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Sab669 posted:As you can see the text you quoted, I don't graduate until next year. I can't afford, both financially and time-wise, to commute however far away for a job and go to school.
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Nov 28, 2011 19:02
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~cross-posting from the IT careers thread~ Can someone tell me about tech recruiters? I'm being messaged on LinkedIn with opportunities for .Net development. I have a nice job right now, which I like except the pay is about 1/2 market rate. I'm curious about what my options are but wary about talking to recruiters because I only hear horrible things about them.
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Nov 28, 2011 22:04
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A potential employer sent me a confidentiality agreement. From a first read-through it looks reasonable (excepting the misspelling of my address  ). Any common pitfalls I should check for before putting my John Hancock on it?
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Nov 28, 2011 22:49
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A MIRACLE posted:~cross-posting from the IT careers thread~ Some of them can be pretty horrible - especially ones like Aston Carter who will just throw as many CVs at a job posting as possible, even if you're not suited or interested. Others can be a bit more tailored. There's nothing preventing you from using multiple recruiters from different companies (you might feel like a bit of a heel lying to their faces, but most of them do sweet fanny adams work and the fee they collect can be several multiples of your monthly salary so don't feel too bad). Also, make sure they never make any changes to your CV. I've interviewed a couple of people where the recruiter has hilariously mangled the CV, or have put down competencies the candidate simply doesn't have. One thing to be aware of is that we're currently in the middle of a tech-hiring frenzy, at least in London. During the last rough patch Banks fired way too many of their IT staff leaving them deskilled and a bit hosed. And now they're all competing with one another for the few good candidates on the market*. Only some of them are beginning massive layoffs again. It's all very short-termist. That said, you could probably use an offer from a Bank to negotiate a better wage elsewhere if you're lucky/good enough to get multiple offers. It might be worth going to .NET user group stuff and just mingling/networking/chatting with IT friends employed elsewhere - some people get referral bonuses if they recommend someone to their company who is later hired. Full Disclosure: I got my current job through a recruiter. *This is an annoyingly low number.
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Nov 28, 2011 22:55
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Otto Skorzeny posted:A potential employer sent me a confidentiality agreement. From a first read-through it looks reasonable (excepting the misspelling of my address As in, have they already given you an offer? Or just to interview them?
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Nov 28, 2011 23:22
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shrughes posted:As in, have they already given you an offer? Or just to interview them? Second "interview", I'm the only candidate left and they said they wanted to meet to discuss my availability in the short and long term and make an offer
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Nov 28, 2011 23:39
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Otto Skorzeny posted:Second "interview", I'm the only candidate left and they said they wanted to meet to discuss my availability in the short and long term and make an offer Don't sign it, tell them to not give you confidential information. There is a huge pitfall: you are giving them a license to sue you. What do you get in return? You get nothing. You get to talk to them, which gives you nothing. If they claim can't figure out whether they'd like to hire you without them giving you confidential information, just walk. Unless it's something limited to patient data confidentiality, like if they're a healthcare IT company or something.
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Nov 28, 2011 23:58
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Since he is apparently at the offer stage I could see this agreement being for more like confidentiality of the terms of the offer and less like confidentiality of the fifteen million lines of source code used to run civilian wiretapping they're going to show him in the interview.
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Nov 29, 2011 02:28
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A MIRACLE posted:~cross-posting from the IT careers thread~ Reputable recruiters are fine; I went through Robert Half for my last job and they were honest and reasonable. If you're getting half market rate and you're actually good at programming, get a new job ASAP if they won't raise your salary to something more reasonable. There's no reason right now to not be getting paid fairly. I've raised my salary by 22% this year, and I just got another offer for 30% more than I was making at the start, and I turned down an offer for 40% more because the job looked loving soul-crushing. And I wasn't even that far underpaid. Of course, it's so highly dependant on your location. I'm within commuting distance of NYC, so I'm set as long as I don't mind an hour train ride each way. That said, I start my new job in a few days and I'll be doing consulting. I've never consulted before and I'm slightly scared.
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Nov 29, 2011 03:06
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Ithaqua posted:Reputable recruiters are fine; I went through Robert Half for my last job and they were honest and reasonable. I got a call/voicemail from a Robert Half rep earlier today about some sort of mobile development position, but I didn't respond because (through a quick Google search) I saw a bunch of places saying they were dishonest/disreputable. The guy sounded like a regular person though and a native English speaker, and was actually calling from an office in the city and not halfway across the country. I just wasn't sure if it was really worth the effort. My general rule of thumb is that if you type the name of a company in on Google and "[company name] scam" shows up within the first four auto-results, that it's probably a scam.
