I would not even bother applying.   I make more than this in my podunk town doing the same stuff pretty much, I applied just to gauge interest. It does have a flexible schedule which would be nice since I'm still pursuing my degree.
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Apr 9, 2013 22:26
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Can't help but read their name as "VaporWare".
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Apr 9, 2013 22:32
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quote:We are a small self-funded tech company that depends heavily on our team members to deliver products typically reserves for much larger groups. We cannot afford mediocracy. Average people need not apply.
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Apr 9, 2013 22:48
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At $15/hr on contract, it sounds like they can't afford talent, either. So if they can't afford talent, and they can't afford "mediocracy" (read: "average people"?), does that mean they can only afford morons?
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Apr 9, 2013 22:56
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Nothing on that entire posting is proofread. Abort abort.
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Apr 9, 2013 23:16
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They are also paying you as an independent contractor so they don't have to provide health insurance or the like. Avoid.
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Apr 9, 2013 23:17
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thepedestrian posted:They are also paying you as an independent contractor so they don't have to provide health insurance or the like. Avoid. They also think that is legal. Just don't.
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Apr 9, 2013 23:24
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Is there someone here I can PM for some offer-countering advice? It's pretty time sensitive. I'd also rather not share details.
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Apr 9, 2013 23:28
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BirdOfPlay posted:Say in school. The real pressing problem is the stress of being with my family as the stress from being with people I'm NOT compatible with has been a long standing strain on my studies. At work I do fine though. I like work, having money, and not doing without very much actually! I'm pretty sure on my own my GPA would go back up to how it was before my family became self-destructive and a thorn in my side. As far as summer school goes, since I'm so close to the end, there's not a lot I can take over it, but I'm going to take what I CAN. My issue is I have to find a way to either get to work and then finish my degree where I can do it at night (My University at present does not have that option) find a job where I can take a day off, or do the part-time thing. The part time job if it keeps steady at 15-20 hours a week and lets me work remotely will be fine. If my hours start to slip, though, I'll be in no position to move out, and I'll have been lied to, which means that it's time for a new job. I figure I might as well just find something FT now since I get calls and emails all the time from recruiters. If someone will actually talk to me after I inform them I already have a part time job and I'm not going to leave my present job for a lower hourly rate, it looks like a good idea. Obviously I haven't put it in those terms, but I already have a job anyway. I can afford to be picky.
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Apr 9, 2013 23:48
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Cicero posted:This company sounds terrible. I didn't catch either of those the first time. I guess I just don't have a good enough attention to detail. I'm actually trying to get in with my wife's company in corporate, they're hiring a junior .net developer and she's been with the company for 7 years now. It's at the same building (though she would be downstairs), so the commute would be great too.
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Apr 10, 2013 01:20
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BirdOfPlay posted:They also think that is legal. Just don't. Just curious, why is that not legal? I have a friend who works a part time, minimum wage job at a small PC repair shop and she's hired as an independent contractor so the guy doesn't have to deal with taxes or something. But yea, holy poo poo don't work there. I have half a year under my belt in a lovely state for a small time company and I make more than that, and everyone here was shocked at how low my pay was when I posted it.
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Apr 10, 2013 15:28
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As a general rule, if you're in a situation where normally you would be required to pay taxes, but you call it something else so that you don't have to pay taxes, it's illegal. And that is the case here; if you want to pay someone as if they were an independent contractor, they have to actually be an independent contractor; if they act like an employee, then they're an employee, no matter what you call it. Working for a single employer, on the employer's premises, for an hourly wage, sounds a rather lot more like an employee than an independent contractor, and the IRS is not going to be impressed if they find out.
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Apr 10, 2013 16:33
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IIRC the difference between an employee and a contractor isn't set in stone and there's no strict test, but generally if the person is acting as an employee then they're an employee, and the company has to pay taxes and all that jazz no matter what they've been writing down.
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Apr 10, 2013 17:38
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Sab669 posted:Just curious, why is that not legal? I have a friend who works a part time, minimum wage job at a small PC repair shop and she's hired as an independent contractor so the guy doesn't have to deal with taxes or something. Well, you just explained why in your example and the others have posted good thing too. For me, it's the fact that the position is for Jr. Dev, fresh out of school. It's for yearly blocks, of which there's no promise to hire (so this isn't contract-to-hire), but are promises of renewal. Also, the position doesn't allow for the developer to do things their own way, which is critical to the discussion and makes an independent contractor, independent. And remember, it's not that the wages aren't taxed, it's that the IC now has to do that. So it's also a way for badly run companies to be "taxes are hard, you do it!" Which, while not a reason for illegality, isn't something that should be happening.
