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Contra Duck posted:What you said is fine. The only really bad answer there is "I would like to remain in my cubicle churning out code". Say something that indicates you have ambition, like how you'd like to be leading projects/designing large scale whatevers/involved with clients/managing a team/blah blah blah. Yeah, I've always answered that question by saying that I want to be a technical lead / architect, just not a manager. Never a manager.
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Nov 2, 2011 02:58
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Well, the interview went well, I guess. It was kind of weird. It's a small company, just two guys-- technically it's actually two companies but they just work together and are working on merging their companies together but want to get a bigger pool of people first. I'd be working from home, and just give a daily status update on projects while working, other than that do it whenever I can. I'd be paid an hourly rate (they asked if I had one, I said I don't but industry standard for entry jobs here is 40-50K so I said 20/hr), instead of salaried. Not sure how that works with working from home- we didn't discuss it too much (I didn't want to ask too many questions about it at first). They really didn't have a whole lot of questions for me, other than "This is what we're working on, this is what we do, do you think you're comfortable with it?" Basically I'd just be tearing down a static website that uses PHP, make it into a template and duplicate it over into Wordpress. They gave me a copy of the files for the website (or at least the HTML) and want to see how comfortable I am / see what I can do by Friday.
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Nov 2, 2011 22:47
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You have to be honest with your ambitions. If you don't want to be a PM or a Manager then don't claim to want to be one. But for such a small shop, you will be doing some project management, even if you're not producing gantt charts and the like out the Wazoo and submitting quarterly progress reports to the Project Management Risk Board. Probably worth saying you're comfortable doing some project management (assuming you are) but make clear it's not something you'd want to do full time. Most of the stuff I've done has tended to be self-directed, with only one or two fullblown projects, so it's not all that bad. Requirements gathering, estimation, drawing up a test plan (each of which can be done on one worksheet in Excel) - these are project management type thingies that a developer should be comfortable doing.
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Nov 2, 2011 23:03
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Ithaqua posted:Yeah, I've always answered that question by saying that I want to be a technical lead / architect, just not a manager. Never a manager. Yeah I think "management" (in the sense of telling people what to do, but not doing) for me is a distraction from making stuff. I don't like not making stuff, it makes me feel like I'm not contributing or living up to my potential. Being a project lead, handling requirements, etc are things that are still related to pushing the ball forward in some technical sense. I would not hold it against someone if they expressed a similar opinion.
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Nov 2, 2011 23:52
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Read this today http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/at-work/tech-careers/noncompete-agreements-carry-high-cost-for-engineers Talks about new hires getting blindsided by non-compete agreements. I've signed these before, since I didn't feel I really had a choice... What are your guys' thoughts/strategies here? IP is such a shitstorm it makes me worry about getting sued if I ever were to start my own company (without basing it on any other company's work).