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Nov 29, 2011 03:22
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Sulk posted:I got a call/voicemail from a Robert Half rep earlier today about some sort of mobile development position, but I didn't respond because (through a quick Google search) I saw a bunch of places saying they were dishonest/disreputable. The guy sounded like a regular person though and a native English speaker, and was actually calling from an office in the city and not halfway across the country. I just wasn't sure if it was really worth the effort. My general rule of thumb is that if you type the name of a company in on Google and "[company name] scam" shows up within the first four auto-results, that it's probably a scam. Robert Half is definitely reputable. I didn't really enjoy working with them, though, and probably would generally avoid recruiters again in the future. careers.stackoverflow.com is a great site if you're looking for work. It's a lot smaller than the other job hunting sites, but employers that know enough to advertise on a "hip" site like stackoverflow are probably pretty good.
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Nov 29, 2011 04:42
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Upon further communication, the potential employer clarified that he just wanted me to review the terms before we met and I wouldn't have to sign until after an offer had been tendered. 
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Nov 29, 2011 05:15
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I updated my LinkedIn last night to indicate I'm looking for work as a web developer, and just this afternoon I got an email from a recruiter  . I'm literally a big baby when it comes to finding work (my only post-collegiate job was offered to me on a platter, I didn't seek it out at all) so I don't really know what to make of this.Are recruiters something I should be cautious about? I mean, I haven't even sent anyone an application yet and this guy says he can get me in touch with a few startups in the area. Is there any harm in biting on his offer? edit: to be more clear, he's a headhunter, not an internal recruiter Deus Rex fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Nov 30, 2011 |
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Nov 30, 2011 05:37
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Deus Rex posted:I updated my LinkedIn last night to indicate I'm looking for work as a web developer, and just this afternoon I got an email from a recruiter There's nothing wrong with them per se but realize they work for the company they are recruiting for and they only make money when they recruit someone for the job. So you'll find recruiters seeing Java on your resume because you took it in college trying to put you up for a job wanting 3 years of Java experience, or they will modify your resume without telling you to fit a job you don't qualify for. Also, if a recruiter doesn't have a job for you immediately they will most likely forget about you. However, it's worth pursuing the recruiter but if they do anything you don't like remember you can walk away.
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Nov 30, 2011 16:03
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Wow, okay. Earlier this month I applied for an internship I was informed about through my school's career services department. Didn't hear back from them until this Monday, had the interview yesterday. Overall, I thought the interview went pretty well. After leaving, stupid me I forgot my cell phone in my car and didn't bother going out to get it when I realized what I did when I was home. 5:45 rolls around and I go off to class, see I had a missed call from the company on my phone only 30 minutes after the interview. I thought it was strange, what could they have forgot to ask me? Called them back this morning, and they offered me the position. Seemed like an incredibly fast decision, guess there must not have been any other candidates! It's a SQL position, which is my least favorite thing in the world of programming, but I'm still excited for it. Sadly it's only for the month of Decemmber, maybe will extend into early January if the project isn't completed (just migrating a database from Access -> SQL). I'm going over tomorrow to fill out tax forms, then I start some brief training / getting familiar on Monday. This all seems really fast paced, are internships normally like this? This will be my first real-world experience.
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Dec 1, 2011 16:47
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If it's just a one month project then grabbing the first person who doesn't seem completely unqualified sounds perfectly normal.
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Dec 1, 2011 17:28
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shrughes posted:Don't sign it, tell them to not give you confidential information. There is a huge pitfall: you are giving them a license to sue you. What do you get in return? You get nothing. You get to talk to them, which gives you nothing. If they claim can't figure out whether they'd like to hire you without them giving you confidential information, just walk. This seems a bit extreme. I've had to sign NDA's to tour the campus of prospective employers. When they show you the back room full of prototype boards or whatnot, they want to gauge your interest in the company and show off some cool stuff. They don't want you to secretly take pictures and reverse engineer their IP. Signing an NDA seems perfectly reasonable, even for a first interview.
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Dec 3, 2011 06:44
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Plorkyeran posted:If it's just a one month project then grabbing the first person who doesn't seem completely unqualified sounds perfectly normal. Agreed, when you consider the time investment involved with hiring somebody, I think that it is perfectly legitimate that they were planning on hiring the first person who could do what they needed for the price they budgeted for.
