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kitten smoothie posted:There's some good advice about this in the Always Be Coding piece linked up-thread, where they bring up the idea of an interview asking you on a 10 point scale how well you know a language. Star War Sex Parrot posted:I intend to get one just so I can teach community college 1 or 2 nights a week as supplemental income. You start out at $62 an hour here. Volte posted:I'm getting one starting later this year because I want to even though I know it won't help me get money or better jobs, and it will probably cost me money in the long run. Does that make it better or worse? Zero The Hero posted:I guess my real problem is, if the interview was so short and easy, what are they doing to weed people out? But more importantly than that, if you pick 'wrong' for your clothes, don't act like it's a big deal or get all flustered. Can just be like, "Whoops, looks like I overdressed, haha!" and then continue on without drawing any more attention to it. Smile, be confident without being arrogant, explain your thoughts as you work through problems, make sure you understand the spec as fully as is reasonable for an interview question before you start coding. If you don't know or can't solve something, own up to that and explain what next steps you would take if you came across this sort of problem in the real work environment. They may be flying you out like that to avoid paying for a hotel. If you volunteer that you're taking care of your own accommodations, they may be willing to change. I wouldn't push it hard, though. Cicero fucked around with this message at 05:05 on May 24, 2013 |
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May 24, 2013 05:00
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Cicero posted:Where do you live that you can get paid that much? I did a cursory search for community college teaching as an occupation a few weeks ago and my conclusion was that you get paid crap. Here's their pay scale. edit: Also I'm at a job that helps pay for school, so I'm gonna milk that for all it's worth. Star War Sex Parrot fucked around with this message at 05:11 on May 24, 2013 |
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May 24, 2013 05:01
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I'm on vacation right now bored on a slow connection so can't quote. But don't be worried about asking companies to fly you back a couple days after your interview. For one theyre trying to hire you and saying no sounds dickish because it doesn't cost them anymore to fly you back two days later. I've done this and was worried about it too but honestly they don't care
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May 24, 2013 05:25
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Strong Sauce posted:I'm on vacation right now bored on a slow connection so can't quote. But don't be worried about asking companies to fly you back a couple days after your interview. For one theyre trying to hire you and saying no sounds dickish because it doesn't cost them anymore to fly you back two days later. Yes, this. If they haven't booked the flights for you yet there's not really any cost to them, and it's also entirely reasonable for someone from out of town to want to spend a weekend visiting their potential future hometown.
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May 24, 2013 05:41
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Gazpacho posted:Go with your feeling. Asking for extra days for something that isn't job-related, even at your own expense during those days, could be perceived as taking advantage. I've asked companies for extra days for apartment hunting but it proved useless because I wasn't ready to sign a lease and I had to make another trip anyway. Ah, the dress isn't strict in Tennessee either. I wore khakis and a polo to most every interview, and found the interviewer wearing the same. The recruiters always told me what to wear though, so I didn't have to worry about it. I'm just nervous because no one's holding my hard this time. I don't have a good enough dress shirt though, I don't think. Or pants to be honest. I'm going to have to buy those. What about cutting my hair? I haven't cut it since 2008. I've seen a lot of programmer-types with long hair, but I get the feeling those guys are established programmers who let their resume do the talking for them at interviews. As for requesting extra days, they're not putting me in a hotel or anything, so it's really just a matter of when they book the flight. I was only worried about how it would look. I'm definitely worried about finding a place to stay, I get the feeling all the housing around that area is out of my price range. As far as finding the time to look for a place though, I have friends in San Diego, a two hour drive. I think I'd be able to stay with them long enough that I could find an apartment or something. Thinking about it though, once I get the plane tickets, is there anyway I could just delay my return trip myself, without their knowledge? If it costs a bit extra, that's fine. I've never flown before :x
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May 24, 2013 05:58
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Zero The Hero posted:Ah, the dress isn't strict in Tennessee either. I wore khakis and a polo to most every interview, and found the interviewer wearing the same. The recruiters always told me what to wear though, so I didn't have to worry about it. I'm just nervous because no one's holding my hard this time. I don't have a good enough dress shirt though, I don't think. Or pants to be honest. I'm going to have to buy those. What about cutting my hair? I haven't cut it since 2008. I've seen a lot of programmer-types with long hair, but I get the feeling those guys are established programmers who let their resume do the talking for them at interviews. 1) Buy nice clothes. At least one set, that you only wear for interviews. Just do it. It'll run you a couple of hundred dollars and last you for years assuming you don't gain or lose a bunch of weight. Also, just ask them what appropriate attire for the interview is. I've almost never had a request to show up in a suit. 2) I'm one of those stereotypical programmer types with long hair. It's varied in length from shoulder-length to mid-back for my entire career, since 2004. It's never once stopped me from getting a good job. Right now I'm a consultant who frequently goes on-site to Fortune 500 companies and major financial institutions. If you have long hair, make sure it's clean and well-kept and tie it back in a ponytail. You're fine. It might be an impediment at stodgier places, but those places are rarer and rarer.
