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Pollyanna posted:
Which accelerator? What kind of position are you applying for? It doesn't sound like you're applying as a startup founder.
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Feb 21, 2014 03:23
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Cicero posted:Startup accelerator? pr0zac (one of the goon mentors) apparently went through Y-Combinator so I'd try asking him. Also I'd go back in time and ask the thread more than one day ahead of time how to prepare. pr0zac posted:Which accelerator? What kind of position are you applying for? It doesn't sound like you're applying as a startup founder. No no, it's an internship working FOR an accelerator, at one of the places rsjr tipped me off to. I don't have information on exactly what I'd be doing in the internship, but I figured that was a question for once I get there. The interview was kinda short notice, too, so I didn't have much time to prepare at all. I was just wondering what I should expect.
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Feb 21, 2014 03:35
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Pollyanna posted:No no, it's an internship working FOR an accelerator, at one of the places rsjr tipped me off to. I don't have information on exactly what I'd be doing in the internship, but I figured that was a question for once I get there. The interview was kinda short notice, too, so I didn't have much time to prepare at all. I was just wondering what I should expect. What to expect depends on which accelerator it is, and even more on what the job is. You should REALLY find that out before you start the interview. Accelerators employ all kinds of people in positions that aren't programming (accounting, marketing, law, general office work, etc) and don't really need that many tech people on staff. If its not a direct programming job you should really make sure you're interested in whatever it is. I sent you a PM if you'd prefer not to discuss the exact place here, I might be able to find out what the job is looking for if I know which accelerator it is. Most likely you're going to get a bunch of questions on startups and the tech industry and the application of knowledge to helping move a new company forward. The details on what knowledge you're discussing depend on what the position entails. I suppose theres also the chance they just need some web-dev work done and you can avoid all the startup industry discussion, but you won't know that until you know what the position is.
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Feb 21, 2014 03:53
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pr0zac posted:What to expect depends on which accelerator it is, and even more on what the job is. You should REALLY find that out before you start the interview. Accelerators employ all kinds of people in positions that aren't programming (accounting, marketing, law, general office work, etc) and don't really need that many tech people on staff. If its not a direct programming job you should really make sure you're interested in whatever it is. Sent you a PM back. Some of the correspondence I had with the interviewer/hiring manager suggests that they understand I am looking for a programming job. They asked about what I was interested in among things like web, mobile, and games, so I'm not TOO worried about that...or so I'd like to think, but now I'm freaking out that everything's going to go wrong.  I do not think they are expecting me to try and work on being an accelerator or something. I think they understand what I can do and what works for me best. I think. I hope. I might be mildly retarded.
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Feb 21, 2014 04:53
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Pollyanna posted:Sent you a PM back. Ok, it actually seems like you know what you're talking about more than you think. I'm unfortunately not familiar with that accelerator in particular (was hoping you were looking in Boston still) but looking around, it looks like they do an apprenticeship program with the local college which lets students gain experience by working with the startups going through the accelerator. Since they told you that program is full, I'd expect the internship involves supporting the startups in some peripheral manner. Its likely you can expect a standard programming interview with some startup color. I'd spend a little bit of time reading about startup philosophy and culture. Paul Graham's essays are an ok place to start http://paulgraham.com/articles.html It probably wouldn't hurt to read about some of the companies that have gone through the accelerator and see if you see any patterns wrt languages or frameworks used/design styles/markets chosen/founder teams etc. You want to understand what they look for in startups and founders. Good place to start would be running some through http://builtwith.com. If you had more time I'd probably suggest trying to contact some of the company's founders (founders@<startup> almost always pings all founder emails, <founder firstname>@<startup> is almost always correct also) and get their feelings on and experience with the accelerator. Might be hard to do last minute though. Also, they've got one intern already, you might try reaching out to him. I'll PM you info on how you can contact him. Having "opinions" on things like software development methods and languages/frameworks would be beneficial. Make sure those opinions line up with those of the accelerator. The mindset the person interviewing you is going into it with is "will Pollyanna make at least one of the startups I'm giving money to execute more effectively and have a better chance of paying out and/or eventually be someone founding a company I'd want to give money to?". If you convince them you're an aspiring entrepreneur on top of just being a competent programmer you're golden. Really, though it looks like random city-oriented startup accelerator #9604. These places are a dime a dozen and they are generally aware of that fact. If you appear intelligent, interested, and eager to please they'll probably offer you some sort of experience building position. Edit: you know, thinking about it, if this doesn't pan out, you might just start looking around for startups that appear interesting and ping the founders directly with an email explaining your background, why you think their startup is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and interest in whether they could offer you an internship/short-term gig. Aspiring entrepreneurs love the chance to play mentor so if you appear to be looking for one they'll likely be willing to at least provide you further advice/guidance/networking. My previous boss at Facebook got his first programming job doing basically this. pr0zac fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Feb 21, 2014 |
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Feb 21, 2014 05:42
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Christ, I have no idea how some people sit in front of a monitor for 10 hour days with only a 20 minute lunch break. I've been starting to lose all productivity around the 7 hour mark. From then on I might as well just go home and work later on at night. The poo poo I'm doing is really cool though! I've already learned a ton, our devs (save for one) all seem very sharp and are more than happy to answer any questions I've had.
