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I've worked with "10x" people before who were really "make everyone else 1/10x" people. I think anyone who is good with logic and abstract thinking can be a "10x" when they are working in a familiar domain ... in idioms and patterns that they find natural ... with languages and tools they are familiar with ... on a codebase they are familiar with. However, anyone who is put in a situation where everything doesn't line up is going to naturally move more slowly - frequently stopping to look up information, cross-reference things, read background material, etc. for quiet some time until they come up to speed. Years ago I was on a project where the lead developer was fond of coming in on the weekend to geek out on the codebase. He would occasionally refactor everything (BOOM - everyone else is a 1/2x developer while figuring out the new codebase) to idioms that made sense to him (BOOM - everyone is a 1/4x developer because they had a different mental model for the solution) and using some hot new framework that he had learned and wanted to use (BOOM - everyone else is a 1/8x developer while figuring out the new framework). And lo, the sorry newbie on the team who was still learning the domain (me) was now a 1/16x developer. gently caress that guy. A good lead would put an end to it, but when that guy is the lead ... well I moved on pretty quick. The same situation can easily apply to greenfield development - the cowboy coder leading the charge can appear to be 10x because everything is lining up - domain, idioms, tools, code - but its just because they wrote it all! Everyone following along will look slow because they are wading in someone else's idea space. Paolomania fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Jul 24, 2015 |
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Jul 24, 2015 00:10
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Paolomania posted:I've worked with "10x" people before who were really "make everyone else 1/10x" people. I think anyone who is good with logic and abstract thinking can be a "10x" when they are working in a familiar domain ... in idioms and patterns that they find natural ... with languages and tools they are familiar with ... on a codebase they are familiar with. However, anyone who is put in a situation where everything doesn't line up is going to naturally move more slowly - frequently stopping to look up information, cross-reference things, read background material, etc. for quiet some time until they come up to speed. This seems really quite insightful to me. One thing that comes to mind is that the best skill a software engineer can have is the ability to quickly adapt and understand new codebases and new frameworks. Minimizing the damage of change is the way forward.
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Jul 24, 2015 00:38
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baquerd posted:This seems really quite insightful to me. One thing that comes to mind is that the best skill a software engineer can have is the ability to quickly adapt and understand new codebases and new frameworks. Minimizing the damage of change is the way forward. This is quite true, but to add to that, not being the rear end in a top hat Paolomania described also helps. I'm usually the one who ends up ripping systems apart and rebuilding them, but I try not to do it unless necessary. When I do, I try very hard to make it obvious how the new stuff works, and spend as much time as is needed explaining it to everyone else who the change affects.
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Jul 24, 2015 15:52
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Next week I'm interviewing a candidate to be my new engineering manager. I've never interviewed someone to be my superior before. Any advice compared to interviewing other non management engineers?
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Jul 25, 2015 01:46
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Sign posted:Next week I'm interviewing a candidate to be my new engineering manager. I've never interviewed someone to be my superior before. Any advice compared to interviewing other non management engineers? Is it a technical role or a non-technical role?
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Jul 25, 2015 04:25
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Flew out to the office for a week to start the new gig in person, before going remote. I haven't had a remote job before where they sent me home with a remote access appliance. It's preconfigured to broadcast the same wifi network as in an office and tunnel it straight through. Nice that I don't need to deal with flaky VPN clients  Past job had a VPN client that would randomly screw with your routing table and network config and basically require a reboot to fix. They switched to a different vendor, whose client didn't jank your routing table, but it crashes if you have more than one monitor connected.
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Jul 25, 2015 04:50
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Sign posted:Next week I'm interviewing a candidate to be my new engineering manager. I've never interviewed someone to be my superior before. Any advice compared to interviewing other non management engineers? Even if it's somewhat technical in terms of project management, it's fairly rare for someone with the title of Engineering Manager to actually be an active engineer. Don't go asking them to whiteboard code unless your company is being weird and writing code is actually something an Engineering Manager does there. Ultimately, they're going to be your line manager, and will significantly help determine your raises and possibly career progression. Pick the guy you think is most likely to help you. .
