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Jaded Burnout posted:As you've discovered a long chat is usually a bad sign, because it means they're on the fence about you, whereas a short chat can either be very good or very bad. Long chat could also be the result of the interview process (though not usually, but I've seen processes in the wild with some purposefully long interviews designed to catch out somebody who is embellishing). Did they say how long the interview would be going in?
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Mar 28, 2018 20:30
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BurntCornMuffin posted:Long chat could also be the result of the interview process (though not usually, but I've seen processes in the wild with some purposefully long interviews designed to catch out somebody who is embellishing). Did they say how long the interview would be going in? Not really but I am a bit wordy myself so that always contributes to overruns.
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Mar 28, 2018 21:12
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Last week a recruiter send my resume to a client and today I was, out of all the candidates, one of two who were invited. So I looked at the role in detail and to be honest, I have no idea why I was invited other than: The others were a worse match. It would be Sr Java / fullstack developer on a backend application for ATM's. Now I am very stressed out thanks to my impostor syndrome. And of course that I know that poo poo only in passing. Another role I am running for is that of Jr/Med java dev at a govt, low stress and super short commute (15 mins by bicycle) but for a rate 20% below my usual. I consider it a good way to gain some additional experience. Either way, let's brush up on Javascript, Angular and React, now for real.
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Mar 29, 2018 17:53
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I talked to a startup guy today about potentially being Employee #1. What's the typical % of company lottery tickets for that these days?
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Apr 2, 2018 22:08
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fantastic in plastic posted:I talked to a startup guy today about potentially being Employee #1. What's the typical % of company lottery tickets for that these days? It depends quite a bit on pay, industry, location, fundraising. One of my previous jobs (I was non-founder employee #3) had a standardized offer with a sliding equity/pay scale you could choose from -- it was something like 90k/6% through 140k/0.5%. I would be wary of anything really far off that scale.
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Apr 2, 2018 22:53
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fantastic in plastic posted:I talked to a startup guy today about potentially being Employee #1. What's the typical % of company lottery tickets for that these days? The first hired team usually gets 10-15%. Eric Ries' The Lean Startup has a chapter on typical distributions that you should definitely read if you're in that situation. I was hired as Employee #1 and negotiated for 2.5 points. I was laid off before I hit the 1 year cliff. So ask about "runway" too.
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Apr 2, 2018 23:07
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JawnV6 posted:The first hired team usually gets 10-15%. Eric Ries' The Lean Startup has a chapter on typical distributions that you should definitely read if you're in that situation. Also Slicing Pie is another good book that talks about this. https://slicingpie.com/book/
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Apr 2, 2018 23:50
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Keetron posted:Last week a recruiter send my resume to a client and today I was, out of all the candidates, one of two who were invited. I hope you do well on your interviews! I'm the type to get stressed out as well, so it's good to have a bit of company. Job hunting has been nerve wracking and I'm just at the phone screen stage.
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Apr 6, 2018 04:21
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Tezzeract posted:I hope you do well on your interviews! Well, I did ok but got rejected for a lack of experience. However, on the same day I had a phone interview I aced and I will be brought in for an in-person to see the team match. This was at a place I been at before but again I lacked experience on some aspects, they forwarded my resume to another team as they were impressed with how I did the things I did know about. Then that same day... (Wednesday was insane for having three interviews), I had an interview at a place I worked at before but left because the lack of teamspirit and other shenanigans removed my will to live. This is a different unit and they had some questions about team fit and how to prevent me from running off again, the tech part was apparently covered already as we talked next to nothing about it. Currently I am waiting to hear a response and I think they will do me an offer I can refuse because the Monday interview should be easy: just act the nicest, most likable I can muster. This place is rather nice because: - I have a background in QA and after doing automation and light development, I want to do full-time development in a place that has no or very few dedicated testers - Initially interviewed for a java backend dev role, lack experience - Forwarded to group that looks to elevate the QA automation to the next level, I am a perfect fit - Only for the part where I said: I want to do more development outside my comfort zone - The response was basically: how about we make it a hybrid role, 2/3rd automation and QA and 1/3rd backend dev on simple stories to prove your worth - Me: when can I start? - Me later to the recruiter: for the QA role I am asking full rate, no discount, as I bring in 15 years of experience. So fingers crossed all will work out.
