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NotHet posted:I've done a first phone interview with a company and I'm feeling extremely stressed about the process. I'd like to both vent and compare experiences with people. Wow, have they mentioned what the starting salary would be? The last interview I had for a front end Java developer position asked me two questions. "What tags are used in a HTML page?" and "What is recursion?" I got a call saying I got the job, one hour afterwards.
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May 4, 2012 01:20
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shrughes posted:Jesus Christ indeed. There's really no reason for such a long interview process. After one phone screen with most hirable candidates you know that there is a 50% chance you'll want to hire them, and after the second there's like a 80%, usually. With good candidates the numbers are already much higher simply because they finish all your interview questions instantly. At a certain point you're simply concerned that they're not neurotic and can actually sit down and get poo poo done. Apparently this company forgot to filter on these last two categories. I'd be quite worried about the workplace culture at such a place. I could imagine all sorts of horrible places like Epic having such a process. On the other hand I could imagine some crazy place that might be worth working at like Wolfram Research doing the same thing. But they're still probably crazy and neurotic. You shouldn't feel stressed out about it because there's a good chance you'd rather work somewhere else. I initially applied to this company because they're probably worth the craziness. They are doing something unique and challenging, and being lead by someone with a very specific drive. This is a very interesting perspective though, I'll keep it in mind. If I get far enough to meet them in person I'll try and find out if they're a good or a bad crazy. Super Ninja Fish posted:Wow, have they mentioned what the starting salary would be? The last interview I had for a front end Java developer position asked me two questions. "What tags are used in a HTML page?" and "What is recursion?" I got a call saying I got the job, one hour afterwards. According to Glassdoor "Engineers" make between 72 and 83k. Compared to the median 81k in LA, this seems a little low? They might be using their reputation to lowball hires. This is literally in downtown LA, so I have no idea if that is a fair wage. I'm from Minnesota where living is cheap.
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May 4, 2012 01:45
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NotHet posted:According to Glassdoor "Engineers" make between 72 and 83k. Compared to the median 81k in LA, this seems a little low? They might be using their reputation to lowball hires. What the christ, with a vetting process like that I'd expect salaries in LA to be 150k+ easy. 80k would be medium low even in Minnesota for someone who is a champion like it seems they're expecting.
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May 4, 2012 02:44
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NotHet posted:According to Glassdoor "Engineers" make between 72 and 83k. Compared to the median 81k in LA, this seems a little low? They might be using their reputation to lowball hires. That is pretty drat low for such a ridiculous interview process. My easy as hell web development job pays 85k in LA and I'm less than a year out of college.
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May 4, 2012 04:12
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Super Ninja Fish posted:Wow, have they mentioned what the starting salary would be? The last interview I had for a front end Java developer position asked me two questions. "What tags are used in a HTML page?" and "What is recursion?" I got a call saying I got the job, one hour afterwards. How is that going? With a process like that I can't imagine your co-workers and the company's rigor in other areas are too good.
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May 5, 2012 03:31
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Do you guys think tutoring programs are something to put on a resume? I've been offered a couple positions, from out-of-class tutoring to running a tutoring section after the CS1 classes.
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May 5, 2012 18:30
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kaempfer0080 posted:Do you guys think tutoring programs are something to put on a resume? I've been offered a couple positions, from out-of-class tutoring to running a tutoring section after the CS1 classes. Any work is something to put on a resume. In this case it's evidence that your CS department didn't think you were too much of a sketchball to have tutoring CS1. Also it casts you as a non-lazy person who does interesting things instead of just playing video games.
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May 5, 2012 18:47
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kaempfer0080 posted:Do you guys think tutoring programs are something to put on a resume? I've been offered a couple positions, from out-of-class tutoring to running a tutoring section after the CS1 classes. I'm 100% certain I got as many interviews and offers as I did because of my work experiences tutoring and help desking as opposed to anything else. Assuming you're good at it, having to explain to someone who is confused and come up with different analogies makes your own understanding that much better.
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May 5, 2012 22:06
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Dammit, I wish I knew this thread was here earlier. Anyways, I've got an on-site interview for a software engineering position coming up soon, which is awesome. The downside is that I'm a CS PhD, so I haven't balanced a binary search tree or any of that fundamental stuff for a long time. I've been going through old textbooks, reading the interview books, and doing Topcoder problems. Any other suggestions to get me back into the swing of things?
