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Good Will Hrunting posted:how am I having such a difficult time finding a JavaScript framework named after a bird ..."Owl"relia? (I'll show myself out)
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Dec 19, 2017 23:52
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leper khan posted:People hate change. Don’t make people hate you by being an agent of change. Even if you are one. Although I know this is the oldie thread, feels weird to cross-quote this in the newbie thread so I'll just ask my question here. This point brought up something in me. I've been about 2-3 months into my new (and first ever!) developer job after doing a bootcamp over the summer. Our team mainly works on C# and some front end stuff with jQuery/vanilla JS/Backbone, etc. although there's a large company-wide push towards putting our JSON APIs in Node and doing client side rendering with Vue/React/Angular. I was presumably brought to the team to help with this transition, and I've helped by building a PoC in Node along with some other things, and one of our clients is now asking for a large new project which will be done in React, which is new to everybody save one person on the team. I get along with my team pretty well and my manager has had nothing but positive things to say and recently mentioned that he likes how I gel with the team, so things are gravy there so far. However, I'm wondering how to best manage these things in the long run. We have bimonthly team tech meetings where we help introduce each other to new technologies, explain some things others might not know, etc. and so I've been trying to share my knowledge by explaining some of the Node and React stuff in these meetings. I'm wondering if there are other ways to help this transition so that I'm not seen as "that new young guy coming in with all the hot shot fancy modern tech pushing us oldies aside". I remember a few people were a little anxious about the upcoming changes, but I haven't detected any resentment or negativity towards me, and I want to make sure that never indeed happens. Any tips on how to navigate this kind of thing?
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Jan 5, 2018 01:30
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the talent deficit posted:boulder has ridiculous cost of living (comparable to seattle/los angeles). if you don't mind commuting longmont is pretty reasonable tho Not sure where you're getting this from. I live a 6 minute car ride from work in Boulder and using about 30% of my salary (post-taxes) for a comfortable 1 bedroom apartment (as an entry-level engineer). Having lived in NYC and Boston before this, the cost of living here is better. I'm assuming it's also better than Seattle or LA but I don't know those markets, although I've heard Seattle is pretty crazy (worse than NYC?). Lots of people complain about the cost of living here, but that's because they're from the mid-west where housing prices are very different. Boulder is definitely getting costlier though with more people moving out here for tech jobs and  , but it's definitely not anywhere near NYC/Boston prices yet. And Denver is even more affordable, plus there are a bunch of towns like Broomfield/Westminster/Longmont/Lafayette that you can commute from if Boulder prices don't work out. I wouldn't write it off immediately from your list.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:48
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Mniot posted:One guy interviewed me and told me he was trying to hire "only A players" and that, to remind himself of this he'd written "A" all around his cubicle. I laughed at this, because I was younger and assumed he was making some kind of joke about that Steve Jobs quote. But when I saw his desk, all the cubes had a little glass wall-topper and he'd written "A A A A A A A" all the way around. I did take the job, though not working under him. Years later, he tried to recruit me to work at his new company but he couldn't remember anything about me or what I'd done (despite that we're LinkedIn connected and I have a passable resume posted). For some reason this reminded me of this old clip.
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Feb 27, 2018 23:53
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How does one get started speaking at conferences? Should you have a certain level of experience before, or just be able to speak intelligently and have a presentation on something interesting? I feel like I could do the latter no problem and am pretty good at public speaking, but I have less than a year of professional experience under my belt so not sure how my qualifications stack up on that front.
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Jun 26, 2018 19:20
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Question for you oldies: How important is your current experience vs previous experience for a job? Not exactly sure how to phrase this, but here's an example I'm thinking of: Say that a few years ago you worked at a place that was really focused on React and other front end work. After that you started working at a place mainly doing back end work, maybe in Java or Python or something like that. Now, you're looking at positions again because you want to go back to working in react. Would employers count the the few years outside of the react world against you, or would the simple fact that you can list jobs/projects in the past that used that technology be enough to have employers be interested in you?