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May 24, 2013 06:21
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You'll have to ask the travel rep what the options are re: delaying the return flight. If necessary you can request a one-way flight and book your own return flight. Regarding the hair, if it's long enough for a ponytail then tie it back. If not, go to a salon, tell the stylist why you're there, and get it trimmed (not a barber shop because they might chop it). Gazpacho fucked around with this message at 06:44 on May 24, 2013 |
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May 24, 2013 06:36
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Cicero posted:Yeah. In my mind, I'd put a new college grad who's had a decent amount of academic experience with a language at a 3 or a 4. A junior developer with a few years of professional experience in the language at like a 5 or 6, and a senior developer with lots of in-depth knowledge at a 7 or 8. 9s and 10s would be reserved for extreme cases like "I contributed source to the compiler for this language" or "I was the primary developer for one of its best-known libraries" or, as noted, "I wrote this language". About a year ago we were interviewing a man who had 15-20 years experience with C++. I asked the question, he smugly answered that he was at least an 8 at C++. We reviewed the coding test he'd just written for us in C++ - it wasn't great. Talking through it I discovered he didn't know quite as much as he claimed. For example he couldn't tell me what "const" meant or, when explained, why you'd want it. Not exactly an esoteric corner-case of the language  I'm begging anyone who goes on a software developer interview: if nothing else you must absolutely be prepared to back up your bullshit. A few pages back the guy with the three page resume had something like "and many more" in his 'familiar with' language list...I'd probably ask him to name 5 and how much / in what cases he's used them. I'd ask him to demonstrate his expertese in one of the languages he claims expert level in, probably SQL. Judging from my own experience people seem to think this means "I wrote a select and it used a join  What do you mean 'execution plan'?"
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May 24, 2013 13:08
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Gazpacho posted:
It never hurts to ask your contact especially because there is no way to know in advance what a company likes for interviews. Some financial firms I know of pretty much require suit+tie in interview but their day-to-day is just as casual as a startup.
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May 24, 2013 13:37
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Does anyone have an opinion on these developer bootcamps that are popping up everywhere? So far press on them seems positive, but it's still quite early. Still, I feel they deserve some mention in the OP. There's even a site dedicated to info on different bootcamps now: http://bootcamper.io/ http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/04/12/learn-to-write-software-in-weeks-new-coding-boot-camps-promise-to-launch-tech/
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May 24, 2013 15:58
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Zero The Hero posted:I guess my real problem is, if the interview was so short and easy, what are they doing to weed people out? The phone screen is an initial filter to see if you're worth dropping a couple hundred bucks on a plane ticket and having some people on the team burn a day to interview you. But honestly it's a good question to ask yourself again after you walk out. I was once in a so-called technical interview where two hours of soft-skills behavioral questions were asked, followed by one simple SQL join question. It occurred to me that I was not terribly confident in my future colleagues' abilities, if this was the sort of technical filter they applied. Obviously that was one extreme, though. Not every shop is going to give you a interview as rigorous as Google, and they'll still have smart people. But if they go through the effort to fly you out and yet barely bother with technical stuff, maybe that's a sign.