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Feb 21, 2014 06:30
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Your job only allows you a 20 minute lunch break? Seriously?
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Feb 21, 2014 07:07
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Cicero posted:Your job only allows you a 20 minute lunch break? Seriously? No, there are no rules like that. You can come and go whenever you please. People just..never leave their desk very often.
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Feb 21, 2014 14:24
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If they're not chilling out every now and then to check out a forum like yourself or a cat video or just read something recreational something's up. Also gently caress a ten hour day.
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Feb 21, 2014 18:16
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First off, thanks to everyone who's contributed to this thread: I've learned a lot from when I started reading it over a year ago on page one...and still lots to learn on the 3800 posts that remain to be read. Anyway, long story short, I have a B.S. in accounting from 2006, traveled for a year, taught English in Japan for 3.5 years, had a (fake) existential crisis where I went back to school (community college, lol!), and took everything I ever wanted to take but didn't have the balls to in regular college - A&P, chemistry, C++, etc. Turns out my programming courses were the most interesting so for the past year I've been trying to learn as much as possible about software development. Soon I'm going to start looking for internships and I'd like feedback on how I can improve my code and resume and all that stuff. Any constructive feedback is highly appreciated! Here's a link to my github site which also have my resume and projects etc: http://meadorjc.github.io/ (worried about goon opinions  )
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Feb 21, 2014 19:16
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That webpage sucks. Use GitHub's page generator or spend an afternoon learning Bootstrap at least. More constructively, you could make it look like your resume and give context to your links.
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Feb 21, 2014 19:56
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Not familiar with Bootstrap, but I will download that this afternoon and try and make it look nicer. I like the idea of the dynamic resume, so may try to do that as well. How do employers generally get a feel for someones coding? I'm less interested in building websites than I am in doing traditional application development or mobile app development, but I just assumed you throw a github link at the employers and say 'look at this!' I thought about trying to create a webUI with the C++ running behind it to give a demonstration, but I haven't had time to do that yet. Would that be the best way to present console-app and coursework code?
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Feb 21, 2014 20:19
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Okay, interview over. It went alright, I think. They asked me about my Bioinformatics masters, and I explained that it was basically biology plus Big Data and using software to get the information from stuff (I HAVE A BAD HABIT OF SAYING THE WORD "STUFF") as opposed to actual software development, and that I was looking to get into development as a logical progression from that. They asked about how I was going about the whole self-learning thing and what I'd become familiar with, and I mentioned that I was mostly familiar with web frameworks in Python like Flask and Django. From that, they brought up my stock lookup app (which turns out the URL was WRONG on my resume so of course they didn't see it prior to the interview) and asked me about it, I showed them the code and Flask app used to make it (this was through Github so they got to see all my commit messages  ) and walked them through what I did (I need to work on making my explanation better and also make that app not so lovely).So then they asked whether I was familiar with Rails, which they mostly use, and I answered that I didn't have much experience with Ruby but was interested in learning it (which I'm going to just bite the bullet and learn the drat thing already). They then said that they worked with a lot of students at the local university, and asked about my schedule since I'm taking an online degree, and I said that I was pretty flexible at ~2hrs of work per day over the course of the week, with no set time schedules. The interviewers were nice and pretty cool, and they seemed fairly knowledgeable about the field and the area. By the end, they said that they couldn't figure anything out until mid-March when their current class ends, and that they'd contact me in a few weeks. They also suggested that I do the Rails tutorial and that I could skip the testing section if I wanted. Plus, they let me know that there are other companies that are cool with taking on apprentices and interns and that if things don't work work, they'll pass me on to the other companies. Also, I broke a pen. No idea if I hosed up or not or how badly. Either way, they at least pointed me in a direction, which is more than I was expecting, especially after the Hashrocket fiasco. I still suck horribly at interviewing, but at least this one felt relatively forgiving. Next up is just work on building skills and apps, and also learn Rails.
