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champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

my job is terrible. i'm the only data scientist in an organisation of 2000, looking for new opportunities like this shining beacon on a hill:

Process Specialist with Agile Mindset posted:

Oh, and the deadline is in five weeks.

You pass by the coffee machine on your way back to your desk. Nothing ignites the creative juices like a good cup of java made on fresh beans. The word processor comes to life at your command; you dig in and start to write.

Suddenly you look up - hours have passed without notice, you have been totally immersed in your task. The result is a lean and simple addition to the R&D procedures that will allow the project managers to continue running their agile teams without drowning in paperwork, but it also meets the requirements of the ISO standard.

Above all else, it ensures patient safety. Safety first!

Satisfied you stretch your legs and head to the kitchen for a refill.

Does the above scenario appeal to you?

company makes dental prosthetics




during another unrelated opportunity a company asked "would you do this technical thing? it probably likely won't take a week". lo and behold it would have taken a week


edit: thanks to The Leck for finding The Questions:

quote:

- who do you work with on a daily basis / describe the day to day role

translation : are you working with a well-defined team that puts out consistent work or is this place a clusterfuck with people coming and going on a weekly basis because management is incompetent

- how are decisions made / how will [team] be asked to accomplish things / who makes those decisions

translation: are the people making decisions that impact your work accountable to you / your team and do you have the ability to influence them or are they dictated from on high or even worse forced upon you by a hostile entity

- what are the company's primary values? what characteristics are you looking for in a candidate in relation to those primary values?

translation: if they say 'uhhhhhhhhhh' here it's a red flag. if they throw gibberish at you it's not a red flag but it's not a good look either. this should get a human bean answer

- what would be expected of me for the first / three / six months? What will success look like in this position, how will it be measured?

translation: same as the last one.

- what sort of training/mentoring/career dev things are here

translation: they should also be able to answer this without thinking. if they hesitate or bullshit you it's a red flag

- what's the most impressive thing you've seen out of someone else you've interviewed recently

translation: what qualities are people here impressed with. what caliber of candidates are you also considering.

- What do you see as the most challenging aspect of this job?

translation: every job has some bullshit aspect to it. this is their chance to lay it on softly and your chance to decide if it's a particular brand of bullshit you can put up with

- how do you set milestones/deliverables for projects and how does your team react when it's clear they won't be met

translation: are you going to work me like a slave when we don't hit the deadline we never agreed to

- when was the last time you took pto / how much did you take / what did you do

translation: without fail lovely interviewers for lovely companies will try to deflect this one. if they try to say 'oh no don't worry about that' or respond with their actual pto policy just reiterate that they didn't answer your question. when was the last time YOU took pto


When interviewing:

"[redacted posted:

"]
[redacted]


When interviewing with startups:

tl;dr version:

quote:

1) How much money does the company have in the bank?
2) Tell me about a time the founders disagreed. What happened?
3) What is the role of the company’s board of directors?
4) Tell me about the changes you’ve experienced at the company over the last year.


quote:

When you're leaving a big company to interview at a startup, there are some hidden questions you might not know to ask.

Not all startup jobs are created equal; without the right info, you could make a bad choice.

Here are 4 questions you should ask in a startup interview loop:


1) How much money does the company have in the bank?

OK, yes: this sounds super crass... an embarrassingly direct question. But it is also incredibly crucial, because without this info, you have no idea what kind of situation you are potentially walking into.
You would never ask this question at a megacorp because, well, the answer is usually "infinite money." The cash position of a public company is also usually freely available. Besides, you probably wouldn't be talking to someone who could give you a direct answer anyway! 🤑
But at a startup, everything is impacted by money. For example:

* How free is the company to build towards its vision?
* How likely is the leadership to make desperate/rash decisions?
* Will you have access to the resources you need to do a good job?
There are lots of less-gosh ways to ask this question, like: "how strong is the company's financial position?"

And be prepared, the answer might sound more like "here's what % of our Series B is still in the bank" or "here's how many more months of runway we have." These are ok!
But by not asking, you have no idea what you are signing up for.

