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EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

man, this experience is way different from last time I did it, I dunno if it's all changed or just that I'm more senior now, but it's just a loving flood of interviews and tech screens left and right

got a tech screen in a few minutes for one company, a recruiter call this afternoon for another, and a tech screen and an open house with the tech leadership for a 3rd tomorrow. and there's still 2 companies I haven't heard back from yet. I might have to be choosy about some of this poo poo

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Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

Sapozhnik posted:

there's an element of this but you overstate the hell out of your case as usual.

weren't you talking about how domain knowledge is what gets you paid a few weeks back? now you're all mr interpersonal skills. yeah part of that involves talking to non-programmers but part of that also involves knowing what the gently caress you're doing in the subject matter without going to wikipedia every five minutes.

two things can be true

interaction with stakeholders is what justifies keeping jobs on-shore. that is table stakes to be an American with a job. ignore this factor at your peril

all things being equal, specialization and domain knowledge will increase your value.

Sapozhnik posted:

also it's more like any chimp can write a program that mostly works under reasonable input, but people who can write something that doesn't disintegrate the moment somebody wants to change something and whose sole answer to any software maintenance problem isn't just "gently caress it, let's just rewrite this poo poo it sucks anyway" are still somewhat hard to come by.

i am not convinced that writing robust software that is also resilient wrt new change requests is a solved problem

The Leck
Feb 27, 2001

thanks thread for being a sounding board and talking through these interviewing issues that clearly all of us run into in some form or another. most of my friends aren't in the tech world and i'm not exactly going to coworkers for advice about offers from other companies, so it helps a lot to see how other people have handled things and how they've worked out.

jony neuemonic
Nov 13, 2009

my last offer came with a 2-day expiry but their whole process had been fast and it was a solid offer so i didn't really sweat it. i'm not really sure it's :redflag:-worthy unless they're demanding you decide on the spot or won't budge if you ask for more time.

Pryor on Fire
May 14, 2013

they don't know all alien abduction experiences can be explained by people thinking saving private ryan was a documentary

This is quite literally the best time in the history of the United States to be looking for a new job. If you have any inclination to do so start sending out resumes today.

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

jony neuemonic posted:

my last offer came with a 2-day expiry but their whole process had been fast and it was a solid offer so i didn't really sweat it. i'm not really sure it's :redflag:-worthy unless they're demanding you decide on the spot or won't budge if you ask for more time.

expiring offers are a sign they know they've made a lovely offer

they don't want you to have time to consider it, much less a competing offer incoming

jony neuemonic
Nov 13, 2009

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

expiring offers are a sign they know they've made a lovely offer

they don't want you to have time to consider it, much less a competing offer incoming

i mean, i agree in principle. but i had a minimum amount to even consider the offer and they came in well above that (and the local market, from what i can see). maybe i'm just happy the paycut isn't as much as i expected :shrug:

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


My current company offers expire in 24 hours rofl. And yeah they don't pay competitive. I only took the job because I was unemployed, otherwise I would've told them emphatically no.

Shaman Linavi
Apr 3, 2012

Pryor on Fire posted:

This is quite literally the best time in the history of the United States to be looking for a new job. If you have any inclination to do so start sending out resumes today.

yeah i dont know what the gently caress happened but all of a sudden ive been actually having to think about booking interviews and getting responses from people after weeks of nothing
also what is there to do in palo alto besides sit in my hotel room and look at cat photos

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

Shaman Linavi posted:

yeah i dont know what the gently caress happened but all of a sudden ive been actually having to think about booking interviews and getting responses from people after weeks of nothing
also what is there to do in palo alto besides sit in my hotel room and look at cat photos

http://www.computerhistory.org/

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

Shaman Linavi posted:

also what is there to do in palo alto besides sit in my hotel room and look at cat photos
stanford has a rodin collection and a frank lloyd wright house to tour

Ellie Crabcakes
Feb 1, 2008

Stop emailing my boyfriend Gay Crungus

Shaman Linavi posted:

also what is there to do in palo alto besides sit in my hotel room and look at cat photos
https://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=glory+holes&find_loc=Palo+Alto%2C+CA

Shaman Linavi
Apr 3, 2012


looks like the museums will be closed when i'm free so i guess its this, thanks

ADINSX
Sep 9, 2003

Wanna run with my crew huh? Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?


computer history museum fuckin rules you should make time to try and see it

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Senior management is floating the idea again of redirecting developers to do QA because QA is backlogged lol. Can't wait to leave this shithole.