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Jul 25, 2015 06:05
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Ithaqua posted:Is it a technical role or a non-technical role? They aren't supposed to actively do any coding but are supposed to do design and code reviews. So kind of.
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Jul 25, 2015 11:09
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Sign posted:They aren't supposed to actively do any coding but are supposed to do design and code reviews. So kind of. Give them example commits for them to code review
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Jul 25, 2015 11:31
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Coding questions sound fair. If they're going to do any kind of code review then the first thing they should be able to do is code.
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Jul 25, 2015 15:17
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I have a 1 on 1 with our new engineering manager tomorrow and I'd like to inquire about a raise (I really deserve a promotion but we'll see). I've been at the company 18 months and got a 7% raise or so in February but at this point I've basically become the sole owner of a very large project while contributing to other teams as well and training other less experienced developers. The company is hurting for people with my expertise of our system and business, as well as this new project I've basically started to lead. On top of that, we just lost one of our team leads in May and one of our seniors last week and I've been picking up slack. The issue is that the new manager just started a few weeks ago. What do I say? My performance review was in February and I'm not sure if I'll have another one before that time next year. If I don't get a fairly substantial raise I plan on looking for a new job starting in a few weeks after my vacation.
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Jul 28, 2015 23:49
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baquerd posted:This seems really quite insightful to me. One thing that comes to mind is that the best skill a software engineer can have is the ability to quickly adapt and understand new codebases and new frameworks. Minimizing the damage of change is the way forward. As a parallel to that, writing code that is not only maintainable, but maintainable by someone other than the original author, is a skillset in and of itself. It's too bad the hiring process generally doesn't prioritize skills like that.
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Jul 29, 2015 11:13
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I have a 1 on 1 with our new engineering manager tomorrow and I'd like to inquire about a raise (I really deserve a promotion but we'll see). I've been at the company 18 months and got a 7% raise or so in February but at this point I've basically become the sole owner of a very large project while contributing to other teams as well and training other less experienced developers. The company is hurting for people with my expertise of our system and business, as well as this new project I've basically started to lead. On top of that, we just lost one of our team leads in May and one of our seniors last week and I've been picking up slack. Personally, I would not hit the new manager with "I need a raise" off the top rope -- he is probably trying to figure out which way is up and who is doing what and that will just mark you a money grubbing whore. It would be reasonable to walk him through what you are doing for these projects and ask if there is any structure for performance reviews and performance raises though.
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Jul 29, 2015 14:07
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wwb posted:Personally, I would not hit the new manager with "I need a raise" off the top rope -- he is probably trying to figure out which way is up and who is doing what and that will just mark you a money grubbing whore. It would be reasonable to walk him through what you are doing for these projects and ask if there is any structure for performance reviews and performance raises though. I'm about 2 hours out of my meeting and this is basically what I was going to ask. Something like "My time is split between two team leads and I was wondering who will be doing my upcoming performance reviews, when they will occur, and how I can make sure I'm going to do well on them".
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Jul 29, 2015 14:46
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A defense contractor near me contacted me directly saying they found my github and some other online profiles and wanted to talk about hiring me for a C# position. $170,000, 6 weeks vacation, 100% company-paid health insurance, 10% 401k match. Holy poo poo. Unfortunately they require a Top Secret clearance which I don't have, and they're unable to sponsor candidates. I didn't think defense compensation was that good.
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Jul 30, 2015 02:01
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That is incredible. Particularly with the 6 weeks of holidays for an American (which I'm assuming you are) and holy poo poo.
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Jul 30, 2015 02:10
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Cryolite posted:A defense contractor near me contacted me directly saying they found my github and some other online profiles and wanted to talk about hiring me for a C# position. $170,000, 6 weeks vacation, 100% company-paid health insurance, 10% 401k match. Holy poo poo. Unfortunately they require a Top Secret clearance which I don't have, and they're unable to sponsor candidates.
