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Malcolm XML posted:There was a company that gave me what amounted to a bespoke IQ test, all for a job that involved a bunch of B2B web app work. Apparently they are one of the best places to work in London? I've talked about it in this thread before, but one place that I was interviewing at had me take a combination Meyers-Briggs/IQ test. I decided after the first 4 questions that I didn't care enough about getting the job to invest any effort in the test, so I picked random answers. They still offered me the job. 
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Jun 10, 2014 14:51
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I recently was given an interview "IQ test" that consisted of 18 photocopied pages from the Bumper Book of Brain Teasers. Surprisingly enough, the company turned out to be a shithole. e: The company was porting 3 million lines of legacy C++ to C#. The highlight was when the interviewer told me they had to implement their own hashmap class because the one from the core libraries was "too slow". I think they were unaware they could override GetHashCode(). coffeetable fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 15:01
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coffeetable posted:I recently was given an interview "IQ test" that consisted of 18 photocopied pages from the Bumper Book of Brain Teasers. Surprisingly enough, the company turned out to be a shithole. Or that they were overriding it with a crappy hash function.
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Jun 10, 2014 15:14
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Lampsacus posted:What's wrong with your experience at your company? I worked for five years at a really nice company full of awesome people but I was stuck in the UK sales office for a US-based company and that meant I was the only developer (or technical role at all) in the office. I did a combination of user-facing support, internal support, sales engineering, and designing and building bespoke Windows apps for customers. I got a lot of great experience there, mostly all in C# but I also worked with a smattering of other languages at times, most of which are best forgotten (Visual Foxpro  ). I was also comfortable with Java from university (and the similarities to C#).During that time I also got heavily into Android as a user and read a lot of the dev docs and stuff even though I never actually did anything with it beyond a few tiny demo apps. I'd watch all the dev talks from IO and stuff just to see what cool stuff was coming. Eventually I got fed up not having any proper mentoring and earning okay money but much less than I could make in a proper dev role and, with a little push from this thread, I quit. My friend referred me for an Android role at an agency that he worked at, warning me that it was a shithole (he quit a few months later) but at least it would get "Android" on my CV. Interviewed there, took the job, immediately realised it was a horrible place to work but got my head down and tried to learn as much as I could. Unfortunately the codebase I'm working on is a retail banking app which has been in development for two years now and hasn't even been released yet. It's a huge mess of badly architected spaghetti written by twenty different people at different times because people keep quitting. The bank can't provide servers that work properly, we're not allowed to write tests because "it takes time" and my company never ever says not to the client because they represent about 90% of our revenue. My team lead is 23, has two years of dev experience, and can't teach me anything (he was promoted because it was cheap to do so, basically). All the good devs have already quit so after eight months I'm now the most senior person on the team, joint with one other guy. I used this to my advantage to get a decent pay rise after six months (£40k -> £52k) but that isn't a particularly high number for London and I have friends on £60k elsewhere. Morale is like a morgue, everyone is interviewing at other places, and today a guy who started two weeks ago quit because he saw it was going nowhere. The company is trying to offer us share options and we just laugh because most of us doubt the company will exist in a 2-3 years and there is zero chance of us still working for it if it does. kitten smoothie posted:If you can do this and do it well than I'd say you're pretty well situated as a junior Android developer somewhere. Based on my experience trying to grow our team, and from what I hear from others, finding Android developers is hard these days. Even some big players like Yahoo and Twitter seem to be acqui-hiring other Android app teams for their own purposes because recruiting is so tough. And when I come home from my job the last thing I want to do is write code because I did that at work and I don't enjoy working there. So it's ruining my love of programming and I hate it for that. When I do try to write something at home I struggle a lot with making architectural decisions and I often end up sitting there not writing any code just staring at the editor because I don't want to do it the "wrong" way and I feel like I don't really know what I'm doing. So right now I feel like the best thing to do is to quit this job, look around at positions but also try to find my creativity again and knock out a personal project or two. I currently have no rent and tons of savings so financially I can afford to do that and honestly I'd learn more than I do at work every day. But I'm not sure if this will look bad on my CV. So that's my giant story, welp. Tunga fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 20:06
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Tunga posted:So that's my giant story, welp.
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Jun 10, 2014 20:47
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I've got an interview next week in a games company and I'm told im going to be tested on my maths and physics knowledge, as well as my "low level" coding ability. I was wondering if someone could recommend some good 3D maths and physics topics i should probably revise.Haven't done any decent math in a while and I'm rusty as gently caress!