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May 6, 2012 04:12
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eelmonger posted:Dammit, I wish I knew this thread was here earlier. Have you programmed? Can you code? Can you linked list? You generally can't study for interviews. The idea of interview questions is to ask you something you haven't done before. They generally try to avoid requiring you to know the definitions of things. Cramming a bunch of facts won't suddenly make you seem to not suck at programming (if you do suck). The kind of knowledge that helps with interview questions is the sort of deep memory you get from having done a bunch of programming. Programming interviews are good at picking that up. (Where they fall short is seeing whether you have the endurance to get lots of things done over a prolonged period of time, whether you can burn through the boring work of gluing APIs together, and some other aspects of a candidate that affect productivity.) YMMV, of course, some have worse interview processes than others. That said, what I'm saying is only an approximation of the truth. The average developer in economically prosperous parts of the industry deals with interview question type problems on a regular basis, because they spend a portion of their time interviewing candidates. That means you, being a PhD student, are at a disadvantage that I simply cannot comprehend. As a side note, I think the only time our programming interview questions ever actually exceeded a person's knowledge was when we interviewed a high school senior for an internship position. He didn't really know what pointers were. (After my coworker gave him a three-minute tutorial on how pointers were just memory addresses, he easily solved whatever problem he was facing.) Edit: My general advice to you is to implement some data structures and algorithms. Write a feature-complete vector class (I'm using C++ lingo here, I mean an array that reallocates logarithmically so that growing takes amortized constant time.) Write a feature-complete doubly linked list class. Write a feature-complete red-black tree. And then add the feature to look up the k'th smallest element of that tree. (What information do you have to add to the nodes to support such lookups?) Write quicksort, merge sort, and goddammit, insertion sort. Write a priority queue (with values stored packed in a vector). These are fun and straightforward exercises that will get you more in touch with the protoplasm of computer programs. Edit: vvv People who can't nih their own priority queue aren't really valid people. shrughes fucked around with this message at 04:45 on May 6, 2012 |
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May 6, 2012 04:35
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eelmonger posted:Dammit, I wish I knew this thread was here earlier. What kind of software and what language? There have been a lot of debates in this thread about just how much fundamental CS knowledge is strictly necessary for your standard software engineering job. My anecdotal experience is "pretty much none". Understanding data structures and algorithms and big O is excellent, but it generally won't be hugely relevant.
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May 6, 2012 04:40
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Ithaqua posted:What kind of software and what language? There have been a lot of debates in this thread about just how much fundamental CS knowledge is strictly necessary for your standard software engineering job. My anecdotal experience is "pretty much none". Understanding data structures and algorithms and big O is excellent, but it generally won't be hugely relevant. Uhhhh no this is actually just crazy retarded. Understanding big O is very important. Otherwise you are just praying to the SQL machine, praying to the linked list, without knowing what you're doing. It's much easier to understand algorithms if you can know that code:My god I've seen people at "real" jobs that just suffer immensely because they can't eyeball that the time complexity of what they're doing, be it measured in CPU cycles or database requests. There is just no hope for them.
