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Pilsner posted:My reply was more aimed as his plan to be "creative" with his cover letter, which I interpreted as lying. I was hoping he meant "think of a good letter that will catch their imagination and have them want to talk to me". Lying on resumes or cover letters is silly; you'll most likely faceplant and even in countries without at-will employment it's often grounds for immediate dismissal.
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Jul 15, 2013 12:15
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Ithaqua posted:This seems like a no-brainer. If you are not qualified for a job, do not apply for it. This is not the best strategy if you're the job seeker. If you're honest about your qualifications and they still want to talk with you why not? It doesn't cost you anything to apply.
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Jul 15, 2013 13:12
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Ithaqua posted:The standards in NJ are actually lower. A lot of the companies are just so hosed up that they can't effectively mentor junior developers, so they don't bother hiring them. Being sandwiched between two major cities means that the top-tier developers end up lured there by higher pay, and the NJ companies are left fighting over the scraps (I'm firmly in "the scraps" category, for the record). Mentoring is a big big big deal, holy poo poo. You learn so much with just an hour a week tops of just "Hey do this..." and general question-asking availability on the parts of your coworkers that it's really stupid to not offer it. The industry is shooting itself in the foot. Also, what do you mean scraps? If you're the scraps I'm the turds on the floor 
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Jul 15, 2013 16:34
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2banks1swap.avi posted:
Seriously. Ithaqua you're anything but "scraps"
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Jul 15, 2013 16:42
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2banks1swap.avi posted:Also, what do you mean scraps? If you're the scraps I'm the turds on the floor I think he means the scraps are the good developers that aren't chasing the big bucks in NYC or Philly(?).
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Jul 15, 2013 16:59
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Good, because I felt bad
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Jul 15, 2013 17:04
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Skuto posted:I was hoping he meant "think of a good letter that will catch their imagination and have them want to talk to me". Oh yeah sorry, I totally didn't mean lying. By "creative" I meant trying to persuade them that you'd fit. Thanks for all the help, I'll definitely get in touch with them and hope they don't just laugh in my face.
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Jul 15, 2013 18:18
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2banks1swap.avi posted:Mentoring is a big big big deal, holy poo poo. You learn so much with just an hour a week tops of just "Hey do this..." and general question-asking availability on the parts of your coworkers that it's really stupid to not offer it. The industry is shooting itself in the foot. I don't get mentored worth a gently caress which is funny cause the project I was just assigned to is .Net/WPF which I've literally never touched. I've been given nothing to do for almost a week now. Nothing. The guy who is supposed to be mentoring me lives half way across the country and is never in the office. Side note: if you were told your salary was "X with a Y bonus", would you assume it's a signing bonus or a bonus you'd have to work a certain number of hours on a client project for?
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Jul 15, 2013 21:40
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Side note: if you were told your salary was "X with a Y bonus", would you assume it's a signing bonus or a bonus you'd have to work a certain number of hours on a client project for? I would assume that I will be getting paid only X and ask for more details about what the bonus is and what needs to happen for me to actually get it. It could be a signing bonus that you get now, it could be a signing bonus that get distributed when you hit 2 years, or it could be a "this is your expected yearly bonus that you will totally get every year, oh whoops we were short on budget this year, but you'll totally get it next year" bonus. tk fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Jul 15, 2013 |
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Jul 15, 2013 21:45
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The Programmer/Software Engineer job market is sparse around here, and my resume leans way heavier on IT and successfully dealing with human beings than it does on programming. I'm trying to decide if it be unwise to take a job in IT/Support with the intent of using internal connections (which I have) to move over to the software end of things after the requisite six months. Circumstances are that I'm a fresh unemployed graduate and a job is a job, I want to live in this region, and the pay is perfectly reasonable for a single dude. That said, the pay is substantially less than what I think Software Engineers apparently make around here, and while there'll be people on my side, there's no guarantee that I'll be able to successfully do an internal position shift within a year. If I get the offer, I see potential outcomes as: -I shift over successfully within a year, get the better paycheck, and start on a track I want to be on. -I turn out to like the job I was hired for and don't try to shift. But my CS degree doesn't quite make what I had hoped it would. -I fail at shifting over and now have a job I don't like that might be worthless on a resume. That said, I can always quit. -I reject the offer, pack my bags, and go find a programming job in a better market. Downside here is that I have no connections or social support anywhere else in the country, which seems like it could quickly become miserable. Thoughts?
