|
In my experience, developing in a Linux environment simply means familiarity with the basic command line tools. Know your grep, chmod, ps, find, etc. and you're set. Of course it helps the more you know, but most things are googleable. That job description has a weird laundry list of technologies, it almost sounds like it's for a devops type role supporting lots of other projects and doing the work no one wants to do but I'm probably reading too much into it.
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2014 22:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 22, 2024 08:32 |
|
|
Good Will Hrunting posted:I have very little experience with Linux but I'm finding a lot of jobs I'm interested in list "Must be proficient in developing in a Linux environment." Is this always a deal-breaker, or will it depend on the company? What can I do to get "proficient"? Good Will Hrunting posted:Mostly web, some systems and mobile listings. The jobs in question have the typical laundry list of tech requirements. For example: Edit: baquerd posted:That job description has a weird laundry list of technologies, it almost sounds like it's for a devops type role supporting lots of other projects and doing the work no one wants to do but I'm probably reading too much into it. tk fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Jan 1, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2014 22:46
|
|
|
Good Will Hrunting posted:I generally get discouraged by these since it'll be my first(ish) programming job but this company looked pretty interesting. It's the recruiter's job, not yours, to decide whether you're good enough. If you're interested, what exactly do you have to lose by applying?
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2014 22:56
|
|
|
coffeetable posted:It's the recruiter's job, not yours, to decide whether you're good enough. If you're interested, what exactly do you have to lose by applying? I'm basically either "drat, I'm an awesome fit for this job!" or "Whelp, looks cool but I'm not good enough". I've gotten a lot better this time around and feel pretty good about my applications but I still shied away from a few companies cause I was intimidated by their listings or other people's interview experiences. Thanks for the reassurance everyone. Aside from interview advice, this thread has done a good job of assuring me not to shy away from something that could be a great fit just because I appear slightly under-qualified.
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2014 22:59
|
|
|
"Proficient in developing in a Linux environment" should be a pretty low bar, I think. You need to be not totally helpless in Linux and a living developer. I'd expect any developer to have basic understanding of the *nix command line. Basic means:
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 00:15
|
|
|
Thanks! That's a good rundown and I'm pretty comfortable with most of those. A few hours of messing around and refreshing my memory (this seems like a good start) should get me comfortable.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 00:44
|
|
|
A compilation of questions to ask at interviews. I think the ones under engineering practice are pretty indicative of the job and perhaps engineer quality. http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/12/30/questions-im-asking-in-interviews/
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 15:53
|
|
|
http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/12/30/questions-im-asking-in-interviews/ posted:How many women work for you? What’s your process for making sure you have diversity in other ways? That's one I'd like to ask (specifically how many women engineers), but it feels a bit creeper-ish since I'm a man. It's been my experience that places that can't hire women also have trouble hiring men that I'd want to work with.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 17:13
|
|
|
Mniot posted:"Proficient in developing in a Linux environment" should be a pretty low bar, I think. You need to be not totally helpless in Linux and a living developer. I'd expect any developer to have basic understanding of the *nix command line. Basic means: Of course that's all essential, but I think a lot of the time when web dudes are asked to be proficient in linux, it's getting around the command line AND knowing the basic workings of your web stack, probably most importantly being apache (maybe some mysql). To me, there's no better way then just diving in and learning. Get Vagrant/virtualbox going and just get a LAMP machine going from a scratch ubuntu image. When I'm hiring, and I'm trying to explore how comfortable someone is in a webby linux environment, just being able to apt-get some packages, knowing how to use a text editor, is golden for me. You don't have to have been using it since your were 12, know all the differences between debian and red hat, or developed your own drivers. You can learn everything else as you go.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 17:41
|
|
|
Just did my Google phone interview... it seemed pretty easy. I'm taking that as a bad sign, since it probably means that I did something egregiously stupid and the interviewer decided to softball me for the rest of the time. I did one coding exercise, then a quick "How would you test a method with the this signature?" exercise.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 20:55
|
|
|
tk posted:Could be a devops thing, but it's hard to tell without context. They could just be looking for something with pretty much any experience that they can mold to suit their needs, or at a larger company they may just be looking for a generic dev that they can put in whatever role is appropriate. "So, we're using a relational database and there are NO joins in any of our queries?" "Yeah, joins are a big source of slowdown on databases so we instead use [horribly slow and convoluted custom rigged solution]" "Joins are slow?" "Yeah, there were these articles about it all over Hacker News a couple years ago where all the bleeding edge database gurus agreed not to use joins" (reality: someone read some blog post talking about the advantages of redis or whatever in certain situations and took it as conventional industry wisdom that joins are for suckers, and they were still a little unclear about join syntax anyway so this came as welcome news)* *Actual summarized conversation. Also, keeping tight control on facial expressions when in the middle of conversations like this is a skillset just like any other. Bhaal fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Jan 2, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 21:33
