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Illusive gently caress Man posted:I'm sitting in google lobby waiting for recruiter now. I think i'm gonna regret not coating my entire body in antiperspirant. Here goes first interview of my life. Oof. They can be pretty tough interviewers in general let alone for a first timer. Good luck. Just pretend that they're classmates asking for homework help.
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Aug 12, 2015 16:14
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I think I nailed the first two. Demolished lunch. Three to go
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Aug 12, 2015 17:59
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One of the projects I'm touting on my resume/cover letter uses a data set. I'm pretty sure from reading the Twitter API TOS I can give it to them, but I'm loath to upload it to github (the test set I'm using is 100MB), and I'm unsure about uploading it and running it on my host (I don't want the app to be publicly accessible at all, and I also have reasonably low storage and bandwidth caps). I could generate a smaller dataset and give them a link to it, or just generate some reports with the app to show them how it works, but I'm not sure which is better, or if there's a different solution. One solution I'm thinking of is to include in the app itself the ability to generate the data sets (which I should do anyway, just to put it all in one place), but it takes a while to get something useful (so nobody using the app could really evaluate it for a few hours if they wanted to generate their own data sets), and running it on hosting would be a nightmare, since the file sizes could balloon and overrun my storage cap. Ideas?
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Aug 12, 2015 20:15
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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:One of the projects I'm touting on my resume/cover letter uses a data set. I'm pretty sure from reading the Twitter API TOS I can give it to them, but I'm loath to upload it to github (the test set I'm using is 100MB), and I'm unsure about uploading it and running it on my host (I don't want the app to be publicly accessible at all, and I also have reasonably low storage and bandwidth caps). I could generate a smaller dataset and give them a link to it, or just generate some reports with the app to show them how it works, but I'm not sure which is better, or if there's a different solution. One solution I'm thinking of is to include in the app itself the ability to generate the data sets (which I should do anyway, just to put it all in one place), but it takes a while to get something useful (so nobody using the app could really evaluate it for a few hours if they wanted to generate their own data sets), and running it on hosting would be a nightmare, since the file sizes could balloon and overrun my storage cap. Get a free server from AWS and host it there, or get one from vNucleus (GOON discount available), can have a server with 2gb RAM and tons of bandwidth for ~$20/month.
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Aug 12, 2015 20:18
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You also get like $150 free credit per month in windows azure which should very comfortably give you a full VM to run that on with plenty of room to breathe in I/O costs
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Aug 12, 2015 20:26
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No Safe Word posted:You also get like $150 free credit per month in windows azure which should very comfortably give you a full VM to run that on with plenty of room to breathe in I/O costs You get Azure credits with MSDN subscriptions. Professional is $50, Enterprise is either 100 or 150.
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Aug 12, 2015 20:43
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Ithaqua posted:You get Azure credits with MSDN subscriptions. Professional is $50, Enterprise is either 100 or 150. Ah, I didn't realize it was because we had a BizSpark account at the time. I guess I'm grandfathered in still because we're not under BizSpark anymore and I still get the $150/mo 
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Aug 12, 2015 20:54
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Skandranon posted:Get a free server from AWS and host it there, or get one from vNucleus (GOON discount available), can have a server with 2gb RAM and tons of bandwidth for ~$20/month. No Safe Word posted:You also get like $150 free credit per month in windows azure which should very comfortably give you a full VM to run that on with plenty of room to breathe in I/O costs A few other questions. 1. Early on I made some design decisions that meant, when I made it easier to extend and work with, I had to add some kludges. They don't detract from performance, and one just happens to be marginally faster (this is not the reason it's there). They aren't even places where bugs could really creep in. They're just mildly ugly and odd if you didn't design the software yourself--you'd wonder "why does it do this thing, rather than that thing?" if you looked at it. Should I take the time to fix them, or just be sure the comments explain them? Basically: would anyone care about this if I'm looking for an entry-level position? 2. Should I mention that I'm still polishing and updating it in the cover letter? It keeps getting better and better, and there's more poo poo I can do to it to make it even closer to what I imagine it being (which helps since it lets me work on stuff I'm less adept at/still learning), but I just don't know if I should mention "hey, I don't consider this finished, but I probably never will, since it can always be made better!" I don't know the feeling in the software industry towards the old adage that nothing's ever finished, only abandoned, so I want to get the tone right. It is polished enough that I'd feel comfortable letting people use it.
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Aug 12, 2015 21:12
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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:Cool, I'll look into those. 1. If you can do the kludges better, or remove them, that is ideal. If you cannot, make sure the comments explain WHY it is there, and the design considerations that went into them. Code doesn't always have to look like art, but it should be as easy as possible to understand. 2. Software is definitely never finished, but not all people looking at your resume will understand this (HR, non-technical managers, etc). I wouldn't put that in your resume, but instead add either TODO: comments to indicate future upgrades, or have a more formal roadmap document along with the code, detailing where you plan to improve things. This will make you look more professional, as you can see problems in your own code, but can rationally plan out which parts are more important to fix than others. This is a huge thing in actual software engineering.
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Aug 12, 2015 21:21
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asur posted:DO NOT GIVE A RANGE. This is basically the worst response possible. While you may think a range gives you room to negotiate up, all the other person hears is the low number which then serves as an anchor for the entire negotiation. It doesn't matter that you said the range is based on benefits as that's not what they hear and you'll end up fighting the whole way. I do contract work and generally have to give my price ahead of time. The low end of the range I give is silly expensive.