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Jul 15, 2013 22:22
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boho posted:The Programmer/Software Engineer job market is sparse around here, and my resume leans way heavier on IT and successfully dealing with human beings than it does on programming. I'm trying to decide if it be unwise to take a job in IT/Support with the intent of using internal connections (which I have) to move over to the software end of things after the requisite six months. Don't take the IT job, in my opinion. Think about it from that company's perspective: they want to hire someone for the role that will be happy there for a long time, not someone looking to upgrade after 6 months. You risk souring your relationship if they find out you only took it to get your foot in the door for another position. The exception would be if you're up front about it during the hiring process. The other real risk you face, though, is that it's a lot harder to get a big salary increase once you're already working for a company. Even if your plan works, they'll know you're willing to work there for an IT employee's salary. You'll probably get a small bump, but still won't be making as much as the other devs. If a dev position is going to open up within 6 months, is it possible to use your internal contacts to apply for that job directly? Edly fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Jul 15, 2013 |
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Jul 15, 2013 22:35
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boho posted:The Programmer/Software Engineer job market is sparse around here, and my resume leans way heavier on IT and successfully dealing with human beings than it does on programming. I'm trying to decide if it be unwise to take a job in IT/Support with the intent of using internal connections (which I have) to move over to the software end of things after the requisite six months. Assuming these are people you can speak freely with (it seems that way), you should really double check whether you'll be able to move into software development from IT. Bear in mind that if your resume is already IT-heavy and you want to get into development, adding more IT experience to your resume will do the opposite of what you want. With regard to pay - if you're in a metro area that's not SF, NYC, or Seattle, and you're working directly for a company instead of doing contract-to-hire or other such work you should be making close to the median around 60-65k out of college. If you are in SF, NYC, or Seattle, that number will go up pretty significantly if you're working for a Microsoft/Apple/Google level company. If you're not in a metro area you'll probably be closer to 40k per year, and the same goes for the shady recruitment agencies just about anywhere.
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Jul 15, 2013 22:42
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Edly posted:If a dev position is going to open up within 6 months, is it possible to use your internal contacts to apply for that job directly? I don't see why it wouldn't be possible, other than inhouse people getting first dibs by rule. e: I'm also in the running for a Build Automation Engineer. Anyone have experience with something like that? Is that dead-end?
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Jul 15, 2013 22:43
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boho posted:e: I'm also in the running for a Build Automation Engineer. Anyone have experience with something like that? Is that dead-end? It's part of the burgeoning "devops" field, leaning more toward "dev" than "ops". It's not dead-end, but I can't imagine it would be very interesting in the long term. The interesting work is in getting all of the builds automated. Once that's done, it's mostly a hands-off process, and I have no idea what your job would actually entail at that point.
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Jul 15, 2013 22:47
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Sarcophallus posted:If you're not in a metro area you'll probably be closer to 40k per year, and the same goes for the shady recruitment agencies just about anywhere.
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Jul 15, 2013 23:10
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boho posted:Thoughts?
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Jul 15, 2013 23:13
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boho posted:e: I'm also in the running for a Build Automation Engineer. Anyone have experience with something like that? Is that dead-end? I have several hats at work, but one of the hats I've ended up with is 'build and automated testing dude'. I really enjoy it, but I like writing tools rather than more traditional applications. It's pretty fun and challenging. Probably foremost in your mind is that every change you make must never remove the ability to build existing codebases, so changes can turn into an artform. As for 'dead-end' - depends upon your definition. At smaller companies where you're the only one, you will become the build guy, and you will be fixing the build and dealing with build migration problems and weirdass runtime issues for as long as you're there. As long as you enjoy that stuff, chances are the technologies you use will be fairly mainstream - Perl/Shell/Java/.NET/C++/CMake, so you're not hamstringing your future career. If you enjoy being a really useful engine that all the other developers respect, then be a build dude. If you want a more customer facing role, and prefer writing apps to tools, then don't.
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Jul 15, 2013 23:46
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Milotic posted:I have several hats at work, but one of the hats I've ended up with is 'build and automated testing dude'. I really enjoy it, but I like writing tools rather than more traditional applications. It's pretty fun and challenging. Probably foremost in your mind is that every change you make must never remove the ability to build existing codebases, so changes can turn into an artform. As for 'dead-end' - depends upon your definition. At smaller companies where you're the only one, you will become the build guy, and you will be fixing the build and dealing with build migration problems and weirdass runtime issues for as long as you're there. As long as you enjoy that stuff, chances are the technologies you use will be fairly mainstream - Perl/Shell/Java/.NET/C++/CMake, so you're not hamstringing your future career. At least in the .NET space, Microsoft is making a lot of strides in making build automation something that doesn't necessarily require a dedicated position. With TFS Team Build + their recent acquisition of InRelease, they have a really strong platform for making build automation something that takes a day or two to get rolling.