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Jul 30, 2015 02:11
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Cryolite posted:A defense contractor near me contacted me directly saying they found my github and some other online profiles and wanted to talk about hiring me for a C# position. $170,000, 6 weeks vacation, 100% company-paid health insurance, 10% 401k match. Holy poo poo. Unfortunately they require a Top Secret clearance which I don't have, and they're unable to sponsor candidates. Heh. Just think how much your boss is making. My brother works as a dev for Booz Allen with TS clearance and got so bored with it he was gonna quit and they basically threw sacks of money at him until he agreed to stay. Keep in mind the military is just gigantic and has an even more gigantic budget. Plus just routine stuff like "software to figure out which base has this loving airplane part" often requires TS clearance. So you have enormous budgets that get minimal amounts of political scrutiny + continuous shortage of qualified staff = lots of contractors getting very very rich.
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Jul 30, 2015 02:16
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Cryolite posted:Unfortunately they require a Top Secret clearance which I don't have, and they're unable to sponsor candidates. This little thing here, it really sucks to get.
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Jul 30, 2015 02:33
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I have it and am trying to find someone that wants it. But Australia, not US, so usual backwater bullshit.
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Jul 30, 2015 02:37
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Cross-posting from BFC negotiating offers thread: I recently received a job offer from a company I'm interested in working. The issue I'm having is with the job title. I am interested in moving up from software engineer to senior software title. The only reason why it matters is because in a couple of years I want to apply for a MBA, and it seems important to show growth. On the other hand, I only really have two years out of school experience (plus 2 years during), so I feel like if someone saw it on a resume, it would seem absurd. The pay is comparable to other companies where I'm applying for a senior title. I'm wondering if I should ask for it in negotiation. I'm 95% positive I would take this job either way. The only negotiating power I have is another company I'm in late stages of the interview process with, but no concrete offer. So I guess my question is, should I ask for the senior title? How do I show career growth on my resume if all the titles are called Software Engineer, even though the pay is drastically different.
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Aug 1, 2015 02:24
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ProSlayer posted:So I guess my question is, should I ask for the senior title? How do I show career growth on my resume if all the titles are called Software Engineer, even though the pay is drastically different. When I'm revising my resume, I use whatever titles I think best communicate to the prospective employer. I don't consider what my job title actually was. Therefore, I don't care what title I'm getting at a new job except where it affects what work they're going to let me do. (For example, I've had "Computer Scientist" from a company that wanted to look more academic on their contract bids, but I spell it "Senior Software Engineer" because that's the kind of work I was actually doing. And my stint as a "Soft Dev Anal II" is "Software Developer".)
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Aug 1, 2015 02:56
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ProSlayer posted:Cross-posting from BFC negotiating offers thread: Job titles are meaningless between companies. If the title is important to you, ask them if they have rigidly defined job titles (e.g. pay scales based on job title and responsibilities) or if the distinction is more fluid. If it's the latter, they'll probably give you the title of Supreme Basketweaver Mk. III if you ask as long as it doesn't affect how much they pay you or your benefits. This is especially true since they've made you an offer. They want you to work for them. As an aside, I worked with a very large auditing firm that had rigidly defined job titles from the accounting world. So there were "junior associates", "associates", "senior associates", etc. To get salaries above a certain level (around 6 figures), you had to be a manager. The team I was working with was comprised entirely of interns and one junior associate who had one year of industry experience. Their manager hadn't written code in a decade. They were very upset that they had trouble attracting and retaining senior associates and didn't understand why the most senior people kept quitting. They also didn't understand why their software was a steaming shitpile of unmaintainable spaghetti code. Mniot posted:When I'm revising my resume, I use whatever titles I think best communicate to the prospective employer. I don't consider what my job title actually was. Therefore, I don't care what title I'm getting at a new job except where it affects what work they're going to let me do. I always recommend against doing that, especially if you put them as a reference. New employer: "Was so and so employed with you from 2010 to 2012 as a Senior Ninja Wizard Rockstar Developer?" Old employer: "No, he was employed with us from 2010 to 2012 as only a Wizard Developer." New employer: "I see... this person is a liar. I wonder what else they have lied about." Not saying it's a likely or common thing, but I am always wary about little things like that. New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Aug 1, 2015 |