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May 24, 2013 17:02
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Malcolm XML posted:It never hurts to ask your contact especially because there is no way to know in advance what a company likes for interviews. I didn't realize this was an option. I felt like it would sound too much like, "Hey, I'm inexperienced and incompetent. Can you tell me what to wear?" On that note, how would you go about asking that question? kitten smoothie posted:The phone screen is an initial filter to see if you're worth dropping a couple hundred bucks on a plane ticket and having some people on the team burn a day to interview you.
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May 24, 2013 17:41
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Assuming two compensation packages: 100k+health vs 80k+401k+health. If health is the same, how much do you value a 401k with employer matching?
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May 24, 2013 18:47
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Zero The Hero posted:I'm not very worried about their competence, and in fact, I feel like the more incompetent they are, the better I'll look. Terrible for my long term career, but far better than nothing. If they pay me good money and I get to list them as experience, that's all I need. You might be smarter than everyone else, but you're not going to get away with acting like it, at least if you want to keep that job. And you'll still spend 8 hours a day dealing with everyone else's awful code and architecture, so you'll be unhappy and eventually quit. When you quit, working a lovely job means you didn't build up any good skills, so if you list that lovely job on your resume then you're not going to have a lot of anything good to talk about during your interview. Just in general seems like a bad sign if you're the smartest guy in the room when you sit down for an interview. nachos posted:Assuming two compensation packages: 100k+health vs 80k+401k+health. If health is the same, how much do you value a 401k with employer matching? What percent is the match? It seems like it would have to be a pretty huge match to offset $20K. You could contribute $20K of gross salary into your own investments, and after tax you may as well assume $13K or so is what you'd get to put in. $13K is about 16% of $80K and I doubt you're going to get a 16% match out of anyone. kitten smoothie fucked around with this message at 18:58 on May 24, 2013 |
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May 24, 2013 18:51
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nachos posted:Assuming two compensation packages: 100k+health vs 80k+401k+health. If health is the same, how much do you value a 401k with employer matching? The first health insurance better give you free blowjobs to compare to $481k plus health. Really though, unless it's a really good 401k, 100k base is going to come out ahead. Your 401k would need to support roughly $8-10k from employer matching to make it better.
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May 24, 2013 18:57
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We had a guy last week interview in ripped jeans, and a guy today in a suit without tie. Big world out there.
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May 24, 2013 19:14
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baquerd posted:The first health insurance better give you free blowjobs to compare to $481k plus health. If you offered me $100k and bidaily BJs or $481k and no BJ's, I'd still take the money 
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May 24, 2013 19:18
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nachos posted:Assuming two compensation packages: 100k+health vs 80k+401k+health. If health is the same, how much do you value a 401k with employer matching? Are you moving, and if you are, is the cost of living the same with both jobs?
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May 24, 2013 20:00
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fritz posted:We had a guy last week interview in ripped jeans, and a guy today in a suit without tie. Big world out there. The guy didn't come back. 
Star War Sex Parrot fucked around with this message at 20:11 on May 24, 2013 |
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May 24, 2013 20:08
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:We had a guy come in for an interview in shorts and flip-flops, but he was very well qualified based on his résumé. My boss greeted him, looked at what he was wearing, and said "go home, come back tomorrow at the same time in more appropriate clothes, and we'll pretend this never happened." Sounds like you dodged a bullet then 
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May 24, 2013 20:31
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Che Delilas posted:Are you moving, and if you are, is the cost of living the same with both jobs? Cost of living is the same (NYC). Job satisfaction will be wayyyyyyyy higher with the second job. The first package represents my current compensation. I may be able to negotiate up a bit from 80k.
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May 24, 2013 20:38
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nachos posted:Cost of living is the same (NYC). Job satisfaction will be wayyyyyyyy higher with the second job. The first package represents my current compensation. I may be able to negotiate up a bit from 80k.
