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Yeah I went the CS degree route and there's certainly stuff I don't exactly use regularly, but that knowledge still informs my thought process and helps a ton in some cases. In hiring, experience and how you do in an interview will almost certainly count for more than your education, but the degree makes getting that initial interview a lot easier. We just hired a guy with no education past high school - but it was super clear he'd built skills through experience and tons of self study. Is there a particular type of computer touching job you want/think you'd be suited for? Oh, and do you have a non-CS degree currently? edit: more specifically, I don't think you'd be very limited by not having a degree after 5 or 10 years in the field, assuming you can learn the stuff yourself. Breaking in will be harder though. Trapick fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Mar 18, 2023 |
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Mar 18, 2023 16:43
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I just want to add that as a non-degree holder I often feel like the dumbest guy in the SA programming threads. That said I still make six figgies so yknow, whatever.
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Mar 18, 2023 17:03
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prom candy posted:I just want to add that as a non-degree holder I often feel like the dumbest guy in the SA programming threads. That said I still make six figgies so yknow, whatever.
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Mar 18, 2023 17:26
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Trapick posted:Is there a particular type of computer touching job you want/think you'd be suited for? Oh, and do you have a non-CS degree currently? Coding is what I enjoy most, so probably webdev if I go the bootcamp route. I think I'll probably have a much more specific career goal if I finish a degree. I don't have a degree currently, which informs my decision a lot.
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Mar 18, 2023 21:07
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There's a compelling case for bootcamps if you already have a degree in another field, but if you're coming from no tertiary qualifications at all then probably getting the degree is the best path forwards. Ultimately a degree signals that you're the sort of person that can commit to something for several years in a row, and push through and finish stuff even when it gets tough. Even if a bootcamp is really tough and tests you on the same things, the only people that are going to know that is the company you're being placed with immediately after the bootcamp, and even they are going to be wondering if it's all talk. You have to work a lot harder to sell yourself than someone that has a degree and can rely on that general positive impression.
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Mar 19, 2023 01:11
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I would actually advocate for getting your bachelor's if you don't have one. My friend doesn't have one and it feels like she is automatically disqualified for a lot of job applications, although she isn't in programming. Maybe you can get lucky and find an entry level job with no degree requirement, although either way it's a lot of extra work going from degree/bootcamp to actually having industry skills. Also if you do a bachelor's it will qualify you for a lot of intern opportunities before you graduate.
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Mar 19, 2023 04:52
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Thankyou for all your help everyone, I appreciate all the advice.
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Mar 19, 2023 08:36
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A degree will help you interview, which is the most important part of having a job.
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Mar 22, 2023 08:31
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IDK if this is the best thread for this, but I'm nominally a code toucher so here it goes I have a friend starting at Grafana, he knows I'm upset with my job (we got acquired, benefits got cut, culture sucks now, etc.) and wants to refer me to something at Grafana. Specifically he thinks I should go for this Senior Technical Writer role, https://boards.greenhouse.io/grafanalabs/jobs/4826598004. My background: I've been writing curriculum at my job for about a year now - I work at one of the big coding bootcamps. Prior to that I was an instructor at the company for three years. I was also a student of that company - joined it after dropping out of a college CS program but feeling like I needed something a bit more concrete, had some experience as a TA in college, and I love(d) teaching. My background doesn't strictly meet the requirements but my friend thinks I can convince people during an interview - I've got a lot of time under my belt explaining code to people and writing about code, and I've also got a fair amount of experience hitting the ground running and having to pick up stuff fairly quickly. Is there anything I can do in the next couple of months to present myself as more appealing for this position, other than the usual tweaking/rewording of the resume? I'm taking over work on a very small open-source project and will be writing up a (small) amount of documentation for that, but I can't think of anything to do to polish my skills otherwise.
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Mar 30, 2023 22:57
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death cob for cutie posted:IDK if this is the best thread for this, but I'm nominally a code toucher so here it goes Are you worried about your resume or actual experience? What do you think you lack? Pretty sure you can set up a local influx db and grafana system and play around with that. You sound like you'd be a good candidate.
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Mar 31, 2023 13:34
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Tell mr. imposter to shut up. You seem like a very strong candidate and being a referral will help you get a foot in the door. The Grafana people are generally really cool too. Spend a bit of time sharpening the listed skills and play around with Grafana, that will help a lot. Maybe you'll get the job maybe you won't but it sounds to me that you're plenty qualified to apply.