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Jul 16, 2013 00:45
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Woohoo, just passed my second phone screen with my top choice in my relocation job hunt. I struggled a little bit with the "definitions" part (owing to my self taught background), not knowing the terms for some design patterns and the like, but once he defined them I was able to cite concrete examples of how I've used them. He actually told me he was more pleased that I knew the concept rather than a rote CS definition. We then did a little exercise where he would throw out scenarios and ask me how I would 'code my way out of them' and asked me to give a high level design of a chat client and he really liked that I started getting specific. Skype interview tomorrow with the entire team, so here's hoping that goes well and then I'll be packing for Dallas
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Jul 16, 2013 01:07
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aBagorn posted:Woohoo, just passed my second phone screen with my top choice in my relocation job hunt.  That sounds like a pretty fun interview. Good luck tomorrow!
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Jul 16, 2013 08:04
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I had interview interest from a company that I declined because I got put on a project while talking to them and couldn't take a day off to interview. This was 3 weeks ago. They're still looking for someone and I'm still looking for a new job now that my suspicions that my current project sucks have been confirmed. How do I approach this? Just say that I'm still interested and now that things have settled down at my current job my availability to interview has changed? Is it worth into even pursue?
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Jul 16, 2013 14:32
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I had interview interest from a company that I declined because I got put on a project while talking to them and couldn't take a day off to interview. This was 3 weeks ago. They're still looking for someone and I'm still looking for a new job now that my suspicions that my current project sucks have been confirmed. How do I approach this? Just say that I'm still interested and now that things have settled down at my current job my availability to interview has changed? Is it worth into even pursue? Sure, why not? I'm not seeing the issue here unless you think they might be insulted because you put it off. If that's the case (which I doubt) then they probably won't put much time into it either so not much to lose.
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Jul 16, 2013 14:35
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So I just found out that the recruiting agency I'm being paid by until I go full time at this job takes out the same amount every paycheck, even if I started Tuesday of that week, or, I only worked 3 days that week due to a holiday. Obviously I'll just get it back next year when I file, but still, wtf man? OTOH I in effect have a lower tax rate the more I work, which is hilarious. I also fell into the 40K trap with lowball areas and recruiters, but it's a first job. Meh. 18 months from now I'll be doing significantly better - but what pisses it off is I'm getting 19.25 an hour, not 20. They literally did 40K/2080 and rounded to the nearest quarter. I hope where I'm at now gives a decent bump when I go salaried with them. I'm DEFINITELY going to play hard with negotiations next time out. I've got a year for my balls to drop, and the job I'm at now is VERY flexible and generous with lunches and when you leave the office.
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Jul 16, 2013 15:39
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Sounds like you're in the exact same boat as me, exact I am full time.
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Jul 16, 2013 15:49
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When doing salary negotiations am I correct in assuming you have nothing to lose by asking for ~10k more? Best case scenario they match it, or maybe add 5k. Worst case is they say they can't budge. I can't imagine them revoking their offer.
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Jul 16, 2013 15:58
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Auto deducting too drat much, or sneaky lowballing? If it's in the former case, just do it yourself and tell them to not deduct anything from your end of things. No reason you can't make a program to do it for you right?  Might as well put what you will owe in taxes into something interest bearing and then only send in what you owe every February.
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Jul 16, 2013 15:58
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Don Mega posted:When doing salary negotiations am I correct in assuming you have nothing to lose by asking for ~10k more? Best case scenario they match it, or maybe add 5k. Worst case is they say they can't budge. I can't imagine them revoking their offer. You Don't Want To Work For A Place That Would Lowball You Anyway™
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Jul 16, 2013 15:58
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2banks1swap.avi posted:You Don't Want To Work For A Place That Would Lowball You Anyway™ This is true. But it's still a good idea. I know of an instance where the company could only increase the base salary by a (relatively) nominal amount, but offered a substantial cash signing bonus that didn't exist before. They were offering above industry standard for the area originally.
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Jul 16, 2013 16:09
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2banks1swap.avi posted:You Don't Want To Work For A Place That Would Lowball You Anyway™ I'm not sure what you're saying here, because you should try to negotiate non-lowball offers as well. As long as you are reasonable about it, the worst the can happen is that they tell you the original offer stands. At best, you get paid a lot more money.