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Nov 4, 2011 03:26
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Pweller posted:Read this today That article feels sensationalist to me. They present statistics (without citations, I might add) about how many people who signed non-compete agreements changed industries, implying that the non-compete agreement was the cause of the move. There are other reasons people change industries, you know.They also talk about how certain states restrict the way non-competes can be used, but don't mention that on numerous occasions these clauses have been tested in court and the general opinion so far has been that they're often unenforceable. Finally, the article states, "Noncompete clauses are essential to protect intellectual property," which is about as far from an empirical fact as a statement can be. Hasn't this guy heard of non-disclosure agreements or "suing someone into the dirt" as a means to protect IP? This article is painting a skewed picture, though I do agree that this is an issue to keep in mind. I personally would try and avoid signing any noncompetes until it meant my job. I would offer to sign as many non-disclosure agreements as they wanted (and honestly, there are usually other clauses about all your work while you are working for a company belonging to that company anyway) as an alternative. But if I had no choice, I wouldn't worry too much about future prospects. A company would have to have some great big brass balls on it to try and stop people from working right now anyway. I would sure try and raise a big, public stink about it if a company tried to pull that on me. This topic has been discussed in the past, and the rough consensus as I recall it has been to sign a non-compete if it means your job, then in the future if you quit, don't worry about it because it's a bullshit agreement. Companies are not actually allowed to own you, no matter how badly they might want to. And you are not legally able to sign away your rights, no matter how official-looking the contract. Che Delilas fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Nov 4, 2011 |
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Nov 4, 2011 04:09
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Pweller posted:Read this today That hits close to home because I signed a non-compete in my first job out of college. I didn't really give it much thought at the time. I liked the offer/company, and signing it was a requirement for employment. Well, a few years later, it turns out that, due to the experience I picked up, I was EXTREMELY valuable on the market, either working for a customer or as a consultant. But I couldn't do anything about it, because I couldn't work for a customer in any capacity for one year, including as a consultant through a third party agency. It was a very broad non-compete, and the general consensus was that it was unenforceable. But that didn't matter. The company also had customers and certified consulting agencies agree not to hire anyone that worked for them. So, basically, nobody wanted to get on their bad side and you were locked out, anyway. It made job hunting a very frustrating experience because there were a plethora of open positions, all paying significantly more than I was making as an employee. In the end, the job turned pretty toxic and I needed out. I took a pay cut when I left because the better paying jobs were off limits.
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Nov 4, 2011 04:32
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Pweller posted:Read this today I signed a noncompete/nonsolicit for a former job that was, in my mind, pretty overreaching. It stipulated that for a year after I were to quit, I could not work for anyone that dealt in the same product/services that the company offered while I worked there. It was not limited specifically to whatever product line I worked on. The trouble is that company had bought dozens of software companies over the years and had their hands in all sorts of businesses - HR software (which is what I worked on), ERP, CRM, library card catalog systems, banking, and even fast food restaurant cash registers, and that's probably not even scratching the surface. If that's not enough, it established the geographical scope as being anywhere in North America. So basically it pretty much meant I couldn't work in any company that sold software to businesses, period. My wife is an attorney, and she basically told me that courts look at noncompetes in terms of whether the scope is reasonably defined. After talking it over we pretty much agreed that I could make the case that this is not in the least reasonably defined, and there was still the question of whether the company would ever bother to come after me for it anyway if I were to go to a competitor. I lasted at that company for a year and a half and then quit to go work in biotech, so all my consternation over the whole thing wound up moot anyway. DISCLAIMER: the above is not legal advice and you should not rely upon it. Go ask your own attorney to review any legal document you are unsure about. kitten smoothie fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Nov 4, 2011 |
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Nov 4, 2011 04:39
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Unless there is financial gain post-termination such as vesting non-completes are completely bogus. Companies do it for scare mongering.
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Nov 4, 2011 11:55
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Do people faced with non-compete clauses in their contracts ever negotiate them away?
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Nov 4, 2011 23:18
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I just never bothered signing the non-compete my current job asked me to sign and eventually HR stopped bothering me.
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Nov 5, 2011 00:12
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Not sure if this is the best place to ask this, but I figure it is as good as any: I'm looking to get into software development / programming as a career and I'm not sure what my best/most efficient course of action is. A little background, I entered college as a CECS student and was enjoying it up until I spent a semester on co-op, during which I enjoyed the work but decided I didn't want a job that would involve only office work. I made the logical(?) move to stay in engineering school and switched to the civil engineering program, as part of which I was received a very rewarding co-op position involving stream restoration research which largely entailed hiking through the woods, doing stream analyses, and, in general, chilling out outside. I ended up receiving both my B.S. and M.Eng. in civil engineering. As it turns out, the real civil engineering world isn't nearly as entertaining as my co-op position led me to believe. I'm now sitting in an office for eight hours a day doing hydrologic and hydraulic analyses for floodplain insurance rate maps, which could possibly be the least fulfilling project I've had the displeasure of being a part of. In a bit of irony, the rare times I enjoy my work are when I am writing VBA macros (I know) to automate hydrologic analyses or generating python scripts for our GIS software. Now I'm looking for a way to get back into the computer science industry. I figure my options are two-fold: go back to school and try for another degree (likely a M.S. in Computer Science, possibly an M.Eng.) to make myself a viable option for hire, or rehone my programming skills on my own time and hope that my small amount of previous programming experience combined with my well-rounded knowledge base will be enough to carry me to a CS position. I worked at a credit union as a computer operator while still in school for CS and can claim some reasonably substantial programming experience from that, most notably the creation of a SQL intranet interface for employees using a combination of Perl and AJAX. On the other hand, I could probably receive a M.S. in about four semesters, or a year and a half. I suppose my question boils down to this: Would it be feasible for me to start a career in computer science without an applicable degree on my resume? If so, how should I proceed? Would it be most beneficial to try to jump on-board open-source or similar projects in order to show a greater degree of programming experience?