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May 6, 2012 04:51
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I guess my main concern is getting into the interview mindset, if that's a thing. I can definitely see a difference in how I approach problems now compared to how I did when I first started practicing, and I didn't know if there was a way to focus on that. I code on a daily basis, both on work and hobby stuff, so I think I can FizzBuzz with the rest of 'em. However, I feel like the coding challenges presented by PhD research are quite different and have a different goal (i.e. just bloody work, Big O be damned) than typical interview questions I see. Since my work has basically encouraged just using brute-force solutions for so long, I'm not really in the mindset of looking for clever tricks to make things run faster. shrughes posted:Edit: My general advice to you is to implement some data structures and algorithms. Write a feature-complete vector class (I'm using C++ lingo here, I mean an array that reallocates logarithmically so that growing takes amortized constant time.) Write a feature-complete doubly linked list class. Write a feature-complete red-black tree. And then add the feature to look up the k'th smallest element of that tree. (What information do you have to add to the nodes to support such lookups?) Write quicksort, merge sort, and goddammit, insertion sort. Write a priority queue (with values stored packed in a vector). These are fun and straightforward exercises that will get you more in touch with the protoplasm of computer programs. I've basically done everything there except the red-black tree, but that's cause even in undergrad I never had to code up one of those. Maybe I'll give it a whirl though. I'm also pretty good at eyeballing Big O (some of my research code does make me cry a bit because of that). So does that mean I don't have to freak out as much as I have been? Edit: To clarify, the job is for one of the big guys and if the phone screen is anything to go by, complexity is relevant. eelmonger fucked around with this message at 05:21 on May 6, 2012 |
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May 6, 2012 05:10
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shrughes posted:Uhhhh no this is actually just crazy retarded. Understanding big O is very important. Otherwise you are just praying to the SQL machine, praying to the linked list, without knowing what you're doing. It's much easier to understand algorithms if you can know that I'm not saying that it's useless. I'm just saying that it's highly unlikely that the interviewer is going to write an algorithm out on a whiteboard and ask what the worst-case complexity is. It could happen, but it's never happened to me. This is why I asked what language and problem domain he's interviewing in. An interview for a .NET web developer is probably going to focus on a very different set of skills than a job writing C for embedded systems or trading algorithms.
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May 6, 2012 05:11
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shrughes posted:My god I've seen people at "real" jobs that just suffer immensely because they can't eyeball that the time complexity of what they're doing, be it measured in CPU cycles or database requests. There is just no hope for them. Agreed, but business as usual doesn't give a poo poo. There are many places for a mediocre programmer to get hired where that poo poo just doesn't matter. Honestly, if I only hired candidates based off their ability to analyze and identify the algorithmic complexity of certain algorithms/data structures my office would be empty. I think that a job where many of your coworkers can do that kind of stuff is reserved for the biggest companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.., that have the resources and leisure to pick the best candidates. Everywhere else it's a crapshoot and the rigorousness of the interview is the only thing that could give a candidate any insight on what to expect from their potential coworkers. At least this has been my experience working in a 3rd world country Mexico. 
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May 6, 2012 07:00
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Ithaqua posted:I'm not saying that it's useless. I'm just saying that it's highly unlikely that the interviewer is going to write an algorithm out on a whiteboard and ask what the worst-case complexity is. It could happen, but it's never happened to me. I don't think I've ever had someone write an algorithm out and ask me to analyze its runtime, but I've certainly been asked to analyze the runtime of almost every algorithm I've presented.
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May 6, 2012 07:02
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eelmonger posted:I guess my main concern is getting into the interview mindset, if that's a thing. I can definitely see a difference in how I approach problems now compared to how I did when I first started practicing, and I didn't know if there was a way to focus on that. If you haven't already, page through 'Programming Interviews Exposed' and 'Cracking the Coding Interview'. I doubt you'd see the specific problems they reference but most of the topics and suggestions are kind of helpful. I got asked about complexity a lot for my onsite, but mostly for simple things. The one "design an algorithm" question ended up being a tradeoff between fast enough, thorough enough, and space complexity.
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May 6, 2012 09:47
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MEAT TREAT posted:Agreed, but business as usual doesn't give a poo poo. There are many places for a mediocre programmer to get hired where that poo poo just doesn't matter. This varies so much from company to company that it's difficult or impossible to generalize like this. Companies that work in middleware may have the luxury to be able to take anyone who can coax eclipse into compiling their code, whereas companies working on eg. high-performance databases need people with solid CS fundamentals, I would furthermore posit that 'companies that make CRUD apps in java and python' are an especially bad place to extrapolate from to cover the entire set of companies hiring from CS and related disciplines (not that this is necessarily what you were doing). In summary, knowledge of CS fundamentals may be a necessary condition for employment depending on what sort of work you want to do. e: we have this 'discussion' about once a month, right? wonder if it's based on moon phases.
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May 6, 2012 20:01
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Otto Skorzeny posted:In summary, knowledge of CS fundamentals may be a necessary condition for employment depending on what sort of work you want to do. This should be in the OP, as far as I'm concerned.
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May 6, 2012 20:03
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Ithaqua posted:This should be in the OP, as far as I'm concerned.