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Apr 6, 2018 08:00
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I am in my first SE job. It is a medium sized company, and a very good one. My colleagues are bright, friendly and helpful. In spite of these things, I wonder if this is a good line of work for me.
B. I doubt the value of what I produce, and the value of the product, and the value of most software products. I would feel more valuable as part of the IT department delivering video cables and RAM around the building. I am at a "low ebb", and fantasise about some whiz-bang-exciting engineering niche that is a perfect mix of variety, technical work and physicality (or just movement). The obvious right answer is to develop a life outside of work (currently 404), but I throw this post out there because a) I like a good whine and b) I am interested in hearing about direction changes of career programmers/engineers (to any job, not just STEM), and the outcomes.
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Apr 6, 2018 21:09
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toadoftoadhall posted:
If you can handle fizzbuzz, you're a better SE than 90% of the "software engineers" out there. Double so if somebody says "fizzbuzz without loops" and you can come up with a different approach immediately. With the rest, it sounds like you might be better off at a small company (like, real small, 10-15 people) where you can actively see the effects of stuff you work on with a project that deploys to end users regularly.
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Apr 6, 2018 21:15
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Impostor syndrome is super common in software. Probably it is super-common in just about every "skilled trade". You said you're in your first job in this domain; it's no surprise that you're less experienced, but that will best be fixed by time, not by study. In particular, maintaining a good work/life balance and a good level of stress about work is really very important. Even if you have things you do outside of work, if you're constantly redlining it while you're at work, you're going to run into problems. This is something that you need to figure out for yourself. Some people are able to come in, sit down at their desks, and just work and work and work until it's time for lunch / to go home. But they're the exception, not the rule, and there's no point trying to imitate them if your brain doesn't work that way. You should try to experiment and figure out what a sustainable pace is for you personally. Monotony and concerns about the value of what you're working on have more to do with the specifics of the work you're doing, and again, with what you personally find motivating. But e.g. many people would find it demotivating if their job consisted of making minor tweaks to a giant pile of legacy code, especially if the surrounding process was especially burdensome (lots of meetings, work tracking, restrictive toolkits, unpopular languages, etc.). It sounds like you want to work closer to the hardware. Firmware jobs do exist. They're a bit more rare than pure-software jobs, but nothing says you can't transition in that direction. If you haven't already, I'd advise playing around with Arduinos or similar to get vague feel for what that kind of work can be like -- heavily resource-constrained but very direct control over exactly what happens at any given moment.
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Apr 6, 2018 21:22
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Roadie posted:Double so if somebody says "fizzbuzz without loops" and you can come up with a different approach immediately. (0 to 100).foreach(i => if(i % 3 == 0) System.out.print("Fizz")) ..etc like this?  Can't believe i typed this on the pooper. Also, I still refuse to believe people are too dumb to code a vanilla FizzBuzz question, to be honest. I whizzed through a bunch of paper coding in the past ~3 weeks and the first thing that somewhat tripped me up as printing all variations that nodes could have been added to a BST. You can change A, and in the right environment, you will do so at a decent pace where you should get a level of fulfillment from learning things. Though I'm not sure you're interested in this? Good Will Hrunting fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Apr 6, 2018 |
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Apr 6, 2018 21:42
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Does foreach not count as a loop?
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Apr 6, 2018 21:47
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toadoftoadhall posted:I doubt the value of what I produce, and the value of the product, and the value of most software products.
