interviewing: Senior by reference, not by value

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Scary Hauntings/Spectral Crap > YOSPOS > interviewing: Senior by reference, not by value

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Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

february is the best month cause i make the most money per hour

# ¿ Feb 21, 2018 17:16

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# ¿ Oct 13, 2024 04:26

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Timed coding test is hella red flag

# ¿ Feb 23, 2018 15:26

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Pollyanna posted:

spearhead and claim poo poo instead of being passive, gotcha

resume-driven development

other advice for taking my career seriously? aside from "do your job well"

make an effort to fit in with the team, in just a really general basic way

like your last job didn't sound good, but I strongly suspect it could have worked out better if you'd just been more proactive and communicative about hours and expectations.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2018 17:15

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

I'm interviewing some people this week :ohdear:

in general I love interviewing and think I'm pretty okay at it, but it's been probably 2 years at this point since I've been on the interviewer side of things, so probably a little rusty

# ¿ Feb 27, 2018 17:17

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Valeyard posted:

im happy at current job, but still think im underpaid for all the stuff i do and how well i do it (compared to others around me)

i already know from experience than i am better than a lot of people ive worked with that have 3/4/5 times the experience i do

main problem is convincing other people of this in an interview scenario

don't worry about interviews, they're an extremely two-way filter

90% of interviews you fail are for jobs that would be bad for you for some reason or another -- it's simple to fall in the trap of "all jobs are good, i am poo poo, if i fail an interview it just means i really am poo poo" but that's total BS. sure there's 10% of interviews you fail because you're having an off day, or the job would be good but the interviewer isn't, but for the most part its not that

# ¿ Feb 27, 2018 18:03

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Oh yeah definitely Pollyanna of all people should go into a job mentally prepared to leave, that will absolutely work out really well for their notably flaky rear end

# ¿ Feb 28, 2018 15:08

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Pollyanna posted:

1a. startups arent very stable and therefore i am worried about having to look for work again soon
2a. startups are known for having crappy work-life balance and this one seems dodgy in that sense

Stop saying poo poo like this, it's a ridiculous generalization and completely meaningless. Evaluate *specific* attributes of actual jobs

# ¿ Feb 28, 2018 15:11

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

PokeJoe posted:

lol if u haven't been updating the same word document for 15 years

Lol if your resume isn't in latex

# ¿ Mar 3, 2018 03:26

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

PokeJoe posted:

40 driving is bad, 40 on a train is easy.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2018 06:32

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Pollyanna posted:

was talking about life and poo poo re: getting rejected from companies with someone recently, and we got to thinking about how companies really really hate telling people the reasons why they were rejected, or are really cagey about it

which leads me to ask: has anyone here been in the position to hire people and rejected anyone? if so, what kinds of reasons have you decided against hiring them? what kinds of things can people at large work on and improve in order to better their odds?

hiring basically boils down to three things:

1) is this person a well adjusted human being that i could work with? [i.e. is an adult]
2) does this person know about the things theyll be working with? [i.e. has experience]
3) can this person figure out the things that they might not know, that theyll encounter [i.e. is smart]

(obviously the balance of importance varies depending on the position)

so the things you can do to improve your odds are

1) be a more well adjusted human being that can work with other people
2) know about the things that you will be working with
3) be good at figuring out the things that you might not know but will encounter
4) be the first person we talk to that has the above three characteristics

if you are okay at those things, its still a numbers game. you will not get plenty of jobs because of random reasons

# ¿ Mar 8, 2018 01:15

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Yospos

# ¿ Mar 8, 2018 05:55

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

how tf do you graduate with a cs degree and be literally unable to program? did i accidentally go to a good school or something?

# ¿ Mar 9, 2018 20:48

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

i've seen a lot of mid-career people that are completely useless, and that's not surprising sadly, hence fizzbuzz. But out of a new grad I would expect someone relatively dumb, but also with base level competence

# ¿ Mar 9, 2018 21:36

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

mods pls change my name to bonus taxes

# ¿ Mar 11, 2018 17:04

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Fiedler posted:

... why do people live in New York?

new york is pretty good

it will ruin all other american cities for you, like whats the point in somewhere equally lovely but lacking all the good bits

# ¿ Mar 11, 2018 19:47

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Maybe you (and everyone) should leave such a hellish place then :thunk:

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 05:56

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

qhat posted:

it's actually pretty funny how a central argument canadian cities have used in their pitches has been "you can get our tech workers for bargain basement prices"

Love local tech companies that try to recruit me with a 'competitive' salary

Some stupid state report came out about the influx of high tech jobs to our state with a median salary of 66k! :chloe:

# ¿ Mar 14, 2018 01:50

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Shaman Linavi posted:

i don't mind not hearing a response from a company after tossing my resume into the void but it seems bad form to just ghost people after they've done a phone screen or something

its inexcusable to ghost people at any stage

it takes like 5 seconds to write an actual human being "hey thanks for your interest, but we've decided not to interview you [further]"

# ¿ Mar 21, 2018 21:34

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

you don't want to get into a c# shop. c#, the technology, is pretty awesome. c#, the community, is a shitshow.

the problem is that c# is inextricably tied to microsoft windows. every c# shop is a windows shop. every windows shop is owned by someone stupid enough to bet his business on microsoft loving windows

can you imagine how loving idiotic your bosses are if they bet their loving livelihood on windows? titanically stupid. monumentally stupid. so stupid, it beggars belief

and, following from that:

A players hire B players.

B players hire Cs.

What do the C players hire?

Windows guys.

don't be a windows guy. it's not worth it. no matter how cool the latest shiny C# thing is, it is never worth working with windows guys

best post in the thread

# ¿ Mar 23, 2018 17:49

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

cis autodrag posted:

But after my no compete is up I can probably make more bux selling my soul back to the insurance industry

Some things aren't worth money

# ¿ Mar 25, 2018 01:21

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Blinkz0rz posted:

that's why i hate the kubernetes quick start and kops because it turns something really complicated and hard into "easy mode if you only do things the way we do them disregarding your network topography/existing deployments/infrastructure." like you said it's rails for container orchestration

it's telling that the actual requirements for running kubernetes is buried under at least 3 links from the home page

even worse: kubernetes isn't really that complicated (theres like a grand total of 4 major pieces you need to setup) but when you start with some magic push button poo poo, it absolutely turns into a set of whirling blades that you haven't thought about, and that will eventually in fact cut you in prod

# ¿ Mar 25, 2018 17:30

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

rkt is the only real competitor and no one uses it, everyone will use it "soon" though because docker is awful

still, it's dumb to ignore containerization even if docker is the current sole viable player

# ¿ Mar 25, 2018 23:05

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

you guys went to class? lol

# ¿ Mar 27, 2018 18:41

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Valeyard posted:

I had an interview today with startup B that ended at 12, I had a positive decision in my email by 12.45 inviting me for a final on-site interview

I've never seen turnaround that quickly

I had one of those -- interviewed with the founders, they emailed me 15 mins after the callr asking for salary requirements to send an official offer. dropped the ball after that though, they dragged feet for like 4 weeks getting board approval on the equity grant. sucks for them, cause I would have taken the job had they gotten back to me

# ¿ Mar 30, 2018 20:53

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Don't accept counter offers. Also if you like your coworkers that's cool, go out for beers with them after you get a new better and higher paying job. You can buy a round!

# ¿ Apr 8, 2018 04:14

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Here's a really good filtering tip: don't work somewhere that does that poo poo

# ¿ Apr 10, 2018 05:55

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Arcsech posted:

senior engineer at work basically told me to start looking for new jobs because our upper management blows rear end today

like, I have been for a couple months now, but I'd really prefer a remote job but every remote job wants you to have already had a remote job. and all the local jobs are lovely defense contractors

anyone hiring a remote (USA) person who can write good java, acceptable javascript*, a bunch of functional languages nobody uses especially rust and elixir, with interests in distributed systems and security?

seriously yesterday I read papers on paxos for fun, I think I'm broken

*: for javascript levels of "acceptable"

IME people aren't super picky about whether or not you have remote experience, so much as making sure you've thought about if it will actually work well for you. and, in fairness, it's not really the company making sure they don't hire a slacker, more that you won't instantly burn out and be miserable and leave

i'm almost at 6 straight years of remote work ama

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 16:38

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

anybody move into management and have a positive experience?

I'm thinking about moving into a team manager role. i enjoy technical work, but I'm much better at breadth vs depth. i.e. i'm not the best <role> on my team, but I'm strong at everything. i'm also a lot happier working on 'everything' than focusing on a single thing.

also it seems the tech path forward is more specialization into a niche (like 'own developer tools' etc.)