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Mar 10, 2019 15:40
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On the topic of greatest weakness, what has always worked for me is to pick something that is genuinely a weakness of yours, but also something that you've become self-aware of and taken steps to mitigate. Don't give a weakness that you've done nothing about or that you only just discovered. Even if it was years ago and you've done a ton of work on it, just say that. I take the question not as "what is your great weakness", but "what is something about your way of working that has been challenging to you or others in the past, and what have you done to resolve it?".
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Mar 14, 2019 14:28
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Question: I'm in the midwest (Colorado) and having been here for the last few years, it seems like most job interviews are pretty laid back compared to the coasts. I usually have to do some sort of small take home project then answer some questions/general personality fit stuff and that's it. Never been asked any of the leetcode type questions. With everything becoming remote, I'm getting lots of messages from recruiters from places all over. What I'm wondering is, if a company is in SF or NYC or some other more intense place, will their interview questions for remote positions be on that NYC/SF/etc level, or do places generally adjust based on where they are interviewing? I've never had to really study all that leetcode stuff but wondering if it might not be the worst idea to start brushing up on it.
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Feb 10, 2021 17:38
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When's a good time to bring up upcoming time-off during the interview process? For more context: Really getting sick of my current gig to the point where I'm ready to start applying now. I have a wedding + honeymoon coming up in August and will probably be out for 2.5 - 3 weeks. I have zero expectations that a company pay for this time off (I'm a contractor at my current gig, so I pay myself time off and have money saved up just for this event), but I know it's pretty inconvenient to start a new gig and then suddenly be out for the better part of a month. I was originally planning on just sticking it out until August then applying everywhere afterwards, but I can't hold out any longer. Should I bring up my situation at the very start of the interview process? After accepting the offer or just before then? I have a friend who is also a dev who said their company is hiring, and he told me that it'd be zero problem to take that time off if I was working there, so I wonder if maybe I think this is a bigger deal than it actually is. Thanks goons!
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May 19, 2021 00:30
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This is all great and just what I needed to hear! Appreciate it folks
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May 19, 2021 01:59
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For web end devs, does it make sense to stay full stack, or is it a good idea to eventually start to specialize in front end or back end? I'm pretty comfortable with both and I like both almost equally. Like, I slightly prefer back end (only because CSS is a real pain at times), but I have IMO pretty solid front-end chops. Sometimes I think I have rather weak UI/UX skills, but then I see some of the designs my coworkers come up with and I realize that I'm much more capable than I think. I only have a little under 4 years experience so I'm still early on in my career, and I'm currently interviewing with a few places. Most of the opportunities are full stack, but there's one opportunity that's progressing that's mainly front-end. I'm a little unsure if I want to start pigeonholing myself into front-end roles. Will I be hurting my career/shooting myself in the foot? Or will the fact that I have past experience make it simpler to go back to back-end if at some point that's my preference? Mostly concerned about my career more than anything else and what impact that will have. Otherwise I personally don't mind focusing in on one of the two for several years.
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May 27, 2021 21:23
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Thanks folks, those are all super helpful considerations. I think I sometimes suffer from imposter syndrome when it comes to back end work, as I don't have a CS degree (music degree), but maybe that's just something I need to get over. Is there any particular danger in staying as a full stack "generalist" instead of specializing in either over the long run?