|
|
|
Ithaqua posted:Just did my Google phone interview... it seemed pretty easy. I'm taking that as a bad sign, since it probably means that I did something egregiously stupid and the interviewer decided to softball me for the rest of the time. If it's the first interview, I thought it didn't get noticeably difficult until 3 or 4 rounds in.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 21:41
|
|
|
I'm a PhD student currently researching in a biological area, but recently I've become very interested in Computer Science. I'm currently learning how to code in python, but I was hoping someone could give me advice and perhaps an essential reading list in order to become proficient/competent enough to pursue a career in software development.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 21:56
|
|
|
No Safe Word posted:If it's the first interview, I thought it didn't get noticeably difficult until 3 or 4 rounds in. 1. A phone screen 2. 5 on-site interviews on one day
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 22:04
|
|
|
Cicero posted:3 or 4 rounds? What kind of insane gauntlet did they put you through? For me it was: Not me, a friend, who I think did two phone interviews and then did a remote teleconference/video interview, though this was for their Sketchup office like right after they bought them so I don't know if that was different from the norm.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 22:10
|
|
|
Cicero posted:3 or 4 rounds? What kind of insane gauntlet did they put you through? For me it was: My MS interview process was pretty much the same. The phone screen questions were laughably easy, I remember one being "How would you parse an XML document" without actually using the word XML. I think for some teams the phone screen's more a weeder stage to make sure you at least know how to talk to people and code before they bring you in. I was going for a SDET internship in college though, so that was probably part of it. Moon Wizard fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Jan 2, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 22:16
|
|
|
No Safe Word posted:If it's the first interview, I thought it didn't get noticeably difficult until 3 or 4 rounds in. I was expecting a more difficult question, although in retrospect I kinda hosed up the code a little bit.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 22:16
|
|
|
WeezerToon posted:I'm a PhD student currently researching in a biological area, but recently I've become very interested in Computer Science. I'm currently learning how to code in python, but I was hoping someone could give me advice and perhaps an essential reading list in order to become proficient/competent enough to pursue a career in software development. The most important thing is to be somebody that doesn't suck at programming. That's sort of a term of art when used in my postings, so let me try to explain what I mean. There are some people who just suck at programming, despite having gone through a 4 year CS degree, they, if you ask them to write a FizzBuzz program or a program that hard-wraps a text file at 80 characters, they just can't do it. They can't take descriptions of problems and turn them into code. They lack the ability to hold logical notions in their head and manipulate them, or have some cluster of brain defects, or something, I don't know, and they suck at programming. Or maybe they can write the most simple programs but they're so slow it takes them forever. Or maybe they get stuck when a problem requires a recursive algorithm. They'll go and take problems like those mentioned and try to solve them by guessing what code to write, or by trying to copy/paste a solution from the internet, or some other complete failure of a thought process. The main thing is to not be one of these people. That's the main hireability/unhireability axis right there. Unfortunately that might be congenital. But right now you should keep learning how to code in Python, and write some code in Python (yes!) and (here comes the hard part) think of challenging things to do in Python and write the code that does them. (If you can't think of challenging things to do at any given time, you could do some Project Euler problems, and they're good exercises up to some point of diminishing returns.) But some more details: Whatever you end up doing (whether you teach yourself about web development or systems programming of some sort or another) what you'll probably end up being short on, some years down the line, is a facility with data structures and algorithms, and with the sort of general software design outlook that could be improved by learning and practicing the use of a variety of programming languages. Some basic introductory data structures and algorithms knowledge (how to use O notation, how to measure the big O running time of code) is very useful in the short term, in the pursuit of a career in software development and very useful in actually developing software, but the thing I said about programming languages isn't.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 22:21
|
|
|
I agree with shrughes. Before worrying about the exact way you should apply programming to your chosen field, first just become a not-horrible programmer. If you can solve the kinds of basic but slightly tricky CS questions that are asked for programming job interviews in a reasonable amount of time (I'd say like < 2 hours is a good target for an intelligent beginner) then you're in a good spot. Once you have at least a modest amount of coding knowledge, it'll be easier to figure out everything else, because you'll be able to do things like read up on biology-specific libraries and quickly test them out or whatever. edit: oh wait, did you mean a career in software development + biology (bioinformatics) or just a regular software development career?
