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Amish Ninja
Jul 2, 2006

It's called survival of the fittest. If you can't slam with the best, jam with the rest.

MeruFM posted:

don't be a contractor unless you're paid obscene amounts

That's the thing - they're calling it LTE but paying as a contractor. I've been in this situation before with a company that had to temporarily pay me 1099 before I relocated and that turned out alright. But I'd be lying if I said this didn't still bother me a bit. Ithaqua made good points up there. Maybe I just play hardball and see what happens? I dunno.

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Necc0
Jun 30, 2005

by exmarx
Broken Cake

Amish Ninja posted:

Description of what's probably a bad company

The lack of technical grilling is normally a bad sign but if they're bringing you on as a contractor it's probably more they immediately cut anyone loose who can't hack it. Still a bad sign but not *quite* as bad.
The biggest red flag is them having a distributed team and coming up with excuses as to why they can't bring you on as an FTE. Have you done any research on this company? Are they somewhat established? Do they have reviews on glassdoor?

There's nothing wrong with working contract-to-hire but absolutely do not let them lowball you. Do not lose focus of the fact that you're comfortable where you are now and have the upper hand in negotiations. It sounds like if they're pushing you on time it could be because they're trying to rush you into making a bad decision. If the CEO is a smooth operator he'll try to pressure you into escalating verbal commitments that you'll feel awkward backing out of.

Simply re-iterate that you're fine coming on as a contractor but due to the inherent risks with contract work you need the positive adjustment on your compensation. Stand firm on your demand because it sounds like he *will* pressure you. And remember that you're comfortable where you are now

Necc0 fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Jun 21, 2016

Amish Ninja
Jul 2, 2006

It's called survival of the fittest. If you can't slam with the best, jam with the rest.
They exist, but there's nothing on glassdoor and I've turned up little in the course of my research. :/

kitten smoothie
Dec 29, 2001

csammis posted:

As others have said it's very normal in most of America. I've had non-compete clauses in my last three jobs (Missouri / Kansas for what that's worth):

The first employer, a medical software giant, sent me a certified letter on very official letterhead reminding me of my non-compete agreement after I had left the job. Scared the poo poo out of me because I hadn't started at the new position and I thought it was telling me that I was going to be sued. Upon examination it turned out to be standard procedure for that company to send that letter to everyone who quits regardless of destination. Those guys were and are pretty much dicks about people leaving despite having a reputation as a meat grinder for fresh grads.

:lol: I think I have a really good idea of what medical software giant this is. I interviewed with them my senior year in college right after a certain internal memo got leaked. I asked the interviewer for his own opinion about what work/life balance was like there in light of that, hoping to get his side of the story rather than what I just read in the news. That went over like a lead balloon.

I had a past job with an ERP firm who made me sign a noncompete agreement. Basically because this company was formed from lots of acquisitions, they were in all kinds of lines of business, so effectively any sort of business software provider would be a "competitor." Regardless of the specific product line that I worked on. Also it specified all of North America as the geographic scope. My wife was a corporate litigation attorney at the time I hired on with that company. She looked over the noncompete, and said that the geographic and business scope were so broad that a judge would laugh it out of court.

Erwin posted:

Any tips on finding a remote job? Obviously I can let recruiters know that that's what I'm interested in when they contact me, but I wasn't sure if there were any job sites out there focused on that. I walk to work now and am not interested in driving very far to a new job. I'm outside of Philly and would be fine going into Philly once per week, or to New York or DC a few times per month, but I really would like to try a full time remote position. When I work from home at my current job, I get more done. I know that working from home doesn't work for a lot of people, but I believe that I'm a good fit for it.

Check out weworkremotely.com and remoteok.io for job boards.

