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astr0man posted:I know there is google stuff there.
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Nov 5, 2014 22:51
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So in summer I quit my old, cozy big company job. I was kinda stuck improving old legacy apps which were used enough to require development, but not important enough to put any resources into it. So I was pretty much alone dealing with half a million lines of code, which used an ancient custom framework that I didn't have sources for, for which even the company that wrote it didn't have sources for, and which wouldn't even decompile correctly. An analyst for that application who had left for a startup and met with in other circumstances actually apologized to me and said he knew my pain. As my company was undergoing some restructuring and with the development requests revealing new knee-deep layers of poo poo from that rotten codebase, I finally said gently caress it, there's got to be something better and more fun I could be doing. So I quit without even having the next job lined up, which everyone says is a terrible idea. But with the market being good for Java developers, and not having much debt or liabilities, I was confident to find a better job for more pay regardless. The first and my go-to place was looking pretty good. I did fairly well on the technical interview; didn't do a great job at whiteboard coding (which is much harder than it looks), but aced the theory questions. Then they gave a coding task, which I spent more than a week on to hone and perfect. They liked it. The final interview with a big hat architect also went well. Except then I got rejected out of the blue. I was  ing pretty hard, and managed to pry out that the big hat architect was actually looking for someone to lead a team, with big experience on their field who could build a team, while the job ads were looking for a mere mortal developer. Basically the person who makes the decision and the one who makes the job ads weren't in sync at all, and in actuality they were in different countries. Told me they do still need a mere mortal developer someday, or in a different branch, and I'd be welcome, but.. who knows when. God dammit.The second-choice place rejected my application without even meeting. What the christ. Didn't expect that at all -- thought my CV was impressive enough for at least an interview. On the second though, perhaps not quite, so I reworked it. At this point I felt pretty crappy about quitting the old job like that. This job-hunting thing was taking much more time than I expected. Onwards to the not-quite-as-appealing places. Toyed around with a few, but the third place looked much better than I expected actually. Nice office, nice people, profitable company, okay technology, fairly steady job.. and a 15 minute walk from my home. Very nice. Did well on my interview, too. So good in fact that as I was finishing the interviews I asked if they had any additional questions, they said "when can you start" and "thank you for choosing our company".  And about the pay... a 80 percent increase from at my old company. Like daym. I credit the improved CV.  What I learned: - Looking for a new job instead of hoping for a raise looks like good idea. Quitting the first one before you do, probably not so much. - If the first place doesn't like you, don't give up. There are plenty more fish in the sea. - Jobhunting takes a lot more time than you'd expect. - Practice whiteboard programming, that poo poo is harder than it looks. - The cliche interview questions, i.e. what is your greatest success/failure/how did you handle it/how did you work with people/why did you quit your last job/etc are actually getting asked. Be prepared for them. - If they give you a coding task, ask what they actually value in it. Coding speed vs maintainability etc? - Effort on CV will pay off
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Nov 5, 2014 23:41
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One thing that pigdog forgot to mention. You should be updating your resume every 3-6 months. If you aren't adding anything significant to it then it's time to think about a new job. I spent years at a company that was stable and had awesome co-workers. However, I was also working on mostly old legacy apps in maintenance hell. Finding my next job was a huge chore. Don't do that. You don't get brownie points for staying at a job that is not propelling you.
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Nov 5, 2014 23:54
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What's a good way to ask an employer to poo poo or get off the pot?My best guess posted:$PersonsName, Is this appropriate?
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Nov 6, 2014 01:24
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I started to write an alternative email but yours sounded better. It sounds fine to me.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:30
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Worst case I'm in a better place here and now, and can just move myself. Or take a long rear end interview-cation.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:35
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OOOOOoooooookay....the duder posted:Hi $Yourname, How do I approach this? If they mean during the day full time remote that's something less secure and reliable than the in-person job I have and have been offered. OTOH if its "in my own time" work, hello double dipping! Clearly I need not answer immediately, but I do want to know what's a good idea to go for, and what I should pass on. OTOH, just how reliable or unreliable is remote work? What should I ask before making a decision? Edit: quote:I'm interested! Let's talk specifics: would this be side gig work, or a full time remote job during your PST business hours? I also wonder what sort of contract would be involved, and how you would accept deliverables, etc. Let's get some more details before wringing hands over this. Fuck them fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 03:46
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gently caress them posted:How do I approach this? If they mean during the day full time remote that's something less secure and reliable than the in-person job I have and have been offered. OTOH if its "in my own time" work, hello double dipping! They mean you work as a regular full-time employee but remote and under a short-term contract. We did this at my office and ended up hiring the contractor. But it's a contracting position. Your goal is for them to say, "he's too expensive to keep in the budget as a contractor, but we can't work without him so I guess we have to hire!" I think it will take a lot of work on your part to make the FTE hire happen.