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Apr 6, 2018 21:48
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toadoftoadhall posted:A. The consequence of this is that I am regularly at my desk for >10 hours, working or staying late to plug a knowledge-gap identified earlier in the day. I do the same on weekends, and feel that if I'm not studying, I'm slipping. My take on this has always been “if you want me to do something I don’t know, you’re paying me to learn it”. They hired you, they should know what you know and what you don’t, it’s their fault if they hired a front end developer to build recursive neural networks. It’s your first job, they should be supporting you, not whip cracking and expecting you to be a magical greybeard. You just have to be upfront about it in any planning sessions. “This might take me longer than the 2 weeks allocated because I know nothing about quantum diffusement. “ Horse Clocks fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Apr 6, 2018 |
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Apr 6, 2018 21:58
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The Fool posted:Does foreach not count as a loop? I was just kidding because a novice might be like "yeah it's not a loop its a method!" but you're right. DOes this count (0 to 100).map(i => ((i % 3 == 0), (i % 5 == 0))).map{j => j match { case (true, false) => System.out.print("Fizz") case (false, true) => System.out.print("Buzz") case (false, false) => System.out.print("FizzBuzz") case _ => } }
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Apr 6, 2018 22:04
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Please not Fizzbuzz again, please.
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Apr 6, 2018 22:08
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toadoftoadhall posted:A. I am not a good SE Welcome to software development, you'll get used to it. toadoftoadhall posted:B. I doubt the value of what I produce Welcome to software development, you'll get used to it. toadoftoadhall posted:C. It is monotonous Welcome to.. no actually this one isn't universally true. Either you're in the wrong job or the wrong profession. Vast amounts of software development (and work in general) is intended to sell things, and make someone (not you) money. No matter how energised and amazing the company is, if you keep asking "why" you're doing what you do the ultimate answer is always "to make money". That's capitalism. The only option is to get lucky and find some pocket of public sector that isn't soul crushing, or accept that's the way it is and line your nest. Jaded Burnout fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Apr 6, 2018 |
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Apr 6, 2018 22:12
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toadoftoadhall posted:
 quote:A. The consequence of this is that I am regularly at my desk for >10 hours, working or staying late to plug a knowledge-gap identified earlier in the day. I do the same on weekends, and feel that if I'm not studying, I'm slipping. quote:B. I doubt the value of what I produce, and the value of the product, and the value of most software products. I would feel more valuable as part of the IT department delivering video cables and RAM around the building. quote:The obvious right answer is to develop a life outside of work (currently 404)
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Apr 6, 2018 22:26
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The Fool posted:Does foreach not count as a loop? For purposes of my example? Nah. The point was having the awareness of different language constructs that do basically the same thing but have different optimal circumstances for use. But even if it did there's other simple similar ways: JavaScript code:Star War Sex Parrot posted:Please not Fizzbuzz again, please. ALL HAIL FIZZBUZZ Roadie fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Apr 7, 2018 |
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Apr 6, 2018 22:28
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The Fizz is good. The Buzz is evil.
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Apr 6, 2018 22:35
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toadoftoadhall posted:I am in my first SE job. It is a medium sized company, and a very good one. My colleagues are bright, friendly and helpful. In spite of these things, I wonder if this is a good line of work for me. A. It doesn't matter what you "ARE". Just like software, people are in constant change. What matters is whether you are GETTING BETTER. Compare yourself not to other people, but to yourself 3 months earlier. It seems like you are working hard at learning and getting better, so I wouldn't worry. B. That's a bigger topic with no simple recommendation. Believing that what you do is useful and what people (or at least the guy writing the check) wants is pretty important. Perhaps there's some way you could talk more to end users or the customer for a better picture of what they want or have trouble with, so you know you're on the right track? Ultimately nobody wants to pay for useless work and would prefer your contribution to be useful, so perhaps there's something to be done about it. Can't think of anything in the niche you're describing, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
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Apr 6, 2018 22:37
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How long have you been at this job? I would fully expect even a fairly seasoned developer to be pretty useless for at least a month as they get up to speed in a new environment. I mean, seasoned developers will be able to contribute to design discussions and similar since that stuff doesn't really depend on the specifics of your work environment, but their development velocity and code quality is going to suffer until they get some familiarity with how things are run. A junior developer is going to have even more trouble, and any company that expects said junior dev to be contributing as well as their peers do right off the block is a delusional company.