I'm on my third remote gig and all of these have been obtained through my personal network, though. It's easier to get hired remote if someone knows you and can vouch for you being good. My current job I landed by way of a slack group for my specific field and I had made at least some impression that way.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

kitten smoothie posted:

:lol: I think I have a really good idea of what medical software giant this is

Yeah, "Missouri / Kansas" + "medical software giant" pretty much spells it out :v:

I knew about the memo and the rumors of overwork but I was moving to the area regardless and I was young and stupid (one year out of college) so I didn't quite believe it. The interview went flawlessly and I received an offer on my drive home - score! I spent less than two years there but I learned a lot on the topic of work / life balance for sure. They also introduced me to the idea of zero-sum raises and horrible inter-team communication. Hell of an education.

Munkeymon
Aug 14, 2003

Motherfucker's got an
armor-piercing crowbar! Rigoddamndicu𝜆ous.



csammis posted:

zero-sum raises

As in more money but "oh about the health plan..."?

Necc0
Jun 30, 2005

by exmarx
Broken Cake
Alright so update on my job hunt: Some interesting contract-to-hire positions are starting to land on my plate so now I'm curious what the rules of this market are since I've only been FTE since graduating. What are things I need to ensure in my contract, what are red flags to watch out for, what are unexpected pros/cons that most people don't know about, what kind of adjustment should I place on my expected salary to account for the FTE vs. CtH distinction, how does the transition back to FTE usually work once the contract has expired, etc etc etc?

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

Munkeymon posted:

As in more money but "oh about the health plan..."?

The idea that if one member of a team gets a raise or a promotion then another member of that same team absolutely must not get a raise to compensate. I think Microsoft did (does?) something similar and called it stack ranking.

My manager sat me down at evaluation time and said "You're doing a great job but we gave Joe Bob a promotion so you don't get a raise." With the benefit of experience and hindsight I can appreciate that he didn't blow some smoke about my performance not being quite good enough but that was and is still a pretty hosed thing to say.

Munkeymon
Aug 14, 2003

Motherfucker's got an
armor-piercing crowbar! Rigoddamndicu𝜆ous.



csammis posted:

The idea that if one member of a team gets a raise or a promotion then another member of that same team absolutely must not get a raise to compensate. I think Microsoft did (does?) something similar and called it stack ranking.

My manager sat me down at evaluation time and said "You're doing a great job but we gave Joe Bob a promotion so you don't get a raise." With the benefit of experience and hindsight I can appreciate that he didn't blow some smoke about my performance not being quite good enough but that was and is still a pretty hosed thing to say.

I think stack ranking as they did(?) it also meant firing the lowest 10-20% of performers, rather than simply not giving them raises, but I get what you're saying and yikes

New Yorp New Yorp
Jul 18, 2003

Only in Kenya.
Pillbug

Munkeymon posted:

I think stack ranking as they did(?) it also meant firing the lowest 10-20% of performers, rather than simply not giving them raises, but I get what you're saying and yikes

Nah, it meant that people at the bottom were told they had "limited advancement potential" and were gently guided to other teams or just demoralized enough to quit.

It was stupid because if you were great at your job, but on a team where everyone else was great at their jobs too, you had a chance of being given a crappy review even if you'd have been in the top 10% of another team and gotten a nice raise/bonus. It encouraged all sorts of awful mercenary poo poo that contributed to Microsoft's reputation for intra- and inter-departmental warfare at the expense of the products.

Good Will Hrunting
Oct 8, 2012

I changed my mind.
I'm not sorry.
Is CTCI still the best review book/resource? I'm basically looking for a list of questions on the popular topics I can check off and then brush up on things more as needed.

spiritual bypass
Feb 19, 2008

Grimey Drawer
Cracking The Coding Interview is a great book, but it's almost all about algorithms. I don't think I've ever interviewed at a place that asked me the sort of difficult algorithmic questions that were in the book, but I also don't live in a "tech hub" type of place.

Eggnogium
Jun 1, 2010

Never give an inch! Hnnnghhhhhh!

Ithaqua posted:

Nah, it meant that people at the bottom were told they had "limited advancement potential" and were gently guided to other teams or just demoralized enough to quit.

