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HardDisk posted:How much does not having any side projects can hurt you professionally? But that said, I feel that side projects really aren't that important if you've already got a good work history and/or can interview well. I know a lot of very good people who don't do any hobby coding whatsoever. If you don't have much of a history yet, then the side projects are largely a way of making up for that.
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Jan 8, 2013 05:14
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No Safe Word posted:If this is your first development gig and it'd be an entry-level role then don't sweat too much about being locked in. It'll either pan out to be awesome or it can be a stepping stone to a better role (you get experience to build your resume, you learn some things, you meet people in the dev community, etc.) And besides that, a good company ideally won't care too much if your experience in their chosen language/framework is weak, provided that they believe you can adapt to it reasonably quickly. For example, my current place is almost entirely C++, and I started here without remembering what a "pure virtual" function was, but they were impressed by my knowledge of more "universal" concepts. * This is also a bit of a challenge in the field; it's worth at least keeping abreast of whatever fad garbage is currently popular so that you're not completely caught off-guard when some subset of it inevitably turns into the New Standard.
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Jan 8, 2013 05:35
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Jerry SanDisky posted:Put your finished school projects on Github.
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Jan 8, 2013 12:31
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HardDisk posted:How much does not having any side projects can hurt you professionally? Probably not a big deal if you're not going for a non-entry level traditional corporate job.
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Jan 8, 2013 13:00
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Volte posted:A friend of mine did this and the professor reused the same assignment the next year. Some people copied his assignment from github and he ended up retroactively getting a zero on the assignment for academic dishonesty, with a mark on his permanent transcript, a year after he'd finished the course. So just make sure that's not going to happen before you do it. That is some real deal bullshit. How can that even work? How did the school let that happen? Pretty sure you're allowed to do whatever you want with your code as long as he didn't post the professors exact question or more likely the exact question from the text book.
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Jan 8, 2013 15:35
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Some schools assume ownership of everything you submit. So yes it's a good idea to check. Still, if youre able to, its a nice way to have a public record of coding aptitude without having to do any extra work.
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Jan 8, 2013 15:40
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The company which I mentioned before that is an hour away wants me to come in tomorrow. The process would have me come in for what I believe is an exercise of my abilities tomorrow, later followed by a half-day long meetings with team members. I expressed again my concerns about the commute, so at least it's out there. Google Maps says that the place is 35 miles each way. I wish this process weren't so difficult. The other two people I spoke with never responded to my follow up, so gently caress them both, I guess.
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Jan 8, 2013 15:51
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KidDynamite posted:That is some real deal bullshit. How can that even work? How did the school let that happen? Pretty sure you're allowed to do whatever you want with your code as long as he didn't post the professors exact question or more likely the exact question from the text book. And it was a fairly broad programming assignment, so it's not like the answer was cut and dried. It was the kind of assignment where 40 students would have 40 completely different assignments, so it's not like it's hard to just not plagiarize.
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Jan 8, 2013 15:51
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gucci void main posted:The company which I mentioned before that is an hour away wants me to come in tomorrow. The process would have me come in for what I believe is an exercise of my abilities tomorrow, later followed by a half-day long meetings with team members. I expressed again my concerns about the commute, so at least it's out there. Google Maps says that the place is 35 miles each way. I wish this process weren't so difficult. The other two people I spoke with never responded to my follow up, so gently caress them both, I guess. I don't understand why you would bring up the commute with the interviewer. It's not their problem.
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Jan 8, 2013 16:29
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Things that would impact your decision to accept their job offer is every bit their business. How can they address your concerns if you won't tell them what they are? Maybe they can offer something to help (like telecommuting), maybe not, but keeping it to yourself doesn't do them any favors.
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Jan 8, 2013 17:02
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I get that, but it sounds more like he's complaining about the commute in terms of having to come allll the way in for an interview.