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May 28, 2021 01:08
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While quite not the figgies land of SF, six figure pay in the Denver area is not very hard to come by. The interviews are pretty straightforward/not very challenging, but they usually are looking for some experience in the stack they're looking for, which I guess makes things tricky for your particular situation More on interviewing/applying stuff: One of the companies I'm interviewing with sent me a fullstack take-home assignment that I just had a chance to pull up today. They have a list of "objectives" for both front and back end. Back end is in Elixir (which I've been wanting to learn) and they also have a separate version in Node.js. They want to see an Elixir solution, but left a Node half-baked implementation in case you need to stub out your work there first (so... do double the backend work  ). For senior positions they're asking for 3+ objectives (not sure if it's 3+ FE on top of 3+ BE for FS or just mix and match). These include seeding a database, writing various GraphQL queries/mutations, creating various unit tests for the queries/mutations, creating new models and linking them together with some of the other existing models, designing all the CRUD parts of the UI for each of those models, writing jest unit tests, writing routes for the various new models, etc. None of the tasks themselves are difficult on their own and they are things I've done plenty of times before, but put together this thing looks like it could take hours if not days. A lot of the objectives depend on each other so even though they sound simple at first, they end up requiring more than they seem to let on. The tests don't seem to count as part of the objectives. The assignment is on a public github repo and I was browsing through some of the other people who forked the project. I've found various folks who have spent entire weekends on this assignment and it doesn't even look like they ended up working there. Not really sure where I'm going with this, but I guess,  who has that loving kind of time to work on this and not even get paid 
reversefungi fucked around with this message at 04:22 on May 29, 2021 |
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May 29, 2021 04:16
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Pollyanna posted:Mid-year reviews are coming up and I’m considering pressing for a higher salary. We’re pretty underpaid across the board, and comparable salaries in the area reach like 140-160 base, higher than what I get. Unfortunately it’s hard for me to tell if those salaries are for someone with my level of experience, or if I’m looking at something I don’t deserve yet. Pollyanna, I remember reading your posts before I even got my first job as a computer toucher, and now I'm getting paid in that band. I'm in Denver if that helps. If you're in a really low COL area that's one thing, but otherwise as far as years of experience are concerned you 100% absolutely should be getting those kinds of salaries.
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Jun 2, 2021 01:15
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Pollyanna posted:The reason I want to stay is that I have good standing in the company (I am well liked and regarded as very reliable and good at delivering projects), and that there's still potential senior-level opportunities that I want to take. I'm scared to go job hunting because I'm scared that employers won't see it that way, and that it'll turn out I'm a lot less useful than I think I am. I definitely can relate to that and am going through some of the same thoughts. At the end of the day, I remember that there's a reason I got to a level of respect here and that it will 100% carry over in a new position. I like to have a written list of things I've accomplished that I know were objectively challenging, and also to keep a list of messages I've received from folks I trust when they've shared positive feedback/praise/etc. Basically, have some sort of "build up my confidence" document lying around that you can always use to combat those feelings of uncertainty/unworthiness  It's always scary starting somewhere new where you don't have that level of trust built up, but at the end of the day you have to decide if the task of rebuilding new relationships somewhere else is a worthy barrier to cross in exchange for a pay raise/better mgmt/etc. That's not always gonna be the case, and I think that's why you always run into those developers who have been in a company for 5+ years. Sometimes that level of comfort is strong enough to just stay at a place. As far as recruiters go, I think I've gotten lucky and have had decent experience with external recruiters, but I make sure to ask tons of questions and be super picky and if a single red flag shows up I  immediately. The amount of recruiters I get reaching out about Java because I have JavaScript on my linkedin is pretty laughable
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Jun 3, 2021 19:10
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Anyone have any experience working for a consulting firm? Just had some interviews last night with one. They're a smaller firm but with a national presence. I really liked talking to everyone there and it seemed like a cool place going by what they were telling me, but it seems like consulting can be very hit or miss judging by what I've read online.
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Jun 8, 2021 15:40
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Plorkyeran posted:The relevant things from the actual firm are mostly how much pressure you're under related to billable hours and how they pick clients. If you're expected to get 40 billable hours per week, that means you're going to be working quite a bit more than 40 hours. Most of your working time is spent with clients and not other people at your consulting firm. Some firms don't care about anything other than the client's ability to pay, and some will be more picky. The latter are usually better to work for. Thanks, this is helpful to know. Something they kept repeating multiple times is how they've been expanding and that they don't have the manpower to take all the jobs coming their way, so they've been pretty picky with clients/telling lots of folks no. So, at least based off of what they're telling me, this could be a positive sign.