It was stupid because if you were great at your job, but on a team where everyone else was great at their jobs too, you had a chance of being given a crappy review even if you'd have been in the top 10% of another team and gotten a nice raise/bonus. It encouraged all sorts of awful mercenary poo poo that contributed to Microsoft's reputation for intra- and inter-departmental warfare at the expense of the products.

To be clear the level at which the stack ranking applied was usually a group of around 50 employees, not just your immediate team of 5-10.

They did remove stack ranking company-wide before I left. Although any company still has a limited budget for pay increases, so management is lying to you if they say your compensation has nothing to do with your co-workers'.

Good Will Hrunting
Oct 8, 2012

I changed my mind.
I'm not sorry.

rt4 posted:

Cracking The Coding Interview is a great book, but it's almost all about algorithms. I don't think I've ever interviewed at a place that asked me the sort of difficult algorithmic questions that were in the book, but I also don't live in a "tech hub" type of place.

I can talk for great lengths about all of my 3 major projects, design choices, the new tech I've learned and stuff, but I'm still apprehensive to begin the new job process because I feel like literally every major place I look at, they ask pretty hard algo/data structures questions and I haven't reviewed them in 2+ years and don't use a lot of them on the daily.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

Good Will Hrunting posted:

I can talk for great lengths about all of my 3 major projects, design choices, the new tech I've learned and stuff, but I'm still apprehensive to begin the new job process because I feel like literally every major place I look at, they ask pretty hard algo/data structures questions and I haven't reviewed them in 2+ years and don't use a lot of them on the daily.

This is me. The most complicated data structures I use on anything remotely like a regular basis are lists, hashmaps, and sets. Maybe a tree occasionally.

Good Will Hrunting
Oct 8, 2012

I changed my mind.
I'm not sorry.
I use queues for some stuff but yeah, same. Definitely need review of tree traversal, graphs, and DP.

Che Delilas
Nov 23, 2009
FREE TIBET WEED

csammis posted:

The idea that if one member of a team gets a raise or a promotion then another member of that same team absolutely must not get a raise to compensate. I think Microsoft did (does?) something similar and called it stack ranking.

My manager sat me down at evaluation time and said "You're doing a great job but we gave Joe Bob a promotion so you don't get a raise." With the benefit of experience and hindsight I can appreciate that he didn't blow some smoke about my performance not being quite good enough but that was and is still a pretty hosed thing to say.

Had my last boss approach this conversation a different way. I was in my review asking for a raise, and he explained the zero sum situation (he didn't use that term). He asked me, if I were to get the raise I was asking for, who should not get a raise or get a smaller raise to compensate?

Motherfucker, I none of the people in this department are my subordinates and I am not responsible for determining their compensation. That's YOUR job. What you're doing is trying to make me feel guilty AND attempting to avoid personal responsibility for telling me "you aren't getting a raise, sucker" by making it seem like decision is in any way my responsibility. Because you're a complete piece of poo poo (for many, many more reasons than this, I might add).

Skandranon
Sep 6, 2008
fucking stupid, dont listen to me

Che Delilas posted:

Had my last boss approach this conversation a different way. I was in my review asking for a raise, and he explained the zero sum situation (he didn't use that term). He asked me, if I were to get the raise I was asking for, who should not get a raise or get a smaller raise to compensate?

Motherfucker, I none of the people in this department are my subordinates and I am not responsible for determining their compensation. That's YOUR job. What you're doing is trying to make me feel guilty AND attempting to avoid personal responsibility for telling me "you aren't getting a raise, sucker" by making it seem like decision is in any way my responsibility. Because you're a complete piece of poo poo (for many, many more reasons than this, I might add).

Tell him he's the one who shouldn't get a raise because he's obviously delegating most of his job to you.

No Safe Word
Feb 26, 2005

Skandranon posted:

Tell him he's the one who shouldn't get a raise because he's obviously delegating most of his job to you.

:golfclap:

mrmcd
Feb 22, 2003

Pictured: The only good cop (a fictional one).