And if a founder/senior member of the team isn't willing to give you *some sort of answer here*, that is a big red flag. They may be hiding something you won't find out about until you start work.


2) Tell me about a time the founders disagreed. What happened?

In any startup with multiple founders (most of them!) the founder working relationship can make or break the company. If it is wonderful, the company may thrive whereas if it is toxic, nothing can save it.
Notice the phrasing of the question. As a candidate, just like as an interviewer, you must practice behavioral interviewing.

Don't ask "how do the founders handle disagreement?" Any smart person can answer that well: “They talk, hear each other's perspectives, and work it out!”
Instead ask the question the behavioral way: "Tell me about a time..." This forces the answer to be specific and real.

Founders always have some disagreement; if they own that and show they know how to handle it, it is a powerful positive signal about the company.
Note: Be especially wary if you are interviewing with a founder and they repeatedly answer your specific questions about this by taking the topic back into the abstract.

This could show that they are not transparent, not self-aware, deceitful, or all three.


3) What is the role of the company’s board of directors?

I'll be honest. During the 16 years I worked at Microsoft, I am not sure I could have named anyone on the board. Bill Gates? The Netflix guy? 🤷🏼‍♂️

It just wasn't in any way germane to the day-to-day of working there.
In a startup, however, the company's relationship with its board could have a huge impact on whether you want to work there.

If you are talking to a founder or senior exec, look for words of alignment and respect. Not snark or 🙄 or "ugh, the board, don't get me started.”
If interviewing with a more junior employee, a great answer might well be "No idea, I’ve only seen them in the office once.”

A board that is out of the way operationally, helping behind-the-scenes but not interfering, is a good sign that there's a healthy relationship there.
Fun story: I once interviewed for a senior job at a tech startup. I went with the CEO to meet the board for a last round of interviews.

The first board member got me into a room and started with: "Hi! FYI. you can't tell him, but we are firing the CEO." AWKWARD. Um, kthxbye. 🛫


4) Tell me about the changes you’ve experienced at the company over the last year.

A big company is pretty much the same year after year. Working there in 2017 is the same as working there in 2018.

The best startups, on the other hand, are growing, changing, strengthening.
The single best way to predict the future is by analyzing the past.

And so by asking your interviewer not "where do you expect to be in a year" but "what have you experienced in the last year", you get a window into what the actual the pace of growth is at the company.
A great, thoughtful answer about the ways the company is growing is a huge plus. A positive is often: "wow, I can't believe how much we've done/grown/changed/built when I think about it."

A worrisome answer is "honestly, it's about the same." When startups stagnate, they die.
Hear the stories about what the last 12 months were like, and use that to gauge whether it would be an exciting place to spend your next few years.

Companies that are thoughtfully growing employ people with a strong growth mindset, creating an amazing place to learn and build.
Last thing: Don't be afraid to ask these things. 💪🏼 You have the right to ask direct questions in your interview. As a founder, I relish being able to share info about our company.

If you get vague answers/hostility, especially from senior people, this is a bad sign. Run away!
Startup interviews require you to probe differently than megacorp interviews. This is a good thing! What you learn will help you find the place that's a strong match for you.

Be prepared to ask the right questions, and you'll be one step closer to landing your dream startup job.

Courtesy of The Leck and this duder on twitter: https://twitter.com/jensenharris


Here's an amazing effortpost about interviewing for white collar jobs:

PIZZA.BAT posted:

alright gonna effortpost how the white collar interview process more or less works. i'll edit this post with it just a sec

e:

office jobs all follow a pretty standard process for hiring, and if you go outside of this process everyone is going to look at you like you have two heads. it's not your fault that you don't know what this process is, and the people looking at you like you have two heads also don't understand that not everyone knows this like the back of their hands. it's a skill that most of us are taught when getting into our first internship.