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Apr 10, 2013 18:16
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It's not about the income being taxed, it's about social security and medicare contributions that the employer would make if that person were an employee, as well as paying into unemployment insurance and possibly a few others depending on where you are. Those are the costs the employer is skirting by having an employee-in-reality that isn't an employee-on-paper, and if the IRS gets on the scent they will take the "duck typing" approach for classifying that worker and things get unpleasant from there. EDIT: Not to mention they can deflate their staff to qualify as a smaller business than they actually are and receive other benefits that way. The list goes on but ironically our crazy health insurance system sometimes counters that as the larger your staff is, the better value you get out of offering healthcare benefits to attract better employees. Though if a company is shady enough to have employees on 1099's then they probably give two shits about offering benefits like that. Bhaal fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Apr 10, 2013 |
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Apr 10, 2013 19:39
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To give an example, the stereotypical independent contractor is a painter. He has an expertise outside of your company's core function, he brings his own tools, is responsible for determining how the job gets done and when the whole building is painted he leaves. You don't need all of that to be an independent contractor, but you need most of it and you need to essentially be a third party that is being payed to perform a service. When that service is just doing the drat company's job, then that's really loving shady.
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Apr 10, 2013 20:30
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Bhaal posted:It's not about the income being taxed, it's about social security and medicare contributions that the employer would make if that person were an employee, as well as paying into unemployment insurance and possibly a few others depending on where you are. The self employment tax covers SS and medicare, which is why I said it was just throwing it on the should-be-employee. Also, you'd probably not be eligible for unemployment after this job, since you weren't employed!  But that's probably enough on the IC derail, here's a newbie question: as a non-degree, first-time job seeker should I be looking at big corps to work on "line of business" software (internal stuff to make internal stuff run smoother) or a much smaller, software-only company? Or, third option, am I viewing things from the wrong angle entirely?
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Apr 10, 2013 21:57
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BirdOfPlay posted:But that's probably enough on the IC derail, here's a newbie question: as a non-degree, first-time job seeker should I be looking at big corps to work on "line of business" software (internal stuff to make internal stuff run smoother) or a much smaller, software-only company? Or, third option, am I viewing things from the wrong angle entirely? I've done both. Massive generalisation here, but if you can work somewhere where developers/IT are the main money spinner rather than a cost centre, do it. A smaller company will also likely give you more exposure to more things and hopefully less bureaucracy. On the other hand, wages may be better at a bigger company (I worked in the public sector in the UK so not really) and you may get a better pension or other perks. When I moved to a smaller company I found I had to up my game a lot and became a better developer as a result - it is lot easier to coast in bigger companies. On the other hand, having a big name on your CV doesn't hurt. Apply to both lots, see what offers you get from both and which sort of culture you prefer.
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Apr 10, 2013 22:30
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As someone who has spent the first few years of his career working independently and for non-development businesses, let me tell you that I feel like I've got significant holes in my development experience. I'm missing out on the way things are done in the industry by working in these environments, on both a process side and a patterns/frameworks side. I feel like it's going to benefit me more, from a career perspective, if my next job is in a company where development is a core part of their business. For reference, I'm still in the very early stages of my career. Then again, you have to ask yourself what you want. Do you want to be a software engineer, or do you just want to make money programming? If you don't have a particular passion for this, business development might actually be a better fit.
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Apr 10, 2013 22:44
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So I have two offers on the table right now: Offer A: A full-time offer around market value for my area with a nice bonus at a stable company. My biggest issue is that I'm not sure how much responsibility or work they're going to give me and how this would influence my progress. Offer B: An internship offer at another company that doesn't pay great according to Glassdoor, but seems to hire their interns full-time after the internship period (pay also just okay). I think it's a great opportunity for me. I'm confident that I'd learn a ton and positive that it's interesting to me, but I'm a little scared to let a full-time offer for a position that could be a good fit slip away. Any advice on things to ask Company A to help me get a better idea? They're a big company, with lots of projects that come and go, and they seem to have a "we'll give you a few assignments and see where you fit" attitude which might be cool, but it's making me uneasy. (This might be ambiguous but I'm somewhat paranoid and any more information makes me feel like I'd be tipping my hand.)
