|
Hello, thread. I'm a soon to be graduating (I'll be done with school in mid-December) Computer Science major and have a couple general questions about how I should go about my next couple of months. Thankfully I've had a decent amount of programming experience outside of classwork, so I hope that will help bolster my resume since my GPA hasn't been the best (roughly 2.7 GPA). This last semester is simply tying up some loose Upper-Division General Ed. classes so no CS classes or anything strenuous. As such, I have been looking into starting to get interviews and job offers so I can have something lined up for when I graduate. Thankfully I live very close to the Bay Area so I hope I don't have too much trouble finding a decent job. First, I'l like to maybe get a little feedback on my resume. I put it up on Dice.com and have had a lot of responses from both recruiters and companies, but I was just wondering if there was anything I could do to make it better. Also, as you can tell from my resume my most important work experience was doing mobile development for both Android and iOS. Since I've been split between both platforms I feel like a bit of a 'jack of all trades, master of none'. Most of the responses I've gotten from my resume have been mobile development jobs. I enjoy the work enough and had a lot of fun developing mobile games during college, but I'm worried that if I get hired or interviewed to make a mobile app I either 1) Won't know as much as I thought I knew or 2)Be pigeon-holed into only doing mobile work for the majority of my career, which I'm not sure I want to do. I get the feeling that if I want to get a job outside of mobile dev, I'm going to have to start applying directly to companies in the Bay Area instead of poring over job boards. Does anyone have a decent resource for tech companies that may be hiring other than on websites like Dice or Indeed, or should I just try to google around and see what companies I find? My final issue is actually getting interviews. I've talked to multiple companies over the phone and spoke to many recruiters but not being available until December seems to be a big hurdle getting past the initial stage. I understand that hoping a company holds a position for me for ~4 months may be a stretch, but I still would like to be interviewing right now to make sure I'm more comfortable with the process once November and December roll around and actually hiring me soon is a possibility. Is this too early to be looking so hard for a job opportunity?
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2012 20:39
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:54 |
|
|
Sab669 posted:Resume advice Thanks for the tips - I feel like I've read over my resume 100 times the last week or two but some things still slipped through. I understand about the objective concerns, if I directly email a company I have another resume without that section since I write a CV but I figured for posting my resume publicly on a job board it's not too bad since I can't really write a cover letter for that. seiken posted:Can you link to some of the things you've worked on from the resume? Seems a little weird to have all the projects/jobs and not be able to go peek at the code or at least see the finished product, maybe that's just me. I have a GitHub account and have thought about making those repositories public but have some reservations, because in case of the mobile development stuff it's not all my code, and is part of a game that we are actively working on so I don't know how comfortable we would be with making it open source at the moment. I also don't know if my professor would feel comfortable with her scripts that I use in the research project being public as well, but I can talk to her about that during our next meeting. I do however understand that it's very beneficial for potential employers seeing actual code I have written, I guess I can post the Game-Jam code and some of my smaller projects online. However as far as final products go, I will put in a link to the Google Play store, and give the URL for the medical analysis CGI script I made. lmao zebong fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Aug 21, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Aug 21, 2012 01:58
|
|
|
So I've been following this thread for over a year now, and have posted in it once or twice while I've been studying computer science and posted my resume for review a couple months ago. I've gotten tons of advice from this thread and am very thankful for all the insight posted here. I'm now in the waning weeks of my last semester, and have really been ramping up the job search. I guess I just have a couple general questions about how to effectively job search online. I'm located in the Bay Area, and am leaning towards something in the East Bay like Oakland but wouldn't mind commuting via BART to SF. I made the mistake of having my resume public when I posted it on Dice, and literally had 25+ calls from recruiters in a single day of me posting that information. I quickly took it off because having my phone constantly go off and multiple voicemails was something I didn't want to have to deal with every day, especially while I'm still taking classes. I have talked to a couple recruiters, but since my resume shows I worked on a successful mobile game they all want to pair me with companies in the gaming industry which I'm not 100% sure I want to do. Is it worth leaving my phone number available and trying to go through these recruiters to get a job? It's a pain in the rear end to have my phone blow up like that but I guess I might be missing out on an opportunity if I don't. Other than recruiters, the way I've been looking for companies to apply to directly consists of searching Dice.com for jobs posted in Oakland or San Francisco, or googling phrases like "top software companies san francisco ca" or "list of software companies oakland ca" and then looking at the jobs posted on the few websites I come across. Is there an easier way? Parsing through job boards sometimes pointless with all the spam or companies looking for senior developers, and it's a bit hard to effectively find software companies through generic googling like that. Any advice?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2012 23:09