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Jun 10, 2014 21:11
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LabiaBadgerTickler posted:I've got an interview next week in a games company and I'm told im going to be tested on my maths and physics knowledge, as well as my "low level" coding ability.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:22
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LabiaBadgerTickler posted:I've got an interview next week in a games company and I'm told im going to be tested on my maths and physics knowledge, as well as my "low level" coding ability. Linear algebra (especially 3D transforms), trigonometry, computational geometry, maybe some calculus if you want to talk about physics. Games people sometimes like to hear people talking about avoiding dynamic allocations by using pool allocators.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:41
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LabiaBadgerTickler posted:I've got an interview next week in a games company and I'm told im going to be tested on my maths and physics knowledge, as well as my "low level" coding ability. I haven't actually watched any of these, so I'm not sure how good they are but I remembered saving the link a long time ago when someone else linked them in one of the SA threads. It's a series of video's titled "Math for game developers" and covers vectors, matrices, quaternions, etc. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEhBM2x5MG9-e_JSOzU068w
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Jun 10, 2014 21:50
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astr0man posted:I took a quick look at your pdf resume and it seems alright except that: Space Gopher posted:This is jumping out and screaming at me as a major issue. Can you go into more detail about what trips you up? You're shooting for technical jobs, so the technical questions are do-or-die. Non-technical stuff is more of a pass/fail "is this person capable of doing work on time and passing the 'minimum acceptable human being to be around' bar?" and a potential tiebreaker between technically qualified candidates. Strong Sauce posted:Space Gopher is right. Even with your other resume problems, the biggest problem is there's a year gap on your resume. I take Gawker with a grain of salt, but Valleywag seems to hit the mark more often than not.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:51
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Ithaqua posted:saying you're a C pound developer when you actually have no programming skills whatsoever. Has anyone that called it C pound ever gotten a job as a C# developer? Unless you're trolling the same way people do when they call it "post grey squirrel"
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Jun 10, 2014 21:59
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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:Has anyone that called it C pound ever gotten a job as a C# developer? Unless you're trolling the same way people do when they call it "post grey squirrel" As far as I know it's apocryphal. I was making a joke, not trolling.
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Jun 10, 2014 22:05
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LabiaBadgerTickler posted:I've got an interview next week in a games company and I'm told im going to be tested on my maths and physics knowledge, as well as my "low level" coding ability. A week's kind of a short amount of time, but at a minimum make sure you know basic vector/matrix math as well as the dot product and cross product. Also be able to explain how they apply to game programming.
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Jun 11, 2014 00:04
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wolffenstein posted:Don't quit your job until you find another. See my sob story. There is tons of work in London and everyone else who has left has easily found work within a month of leaving. Also I don't give a poo poo about ethics and will work for anyone that doesn't treat me like a code-producing meat bag, so there's that.
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Jun 11, 2014 00:18
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take a day off and apply for jobs, then take another day off when you have interviews.
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Jun 11, 2014 00:31
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wolffenstein posted:take a day off and apply for jobs, then take another day off when you have interviews.
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Jun 11, 2014 01:10
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Tunga posted:Is there some specific downside that I'm missing?
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Jun 11, 2014 01:28
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Tunga posted:Don't have spare holiday. Also this doesn't really answer the question. Take sick days, get "penalized". You're leaving, oh well.
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Jun 11, 2014 03:59
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Doh004 posted:Take sick days, get "penalized". You're leaving, oh well. Uh, seconding this. If you're interviewing for a better job and you need to go on-site, you need to make up an excuse and take some time off. If you're potentially going to be happier, and especially if you're going to make more money, then just do it.