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Apr 11, 2013 04:54
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Good Will Hrunting posted:So I have two offers on the table right now: There is no situation in which I'd take an internship over a full-time offer. Even if I ended up hating the company I worked for, having full-time experience to show on your resume looks better than an internship.
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Apr 11, 2013 05:08
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Good Will Hrunting posted:So I have two offers on the table right now: Offer A is clearly better on paper. It sounds like you really want to take offer B, though. The fear of letting a good offer slip away shouldn't stop you from following the opportunity you really want--there will always be other opportunities, especially at this stage in your career. That said, doing an internship when you could have a full-time position sucks. If you can, get A to let you talk to your prospective manager for 15 minutes and ask about your concerns and the team you'll be joining. There's really no substitute for a good manager, and if you have a bad manager that you can't get along with, you'll probably be miserable even at a good company.
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Apr 11, 2013 05:29
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Good Will Hrunting posted:So I have two offers on the table right now: You sound like your heart is telling you B, right? What about this -- if you were to take up Offer A, how much second-guessing and asking yourself "I wonder what it'd be like if I'd chosen Company B instead" would you think there'd be? Or would you be perfectly happy at Company A with no regrets? Since you got two offers, grats! This means people like you. You're in a pretty good position because if whichever option you choose doesn't pan out, at least you're pretty employable and can probably find decent options elsewhere.
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Apr 11, 2013 07:32
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Why not contact A and tell them exactly what you told us? You have two offers, but you'd like to understand your responsibilities and working environment a bit better so you can decide. It reflects well on you, and you have the offer anyway, it's not like they're going to rescind it.
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Apr 11, 2013 08:03
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Take A 1. Generally speaking the only time you're not given real responsibility is when your employer really can't manage well and/or your employer doesn't trust you with real responsibility yet doesn't want to fire you for some varied reason or another. In our line of work especially, even if it's the lowest rung of code janitor, you want to hire someone who can not only do the job but grow out of it, grok it and find/make tooling that does the job with a fraction of the effort and move on to more productive stuff with their time. It's hard enough to find people like this as it is so you try to make every hire someone who you think stands a good chance at it. If this is a stable company odds are good that whoever's in charge of you get this and has every intention of making that happen with you. Like the others said I'd contact the manager again and say you're strongly considering the offer along with another you have and had questions about your long term prospects with them. Where do their other developers tend to go? Move up, move laterally, how frequently, etc? State your intent to grow and how and give them an opportunity to respond. 2. Full time vs. internship. Market value pay & nice bonus vs. "not great according to ...". You're having a beer with a friend, and this is how they're describing their two options to you but for some reason they're not sure what to do. You would say to them... ? 3. Turning down an offer is not turning down the company. People get hired into companies they've turned down offers from, quit from, and so on all the time. Unless you really, truly mishandle turning down an offer (or quit disruptively) nobody worth working for is going to adopt a "you're dead to me" attitude. Close the loop, thank them for their time and offer, and give them a solid, politely stated, but non-rambling reason for why (in your case, "I've accepted another offer" is plenty). Sometimes, like if they really want you, they'll respond to ask for a little more detail about why the other offer appealed to you more. Now, you can give a hazy open-ended response like "it seemed like a better fit overall" and they'll parse that as you politely telling them their offer just didn't compare. Or, if you want to keep the door a little more open or are just feeling generous (perhaps the other person is new to hiring and is looking for feedback on what made their offer fail), give some detail like "they offered a higher salary" or whatever was the major deciding factor for you. But remember what your mother told you when you were little: If you don't have something nice to say, then say "it seemed like a better fit overall". The point is as long as you respect their time & attention towards you, that door never really closes after you decline an offer. Afterall, this is networking in action: now you know them, they know you, it didn't work out this time but who knows, 2 years could go by and you'll get an email out of the blue saying, "Hi, how have you been? I remember interviewing you from X and I know we couldn't connect on salary that time. So, I just wanted to reach out because we now have a position opening up and I'd like to see if...". 4. You are not getting married to A. If it turns out it has no long term prospects, then accept the good pay for your level and get out before you get to the "long term" part. Work, learn, grow, and move on when it's appropriate. No lawyers, no alimony, easy. 5. B might be a missed opportunity (for now, see 3). But no matter what as you go along in your career you're going to acquire an impressive collection of missed opportunities. We all have them. Unless B is something meteoric like you get to work directly on google's search IP, it's probably not a large enough opportunity to start making big concessions for. Bhaal fucked around with this message at 08:37 on Apr 11, 2013 |
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Apr 11, 2013 08:24
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Good Will Hrunting posted:So I have two offers on the table right now: If i'm reading this right - and I may not be, i'm known to screw things up sometimes - it sounds like you are a fairly ambitious person. This is why B is interesting to you, you are thinking there is more room to grow there? If that's the case, I'd still say Company A sounds interesting. They .. give you a few assignemnts and see where you fit - seems like you'd have a chance to work hard, and get somewhere. It might be worth asking the questions (if you didn't)... along the lines of - For people that excel and do well, what type of things are they working on after X years?
