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biochemist posted:I was actually really surprised when I got my new job- my manager is a great guy and there's a bunch of things to do, but he's stuck in meetings all day and things tend to bottleneck until he can start assigning tasks. I came from a small firm where I had a huge list of things to do every day and I was getting paid so much less, so it pretty crazy that I was getting paid significantly more and had a lot more free time. That's a project management failure. If they were doing things right, you'd have a consistent, reasonable amount of work to do each week/sprint.
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Mar 30, 2013 20:59
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I just took an online aptitude test for a job I applied for after talking to the recruiter. It had general programming logic, database queries, some algorithms and math questions. Fairly standard interview questions that I handled fine, except for the fact that it was obviously written by someone who could not speak English. This tripped me up on quite a few questions as there was arbitrary word choice and I didn't finish as much as I could have because I was decoding the stupid grammar and spelling mistakes. Is this something worth mentioning or if I don't get a callback should I just let it go?
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Mar 31, 2013 02:08
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Newbie Programming Interviews/Get a Job Megathread: Get paid $384/hr to do nothing
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Mar 31, 2013 16:51
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Woo, I should have an interview for what sounds like a really cool job in C# and some C++, working with machines to automate all sorts of processes. I've done a little work with flatbed scanners and barcode readers and I really enjoyed working with physical hardware instead of just writing lovely CRUD apps for sales orders like I have been for a while now. I spoke to the staffing agency today and they seemed pretty cool compared to most others I've talked with. I've always been crappy at coming up with questions to ask when I get the actual interview, but a few I was thinking of; -How are employee reviews / evaluations done? (My current employer doesn't do them) -What's the dress code and work environment like, cubicles, or...? -What would the benefits include and who should I direct any questions to (is it too early in the process to ask this?) -Standard business hours? 8-5? 9-6? -What is the policy on telecommuting -How much overtime is considered normal or otherwise acceptable? (again, I'm not sure if it would be too early to ask this) I should also mention I'd be relocating for this job, but more than likely no relocation assistance. However, I know little about the region it's in. Any decent questions to ask relevant to that? The company I work for now, the interview process was basically "Where did you go to school? Do you use C#? Okay, here's what we do, want do it?" Sab669 fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Apr 2, 2013 |
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Apr 2, 2013 14:59
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Here are some ideas for questions off the top of my head, many of which may be helpful in uncovering any warning signs before you join: What is a typical workday like for you? Sorta an open question, might not be super useful, but could uncover something interesting. How do new projects or features get proposed? Shows whether coworkers commonly give input on future direction or if it's entirely top-down. Whats the management structure like? It could be completely ad-hoc, or there might be one overloaded manager trying to herd dozens of people, etc. What sort of planning is done for future releases? Its possible that there isn't any, implying frequent death marches and last minute additions. How are upcoming releases tested? Check whether any such testing occurs, and how thought out it is. What tools does the team use? (eg SCM, bug tracker, common editor) At least gets you something to read up on if you haven't used it yet. Also possible that they're using something stupid. For the questions you've picked, some comments (the ones not mentioned here look good to me): What's the dress code and work environment like, cubicles, or...? Ideally you'll be able to discover both of these during your interview by observing your interviewers and the office. What would the benefits include and who should I direct any questions to (is it too early in the process to ask this?) Your recruiter would be a better person to ask this. The employees you'll be interviewed by probably won't have all the info. You can wait until you've heard back after the interview. If things go well, the recruiter will give you a lot of this info anyway when trying to sell you on the position. How much overtime is considered normal or otherwise acceptable? (again, I'm not sure if it would be too early to ask this) You could word this as "How often are you in a big crunch?" or similar. Probably best to ask the underlings this question, since the managers will probably just sugercoat the issue. It can help to give multiple interviewers the same question, just to see if the answer varies by position/role. It's good that you're thinking of questions to ask them. Ideally, the interview is about you evaluating them as much as it is them evaluating you. Feel free to bring a written list of questions to pick from with you to the interview. Doing so may even show that you're well-prepared and well-organized.