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 22:40
|
|
|
Thanks for the tips so far. I meant a software development career not focused on Biology. Everyone in biological research I've spoken to has about 10 bad things to say about research as a career to every good thing.
WeezerToon fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Jan 2, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 22:55
|
|
|
WeezerToon posted:Thanks for the tips so far. I meant a software development career not focused on Biology. Everyone in biological research I've spoken to has about 10 bad things to say about research as a career to every good thing. Research, and then moving on to be an academic, can be a great career, but it involves a whole bunch of networking and rear end kissing. But if you're finishing up your phd, I think it'd be awful to throw away all that education and start being a boring old business software dev like me.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 23:26
|
|
|
WeezerToon posted:Everyone in biological research I've spoken to has about 10 bad things to say about research as a career to every good thing. I'm pretty sure you will find people like this no matter what career you are looking at.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 23:29
|
|
|
I'm not sure that there's a good, straightforward way to become a software engineer in terms of independently learning code style and basic software design. I picked up the bare basics in school; they taught bits and pieces of code style and design in the first handful of CS classes, and one of the required 300-level classes was Software Design and Testing (taught by a professor who still actually worked in private industry). I also took a 400 class in distributed system design, also taught by a professor who still worked in private industry. So you could look into college classes, especially if they're taught by someone who knows what they're talking about. There are books that teach good style, like Code Complete, although I think book learning is of limited use on its own. If I was in your position...I guess I'd emphasize simply coding a lot to become more comfortable first. It seems like programming books that aim to teach something relatively concrete (e.g. here's how to make Android apps), which is probably most of them, have you coding projects along the way, and I think you can definitely absorb some of the basics from that. For example, recently I've been going through Big Nerd Ranch's Android beginner book to fill in the gaps in my knowledge, and while it doesn't have you make anything huge, the projects are big enough to start to grasp the fundamental concepts of software design. Once you feel more advanced, you could try small open-source/collaborative projects to try and learn from others. Note that the 'small' here is pretty important, diving into large codebases is intimidating even for highly experienced software engineers.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 00:25
|
|
|
WeezerToon posted:I'm a PhD student currently researching in a biological area, but recently I've become very interested in Computer Science. I'm currently learning how to code in python, but I was hoping someone could give me advice and perhaps an essential reading list in order to become proficient/competent enough to pursue a career in software development. I'm in a similar situation, except I'd still like to use some of my scientific training while doing mostly coding. Not necessarily bioinformatics but maybe statistics/data science in general or perhaps developing software for an academic market. Not sure about a reading list, I just read the documentation/code of various libraries. Also there's a lot of good (and even more mediocre) talks on YouTube/Vimeo from various conferences, especially at the intersection of Python and scientific computing. But the most important thing is to code a lot. What I've been doing is any time I need to program something for my research, instead of writing a specific script to do just what I need to do (as scientists are wont to do in my experience), I generalize the problem and write a function or a library. For example, I was doing a parameter fit over 5 parameters and my supervisor wanted to visualize how the model fit changed as the parameters varied. So I made a GUI which takes an N-dimensional space, asks the user to choose 3 dimensions to visualize in 3D and makes the other N-3 dimensions adjustable as sliders. Of course, the original research project took an extra month or two, but now I have a cool programming project I can show off (and hopefully get more use out of). It is hard to find the time for that sort of thing when working for a Ph.D. but if you're not going into academia, those publications can be a bit delayed, gently caress it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 02:12