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Apr 6, 2018 22:42
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Keetron posted:
Ok, this is a rollercoaster. While on my way to the interview for the job I would really want, I got a callback from the other job that they would like me to start next week. I told them honestly that I was on my way to another interview and I was not going to cancel that last minute, would call them back later in the day. Feels like I aced the interviews but now they take all day to tell me I got the job, it is 7pm here now and seems it will be tomorrow morning. Feels like stressing out over nothing, but I hate dissapointing people if I pick the one that I like best myself. Also I do not want to cancel A in case B decides not to go forward. Time for another glass of wine. edit: I want the job that did not call back yet.
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Apr 9, 2018 18:14
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I'm always leery of those "can you start next week" things. One super-common negotiation tactic is to put time pressure on people, which encourages them to make decisions before they can get all the data they need to make a good decision. You should not be afraid to say "sorry, I'm not ready to make a decision yet, can you wait 1-2 weeks while I wait to hear back from other places I'm interviewing at?" If they say no, then you know that they're either practicing scummy business practices, or they're actually in a situation where (they think) a 1-2 week delay in getting a new person onboard makes a big difference; either way you don't want to work there.
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Apr 9, 2018 18:26
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This is contracting / temp work, so the rules are a bit different. For a perm position I completely agree with you and either way, a few hours or days won't hurt anyone. Considering most of my commitments are not more than 3 months, sometimes 6, waiting two weeks damages my bottom line. So I told the place I really want to work that I need to know tomorrow before lunch because I do not want to keep anyone waiting. At the same time, I told the place that offered me to tentatively start onboarding which will take up to a week. Either way, I'll be working next week.
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Apr 9, 2018 19:12
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I'm always leery of those "can you start next week" things. One super-common negotiation tactic is to put time pressure on people, which encourages them to make decisions before they can get all the data they need to make a good decision. You should not be afraid to say "sorry, I'm not ready to make a decision yet, can you wait 1-2 weeks while I wait to hear back from other places I'm interviewing at?" If they say no, then you know that they're either practicing scummy business practices, or they're actually in a situation where (they think) a 1-2 week delay in getting a new person onboard makes a big difference; either way you don't want to work there. offers with an expiry are totally normal and reasonable. i agree that 'this offer expires in 48 hours' is just a lovely pressure tactic and a negative signal but asking for an answer within ~7 or more days is fine. a lot of smaller places don't have the resources to have multiple offers outstanding at the same time and they need to get a yes or no answer so they can move on from a 'no' before their other candidates find other jobs
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Apr 9, 2018 21:19
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Eventually the second option did not lead to an offer so I told the first I am thrilled to start at their place. Not having to pick one is so much better.
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Apr 10, 2018 11:57
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I'm starting a small-mid size project and have been given the option to choose the language. We're going to be doing loads of external HTTP requests. Obviously many good options but in terms of career and sanity, what would everybody choose? We're currently using C#.
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Apr 10, 2018 14:16
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What are you doing with the responses? I just wrote a small app (like 50 lines) to do the same in Scala to replay web traffic logs to our staging API and it took like, under a day to get it running super effectively with AsyncHttpClient library.