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Mar 31, 2023 15:14
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StumblyWumbly posted:Are you worried about your resume or actual experience? What do you think you lack? Pretty sure you can set up a local influx db and grafana system and play around with that. It's mostly "actual experience" - my friend that I've talked to a bunch about the job search process describes me as being in this weird limbo between junior and senior developer. Basically all I've done for years now is teach basic CRUD apps and introductory JavaScript - but I also try to teach students to think ahead with their code, to avoid common pitfalls, to not take weird shortcuts. All the actual developers I've talked to about technical stuff say that I seem to know basic fundamentals/common problems well, that I seem to have good technical instincts; the only thing I'm lacking is actual experience outside of teaching. Right now I'm only applying to places that seem like they're really interesting to work at - I threw my resume at Ganymede for a lark, for example - but I'm starting to feel some discomfort with my job post-acquisition-by-a-company-that-gets-sued-by-state-governments-frequently. It's probably-definitely imposter syndrome, because I've heard stories from friends of devs I know I'm smarter than - my resume is just sparse on the actual development side of things.
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Mar 31, 2023 21:09
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death cob for cutie posted:IDK if this is the best thread for this, but I'm nominally a code toucher so here it goes Definitely look up the state of the technical writing world and use what you can gather to kill it with that project. Check out Write The Docs and join their Slack. People will be happy to chat with you about the field all day long. Code touching is usually a minor part of the work—researching (both the cloistered sort and interviewing SMEs), structuring information, and playing PM Lite typically eat up way more of your time, and I’d expect that someone who radiates confidence in doing those things would interview well for the position you shared. PM me if you’d like to technical writing chat. Source: I’ve been a technical writer for most of the last 13 years. Insanite fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Apr 2, 2023 |
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Apr 2, 2023 15:44
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Hey, apologies if this has been asked one million times. How many, of what type, and how good of portfolio pieces are needed to get a realistic shot at a junior dev job for somebody with minimal formal education? I am looking for a DBA role as the easiest in but would really like to spend my time in backend or full stack. Python, C++, C#, and SQL are my strongest languages, with Python being the one I feel like I can actually write code in. Got a pretty good handle on OOP, but I still have a lot to learn before I'm actually good at anything. My version controlling is admittedly sloppy and inconsistent, but that's an area I'm looking to pay attention to while putting together my portfolio. I guess I'm looking for a goal to target to demonstrate that I could be employable to myself and prospective hires. Is one or two reasonably complex things enough? Is that the wrong way to be thinking about it? Should I learn some Frameworks and demonstrate knowledge in those instead of working in vanilla python etc...?
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Apr 11, 2023 16:13
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I don't maintain a public portfolio so I can't help there, but I can say that if you want a full stack developer role, do not take a DBA role. It's fine if you just want a tech specific job or if you want to be a DBA, but it's a different job and not a meaningful step towards a dev role. If anything, be willing to settle for a not full stack role, like front end development, because then you'll still be getting meaningful experience towards the full stack role you want. You probably won't need to do that though, since the majority of broad tech developer roles are full stack to some extent.
wilderthanmild fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Apr 11, 2023 |
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Apr 11, 2023 16:39
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When I was a junior I had maybe 2-3 projects in my portfolio but I could really speak to them. In hindsight they were pretty janky but I knew what & why I wrote the code that I did, which from a business standpoint is most important. My projects were simple. For example I did the MDN tutorial for Django and modified it into a personal blog, or built a script to read from a table, analyze the data and send an email. If it's up your alley, doing MDN tutorials and creating something new from them would take you pretty far. Ive met lots of juniors who don't know why they do anything, so if you can show you can make something work and understand how you're doing pretty well.
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Apr 11, 2023 17:05
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The less formal education/certification/bootcamp you have the better your portfolio needs to be. Basically if you have a degree then I know "This university says you know what you're talking about", if you have a bootcamp cert then "This organization is vouching for you." If you have neither than you need that much more to show to convince me you're qualified. Typically, I like to see 1 polished, maybe not super exciting but fully baked, project. Something that tells me you can start and finish something, that it's deployed and works, reasonably tested, and you can demo it with confidence it won't catch on fire. Then I like to see something that is maybe a stretch. Machine Learning is good for this. Something that maybe doesn't work perfectly or is fully tested but shows that you can stretch and work on something that maybe goes a bit beyond your skill. Basically, show me you can learn new things if given a chance. For someone totally self taught I'd probably also like to see a couple other projects just to know you aren't just copying your friends projects and learning enough words to fool me. So don't be afraid to have a bunch of "I was messing around with Mongo" or whatever projects you can kinda just point to but maybe not dive into. Some experience with frameworks is a big plus. I also echo the idea of you should have a target. A full-stack dev and a DBA are two very different jobs. Pick one. Maybe if you shared your long term goal we could give advice on some junior level places to try to aim for.