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Jan 8, 2013 17:03
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Zhentar posted:Things that would impact your decision to accept their job offer is every bit their business. How can they address your concerns if you won't tell them what they are? Maybe they can offer something to help (like telecommuting), maybe not, but keeping it to yourself doesn't do them any favors. Pretty much this -- one of their lead devs was the one who responded and posted about the position in response to something I put up, so I told him that I was interested but that based on their location that it was a large point of concern. I would rather be honest about my issues (and realistically, this is just about the only one I have right now) than mislead them the entire time. Pweller posted:I get that, but it sounds more like he's complaining about the commute in terms of having to come allll the way in for an interview. It does suck that I have to go all the way in for something which will last half of the time that it would take me to get there and back. There's also (in theory) nothing stopping them from having me do an exercise at home if they would like to test my capabilities. I would rather have one long interview process instead of making two potential trips, which I have done before.
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Jan 8, 2013 17:08
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Note to everybody: Don't be this guy: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5025660
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Jan 8, 2013 20:13
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KidDynamite posted:That is some real deal bullshit. How can that even work? How did the school let that happen? Pretty sure you're allowed to do whatever you want with your code as long as he didn't post the professors exact question or more likely the exact question from the text book. "Because it's the same as you handing your code to X, Y, and Z students." - The School gucci void main posted:It does suck that I have to go all the way in for something which will last half of the time that it would take me to get there and back. There's also (in theory) nothing stopping them from having me do an exercise at home if they would like to test my capabilities. I would rather have one long interview process instead of making two potential trips, which I have done before. To be fair, I read it as 1. Get there. 2. Do tests 3. Half-day of meetings 4. Go home, meaning it was a one-long-day dealie. Is it a one day thing or two separate days or did they even specify? Real solution: Tell them that, due to the commute issues, you have to do this all in one day (if they are trying to do it in two). Don't tell HR, "Well, it is kinda far away..." and hope that they pick up the subtleties in your tone. Be direct and ask, "Since it's over a half-hour commute one way, can we do this all in one day?" And to tag on with Zhentar, see if they'll let you work flex-time to avoid traffic or so that you can push out your work in four days instead of five. See if you can do a partial telecommute as well, like two days at home, three there.
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Jan 8, 2013 21:17
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I'm getting ready to job hunt soon. I've had a few months off but before that I was working as a developer for a little over 5 years at the same company (which in its industry is well known). I don't have any side projects but I would think that much experience, while not a ton, would more than make up for it. I'm planning on doing some interview question practice in various languages to get my chops back and brush up on some CS theory I haven't used in a while before I start trying to get interviews. Would you guys do anything different, such as spend more time getting some side projects instead? I'm putting my resume together as well, and it is going to be mostly focused on what I did at that one company, since it is most relevant. Should I even bother listing prior work like a part-time IT position while in school?
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Jan 8, 2013 21:26
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BirdOfPlay posted:To be fair, I read it as 1. Get there. 2. Do tests 3. Half-day of meetings 4. Go home, meaning it was a one-long-day dealie. Is it a one day thing or two separate days or did they even specify? This is a quote from the email: "Are you available in the afternoon this week for a 1hr onsite interview? This is the next step in the interview process. The final step is a half day of interviews with the team." Considering that I'm going in the mid-afternoon tomorrow, this would doubly confirm that it's a one-hour deal. Being that it's almost *an hour* one way (this is assuming good/average traffic), about 70 miles total trip, for what it's worth it's not that easy on the gas tank. I didn't ask about flex time yet because I'm obviously not going to try and appear to be demanding too much until I theoretically see an offer, to which point I'd be willing to negotiate my scheduling. I sent an email and asked if we could condense both steps of the process into the same day. Hopefully this works out because I would hate to theoretically do two large trips (at my cost in terms of fuel) for no offer in the end.
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Jan 8, 2013 21:35
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Double post, but I'd rather update. Got a reply and was told they would like to keep it as scheduled, and are not comfortable with speeding up the process (how getting both things done at once makes much difference I'm unsure). I was also told they will "make sure it is worth [my] time and keep [my] in mind as we make a decision about inviting [me] for the final round." So I guess I can still go tomorrow, but I hate that "final round" term.