Progressive JPEG
Feb 19, 2003

Shaman Linavi posted:

also what is there to do in palo alto besides sit in my hotel room and look at cat photos

not strictly palo alto but

https://openspace.org/preserves

if i were to pick one i'd say either russian ridge or windy hill

Progressive JPEG
Feb 19, 2003

qhat posted:

Senior management is floating the idea again of redirecting developers to do QA because QA is backlogged lol. Can't wait to leave this shithole.

that'd at least give them some incentive to stop making life hard for QA

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Progressive JPEG posted:

that'd at least give them some incentive to stop making life hard for QA

What you need to understand about this company is the senior management have literally no clue how to manage a software firm and think things like checking binaries into git to manage dependencies and not forcing developers to write unit tests is an acceptable practice in software engineering in 2018, and cannot nay will not be convinced otherwise.

ShadowHawk
Jun 25, 2000

CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

qhat posted:

Senior management is floating the idea again of redirecting developers to do QA because QA is backlogged lol. Can't wait to leave this shithole.

qhat posted:

What you need to understand about this company is the senior management have literally no clue how to manage a software firm and think things like checking binaries into git to manage dependencies and not forcing developers to write unit tests is an acceptable practice in software engineering in 2018, and cannot nay will not be convinced otherwise.
Putting devs in QA sounds a bit like "forcing them to write tests"

HoboMan
Nov 4, 2010

ADINSX posted:

computer history museum fuckin rules you should make time to try and see it

i had a trip to boston a quite a ways back and was super stoked to go to the computer museum. but they had moved everything to the califonia museum and i still haven't stopped crying

fritz
Jul 26, 2003


100% this, we used to go up to monte bello all the time before we got the dog

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


ShadowHawk posted:

Putting devs in QA sounds a bit like "forcing them to write tests"

My team is relentless when writing unit tests, but not because management told us. It's the other teams that don't write tests that are the real issue, and as a result when we need something released we either get in line, or as suggested, QA the software you just wrote hundreds of tests for. So in fact, putting Devs into QA actively discourages unit testing because well you're just going to be doing the QA anyway so why bother. The whole point of QA is to have someone who isn't the actual developer and who actually understands the real world customer's behaviour testing the code.

qhat fucked around with this message at 22:24 on May 16, 2018

EIDE Van Hagar
Dec 8, 2000

Beep Boop

qhat posted:

My team is relentless when writing unit tests, but not because management told us. It's the other teams that don't write tests that are the real issue, and as a result when we need something released we either get in line, or as suggested, QA the software you just wrote hundreds of tests for. So in fact, putting Devs into QA actively discourages unit testing because well you're just going to be doing the QA anyway so why bother.

idk how it works in software but in hardware qa and devs are the same job and same pay scale and move pretty seamlessly between the two on different projects depending on the need and how early it is in the design process. people move from rtl design (dev) roles to verification (qa) as the project matures and workload shifts from design to verification. maybe in software the development load never tapers off like that, idk. that makes everyone try to make life easy for everyone else, in my experience. i mostly do verification but i have done a lot of rtl development as well over the years.

there are a couple strictly rtl people who dont do any oop stuff and a couple verification people who dont know how to write synthesizable rtl but specialization like that tends to hurt you rather than help you because mgmt feels like they cant use you as effectively through the whole project.

EIDE Van Hagar fucked around with this message at 00:35 on May 17, 2018

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


C.H.O.M.E. posted:

idk how it works in software but in hardware qa and devs are the same job and same pay scale and move pretty seamlessly between the two on different projects depending on the need and how early it is in the design process. people move from rtl design (dev) roles to verification (qa) as the project matures and workload shifts from design to verification. maybe in software the development load never tapers off like that, idk. that makes everyone try to make life easy for everyone else, in my experience. i mostly do verification but i have done a lot of rtl development as well over the years.

there are a couple strictly rtl people who dont do any oop stuff and a couple verification people who dont know how to write synthesizable rtl but specialization like that tends to help you rather than hurt you because mgmt feels like they cant use you as effectively through the whole project.