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Feb 21, 2014 21:44
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Giglioroninomicon posted:How do employers generally get a feel for someones coding? I'm less interested in building websites than I am in doing traditional application development or mobile app development, but I just assumed you throw a github link at the employers and say 'look at this!' I thought about trying to create a webUI with the C++ running behind it to give a demonstration, but I haven't had time to do that yet. Would that be the best way to present console-app and coursework code? I decided on doing a Rails app that visualizes a data structure with CSS and then animates a sort (or path finding algorithm in the case of graphs) with jQuery. The algo/data structures are implemented in ruby and I'm breaking out the section of the code that deals with tracking the algorithms progress (and sending it to the frontend for display) into its own module. Good/bad? I think it's good because it shows that I have some understanding of algorithms and data structures while also giving me a chance to render some data in a 'beautiful' way.
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Feb 21, 2014 21:44
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Pollyanna posted:Okay, interview over. Do the Rails tutorial sure, but if you are already far along in figuring out Django/Flask then I would continue learning python/Django/Flask. The scientific community continues to use python and learning Rails would just be more of a waste of your time. Unfortunately almost every single "Ruby" job is actually a "Rails" job.
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Feb 21, 2014 22:09
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Pollyanna posted:stock lookup app This sounds really cool. Do you have a link for it? And seeing commit message isn't a bad thing! I like glancing at them, especially because some of them are rather humorous. USSMICHELLEBACHMAN posted:I decided on doing a Rails app that visualizes a data structure with CSS and then animates a sort That sounds like a fun project and a good way to display stuff. I mean, I'd be impressed, but that's not saying much. Also, I'm in love with your username. Also, taking wolffensteins advice and made the site slightly more pretty. Bootstrap is good! http://meadorjc.github.io/
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Feb 21, 2014 22:09
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Giglioroninomicon posted:
That definitely looks a lot better. I'd take the additional hour or two it takes to get away from having to use a template, but I'm hardly one to talk about incomplete personal websites. http://daviswahl.io/
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Feb 21, 2014 22:20
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Giglioroninomicon posted:Also, taking wolffensteins advice and made the site slightly more pretty. Bootstrap is good! http://meadorjc.github.io/ I'm bad at taking my own advice but congrats
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Feb 21, 2014 22:28
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Pollyanna posted:interview stuff... Sounds about like what I expected. Definitely ping the interviewer in the next day or two. Right after you do that Rails tutorial would be best since it'll let you drop in that you did it. If they can't give you a position definitely follow up wrt to the introducing you to other startups. If nothing else, that will let you build a network to mine for possibilities. Strong Sauce posted:Do the Rails tutorial sure, but if you are already far along in figuring out Django/Flask then I would continue learning python/Django/Flask. The scientific community continues to use python and learning Rails would just be more of a waste of your time. Unfortunately almost every single "Ruby" job is actually a "Rails" job. I'd agree with the scientific community thing. Every science researcher I know writes Python. If shes looking for jobs outside of just science, both are good choices. For straight web-dev, Rails is much more prevalent than Django. A lot of smaller, non-valley startup scene companies are based on hacked together Rails apps. Python seems to be more in vogue at most bigger companies (Facebook, Google/Youtube, Reddit, Dropbox). Its also "cooler" in the valley startup scene, and looks to have more general jobs around. Django vs Rails numbers (Rails leads): http://www.indeed.com/jobanalytics/jobtrends?q=Django%2C+Rails&l= Python vs Ruby numbers (Python leads): http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=python%2C+ruby&l= Really though they are similar enough languages, if you know one well learning enough about the eccentricities of the other should be a weeks worth of work at most. The most important thing is being able to program well in SOMETHING.
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Feb 21, 2014 23:48
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Yeah the main point I want to bring up is that learning Rails for her is going to take her off track. I don't think python/ruby are that similar. Writing simple toy programs you probably won't notice much difference, but writing more and more ruby eventually leads you into more and more metaprogramming/writing DSLs that seem very natural to ruby. It is also my opinion that most python shops won't hire any rubyists (at least from my past experience). The problem is I don't see a lot of companies doing a lot with ruby. Whenever I see a job for ruby! It always ends up meaning they want you to maintain/write rails apps or the deploy system around their Rails app. At least if I see "python" programming job, there is a good chance I will be writing other code that isn't just Django/Pylon/Flask, etc... The only company I can think of who uses ruby for something besides rails was Square. Being a great Rails developer does pay good money though so it's not like it's a bad field to get in as long as you know that the ruby portion of your skills won't land you onto another ruby job. Whereas with Python/Django is a different story.