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Nov 6, 2014 04:30
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quote:Awesome! Hmm. Mniot posted:They mean you work as a regular full-time employee but remote and under a short-term contract. My prior luck with contracts led to my current forum name and avatar. Looks like I might be passing. Welp.
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Nov 6, 2014 04:36
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wolffenstein posted:Linkerino
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Nov 6, 2014 07:26
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Cicero posted:Yeah, there's a google dev office, but it's a small one. Small but  A couple of final steps to finalize everything, but it looks I will be full-time at Google Madison next year! 
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Nov 6, 2014 12:57
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gently caress them posted:
There's contracts and there's contracts. I'd talk to them about the specifics and if they're offering $50/hr or more then I'd seriously consider it. Keep in mind that $50/hr is more like $35/hr for the company though (or less) because they aren't paying for the room you sit in or a bunch of nice stuff like healthcare. Don't be afraid to ask for something high since you aren't hugely enthusiastic about it.
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Nov 6, 2014 13:28
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NovemberMike posted:There's contracts and there's contracts. I'd talk to them about the specifics and if they're offering $50/hr or more then I'd seriously consider it. Keep in mind that $50/hr is more like $35/hr for the company though (or less) because they aren't paying for the room you sit in or a bunch of nice stuff like healthcare. Don't be afraid to ask for something high since you aren't hugely enthusiastic about it. I'd also expect something around $50/hr as a salary anyway given that it's SF and any less would be a pay cut moving there given the cost of living. I guess I'll be playing this by ear.
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Nov 6, 2014 15:03
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Chill Callahan posted:Epic is in Wisconsin but then you'd be working with MUMPS and I don't know why you would want to do that. yeah, there is a tech hub there in the sense that Epic is a fuckhuge company
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Nov 6, 2014 15:21
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gently caress them posted:Hmm. My beef with contract-to-hire is that if they like your and your contract runs up, suddenly your employer has a ton of negotiating power because if you don't reach an agreement, welp now you don't have a job. So the employer can give you a huge hourly wage on the contract but talk you down in negotiating full-time salary. I got screwed out of a few grand on my current job like this :/ As an aside, I've also learned that if its the company's MO to hire in like this, everyone you work with is going to be a bunch of pushovers.
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Nov 6, 2014 15:26
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a slime posted:A couple of final steps to finalize everything, but it looks I will be full-time at Google Madison next year! On that note, I just got rejected by Google London  . But the interviews were fun and I didn't get my hopes up so it's cool, maybe I'll try again in a year or something.
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Nov 6, 2014 17:43
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a slime posted:Small but
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Nov 6, 2014 19:35
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Anyone have experience segueing into contracting from a full time job? My employer is consistently late paying me (only by a couple days, but it's annoying), and I'm thinking I'd might as well work on my own terms if I'm going to deal with things like that. Eventually my goal is to work for one of the big four tech firms, but I'm not there yet skill-wise. For anyone who may be involved in the hiring process there (or really anywhere) how do employers look upon developers coming from a contractor point of view? If you do have experience contracting, can you let me know some of the pit falls, some of the ways you find work, etc? Like do you have a website to find clients and that's your main way of finding them, or elance, or something else? Anything beyond an LLC that may be needed business-wise (insurance, etc)? Thanks a lot.
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Nov 7, 2014 04:45
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What do you do if someone sends you a technical exercise and you look at and realise that you have no idea how to approach it because you don't have experience with the things that they are asking you to do? I feel that saying "hi, no idea, help?" is pretty much equivalent to just telling them that I don't want the job since they obviously aren't going to hire someone who can't do the pre-interview test without help. I've ended up in this weird place where I spent five years writing C# with virtually zero mentoring and then a year as an Android dev working on an app that was 75% finished when I joined so I mostly just did bug fixing. The only new feature I spent any serious amount of time on was a hybrid native/WebView component where I did all kinds of ridiculous things to a WebView to make it fit the client's (a bank) ludicrous security requirements. Some of the stuff we did here was actually quite impressive but it has absolutely zero use in any well-designed app because it should never have been necessary in the first place. I didn't ever want to write that code, it was a shitheap of hacks on top of hacks just to make it work with their god forsaken 1980s backends. MEanwhile I learned nothing about good modern programming methodologies, patterns, etc. We didn't even write unit tests because the client said that was a waste of time so our management banned us. Yes, really. I have a ton of theory about various Android stuff and no practice with any of it and it's kind of overwhelming trying to use all of this half-knowledge to build anything. So this startup wants me to build a little app to grab some JSON and display it in a ListView in a certain way and I've simply never really touched ListViews, especially involving custom Views like this would. They want me to give an estimate and then do the work and tell them how it took. My actual estimate is going to be "a few days to figure out what the hell", but I'm sure if I tell them that they will just say "umm, don't bother". Sorry, bit of a rant :/ .