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May 6, 2012 21:12
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shrughes posted:ManlyWeevil posted:Thanks fellers, I think I'll go for it.
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May 6, 2012 23:05
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E: VVVV
Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 23:12 on May 6, 2012 |
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May 6, 2012 23:06
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Knyteguy posted:So I've managed to score a position as a consultant/programmer/web designer for a million dollar company. I'm pretty comfortable with the consulting and programming (which is fairly basic stuff), and I've been building websites for 16 years, but I'm wondering if there are any new technologies out there for building layouts and such. You'll probably get better answers here.
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May 6, 2012 23:08
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Ithaqua posted:You'll probably get better answers here. Ah yes I guess it relates less to programming. Thanks.
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May 6, 2012 23:12
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eelmonger posted:I guess my main concern is getting into the interview mindset, if that's a thing. I can definitely see a difference in how I approach problems now compared to how I did when I first started practicing, and I didn't know if there was a way to focus on that. Every coding question I have been asked always starts with pretty much the O(n) or O(n^2) implementation (either space or time-wise) being really obvious and I think what they want you to "solve" before they move on to the, "so how do you make this faster?" kind of question. These questions are usually so they can see if you notice what data structure to store the data in or what other improvements you can make to reduce the running time to O(1), O(log n), or O(n) time instead. Then afterwords they ask you about space and time complexity/tradeoff for using this data structure/sort/algorithm.
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May 7, 2012 10:19
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Not very happy when I receive a preliminary e-mail test and the drat thing is in VB when I was expecting C# (the job description on the listing mentioned C#, on the phone interview no mention was made of VB) Ugh. I think I got most of it ok anyway (thanks Telerik code converter), but it was just really frustrating.
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May 7, 2012 19:53
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aBagorn posted:Not very happy when I receive a preliminary e-mail test and the drat thing is in VB when I was expecting C# (the job description on the listing mentioned C#, on the phone interview no mention was made of VB) Want some feedback? I'm conversant in VB .NET.
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May 7, 2012 20:03
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http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~scottm/cs307/TestsStudyMaterial.htm Work all this guy's old tests in whatever language it is you'll be using. They're really similar to programming interview questions. Edit: And I'm willing to bet that most classes with similar titles also have really similar tests that are also super-helpful. it is fucked around with this message at 03:35 on May 8, 2012 |
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May 8, 2012 03:28
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I guess I could use some advice. So a few days ago I was browsing around Craigslist because sometimes you see a good ad or two on occasion and replied to one that was really kind of... odd: http://tinyurl.com/7z3ahon I figured it wouldn't hurt to send a response. I wrote the answer up in Python and basically said "PHP is an abomination so here's the solution in Python" and sent it off. Literally five minutes later I get a call, the woman says that my email was amusing and made her laugh, and she wants me to come in. Apparently the job is a PHP job, but at this point if the pay is acceptable and the work is meaningful/good for building a skill set then I don't see much problem with it. However, I go in and meet with her. The interview lasted about 40 minutes, and on the whole I wouldn't even say that it was bad, maybe an 8.5/10 if I had to actually grade it. She apparently hadn't looked at my resume at all in the course of a couple days, and only saw it for the first time then and there. After noting a couple good things I've done in the past, she basically goes on to say "so you have no programming experience" -- not verbatim, but close -- even though I have a link to my Github account on my resume, which is admittedly barren but has a personal project I was working on which utilized Django, jQuery, and a couple other things. I understand that it's a bit lacking, but to say that I have absolutely nothing whatsoever made me feel kind of insulted, especially when she could have at least went to check out some of the work. Note that I would understand the lack of experience being an issue if it wasn't posted as an entry level position, but it was. She implied that I was a bit short of what they were looking for in regards to the position, but if I could do well on their technical test, I would still be considered. Alternately, she mentioned an internship (I recall hearing it lasting three months, maybe longer), but the pay is only $15 an hour and unless I move back home (which is closer), it's a 35-60 minute drive, depending on traffic. I talked to a couple people and they seemed to get an impression that they might be saying that so they can pay me less money to work for them. My last concern is that although the position is in PHP development, they're using CakePHP, which based on what I'm reading on here and have been told by others, is absolutely terrible. It's also an older version, 1.3, which they aren't updating because of some inane legacy server issues they have or something like that. I haven't started messing around with it yet, but I'm afraid it's the kind of thing that will make me not want to program or work on personal studies when I get home from work. Sorry for the somewhat long post. I just wanted to maybe get some insight into this whole thing. I do think that the interview didn't go poorly, for as negative as I may sound, but I have my concerns. It's so difficult to find a decent position around here, but with every opportunity there appears to be, it seems like there are some major caveats.