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Jun 11, 2014 07:51
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Just got asked to calculate 20% of 100 by a recruiter over the phone. e: Fair enough to ask I suppose, but it was a bit surprising considering we had just been discussing my physics degree. distortion park fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 10:20
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ultramiraculous posted:Uh, seconding this. If you're interviewing for a better job and you need to go on-site, you need to make up an excuse and take some time off. If you're potentially going to be happier, and especially if you're going to make more money, then just do it. Maybe you're all correct and I'll regret it but this place is making me anti-social and cynical, it't not fun, the idea of being here for another six months is just not an option, I will go insane. There are so many things wrong with the company. It's 100% revenue driven and as developers we are cattle to be milked and nothing more. Nobody cares about good practices, training, investment in employees, reducing the attrition rate (my CEO said "it doesn't matter, people only take a week to get up to speed"), the actual quality of the product (check the reviews on this thing), the working environment, providing a competitive package, or any of the other things you expect from an employer. Nearly everyone here is either interviewing or about to quit - someone who joined two weeks ago has already quit because he realised what a shithole it is. The company is half the size of what it was six months ago, I doubt it'll last another year. I came here for six months to get some lines on my CV and now I'm done. I appreciate the advice but this is where I am and I'll live with the decision. If it turns out to be a horrible mistake then you can all look forward to my apologetic post about not listening in six months' time. This company will not give me anything more even if I say I'm quitting so there's no way I can play my current job off against a new offer. The only thing that concerns me is Cicero posted:makes you appear less desirable to other companies I'd be interested in any ideas for leaning more about how to make architectural decisions and how to avoid sitting there staring at my IDE because I feel like I'm going to build it all the wrong way and will have to do it all again later. Is this normal? Is the answer just to suck it up and do it badly and then rewrite it and learn that way? Is there a good book I can read about coding patterns and how to choose between them? Tunga fucked around with this message at 10:52 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 10:49
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Some people like myself need to learn this lesson the hard way, but we are all trying to help you deal with this lovely situation so that you come out of it in the best possible way. I don't know UK laws, but if it's just like the US, you can't collect unemployment if you voluntarily quit. By the sounds of it, the company is doing its best to make sure you do voluntarily quit. Businesses are taxed and pay a small portion of your unemployment checks, and because it's the business's job to get revenue, one way they do that is to minimize costs. They still need developers to make the stuff that gets them revenue. Once they prove they can churn out something, anything's fair game. If you voluntarily quit, they couldn't be happier. Since this company is milking the hell out of its employees, don't feel bad for milking the company. Search for jobs on company time. Take smoke breaks to do phone interviews. I wouldn't go as far as say do everything in your power to get fired, but start fighting back until you can truly jump ship for another job. Please see a mental health counselor to vent your anger and give you an outside perspective on everything going in your life. This is one of the very few regrets I have. Had I seen a counselor sooner, I would be in much better shape than I am today. I truly thought I was being rational in my own head, but people and the world aren't rational; in dire circumstances we rationalize things in a very tunneled way so that it gives us hope. From an outsider's perspective however, it looks like you couldn't handle a tough situation. That's a tough first impression to overcome. I did you want to do. Now I'm in a much worse spot. Please, please, please do not repeat the same mistakes I did. I don't wish for what's happened in the past year of my life on anybody.
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Jun 11, 2014 13:57
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The company is not trying to make us quit, it's desperately trying to stop everyone from quitting. That's why I got a £12k payrise (also because I know how to negotiate) and they are offering us share options and stuff, but the problems are a lot more in the day-to-day stuff so nobody cares about shares when they doubt the company will even exist. The business makes tons of money because it's primary client is a bank. The owner is making millions, it's just that none of it gets reinvested or makes its way to us. He wants us to stay here so he can keep abusing us. No thanks. Sorry but I feel like you are projecting a bit here. I don't have mental health issues and I'm happy with every part of my life except where I work. I have no dependents, no rent, no bills, and £100k in savings. Quitting will have zero long-term financial impact on me even if it takes me a year to find a job. Everyone who knows me in real life and knows the situation and the job market thinks I should quit. There are a billion developer jobs in London, I get recruiters chasing me every day, and I just don't have time to follow up with stuff. The only reason I'm still here is because I agreed with the COO three weeks ago that if I stayed for two months and still wanted to leave he'd let me go with a month's notice instead of three. He is new and wants to improve things and wanted me to give him a chance, which I agreed to do as long as my total notice period remained the same. I really just wanted some advice on how to help myself get better at building complex systems from scratch. that's the only thing I am concerned about. I don't doubt that I can find another job but I don't want to take a paycut because I failed to learn some fundamental stuff here so I'm trying to fix that in my own time.
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Jun 11, 2014 14:26
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Tunga posted:There are a billion developer jobs in London Sounds like you've got a pretty lucid understanding of it all, Tunga.
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Jun 11, 2014 14:43
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Tunga posted:I also have a three month notice period  Is this normal in the UK? And even if it is, what actually happens if you say "I'm leaving in 2 weeks deal with it"
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Jun 11, 2014 15:21
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astr0man posted:
If I walk out they can't stop me but they could theoretically sue me for incurred costs. More likely they would just refuse to provide a reference.