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Apr 12, 2023 19:39
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There's probably close to zero interview overlap between a DBA and really any role at that company, if your "in" there is a DBA role I'd focus on what's required to get that role
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Apr 12, 2023 20:13
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Lockback posted:The less formal education/certification/bootcamp you have the better your portfolio needs to be. Basically if you have a degree then I know "This university says you know what you're talking about", if you have a bootcamp cert then "This organization is vouching for you." If you have neither than you need that much more to show to convince me you're qualified. I wonder which is a more common perspective among those hiring. Edit: I tried to search for the thing I remembered here, and couldn't reasonably find it. Maybe I just misread someone saying "a bootcamp means you need to do less than someone with nothing" as "a bootcamp means you need to do less than someone with a CS bachelors" or something. dirby fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Apr 15, 2023 |
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Apr 13, 2023 18:52
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Flea Bargain posted:I'm mid-30s and I've just started my bachelors of Computer Science. My goal is basically to be a wfh computer toucher earning 6 figs, my question is basically whether I should invest 3 years into a Computer Science degree with all the costs involved (loans in Australia are only paid back once you're earning over a certain amount) but the time is obviously very valuable, or should I do a bootcamp and start applying for jobs right away. Would a CS degree open doors for me that experience wouldn't at say, 5 years into the bootcamp pathway vs the 3+2 of the CS path? I don't have a degree already. Is there a cap on income without a CS degree? I've asked this in the careers thread, and it was suggested I ask in yospos but I couldn't find an appropriate thread. Missed this way back, and it looks like you already got lots of good advice, but I went back to uni to study CS in my early-to-mid-30s (graduated in 2019), in Australia no less, and now work in the industry. Happy to answer any questions here or via PM if it’s helpful. The calculus is definitely different with HECS-HELP.
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Apr 17, 2023 17:24
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dirby posted:I wonder which is a more common perspective among those hiring. I don't think there's necessarily a "common" perspective, from what I've seen/heard (I teach at a bootcamp and talk to the people who try to help our grads find jobs) - there are some companies who won't even look at someone without a CS degree (their mistake IMO, I know an amazing amount of dipshit CS students - part of why I dropped out) like the bootcamp I work at does breadth over depth; this isn't a bad thing, but a project that gets into the weeds on something novel/difficult/interesting/applicable is important for demonstrating that you know stuff that you weren't explicitly taught to talk at the person who got this started Justa Dandelion posted:Hey, apologies if this has been asked one million times. How many, of what type, and how good of portfolio pieces are needed to get a realistic shot at a junior dev job for somebody with minimal formal education? if you wanna do full-stack, and speaking as a Python person: learn Django, learn how to staple React or Vue or whatever to it. learn how Django's ORM interacts with the database, learn the interesting things you can do with it, learn about Django's built-in auth/admin stuff. (if you'd rather do C# do the same but with ASP.NET I guess) anyone who can write code reasonably well can pick up a framework like Django or Flask or ASP.NET or w/e in like, a week. I teach people who couldn't write a line of JavaScript a month ago the basics of Flask in like three days. but I wouldn't want to work with any of them that only had that entry-level knowledge. demonstrate that you can pick up stuff independently, read documentation, synthesize information - go from "I followed a tutorial and made X" to "from basic principles I synthesized X, Y and Z into something new, and I can talk about problems I encountered/solved along the way"
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Apr 17, 2023 21:16
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Flask is kind of nice for a true microservice. As soon as you start bolting on users and auth and especially an ORM you might as well just have started with django I really, really like this Django tutorial, it walks you through building a blog with editing options: https://tutorial.djangogirls.org/en/ it should take you about 2-6 hours to complete depending on your familiarity with various parts of the computer/filesystem/language
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Apr 17, 2023 21:25
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Thanks for the advice all.a dingus posted:If it's up your alley, doing MDN tutorials and creating something new from them would take you pretty far. Ive met lots of juniors who don't know why they do anything, so if you can show you can make something work and understand how you're doing pretty well. What's mdn? Edit: It sounds like knowledge wise I might be closer than I thought. The last couple things I've been playing with are all written with no help beyond asking general questions from friends and googling syntax when needed. One project is a procgen text adventure game playing with some ideas that emily short brought to the field (suits as a metaphor for narrative cohesion). Currently you can move from scene to scene in two dimensions and see a bunch of elm trees. Not much else but the thing is structured well i think. The other is a database version of the flavor Bible with shelf life as an additional value, the idea there is to prompt the user with what food will go to waste first and provide a way for them to identify compatible flavors that they have in the kitchen (or what to buy from the store to have good flavor companions), therefore encourage exploration and free play in the kitchen. A big issue I am running into is a lack of time. I open restaurants for a living and it's consistent 60 hour weeks plus thinking about it all the time and getting calls from 7am-3am every day. Doesn't leave a lot of time for personal pursuits. Justa Dandelion fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Apr 23, 2023 |
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Apr 23, 2023 01:36
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Justa Dandelion posted:Thanks for the advice all. mozilla's documentation site that is usually a good first option when looking something up (outside of stack overflow). people usually recommend skipping over w3schools.com search results in favor of mdn because the former is sometimes incorrect or outdated. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/
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Apr 23, 2023 04:24
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Oh that website is rad as hell. Going to make use of that, thank you.