# ¿ Apr 16, 2018 17:01

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

TerminalRaptor posted:

Depends, is your organization stable? If so, and you have clear visibility with regards to how the role is supposed to operate in your department, and you want to do it, you'll probably enjoy it immensely. Does your org have some sort of intermediary role, like a team lead? That's a great way to see if its something you want to do more of. Even if they don't your manager might be able to stick you in some intermediary role to test the waters if you ask. Being strong at 'everything' doesn't necessarily make you a good candidate for management though. Having a good understanding of development and how the processes work can make the different between a good manager and a great manager, but only if you have the ability to manage people; it's why it's called manager. Be prepared to have to deal with a lot of soft skill issues: interpersonal conflicts, helping team members grow their skills, negotiating with fellow managers and stakeholders for timelines and resources.

Honestly I'm going on three years in a manager role after spending several as a team lead, and the past two years have been hell, but that's do to a variety of issues in our department. We'd been winging it for a long time with regards to project management and around the time our previous cto retired various middle management people in our department decided we needed to be doing more project management responsibilities. Instead of hiring for the necessary roles though, they decided to dump all of it on the existing managers. So I found myself doing PO work, scrummaster work, dev work, and people manager work all at the same time. This happened right when I became manager, and made it confusing as hell as to what my role was supposed to be. Thankfully this only lasted for about a year before our cto's replacement decided to impose order on our department and enforce an actual agile process with dedicated po's/scrum masters etc. Unfortunately they trusted the people running the department to implement this and didn't realize just how pants on head retarded they were with regards to actually doing their job titles (previous cto was a dictator), so now we're a year into a reorg that was supposed to be done by last Christmas. This means I've still been doing a half-dozen different roles in the meantime, while dealing with a team that has been hurt and frustrated because they don't know what's going on with their roles, confusing vision statements, repeated false starts, lacking necessary people resources, and not knowing what they're going to be working on. This is a cliff's notes version of the mess, and it doesn't even touch on some of other stuff like a problem report I had to deal with right after becoming manager and a superior's personal issues that have been bleeding into work for way too long. Our manager role is turning into strictly people focused after everything is supposed to be said and done and because all technical responsibilities are gone, the role will have a lot more direct reports than I'm comfortable with; doing only that everyday doesn't appeal to me. The technical leadership responsibilities have moved into other roles.

That's why I asked if your organization is stable. One of the books I really like on software dev management is called "The Manager's Path" and I recommend checking it out if you think this might be the path you want to down. Even with all the pain and frustration I've dealt with, I've loved being able to manage a team and realizing I need to transition into another role (or leave) has been incredibly difficult for me to accept.

thanks for this good post :glomp:

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 16:15

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

qhat posted:

At what point is it okay to reapply to a big name company like MS? I done an interview last year April but got passed over at the final round for another candidate. Only trouble is the office here doesn't have a lot of openings for my specialities, mostly AR stuff.

literally like an hour after a rejection email/call

or even befor eone

# ¿ Apr 25, 2018 02:53

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

MononcQc posted:

I've learned more from online communities and open source projects than I have from most face-to-face interactions put together hands down. If you work in any kind of office that looks somewhat open plan, where folks have headphones to help focus and you ping them on chat or send e-mails rather than getting up and walking to their part of the office just to ask a question, congratulations, you have just replicated most of the remote experience except you commute to do it and likely are in a high cost of living area for it.

This is my 4th remote job now. Heroku was the third. I liked remote before, and I still like remote after. There are some teams or places where the work culture just isn't amenable to it, and there are places where it works fine. I can easily imagine an extroverted person who loves facetime hating the remote experience, but I tend to like being in calm and silence to focus on whatever, and being around larger crowds tires me out.

Any time I visit coworkers on-site, I end up doing nearly no work whatsoever and I am 3-4 times more tired than any other day anyway, and that's usually without even requiring a commute because I get a hotel nearby.

I get you consider remote teams to be second rate. I simply disagree and would think that a team for which it's impossible to work remotely probably has implicit communication patterns and power dynamics that turn out to be counterproductive in the long run, informally institutionalized within a circle of a few long-standing employees that just walk around and somehow turn out having untraceable impact on a fuckton of projects just because they hold some perceived authority or get to talk louder.