|
|
|
Do you guys like your jobs? Did many of you go to a 4-year school while working? I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to ask. I need a career and programming seems appealing. I know very little about coding but it seems like an intellectually interesting and comfortable job that won't break my body. On the other hand my dad is a software programmer and he's not too happy. Works at home though so I don't see what he has to complain about, other than me.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 19:41
|
|
|
I personally despise pretty much everything about it, and its made me hate programming, and computers in general. I have no other marketable skills so I'll probably kill myself if the money:loathing ratio ever starts to move in the other direction.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 19:51
|
|
|
Posting Principle posted:I personally despise pretty much everything about it, and its made me hate programming, and computers in general. I have no other marketable skills so I'll probably kill myself if the money:loathing ratio ever starts to move in the other direction.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 19:52
|
|
|
Splurgerwitzl posted:Do you guys like your jobs? Did many of you go to a 4-year school while working? I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to ask. I need a career and programming seems appealing. I know very little about coding but it seems like an intellectually interesting and comfortable job that won't break my body. Are you considering going to a 4-year school while working? For two years I worked a full-time, salaried position and took 8 credits/semester simultaneously on the side. You'll work really, really hard. Only do it if you're certain you want to change careers and not just because you're kind of curious. Do some research, try to pick up some basic programming skills, and see if it's something you'd like to do (and can afford).
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 20:14
|
|
|
The two worst parts (in my opinion) of being a software developer/programmer/engineer are: 1. That you go into it naively thinking you'll get to work on interesting, hard problems, but the truth of it is that the vast majority of work that needs doing is incredibly mundane. 2. You will almost always have bosses that know less about software/your work than you do, but who nevertheless exert more control and influence over the thing you are actually making than yourself. The better parts: 1. You get paid quite a bit. 2. I would still rather be doing this than: Service-oriented work, Management, Finance, etc.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 20:52
|
|
|
Sarcophallus posted:2. You will almost always have bosses that know less about software/your work than you do, but who nevertheless exert more control and influence over the thing you are actually making than yourself. This is what leads to open plan offices for developers. I don't hate them anymore, but I recognize it will cut my productivity in half and make that known.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 21:02
|
|
|
Splurgerwitzl posted:Do you guys like your jobs? Did many of you go to a 4-year school while working? I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to ask. I need a career and programming seems appealing. I know very little about coding but it seems like an intellectually interesting and comfortable job that won't break my body. I worked at a job full time while I went to Community College and then University. It was a crappy grocery store job but it paid the bills and had flexible hours. Splurgerwitzl posted:On the other hand my dad is a software programmer and he's not too happy. Works at home though so I don't see what he has to complain about, other than me. Edit: forgot to say that I do enjoy my job very much  being a programmer is pretty great.