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Aug 1, 2015 03:00
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I wouldn't sweat the title if the money is good. I've been hired in as both "senior engineer" and just plain "engineer." Each move came with a pay bump; my current title is just "engineer" but I'm making almost double the money as I was as a "senior engineer" a couple years ago. In a past job I got sort of screwed by getting a promotion from "engineer" to "senior engineer." That came with a raise, but the problem was that I was not maxed out at the pay range for the regular engineer title (and my new salary as a senior engineer was still lower than the top of the engineer range). With a more senior title, there were organizational rules regarding tenure and whatever else that made it more difficult to secure a raise later on down the line. The next time around, my boss had to fight with HR for months to get me a raise. Had they moved me up the pay scale for my existing title, we would've had an easier time. I don't know what MBA program you'd be looking at applying to, but any good one is going to have you write application essays and do an in person interview to discuss your background. That's a good opportunity to actually talk about what you've been doing in your career, rather than strictly on what job titles you've had.
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Aug 1, 2015 03:13
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Mniot posted:"Soft Dev Anal II" The worst porn series. I don't even know why they made a sequel.
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Aug 1, 2015 05:37
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Has anyone ever done any of the HackerRank stuff as part of the interview process (on either side of the process)? If so, what are your thoughts. I met with a company yesterday for a Senior Engineer role and nailed the interview. It was mostly culture fit stuff with some architecture questions thrown in. Ended up meeting the president of the company and she really felt I would do well as well. At the end of the interview, CTO mentioned he would send me a link to a custom set of HackerRank questions, and that it would be a timed evaluation. Personally I hate this kind of thing. I'd much rather whiteboard something or do something while I'm there but he seemed adamant about the process. I didn't want to press too hard because the role sounds really great, as they basically gutted the entire company 8-12 months ago except for support for the existing app and my role would include building a whole new team to start development on the next generation of said application (a complete rebuild from scratch). e: Well I took it and think I completely bombed. I spent 45 minutes on an Array Merge problem that kept telling me my algorithm would cut off the end of the merged array when Visual Studio said it would work just fine based on a multitude of inputs I threw at it, so I didn't even get to answer one of the problems. gently caress me. aBagorn fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Aug 1, 2015 |
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Aug 1, 2015 18:35
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aBagorn posted:Personally I hate this kind of thing. I'd much rather whiteboard something or do something while I'm there but he seemed adamant about the process. I didn't want to press too hard because the role sounds really great, as they basically gutted the entire company 8-12 months ago except for support for the existing app and my role would include building a whole new team to start development on the next generation of said application (a complete rebuild from scratch). I recently did one of those as the first step of an interview process and completely failed, mostly because I got hung up on reading stuff from stdin which I hadn't done in years. In a face-to-face setting I'd have been able to explain that and just focus on the algorithm. What also irks me about it is that it doesn't seem to be about how clear, maintainable or well-considered your code is. But, I guess, sour grapes.
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Aug 1, 2015 19:57
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aBagorn posted:Has anyone ever done any of the HackerRank stuff as part of the interview process (on either side of the process)? If so, what are your thoughts. Late in my term at lastjob we were transitioning to using HackerRank (or something similar) as an initial screen, and I thought it was just terrible, both as an idea and as a product (we had to come up with our own questions and own matched input/output and I don't remember it ever really working right, one colleague had a question involving floats and you can imagine the disasters there). (I think that company also purged a lot of development people about 8-12 months ago, they're not a business analytic outfit in SOMA by any chance are they)
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Aug 1, 2015 20:25
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aBagorn posted:Has anyone ever done any of the HackerRank stuff as part of the interview process (on either side of the process)? If so, what are your thoughts. I can understand using HackerRank or similar to weed out people before you give face-to-face interviews, but after? That seems really bizarre.
