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Well gently caress that aforementioned company that wanted a drug test a few pages back, the second company just made a kick rear end offer paying as much as I made as a contractor for a giant bank except now I'll have benefits so it basically works out to be more money 
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May 14, 2015 23:48
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Not sure if this is the best thread for this but here goes. Interviewing remotely for a SF job. Already had a phone screen and a first real skype interview. Two more later today, seems like this is it! The first two went very well, and the skype interview even featured a very personable goon. Besides "Don't gently caress it up, whale" what are good things to keep in mind? I've already done a little COLA + state income tax math so I know what to ask for when it's offer letter time, and they know I'm far away and won't be giving me any grief about relocating. It's not that I can't interview or that I'm inexperienced, it's that I'm going from The South to The Bay Area and I'd have to be a fool to not realize there will be culture shock both ways. OTOH I think having a slight accent and some colorful mannerisms might help me stand out in a good way.
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May 15, 2015 17:15
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Space Whale posted:Besides "Don't gently caress it up, whale" what are good things to keep in mind? I've already done a little COLA + state income tax math so I know what to ask for when it's offer letter time, and they know I'm far away and won't be giving me any grief about relocating. Make sure you know what you're worth. Offers in the bay area can get very generous between stock/signup/basepay depending on your education level, experience, company size-stage and how much they want you.
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May 15, 2015 17:54
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I'm hoping to get into a programming role within a year or so. I'm going to have an A.S. so I know I'll need a portfolio too. I have no ideas for what to make. How did you fill out your portfolio? I have two pieces for it, but I figure I should probably aim for at least 3-5. Basically I am one of the only goons who isn't the idea man I also did all of my school coding in Java and C++. Should I stick with those for now, or would it pay to branch out? I feel like branching out is more for people who already know how to code well. Kind of like a good musician will learn a new instrument faster than a beginner. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 18:21 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 18:19
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22 Eargesplitten posted:I also did all of my school coding in Java and C++. Should I stick with those for now, or would it pay to branch out? I feel like branching out is more for people who already know how to code well. Kind of like a good musician will learn a new instrument faster than a beginner. There's a lot of instruments in the world. Look at all the job listings on dice.com for your area and make a portfolio that demonstrates you would be a good candidate for the kinds of junior developer roles that appeal to you. The language depends a lot on what domain you want to break into (e.g. web development, embedded programming, systems administration, enterprise GUI applications, etc.).
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May 15, 2015 18:32
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Okay, thanks. It also occurred to me that I should probably learn some version control best practices. I never really learned that in school. Where would I learn that independently?
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May 15, 2015 19:07
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Okay, thanks. It also occurred to me that I should probably learn some version control best practices. I never really learned that in school. Where would I learn that independently? https://www.hginit.com is a good primer for Mercurial (similar to Git). In practice though, you'll just have to start using something regularly to get the hang of it. It's a bit contrived, but for example, with Mercurial, you could practice creating separate branches for different features, and then merging them with your default branch.
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May 15, 2015 19:18
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Space Whale posted:It's not that I can't interview or that I'm inexperienced, it's that I'm going from The South to The Bay Area and I'd have to be a fool to not realize there will be culture shock both ways. OTOH I think having a slight accent and some colorful mannerisms might help me stand out in a good way. If we're to learn anything from forum poster Hybridfusion's experiences: Expect more douchebags than you'd see in the south, particularly in tech, but also in general. Also, don't ironically call your coworkers faggots. Asians aren't as smart here as they are on the east coast. Motorcyclists can lane split. In SF specifically: homeless people are everywhere, and if you shoot them, cops will confiscate your gun. Realize that the commute from one side of SF to the other side is looong, don't go living on the wrong side of the city. SF is the most dysfunctionally run city in the world, you'll have to suppress common sense if you have any political opinions. You might end up hating your coworkers that are straight-outta-Stanford noobs that don't know poo poo and yet get paid $190k or whatever the going rate for fresh meat is these days.
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May 15, 2015 19:26
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Okay, thanks. It also occurred to me that I should probably learn some version control best practices. I never really learned that in school. Where would I learn that independently? There's basically two major types of version control out there: * Distributed version control -- exemplified by Git and Mercurial * Client-server version controls -- exemplified by Subversion, Perforce, and Microsoft TFS If you can learn how to use Git and Svn, you'll be able to directly translate your experience with either of those to pretty much anything you run into. The easiest way to learn is to actually use them -- read a basic "how to" guide, set up your own repositories, and try using source control for your personal projects.