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Nov 7, 2011 21:04
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Engineering degrees are pretty common where I work. If you can show relevant experience in the field, I don't think most places will care that you're coming from an Engineering background versus say, Computer science.
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Nov 7, 2011 21:07
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Cicero posted:1. A good GPA. You want to at least have a 3.0, and 3.5+ is generally seen as very good. Besides demonstrating some level of competence in the art of Computer Science, companies want to know that you aren't lazy, and that even if some classes are boring, you are willing and able to suffer through boring things. Many big companies seem to have a 3.0+ requirement (obviously this is for recruiting college students, once you're out of school nobody cares), and one I saw was 3.2+. I disagree with this completely. In fact, I know of companies that will specifically throw away your resume if they see a GPA above 3.5+. The reasoning behind this is that people with high GPA's tend to be socially inept. If you're working on a software engineering team, you want to be approachable and not seem like some basement troll. I have friends in major, MAJOR high tech silicon valley companies who had atrocious GPA's. I myself interned at a prevalent Silicon Valley company, and my GPA isn't really all that. What these companies look for is that you simply know your poo poo. GPA comes third, fourth, etc. If you built a web server off a PS3 and utilized the GPU to generate fractals, for example, this holds a lot more weight than your GPA. I've read people on SA getting jobs at Google simply because they won a lot of programming contests, and they had no college degree period.
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Nov 9, 2011 01:18
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Sorry dude but that's almost certainly just straight up bad information, GPA is extremely important. Your anecdotal evidence of a few companies that actually throw out high GPA resumes is definitely atypical. What companies are they? That is most certainly an idiotic practice. Also invoking Google there is a bad example, Google is one of most strict GPA companies out there and will throw out resumes that are less than 3.5 unless it's an absolute top school, and even there you need probably at least a 3.2.
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Nov 9, 2011 02:21
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There are certainly plenty of companies that don't care about GPA unless you have zero internships and zero projects to show them, but if someone told me they actively penalized high GPAs I'd assume that they were simply horribly insecure about their own grades long past when any normal person would continue to care.
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Nov 9, 2011 03:01
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If you can't get a 3.5+ GPA either you didn't try very hard or you're pretty terrible. Particularly in undergrad, but increasingly in masters programs, academic programming simply isn't that difficult as Cicero insinuates. Having social skills has nothing to do with showing up to classes and turning in your homework while knowing the material. I almost bombed out of my first development job because I learned very quickly that if I had to be told more than once how my project was supposed to work in particular and as part of the overall system (in a subject area unfamiliar to me) my boss was already annoyed with me. I had to quickly learn that I wasn't going to be spoon fed information until I was bored like in school and I had better pick poo poo up quick and start taking notes. If a person can't master the material in classes with teachers that repeat the concepts several times, I don't think they're going to make it in a high end company.
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Nov 9, 2011 06:45
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Signed, A Person Who Went to a Bad School.