|
|
|
gucci void main posted:Don't use Dice. Don't talk to (their kind of) recruiters. I've been on that same path and it's simply a waste of your time. I just wanted to jump in during this annoying sperg argument and say that I really appreciated this advice. I requested an invitation to StackOverflow Careers and got invited the next day, and threw out about 20 job applications on Wednesday night while watching tv. Fast forward to today (Saturday) and I have done 4 phone interviews, have 3 phone calls set up for early next week all with reputable companies and am going to be heading to San Francisco for in-person interviews/meet the dev team next week for two companies. I was getting a bit disheartened from just going on Dice and only getting responses from lovely recruiters who want to put me in Senior positions fresh out of college, and getting all these responses from companies is really motivating. I obviously have not done anything past the initial HR screen/pretty simple technical questions but so far it's looking really good, and it's all in thanks to this thread. I have gotten a crazy amount of advice from this board and it's looking like it's all going to work out. I also want to say that entry level devs coming out of school really shouldn't lowball themselves. Granted I'm looking for jobs in San Francisco so wages are a bit skewed, but whenever I've been asked what my salary requests are, I've been saying $90,000-$110,000 and so far nobody has balked or batted an eye. I feel like an idiot saying those huge numbers since I'm a fresh graduate but the demand is there, especially in places like New York or the Bay Area where the tech industry is strong. I went to a no-name CSU here in California and my GPA is so low (~2.7) that I don't even bother listing it, but with my outside experience and personality my education has not beed a hindrance. I've only been told by one company that my school wasn't prestigious enough and that they were looking for developers coming from the top-20 schools. Good luck with that. lmao zebong fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Dec 15, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Dec 15, 2012 19:47
|
|
|
Does anybody in this thread have any experiences working in a remote office? I just got off the phone with a company based in New York (I'm out in the SF Bay Area), and they're looking for people to either work in their established office in New York, or to start populating their remote office out here. The company and product seem really cool and something I wold be interested in working on, but I'm just curious if working on the opposite coast from the other developers would be detrimental. I'm not really in a position to move to NY as cool as it would be, but I would hate to potentially fly out, have the interview go well, I accept an offer and then find working remotely sucks. Do you feel it hinders communication with your team, or that you are so isolated it's hard to feel like you're a big contributor to the product?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 22, 2013 00:04
|
|
|
Thanks for the replies. I should clarify a bit that I wouldn't be working from home, they have a physical office out here in the Bay Area with a couple people working out of it already. However I am talking to them about a mobile development position, and I believe the developers out here are more backend people. As far as I know I would be the only mobile developer out here in San Francisco, with the rest of the mobile team being in NY. We also talked about if it did come to the point of me accepting an offer that I would stay out in New York for two or three weeks to get to know the team and see how they like to run things. I appreciate all the points made though. There are obviously a decent amount of concerns working in a situation like that, and some things will need to be clarified before we proceed, both for me and the company. I'm currently in the middle of the interview process with a couple places so we'll see what options I have when it comes time to accept an offer.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 22, 2013 06:06
|
|
|
Firstly, I want to sincerely thank everyone that gives advice in this thread and subforum. Navigating the job search after graduation is sometimes confusing and difficult, and I don't think I would have gotten to the position I'm currently in without all the guidance and advice here. From resume tips to interview advice, I felt fully prepared and confident going into technical programming interviews, and every inperson interview has gone very well. I'm at a position where two companies have extended me offers, and I have to make the difficult decision within the next day or so. Since I've gotten such great advice in the past here, I wanted to run the two offers by this thread and see if my thinking on this is good. Both offers are for a mobile iOS development position in San Francisco, with both companies very well established and with a large user base. Some attributes about both: Comany A Generous base salary (85k) + benefits Shorter commute (~45 min