Software isn't like hardware, iterations are much faster and there's never ever a shortage of new work for devs to do. QA don't necessarily have to understand the nitty gritty of the code, but they do need to have an in depth understanding of exactly how the actual customer will be abusing the product, which is not something a dev may have enough exposure to understand. I'm fairly sure it's also not the same pay scale.

prisoner of waffles
May 8, 2007

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

qhat posted:

My team is relentless when writing unit tests, but not because management told us. It's the other teams that don't write tests that are the real issue, and as a result when we need something released we either get in line, or as suggested, QA the software you just wrote hundreds of tests for. So in fact, putting Devs into QA actively discourages unit testing because well you're just going to be doing the QA anyway so why bother. The whole point of QA is to have someone who isn't the actual developer and who actually understands the real world customer's behaviour testing the code.

do I have this right?
# your team is being asked to do QA for a product that you only wrote some of the in-house parts for
# the problems that you are encountering are caused by parts written by a different in-house team; this team does not write tests

because if so it sounds like you can combine "getting your work done" with a satisfying level of passive-aggression if you start writing tests for this other team's code

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


prisoner of waffles posted:

do I have this right?
# your team is being asked to do QA for a product that you only wrote some of the in-house parts for
# the problems that you are encountering are caused by parts written by a different in-house team; this team does not write tests

because if so it sounds like you can combine "getting your work done" with a satisfying level of passive-aggression if you start writing tests for this other team's code

This is basically the same as washing someone else's dirty dishes they've left out and expect them to feel guilty and stop being a lazy rear end in a top hat. The actual thing that happens is they don't give a poo poo and let you do their job for them because that's the easiest thing to do.

TimWinter
Mar 30, 2015

https://timsthebomb.com

qhat posted:

Senior management is floating the idea again of redirecting developers to do QA because QA is backlogged lol. Can't wait to leave this shithole.

Conversely, you find yourself with open QA engineer reqs and a backlogged QA- what's the appropriate course of action?

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


TimWinter posted:

Conversely, you find yourself with open QA engineer reqs and a backlogged QA- what's the appropriate course of action?

Find better more efficient ways of doing and automating QA. We've been trying to push continuous integration for a long time and pretty everyone is on board except the person who actually matters, the software engineering director, who thinks it's just a luxury rather than an essential part of the process. He should also be smacking down teams who don't write unit tests and just submit straight to QA, but he doesn't. Instead, he thinks it's better to increase QA headcount than solve the root cause issues that cause the problems in the first place. This is purely a leadership problem.

Shaman Linavi
Apr 3, 2012

Shaman Linavi posted:


i don't think this company's idea of what the important qualities of a software dev are align with my own
and there were 30 pages of questions like this

quotin to say this company wanted me to take the same test again, but this time i had to be on skype so they could make sure i wasn't cheating (???)

of course i did it because i have less shame than the dudes posting dick pics in their aliexpress underwear reviews

Fiedler
Jun 29, 2002

I, for one, welcome our new mouse overlords.
That poo poo isn't worth it unless they're offering at least 6.75 figgies.

raminasi
Jan 25, 2005

a last drink with no ice

Fiedler posted:

That poo poo isn't worth it unless they're offering at least 6.75 figgies.

this is one of those pieces of job hunting advice that only apply if you're not in urgent need of a paycheck

PokeJoe
Aug 24, 2004

hail cgatan


I'd only bother with that test if I was unemployed.

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


PokeJoe posted:

I'd only bother with that test if I was unemployed.

Space Whale
Nov 6, 2014
Can't un pass on a job can you?

:smith:

Space Whale
Nov 6, 2014
"Sorry, we forgot to realize you told us you're rusty on poo poo you haven't done in years, so bye"

The gently caress

ADINSX
Sep 9, 2003

Wanna run with my crew huh? Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?

Space Whale posted:

"Sorry, we forgot to realize you told us you're rusty on poo poo you haven't done in years, so bye"

The gently caress

Did they make a written offer that you signed and then reneged on that offer? I'd talk to a lawyer if that happened and you wanna do something about it.

Space Whale
Nov 6, 2014

ADINSX posted:

Did they make a written offer that you signed and then reneged on that offer? I'd talk to a lawyer if that happened and you wanna do something about it.

Lol no

Space Whale
Nov 6, 2014
Unemployment won't come back in before I'm going to be evicted. Yay.

Also cth lol

Space Whale
Nov 6, 2014
Trifecta:

The recruiter apologized for the hiring manager having unrealistic expectations while also lowballing.

YA THINK?

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Space Whale
Nov 6, 2014
"Hey datepicker is being stupid, anyone wanna help with playing whack-a-mole with jquery and jqueryUI and datatables?"

"Sorry, you're clearly inexperienced and lack skills with stuff" :q:

I asked if today was my last day and just stood up and left, I had the loving card and key in my back pocket, I even saw this poo poo, but would not have guessed it was "I can't tell rust from inexperience"

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