Good Will Hrunting posted:

I use queues for some stuff but yeah, same. Definitely need review of tree traversal, graphs, and DP.

I think part of the reason I did so well at my Google interview is that a lot of places have copied their method of "lock a candidate in a room and have them work on open ended and non-trivial algorithm problems, including white board coding plus large scale system design, for 5 hours" for doing interviews.

Google was way more professional and structured about it, but going through a similar process at 2-3 other companies beforehand helped me perform significantly better, I think. That isn't to say the particular company you're interviewing at will do that, but if you're already comfortable with more traditional interview type questions then I think it can definitely help.

Che Delilas
Nov 23, 2009
FREE TIBET WEED

Skandranon posted:

Tell him he's the one who shouldn't get a raise because he's obviously delegating most of his job to you.

No no, the budget for raises for plebs is separate from the budget for the nobility. Probably because of buffer overflow issues.

minato
Jun 7, 2004

cutty cain't hang, say 7-up.
Taco Defender

Good Will Hrunting posted:

they ask pretty hard algo/data structures questions and I haven't reviewed them in 2+ years and don't use a lot of them on the daily.
I think only a tiny minority of people use them daily, anywhere. My take is that those questions are a common ground, a lingua franca for interviews. They're agnostic about languages and tools so it's easier to rank candidates side-by-side, and interviewers don't have to know any particulars about whatever tools or languages the candidate claims to be an expert in.

When I went through this a year ago it was a pain to do the revision, and I immediately forgot everything the minute I left the interview. But I totally get why they focus on that. By way of contrast: At my old job, we got people to tell us about prior projects and they'd tell us stories about how they set up stuff in AWS, which we didn't use and therefore couldn't evaluate if they were geniuses or StackOverflow-script-kiddies.

ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


Nobody knows how to interview, so everyone just copies Google.

Urit
Oct 22, 2010

rt4 posted:

Cracking The Coding Interview is a great book, but it's almost all about algorithms. I don't think I've ever interviewed at a place that asked me the sort of difficult algorithmic questions that were in the book, but I also don't live in a "tech hub" type of place.

I got asked questions that were directly out of CTCI when I interviewed at Microsoft so YMMV. I personally think it's a great resource and should just memorize it for easy wins in interviews, because no one has any imagination and they all ask you how to reverse a doubly linked list or something silly.

Skandranon
Sep 6, 2008
fucking stupid, dont listen to me

ultrafilter posted:

Nobody knows how to interview, so everyone just copies Google.

Including Google. They literally did a study on their own interview process, found no actual correlation between interview performance and actual job performance, but have not changed anything because they don't know any better.

Strong Sauce
Jul 2, 2003

You know I am not really your father.





Skandranon posted:

Including Google. They literally did a study on their own interview process, found no actual correlation between interview performance and actual job performance, but have not changed anything because they don't know any better.

iirc, they found that brain teasers had no correlation to actual performance at the company so they stopped doing those.

apple still does brain teasers fyi.

Che Delilas
Nov 23, 2009
FREE TIBET WEED

Strong Sauce posted:

iirc, they found that brain teasers had no correlation to actual performance at the company so they stopped doing those.

apple still does brain teasers fyi.

Thought that was Microsoft, who are the ones who came up with the "interview 2.0" questions in the first place. Or so I've read.

spiritual bypass
Feb 19, 2008

Grimey Drawer
Thinking again, I did once have an interview at a startup where I was asked some ridiculous brain teaser and some low-level C compiler bullshit. I got the job, but was fired 3 days later when I refused to take "stock" instead of the actual terrible salary I was promised. No way I'd ever waste time at a place like that again.

Volguus
Mar 3, 2009

ultrafilter posted:

Nobody knows how to interview, so everyone just copies Google.