on BART + a short walk to the office in downtown SF) Nice equipment (27" iMac and Macbook Pro) Pay for lunch every day Met the team and felt I meshed with them very well both in personality and as developers Lots of opportunity to have a voice in the design process 3 weeks time off accrued each year + 5 'flex' days Nicer office with lots of toys to mess with during breaks (arcade cabinets, ping-ping and pool tables, punching bag, monthly poker games after work, free beer, etc) Company B Generous base salary (85k) + slightly worse benefits but a stupid high 401k contribution plan Yearly performance review for potential raise Higher quality application (in my opinion) with a larger user base Even larger opportunity to have a voice in the design process Better work/life balance Doesn't pay for lunch Met part of the team, and while they seem very smart and capable developers they were also a bit abrasive during interview process Longer commute (~1 hour on BART + ~1 mile walk from the station) 2 weeks time off accrued in the first year, with 3 weeks accrued each year after that Not as nice equipment/no laptop to take home After typing this out, I'm leaning a bit towards Company A because of the commute and how I got along with the iOS team, but obviously this is a decision I don't want to rush into. Any advice? Another issue I'm struggling with is telling a company that I want to turn down their offer. I do understand this is a business and a huge career decision, but I felt like I got along so well with both companies it is going to be hard or awkward calling and saying I don't want to accept. Any advice on how to effectively phrase it so that I don't burn any bridges?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2013 19:12
|
|
|
Thanks for all the advice posted in response. I feel like I should clarify a couple things. While I do think Company B's app is better, by no means did I mean to imply that Company A's product was subpar in any way. It is actually an application I use quite frequently before even applying there, and would be a product I would be proud to be a part of the development team on. While I do think that the work/life balance at Company B would be a bit nicer, Company A is an established, large-ish company and don't do the startup 'work 12 hours a day' type of deal. I think the balance is fairly even at both companies, but I do expect to work a bit more hours over the course of a month at Company A. However the commute is so much nicer I think that I would get home around the same time every day at both companies. I'm also a fairly healthy person so getting some extra exercise in a longer walk is not really a perk for me. Meshing well with the team and culture was the biggest priority for me, and after mulling it over for a while I decided to go with my gut and went with Company A. I felt like I connected very well with the iOS team, and while the other guys were great I didn't think it was as good a fit. However, I did manage to use the other offer as leverage and got another $5,000 added to Company A's offer, which was awesome. I'm very excited to start working as a software developer, and am still shocked that I was able to get such a great salary right out of college. Thanks again for all the advice given, I took it all to heart and it helped me make the final decision.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2013 23:56
|
|
|
While talking with a friend over email about me landing a job, he asked me some of the topics I felt got hit on a lot during interviews and I figured I would share my answer here in the hopes that it helps someone looking for a job. Some frequently hit on topics that I got a lot during the interview process: Recursion: Both understanding the need of a base case and the next recursive call, understanding what is actually happening when you call a recursive algorithm and walking through each step of it's winding/unwinding. Big-O: Almost every algorithm I wrote I had to describe it's asymptotic complexity. Tree/Graph Traversal: sometimes explicit, like 'find every path between two arbitrary nodes in a graph' and sometimes hidden within the problem where it wasn't immediately clear that a tree is what you need to use to solve the problem. Hashing: understanding the difference between hashing data structures and other data structures like a linked list or an array, and the differences it creates when searching for an object in the data structure. That's all the CS topics I can remember off the top of my head that came up frequently. Other things I found during the interview process was just being calm, and thinking out loud. Interviews really seem to respond if you try and describe your basic algorithm structure before writing code on the board. Also being able to look at your completed algorithm and find ways to make it more efficient is really important, even if you don't actually implement the changes. Also, be sure that you can talk about everything on your resume! I was asked to explain everything on my resume in almost every interview and if I had embellished anything it would have been immediately obvious. To extrapolate on that, if you have a language down on your resume and it's relevant to the position, they will almost always ask you questions related to the language to see if you're lying about your exposure to it. I applied to a lot of iOS positions, so I got things like "What is the difference between 'new' and 'malloc' " or questions related to iOS design patterns (MVC, using delegates, etc). As an aside, the guy I was talking to does a weekly email group of interview topics to help you get prepared, which helped me a lot. Here's the link, I really recommend it! http://codingforinterviews.com/