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Jan 8, 2013 22:08
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gucci void main posted:Double post, but I'd rather update. Got a reply and was told they would like to keep it as scheduled, and are not comfortable with speeding up the process (how getting both things done at once makes much difference I'm unsure). I was also told they will "make sure it is worth [my] time and keep [my] in mind as we make a decision about inviting [me] for the final round." So I guess I can still go tomorrow, but I hate that "final round" term. I suspect that whatever you're going to do in the first hour long interview could be accomplished over video chat with little issue. If so, it's a little inconsiderate of them to not consider your time (even ignoring a long drive), but also not really a big red flag that they would be a poor place of employment.
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Jan 8, 2013 22:59
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tk posted:I suspect that whatever you're going to do in the first hour long interview could be accomplished over video chat with little issue. If so, it's a little inconsiderate of them to not consider your time (even ignoring a long drive), but also not really a big red flag that they would be a poor place of employment. I was really more turned off by the "final round" comment which implies that they're looking at other people. I get that companies do this, but it's giving me a weird vibe and the fact that I can't do a coding exercise in an hour or something at home instead is kind of lovely. What awful thing am I going to do if left to my own devices, use Google to figure out something which I might not be familiar with? When I interviewed for the NYC gig, they let me do what I did at home as it took some time to complete. This whole situation sucks because I kind of feel like I'm being an indignant poo poo over it, when instead I'd like to imagine that I'm just trying to be reasonable.
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Jan 8, 2013 23:23
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gucci void main posted:I was really more turned off by the "final round" comment which implies that they're looking at other people. I get that companies do this, but it's giving me a weird vibe and the fact that I can't do a coding exercise in an hour or something at home instead is kind of lovely. What awful thing am I going to do if left to my own devices, use Google to figure out something which I might not be familiar with? When I interviewed for the NYC gig, they let me do what I did at home as it took some time to complete. Just tell them that you can write code than anyone in the company, as long as you have time to research solutions and think your way through. 
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Jan 8, 2013 23:33
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gucci void main posted:I was really more turned off by the "final round" comment which implies that they're looking at other people. You really need to not take personally the fact that they're looking at more people for the job than just you. I'm surprised that you expect anything else, frankly. Now, the part about them not seeming to care about your schedule does suck. Their process clearly involves paring down the list of candidates several times until they get to their favorites, which is pretty common. Welcome to beaurocracy. You're going to have to deal with that to some degree in most jobs, depending on the company (especially the size of the company). The fact that they weren't willing to be flexible with you should definitely factor into your decision to take a job with that company, but keep this in mind: if this is HR you're dealing with directly, it's not necessarily an accurate representation of the attitude of the rest of the company or anybody you would be working with. HR drones typically don't know a goddamn thing about anything we do as an industry, and have basically nothing to do with a company's business operations in general. After the most basic resume screening, they should really pass technical candidates on to the appropriate departments for further rounds, but that's often not how it's done, unfortunately. In your case, they're probably treating you the same way they treat prospective toilet scrubbers or bus boys. They don't know you can demonstrate your ability remotely. They don't know what "programmer" means. They just know you're applicant 13827 for position #AA857 and you're in interview stage 3 of 4. So that means come in for a 1 hour(s) aptitude screening or whatever. Again, you have to decide whether that's enough bullshit to make you pass up the job. My advice is to grit your teeth and go through with it until you get to the offer/salary negotiation phase, and THEN decide how much bullshit you'll have to put up with for how much money and whether it's worth it.
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Jan 9, 2013 00:18
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If in work history and project descriptions on my resume I describe projects using APIs like WinForms, ASP.NET MVC, Rails, Entity Framework, etc. how important is it to list these things separately in their own API/technologies section, if at all? I think it helps to summarize the person at a glance so the reader can vertically scan down the resume quickly without needing to read too much into descriptions. However, I've asked around elsewhere and people have said they seem generic/simple and not worth listing on a resume (or at least mine are, because I suck), and unless I have really in-depth knowledge of them it's not really indicative of anything about the candidate. As far as HR keyword search optimization they're all in there already (except for the ones I say I've just dabbled in) but is it actually useful or just tacky to list them separately?