the process can start either one of two ways. either they decide that they need to hire to fill a position, or someone with some sway inside the company finds you and decides that they need to create a position for you to fill. almost always you're going to be falling somehow into the former, but it goes without saying that being in the latter is a very very good place to be.

when they decide to hire for a position a bunch of processes are set into motion. the team or department overseeing the team has to come up with a job description. that job description is then vetted by the hr department. the budget is cleared with accounting. management decides who the new hire is going to work under. etc etc etc. eventually this is all hammered out and the job description is passed back to the hr department, or recruiting if the company is large enough to have a dedicated recruiting department, and they start posting the job opening on places like linkedin, the internal company job board, and wherever else.

at this point external recruiters may be brought in as well. these guys take the job description and contact everyone they possibly can to try to get the job posting in front of as many eyeballs as possible. if someone they convince to interview gets the job, they get a payout based on the candidate's salary. it's usually something like 10% where they get the first half up front and the second half if the new employee remains with the company past a year. you may be thinking, 'wow this probably incentivizes external recruiters to just throw as much poo poo at that wall as they can to pump up the volume' and you'd be 100% correct. they're almost entirely garbage. don't be surprised if you have a rough time with an external recruiter because they're all bottom of the barrel garbage. however when you're first getting started you'll have to deal with it because they'll probably be the only ones who contact you.

anyways- at this point the company is getting resume submissions for the position. every company handles this next part differently but it's mostly: a group of people sift through the resumes to find people they want to interview, those candidates are interviewed, a final candidate is identified and extended an offer. every step of this process is extremely arbitrary and people will reject candidates for any loving reason. one of the reviewers didn't like the font you used on your resume? denied. a recruiter thinks one of your bullet points is awkward and makes them think of a bad time they had two jobs ago? denied. do not take it personally if you submit a lot of resumes to jobs you think line up with you perfectly and don't hear back from 95% of them. you're being rejected for extremely stupid and arbitrary reasons. that's just how it is and why i said it's a numbers game. you just have to keep bashing your head against that brick wall until you finally smash through.

the interview process itself is an entire process that any of us could write a book about. i recommend googling some common interview questions and preparing how you'd answer them. things like, 'tell me about a time you had a conflict in the workplace and how you resolved it' or 'what's your greatest weakness?' that kind of bullshit. the thing to keep in mind however that at this point, all of the interviewers are looking for a good gut feeling about you. it's most likely that you're talking to the people you'll actually be working with and they're mostly concerned with: is this guy going to be able to do the job and not be a colossal pain in my rear end, and is this guy someone i actually want to work with. this process is also just as arbitrary as the resume process. you answered the question you thought the interviewer was asking but it turned out he was trying to get at something else and you didn't pick up the hint? denied. interviewer just thought you 'came across wrong' when they asked you something specific even though you answered it correctly? denied. just like with the resumes, if you get rejected time and time again despite feeling like you knocked it out of the park, don't beat yourself up over it. it's stupid and arbitrary.

eventually you get to the offer stage, which we have an entire thread dedicated to in business and finance for a reason. this is basically hr trying to figure out how little they can get away with paying you while you try to figure out how much you can get out of them. just like the resume and interview stages before, don't beat yourself up if you gently caress this up the first few times you go through this. they do it for a living day in and day out while you do it maybe once every couple of years at most.

again, i want to emphasize that i call this a numbers game for a reason. make sure you have some friends or people itt review your resume to make sure it looks ok because there's shitloads of unspoken rules about them. the interviews you'll just get the hang of by doing lots of them. eventually you will have done so many that you won't give a poo poo any more which ironically will make you way WAY better at interviewing. with the offer stage just hold the cardinal rule of NEVER SAY A loving NUMBER JESUS loving CHRIST close to your heart and you'll probably do fine.

if you have questions about specifics we can help you out with that too

More Really Good Advice that you should follow:

reversefungi posted:

I have a continuously growing list of questions in a Google doc. Whenever I run into something that's either "That's awesome, how do I make sure I find this again in the future" or "this is absolute garbage I never want to encounter this in a job again", it goes in the list. An obvious one that has saved me some grief is "Can I get a short product demo at some point during the interview process, to have a better understanding of what I'd be working on?" If they show you a janky pos app, makes it very easy to turn down and move on

champagne posting fucked around with this message at 11:37 on Jun 25, 2022

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champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Valeyard posted:

I'm chasing up opportunities in London

:yossame:

but in order to not go down in real salary i'd have to be paid to the tune of £70k and for some reason no one in london wants to pay that to an entry level person

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

but i've also been told (possibly in this thread) that the uk is a terrible place to touch computers professionally

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

qhat posted:

No loving chance you're getting £80k in London unless you're a technical lead. 2 years should expect no more than 45k imho.

qhat posted:

Dunno if you're joking but entry level in London is half that.

duly noted, will touch computers elsewhere

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

pointsofdata posted:

Looks like I got owned hard by my recruiter though

:yossame: (yos-similar??) where recruiters say "hey your resume looks vaguely technical do you wanna do it support for xerox for a pittance?"

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Captain Foo posted:

post the interview questions that were in the op of the other thread or this one is worthless

be the change you want to see in the world

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

The Management posted:

Scandinavian countries are highly educated and not poor though. Ireland is probably a better model.

Scandinavian countries also have rights for women making the comparison less apt

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

The Management posted:

I’m thinking of throwing “AI” and “ML” on my resumé even though I know jack poo poo about those (I have some talking points I can run with) just to see what the LinkedIn response will be.

so far all i've had are lovely recruiters

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

lampey posted:

is this for their first job out of college? I don't see where grades would come up at all in an interview otherwise

:yossame:

although I could see some kinds of people wanting to see at least a diploma

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EfI-PPBwzU

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

carry on then posted:

first, i'm talking about internship interviews, so if you aren't let's just drop this talking past each other fest

second, help me get this straight: i'm supposed to blow off my core classes and barely pass, so that i can spend all my time working on spare projects that are basically jobs, in order to get to an interview where you grill me on concepts covered in those classes i'm blowing off to get into the interview. if instead i decide to take those same classes seriously and have less time for my own projects, my resume will be thrown in the trash. how am i, as someone seeking an internship, supposed to be able to get past this?

having a ton of poo poo to show off on github is a million times more impressive than an A+ in algorithm design from university.

the order is view applications is likely resume -> github -> cover letter -> anything else -> grades

another problem with grades is you have to know the context with which they are given, what they mean at a given institution and the quality of said institution which unless you’ve been there or have firsthand experience is really difficult to gage.

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

I want to imagine the alternative is getting your resume thrown out by HR on grounds of being thin

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Xarn posted:

Reading this thread from a socialist hellhole with free education feels real nice right now. :v:

:yossame:

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

HoboMan posted:

i def mostly post at work

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

qhat posted:

I post mostly outside of work or during lunch because I don't have time most days, because I'm working.

you have this the wrong way

it is your duty to steal as much as possible from your employer.

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

i don't see how there is a conflict here between earning as much as possible and stealing as much time / salary / office supplies

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Symbolic Butt posted:

I sent a resume to a place these days and HR seems to be fumbling around because nobody even knew there was an embedded linux position in the company

not sure what to think about this but maybe it's kind of a bad sign

seems like it's the worst sign

also if you can embed linux can you not work wherever you chose?

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

gee thanks recruiting site for defaulting to Swedish with no options to change

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

ShadowHawk posted:

When I got hired at a game streaming startup they needed someone who was an expert on Ubuntu and on Wine.

I was found by an external recruiter who researched that I was Ubuntu's Wine maintainer. The first point of contact was direct message via Freenode IRC after asking me in the #winehq channel.


I've shared this story with quite a few people, and the consensus seems to be that this was the best external recruiter story you will ever hear in your lifetime.

