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Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


i've been having interviews but they're with startups that have like 15~20 people and maybe a handful of engineers

i don't really like that? i don't feel like it's the right environment for me, but that's also the grand majority of companies looking to hire in boston

i have no idea how to get noticed by and hired at non-startup places and that's loving me up

goons please help how i get job

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Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Captain Foo posted:

what's your skillset

2.5 years rails-ing 1 year react+redux-ing

typical agile familiarity

fair amount of experience translating feature requests into requirements and implementations

some basic sql knowledge

learned clojure and elixir on the side

bog standard otherwise

still trying to figure out where i want to go in life

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Jimmy Carter posted:

Oh snap, I suddenly have an interview coming up for a QA gig.

The team seems really cool and talking to people on the team and others around them, they’re big on actually giving a poo poo about work/life balance. Some people had to be on call over a holiday and the manager legitimately felt bad since he’s been on teams before where that’s the norm, so they’re changing procedures and how they scope things so that doesn’t happen again.

Post your best advice for prepping for interviews as it’s been a very long time since I’ve done one

what kinda company? what kinda size? what do they do?

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Pollyanna posted:

2.5 years rails-ing 1 year react+redux-ing

typical agile familiarity

fair amount of experience translating feature requests into requirements and implementations

some basic sql knowledge

learned clojure and elixir on the side

bog standard otherwise

still trying to figure out where i want to go in life

is this a bad skillset

Sapozhnik posted:

dont work for startups

e: maybe unless ur the ceo

+1

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Shaggar posted:

you should be able to get entry level dev/qa at a real company pretty easy.

what is a "real company" in this case? my criteria is "has more than 100 engineers" and "is profitable", no idea if that makes sense

e.g. red hat, wayfair, amazon

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


i don't think i'm at the point where i have anything useful to say on the direction of the product, i've only ever really been forced into that role/had to pull weight on it due to lack of manpower/perspective. i don't mind being a tiny cog tbqh, i do care about having regular and stable work with good compensation - i am not an ambitious person

large companies in general are a good bet. startups just aren't my scene. maybe red hat has a use for me

edit: how about places like TripAdvisor, for example? or Wayfair?

Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Feb 16, 2018

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Captain Foo posted:

Yeah, don't fall into the trap of thinking that only tech companies need devs or other IT staff, every company has some sort of demand for technical people

that is true, though i feel the need to work with software engineers over just an "it department" - i'm not entirely sure why, i think it has to do with growth. maybe im misunderstanding/wrong

Shaggar posted:

if you want on the gravy train finance or healthcare is where its at.

are we talking finance as in hedge funds, or as in money lenders? and healthcare as in "patient interaction and social platform", or EMRs and hospital management systems?

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Shaggar posted:

idk anything about tripadvisor or wayfair, but don't be afraid to interview cause you can always turn them down if you don't think its gonna be a fit.

i'm more worried about whether they'll give me even a passing glance

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


also, what would you say is the typical time-to-new-job for an engineer? starting from unemployment i mean

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


q re: networking with people. a PM i worked with at a previous company now works at one that looks cool, and i have no idea how to ask "hey, you guys got openings?" in a way that isn't crass. how do people do this?

Shaggar posted:

all of the above. insurance too.


unemployment is so low right now that anyone with a pulse can get a job. If you have technical skills or you can show the desire and ability to learn you're gonna be above most applicants these days so don't worry about it. M

true. its a matter of knowing what the gently caress to do for me, tho

Shaggar posted:

it will depend on where you are, but right now for the most part its gonna be pretty quick so just get out there and keep interviewing. you cant get a job if you aren't looking for one.

stay positive and be confident when you interview.

def a+ on the be positive and confident, one of the few things about interviewing that keeps me sane. the good thing is that i apparently interview well


there is this too yes :(

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Star War Sex Parrot posted:

oh good, Pollyanna has taken over another job hunting thread

i will never die

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Schadenboner posted:

This isn't crass, this is literally how most places prefer to hire people because (so the thought goes) good people know good people.

i know it's normal but i have a tendency to piss people off by accident

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


japanese megacorps can get loving intense tho

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


like in anime

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


freeasinbeer posted:

comedy option: they could have decent technical staff that does cool things, with some rough edges, that is being outsourced to a SaaS firm for bullshit internal politics because they aren’t a tech company at the core.

and the SaaS offering is hot garbage with downtime’s for every deploy and loving up a move between data centers with a day worth of downtime. god what a loving mess this place is turning into. now I get to Pollyanna and job hop quickly.

glad 2 be a verb

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


i dont like startups and im not sure if thats me being immature and having no idea what it means to be an engineer, or if its me just not jiving with the work-50-hours-a-week-for-peanuts-and-no-stability culture