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Jun 11, 2014 15:35
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Hey folks, looking to make a career change into software development and I'm hoping some of you could help me figure some stuff out! Currently I've got a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and I've been working as a full time Electrical Engineer for the past 3 years and I want to make a switch into software development but I'm a little bewildered about how to go about doing so. I gained some basic coding knowledge as a student -- my grad/undergrad research and coursework involved a lot of MATLAB script writing (which is kind of similar to C++ I think?), I took a C++ class, and used other languages like Java to a small degree. None of the work I do at my current job requires coding of any kind. The OP suggests a few options for Post-Bacc/Master's programs, but do you think it would be necessary to get another degree if I already have a M.S. in a math-heavy techincal field? Should I just take some courses online or at a local school (I'm in Los Angeles if anyone has any suggestions), or maybe try to get some certifications? I don't really know what is the best thing to do here, so if anyone has any suggestions for what steps to take to eventually get a software development job for someone in my situation I would really appreciate it!
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Jun 11, 2014 15:38
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astr0man posted:
It's not particularly incongruous for the UK. Remember it works both ways, your employer would probably need to provide a similar amount of notice before terminating you.
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Jun 11, 2014 15:50
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D-Tron posted:my grad/undergrad research and coursework involved a lot of MATLAB script writing (which is kind of similar to C++ I think?) My eyes have never bugged out of my head so far as when I read this line. Your education will not stop you from getting interviews, particularly as you get closer to embedded development it will even give you an edge over someone with a CS degree. But you definitely have an indescribable amount of learning ahead of you if you want to work with C++ in a professional capacity. Depending on what kind of position you are shooting for, you will need more or less training on the fundamentals. I have a friend who transitioned from Biology grad student to employed professional web developer after spending three months intensively studying Rails and web technologies. It really depends on your goals.
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Jun 11, 2014 15:55
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qntm posted:It's not particularly incongruous for the UK. Remember it works both ways, your employer would probably need to provide a similar amount of notice before terminating you.
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Jun 11, 2014 16:06
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As noted by other posters, C++ and Matlab are Quite Different. Disabuse yourself of the notion that they are similar  The transition you're looking to make will look very different depending on what sort of software you want to work on. Do you know whether you want to do webapps, mobile apps, enterprise stuff (don't do enterprise stuff), systems programming, embedded development, etc? What sort of electrical engineering have you been doing predominantly for the past three years - power stuff, communications, analog signal path work, digital logic, etc? This too could affect how easy the transition is for you.
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Jun 11, 2014 16:06
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I'm having a hard time getting an internship. I've had three interviews but no dice. I think it has to do with the technical stuff in the interview. I've only been in school for about a year, and I've learned a lot, but I think I have gotten used to doing assignments "open book" and since it's online, I don't really talk to peers that much. As such, I can do the programming assignments well and am getting good grades. But if interviewers ask me to explain a concept or to code on the whiteboard, I sometimes flub it - I'll describe something in an unclear way or blank on basic syntax. Does anyone have any advice on how to get better at these things? Should i just find problems and try coding them on a piece of paper?
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Jun 11, 2014 16:12
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I couldn't get an internship after my first year of college because no one likes to trust a super young person for an internship when there are older, more "experienced" interns that are also applying for the job (unless you're a sperg who's written 5 different published apps by the time you're 19 or some poo poo). It's just tougher. You're only going to get better with experience of not just coding but also interviewing. I blew my first interviews as well but learned from them. You'll get better over time if you keep working at it.
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Jun 11, 2014 16:36
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Doghouse posted:I'm having a hard time getting an internship. I've had three interviews but no dice. I think it has to do with the technical stuff in the interview. I've only been in school for about a year, and I've learned a lot, but I think I have gotten used to doing assignments "open book" and since it's online, I don't really talk to peers that much. As such, I can do the programming assignments well and am getting good grades. But if interviewers ask me to explain a concept or to code on the whiteboard, I sometimes flub it - I'll describe something in an unclear way or blank on basic syntax. Does anyone have any advice on how to get better at these things? Should i just find problems and try coding them on a piece of paper? There's an old corny Dad-joke that asks, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" You practice. Work through problems, and when you're done, work through more. Practice with your friends and classmates, too, asking each other questions and posing problems. And as was said in the post above me, the way to get better at interviewing in general is to do more interviews and practice that way. If you're getting good grades in your coursework, I know my university would let people who got an A in a class be TAs when that class was offered later. Hosting office hours twice a week where people would ask me questions was good practice for being able to explain concepts to others and do whiteboard coding in front of people.