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Nov 9, 2011 07:05
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Markov Chain Chomp posted:Signed, A Person Who Went to a Bad School. Wasn't a big name or anything but it was ranked in the bottom half of the top 100 for computer science. I suppose I should qualify that statement since I'm not really familiar with the course load at MIT or wherever. Had some good teachers with interesting backgrounds, but the courses were too simple. I got my masters at a so-so school while working and in many ways that was even easier to complete. There may be a lot to be said for valuing tough schools, and I wonder how familiar most companies are with the different programs.
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Nov 9, 2011 07:24
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I had a mediocre GPA. I've always left it off my resume and I've never had an issue finding a job. I've mostly worked for startups since graduating though, I think they tend to care less about your academics and more about interesting projects you've done. The idea of a company filtering out GPAs that are too high is ridiculous. I never saw any correlation between trollishness and academic performance within my major -- there were plenty of people that did really well who were totally normal. You'll find out if they're a basement troll during the interview anyways.
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Nov 9, 2011 07:27
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Sorry for the long post but this seems like the best place to ask. I'm trying to work out where I would fit and what sort of positions I'd be able to apply for. I'm in Perth, Western Australia. I'm also considering moving to the east coast (Sydney, Melbourne, maybe Brisbane) or Canada (probably Vancouver). Education Bachelor of Engineering (Software) with Honours, from a respected local university. Similar to the CS degree offered by my university but a year longer (common first year with all engineering disciplines) and with more units on project management, client relations etc. Experience Out of university I worked for a small (~10 employee) dev shop doing C# and ASP.Net (3.5) work for six months. I let them know when I joined that I was only there for six months and they were cool with it, they take a lot of grads and work experience hires. Government contract work for healthcare. I then spent 10 months traveling, didn't do any work. When I returned they wanted me back (the boss relayed offers through my friend who was still working there when he heard I was in town). I went back (with a raise to be level with my friend who started the same time as me but didn't leave). I spent twelve months there doing the same stuff, the company had grown (~18 employees). Had more interaction with clients and other stakeholders (including one-on-one meetings) this time. The boss hinted after about 6 months of offering me a raise and moving me up to be a technical lead of two or three other developers, all of about my level of experience. This came to nothing and I left again (giving two months notice instead of the required two weeks). The boss was okay with my leaving and offered to be a reference if I was searching for jobs while overseas. At least one ex-coworker would give me a good reference, the boss might write one if I asked. I spent another 12 months traveling. Did six weeks of volunteering not related to my work but in an interview I could talk about people skills/experience working with very different people in different/adverse/safety-critical situations. I am now back home and unemployed. Total formal experience: 18 months, C# & ASP.Net 3.5, MSSQL (TSQL), HTML, Javascript, AJAX (within ASP), svn, Linq, Linq-to-SQL, small amount of Java Non-professional experience Thoughout university (and before) and during my employment I was actively learning other platforms and languages. Some casual work in PHP around the beginning of my degree. I have used Python for years and have used it for large projects but not with any of the trendy web frameworks. Not really gotten into 3.0 but I don't think it would be hard. I am comfortable working with C although I have never used it in a large project. Completely understand pointers, mem management, have done some assembly (personally and university) and how C translates to machine code. Some experience with gdb. Fine with SQL, MySQL at university and MS-SQL at work. Understand inner/outer/cross joins, foreign keys, indexes, computed columns, views, indexes and normalisation. Lots of Java at university but haven't used it much professionally (or personally, I'm not a fan). When I do go to use it I'm able to but have no memory for the standard libraries. Not done any large projects. Some exposure to C++ but not enough I'd say I'm comfortable using it (I'm aware how much I don't know). Also dabbled with Haskell and Scheme and was exposed to several other languages thoughout university (Prolog, Perl, VB, Smalltalk). Also used cvs, svn and git in several projects. I have been using GNU/Linux as my primary OS for eight years. I'm fine with shell scripting but I don't have admin experience (Apache setup/config etc). I have owned and used two Mac OS X laptops and am comfortable with OS X but no dev experience. Other checkboxes Understand OOP, maybe rusty on terminology. Understand Big O and Big Theta notation and all