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


honestly the grand, grand majority of startups could go out of business overnight and the world wouldnt change a bit, which makes me wonder why the startups exist in the first place

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


it sucks cause you trip over startups here in the boston area but most of them arent very good opportunities

prime way to get unemployment payouts tho by having shitloads of stuff to do each week so the unemployment people cant claim youre doing nothing and refuse to pay you

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


qhat posted:

Because occasionally one succeeds and produces more money than all of losses of the other unsuccessful ones combined.

that money should go to the people and not some fat cat's swiss bank accounts

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Sapozhnik posted:

if you like the idea of working 60+ hrs/wk to make somebody who is not you extremely rich then go for it!

the idea is that startups would pay you in equity/stocks so itll pay off once they make it big but 1. they dont make it big 2. they dont offer it anyway

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


heres my checklist for startups

- what was your last series? (less than series c is a no-go)
- do you offer equity? (if no then no, if yes then still probably no)
- whats your work life balance like? (expectation of 50+ hour workweeks + getting snippy with you when you express your belief in a good work life balance -> no, btw ask me how i came to this conclusion)
- whats your runway? (less than 18 months = dying)
- can you prove to me that you will still be around in 3 years? (they all dont know if they will be around in one year so this question has no point)

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


someone should make startup bingo

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Shinku ABOOKEN posted:

ooh i love story time. tell us :allears:

recent interview had the people interviewing me telling me that everyone there "values hard work" and "we work hard play hard" and then got really cagey when i started asking about pto and work-life balance. the lady talked about the employees spending most of their day at the office as if it was one of the most amazing things shed seen. it was pretty weird and i didnt like where it was going

there was also a particularly hilarious line "the work life balance is great and the company is very flexible, if i have to leave at five, i can come in at eight"

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


qhat posted:

My startup checklist: no

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Notorious b.s.d. posted:

this might be a good moment to point out that pollyanna has very little industry experience and managed to derail both of the prior interviewing threads

do not engage pollyanna

too bad

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Gazpacho posted:

there is no purpose in asking about work life balance in an interview because you will never get a straight answer and ultimately establishing the balance is your responsibility

i ask the balance question not because i cant handle it but because they cant

i need to know ahead of time the expectations placed upon me and i need to know if those expectations include 50 hour work weeks

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


i am reduced to connecting to and posting on the statuses of technical/hiring managers of big companies on linkedin

pls 2 job

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


FMguru posted:

also the small chance of an equity payout bonanza if the startup is a big hit goes to zero if your "startup" is embedded in a large corporation

equity is worthless because 9 times out of 10 the company, even if its a small startup, will look to screw you out of as much money as possible

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


i would start my own startup/be the CTO of my own startup, if it was for a product that was genuinely useful and not just airbnb for dogs

i would not work at a startup as a non-C level.

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


whotf would willingly work at a startup

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


here's some poo poo i saw on linkedin

quote:

Huge question that engineers balk at is "what are you reading?"

The "readers" are the ones you want on your team.

The dedicated, and the curious few who find DISCOMFORT and pursue it.

Reading is practice for parsing and internalizing new ideas.

You don't read, and you're not ready for coaching, feedback, or to build something larger than the sum of its parts.

love2be turned down for a job and told im incapable of being coached because im not currently reading a book

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.



and here we arrive at the heart of the problem

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


PokeJoe posted:

i want a new job but don't want to do any interviewing or put any effort into it

please dont dox me

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Blinkz0rz posted:

right, so don't apply to startups

i was making a self-deprecating joke but this too yeah

jony neuemonic posted:

i think i just hate working tbqh.

take work as far as you want or need it to be, burning yourself out is an awful thing and nobody should demand more from you than you are willing to give :)

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


meatpotato posted:

my advice to all is don’t compromise your principles in work. don’t work for idiots, don’t make idiotic products. best case is you’ll regret it. worst case is you’ll become an idiot.

im not good enough to work for non-idiots

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


meatpotato posted:

not with that attitude!!

youre right :unsmith: but what use can a lovely half-rails half-react developer be? well im sure i can learn and im sure i am useful somehow

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


jony neuemonic posted:

you can always learn a new thing. i started on php.

im considering learning SRE work which is apparently a bunch of linux work and containers n poo poo, but i always learn on the job so you need a job to get good enough for a job and aaaaaaaaaaaa

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


interview today wish me lukk

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.



wish me luck in writing an implementation of merge sort

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Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


is it disingenuous to market myself as 2 years of rails exp if I haven’t touched it in over a year?

cause I’m paranoid of people asking me obscure rails trivia as a screening/technical q

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