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Apr 2, 2013 15:35
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Those are really good. Here's a few more:
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Apr 2, 2013 16:11
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Thanks for the ideas, definitely wouldn't have thought of those 
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Apr 2, 2013 16:14
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Sab669 posted:Thanks for the ideas, definitely wouldn't have thought of those Also, the Joel Test is a little bit antiquated, but it has some good questions.
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Apr 2, 2013 16:34
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So, job hunting from out of state: look at postings online, fire off my resume to everything relevant that doesn't specify that they're looking only for local candidates?
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Apr 2, 2013 16:56
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Safe and Secure! posted:So, job hunting from out of state: look at postings online, fire off my resume to everything relevant that doesn't specify that they're looking only for local candidates? "Local only" usually means they just don't want to pay you a relo allowance or spend the money to fly you in for an interview. If you're cool with that and are willing to do this on your own dime, apply anyway, put in your cover letter you're willing to cover your own relo expense. Some relocation expenses can be tax deductible if you pay out of pocket, consult with your tax advisor for full details on your unique situation as I am not a tax practitioner. kitten smoothie fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Apr 2, 2013 |
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Apr 2, 2013 17:00
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kitten smoothie posted:"Local only" usually means they just don't want to pay you a relo allowance or spend the money to fly you in for an interview. If you're cool with that and are willing to do this on your own dime, apply anyway, put in your cover letter you're willing to cover your own relo expense. Some relocation expenses can be tax deductible if you pay out of pocket, consult with your tax advisor for full details on your unique situation as I am not a tax practitioner. I did not know that about the taxes, that's pretty cool as I might be going from South-West Rhode Island to North of Boston if any of these interviews go well...
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Apr 3, 2013 14:04
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I apologize if this question has already been asked - I didn't see a great deal of discussion (like, two posts) in the first ten pages of the thread. What kind of prospects do I have as a person earning an MIS? I already have a bachelor's in English, and I got about a semester into my MLS program before I realized that the job prospects were a bunch of hot bullshit (entry level positions are typically labeled "assistants" in order to justify lower pay, which is $13/hr if you're lucky). If I get a job with a bunch of CS dudes, will they all secretly despise me? Will having a master's degree make a huge difference in the kinds of positions I could potentially earn out the gate? I guess I'm mostly just concerned that there would be some sort of stigma attached to the degree. It would feel pretty dumb to go back and earn a second bachelor's degree when I could just get a master's, though.
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Apr 3, 2013 20:11
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MIS seems to be a popular degree for consultant roles. You could probably find just as many actual dev. roles if your hard skills are strong.
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Apr 3, 2013 20:19
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On a similar note, what's the best way to spend the summer before entry into the MIS program? I've been refreshing HTML / CSS fundamentals, and just started learning some basic Java. Should I keep that up?
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Apr 3, 2013 22:51
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Necronomicon posted:On a similar note, what's the best way to spend the summer before entry into the MIS program? I've been refreshing HTML / CSS fundamentals, and just started learning some basic Java. Should I keep that up? What's your ideal career? You already have a bachelors, it might not be the best idea to spend a ton of cash on another one. At my school the degree seemed to be a mix of an associates-level understanding of programming with an associates-level understanding of business.
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Apr 4, 2013 01:00
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quote:If I get a job with a bunch of CS dudes, will they all secretly despise me? Will having a master's degree make a huge difference in the kinds of positions I could potentially earn out the gate? In the real world, nobody cares what you majored in. They care that you can do the work and speak intelligently about it. Necronomicon posted:On a similar note, what's the best way to spend the summer before entry into the MIS program? I've been refreshing HTML / CSS fundamentals, and just started learning some basic Java. Should I keep that up? Build something interesting. Best way to learn, and the best resume item you'll have.
