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qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Penisface posted:

i sure as hell hope it is, but why the personal backup drives then?

Sounds like another hardware startup that doesn't understand software. That can be a good thing of management are open to you proposing changes.

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Ator
Oct 1, 2005

i dont mind notorious bsd's mean joke. the "swamp cooler" and "arbys" shows that he put effort into the comedy

i feel pretty good about embarking on a slightly different career path. i was clearly in a rut and had turned into a toxic, angry jerk

one problem with interviewing is that you don't know what the team/company is REALLY like until youre inside, and by then its too late

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

Ator posted:

one problem with interviewing is that you don't know what the team/company is REALLY like until youre inside, and by then its too late

if you poke through this thread a bit you can find a list of leading questions written by tef, a chronically unemployed but highly perceptive yosposter, that can help you get more useful information out of the interview

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

cis autodrag posted:

if the food thing is a genuine medical diagnosis, your employer is probably violating the ADA and you should be throwing around scare words like "reasonable accommodation"

as you yourself point out, your employer is only obliged to make reasonable accommodations.

there is no medical condition that requires you to go off site for hot, fresh food several times a day. there are many conditions that would require you to eat small meals frequently, and your employer need only permit you to eat at your desk

my homie dhall
Dec 9, 2010

honey, oh please, it's just a machine

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

if you poke through this thread a bit you can find a list of leading questions written by tef, a chronically unemployed but highly perceptive yosposter, that can help you get more useful information out of the interview

I think it was rex-goliath unless it’s another post you’re thinking of

PIZZA.BAT
Nov 12, 2016


:cheers:


Ploft-shell crab posted:

I think it was rex-goliath unless it’s another post you’re thinking of

no tef posted the original set of questions which others contributed to while i wrote the associated explanations because people kept not understanding what the questions were getting at

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

Rex-Goliath posted:

no tef posted the original set of questions which others contributed to while i wrote the associated explanations because people kept not understanding what the questions were getting at

if you have a link that would be good

PIZZA.BAT
Nov 12, 2016


:cheers:


the old thread was corrupted so even if i had a link it probably wouldn't work

jony neuemonic
Nov 13, 2009

they’re in the first post, aren’t they?

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



I found the questions but not the explanations

Rex-Goliath posted:
- who do you work with on a daily basis / describe the day to day role
- how are decisions made / how will [team] be asked to accomplish things / who makes those decisions
- what are the company's primary values? what characteristics are you looking for in a candidate in relation to those primary values?
- what would be expected of me for the first / three / six months? What will success look like in this position, how will it be measured?
- what sort of training/mentoring/career dev things are here
- what's the most impressive thing you've seen out of someone else you've interviewed recently
- What do you see as the most challenging aspect of this job?
- how do you set milestones/deliverables for projects and how does your team react when it's clear they won't be met
- when was the last time you took pto / how much did you take / what did you do

PIZZA.BAT
Nov 12, 2016


:cheers:


also i think rotor or qirex or maybe both may have contributed to that list as well. i used to have a text file with a list of those questions plus good interview questions that i kept ready because i was on a job hunt at the time. every now in the regular discussion in the old thread a new question would pop up and i'd be all 'oooh that's a good one' and into the text file it'd go. it was a while ago though so i forget

PokeJoe
Aug 24, 2004

hail cgatan


they're in the OP of this thread you're all posting in

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


nobody reads ops

PIZZA.BAT
Nov 12, 2016


:cheers:


PokeJoe posted:

they're in the OP of this thread you're all posting in

i was assuming they wanted the sauce

Shaman Linavi
Apr 3, 2012

i really don't like some of these places that have taleo portals for jobs. i know more than once i've applied for something with an old resume/cover letter because there was no way for me to check what i was actually submitting until i'd already sent it

distortion park
Apr 25, 2011


the panacea posted:

on topic: lol at Headhunters wanting a RL meeting without their client first. who has time for that?!