And is terrible since they're (by definition) not Google. 5 hour interviews kills the entire drat day. I am fine to do that for Google (done it once, unsuccessful) but gently caress you lovely company if you think you can get me get half (or more) a day off just for your lovely interview. I had quite a few companies that I just had to tell to just stagger their interviews. 1 hour here, 2 hours there, whatever. Taking 4-5 hours just for them is just not worth it. If you do this at your workplace, tell them to stop or become Google. Their offices look amazing, food is great, people seem awesome. The re-purposed and unfinished factory floor that you're occupying right now is not cool anyway you look at it.

rt4 posted:

Thinking again, I did once have an interview at a startup where I was asked some ridiculous brain teaser and some low-level C compiler bullshit. I got the job, but was fired 3 days later when I refused to take "stock" instead of the actual terrible salary I was promised. No way I'd ever waste time at a place like that again.

Good call, one should never settle for that crap.

mrmcd
Feb 22, 2003

Pictured: The only good cop (a fictional one).

Volguus posted:

And is terrible since they're (by definition) not Google. 5 hour interviews kills the entire drat day. I am fine to do that for Google (done it once, unsuccessful) but gently caress you lovely company if you think you can get me get half (or more) a day off just for your lovely interview. I had quite a few companies that I just had to tell to just stagger their interviews. 1 hour here, 2 hours there, whatever. Taking 4-5 hours just for them is just not worth it. If you do this at your workplace, tell them to stop or become Google. Their offices look amazing, food is great, people seem awesome. The re-purposed and unfinished factory floor that you're occupying right now is not cool anyway you look at it.


Good call, one should never settle for that crap.

Also Google has a whole process beyond just 5 hours of difficult whiteboard code problems. There's a structured way to give interview reports, you meet with people from many different teams and product areas, the hire decisions are made by committee consensus, and hiring managers for headcount don't get to approve/deny hiring decisions, don't screen for "culture fit". They explain all this to candidates too, and are very open with what to expect and the skills they are evaluating, and even offer pre-interview coaching sessions. If you're paying attention motivated you can do a lot of effective pre-interview preparation to make sure you preform at your best (which arguably is a really good job skill).

I met with more than a few companies in retrospect that were just going "Google tortures people with whiteboards for 5 hours, let's do that!" and then deciding to hire based on whether $important_manager liked you or not. I even had one company that made it very clear first thing in the morning that candidates would only be invited to lunch and the afternoon sessions if they sufficiently impressed people in the morning. I'm so grateful I was good enough to be fed before another 3 hours of being locked in a room... :rolleyes:

leper khan
Dec 28, 2010
Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.

mrmcd posted:

Also Google has a whole process beyond just 5 hours of difficult whiteboard code problems. There's a structured way to give interview reports, you meet with people from many different teams and product areas, the hire decisions are made by committee consensus, and hiring managers for headcount don't get to approve/deny hiring decisions, don't screen for "culture fit". They explain all this to candidates too, and are very open with what to expect and the skills they are evaluating, and even offer pre-interview coaching sessions. If you're paying attention motivated you can do a lot of effective pre-interview preparation to make sure you preform at your best (which arguably is a really good job skill).

I met with more than a few companies in retrospect that were just going "Google tortures people with whiteboards for 5 hours, let's do that!" and then deciding to hire based on whether $important_manager liked you or not. I even had one company that made it very clear first thing in the morning that candidates would only be invited to lunch and the afternoon sessions if they sufficiently impressed people in the morning. I'm so grateful I was good enough to be fed before another 3 hours of being locked in a room... :rolleyes:

Google is also the only company that offered to run through their feedback and tell me where I punted the interview.

Rurutia
Jun 11, 2009

leper khan posted:

Google is also the only company that offered to run through their feedback and tell me where I punted the interview.

Was this recent? I've never heard of this. Huh.

Volguus
Mar 3, 2009

leper khan posted:

Google is also the only company that offered to run through their feedback and tell me where I punted the interview.

Hmm, I was told that, since the hiring decision is done by a committee , they don't release the details of their decision, the why's. Could it differ for some people? Maybe different countries (they have offices everywhere) have different rules?

leper khan
Dec 28, 2010
Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.