|
|
#
¿
Feb 2, 2013 20:48
|
|
|
I would highly recommend that if you can afford it sticking it out and earning your CS degree is well worth it. You're not wrong in that you learn the intricacies of programming and software development doing actual programming work, but getting a degree is more than learning CS concepts in a dry environment. Getting your degree shows to future employers that you can finish things you started. It shows that you can complete things that may be hard or slightly boring, and that you don't give up when you start to lose interest. With your experience outside of school and a degree, you will be in a prime position once you finally graduate, and I'll bet you'll be happy with the decision.BirdOfPlay posted:Thanks for mentioning this as this is the one of those things I really don't know how to do/can explain. Even though I got an A+ in the class that had a project on hashing. lmao zebong fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Feb 6, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2013 20:16
|
|
|
shrughes posted:I was joking. Nobody shows up in a suit in the Bay Area (except some senior in college that was just finishing/finished with William & Mary). Yeah I think this suit talk is very geographically dependent. I'm in the Bay Area, and the only time I dressed up for an interview with slacks and a dress shirt I was way over dressed and didn't get the job (bummed about it at the time, but now I realize that place would have been terrible). After that I just asked the recruiter, and every other place I interviewed were pretty adamant that slacks + dress shirt was overkill. I just wore jeans and a nice collared shirt for all my interviews after that and ended up getting hired at an awesome job doing something I enjoy, and I get to wear jeans and a hoodie every day. If you are interviewing for a financial firm or something than I would say dress up, but if you are on the West Coast it's most likely going to be too much. It's really not as big a deal as some people are making it out to be in this thread, but a good rule of thumb is to just ask the recruiter. It's not a weird question to have and eliminates all worry about your appearance.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2013 02:23
|
|
|
It's not surprising that your first point of contact with a company was with a non-technical recruiter. While sometimes it is frustrating to have to try and explain concepts to somebody who is screening you, I would assume that if you passed this stage your next interviews will be with people who are much more familiar with software development. I wouldn't feel insulted in the least, almost all companies use recruiters to screen out the obvious bad candidates and then let the more knowledgeable people interview you after that. Although it is strange that a recruiter for a software company didn't know those languages. I wouldn't be totally turned off to a company just by just one person but that is pretty bad.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2013 21:57
|
|
|
As a new grad I applied to probably about 30 jobs, did roughly 15 phone interviews, 4 inperson interviews and received two offer sheets. This was during a span of about a month and a half from late December 2012 to the end of January this year. I have no idea if that was more or less than average, almost everyone who I keep in contact with from school seemed to apply to a couple places and then give up and are currently working the jobs they had before graduating. This was in the Bay Area, which is pretty flush with available development positions. I'm sure it's very different in other areas of the US, but if you have experience and have a halfway decent resume you should be fine at least getting interviews.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 25, 2013 23:05
|
|
|
Manic Mongoose posted:Hello all, I'm potentially more nervous than I was before because I got an offer from my prospective company. The only thing is I do not know how to tell my current company. As a small startup and their first hire (we've hired about 6 more people since then), I feel bad breaking it to them as they were my first job also. In addition, the background check asks for references and since they are basically my only work peers, I worry that leaving might also leave me in bad taste. They're all good people I just was looking for an opportunity to grow more. I just went through a very similar situation (was interviewing for other offers without them knowing, accepting an offer when I know the company is expecting me to be around and was counting on my contributions) and my advice is to just rip the band aid off. It was tough telling colleagues and friends that I will be moving on, and it was definitely a bit awkward telling my manager and having to decline the counter offer, but I felt 100x better after I just got it over with as soon as I could. Thankfully we are in an industry where there is a decent amount of regular turnover and even though you were their first hire I think people are generally expected to move on at some point. These conversations are never fun to have but I am sure they're not going to go as badly as you're fearing.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2014 20:23
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:54 |
|
|
Pretty much any city south of Oakland in the East Bay (San Leandro, Castro Valley, Hayward) are all 'cheap' Bay Area housing with probably a ~30 min commute time into SF. Also there are tons of nicer neighborhoods in Oakland that are close to what you're paying now, and Oakland is awesome.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2014 20:22
|
|