They could be screening you for certain clients and/or want to prep your for the interview

4lokos basilisk
Jul 17, 2008


qhat posted:

Sounds like another hardware startup that doesn't understand software. That can be a good thing of management are open to you proposing changes.

I am feeling good about this because they both have shown that they are open to proposing changes and their future plans heavily depend on having some in-house software capability so getting a basic development process going is absolutely crucial for the business if it hopes to achieve something in that regard. I absoutely do not want to be the arrogant chucklefuck who comes in the door and tells everyone what to do, but I am excited at the chance to set things up and running, and I hope they will go along with it.

pointsofdata posted:

They could be screening you for certain clients and/or want to prep your for the interview

Here in Japan my experience has been mixed - some recruiters want to first get a face-to-face so they can size you up and go over your resume, others are comfortable with a screening phone call. The upside for the meeting is that both the recruiter and you too can already feel more confident going into an actual interview because you've had a practice session sort of and the recruiter can prep the company as to who you are. The downside is that since the interview pace here seems to be 1 meeting per week, if you spend the first week not in the actual interview process, the recruiters who do a phone screen are going to be 1 week ahead of you in terms of speed. And timing and speed somehow matters a lot here, because in all the processes I have successfully finished there has never been a deciding period of more than a week. Instead it seems if you already got the offer, then the company fully expects you to be ready to sign. This is raw bullshit of course because if I can not time or delay things well, it forces me to constantly decide if I want the offer at hand, or try and hope for another process that's not finished yet.

I think this is a quirk of Japan, because I have also done an apartment search here and it's almost like a job interview itself - through one agency you can apply for one apartment at a time, it takes around a week to get an answer (which is usually no) and then you hope the other nice apartments are still on the market. We played nice at first, but then we just contacted many agencies at a once to have some process that can be measured in non-geological units.

CLASS 2 PERVERSION
Jan 19, 2010
hey i mostly lurk but i just doubled my salary at least partially thanks to this thread so thanks

also holy hell i have no idea what i'm doing, gently caress

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Penisface posted:

I am feeling good about this because they both have shown that they are open to proposing changes and their future plans heavily depend on having some in-house software capability so getting a basic development process going is absolutely crucial for the business if it hopes to achieve something in that regard. I absoutely do not want to be the arrogant chucklefuck who comes in the door and tells everyone what to do, but I am excited at the chance to set things up and running, and I hope they will go along with it.

Just start of with integrating good practices into your own projects (source control, package management, etc) and then try to demo it to your other coworkers. People are a lot more receptive if they can see something working.

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

a very small horse posted:

hey i mostly lurk but i just doubled my salary at least partially thanks to this thread so thanks

also holy hell i have no idea what i'm doing, gently caress

nobody knows what they’re doing

If they do they’re overqualified :v:

heated game moment
Oct 30, 2003

Lipstick Apathy

quote:

questions to ask your interviewer
- who do you work with on a daily basis / describe the day to day role

translation : are you working with a well-defined team that puts out consistent work or is this place a clusterfuck with people coming and going on a weekly basis because management is incompetent

- how are decisions made / how will [team] be asked to accomplish things / who makes those decisions

translation: are the people making decisions that impact your work accountable to you / your team and do you have the ability to influence them or are they dictated from on high or even worse forced upon you by a hostile entity

- what are the company's primary values? what characteristics are you looking for in a candidate in relation to those primary values?

translation: if they say 'uhhhhhhhhhh' here it's a red flag. if they throw gibberish at you it's not a red flag but it's not a good look either. this should get a human bean answer

- what would be expected of me for the first / three / six months? What will success look like in this position, how will it be measured?

translation: same as the last one.

- what sort of training/mentoring/career dev things are here

translation: they should also be able to answer this without thinking. if they hesitate or bullshit you it's a red flag

- what's the most impressive thing you've seen out of someone else you've interviewed recently

translation: what qualities are people here impressed with. what caliber of candidates are you also considering.