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Jun 11, 2014 16:39
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Doghouse posted:I'm having a hard time getting an internship. I've had three interviews but no dice. I think it has to do with the technical stuff in the interview. I've only been in school for about a year, and I've learned a lot, but I think I have gotten used to doing assignments "open book" and since it's online, I don't really talk to peers that much. As such, I can do the programming assignments well and am getting good grades. But if interviewers ask me to explain a concept or to code on the whiteboard, I sometimes flub it - I'll describe something in an unclear way or blank on basic syntax. Does anyone have any advice on how to get better at these things? Should i just find problems and try coding them on a piece of paper? I will likely be in the minority about this, but I really wouldn't sweat a difficulty getting internships as a rising sophomore. If you can snag one that early it's great (you will learn tons and money in your pocket is always nice), but the lack of a summer-after-freshman-year internship will not in any way damage your future prospects. My current employer won't even bother interviewing folks for the MechE and EE intern positions we normally have each summer if they aren't at least a rising junior. That being said, if you want to improve your chances of getting a quality internship at one of the major employers of programmers (Google, Facebook, MS, etc) next year, focus on
You can do the former with a pair of good texts (DPV's Algorithms to learn and possibly CLRS's Introduction to Algorithms as a reference) and some practice. The latter is more difficult for a lot of people, but you can get good enough to make an internship by writing programs and doing practice problems (cf. Cracking the Coding Interview for problems that should be of sufficient difficulty for internships - the book has some errata but it's worthwhile regardless). And yes, the best interview practice is done without an IDE.
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Jun 11, 2014 16:41
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Frustrated after 3 interviews. Good grief. Edit: Of course you have to practice. Strong Sauce fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 16:42
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Tunga posted:No, and I refused to sign the contract because of it, but then I didn't actually stop working here so I've de facto accepted it. If you havent signed look into a competent employment lawyer. They may be able to get you out of the 3 month period.
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Jun 11, 2014 16:51
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Doghouse posted:I'm having a hard time getting an internship. I've had three interviews but no dice. I think it has to do with the technical stuff in the interview. I've only been in school for about a year, and I've learned a lot, but I think I have gotten used to doing assignments "open book" and since it's online, I don't really talk to peers that much. As such, I can do the programming assignments well and am getting good grades. But if interviewers ask me to explain a concept or to code on the whiteboard, I sometimes flub it - I'll describe something in an unclear way or blank on basic syntax. Does anyone have any advice on how to get better at these things? Should i just find problems and try coding them on a piece of paper? These are pretty good for general practice on small bite size problems. http://projecteuler.net/problems
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Jun 11, 2014 17:06
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Sorry I didn't specify - I'm doing an online 2 year masters, and have one year left. So I guess I'm panicking a bit because I don't have the luxury of having a few years to land an internship, and all the summer internship listings for this year seem to be drying up. But yeah I know i just need practice, I was just looking for specific methods that work. Thanks for all the input.
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Jun 11, 2014 17:10
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a slime posted:My eyes have never bugged out of my head so far as when I read this line. Your education will not stop you from getting interviews, particularly as you get closer to embedded development it will even give you an edge over someone with a CS degree. But you definitely have an indescribable amount of learning ahead of you if you want to work with C++ in a professional capacity. Haha fair enough, but I'm not trying to imply that I know C++ based on my Matlab experience or that I necessarily want to work with C++, just giving some background info. I'm really looking to clarify my goals at this point, just trying to get a general sense for what options are best for someone in EE to transition to software. It sounds like it depends heavily on what I want to specialize in. Did your friend take formal courses or was it all independent study? Otto Skorzeny posted:As noted by other posters, C++ and Matlab are Quite Different. Disabuse yourself of the notion that they are similar Academically, my work was mostly in semiconductor physics/devices, electronics, and signal processing. I currently work with power stuff, as weird as that is considering my focus in school. I'm wanting to go into some sort of application programming (web, mobile, etc) so I think it will be a pretty big transition that will require some additional study. My main question is how to best go about this -- should I just take some classes, get some certifications, or do I need to do a full-blown degree of some kind? Thanks for your responses!
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Jun 11, 2014 17:43
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