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Jul 16, 2013 16:13
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tk posted:I'm not sure what you're saying here, because you should try to negotiate non-lowball offers as well. As long as you are reasonable about it, the worst the can happen is that they tell you the original offer stands. At best, you get paid a lot more money. I think that what he's saying is that if the offer is unreasonably low (eg. their initial offer is 25% below your estimate of the market salary for the position), don't bother trying to negotiate it up but rather reject it out of hand and look elsewhere for employment, since even you are able to negotiate them up to a reasonable wage, their initial lowball indicates that they're comfortable with loving people over and working there will be a bad experience. There are some obvious pitfalls to this, but if you have good reason to believe your estimate of the market wage for that position in that geographic area is non-crazy and you're not under duress of some sort (eg. unemployed with bills to pay an no substantial savings), I think it's a good approach. Don't waste your time with assholes.
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Jul 16, 2013 16:23
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2banks1swap.avi posted:Might as well put what you will owe in taxes into something interest bearing and then only send in what you owe every February.
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Jul 16, 2013 17:18
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Just spoke to a headhunter who's marketing me at a couple of firms in Connecticut. Has anyone worked through headhunters for their first job before? The part that worries me (on the subject of lowballing) is that they claimed the average starting salary for programmers is $45-55k, and scoffed at the $60k number that's generally quoted, this being after them telling me how great my background looks. Seems kind of predatory to me, but are my expectations just too high?
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Jul 16, 2013 20:44
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Garnavis posted:Just spoke to a headhunter who's marketing me at a couple of firms in Connecticut. Has anyone worked through headhunters for their first job before? The part that worries me (on the subject of lowballing) is that they claimed the average starting salary for programmers is $45-55k, and scoffed at the $60k number that's generally quoted, this being after them telling me how great my background looks. Seems kind of predatory to me, but are my expectations just too high? I got hired by a firm in Connecticut for my first job out of school just over a year ago today, and I got a salary adjustment based on a market study last month. Email me at [redacted]. Blotto Skorzany fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Jul 16, 2013 |
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Jul 16, 2013 21:04
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Garnavis posted:Has anyone worked through headhunters for their first job before? No personal experience, but I've only heard bad things.
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Jul 16, 2013 23:37
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Well, looks like I'm on the move (pending a background check)! Got an email from HR 20 minutes after my Skype interview with the company of choice that they are ready to move forward and that the BR check was the last step. Dallas here I come!
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Jul 17, 2013 00:01
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Garnavis posted:Just spoke to a headhunter who's marketing me at a couple of firms in Connecticut. Has anyone worked through headhunters for their first job before? The part that worries me (on the subject of lowballing) is that they claimed the average starting salary for programmers is $45-55k, and scoffed at the $60k number that's generally quoted, this being after them telling me how great my background looks. Seems kind of predatory to me, but are my expectations just too high? Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not. Just send your resume to them and assume you won't hear back.
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Jul 17, 2013 02:41
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How long does should you typically start interviewing for a job out-of-state? I'm trying to get a job in Seattle, but I don't graduate until December. I've been spending 2-4 hours a week applying for jobs but not getting anywhere and I'm trying to determine if it is the fact that I can't be hired until Dec. (which is on my resume) is the factor or if it just sucks.
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Jul 17, 2013 03:08
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aBagorn posted:Well, looks like I'm on the move (pending a background check)! Got an email from HR 20 minutes after my Skype interview with the company of choice that they are ready to move forward and that the BR check was the last step. Congratulations! You're one of this thread's poster boys for successfully becoming a good developer.
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Jul 17, 2013 03:23
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Ithaqua posted:Congratulations! You're one of this thread's poster boys for successfully becoming a good developer. I appreciate the sentiment but I'm not a good developer. Not yet at least. I'm working on it though 
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Jul 17, 2013 03:43
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Garnavis posted:Just spoke to a headhunter who's marketing me at a couple of firms in Connecticut. Has anyone worked through headhunters for their first job before? The part that worries me (on the subject of lowballing) is that they claimed the average starting salary for programmers is $45-55k, and scoffed at the $60k number that's generally quoted, this being after them telling me how great my background looks. Seems kind of predatory to me, but are my expectations just too high? They're predatory, but it's a good way to have people who get paid to get you hired get your 'foot in the door' for your first job in potentially less time than doing it yourself. Besides, in the scheme of things, 45-55K is hardly 'bad' for most Americans, let alone the world. It's a mediocre start to what will turn out truly great in a year to eighteen months at most if you play the game right. If you learn how to negotiate and don't tell anyone what you made at the last job (or just lie) it won't be too big of a hit down the road. Focus more on getting in a place where mentoring is done and there's a healthy development environment. Your first job is just a notch in the helmet - though that doesn't mean you shouldn't NETWORK and pimp your linked in.
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