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Jan 9, 2013 00:30
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It's perfectly reasonable for them to want everyone to do the coding exercise under controlled conditions. It's not bureaucracy, it's about having a standardised way of filtering out the bottom X% of applicants. The reason why they may not want to roll the two phases into one is so they don't have to waste the dev team's time if you don't pass the test or they might be busy with other stuff that day - could be their end of sprint or whatever. Developer time is valuable, and as anyone who does hiring will tell you, there is so much dross out there, it's not funny. You should view any interview process as incorporating some things to protect developers from spending too much time interviewing rubbish applicants.
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Jan 9, 2013 00:40
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shrughes posted:Note to everybody: Don't be this guy: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5025660  At least now he can enter the real world, where he won't have to deal with such BS.
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Jan 9, 2013 00:57
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gucci void main posted:When I interviewed for the NYC gig, they let me do what I did at home as it took some time to complete. Yeah that was a really professional organization with sensible policies that you should benchmark all other companies against.
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Jan 9, 2013 01:04
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I worked at a company that had a rather annoying and suboptimal hiring experience for potential candidates, and it had two visits to the office, but it was a nice place to work. If you want to play devil's advocate, one neat thing about two visits to the office is that it discourages people who would have a long commute.
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Jan 9, 2013 02:18
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Cicero posted:B-b-but class was boring! You don't understand his pain, man. Every day, he was forced to do things he wasn't personally interested in! To be fair though, he was ostensibly learning javascript in a university level class - that's like taking a college level english class on Dr. Seuss.
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Jan 9, 2013 05:03
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There's a lot of glorification of abandoning (formal) education in startup culture. It's not hard to imagine how some naive kid gets it into his head that dropping out is the best option, even if this guy seems to have done it for all the wrong reasons.
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Jan 9, 2013 05:11
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Has anyone applied to Amazon? I put in my resume to three listings, and their current statuses are: 1. Reviewed, Not Selected 2. Submitted - Under Review 3. Under Review I applied to these on Dec. 5th, 17th, and 25th, respectively. Are those last two good signs, or just euphemisms for "We will never call you back."?
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Jan 9, 2013 05:30
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hieronymus posted:To be fair though, he was ostensibly learning javascript in a university level class - that's like taking a college level english class on Dr. Seuss. If it was using JavaScript to teach functional programming concepts or other computer science topics it would make sense; I get the impression though he was learning jQuery (the PHP of JavaScript) on his own though.
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Jan 9, 2013 05:36
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I guess my impostor syndrome sense is tingling. After a pretty amazing interview on Friday I got an offer today.. I was expecting another deeper in person interview after it, since I felt most of the questions were pretty easy (compare some concepts of programming. Pros, cons, likes, and dislikes of a few languages I know. Basic architecting. A few simple live coding exercises: fizz-buzz, histogram, etc). Good tangents spun off of just about everything. I guess everything is going too well.. I even managed to not spit out a number first on negotiation they said a number first and came down on the top end of what I would take. I then did the whole pause, and sigh trick and they came in with an extra 5k raise after a few months.. I guess I need to find something wrong with this whole situation. And if the interview was this easy maybe some of my coworkers won't be so hot? It wasn't a senior position but I'm not a senior guy. Apparently a lot of people are still filtered out by fizz-buzz.
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Jan 9, 2013 06:56
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gucci void main posted:What awful thing am I going to do if left to my own devices, use Google to figure out something which I might not be familiar with? You could get a friend to do it for you.