PleasantDilemma fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Jan 3, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 21:09
|
|
|
baquerd posted:This is what leads to open plan offices for developers. I don't hate them anymore, but I recognize it will cut my productivity in half and make that known. Since we're throwing out one-off data points that are totally meaningless in any broad sense, my most productive and happiest engineers are in open plan. They've repeatedly told me that they like being able to just swivel chairs and consult with each other. Different people work differently! e: to answer your basic question Splurgerwitzl, I love my job, though at the moment it's a software architect & management role so I'm not sure that's helpful. I got to this role by being promoted up through being a couple of levels of software engineer and I loved the hell out of those roles too. csammis fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Jan 3, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 21:37
|
|
|
Splurgerwitzl posted:Do you guys like your jobs? Did many of you go to a 4-year school while working? I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to ask. I need a career and programming seems appealing. I know very little about coding but it seems like an intellectually interesting and comfortable job that won't break my body. The biggest complaint I have at my job is that I wouldn't, in all honesty, buy the software we sell. Everything else is great - pay, benefits, huge flexibility in working hours and holidays, the option to work from home, the working environment, the colleagues. It's a pretty good sector.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 21:37
|
|
|
csammis posted:Since we're throwing out one-off data points that are totally meaningless in any broad sense, my most productive and happiest engineers are in open plan. They've repeatedly told me that they like being able to just swivel chairs and consult with each other. Different people work differently! Yeah, I love open floor plan when it's done correctly. I've seen it done badly more frequently than not-badly. It needs to be quiet (e.g. isolated from other groups within the business, especially anyone that's going to be on the phone a lot), and there needs to be a quiet, isolated meeting space where two or three people can break away from the group to have a protracted chat.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 21:42
|
|
|
Ithaqua posted:Yeah, I love open floor plan when it's done correctly. I've seen it done badly more frequently than not-badly. That's a good point. You pretty much described what we've got going on...for the most part. We've been running out of space in our current building so last summer Facilities tried to put our new interns smack in the middle of the Sales area. I called bullshit on that and rounded up enough tables to make it work. It wasn't the best situation but it was a drat sight better than being surrounded by salespeople. I couldn't believe anyone thought that would work 
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 21:47
|
|
|
csammis posted:That's a good point. You pretty much described what we've got going on...for the most part. We've been running out of space in our current building so last summer Facilities tried to put our new interns smack in the middle of the Sales area. I called bullshit on that and rounded up enough tables to make it work. It wasn't the best situation but it was a drat sight better than being surrounded by salespeople. I couldn't believe anyone thought that would work The worst job I ever had was organized like this: code:D: Developers P: Purchasing agents CS: Customer service reps |: wall I complained about that all the time and no one else understood what the problem was. CS was organized into standard cubes, devs and purchasing had half-cubes arranged in a circle.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 22:05
|
|
|
So I'm in an interesting situation. Two weeks ago or so I found a job on CraigsList that I was really interested in. They had a long listing and description, but I thought it was weird that they didn't list a company. I held off for a few days but eventually ended up applying. Today I found a listing on StackOverflow that seems to be the same company, linking to a bunch of jobs on Resumator. However, they don't list the job I applied for. Worth emailing them in a few days if I don't hear back? I know it's important not to get tied to one company, but it's an ideal company for me in terms of salary, tech, and location.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 22:08
|
|
|
csammis posted:Since we're throwing out one-off data points that are totally meaningless in any broad sense, my most productive and happiest engineers are in open plan. They've repeatedly told me that they like being able to just swivel chairs and consult with each other. Different people work differently! Could be, if you've got it set up really well or your work has more to do with conversation and collaboration than getting concrete things done. Funny thing though, that management gets offices, even when a lot of what most management does is meet with people. Why do you suppose that is? I like the idea that it can be done well, but protracted chats in other locations away from easy code access just doesn't work well. I have never seen it done well to my satisfaction and will probably never be completely happy in a place that does it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 23:30
|
|
|
qntm posted:The biggest complaint I have at my job is that I wouldn't, in all honesty, buy the software we sell.  But the cobbler's children never had shoes
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 23:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 22, 2024 08:32 |
|
|
Last job had me in an open plan office that used to be an old non-technical work space, in a room about 2500-3000 sqft. It had linoleum floors that they didn't carpet over when renovating, so there was a wonderful echo. They installed eight 4-desk pods that were clover-shaped, an arrangement that was selected to "foster collaboration." No space was allocated for unscheduled meeting space, and they didn't make a whole lot of effort anyway because they were already short on schedulable conference room space for use by the rest of the organization. To have rooms for developers would look like playing favorites and giving special treatment to a group that was generally perceived as a bunch of overpaid kids. Two teams, about 30 developers in total, were consolidated into this room. Seats were not assigned based on who was collaborating with whom. A raffle was held to determine the order in which people could select seats; each month of seniority you had bought you a raffle ticket. So of course the burnout employees who had been around forever chose the seats that backed to the corners of the room where they could dick around on the internet and not be seen, and then everyone else basically just filled in based on personal preference. If people wanted to collaborate, they'd walk over to one person's desk and stand there and yak real loud, or just shout across the room. I don't know how you could possibly screw up an open plan arrangement any worse than that.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2014 00:01
|
|