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Jun 8, 2021 16:50
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Better yet, head on over to the SA Code Discord! How do I get an invite to this?
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Jun 10, 2021 00:20
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Hey goons, would appreciate some advice on next steps to take here ( ahead):I joined a startup in June of last year. It was technically started/funded by a company that's been around for several decades, although the plan is to get us to be independent eventually. When I joined, things were pretty scattered and there was poor communication across departments. We started hiring a bunch based on a hiring plan that assumed a certain amount of growth/revenue that never came. Different departments chased after potential investors and there were no clear priorities on where the product should go. We hired a CEO-type figure in October to help centralize decision making and give us clear direction on how to move forward which has been very helpful. I feel that the scattered approach we had before has genuinely improved. Unfortunately since they were hired late in the year, this delayed budget planning until the end of 2021. We knew we were losing all our contractors due to this, and that the final budget could mean some positions being cut. Come the beginning of this year, there was a sizeable layoff (roughly a third of the company, we went from 50ish folks to 30ish) when we received this year's budget from the parent company. We definitely lost more folks than anyone expected. They told us that the budget is firm and our jobs should be safe throughout at least the end of 2022, and that they cut the budget to the most conservative level possible to ensure project longevity. At least one senior dev has put in their 2 weeks since the layoffs. I was just in a call with them, and they mentioned that they have heard a lot of other folks on the project are also considering jumping ship. My question is, how concerned should I be, and should I start looking for a new job? I received a sign on bonus which I need to pay back if I leave before my first year. Is it common to find companies that are willing to help pay that back? I really don't want to leave, there are some awesome people on the team, the culture is great (despite the layoffs), I rarely feel stressed, and the pay is fine. I know I could be making more, but I don't feel unfairly underpaid. Our revenue situation is definitely pretty barebones, but with the new CEO figure, we have better direction that I'm hoping will start to pay off soon. We got rid of a lot of dead weight during the layoffs, and we have some promising leads in the next quarter or two including a partnership with a very large household-name company. Plus, the parent company has tons of connections that they are leveraging in a more focused way to help improve revenue. Ideally I'd like to hold off looking until May/June when I'm approaching the end of the bonus-payback window, but would it make sense to start looking even sooner than that? This is my first startup so I definitely don't know enough about potential warning signs/red flags/etc or what to expect in general.
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Jan 20, 2022 21:46
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Thanks folks! Yeah there was definitely something really weird going on in hiring. We had/have a really awesome dev team but product was a complete mess. Thankfully they kept only the good ones. Unless various revenue leads pan out and the comp situation changes drastically, yeah, it's pretty clear this boat ain't worth staying on, but I do want to hold out at least a few more months. Due to the layoffs/departures, I'm finally getting an opportunity to learn and work in React Native which is something I've had zero experience with before, so would like to finally add that to my list of skills. I also really don't want to bother with the whole job application process just yet, so I want to squeeze a few more months out of this spot for the time being unless there are red flags showing that this might not even last till June.
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Jan 20, 2022 23:10
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 19:53 |
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I have a degree in music, but I went through all of Harvard's free CS50 course before starting a web dev bootcamp and I feel like that's made a colossal difference in my capabilities as a dev. Going through that program has kept me from feeling "insufficient" for not having a CS degree. You need to learn a few algorithms and data structures, big o notation, understand pointers and demonstrate you understand them through some non-trivial projects, and you also learn just enough about a variety of other topics that you can start to have a sense of what knowledge you might be lacking. I'd highly recommend going through that course if you feel any kind of impostor syndrome from not having a CS degree. It's honestly a fun course, they do a great job of making it accessible and entertaining, and the production values are sky high, especially compared to a lot of other MOOCs out there.
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Apr 20, 2023 21:39
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