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May 15, 2015 19:30
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sarehu posted:If we're to learn anything from forum poster Hybridfusion's experiences: Expect more douchebags than you'd see in the south, particularly in tech, but also in general. Also, don't ironically call your coworkers faggots. Asians aren't as smart here as they are on the east coast. Motorcyclists can lane split. In SF specifically: homeless people are everywhere, and if you shoot them, cops will confiscate your gun. Realize that the commute from one side of SF to the other side is looong, don't go living on the wrong side of the city. SF is the most dysfunctionally run city in the world, you'll have to suppress common sense if you have any political opinions. You might end up hating your coworkers that are straight-outta-Stanford noobs that don't know poo poo and yet get paid $190k or whatever the going rate for fresh meat is these days. More douches, dumber asians, you lose a gun if you shoot homeless people (what if it was ag assault?) and motorcyclists are all badasses - gotcha! Wait, who the gently caress actually calls someone "human being" anymore? I mean unless you're into that.
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May 15, 2015 20:01
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I wouldn't call somebody a human being. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
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May 15, 2015 20:07
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sarehu posted:I wouldn't call somebody a human being. Don't sissyshame.
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May 15, 2015 20:08
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sarehu posted:I wouldn't call somebody a human being. do you have a chart that shows which areas of the US have the smartest asians?
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May 15, 2015 20:09
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22 Eargesplitten posted:How did you fill out your portfolio? By doing so, you're demonstrating that you can find your way through an existing, potentially-large codebase, that you can work with others, that you're able to use version control, and that you're able to follow a process to make a useful contribution. It's a big thing when I interview folks with that experience because it tells me that they can work on a team. It doesn't matter how great of a programmer you are individually if you can't work on a larger project.
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May 15, 2015 20:13
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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:do you have a chart that shows which areas of the US have the smartest asians? It would just be a bar graph with CT at 100% and the rest of the states at 0%, hth.
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May 15, 2015 20:19
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The March Hare posted:It would just be a bar graph with CT at 100% and the rest of the states at 0%, hth. Bullshit. Nobody in CT is smart.
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May 15, 2015 20:27
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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:do you have a chart that shows which areas of the US have the smartest asians? I'll go put on a turban and put it to my head if you wrap it in an envelope!
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May 15, 2015 21:29
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ullerrm posted:There's basically two major types of version control out there: Yeah, sorry for not being clear. I'm going to use them, I just wanted some information so I didn't do them wrong. I would like to contribute to some open source projects, but I haven't coded in almost a year, so I want to do some simple stuff to get back into the groove before going into a big project. I do have one idea, though, and it involves a bunch of file manipulation, which is a new thing for me. I'll do open source after that. How should I document the things that I contribute to an open source project?
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May 15, 2015 21:32
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Second interview seems to have made me miss my beat because I didn't know the right buzzwords. OTOH it was two more dull engineers than I spoke to prior - the screen and interview 1 were almost more about hanging out than really interviewing. I could answer all the questions but that was largely it, no real sync up and chumminess. Is this really that bad? That's my go-to interview strategy and works very well, at least down here. I still have another interview in an hour. If it's a by-vote thing, and it's 2-1 instead of 3-0 is that still a go or is that a no?
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May 15, 2015 21:34
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Yeah, sorry for not being clear. I'm going to use them, I just wanted some information so I didn't do them wrong. Try to match the documentation and coding style of the project as it is. If the project has a style guide, read it first and follow it. As to how to use source control properly, just find some tutorials and practice on your own repositories first. Git, Mercurial, SVN are all free and easy to set up either on your own machine, or via cloud services. Space Whale posted:Second interview seems to have made me miss my beat because I didn't know the right buzzwords. OTOH it was two more dull engineers than I spoke to prior - the screen and interview 1 were almost more about hanging out than really interviewing. I could answer all the questions but that was largely it, no real sync up and chumminess. Is this really that bad? That's my go-to interview strategy and works very well, at least down here. It's not exactly bad, they may have intentionally trying to be cold and focused on technical questions. As for voting, depends. Some places may go with majority, but I think most places (good places) use more a "Hire/No Hire" vote, and the decision has to be unanimous. If there is any doubt, you should vote No Hire, and only hire if everyone agrees to hire. But, ultimately it is up to whatever manager is actually responsible for the decision and could likely over-rule if he really likes you or desperately needs to fill a spot. Skandranon fucked around with this message at 22:04 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 22:01
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22 Eargesplitten posted:How should I document the things that I contribute to an open source project? Another thing you can do is provide a link to your GitHub account (if you use GitHub) which would host your personal projects and forks of open source projects to which you've made contributions. It's a little less straight forward, but it's low effort and something one can poke around in for a little while to see what kind of things you've done.
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May 15, 2015 22:03
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Space Whale posted:I still have another interview in an hour. If it's a by-vote thing, and it's 2-1 instead of 3-0 is that still a go or is that a no? It really depends, and sometimes negative votes can turn positive in the post-interview discussions (or vice versa).