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Apr 4, 2013 13:46
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Gounads posted:In the real world, nobody cares what you majored in. They care that you can do the work and speak intelligently about it. Plenty of people care what you majored at least for your first job, depending on which subsector of the industry you want to work in, as was mentioned in the OP. Different companies value credentials differently, and neither the old school "You must have a BSci in CS" nor the Bay Area "just throw poo poo on Github for six months and wait for the offers to roll in" advice is universally applicable. Usually credentials are most important in getting past an HR filter to land an interview. Necronomicon: what sort of programming job do you want to get? I'll quickly and badly define some broad subsectors of the industry for you in case you're unfamiliar:
Obviously this isn't an exhaustive list, but I hope it's helpful. Blotto Skorzany fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Apr 4, 2013 |
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Apr 4, 2013 16:05
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Very helpful breakdown. I'd be curious to know what area you're in! I'm not really looking for Web Dev jobs but from what I've seen in my area and what my peers do, if you're familiar with the hot JS frameworks you're set. All these start-up type places want someone that can knockout the competition with a good backbone in jQuery, someone who really nodes what they're doing.
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Apr 4, 2013 17:51
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MIS is mostly for it/sys admin. DBA or devops if you're good. I'd be a little leery of an English BA with an MIS unless they had some experience to back it up, as a lot of what you need to be good in that role doesn't come from school. If you do it try to get some experience while you're still in school, even if its just help-desk part-time or over the summer. If you're already working in IT, get your employer to pay for it.
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Apr 4, 2013 17:53
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I already got into a Master's of Library Science, and databases and monstrous amounts of information are already pretty well in my wheelhouse. The program I'm looking at is 42 hours, and the classes I've already taken can slot in as electives (same department, after all). With 9 credits per semester (which is full time by grad standards) I can finish the degree in two years, roughly. I'd like to spend the summer before classes on a personal project that I can attach to resumes, just to get my feet wet. I've been refreshing my HTML / CSS chops and juuuust started up with extremely basic Java. Since half of the credits for my degree will be electives, I figure I can dip into the CS department pretty liberally to get more programming chops. With an English BA, my concern is that employers will see that and think I'll just run around writing poems about servers or some bullshit, so the more hard skills I can learn the better.
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Apr 4, 2013 22:35
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Cicero posted:IF YOU WAIT UNTIL YOU GRADUATE TO LOOK FOR JOBS YOU'RE AN IDIOT! DO NOT DO THIS. poo poo son, this is exactly what I did. Am I hosed now? How is this gonna hurt me? This poo poo just ruined my night.
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Apr 5, 2013 08:26
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Dog Jones posted:poo poo son, this is exactly what I did. Am I hosed now? How is this gonna hurt me? This poo poo just ruined my night. It's going to perhaps hurt you because if you haven't gotten a job yet, there's a higher chance you tried to get a job but were rejected everywhere.
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Apr 5, 2013 08:49
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shrughes posted:It's going to perhaps hurt you because if you haven't gotten a job yet, there's a higher chance you tried to get a job but were rejected everywhere. Nah, I just didn't apply for stuff because I wanted to finish a project for my portfolio so I could get a job in the field I want.
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Apr 5, 2013 08:58
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Dog Jones posted:Nah, I just didn't apply for stuff because I wanted to finish a project for my portfolio so I could get a job in the field I want. Facts don't have anything to do with this, it has to do with the perceptions of the person filtering resumes.
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Apr 5, 2013 11:15
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shrughes posted:Facts don't have anything to do with this, it has to do with the perceptions of the person filtering resumes. Can I do anything to remedy this situation?
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Apr 5, 2013 11:22
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Know your poo poo inside and out, and interview well. I will pretty much always prefer a resume where someone has previous experience from a relevant internship, but it doesn't mean I won't interview someone who doesn't. It basically means you are just more of a gamble. You mention a project portfolio... that could help if it is impressive and in some form that you can easily submit with job applications.
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Apr 5, 2013 12:58
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Otto Skorzeny posted:Plenty of people care what you majored at least for your first job, depending on which subsector of the industry you want to work in, as was mentioned in the OP. Different companies value credentials differently, and neither the old school "You must have a BSci in CS" nor the Bay Area "just throw poo poo on Github for six months and wait for the offers to roll in" advice is universally applicable. Usually credentials are most important in getting past an HR filter to land an interview. I guess I was answering just for "If I get a job with a bunch of CS dudes, will they all secretly despise me?" - I still maintain that nobody really cares what you majored in, in a post-hiring situation.