- What do you see as the most challenging aspect of this job?

translation: every job has some bullshit aspect to it. this is their chance to lay it on softly and your chance to decide if it's a particular brand of bullshit you can put up with

- how do you set milestones/deliverables for projects and how does your team react when it's clear they won't be met

translation: are you going to work me like a slave when we don't hit the deadline we never agreed to

- when was the last time you took pto / how much did you take / what did you do

translation: without fail lovely interviewers for lovely companies will try to deflect this one. if they try to say 'oh no don't worry about that' or respond with their actual pto policy just reiterate that they didn't answer your question. when was the last time YOU took pto


i saved them with some minor revisions bc even though im not a cj they are good overall questions

4lokos basilisk
Jul 17, 2008


qhat posted:

Just start of with integrating good practices into your own projects (source control, package management, etc) and then try to demo it to your other coworkers. People are a lot more receptive if they can see something working.

This is the basic plan yes. Just baby steps using some free and common software tools. Go as the situation demands it as we probably have no time or resources for building some Rube Goldberg devops stuff that will get instant boners out of people who unironically read HN.

Analytic Engine
May 18, 2009

not the analytical engine

cool startup feel posted:

i saved them with some minor revisions bc even though im not a cj they are good overall questions

yet another win for Digital Hoarding

Caganer
Feb 15, 2018

DELETE CASCADE posted:

tbh i would say take the job, but then also don't start off immediately disgruntled and spend all your time on prep for other interviews so you can chase a higher salary. you need to dedicate most of your resources to onboarding at your new job, otherwise they will notice how disengaged you are, and you'll be out of there in 3 weeks as a "mistake hire who just wasn't a good fit and didn't work out". now you're right back where you started but with a perfectly good offer burned. give the job a chance, who knows, you might like it

no one will fire you before 6 months - a year unless you actively gently caress up

PIZZA.BAT
Nov 12, 2016


:cheers:


Caganer posted:

no one will fire you before 6 months - a year unless you actively gently caress up

yup. everyone will give you multiple benefits of the doubt if you're the fng. i've only seen a new guy get fired in their first month twice:

- The first instance was a super senior guy that we brought on who in his second week called the vp of engineering a dipshit and ripped apart all the high level design decisions of our product in front of basically everyone.
- The second instance was the guy who some of you may remember from the cjs thread who did tons of faux-alpha male trumpesque bullshit and quickly made everyone loathe him

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


I knew a guy once who made lots of dumb and outrageous jokes in the office and occasionally said unintentionally racist things to coworkers. He was also a terrible programmer and sometimes shipped services without any testing and took code reviews very poorly. He once shipped and deployed an untested web service to production without permission on a Friday evening and unsurprisingly it broke. His excuse was "it's okay, noone is using the service on the weekend". He was removed from the premises the same afternoon, and this was after one whole year of this bullshit.

Workaday Wizard
Oct 23, 2009

by Pragmatica

Rex-Goliath posted:

... The second instance was the guy who some of you may remember from the cjs thread...

the cjs thread moves faster than a cheetah with a jet engine rammed up its rear end. anyone got a link for this one?

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

Shinku ABOOKEN posted:

the cjs thread moves faster than a cheetah with a jet engine rammed up its rear end. anyone got a link for this one?

it moves fast but its not c-spam trump thread

PIZZA.BAT
Nov 12, 2016


:cheers:


Shinku ABOOKEN posted:

the cjs thread moves faster than a cheetah with a jet engine rammed up its rear end. anyone got a link for this one?

it's from a while ago- sometime mid-last year.

basically the guy had absolutely no idea what he was doing and compensated for it by being a colossal dick to everyone. any time he'd say something stupid and someone politely disagreed with him he'd turn it around to trying to make it seem like the person disagreeing was supremely incompetent for even making the suggestion.