I’m angry and sad since this is probably the best external recruiter in the entire world

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

anatoliy pltkrvkay posted:

how to succeed on your take home interview: use your demo enterprise account to submit high-priority support tickets asking for assistance on your take home questions.

it did work for about a day until i complained to the department attempting to hire this candidate that they hadn't properly onboarded this particular "customer"

:nsavince:

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

ShadowHawk posted:

I automated half my job and taught interns to do the other half, then got laid off.

good job playing yourself

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Schadenboner posted:

Someone give me a good form for a cover letter. Mine obviously are complete poo poo, MLMP.

i use this thing with ok results: https://github.com/posquit0/Awesome-CV

i mean mine is much less impressive because i literally started my career six months ago

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Symbolic Butt posted:

current job status: slowly descending into despair

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

the panacea posted:

Can someone help me decipher if this is good or bad:

"We see ourselves as a start-up, but with all the advantages of being embedded in a large corporation with all its associated benefits."

"we have the worst of both worlds"

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

God drat why do companies always recruit the hardest during the busiest part of the semester? I’ve got projects, midterms, research, and finding 4 hours in my week to knock out some of these phone screens is loving impossible

Two weeks ago would have been fine

vacations Christmas or summer wreck havoc on making decisions in companies. the bigger the company with more stakeholders the longer it takes to get anything, including hiring, done

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

qhat posted:

Phone screens meh. At least they're not asking you to dedicate multiple hours a pop to write a homework project.

try a week

gently caress you English company in the middle of nowhere you’re not that important

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Double Bill posted:

12 problems in 1 hour is fine, I regularly fix 96 bugs a day at work.

you gotta pump up those numbers

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

lol this is my favorite

i have worked so many places with this pattern

neighboring team has this issue

hell they just now hired a dude to do automatic testing and the specs they give him to test change every two weeks meaning he gets basically nothing meaningful done

edit: should have added they don’t tell him the spec is different it just suddenly shifts and the nothing works

champagne posting fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Feb 24, 2018

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

My student loans (totalling 5k if translated to freedom money) has 1% interest. If the Danish central bank lowers their interest further it'll go below. It might be zero.

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

my Apple phone screen last night seemed to go pretty well, but they repeatedly asked if I had anything more recent I could publish on my GitHub. unfortunately all of my recent projects are class assignments (that they reuse) and they turbofuck you if you post them on public repos. after this semester I'll have a few independent mini-research projects that I can publish, but it's a bit of a bummer in the meantime.

I asked them if they have a specific reviewer on the team I'm interviewing for I can add them to my private repos to take a look, but we'll see

how can they gently caress you for posting stuff on github? assuming you’re not a student of course

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Who knows? Maybe they’ll like the job

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

qhat posted:

management is also a much riskier position if your company is at all decent. i'm pretty sure most if not all fuckups in business can be placed squarely at the feet of management.

is it? if the corporate thread is to be believed management never falls but watch each other’s back

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Jesus just work at a financial institution or something. they pay well and you get to have this thing work / life

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

akadajet posted:

ya, my car is clean and not full of filthy, sick strangers

your office is full of them though

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Achmed Jones posted:

this was not my experience, maybe your immune system is a pos

YISPOS


new name for ylls?

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Valeyard posted:

i might be interviewing at a startup soon

what kind of stuff should i be asking thats specific to startups

can I receive equity, if not, flee

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Blinkz0rz posted:

unless you're really, really sure they'll go public with a huge ipo or will be acquired for gobs of cash you should eschew equity in favor of a bigger base salary every time

if they won’t why bother working with techbros at a startup?

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Shaman Linavi posted:

what's a good protocol to use when applying to jobs that don't seem to have any place to attach a cover letter?
sometimes i will put it in a pdf with my resume, but usually i just pout a little after spending time writing it and leave it off

they might not want it

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

HoboMan posted:

yesterday i applied for a job and a recruiter emailed me within 5 minutes to set up a call for today, but never called me

I’ve yet to meet a recruiter who can tell time

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champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

yesterday was a ride. went in for a cup of coffee with the head of a section. drank cortado on his dime and went out with an offer in hand


that’s my success story

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