the complexity stuff. Understand basic networking (TCP vs UDP, basic routing, TCP/IP stack). If I was asked to implement sorting or graph algorithms right now I probably wouldn't be able to but I understood all of them when I had to at uni. I think I'm at the level where it's reasonable to say I'd just use the library standard one for most situations and if it was a bottleneck or special case I could check the libraries available and make an informed decision? The same with most datastructures, I could knock out the basic ones but probably not (ie.) a red-black tree from memory. Again if I were in a situation where a specialty data structure was required I'd be able look them up and choose the right one. Do I need to look up the design pattern stuff? It's pretty intuitive but I'd be in trouble if I was quizzed on it. What I want to do I'm ready to work for a least a few years, I'm not going jetting off again soon. I realise this is something companies would consider but I'm being honest here. It's also a lot more common for people to do this sort of thing in Australia than the US. I'd like to work on more backend or data heavy stuff than I was previously, I'd like to move away from web stuff if possible but I know that's not something I can demand. I would prefer more challenging problems over UI work. I wouldn't mind working in the .Net area again but it's not essential. I'd be willing to learn a new language/platform on the job if it was for interesting work, I don't want to learn Ruby just to do web dev stuff. C/C++, Perl, Haskell etc I'd be happy to move into. Where I see myself in five years Leading a dev team of five or six people, moving more into project management than coding full time. What I'm looking for here Writing this up has helped me a lot to identify my strengths and weaknesses. I guess I was hoping for some input as to what level I should be looking for, and what areas I should look at improving in my skillset. I'd like to think I could apply for non-grad positions but I'm not sure. Hints on where to find work (especially in Australia) that is beyond the standard websites (seek, monster, careerone) and "know somebody". Something like careers.stackoverflow (but with more than fourteen positions for all of Aus). Should I look into linkedin? How essential are some of the extra Windows technologies I'm seeing in C# job postings like WCF?
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Nov 9, 2011 07:58
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Destroyenator posted:I'd like to think I could apply for non-grad positions but I'm not sure. What is a "non-grad" position?
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Nov 9, 2011 21:47
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Orzo posted:Sorry dude but that's almost certainly just straight up bad information, GPA is extremely important. Your anecdotal evidence of a few companies that actually throw out high GPA resumes is definitely atypical. What companies are they? That is most certainly an idiotic practice. If an applicant has a good work history, contributed to OSS stuff or otherwise has a decent track record of caring about their work and the employer rejects them because of GPA, believe me, you do not want to work for them.
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Nov 10, 2011 00:40
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shrughes posted:What is a "non-grad" position? I'd like to be looking a step beyond those but there isn't a lot between that and five plus years experience required positions. I guess it's partly the job market here, almost no businesses hire their own staff, all the job posting are from recruitment agencies.
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Nov 10, 2011 08:54
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Orzo posted:Sorry dude but that's almost certainly just straight up bad information, GPA is extremely important. Your anecdotal evidence of a few companies that actually throw out high GPA resumes is definitely atypical. What companies are they? That is most certainly an idiotic practice. I should reframe my statement and say from my experience, projects/side work and work experience matter much MUCH more than GPA for Silicon Valley companies. I can't really speak much for cases outside of Silicon Valley. "NotShadowStar posted:If an applicant has a good work history, contributed to OSS stuff or otherwise has a decent track record of caring about their work and the employer rejects them because of GPA, believe me, you do not want to work for them. This, too.
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Nov 10, 2011 09:40
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NotShadowStar posted:If an applicant has a good work history, contributed to OSS stuff or otherwise has a decent track record of caring about their work and the employer rejects them because of GPA, believe me, you do not want to work for them. pliable posted:I should reframe my statement and say from my experience, projects/side work and work experience matter much MUCH more than GPA for Silicon Valley companies. I can't really speak much for cases outside of Silicon Valley.
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Nov 10, 2011 16:59
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If anyone is 10 years out of college and still lists their GPA on their resume, I'd ask why the hell they're doing so.