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Apr 23, 2023 20:06
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Justa Dandelion posted:Oh that website is rad as hell. Going to make use of that, thank you. oh believe me you will
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Apr 24, 2023 00:48
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In my search for a new software developer job, sometimes I get little bits of async electronic homework from potential positions. These are not live coding exercises or interviews; these are websites where you do code and it records you while they are not online. Sometimes they are before you've spoken to anyone, sometimes it's only after speaking to someone non-technical like a recruiter. I've gotten two over the last few weeks that have been between 90 minutes and 2 hours long. Before now, my policy has been: I am willing to give away up to 1 hour my own time for free without them also spending time or money. If they want to have a live interview session that lasts 2 hours, that's fine since they are committing the paid time of their employees. If they want more time and are not also willing to commit their own manhours, gently caress them. It really seems like a sign of disrespect to start out on that foot. Besides, I've been a dev for over 6 years so I can do your little loving coding exercise. That's besides the fact that, depending on which vendor they're using, they are sometimes extremely annoying and fiddly as compared to working in a real IDE. Am I being unreasonable here?
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Apr 26, 2023 19:54
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I have a 100% job placement success rate with take home assignments, only about 25% with whiteboard Yeah it's a tremendous pain in the rear end but for whatever reason it's excruciating to watch me code, so I prefer the take home even if it's a 2 or even 3 hour project
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Apr 26, 2023 20:38
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Hadlock posted:I have a 100% job placement success rate with take home assignments, only about 25% with whiteboard I've never passed a whiteboard interview. I have dysgraphia. The places I've interviewed will bring out a computer and try to accommodate and I don't make it through the interview for whatever reason. This makes me very accommodating of long take home exercises.
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Apr 26, 2023 21:35
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Magnetic North posted:In my search for a new software developer job, sometimes I get little bits of async electronic homework from potential positions. These are not live coding exercises or interviews; these are websites where you do code and it records you while they are not online. Sometimes they are before you've spoken to anyone, sometimes it's only after speaking to someone non-technical like a recruiter. I've gotten two over the last few weeks that have been between 90 minutes and 2 hours long. i've gotten to the point where i've even stopped doing take-homes over 1 hour. The final straw was when codesandbox made me implement VSCode's side panel from scratch with search, styling, and query highlighting, after i was done and got it fully functional, they didn't even flatter me with a follow-up discussion. It was like a 3-4 hour project. i'd stick to your 1 hour rule regardless of whiteboard or take-home because it's never worth it. gently caress everything about code challenges that aren't basic "hey we just need to check if you're lying about knowing the basics about the language." my current job had me do a couple state updates in React and called it a day and wouldn't you know it i'm extremely happy with the culture here. edit: talking about this thing 
teen phone cutie fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Apr 26, 2023 |
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Apr 26, 2023 23:17
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teen phone cutie posted:after i was done and got it fully functional, they didn't even flatter me with a follow-up discussion. It was like a 3-4 hour project. Yeah I should say, when I was looking last time, I got an 8 hour homework after the 2nd level interview. The assignment didn't look like free work; it was completely alien to their business model, so I didn't suspect foul play. It took about 6 hours. I sent it to them and they (through the non-technical recruiter) said "doesn't work." So I looked at it, said "it runs on my machine" and surmised what I thought the problem was. They said "that's not it" and I looked again and finally discovered it was a Git feature I never heard of that was causing the issue. I only learned it after re-pulling the repo. So I told them about it and never heard back. That experience is why I have that policy now.