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Dec 5, 2011 23:43
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I applied for a full-time web developer position at a funded startup in Los Angeles. They called me back and offered me a contract position which could lead to a full-time gig if they're happy with my work. They made me this offer because I don't have a CS degree, and I have no experience in the industry. My duties would include some tweaks to and maintenance on their existing site (mostly HTML/JS stuff) as well as developing a new site in Rails from scratch. I foolishly hadn't considered this option, and so when they asked me about compensation I drew a blank. They offered me $20/hr, which I knew was a major lowball so I countered with $30. The interviewer accepted almost immediately, and said we'd meet later in the week to draw up a contract and work out the details. I realize now that $30/hr is still probably too low, even for someone with no 'real-world' experience (but with a decent portfolio of personal projects). Would I be out of line to go into the meeting and ask for a higher rate (maybe more like $45, given that this is LA)? I really need this job as I'm scraping by but I don't want to get ripped off either. edit: my github is here if anyone cares enough to see the kind of stuff I've worked on for reference
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Dec 7, 2011 02:44
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Deus Rex posted:I applied for a full-time web developer position at a funded startup in Los Angeles. They called me back and offered me a contract position which could lead to a full-time gig if they're happy with my work. They made me this offer because I don't have a CS degree, and I have no experience in the industry. My duties would include some tweaks to and maintenance on their existing site (mostly HTML/JS stuff) as well as developing a new site in Rails from scratch. I'd be straight with the hiring person, and tell them you know you got lowballed on the salary, and ask to have a) A better stock grant (MAKE SURE YOU DEMAND PREFERRED STOCK) and a better vesting schedule when you become full time. A 12 month cliff is typical in startups, you want it shorter than that. and/or depending on how ballsy you feel. b) Your salary renegotiated based on industry wages when you're made full time. If you're fresh out of school and have a pulse, you should be making at least 70-80k. Personally, I'd stress option B, as startup shares are worthless, treat them like expensive lottery tickets. If you end up getting either of these MAKE SURE YOU GET IT IN WRITING AS PART OF YOUR INITIAL CONTRACT TO WORK FOR THEM.
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Dec 7, 2011 03:34
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2nd Rate Poster posted:30/hr is an extreme lowball, but you've already agreed and IMO you should just chalk it up to a lesson learned. _Never_ go into salary negotiations without a firm figure in mind. Right. quote:I'd be straight with the hiring person, and tell them you know you got lowballed on the salary, and ask to have I'm definitely going to stress that I want to renegotiate when I'm made full time. Starting salaries for Rails developers in Los Angeles are something like $75,000/yr and the point of this contract period is to show I have the competency and skill set of a junior Rails developer. I'm still covered under my parents' medical insurance and such so at least I'm not going to be paying for that out of $30/hr.
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Dec 7, 2011 03:52
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Deus Rex posted:Right. Not anymore they're not! If you didn't sign anything, renegotiate. Unpaid internships are also sold as a way of proving your chops, but what's really happening is exploitation of technical labor. Tell them you spoke with other technical professionals in your profession and feel you'd be taken advantage of and are being devalued as a cost saving measure if you didn't start at 50 an hour 
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Dec 7, 2011 06:13
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Reading this thread, I'm really starting to think I'm being underpaid. What's the general pay scale for someone a year out of school in the Vancouver area? I'm thinking about asking for a raise, but I'm not sure how to approach my boss about it.
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Dec 7, 2011 08:21
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w00tz0r posted:Reading this thread, I'm really starting to think I'm being underpaid. What's the general pay scale for someone a year out of school in the Vancouver area? I'm thinking about asking for a raise, but I'm not sure how to approach my boss about it. Talk to other people in your business group and industry. Remember that it is illegal for an employer to ban discussions of compensation, so keep in mind when bringing it up at the water cooler when someone argues they signed a contract that forbids this type of discussion. It would cost a company less to compensate everyone fairly than it is to put the hammer down, run afoul of US labor law, and scare away great employees.