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May 24, 2013 20:53
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I mean, the job and the interview are two separate events with differing dress codes. Day to day work may be shorts and flip-flops for candidate and interviewer alike, but an interview is serious business.
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May 24, 2013 20:55
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:We had a guy come in for an interview in shorts and flip-flops, but he was very well qualified based on his résumé. My boss greeted him, looked at what he was wearing, and said "go home, come back tomorrow at the same time in more appropriate clothes, and we'll pretend this never happened."
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May 24, 2013 21:18
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Plorkyeran posted:Are you actually confused about why the guy didn't come back? It sounds like he successfully filtered out a company he didn't want to work for with a minimal amount of time wasted.
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May 24, 2013 21:27
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:He wasn't working anywhere at the time though and this was peak recession era. I guess some people just like chilling at home in flip-flops? You're presuming a bit about the rest of his circumstances, like how many other interviews/offers he had in addition to yours. You said his resume made him very qualified, maybe he was confident about how easily he'd be able to get a job in a place that didn't like, cage his free spirit, man. Some people would rather not have a job at all than work in an environment they hate. I don't see the problem or confusion. Your boss wouldn't even talk to him about his relevant skills; the guy probably concluded from that one reaction that it would have been a bad arrangement for all parties.
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May 24, 2013 22:00
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nachos posted:Assuming two compensation packages: 100k+health vs 80k+401k+health. If health is the same, how much do you value a 401k with employer matching? Tax-deferred 401ks cap at $17500 in 2013 anyway, so even if your employer matched 1:1, that's still worth only $8750. That's still less than the $20k difference, even factoring in taxes. I doubt any employer would match more than $8750.
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May 24, 2013 23:21
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Che Delilas posted:You're presuming a bit about the rest of his circumstances, like how many other interviews/offers he had in addition to yours. You said his resume made him very qualified, maybe he was confident about how easily he'd be able to get a job in a place that didn't like, cage his free spirit, man. Some people would rather not have a job at all than work in an environment they hate. I met a guy a while back, a network expert of some sort, apparently incredibly talented. He said he probably took a pay hit as a result, but he negotiated the ability to show up in a tank top and flip flops, as well as set his own schedule. As long as their servers keep working flawlessly, they don't seem to care.
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May 24, 2013 23:23
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facepalmolive posted:Tax-deferred 401ks cap at $17500 in 2013 anyway, so even if your employer matched 1:1, that's still worth only $8750. That's still less than the $20k difference, even factoring in taxes. I doubt any employer would match more than $8750. It's not really a $20k difference. Medicare takes 1.45%, OASDI takes 6.2%, state taxes take perhaps 4%, and federal will take 25% of the difference between 80k and 100k. So you only get to take home 12.7k of the difference. Then you have to realize the ability to contribute pre-tax is limited to 5.5k in a traditional IRA, and that matching can actually exceed 100%.
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May 24, 2013 23:32
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So the guy I had a phone interview with a couple pages back told me to e-mail the guy I'd been e-mailing about the phone interview when I'd decided to accept the in-person interview. I had told him at the time I'd love to make the interview, but it was still very sudden to agree to a trip to California, so I don't think I really gave him the impression that I wasn't really interested. I sent the e-mail a few hours later that night. Anyway, I was hoping to hear back from them on Friday, since they originally said they wanted me there on May 31st(next Friday). I didn't get any e-mail back yet. I'm wondering how long I should wait before sending another e-mail. I don't want to look uninterested, and besides, there's a time limit if I'm going to make a 7AM flight next Friday. But I don't really think it sends a good signal if I'm sending them a new e-mail every day, "Hey, have you gotten on that yet? Please hurry and do your job, this is important." I'm thinking of waiting until around 4:30 on Monday(4 being the time they normally call/e-mail me) and messaging them again. I don't know what I'll say. Am I worrying about things too much again?