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Feb 22, 2014 00:56
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I've been asked to do a "phone / VC interview" for a contractor position with a company like Google in two weeks. Looking it up, "VC" seems to stand for "video conferencing". Are they actually going to want to see me? Or is this code for "have a computer ready so we can see you code on collabedit" or something? Guess I'll be taking a sick day because it's going to be during work hours and I obviously can't use my work PC. EN Bullshit fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Feb 22, 2014 |
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Feb 22, 2014 00:58
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EN Bullshit posted:Guess I'll be taking a sick day because it's going to be during work hours and I obviously can't use my work PC. You could try to schedule the interview early or late in the day and then just come in to work late (and stay late) or come in early and leave early. I do my phone interviews during lunchtime, but that only works if your work is pretty close to home. Another possibility is doing the interview in your car if you have a car, a laptop and a phone that you can tether to. Taking a whole day off for a 45 min. phone interview seems a bit excessive.
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Feb 22, 2014 01:15
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Pollyanna, that sounds like a great interview! I would read their hedging at the end as meaning that they liked you well enough to hire, but not well enough to make a snap-decision and they're hoping they find someone better to hire instead. That's OK, though, because you should absolutely take them up on their offer to help you do some networking. As far as Ruby outside of Rails, it seems to be getting a lot of traction in DevOps. Puppet, Chef, and Vagrant all use it, and Amazon had an official Ruby library for AWS but no official Python library for a while.
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Feb 22, 2014 01:39
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Strong Sauce posted:Yeah the main point I want to bring up is that learning Rails for her is going to take her off track. I might be wrong, but it was my understanding that Pollyanna wanted to become a programmer -- not a scientist who can program -- in which case I think moving from Python to Ruby is a fine decision. Python is a great language, but it puts far less emphasis on metaprogramming and design than Ruby (no private/protected/public methods in classes, for instance). Understanding good design principles will open up far more opportunities than just knowing how to code really well in $language. But, it really doesn't matter. You can learn good design in Python, and you can learn how to code in any language in a weekend. What you cant learn in a weekend is how to design programs that exist within an ecosystem and arent just black box scripts that sit in a /bin on some company server. DONT THREAD ON ME fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Feb 22, 2014 |
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Feb 22, 2014 01:55
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I have a biology background as a result of my family and (part of) what I studied in college. Outside of that, I had relatively little interest in it before, and am beginning to lose that more and more as time goes by. Sure, I'm a little curious on some things, but exposure to bioinformatics has actually done the opposite and the software/programming side is more interesting to me. I am certainly not married to biology, medicine or science and I'm perfectly open to branching out - and probably will. What Strong Sauce said does make sense, though. I can think of many more popular uses for Python than for Ruby. However, a lot of my examples are scientific, which isn't necessarily what I want to do. Plus, there's the issue of job security: what if Rails falls out of vogue, or one day it just vanishes from the face of the Earth? It depends on the uses for the languages outside of web development. That's also something I've been thinking of. I'm not necessarily married to web dev, either - and I might try getting into mobile or game development a bit. Web dev is much more accessible than the latter two, however. pr0zac posted:Sounds about like what I expected. Definitely ping the interviewer in the next day or two. Right after you do that Rails tutorial would be best since it'll let you drop in that you did it. If they can't give you a position definitely follow up wrt to the introducing you to other startups. If nothing else, that will let you build a network to mine for possibilities. I sent a thank-you email after the interview, with an updated resume. I hope that they'll keep in touch. Mniot posted:Pollyanna, that sounds like a great interview! I would read their hedging at the end as meaning that they liked you well enough to hire, but not well enough to make a snap-decision and they're hoping they find someone better to hire instead. That's OK, though, because you should absolutely take them up on their offer to help you do some networking. If all I get out of them is a reference to another company who's willing to entertain the concept of hiring me, it's a net gain as far as I'm concerned.
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Feb 22, 2014 05:08
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General design principles of software engineering tend to carry over regardless of language, especially when you're in the same domain (web, mobile, system, etc.). I wouldn't worry too much about a language eventually going extinct*, it won't happen overnight, so as long as your head isn't stuck in the sand, you should be able to transition. * unless it's something already on its way out, like perl
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Feb 22, 2014 05:56
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Cicero posted:* unless it's something already on its way out, like perl Speaking of languages only scientists use. 
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Feb 22, 2014 06:01
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I wrote Perl today at work and I'm not a scientist at all
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Feb 22, 2014 06:47
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I work with Perl all day every day on a web app
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Feb 22, 2014 07:17
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I've just conducted my first couple interviews this week (as the interviewer rather than the applicant) and I have to say: if someone asks you to write a linked list and you start with an array, you're going in the wrong direction.
RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Feb 22, 2014 |
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Feb 22, 2014 16:17
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Ithaqua posted:Not having work for you to do is a sign of poor project management, that's all. Also a sign that your job may not last, in my opinion.
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Feb 22, 2014 16:21
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:I've just conducted my first couple interviews this week (as the interviewer rather than the applicant) and I have to say: if someone asks you to write a linked list and you start with an array, you're going in the wrong direction. The HELL NO or OMG YES candidates are always easy, but judging the in-betweens is painful. Do you turn down a maybe guy that might be great or just had a bad day or too much nerves during the interview, at the risk you end up with a shitlord? I always find guys that seem friendly and smart but are lacking just a bit too much experience the most difficult calls. The last one we turned down ended up at Facebook shortly after. I'd consider it a sign they are quite willing to do a lot of training for juniors. Maybe that's useful info for people here.
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Feb 22, 2014 19:15
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Skuto posted:The HELL NO or OMG YES candidates are always easy, but judging the in-betweens is painful. Do you turn down a maybe guy that might be great or just had a bad day or too much nerves during the interview, at the risk you end up with a shitlord?
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Feb 22, 2014 19:37
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E: Quote is not edit.
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Feb 22, 2014 19:44
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Skuto posted:The last one we turned down ended up at Facebook shortly after. I'd consider it a sign they are quite willing to do a lot of training for juniors. Maybe that's useful info for people here. I will confirm this. We are constantly hiring a ton of new grads and if you had an internship (which only requires passing the recruiter filter and two phone screens) and weren't an idiot you'll get a full time offer. I think it's because we use a lot of stuff other companies don't (HPHP in particular) and new grads are easier to mold into what we want. Personally I disagree with the strategy, I feel like we need more people with experience outside FB, but of course I didn't come into the company as a new grad so.
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Feb 22, 2014 19:53
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pr0zac posted:I will confirm this. We are constantly hiring a ton of new grads and if you had an internship (which only requires passing the recruiter filter and two phone screens) Hm. Does facebook really offer huge signing bonuses to interns they make full-time offers to, as I've heard in places? And do they accept master's students as interns? I feel like I could game this by leaving my experience off my resume and enrolling in a 1-year online CS masters program. Having facebook pay for my masters up-front seems like it would be cool. >_>
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Feb 22, 2014 20:04
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:I've just conducted my first couple interviews this week (as the interviewer rather than the applicant) and I have to say: if someone asks you to write a linked list and you start with an array, you're going in the wrong direction. Another tip from a recent interview: if your solution is O(n^10), a more efficient solution is likely to be available.
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Feb 22, 2014 23:20
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I'm a recent college graduate and I'm new to the whole job thing. I've been doing Python and Django and Flask web projects for years and writing web applications is what I know. I took a couple semesters of C++, and I know a little Java and C#/.NET but the only one I'm confident with and use regularly is Python. The degree program I was in seemed to deal more with project management than computer science. The problem is that I'm living somewhere that doesn't have any jobs on the job posting sites that have to do with what I know. I definitely don't have 4 years experience with .NET or Java like half the postings I find say. Now I'm having an existential crisis and afraid that I wasted years learning the wrong stuff (Python/Django instead of JSP or Rails or something) or that I'll have to move across the country to find a job in what I want to do! Or maybe I'm fine, I'm not looking in the right places, and it's my crippling anxiety talking. Argh.
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Feb 23, 2014 02:22
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Luigi Thirty posted:I'm a recent college graduate and I'm new to the whole job thing. I've been doing Python and Django and Flask web projects for years and writing web applications is what I know. I took a couple semesters of C++, and I know a little Java and C#/.NET but the only one I'm confident with and use regularly is Python. The degree program I was in seemed to deal more with project management than computer science. The problem is that I'm living somewhere that doesn't have any jobs on the job posting sites that have to do with what I know. I definitely don't have 4 years experience with .NET or Java like half the postings I find say. Now I'm having an existential crisis and afraid that I wasted years learning the wrong stuff (Python/Django instead of JSP or Rails or something) or that I'll have to move across the country to find a job in what I want to do! Or maybe I'm fine, I'm not looking in the right places, and it's my crippling anxiety talking. Argh. Well, you get 0% of the jobs you don't apply for.
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Feb 23, 2014 03:10
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Skuto posted:The HELL NO or OMG YES candidates are always easy, but judging the in-betweens is painful. Do you turn down a maybe guy that might be great or just had a bad day or too much nerves during the interview, at the risk you end up with a shitlord? It's probably harsh, but when I started interviewing, my manager said I should treat a maybe as a no. If you're not sure, you're not sure.
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