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Nov 10, 2011 17:03
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Really? I'd definitely put mine down after 10 years.
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Nov 10, 2011 17:06
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Orzo posted:Really? I'd definitely put mine down after 10 years. Seriously? I'm seven years out of college and have been employed as a software engineer / architect ever since. What possible use would my GPA be to a potential employer? "You've done x y z, led a b c projects, oh but you had a 3.4 GPA? Thanks for your time goodbye." e: for the record my GPA was not 3.4, it was 2.7. I still can't see what relevance it has after so much time but hey maybe that's my college stupidity talking 
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Nov 10, 2011 17:44
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Well, maybe it's dependent on if you had a good GPA. I can't see the harm in putting down a good/decent GPA from a good school even 10 year after graduating.
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Nov 10, 2011 17:50
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If an employer is looking at someone's resume that reflects ten years of industry experience, doesn't spot a GPA on a resume, and then proceeds to ask for one...to me that's a really good indicator that they're placing an undue amount of value on some things that you did a decade + 4/5 years ago as opposed to the experience you've gained since. If you just put your GPA then you lose that litmus test.
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Nov 10, 2011 17:56
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To me it'd be like putting down what clubs you were in during college. While it's nice when you're just getting out of school to show your involvement, it's largely irrelevant once you reach a certain point. Your actual work in the industry at that point is a better indicator of what you are capable of. If you're including it and it's good I'd wonder if it's because you're trying to cover for a shortcoming somewhere else. If you're including it and it's bad well then you're stupid.
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Nov 10, 2011 17:57
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I'm a little more than 10 years out here. I have no loving recollection what my GPA was in college.
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Nov 10, 2011 19:02
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Orzo posted:Well, maybe it's dependent on if you had a good GPA. I can't see the harm in putting down a good/decent GPA from a good school even 10 year after graduating. The harm would be that the first impression you're making on hiring departments includes the fact that you think how well you scored in academia a decade ago has any relevance to any job you would be applying for now. If you created some revolutionary technology as part of a school project, that's something else again. But GPA? At best they don't care, at worst they laugh at you and don't respect you and you already are at a disadvantage.
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Nov 11, 2011 00:35
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Che Delilas posted:But GPA? At best they don't care...
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Nov 11, 2011 17:58
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Orzo posted:Just because you say this, or want this to be true, doesn't make it so. I mean, are you really trying to speak for every company here? Why do you think someone's ability to do college-level work 10-13 years ago is relevant to someone who would be looking for a non-junior level position? Even if it's at an elite school, I still don't see it being nearly as relevant as your professional experience (then combined with any screening you'd have to do as part of the interview process).
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Nov 11, 2011 18:52
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No Safe Word posted:Why do you think someone's ability to do college-level work 10-13 years ago is relevant to someone who would be looking for a non-junior level position? Even if it's at an elite school, I still don't see it being nearly as relevant as your professional experience (then combined with any screening you'd have to do as part of the interview process). I read a blog post from someone who applied to Google after 20+ years in the industry. They asked him what his college GPA was. Personally, I think GPA is roughly as important as what school you went to. If you put your college on your resume, you may as well throw in your GPA. FWIW, I do some interviewing/recruiting for a major software company and if I don't see a GPA I assume you did poorly, and will be focusing a lot more on basic concepts to make sure you have them down.
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Nov 11, 2011 20:14
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Ranma posted:I read a blog post from someone who applied to Google after 20+ years in the industry. They asked him what his college GPA was. Is this true for all applicants or only new grads?
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Nov 11, 2011 20:35
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Ranma posted:I read a blog post from someone who applied to Google after 20+ years in the industry. They asked him what his college GPA was. Google is a company founded and manned by the spergiest spergs of sperg kingdom, so they are not a good metric for hiring practices.
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Nov 11, 2011 21:11
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Ranma posted:I read a blog post from someone who applied to Google after 20+ years in the industry. They asked him what his college GPA was. This is perfectly reasonable, what's not imo is the HR screen that prevents this from ever occurring at many places
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