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Apr 5, 2013 16:43
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Dog Jones posted:poo poo son, this is exactly what I did. Am I hosed now? How is this gonna hurt me? This poo poo just ruined my night. edit: To elaborate on this - 1. When you're still in school and interviewing for jobs, you're in a situation not unlike interviewing for jobs when you're already gainfully employed: because you don't need something immediately, you have a lot more leverage to only take offers that actually appeal to you. Meaning, you can avoid offers from companies you don't really feel right about, and you can walk away if negotiations don't go well (more the former than the latter probably since new college grads generally don't have a ton of room to negotiate). Of course, you may still be able to do this if you're living at home and have a decent family situation. 2. A lot of the best companies try to snatch up CS grads ahead of time, before their competitors can get to them, so if you wait too long you may find it more difficult to get an interview, since they've already passed their main college hiring phase. This is usually much more true for big (national) tech companies than smaller (local) ones, mind. Cicero fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Apr 5, 2013 |
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Apr 5, 2013 16:59
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I just got off the phone with a preliminary interview for a company that does embedded development for medical equipment. Mostly just seeing what my experience was / what they do. Unfortunately I have 0 experience with developing multithreaded applications and actually maintaining threads myself, but that didn't sound like too much of a problem for them. He recommended I do read up on it for my next interview though. I did read a few articles on MSDN about it for C#, any other good resources you guys know of?
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Apr 5, 2013 20:58
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Gounads posted:I guess I was answering just for "If I get a job with a bunch of CS dudes, will they all secretly despise me?" - I still maintain that nobody really cares what you majored in, in a post-hiring situation. Yeah, I don't think I know where any of my current coworkers graduated from, when, or what degrees they got. Your coworkers would be so busy and caught up in their own poo poo that nobody's going to bother keep tracking of this stuff. Just don't be lazy, retarded, or insufferable and nobody will secretly despise you. This goes regardless of what degrees you have or where you went to school. (At my old job, I secretly despised a guy who went had a CS degree from a top brand-name school but was lazy as hell, did his own poo poo instead of his project for the quarter (and everyone else on the team had to scramble to cover for him), and always kept asking me questions that could have been answered with a simple Google search. I got the sense that other people were annoyed at him too, for the first 3 reasons at least.) Otto Skorzeny posted:[*]Enterprise: applications that a business uses for their internal processes, like accounting and inventory management. Not a hot sector but always hiring. I would say this requires a moderate level of CS knowledge, but there are plenty of people working in this sector who don't know a linked list from a hyperlink that this probably isn't the case (although companies in this sector may like credentials). Databases are huge here as well. Common languages: Java, C#. For enterprise, the sense I get is that you'll need some smart, very strong CS guys making the big architectural decisions and idiot-proofing the thing, and then you get the idiot coding peons on the bottom rung. So, I guess you get a nice spectrum of people, which is a good thing because there are always more experienced people to look up to and learn from. Fresh out of college, you'd probably be stuck with as an idiot peon until you earn your stripes, so it depends on how much patience you have dealing with all the other idiot peons around you and, depending on the place, how much you're willing to play the politics game to get that promo. Again this is the sense I get, I don't have much experience or evidence to back this up, so I could be very wrong!
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Apr 5, 2013 21:02
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Getting out of an interview and realizing you messed up one small, silly conditional in a loop feels bad. Such a dumb mistake I should have realized. Hope it's not a big deal  That was only 1 out of 5 (very easy) problems though. This thread definitely helped a lot with today's interview.