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Jan 9, 2013 17:10
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Kallikrates posted:I guess my impostor syndrome sense is tingling. After a pretty amazing interview on Friday I got an offer today.. I was expecting another deeper in person interview after it, since I felt most of the questions were pretty easy (compare some concepts of programming. Pros, cons, likes, and dislikes of a few languages I know. Basic architecting. A few simple live coding exercises: fizz-buzz, histogram, etc). Good tangents spun off of just about everything. If it's a junior position, it shouldn't be a surprise that they kept the interview questions fairly basic. Fizz-buzz is just to weed out the liars and people who think, "I can type numbers into excel, how hard can programming be?" and prevent more than 5 minutes of the interviewers' time from being wasted. There's no other reason for it. Don't think that what they asked you on the interview represents the average skill level of their current employees. Is there any other reason for your caution aside from the apparent ease of the interview questions? Did you meet any of the current employees and do they seem beaten down? Do the development machines sound like they have small mammals inside them? Does their source control consist of a network share? Did you ask any questions about their process in the interview, and if so did the answers make you feel like you were back in the 90's? If the rest of the company looks fine and the only thing concerning you is the ease of the interview, then what is probably happening is that you found a job that fits you and your skill set really well. Congratulations.
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Jan 9, 2013 18:34
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Che Delilas posted:... Not a junior position or title, "Software Engineer". When at client sites we need to use client computers (win) but can ssh into the servers for development (sites are secure). But they give developers their choices of system for internal and use at home. I only met the people that interviewed me. Their process is about as modern as it can be when working with sensitive resources. Jira Github for things that can leave the silo, a couple projects in the apache foundation, etc. This might also be a "trading the devil I know, for the one I dont" issue.
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Jan 9, 2013 18:55
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If you've done a decent bit of Android programming but only used Mono, how would you put that on your resume? Would look weird under a Technical Skills section to say something like "Android Development (Mono C#)"
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Jan 9, 2013 20:16
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Sab669 posted:If you've done a decent bit of Android programming but only used Mono, how would you put that on your resume? Would look weird under a Technical Skills section to say something like "Android Development (Mono C#)" I wouldn't think that was weird, though I would definitely ask you about your experiences since Android development is a largely Java world (as far as I know) and it'd be interesting to see how you handled the learning process among other things.
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Jan 9, 2013 20:49
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Kallikrates posted:Not a junior position or title, "Software Engineer". When at client sites we need to use client computers (win) but can ssh into the servers for development (sites are secure). But they give developers their choices of system for internal and use at home. I only met the people that interviewed me. Their process is about as modern as it can be when working with sensitive resources. Jira Github for things that can leave the silo, a couple projects in the apache foundation, etc. This might also be a "trading the devil I know, for the one I dont" issue. It sounds like a company that has their poo poo somewhat together as far as process in concerned. If it were me, that would put them at the head of the pack, assuming they didn't have any other show stoppers (and easy interview questions isn't a show stopper to me, if they are capable of discussing programming details at all).
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Jan 9, 2013 22:14
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I just got off the phone from a 30 minute phone interview for a junior dev position. It wasn't too bad, mainly C++ and Java syntax/features and object oriented programming, and I think only flubbed 2 questions out of 15 (e.g. what is multiple inheritance). The main problem is that I have a mild stutter, and while I can control it to some extent in everyday life, during the interview it really came out strongly. I probably spoke only 4 sentences that were completely "fluent". Not asking for sympathy or tips here, just wondering how that might be perceived by a hiring engineer. I can work/code well under stress, but I think I gave off the opposite impression if that mattered to him. (I was certainly nervous, but for me there's little correlation between stress and how much I stutter. I don't at all for instance when I'm singing, acting, or doing an accent, so during any company/school presentations I kinda pretend that I'm on the stage. You can't really do that for a down-to-business interview on the phone.)
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Jan 9, 2013 22:51
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You answered the questions right, so there's that. Most reasonable and intelligent people can also realize that a speech condition is not something that is going to preclude you from doing good work. If they are going to judge you for it and they don't move things forward because you stuttered in the interview, consider that you just dodged working for an rear end in a top hat.
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Jan 9, 2013 23:19
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I would perceive it as a not a big deal at all.
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Jan 9, 2013 23:32
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