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Nov 7, 2014 12:56
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Tunga posted:What do you do if someone sends you a technical exercise and you look at and realise that you have no idea how to approach it because you don't have experience with the things that they are asking you to do? I feel that saying "hi, no idea, help?" is pretty much equivalent to just telling them that I don't want the job since they obviously aren't going to hire someone who can't do the pre-interview test without help. It sounds like you either need to grit your teeth and just do it (seriously, you can't figure out a couple UI components and some JSON?), or take "Android" off of your resume.
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Nov 7, 2014 14:21
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You should just figure out the thing and do it. They don't expect you to know everything, but the time to expose your ignorance is later when you send back your exercise and have proven you can at least kinda figure out your own crap, imo ("this was the first time I worked with _____, I had some trouble with _______" etc)
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Nov 7, 2014 14:39
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So the job paying me well, with a team, and build servers - and GIT! - and QA and a senior dev who interviewed me like I was sitting down with ithaca, rotor or tef (or who ever) is having me come down to do paperwork today. Finally passed background check. I called out of this current poo poo job Wednesday. Since email, texts, and our phones apparently do not work, they didn't realize I wasn't here until 2:30pm on Wednesday, and as such want me to fill out paper loving time sheets every time I take a break, go to lunch, or when I show up and leave for the day. The only other dev isn't even here, and the BA is basically orbiting them, which is why they can find them. If $NEWJOB will let me start Monday, should I? 
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Nov 7, 2014 15:36
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Burning bridges is generally a terrible idea, even if it's from a bad job. The new job will understand that you're a professional and need to give notice.
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Nov 7, 2014 15:39
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spatula posted:You should just figure out the thing and do it. They don't expect you to know everything, but the time to expose your ignorance is later when you send back your exercise and have proven you can at least kinda figure out your own crap, imo ("this was the first time I worked with _____, I had some trouble with _______" etc) Exactly. With my interview project I did many things for the first time (Used MVC Identities, Blob storage on Azure) that I had never done before. I had to look up how to do it and then I... did it. It ended up being a really good thing too, since one of the first (thrown in my face) projects I got ended up needing Azure blob storage, so I already knew how to do it. Normally when you do programming work you will run into tons of things you've never tried before, so you have to research it and figure out the best approch to doing it. So this sort of thing happens, and any good development house should understand that you don't know every single possible thing. The question is how you handle that situation, and if your first instinct is to freak out, then there is a problem.
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Nov 7, 2014 15:44
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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:Burning bridges is generally a terrible idea, even if it's from a bad job. NewJob wants me to work just one week, not two. The thing is, ShitJob is managed so poorly and so understaffed, any amount of notice is basically like asking someone to bail out the titanic just a few minutes longer before jumping overboard. They're not going to replace me in a week, or two, or for that matter, a month. Also, they've had other refugees from this environment, and set the tone for the interview with "Yeah we know all about it, don't pull punches, $PredecessorOfYours spilled the beans." I mentally checked out of here months ago, dude. 
Fuck them fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Nov 7, 2014 |
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Nov 7, 2014 16:08
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gently caress them posted:NewJob wants me to work just one week, not two. The thing is, ShitJob is managed so poorly and so understaffed, any amount of notice is basically like asking someone to bail out the titanic just a few minutes longer before jumping overboard. They're not going to replace me in a week, or two, or for that matter, a month. He gave you the correct advice, ignore at your own risk. See you in 3 months for the next job hunt.
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Nov 7, 2014 16:16
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spatula posted:You should just figure out the thing and do it. They don't expect you to know everything, but the time to expose your ignorance is later when you send back your exercise and have proven you can at least kinda figure out your own crap, imo ("this was the first time I worked with _____, I had some trouble with _______" etc) Drastic Actions posted:Exactly. With my interview project I did many things for the first time (Used MVC Identities, Blob storage on Azure) that I had never done before. I had to look up how to do it and then I... did it. It ended up being a really good thing too, since one of the first (thrown in my face) projects I got ended up needing Azure blob storage, so I already knew how to do it.