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Dec 7, 2011 14:32
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w00tz0r posted:Reading this thread, I'm really starting to think I'm being underpaid. What's the general pay scale for someone a year out of school in the Vancouver area? I'm thinking about asking for a raise, but I'm not sure how to approach my boss about it. Salary.com can give you a decent starting point, but keep in mind that salary can vary a lot between different types and sizes of companies. If you work for a giant software company, your salary is going to probably be a lot higher than someone who works for a small insurance company, even if you're doing the exact same type of work at both. [edit] I don't know if there's a Salary.com-equivalent for Canada, sorry. New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Dec 7, 2011 |
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Dec 7, 2011 15:16
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Fiend posted:Talk to other people in your business group and industry. Remember that it is illegal for an employer to ban discussions of compensation, so keep in mind when bringing it up at the water cooler when someone argues they signed a contract that forbids this type of discussion. It would cost a company less to compensate everyone fairly than it is to put the hammer down, run afoul of US labor law, and scare away great employees. I don't think Vancouver is bound by US labor law. Not saying Canada doesn't have similar labor laws there...
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Dec 7, 2011 15:21
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Ithaqua posted:Salary.com can give you a decent starting point, but keep in mind that salary can vary a lot between different types and sizes of companies. If you work for a giant software company, your salary is going to probably be a lot higher than someone who works for a small insurance company, even if you're doing the exact same type of work at both. Looking at that website, when I searched "Software Engineer" and "Quality Assurance Engineer" it said about $58k was the average for central Rhode Island. Looking for "Web Developer" it proposed a Java Developer position instead, which has an average of $81k? I have no idea, but that doesn't sound right to me at all. I dunno what it is, but I feel like when I graduate this summer I won't be worth $60k to an employer :P
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Dec 7, 2011 15:27
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Suspicious Dish posted:I don't think Vancouver is bound by US labor law. Not saying Canada doesn't have similar labor laws there... Vancouver BC isn't, Vancouver Washington is. Workers should have the right to a living wage and a work environment free from exploitation regardless of their industry or the whims of authoritarian corporate interests.
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Dec 7, 2011 16:09
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Sab669 posted:Looking at that website, when I searched "Software Engineer" and "Quality Assurance Engineer" it said about $58k was the average for central Rhode Island. Looking for "Web Developer" it proposed a Java Developer position instead, which has an average of $81k? I have no idea, but that doesn't sound right to me at all. It's pretty accurate for the NYC area, in my experience. Just use it as a ballpark figure... I generally assume that +/-10% of the median it gives is reasonable.
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Dec 7, 2011 16:21
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I always forget that there's a Vancouver WA. Anyways, thanks.
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Dec 7, 2011 18:22
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Deus Rex posted:I'm definitely going to stress that I want to renegotiate when I'm made full time. Starting salaries for Rails developers in Los Angeles are something like $75,000/yr How attached are you to this job? If you're willing to play hard-ball, but don't want to admit that you hosed up your initial negotiations, why not lie? You could tell them that another offer came in at $42 (or whatever) and that they are free to beat it. Even if the hiring manager calls your bluff, they will still probably up their initial offer (i.e., "listen, we can't match that, but how about $35/hr?"). Interesting fact: with my second job, the hiring manager offered $13k more than the salary requirements that I asked for. There are two lessons that I picked up from this. First, a good company should want to pay you a good wage. They should want their employees to be happy with their job and the lifestyle it affords them. If they are underpaying their skilled workers, then there is a chance that you'll leave at the worst possible time (I did this after one job decided to not give me a raise after three years). Secondly, don't be afraid to ask for more than you think you deserve. If the hiring manager doesn't balk in someway before conceding to your demands, then you probably accepted significantly less than they were willing to take.
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Dec 7, 2011 22:45
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This might seem stupid or obvious, but don't get addicted to job hunting/making your resume look better. I just realized I've been for the past few months: A) looking for, applying to, and interviewing for way too many internships B) reading about technology X or Y and why it's better than Z C) reading tons and tons of advice nonstop, instead of actually making anything I'm proud of. Which is all that really matters - but I knew that. Especially after reading all that advice (over and over again)! It just seems like reading a few more articles, applying just to one more job, or redoing your resume again might just be the extra boost you need to getting a ~DREAM JOB~, but it never is. Just learn for yourself as you go, instead of reading what some angry nerd has to say about jQuery when you've never done any Javascript. There's so many blog posts out there that will keep you entertained while you think you're about to unlock the secret to winning at everything, but in reality they all pretty much say the same thing. After deciding for months what my winter break project would be (I have a ton of these pointless hypothetical projects/self created curriculums that I'll never get to if I keep it up), I realized it didn't matter which programming language or framework I did for three weeks so I'm just going to read and do the exercises in Programming Pearls or SICP or something. Hope I'll actually stick to it.