on top of that he was the type of dude who saw trump's 'power' handshake and thought that it seemed like a great idea. one day i walked into my office to find him sitting at my desk with all my stuff all over the ground. i asked him wtf and he said he was told it was cool for him to use my desk. i told him I had to use my desk so he got up and walked away leaving my office a mess.

later that day he came back in and tried to take my keyboard as i was using it claiming that it was his

yeah they fired him

Workaday Wizard
Oct 23, 2009

by Pragmatica

Rex-Goliath posted:

it's from a while ago- sometime mid-last year.

basically the guy had absolutely no idea what he was doing and compensated for it by being a colossal dick to everyone. any time he'd say something stupid and someone politely disagreed with him he'd turn it around to trying to make it seem like the person disagreeing was supremely incompetent for even making the suggestion.

on top of that he was the type of dude who saw trump's 'power' handshake and thought that it seemed like a great idea. one day i walked into my office to find him sitting at my desk with all my stuff all over the ground. i asked him wtf and he said he was told it was cool for him to use my desk. i told him I had to use my desk so he got up and walked away leaving my office a mess.

later that day he came back in and tried to take my keyboard as i was using it claiming that it was his

yeah they fired him

they should’ve fired the recruiter and the hr too. sheesh

Caganer
Feb 15, 2018

Rex-Goliath posted:

it's from a while ago- sometime mid-last year.

basically the guy had absolutely no idea what he was doing and compensated for it by being a colossal dick to everyone. any time he'd say something stupid and someone politely disagreed with him he'd turn it around to trying to make it seem like the person disagreeing was supremely incompetent for even making the suggestion.

on top of that he was the type of dude who saw trump's 'power' handshake and thought that it seemed like a great idea. one day i walked into my office to find him sitting at my desk with all my stuff all over the ground. i asked him wtf and he said he was told it was cool for him to use my desk. i told him I had to use my desk so he got up and walked away leaving my office a mess.

later that day he came back in and tried to take my keyboard as i was using it claiming that it was his

yeah they fired him

yeah, like if whoever suggested he'd be let go thinks poly is going to go full office space at their new job yeah they'll be fired

if (s)he just is kind of disengaged - comes in at 8 leaves at 5 does what is asked, there's no way they'll fire them 3 weeks in. you have to work for that. most places want to document you were redirected so you'll at least coast to a 6 month review then probably be fired 6 after that for not improving

The Management
Jan 2, 2010

sup, bitch?

a very small horse posted:

hey i mostly lurk but i just doubled my salary at least partially thanks to this thread so thanks

also holy hell i have no idea what i'm doing, gently caress

hobbesmaster posted:

nobody knows what they’re doing

If they do they’re overqualified :v:

The Management
Jan 2, 2010

sup, bitch?
working on this internal transfer because I realized my group is hopeless, and it’s taking forever. don’t know how long I can pretend to still care about what I’m doing.

PokeJoe
Aug 24, 2004

hail cgatan


a very small horse posted:

hey i mostly lurk but i just doubled my salary at least partially thanks to this thread so thanks

also holy hell i have no idea what i'm doing, gently caress

welcome to the club

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Rex-Goliath posted:

it's from a while ago- sometime mid-last year.

basically the guy had absolutely no idea what he was doing and compensated for it by being a colossal dick to everyone. any time he'd say something stupid and someone politely disagreed with him he'd turn it around to trying to make it seem like the person disagreeing was supremely incompetent for even making the suggestion.

on top of that he was the type of dude who saw trump's 'power' handshake and thought that it seemed like a great idea. one day i walked into my office to find him sitting at my desk with all my stuff all over the ground. i asked him wtf and he said he was told it was cool for him to use my desk. i told him I had to use my desk so he got up and walked away leaving my office a mess.

later that day he came back in and tried to take my keyboard as i was using it claiming that it was his

yeah they fired him

Lol. Sounds like he owned you pretty hard.