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Apr 5, 2013 21:22
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facepalmolive posted:For enterprise, the sense I get is that you'll need some smart, very strong CS guys making the big architectural decisions and idiot-proofing the thing, and then you get the idiot coding peons on the bottom rung. So, I guess you get a nice spectrum of people, which is a good thing because there are always more experienced people to look up to and learn from. Fresh out of college, you'd probably be stuck with as an idiot peon until you earn your stripes, so it depends on how much patience you have dealing with all the other idiot peons around you and, depending on the place, how much you're willing to play the politics game to get that promo. Another path through this is to go into the business/functional analyst role. This sort of stuff requires people to analyze the business requirements and translate those to something that can actually be put together in software. Having a proper CS training but also able to talk the business side too can make you way more valuable than the people who only do the latter, and the folks I know who fit this category get paid quite well for what they do. Someone will ask you "can the software do X, and what will that take," and your technical spidey-sense can tell you what the implementation impact is. And a technical background will help you much better to identify corner cases or other situations that you need to ask about while doing requirements gathering and test design.
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Apr 5, 2013 21:24
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facepalmolive posted:For enterprise, the sense I get is that you'll need some smart, very strong CS guys making the big architectural decisions and idiot-proofing the thing, and then you get the idiot coding peons on the bottom rung. So, I guess you get a nice spectrum of people, which is a good thing because there are always more experienced people to look up to and learn from. Fresh out of college, you'd probably be stuck with as an idiot peon until you earn your stripes, so it depends on how much patience you have dealing with all the other idiot peons around you and, depending on the place, how much you're willing to play the politics game to get that promo. If there's something I'd like to suggest newbies to look for when hunting for a job, it's that you'd probably want a boss who has actually done a share coding himself at his time, as opposed to just being a cool guy.
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Apr 5, 2013 21:34
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Getting out of an interview and realizing you messed up one small, silly conditional in a loop feels bad. Such a dumb mistake I should have realized. Hope it's not a big deal The only real drawback is one of them didn't notice it and point it out while you were there, which would've given you an opportunity to go "oh, whoops" and fix it up without being confused over what was wrong, etc, which would further demonstrate your familiarity with what you're doing.
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Apr 5, 2013 21:59
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Getting out of an interview and realizing you messed up one small, silly conditional in a loop feels bad. Such a dumb mistake I should have realized. Hope it's not a big deal If you just got out of an interview email the person who interviewed you and explain that you realized that one of the solutions you suggested wouldn't work because of X, Y, Z.
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Apr 5, 2013 22:21
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Getting out of an interview and realizing you messed up one small, silly conditional in a loop feels bad. Such a dumb mistake I should have realized. Hope it's not a big deal If we only hired developers who got perfect scores on our programming tests, we'd have a hard time hiring anyone at all (granted, I wouldn't call them "very easy"). It's not unusual even for pretty good developers to get started out in the wrong direction and end up totally bombing one question.
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Apr 5, 2013 22:25
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I have since calmed down and realized that its babby's first dev job and probably not a big deal. Conceptually, I also did something similar for another problem which illustrates that I'm not an idiot and that it was just because I was rushing. Now I'm worrying about making other mistakes! I'll find out soon enough though and I have an interview Monday that I need to do some prep for.
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Apr 5, 2013 22:40
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Sab669 posted:I just got off the phone with a preliminary interview for a company that does embedded development for medical equipment. Mostly just seeing what my experience was / what they do. Unfortunately I have 0 experience with developing multithreaded applications and actually maintaining threads myself, but that didn't sound like too much of a problem for them. He recommended I do read up on it for my next interview though. I did read a few articles on MSDN about it for C#, any other good resources you guys know of? Manually dicking around with threads has been considered a bad practice in .NET for several years; you should be using Tasks for long-running CPU-bound operations, and async/await for long-running I/O bound operations. That said, read up on dining philosophers, deadlocks, race conditions, mutexes, monitors, semaphors, spinlocks, etc. Understanding the concepts will help, but even with a firm understanding, writing multithreaded code sucks. New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Apr 5, 2013 |
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Apr 5, 2013 22:50
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Thanks for the advice, guys.
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Apr 6, 2013 06:01
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Anybody have good advice for phone interviews? I have recently been applying to jobs out of state so this is my only option at the moment. I have been updating a document with topics to speak about, answers to common questions, and questions to ask the interviewer. Although, I am going to expand on these notes because I have not been answering some as well I could be. P.s. is there anything worse than an interview on speaker phone? Hearing myself speak definitely interrupts my flow of thought.
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Apr 6, 2013 18:15
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