Oldie Programming: Career Advice, Questions, Change of Directions

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Oldie Programming: Career Advice, Questions, Change of Directions

The Leck: Feb 27, 2001

Does anyone have advice on how to talk about work that never made it to production? I've talked to a few companies for interviews or pre-interviews, but one major roadblock that I keep running into is that due to some terrible planning, almost every bit of work that I've done in the last year was thrown away when a new architect came in and decided that the right solution was to rewrite from scratch. I don't have any real data on performance or revenue impact, because it never made it to the real world, and I feel like it comes off pretty bad to say "yeah, basically I spent a year on a team writing code that was never used". I'm sure someone else has experienced this, and I'm curious what you've done in this situation.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2018 18:14

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 21:26

The Leck: Feb 27, 2001

BurntCornMuffin posted:

Do you have any personal coding projects to fall back on? A blog or portfolio site? Open source contributions?

While the code was never used, did you do or learn something clever while writing it? Any personal growth or perspectives you can demonstrate? Any references who can put in a good word for you?

fantastic in plastic posted:

Most of my work experience has been in consulting, and most of the projects that I've worked on never made it to production. When describing a project that died before seeing production, I leave off the end unless it's directly relevant to the question that they asked. If they do ask, and the project has a funny story about how it ended, I tell that story; otherwise I just say that it was cancelled or that the client was responsible for maintaining it, or whatever else is true. I don't think anyone's ever reacted badly to that. It's not like developers have any control over those outcomes.

Hughlander posted:

Talk around it. Why would the fact that it never made to production even come up? If they ask for revenue impact look at them funnily and say that financial data is confidential and surely they must understand that. I can't say I've ever been in an interview when someone would look at a feature I worked on and said, "So what did that do for gross booking?" And asking that certainly never crossed my mind when on the other side of the table.

Performance impact? Surely you've done load testing on it? If not drop down to algorithmic complexity changes, or the design specs that were behind the changes.

Thanks for the input! I think revenue impact was a poor choice of words on my part, but all advice I've seen regarding resumes and talking about projects is to emphasize the actual effects of what you did, not just "wrote a thing". With that in mind, I've had a hard time talking about that never really had an impact on production/business, but I think I see some worthwhile topics here. We definitely saw some value in getting the behavior documented and tested where it wasn't before, and those tests have been used to validate the new rewrite. It was part of our move to having any tests at all, and we went through a few iterations and learned a lot about testing code that's mostly dealing with accessing a database.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2018 23:44

The Leck: Feb 27, 2001

Munkeymon posted:

I bet this is why you're getting grilled about algorithms more than most of the posters ITT. They see your degree wasn't in CS so they crack their knuckles and think better make sure this isn't some dogshit imposter to the brotherhood * because your prep work is nuts compared to what I'd realistically do, even for a big 5

*realistically, this is the word they'd use, unfortunately

I've definitely felt like this was happening in interviews, although who knows how much of that is me projecting. I did interview at Amazon a while back and fielded the "so, I see you don't have a CS or EE degree... why are you here?" question in every single one of the six interviews plus lunch that day. On a less intense note, for my current job I got a grilling on basic Java (interfaces, abstract classes, what the compiler will/will not allow), even though there's no Java in use at the company at all. I guess it was a similar "Is this guy bullshitting us?" kind of thing, even though I was a referral.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2018 02:41

The Leck: Feb 27, 2001

raminasi posted:

It’s really wild that a greenfield project with a supposed open mandate to use any new tech ended up going forward with node. I know it’s not your decision, but goddamn.

I don�t know, I have some coworkers who are REALLY excited about using node for a new project to get away from all this gross C# and SQL nonsense. We just agree to disagree.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2018 01:30

The Leck: Feb 27, 2001

Good Will Hrunting posted:

I know titles don't matter but I'm not really a Senior level engineer, though that's what I'm getting contacted for on job boards etc. Should I just... talk to the people at companies I'm interested in anyway?

I don�t know your job history, but at my current place, senior is the title you end up with after a promotion a couple of years right out of school. There are several levels above that, and the titles are very stupid/confusing. So yeah, you could be a senior with just a couple of years experience, or 15+, depending on the company.

# ¿ May 29, 2018 18:54

The Leck: Feb 27, 2001

Good Will Hrunting posted:

Not yet, they are on my list somewhere though. Should I avoid? Tossing some other names out: Last time I hit Betterment, Mark43, Spring, and Rent the Runway. This time I've got... Oscar, Stash, Capsule, Curalate, and a bunch of other smaller ones remaining still.

I definitely recognize the companies on your lists, because I've applied at a bunch of them myself. One of them even got to the offer stage, but it was lower than my current salary, with no budging on negotiation, so that didn't work out. Sounds like you did better than I did at Amazon, but who knows.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2018 00:21

The Leck: Feb 27, 2001

Phobeste posted:

I didn't join but only because the invite expired I'll PM someone

Same, I guess I don't check this thread as religiously as I should

# ¿ Jul 14, 2018 20:45

The Leck: Feb 27, 2001

Guinness posted:

Often you don't even need to write actual runnable code, but some combination of pseudocode and diagrams along with a good conversation.

This has definitely not been my experience. Occasionally I'll get an interviewer where I can say "I don't recall the exact name of this built-in method , but here's what I'm trying to do", and it's fine, but it seems a lot more common to get "oh, you capitalized that letter when the library method name is lowercase" or "your indentation is a little rough".

# ¿ Feb 3, 2019 15:01

The Leck: Feb 27, 2001

Ihmemies posted:

When, if ever, is the moment to ask noob questions about the job? Like
- What kind of version control you use
- How do you apply common coding standards, with linter or something else?
- How do you verify the results? Unit testing, static code analysis, something etc?
- What dev process you use (scrum, waterfall etc)?
- Can you describe your code review process?

Maybe at the end of a tech interview? What if I forgot to ask anything, any way to avoid a potential horror show before signing up?

I guess it is not appropriate to ask these afterwards before getting a job offer. Maybe between getting and offer and signing up?

In my experience, every interview I've had (apart from Amazon) has had some time for candidate questions at the end. I just keep a list of questions like these or the ones in the YOSPOS interviewing thread (https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3845966) and ask a few depending on how much time I have. As people here said, sometimes you're not talking to someone on the team you're interviewing for, but I still find they're useful to a) get a feel for the company in general, and b) show that you give a poo poo about working there and have some intelligent questions. When you're in these multi-round interviews, it's fine to ask the same questions to different people too, you'll be surprised at the range of answers! To avoid forgetting to ask something important to me, I just always keep it written down. If I'm doing a remote interview, the list is in a google doc or something, and for in person interviews, I bring a notebook with my questions pre-written so I can just write down the answers.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2024 14:24

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 21:26

The Leck: Feb 27, 2001

Hadlock posted:

My favorite is "this is kind of an obvious question, but it's always important to do a sanity check: do you like working here?"

Ideally they'll spill the beans about any structural problems. I have when asked this question. If the guy hesitates more than 10 seconds, it's time to pull the ripcord and look elsewhere

When I get someone who�s relatively new to the company, I like to ask what brought them there, when I get someone who�s been there a while, I�ll ask what�s kept them there. I don�t remember it exposing any major red flags for me, but it�s opened the door to talk about promotions, moving around between teams, what�s interesting about the work, stuff like that.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2024 21:24

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