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May 11, 2012 04:48
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Sulk posted:I guess I could use some advice. 40 minutes of interview? They have no other developers to interview you with? Was she even one? The company sounds stupid with stupid employees. Who is this woman who interviewed you? What is her role in the company? If you can't get any other jobs get that one (but not an "internship") and start looking elsewhere 6 months in. If you can get any other jobs get the other one, which is probably better.
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May 11, 2012 05:10
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Sulk posted:The interview lasted about 40 minutes, Sulk posted:She apparently hadn't looked at my resume at all Sulk posted:she basically goes on to say "so you have no programming experience" are ignorant; Sulk posted:made me feel kind of insulted Sulk posted:Note that I would understand the lack of experience being an issue if it wasn't posted as an entry level position, but it was. Sulk posted:She implied that I was a bit short of what they were looking for in regards to the position Sulk posted:My last concern is that although the position is in PHP development, Sulk posted:It's also an older version, 1.3, which they aren't updating 1. Management who doesn't see the value in keeping their technology stack up-to-date. 2. The current staff is too lazy or incompetent to undertake the task of updating their software in a reasonable time. 3. The person making the decisions is thickheaded and lives in a fantasy world were updating would would result in imaginary issue that is unacceptable. This excuses is typically, but not limited to, "poor performance." They will hold onto this position feverishly until the very end, literally, until they are fired. 4. The company has a legitimate need for legacy software due to co-dependencies that cannot be resolved by the company alone. Sulk posted:I'm afraid it's the kind of thing that will make me not want to program or work on personal studies when I get home from work. It will. My advice is to keep looking for a better position. You'll likely end up having to unlearn a more bad habits from working there than you will have gained in any real experience. Edit: fixed some grammar. oRenj9 fucked around with this message at 05:24 on May 11, 2012 |
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May 11, 2012 05:21
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Removed. I'll just deal with it.
double sulk fucked around with this message at 06:44 on May 11, 2012 |
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May 11, 2012 05:37
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Jesus Christ Sulk, quit being a bitch and pad your resume. $15 an hour is less than my entry wage in Mexico, just to give you an idea. Spend some cash to polish your resume from the various people that do it in SA mart and get a jump on your opponents. You have no other recourse if you aren't willing to relocate to a better job market, and while you're at it make sure you mention every dinky school project you ever did. Get yourself brushed up on C#/Java since that's where the jobs are in your community. Study up on a few good books like Effective Java and you'll be way ahead of the competition even if you are kinda rusty.
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May 11, 2012 06:27
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Also protip: In certain fields no one will look at your github. Their value as a recruitment filter is greatly overrated.
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May 11, 2012 07:37
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Milotic posted:Also protip: In certain fields no one will look at your github. Their value as a recruitment filter is greatly overrated. That's because the first screen is usually a recruiter, who isn't necessarily technical. If it's not something that they can read quickly, odds are good it won't be seen. That whole thing about people spending 30 seconds on a resume or less is true, and popping open a browser and figuring out how to navigate github (especially for a non-technical person) makes that a much longer process.
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May 11, 2012 07:51
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let's keep posting highly location and industry specific advice here gentlemen. good work
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May 11, 2012 08:51
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make sure to leave your door open during your first week at work in case any cool or kawaii girls wanna come by + hang out
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May 11, 2012 09:00
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Dumb question incoming: I'm interviewing for a job whose posting lists "Knowledge of AI and Agile Development methodologies, in particular Scrum" as an asset. I'm confused as to whether there's a related methodology/development topic belonging to the acronym AI, or if the methodology topics just ended up in the same sentence as artificial intelligence.
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May 11, 2012 18:00
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Newf posted:Dumb question incoming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appreciative_inquiry
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May 11, 2012 18:02
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Thanks 
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May 11, 2012 18:17
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