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Nov 7, 2014 16:24
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Tunga posted:Okay, thanks, these were helpful. I think my post got a bit off track, I was really just wondering what I should give them for an estimate since they specifically said that I have to give an estimate before I start working on it. Should I be honest up-front about the fact that it will take me longer because there's some new stuff here? Obviously if I was to do it again in the future it'd be quicker since after this I'll know how to do it. Would you be honest about it if you had the job? Yeah, you should. If you feel something might trip you up, then you should note it. Also, if it was not already in the requirements to have this in source control, you should throw it up on something like Github. That way you can show exactly what you're doing and, hopefully, what your improving as you learn more about what you need to do.
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Nov 7, 2014 16:31
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Tunga posted:Okay, thanks, these were helpful. I think my post got a bit off track, I was really just wondering what I should give them for an estimate since they specifically said that I have to give an estimate before I start working on it. Should I be honest up-front about the fact that it will take me longer because there's some new stuff here? Obviously if I was to do it again in the future it'd be quicker since after this I'll know how to do it. You should figure out how long it will honestly take you and tell them that plus some time for margin of error. Any time estimate you give is part of the test: it tests whether you can give accurate estimates of project completion time. They don't know the circumstances of your life and so shouldn't judge you on how many days it'll take to finish.
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Nov 7, 2014 16:33
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Munkeymon posted:You should figure out how long it will honestly take you and tell them that plus some time for margin of error. Any time estimate you give is part of the test: it tests whether you can give accurate estimates of project completion time. They don't know the circumstances of your life and so shouldn't judge you on how many days it'll take to finish. this plus spend 30 minutes before you give an estimate reading up on the things you dont know. maybe its a matter of learning a few new APIs, maybe its going to involve a lot of mucking around because you dont have a good mental model for what you want to do just yet. 30 minutes will give you a much clearer picture for little to no time loss.
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Nov 7, 2014 17:45
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Munkeymon posted:You should figure out how long it will honestly take you and tell them that plus some time for margin of error. Any time estimate you give is part of the test: it tests whether you can give accurate estimates of project completion time. They don't know the circumstances of your life and so shouldn't judge you on how many days it'll take to finish.
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Nov 7, 2014 18:41
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down with slavery posted:He gave you the correct advice, ignore at your own risk. See you in 3 months for the next job hunt. I offered a notice. As usual nobody is in their office. I won't be back here if ever for a long time. Learned how to dodge awful poo poo the hard way. As seems to be the case, good places find you. Peace, thread.
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Nov 7, 2014 18:59
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pigdog posted:Nobody can give accurate estimates of project completion time, exactly for the reason that a lot of your time as a developer is spent on learning new things which may or may not work the way you'd expect. And yet it's expected of all of us, which is why I said "plus some time for margin of error" which is how you deal with that "how the hell should I know how long it'll take me to do something I don't know how to do" factor. I recommend doubling a naive estimate.
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Nov 7, 2014 19:04
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gently caress them posted:I offered a notice. As usual nobody is in their office. quoting this so i can find it easier next time
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Nov 7, 2014 19:05
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gently caress them posted:NewJob wants me to work just one week, not two. What kind of place tells new hires it's a good idea for them to give just one week notice at their existing employer?
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Nov 7, 2014 19:11
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gently caress them posted:I offered a notice. As usual nobody is in their office. Shine on, you crazy diamond
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Nov 7, 2014 20:00
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Is newplace the one in SF?
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Nov 7, 2014 21:12
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gently caress them posted:I offered a notice. As usual nobody is in their office. I'm glad you didn't go for that one place that sounded terrible when you were really desperate. Good luck!
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Nov 8, 2014 01:15
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Does anybody know anything about the work/life balance at Microsoft? If I'm being honest with myself I just want to coast through to my career and enjoy things outside of work. Is it better than Google's balance?
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Nov 8, 2014 03:26
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sailormoon posted:Does anybody know anything about the work/life balance at Microsoft? If I'm being honest with myself I just want to coast through to my career and enjoy things outside of work. Is it better than Google's balance? Microsoft is so big that you can't make any generalizations out what the environment is going to be before you get there, every group is different.
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Nov 8, 2014 04:44
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