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May 26, 2013 04:25
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Zero The Hero posted:So the guy I had a phone interview with a couple pages back told me to e-mail the guy I'd been e-mailing about the phone interview when I'd decided to accept the in-person interview. I had told him at the time I'd love to make the interview, but it was still very sudden to agree to a trip to California, so I don't think I really gave him the impression that I wasn't really interested. I sent the e-mail a few hours later that night.
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May 26, 2013 04:26
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Zero The Hero posted:I'm thinking of waiting until around 4:30 on Monday(4 being the time they normally call/e-mail me) and messaging them again. I don't know what I'll say. Am I worrying about things too much again?
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May 26, 2013 14:44
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@salary discussion Money isn't everything. If you know ahead of time the job that pays even potentially significantly better is going to be miserable, and you'd love working at another company with less pay and less benefits, what's the choice? Barring extenuating circumstances (took a loan from the mob), why would you want to spend the majority of the next year or more of your life miserable for marginally more $$. Time is money, and time spent happy is infinitely more valuable to me than the alternative.
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May 27, 2013 05:50
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Mr. Crow posted:@salary discussion Haha just kidding, no seriously I agree with you, although once you have a family it becomes more muddled because it's not just your personal financial well-being that you're playing with.
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May 27, 2013 06:28
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I like what Mark Suster says about this: Is it time to learn, or is it time to earn? Early on in one's career is the best time to invest as much as possible into one's growth and maximize the likelihood of great opportunities and connections coming one's way. I've done the "more money" route once and always regret that decision. At least for me personally there's nothing quite like the thrill of learning a lot every day and being thoroughly challenged, and it's not worth the extra 20 grand a year. I really don't need that new car smell every five years, I need to feel like I'm not wasting my time.
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May 27, 2013 07:54
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DreadCthulhu posted:I like what Mark Suster says about this: Is it time to learn, or is it time to earn? Early on in one's career is the best time to invest as much as possible into one's growth and maximize the likelihood of great opportunities and connections coming one's way. I've done the "more money" route once and always regret that decision. At least for me personally there's nothing quite like the thrill of learning a lot every day and being thoroughly challenged, and it's not worth the extra 20 grand a year. Completely agree. Just one thing to add... do some research on what skills are actually wanted. It sucks when someone spend a couple years in a gig learning a stupid-complex skill, only to find out it's been on the decline the entire time and there are no jobs for it. I regrettably did that once. A good indicator is to look at conferences centered around the skill. Are they growing or shrinking year to year?
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May 27, 2013 15:38
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I bought some clothes for my interview. I got a nice black pair of dress pants, and a nice dark grey pair too. They're pretty dark, I assume there's nothing wrong with dark grey. The shirt I got is too large, though, so I'll have to take it back. It's also short sleeved, i didn't realize that at the time, I meant to get a long sleeved shirt. But would a short sleeved shirt be acceptable? On one hand, I feel like it's less important since I'm not wearing a tie, but on the other, maybe short sleeves AND no tie is just too casual. This is for a programming position.
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May 27, 2013 21:20
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Zero The Hero posted:I bought some clothes for my interview. I got a nice black pair of dress pants, and a nice dark grey pair too. They're pretty dark, I assume there's nothing wrong with dark grey. You might be able to get away with it but I wouldn't consider short sleeves acceptable if you're going to wear slacks. Then again I've never been a fan of short-sleeved dress shirts.
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May 27, 2013 21:35
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Zero The Hero posted:I bought some clothes for my interview. I got a nice black pair of dress pants, and a nice dark grey pair too. They're pretty dark, I assume there's nothing wrong with dark grey. How casual is the company? A good basic rule is to dress one step above them, if they're pretty casual then slacks and a tucked in polo should be fine.
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May 27, 2013 22:01
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I'm a recent grad of CS that's looking for a job, a recruiter messaged me on LinkedIn asking for a time to be able to talk over the phone. What are some questions I could ask to make sure that doing anything with this recruiter won't lead to one of the horror stories I read in this thread? edit: To make sure the recruiter is any good, not really the companies that would be hiring me. piratepilates fucked around with this message at 07:11 on May 28, 2013 |
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May 27, 2013 22:35
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