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May 15, 2015 22:19
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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:do you have a chart that shows which areas of the US have the smartest asians? Yeah, northeast has the smartest (and D.C. burbs > Lehigh Valley > Albany > Main Line > Westchester County > ...), Hawaii has the dumbest, California second-dumbest.
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May 15, 2015 23:22
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Space Whale posted:More douches, dumber asians, you lose a gun if you shoot homeless people (what if it was ag assault?) and motorcyclists are all badasses - gotcha! I'm in California now, coming from Louisiana. It's not really that big of a change. In addition to what was already said, everyone is casually racist, significantly more than back in Louisiana. Drivers are not fundamentally BAD, but nobody knows what courtesy is, if you need to get over, cut that other guy off or you'll never get there. North California and south California have a stupid rivalry, like Mississippi and Alabama football teams, do your best to stay out of it. Everything is crazy expensive and don't tell anyone if you like a Mexican restaurant because no matter how good it is it's not good enough and they will say you're bad for liking it. It's not really a big deal, if you're from Louisiana everyone will ask you how it compares to True Blood. If you're not from Louisiana I can't say but you'll be a novelty at the least
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May 16, 2015 05:05
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OK, but is the Shrughes Ordinality of Asian Smartness™ valid?
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May 16, 2015 17:39
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Space Whale posted:OK, but is the Shrughes Ordinality of Asian Smartness™ valid? It correlates with "has had actual Asian communities for a while" ie, has the full scope of Asian people instead of just those immigrating for tech jobs, so sorta.
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May 16, 2015 19:23
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pr0zac posted:It correlates with "has had actual Asian communities for a while" ie, has the full scope of Asian people instead of just those immigrating for tech jobs, so sorta. I'm not sure what's funnier, that I was taken seriously or that there was even an iota of truth to shrughes' rambling.
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May 16, 2015 20:58
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Space Whale posted:I'm not sure what's funnier, that I was taken seriously or that there was even an iota of truth to shrughes' rambling. My finding the second part funny caused the first so basically both.
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May 16, 2015 21:23
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This is probably a woefully stupid question. I'm a freshman student in Computer Science, and I've lined up two different opportunities for the summer: The first is working with Caltech's summer undergraduate program, particularly their Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, and the second is going to something called Make School to make iOS apps and possibly hook myself up with an internship with a tech company in Palo Alto. The latter (Make School) is more relevant to my major, and I would love to go, but it would cost me probably several thousand dollars. The former (Caltech) would pay me $6,000. My goal at the moment is to transfer to a UC and get a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, and obviously a job in Computer Science. Does either of these two opportunities make much a difference in helping me achieve that goal? If I take the Caltech option, Make School still offers online classes but I would miss out on the opportunity of an internship. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 22:47 on May 16, 2015 |
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May 16, 2015 22:44
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You've got the rest of your life to make iOS apps and I suspect you'll have no major problems getting an internship with tech companies in... Definitely go for the Caltech summer undergrad program thing, that would be the right choice even if the pay was the same.
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May 16, 2015 22:52
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sarehu posted:You've got the rest of your life to make iOS apps and I suspect you'll have no major problems getting an internship with tech companies in... Completely agreed with this. If you're already doing CS in a decent program, you're gonna have few issues scoring internships at major tech firms (if you're half-good obviously). You don't need to go to a hacker school or a coding camp or whatever to get hooked up. Send out a bunch of resumes after you're done with the Caltech gig, go to your campus' recruiting events and you'll do fine.
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May 16, 2015 23:13
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Thanks guys, that's been hanging on my mind for like a month now.
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May 16, 2015 23:28
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I will be working at an internship this semester doing web/mobile related work. The company I will be working for is fairly prestigious, the interview process for the internship was pretty rigorous and I'm looking forward to a productive and informative internship. However, I am kind of concerned that I may be extended an offer and expected to accept it-- the company has said that it really hires interns to offer employment to them eventually. This is cool and I would certainly appreciate the offer should I receive it, but there's a few problems: * I do not really want to stay in the city I am currently living in. (This is a big one) * The company has a lot of cool perks like an awesome office and diversity of projects, but from what I've gathered I could do better in terms of overall compensation. * The company's leadership appears to have a strong Christian influence. They mention that they do not discriminate at all but they definitely credit their success to God and I think they even quoted scripture. The CEO (who was making most of the Godly references) is very charismatic and seems very respected, but I am not really religious in the traditional sense and I tend to be a skeptic so overall I'm wary of this sort of thing. There are a lot of factors here and I certainly wouldn't exclude the possibility of working there, because it does seem to be a great company; but I am afraid of the stituation where I want to go elsewhere and not being sure how to handle the situation of getting a job offer, or responding to inquisitions of my intentions in an honest yet professional manner. Any and all advice is appreciated.