HoboMan
Nov 4, 2010

well this morning the ceo announced that we are having a merger. what is a good template for cover letters/resumes? i completely suck at writing them

PokeJoe
Aug 24, 2004

hail cgatan


lol if u haven't been updating the same word document for 15 years

buttchugging adderall
May 7, 2007

COME GET SOME

HoboMan posted:

well this morning the ceo announced that we are having a merger. what is a good template for cover letters/resumes? i completely suck at writing them

last time I did my resume I just googled “Google Docs resume template”, picked one I thought looked ok, changed some margins and colors around, and put in my info. people responded positively to my resume so I guess it worked.

4lokos basilisk
Jul 17, 2008


a very small horse posted:

hey i mostly lurk but i just doubled my salary at least partially thanks to this thread so thanks

also holy hell i have no idea what i'm doing, gently caress

I could have doubled my salary but I chose robotics with pretty clear-cut "this helps people & safety" over finance while still getting a significant salary boost. It's still below what I made 2 years ago, but I have told the startup directly that if I work hard and they are happy with me, I expect my number to go up significatly. I took a huge pay cut in total salary (not take-home) when I came to Japan, where my job did not have any pension plan, health insurance or unemployment insurance. Looking back it's a wonder I lasted that long, I guess I just was not aware of the realities of the deal compared to what the market is.

And loving hell the recruiting in Japan is crazy. The assumption seems to be that you are supposed to provide all your information to the recruiter up to and including proof about your current salary, and they pinkie swear that they are absolutely not never ever going to share it with the prospective employer, and especially definitely not during salary negotiations. When you point out that this practice has been made illegal in a number of places, you get some dumbass babble response that it's a "tradition" and will never lead to the prospective employer lowballing your offer because of the known high moral standards in :japan: or something.

And there's a very real chance I probably would be preparing for my cushy job in finance now if it was not for the above or the recruiter had been in any way reliable. Here are some gems:
1) Fairly early on in the process (which took 3 months and usually takes 6, but I don't know if the recruiter was bullshitting about this) when the recruiter basically said "hey you pretty much got the offer, now it is just jumping through the official hoops", I asked for a description of working conditions, office location, health insurance, pto and I received endless replies how "there's really nothing to describe, it's a standard offer" or "it is a big company, how do you expect someone to know the all the stuff you are asking :rolleyes:" or "trust me, it will be fine". I finally received this information just a couple of days ago.
2) Despite being assured by the recruiter that they had confirmed that I would have some 2-3 days of time to decide on the offer, when I finally had the details and conditions at hand, the company representative was very surprised that I was not going to sign right there and then. The dynamics of the whole 3 month process were basically me going to an interview every other week and answering the same questions maybe 6-7 times, constantly asking the recruiter for a description for working conditions and receiving it only at the final signing meeting. Thanks for making me look bad, recruiter.
3) Most of the process was accompanied by a constant drone of "we are doing everything we can to speed up the process, the company is really interested in having you" coming from the recruiter. Thanks for the good faith I guess, but why not just answer my questions and clear up any doubts. This was mostly responded to with some spiel like "this is a really great deal and good for your career and an unique chance". Last 2 weeks basically.
4) After I finally declined the offer, the recruiter got really irate. They told me that now I would never have the chance of working at that company again, and that my behaviour could leave a mark on me when looking for jobs in this market. This really sealed the deal for me as I was almost mentally preparing myself to walk away from the robotics company. Thanks a lot for the veiled threats I guess.
5) EDIT: Oh yeah did I mention the numerous times the recruiter told me that "it is a bad look to ask questions, this company expects you to join in good faith". Not suspicious at all!

Personally I think the recruiter hosed up by both assuming too much things about me and the company, and not providing any information, and I hope this thing about burning bridges is just another bullshit scare tactic.

Anyways now I can just frame the finance offer on my wall and then work on helping make some robots instead of capitalism.

4lokos basilisk fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Mar 3, 2018

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qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Never use recruiters.

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