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Dec 8, 2011 07:32
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DotFortune posted:This might seem stupid or obvious, but don't get addicted to job hunting/making your resume look better. I just realized I've been for the past few months: yep, this. I wasted like six months hemming and hawing over what to do for my portfolio projects instead of applying for jobs. the company that just hired me didn't even end up looking at my portfolio 
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Dec 8, 2011 09:30
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sometimes it's hard not to think about making that "killer app" that will make you irresistible to employers, but as mentioned you just end up spinning your wheels dithering over choice of language etc. That said I've seen a few ads now that ask for a github if you've got one and I do, but all it contains is a broken python thing 
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Dec 8, 2011 12:29
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My problem is simply that I can't even come up with ideas for stuff to put in my portfolio- let alone actually executing it. There's all this stuff I've been taught but I can't even come up with practical implementations of it
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Dec 8, 2011 14:07
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Sab669 posted:My problem is simply that I can't even come up with ideas for stuff to put in my portfolio- let alone actually executing it. There's also lots of open source projects on github in #{language_you_know} with issues no one's submitted pull requests for. Just steal other people's ideas for stuff to do!
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Dec 8, 2011 15:26
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Doc Hawkins posted:There's also lots of open source projects on github in #{language_you_know} with issues no one's submitted pull requests for. Just steal other people's ideas for stuff to do! this is also good because it shows you can work with existing code
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Dec 8, 2011 20:38
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DotFortune posted:This might seem stupid or obvious, but don't get addicted to job hunting/making your resume look better. I just realized I've been for the past few months: This does a perfect job of explaining where I was during the job hunt 6 months ago. I think it's why I'd be terrible working remotely, I'm way too easily sidetracked and like to over-analyze. Me: "Ok, let's sit down and hammer out some portfolio code...... hmm, let me check my reader feed, first, then I'll start coding." Hours later... oops. I can't stress enough how important it is during the interview process to have something demonstrable to show and speak about. It doesn't need to be the next open-source version of node.js, but it should be big enough to show some design patterns, even basic OOP if that's what you're developing for. Being able to speak about those design choices is even better, to prove you actually wrote it. I submitted something half-baked and barely working during my last job search, but it really helped put me over the edge in landing the position.
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Dec 9, 2011 07:43
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I recently finished a business degree but only realized until it was too late that I would have rather done something like software engineering instead. I want to get into career programming (I'd consider myself amateur level at this point, but I'm learning quick). What would be the best way to do this considering I don't have the degree? Some options I've considered: 1. Getting a masters degree in Information Systems. This is kind of like the software-engineering for dummies degree (it's more business focused), but it would at least show I have some sort of aptitude in programming on a resume. Would a job that typically lists a requirement of a computer science degree even consider this an equivalent? 2. Get a masters degree in software engineering. This would require taking deficiency courses as they're called (essentially undergrad programming classes), lots of extra math, and would generally be a lot more difficult than going the INSY route in both time and money. I would also have to go through the whole application process/GMAT thing with this, which I wouldn't with the INSY masters. I hate the idea of doing this option. 3. Study on my own and get certifications from Sun for Java (which is the language I want to be most proficient in). I've seen feedback that these certifications are sort of worthless, but I figured that may not be the case for me since I'm not coming from a CS background. 4. Somehow get involved in open source or charity projects of some sort that I can do in my free time to get some "professional" experience that I can show on a resume. Some other things to note: I don't really like school at all, hate math classes (and therefore the software engineering option), but my work pays for all certification exams and college classes up to $10,000 per year. There's also a sort of support level application services job at my work that will open up within a year that I'm going to apply for. No actual programming there, just some SQL usage and writing documentation for programmers, but I figured it could be a stepping stone to an actual developer position later. hayden. fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Dec 13, 2011 |
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Dec 13, 2011 01:25
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hayden. posted:I recently finished a business degree but only realized until it was too late that I would have rather done something like software engineering instead. I want to get into career programming (I'd consider myself amateur level at this point, but I'm learning quick). What would be the best way to do this considering I don't have the degree? Some options I've considered: Option 4. A graduate degree means fuckall when hiring software developers, unless, for example, you did your masters degree in some area of machine learning and my company is looking for an expert in machine learning. I've seen people with no college degree at all who were badass software developers and had no problems getting jobs.
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Dec 13, 2011 01:30
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