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Apr 26, 2023 23:46
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teen phone cutie posted:implement VSCode's side panel from scratch with search, styling, and query highlighting, after i was done and got it fully functional, they didn't even flatter me with a follow-up discussion. It was like a 3-4 hour project. Name and shame, my good dude
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Apr 26, 2023 23:56
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Hadlock posted:Name and shame, my good dude no i mean like codesandbox the company - not what they made me code it in lol. it was actually them
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Apr 27, 2023 00:28
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teen phone cutie posted:no i mean like codesandbox the company - not what they made me code it in lol. it was actually them lol, also: thanks
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Apr 27, 2023 02:05
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I was in an ops role at a brokerage and was recently laid off. the severance is insane, if you can get laid off I’d definitely recommend it. we got bought out by an enormous bank and I made my own position redundant. that role was mostly business intelligence, procedure writing, meeting with Tech and Compliance and Legal to have requirements communicated to me and vice versa. after the merger day 1 looking at old practices, looking at new requirements, making the two meet where I could, and communicating the requirements and resources needed where I couldn’t. Where I think I’d like to be is data. Finance tech, specifically finance data & analysis seems like it has insane growth potential. I have a third interview next week for a Data Operations role that sounds like it’ll be a lot more technical and I’m a little terrified. I did work with large datasets in a variety of different settings but usually nothing more complicated than using built-in filters to Tableau or Kibana. Coding wise at my old job I did a few SQL queries, troubleshot and updated a few ancient macros that our business unit was enslaved to, and the big thing is I “developed”( had my name on) a couple of automation robots using RPA, which uses a VB.net framework. I put SQL, VBA and vb.net on my resume and poking through the threads here made me realize I’m a complete fraud!! The SQL thread is completely incomprehensible to me. I thought basically all there was to SQL was SELECTing the poo poo you want. The VB.net stuff I can’t do without the RPA graphical framework and got a ton of help on. The Excel stuff I can usually get through with googling or asking a friend. Every time someone has come to me at work with a SQL problem it’s been about a five to thirty minute solve because all they want to do is pull workflows with a couple parameters. I have been throwing myself full speed at online refreshers for coding, I just want to be able to not sound like a dumbass in the interview. How can I strike a balance between putting my best foot forward and not getting fired in 2 months because I overrepresented my knowledge? For what it’s worth, coding technical skills are the last thing on the listing and they’re “preferred.” Top of the list is understanding capital markets and financial instruments with a bunch of soft skills in the middle, so maybe I’m overthinking.
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May 28, 2023 19:36
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Ghislaine of YOSPOS posted:I have been throwing myself full speed at online refreshers for coding, I just want to be able to not sound like a dumbass in the interview. How can I strike a balance between putting my best foot forward and not getting fired in 2 months because I overrepresented my knowledge? First thing do not worry about this. If a company hires you and this happens, that means their interview process is broken. It is in the best interest of every candidate to sell themselves and represent themselves in the best way possible to a potential employer and any company that's not run by idiots knows this. It's their job to figure out if you're lying or overselling. In regards to your question, I would say: 1. Read the job description and make sure you actually fit every requirement. 2. If you're not confident about it, ask a person in the industry to review your resumé and confirm that you actually fit the requirements. 3. If you can't find anybody to do that, then lie and fool someone into interviewing you. You'll find out that you don't meet the requirements otherwise that's on them. 4. If you don't fit the requirements, study and practice until you do. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 12:06 on May 29, 2023 |
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May 29, 2023 12:01
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I have the smallest disagreement with the above advice. Don’t worry about fitting every requirement. The requirement list is often more of a wishlist for a perfect candidate than a list of minimum requirements, and it’s often written by HR. If you meet many of the requirements, go for it. If you get to a phone call from an internal recruiter or even from HR, you can bring up your concerns then about your suitability. They will probably do the phone call equivalent of hand-waving away your concerns. Don’t prematurely disqualify yourself.
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May 29, 2023 18:12
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As a general rule, requirements near the top of the list are more important than the ones listed later on. If you match the first three or four, it's probably worth applying. If you don't have the first, save your time.
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May 29, 2023 19:08
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Alright, I don't know where else to ask this. Little brother is going off to college, needs a laptop. Intended major is data science. Are there are industry tools, and are they going to be single-threaded, multi-threaded, or GPU-intensive? Or is it coding your own to make sense of the giant data sets? The more RAM the better? The more cache the better? I assume CUDA is everywhere in curriculum, I've seen what Nvidia does to invest in education. SwissArmyDruid fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Aug 3, 2023 |
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Aug 3, 2023 14:55
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SwissArmyDruid posted:Alright, I don't know where else to ask this. More RAM is better. GPU with a bunch of ram and execution cores is good. They'll probably be able to remote in to a computer lab and not really need to worry too much about it.
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