The teams and companies I worked at where alignment, processes and decisions were the clearest and best explained always turned out to be those that were remote-friendliest because this was the only way things could actually work fine.

The good thing though is that working remotely with someone like you on the team is probably what would make it a second rate experience for me as well, so as long as we don't get to work together, I bet we'll be fine.

Best post in thread and also you got fuckin dunked on nbsd

# ¿ May 6, 2018 14:25

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Nbsd idk who hurt you but your points are pretty stupid and don't echo any remote job I've ever had. But nice crusade and all

Like monon said, good communication tooling is inherently remote friendly. It's cool you think interruptions are good (they aren't) but they can happen just as easily with chat and video.

Remote requires IRL interaction occasionally, but not so work can get done, but so you can build more familiarity and trust and talk about not work, or work at the macro scale.

And finally lol at extroversion being the main resource you sell at a job. What does that even mean? Talking to human beings at work is not an extrovert/introvert thing. There's another axis and it's more about being a drooling stupid rear end in a top hat, like a shut in weeaboo, or an obnoxious dudebro.

# ¿ May 6, 2018 14:43

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

this is pretty loving key for this particular thread

most of the readers in this thread hoping for remote jobs are based in the united states, and cost of living is not substantially lower in the flyover states, despite much lower housing costs

for a yosposter living in ohio, remote work is gonna be a troubling proposition. he has to compete with south american and eastern european workers, but his salary and benefits cost is going to be much closer to that of a local resource in San Francisco or New York.

it's a really lovely competitive position

edit: to be very clear, if you want to live in ohio, your best bet is to look for a job in ohio. if you don't like the job options in ohio, you should move. remote is an awful, awful compromise.

agree that CoL in middle america is not vastly different than the coasts, the rent thing is blown wayyyyyy out of proportion, there are a lot of other things people spend money on and they vary less, or not at all.

but you completely misunderstand remote comp. it is a giant loving red flag if your remote job comps you based on where you live. because of what we just both agreed on that CoL is not as wildly variant as people like to trot out -- there are a lot of employers that understand this (and plenty that don't). you also misunderstand remote work in general: you say its inefficient or less productive and also assert remote employees are competing with whoever-is-cheapest offshoring type work. one of those things is optional, and the other is causally linked to the first. guess which is which.

your entire thesis boils down to 'if you hire bad people and have bad communication tooling and processes work is actually not very efficient' well no poo poo. IRL gives you a bit of latitude for hiring bad people and having bad communication tooling and processes, but that's loving stupid anyway, and you will still have a bad time, even if you get 5% more play in 'how bad can we be without overt impact'.

# ¿ May 6, 2018 15:33

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

qhat posted:

Because you get what you pay for.

# ¿ May 6, 2018 18:56

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

cheque_some posted:

GitLab's workforce is fully remote, and they put their entire employee handbook online, which was pretty interesting. Apparently they pay based on where you live, and they include a git repo with all their scaling factors. Apparently if you move some where cheaper, they dock your pay. It looked like New York City is high CoL according to them, but Boston is at the national average.

https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-compensation/

At the very least, at least interesting to see what one company is doing in practice.

yeah gitlab does that, so does buffer. they're both companies in love with themselves to a fault that i would never work at too.

lol at that fuckin quote about moving

tired: i'm providing the same value to the company
wired: THINK OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY ACTUALLY IT MAKES TOTAL SENSE :thunk:

# ¿ May 6, 2018 18:59

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

the more i think about it, the funnier it gets

they couldn't even be assed to come up with a reason other than 'gently caress you' so just assert that actually if you think about it its fair <exercise left to reader>

tho honestly, it is fair, because i would just get another job that didnt do that so whatever gently caress them

# ¿ May 6, 2018 19:05

Mao Zedong Thot: Oct 16, 2008

Fiedler posted:

Translation: Do not ever work for this company or use their products.

we knew this when they blew up their db and livestreamed themselves sucking at fixing it

jony neuemonic posted:

lol jesus, i'm the company built entirely on git that will only begrudgingly allow you to use linux.

a non-trivial part of changing my mind about a job offer I accepted was they insisted I use a mac, liken literally disallowed from using a linux machine

well that and getting a way better job offer

# ¿ May 7, 2018 02:10