Volguus posted:

Hmm, I was told that, since the hiring decision is done by a committee , they don't release the details of their decision, the why's. Could it differ for some people? Maybe different countries (they have offices everywhere) have different rules?

The feedback wasn't exceptionally detailed. It was basically: "you really punted on that one problem, huh? You were still really close; you had on definite yes, two positive, one indifferent, and one no. If you had another definite yes, I would probably be giving you an offer right now. Try again next year :D
Also, study up on graph structures maybe, and try not to punt next time."

e: this was a few months ago

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


I've been doing web dev for about two years now. I've enjoyed it, but I don't want to remain a Rails monkey forever. I want to work on technologies and products past the scope of a Series A, with interesting problems to solve that require more than an understanding of basic CRUD and REST. The most challenging problems and issues I've come across in my career so far have not related to software engineering at all - it's been product design, and project and people management. Product design is interesting enough, but I do not have the chops to be a manager and really don't want to be doing that as a career even though I'm a fervent believer in good and proper management.

I'm thinking about my future, and what I want to build out of my current web dev career. There's new and interesting fields popping up around machine learning and data, and I'm curious about those, but opportunities are somewhat scarce and breaking in is hard. (Though, I still find machine learning fascinating!) I could transition into desktop or mobile applications, but I feel like there's less opportunity for mobile these days even if they don't all revolve around CRUD and REST, and I'm used to functional programming so heavy OOP isn't my bag. There's also the option of remaining in web dev, but focusing on something different like devops (CICD, team management and tooling, etc.) or hardcore networking problems (e.g. concurrency, optimization, the kind of stuff you need Elixir for). There's game dev, but :yikes:. Then there's doing something totally different, which would require a career change away from something I do continue to enjoy, but am not entirely sure about my future within.

I know it's too early in my career to be thinking about these sorts of things, but I do want to know where I'm headed and what paths I have available to me. What do people generally spin off web dev careers into, and how hard is it to transition away from it if I need to?

Thermopyle
Jul 1, 2003

...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. —Bertrand Russell

Pollyanna posted:

The most challenging problems and issues I've come across in my career so far have not related to software engineering at all - it's been product design, and project and people management.

IMO, this will always be true.

denzelcurrypower
Jan 28, 2011
e; wrong thread sorry

denzelcurrypower fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Jun 28, 2016

the talent deficit
Dec 20, 2003

self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture





Thermopyle posted:

IMO, this will always be true.

i'm leading the redesign/reimplementation of our entire data aquisition/analytics pipeline and despite some engineering challenges (global ordering of events! ramp transactions!) by far the majority of my time is spent on product and people problems. there's relatively few working programmers who can avoid that as they advance in their careers

Rebus
Jan 18, 2006

Meanwhile, somewhere in Grove, work begins on next season's Williams F1 car...


I'm semi-tempted to pursue a career developing embedded software for one of the many motorsport companies in my local area (southern UK). There are some high-profile F1 teams nearby that I've applied to but it seems like there may be some form of 'supremacy' they're after and I don't get many formal replies. (I did actually get an interview at one but the position turned out to be a more SQL backend type thing I wasn't interested in).

Has anyone any experience of working for a motorsport company and have any pointers on what may make me stand out? I really enjoy my current position (embedded C for hand held electronic devices and some .Net stuff for configuring them) but I feel like I'm not really being recompensed for the amount of work I've been putting in. I also kind of made myself a target to be bringing in £50k by the time I was this age (I'm on around £44k), so I dunno if motorsport is one of those "you're in it for the love of the job" type places where they use that as an excuse to not pay so well.

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Comb Your Beard
Sep 28, 2007

Chillin' like a villian.
Is Shirlington to Tyson's Corner a manageable commute?

I do internal webapps for a publicly traded telecom and now I'm being recruited to do something very similar at another similar company.

Does that sound like a lateral move? I'm telling myself I would only do it for a huge raise. It's primarily PHP though, which is nice. Kinda over Java.

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