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May 17, 2015 09:10
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It sounds like you know what to do.
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May 17, 2015 09:31
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You have no obligation to accept any offer, full stop. No, it doesn't matter that that may be what they expect or the way this company does things or that somebody might get personally offended. If they start asking about committing to a full offer (you know, like before they actually make one officially), you can tell them you haven't decided yet, but that this company is great to work for so far and the people are all great and you're learning a lot, etc. etc. Redirect the focus of the conversation to how great the situation is now. But while many people end up working for companies that they interned with, plenty do not. Also, you're over-thinking this. People like us tend to do this a lot, but the situation is almost never going to be as bad or awkward or uncomfortable as we imagine it will (or might) be. Try to stop worrying about it and just enjoy your internship and learn everything you can while you're there.
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May 17, 2015 11:54
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I'm not sure if this is the right thread, but here goes: I've been working in HR for about five years now and to be quite honest, it's time for a change for me. I don't find this field very enjoyable and it's really just a paycheque at this point. I'm taking a good long look at software development as a potential career track. A long time ago (like 10 years ago), I did some hobby programming (PHP mostly) and found it rewarding enough then. I'm taking a look at potential options for part-time schooling, so I can learn while working. (Can't afford to take off 4 years for a degree!) http://ce-online.ryerson.ca/ce/calendar/default.aspx?section=program&sub=cert&cert=COPRAP00&mode=program Would something like this be a good option? Does anyone in the thread have any experience with that specific program? Any general advice anyone might be able to offer?
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May 17, 2015 17:49
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jot posted:Would something like this be a good option? Does anyone in the thread have any experience with that specific program? Any general advice anyone might be able to offer? I think your time would be better spent picking a few highish profile open source projects and contributing to them either directly or in the form of support or extension libraries. To succeed as a programmer you're going to have to be able to self teach anyways and the contributions you can show and talk about with prospective employers are going to be way more impressive than a certificate in programming from an online course.
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May 17, 2015 19:43
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jot posted:Any general advice anyone might be able to offer? In general though I wouldn't bother with tuition-based programs. The certificates aren't very helpful, especially compared to a portfolio of your work. There's plenty of free curricula available online. Plus, if you find that it's not really working out for you, you're only out the time invested. As for learning, I'd recommend an approach that mirrors (somewhat) the first two years of typical CS curriculum. 1. Learn a popular general purpose programming language (Python, Ruby, or possibly Java) and get comfortable writing programs in it to solve relatively simple problems. 2. Learn about data structures (lists, trees, hash tables, etc.), algorithms (search, sort, traversal, etc.), complexity (big-O notation), and other topics typically found in a second-year Data Structure and Algorithms course. This is really the heart of CS background knowledge and the thing likely glossed over in bootcamps and other accelerated programs. Ideally you would have enough comfort here to be able to take a problem of moderate complexity, be able to determine what data structures best represent it and the algorithms to best solve it, then implement a solution. You should also be able to evaluate alternative approaches for both and list their tradeoffs. 3. Learn the language and system of the field you're interested in working in. For example, if you wanted to do front-end web development, learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, the DOM, and one of the modern JavaScript libraries/frameworks. Conversely, if you wanted to make Android apps, learn Java and the Android SDK. 4. Find an open source project in your area of interest and make some contributions to it. Either bug fixes, or small feature enhancements, documentation, etc. There's lots of stuff that can be done here on pretty much any project. As part of "make some contributions" you'll inevitably learn about revision control, how to interact with a team, how to stage a change to be accepted by the project maintainers, etc. Keep track of your contributions (links to commits, pull requests, issues/bug reports) so that you can list them on your resume. 5. Apply for junior development jobs in your area. List whatever academic credentials you do have, and say in your cover letter that you're looking for a career change and you've spent the past year (two years, or however long it's been) self-teaching CS background materials and specifics in the field you're interested in. For your experience, list your open source contributions. Now, if at this point you find that for some strange reason companies will only hire with some kind of certification, find out what that certification is and then pay for it. But honestly, if you've already demonstrated that you can do solid work in the context of open source, what's the certification going to do?
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May 17, 2015 22:19
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jot posted:I'm not sure if this is the right thread, but here goes: Many goons here recommend self-teaching, and if you can do it and not have to pay for schooling, great. But I don't think self-teaching from scratch is realistic for everyone; I found that I needed the structure of school. I liked the 2-year Master's program I am almost done with (University of West Georgia, see the OP, and you can ask me questions about it if you want). I did most of it while working full time, and although I'm pretty burned out at this point, it can be done.
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May 18, 2015 00:31
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Che Delilas posted:You have no obligation to accept any offer, full stop. No, it doesn't matter that that may be what they expect or the way this company does things or that somebody might get personally offended. Thank you.
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May 18, 2015 03:23
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