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Apr 10, 2018 14:19
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Good Will Hrunting posted:What are you doing with the responses? I just wrote a small app (like 50 lines) to do the same in Scala to replay web traffic logs to our staging API and it took like, under a day to get it running super effectively with AsyncHttpClient library. I'm not sure Scala is a good pick for career or sanity. SBT is some kind of hellspawn. strange posted:I'm starting a small-mid size project and have been given the option to choose the language. We're going to be doing loads of external HTTP requests. Obviously many good options but in terms of career and sanity, what would everybody choose? We're currently using C#. Are the requests incoming or outgoing? Is your shop all .Net? Would deviating from the main way your team does things be bad for future maintenance or if you're sick and someone needs to cover you? C# is a pretty good language, especially with async/await type stuff baked in, and if you're already running the .Net stack for hosting etc, you may as well stick with it.
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Apr 10, 2018 14:44
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strange posted:I'm starting a small-mid size project and have been given the option to choose the language. We're going to be doing loads of external HTTP requests. Obviously many good options but in terms of career and sanity, what would everybody choose? We're currently using C#. I'd choose Go because its concurrency system makes doing lots of outgoing HTTP requests easy and because I like programming against interfaces
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Apr 10, 2018 15:39
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strange posted:I'm starting a small-mid size project and have been given the option to choose the language. We're going to be doing loads of external HTTP requests. Obviously many good options but in terms of career and sanity, what would everybody choose? We're currently using C#. The first consideration should be "Who will maintain this 10 years form now when it has grown into a huge monster?. Is it reasonable for me to ask a .NET shop to learn a different language/technology?" The answer may be yes ... or not. The answer can also be " I don't give a poo poo". But if you like your coworkers and/or your place of work don't put unnecessary maintenance burden of them if you don't need to. And this kind of project sounds like it can be done in any language. Now, if you know that the team/company is looking to move to language X (go?) in the future, it may be a valuable learning experience for everyone to see how does the language perform and this would then be the perfect project to test it. Otherwise, stick with what everyone does and knows.
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Apr 10, 2018 15:55
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The obvious answer here is to use Node.js because it's the only solution we can say, with certainty, will be around in 10, 20, hell even 40 years. Looking at C# holy poo poo, is this a baked in Async HTTP client???
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Apr 10, 2018 16:04
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Good Will Hrunting posted:The obvious answer here is to use Node.js because it's the only solution we can say, with certainty, will be around in 10, 20, hell even 40 years. Looking at C# holy poo poo, is this a baked in Async HTTP client??? .Net's oldest HTTP client*, HttpWebRequest, has had async methods for a long time, but they used callbacks. HttpClient is just a thin wrapper. Actually, pretty much all of the IO libraries have had similar async interfaces for a long time, too, IIRC. *yes, there are several 
Munkeymon fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Apr 10, 2018 |
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Apr 10, 2018 16:23
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strange posted:I'm starting a small-mid size project and have been given the option to choose the language. We're going to be doing loads of external HTTP requests. Obviously many good options but in terms of career and sanity, what would everybody choose? We're currently using C#. What sort of user interface does it have? Anything where you want a strong ecosystem for libraries? Any techs other than HTTP you're looking at tightly interfacing with? Those would be my primary concerns otherwise you've not said anything so far that would make me give a poo poo about what language it was in, tech-wise. Most everything can do HTTP pretty robustly, it's not something like rabbitmq or kafka where the underlying tech is written in a certain language and thus informs the amount of support you get with client languages.
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Apr 10, 2018 17:07
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Unless there's a really compelling reason to do otherwise, use the language(s) that are in common use in your company already. You don't want to be in the situation of "this was written by this one guy in some weird rando language that nobody else understands, so when he left nobody can maintain it any more." I mean, maybe you do, because job security, but that's a lovely way to behave.
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Apr 10, 2018 20:50
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What about if the currently common language is Groovy and the current framework varies between versions of Grails 2.x and 3.x?
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Apr 10, 2018 20:57
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I mean, maybe you do, because job security, but that's a lovely way to behave. Is there anyone whose life is so bereft of contempt they'd seek this out? Can't imagine.
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Apr 10, 2018 21:11
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