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Aug 1, 2015 20:35
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ultrafilter posted:I can understand using HackerRank or similar to weed out people before you give face-to-face interviews, but after? That seems really bizarre. That's what I thought as well. The CTO even apologized before bringing it up. Hopefully I did well enough (I sent him a follow up explaining my issues with several of the problems) and we can just put this behind us. If I get this position I will be suggesting that we do something else to technically screen people. e: Nope, bombed it. On to the next one, I guess aBagorn fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 12:56
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I haven't learned a new language in a while. Go seems like the new hotness, but I'm not overly keen on it. Julia is a possibility, but I'd really like a compiled language. Rust might be a good option, but something with slightly higher level constructs would be great. I'm trying to hit the niche between Python and Java, something to supplant C in terms of speed and a compiled nature. I thought D would do it for while, but I'm moving past that. I would keep building the depth of my understanding of the languages I know already, but I don't want to get left behind. Is it a reasonable fear to have?
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Aug 3, 2015 19:52
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Jo posted:I'm trying to hit the niche between Python and Java, something to supplant C in terms of speed and a compiled nature. Between Python and Java is something like Groovy, not something like C.
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Aug 3, 2015 20:49
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Jo posted:I haven't learned a new language in a while. Go seems like the new hotness, but I'm not overly keen on it. Julia is a possibility, but I'd really like a compiled language. Rust might be a good option, but something with slightly higher level constructs would be great. Learn Swift since it'll ship with Linux support when it gets open-sourced?
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Aug 3, 2015 21:23
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baquerd posted:Between Python and Java is something like Groovy, not something like C. Sorry, I meant something which covers a niche unmarked by the others. Python is great for experimenting with algorithms because I can write up the pseudocode quickly and play with it in the repl. Java is great for building enterprise applications (and to a large extent, desktop applications), but it's not compiled, so if I need a lot of low-level operations and library stuff, I'm left with JNI or just doing stuff in C. I'd love to make something which has static typing like Java, but has a good mathematics/matrix library like Python. If I can compile it and give it out without requiring people to install the JRE, prefect. But I'm getting distracted, the real purpose of my question when I started writing it was to inquire if it was really worthwhile to add new languages to the fray at this point to stay mentally agile, or if I should deepen my current level of understanding with the existing languages. Jo fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Aug 4, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 23:41
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I have a phone screen with Amazon and I'm intimidated because I've never interviewed with a bigcorp before. Is there anything in particular I should be prepared for?
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Aug 6, 2015 02:48
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You have it backwards. What you should be feeling is contempt. First go google some "working at amazon engineering" writeups, then if you're still up for it read up on general algorithm interview prep, CtCI, etc.
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Aug 6, 2015 03:21
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Tao Jones posted:I have a phone screen with Amazon and I'm intimidated because I've never interviewed with a bigcorp before. Is there anything in particular I should be prepared for?
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Aug 6, 2015 03:21
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If I have a hole of a couple of months in my resume due to bereavement, is it better to say so, or to omit the time period, or to list "contracting"?
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Aug 6, 2015 03:49
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:If I have a hole of a couple of months in my resume due to bereavement, is it better to say so, or to omit the time period, or to list "contracting"? I don't think I'd want to work for/with people who'd look askance at an honest explanation of that.
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Aug 6, 2015 15:50
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Munkeymon posted:I don't think I'd want to work for/with people who'd look askance at an honest explanation of that. My question was more about do I put that upfront on the resume or leave it out, and (secondarily) if I leave it out, do I substitute "contracting" or not. It might be in poor taste to put "death in the family" as an entry on a resume, just sayin'.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:14
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