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Apr 11, 2013 11:30
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Thanks for the insight, all. It's been really helpful. I'm just incredibly hesitant because I had a downright miserable experience with my first position out of school. I'm actually *still* waiting on Company C, who also really liked me. I reached out to them yesterday but found out there was some turnover and my recruiting manager is no longer there. I'll post an update tonight. Thanks again.
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Apr 11, 2013 16:46
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wrong thread
DholmbladRU fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Apr 11, 2013 |
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Apr 11, 2013 17:37
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Not sure if this is the right thread to ask this, sorry if not, but this has been bothering me for a while: The (web development) job I currently work at evolved from an internship to a "help out whenever needed" to a full-time job. For a while now we have been teamed up with another web agency which does not have a developer (they mainly do design, wordpress and social media), so they have relied on me to develop several applications for their client. I have never signed any contracts, not with their client, not with them, not with my boss, due to the casual "here have some more responsibility and some more cash"-way that my job evolved like. Would I be allowed without having to ask for permission to: a) Use excerpts of my code as reference when applying for a new job? b) Continue development of one of the projects on my own time and eventually publish it on github. (To clarify, the project is finished according to the requirements, deployed at the client, and will not see any further development, but I would love to keep working on it, change a few rushed parts and add features. The end result would be quite different from the product we developed for the client and in no way connected to them, but obviously share some code.) I know the obvious answer would be to ask my boss, but I can't really do that at this time.  edit: re-reading my own post makes it sound pretty stupid and both a) and b) pretty unlikely. :/ guess I'll have to try and put aside some time to start something new from scratch for both purposes, not work related Calyn fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Apr 11, 2013 |
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Apr 11, 2013 17:48
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I'm sure you're *allowed* to do A, but it's shady and unethical. B more than likely not though. I'm sure you could get away with it being unknown to your employer, but could be an ugly legal battle if they find out. I am curious about A, I've got an Interview tomorrow and they want to see some sample code! Luckily last night I started writing an Android app I can bring in.
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Apr 11, 2013 19:09
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Calyn posted:Not sure if this is the right thread to ask this, sorry if not, but this has been bothering me for a while: Yeah, your boss would probably consider all of that to be "work for hire" which means the company owns the copyright. Without a written document saying otherwise, that would probably be the default position of a court. But that being said, if you offer to work for free on an open sourced version of a project that they could benefit from in the future, some companies might go for that. Now, for the job-interview thing... I wouldn't send the code to the recruiting company. But bring a laptop with it and let your interviewer see it, telling them you can't actually send it to them. I've had candidates interview with me do that all the time.
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Apr 11, 2013 19:11
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Calyn posted:Would I be allowed without having to ask for permission to: To put it simply, there's more than one law to skin a cat, and if the company takes offense to your disclosure it can hire an attorney who knows all of them. I understand the problem of being alienated from your past work when looking for another job, but developing something from scratch is really a better solution. Gazpacho fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Apr 11, 2013 |
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Apr 11, 2013 22:52
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The past several hires I've made w/ masters came in at about the same level as a what a (new grad + 2 years working with us) was at. So, yeah.
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Apr 11, 2013 23:53
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Update - I reached out to Company A (full time offer) with a few more questions. I was told that they didn't know what type of projects I would be working on to start. They were going to float me around and let me try different things since I'm new. They've never hired someone fresh out of school with minimal experience (me) before. My biggest concern is that I get stuck doing BA/consultant type poo poo for clients which is not aligned with my interests. - Company B (internship) said I could have until the end of today to decide and offered to talk to me if I had questions regarding the progression of the program. - Company C had some turnover in HR and was figuring things out. I told them I needed to make my decision by this afternoon. The recruiting manager seems to be out of office but did contact me yesterday. This is still my first choice for a multitude of reasons: best pay, easiest commute, and from what others have said a fairly low-stress environment.
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Apr 12, 2013 16:52
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