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Aug 12, 2015 21:27
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 I think I did fairly loving well. The problems were all things I had studied and practiced variants of. I can definitely recommend "elements of programming interviews" to anyone who wants to practice a shitload of google-interview relevant problems.
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Aug 12, 2015 21:49
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Bhaal posted:Absolutely, and I'm not talking about politeness, I'm talking about the chances you have to make them budge AFTER they insist on it, which shoots to zero very quickly because of where they're standing. If you make the approach then the ask is implicitly on you, is the general perception of dealmaking. It's not an absolute and certainly avoid giving in immediately, I feel like what I wrote would have to be cherry picked quite a bit to arrive at the opposite sentiment, but I didn't express it very well so apologies on my wording. Sorry, I completely misinterpreted what you wrote. That makes more sense, though obviously does sound company-dependent.
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Aug 12, 2015 22:38
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Skandranon posted:1. If you can do the kludges better, or remove them, that is ideal. If you cannot, make sure the comments explain WHY it is there, and the design considerations that went into them. Code doesn't always have to look like art, but it should be as easy as possible to understand. I'll write out a reasonably detailed plan to throw on Github, do some fixes, and try and get this all deployed to AWS in the next week so I can really get on the job application process  .
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Aug 12, 2015 23:19
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Illusive gently caress Man posted:
To be honest, if you are actively studying and practicing for the interview, you are better than a lot of the candidates that I interview. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you to pass HC 
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Aug 14, 2015 07:24
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Not so much newbie but this thread was very helpful for learning how to practice for Big Co type interviews. I did leetcode and problems from Career Cup. Mock interviews are a huge help and I'm new to my area so I didn't have any friends to help. Luckily there is an interview prep Meetup I attended a couple of times. They basically go through interview prep books, and host mock whiteboard/behavioral interviews. (doing a whiteboard question in front of 15 people is more nerve wracking than 1-2) I also found that being on the interviewer side of the table has upped my interviewee game significantly. The above process got (so far) through the 'maybe' stage of a google hiring committee my first time at bat with no "warmup" interviews. My recruiter is trying to get me over the line to a yes.
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Aug 14, 2015 17:10
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So I graduated from college yesterday with my shiny new Comp Sci degree and, while I have some plates spinning, I don't have a job yet. I was thinking I'd study up on web development, since we did almost none of it in my curriculum and it seems like the sort of thing that both constitutes a gaping hole in my knowledge base and shouldn't be excessively difficult to get a basic competency in. At first blush,The Odin Project seems like a good place to start, but I was wondering if anyone on here had any feedback on that site or recommendations of other places I might look for free/cheap resources on web development.
Spiritus Nox fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 03:22
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You don't have to. There are plenty of jobs disconnected from webdev
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Aug 17, 2015 03:50
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Series DD Funding posted:You don't have to. There are plenty of jobs disconnected from webdev Sure, and I've already sent out a bunch of applications and gotten some responses. Still, I'm not employed or busy right now and I don't know when that'll change, so what's the harm in trying to add some qualifications to my resume on my own time instead of just lounging around my folks' house eating pies and waiting on applications? Spiritus Nox fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 03:54
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Spiritus Nox posted:Sure, and I've already sent out a bunch of applications and gotten some responses. Still, I'm not employed or busy right now and I don't know when that'll change, so what's the harm in trying to add some qualifications to my resume on my own time instead of just lounging around my folks' house eating pies and waiting on applications? This is exactly what I did and it landed me a pretty OK webdev job. Just pick some programming problem/thing that you're interested in and present it in an interactive / visual way, put it up on github. It's nice being able to go to an interview and say, "hey look at this thing I made, it's impressive because of X reason".
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Aug 17, 2015 04:14
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Spiritus Nox posted:So I graduated from college yesterday with my shiny new Comp Sci degree and, while I have some plates spinning, I don't have a job yet. I was thinking I'd study up on web development, since we did almost none of it in my curriculum and it seems like the sort of thing that both constitutes a gaping hole in my knowledge base and shouldn't be excessively difficult to get a basic competency in. At first blush,The Odin Project seems like a good place to start, but I was wondering if anyone on here had any feedback on that site or recommendations of other places I might look for free/cheap resources on web development. Have you not had any internships or gone to any job fairs yet? The fact you're graduating without a job already lined up is kind of odd. To be helpful yeah that site should be fine but just be aware that most shops use c# or Java so always try to frame anything you learn into either or both of those languages.
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Aug 17, 2015 04:46
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Spiritus Nox posted:So I graduated from college yesterday with my shiny new Comp Sci degree and, while I have some plates spinning, I don't have a job yet. I was thinking I'd study up on web development, since we did almost none of it in my curriculum and it seems like the sort of thing that both constitutes a gaping hole in my knowledge base and shouldn't be excessively difficult to get a basic competency in. At first blush,The Odin Project seems like a good place to start, but I was wondering if anyone on here had any feedback on that site or recommendations of other places I might look for free/cheap resources on web development. Maybe do the first lesson (HTML, CSS, jQuery), but skip the Ruby & Backbone stuff. Take a look at AngularJS or React if you want one of the hotter MVC frameworks for web dev.
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Aug 17, 2015 04:58
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Necc0 posted:Have you not had any internships or gone to any job fairs yet? The fact you're graduating without a job already lined up is kind of odd. Went to job fairs basically every semester when I was in college - never managed to land an internship through my first three years, and then when I went in my senior year I figured I'd want to be looking for careers. To that end I've had some talks, but nothing's stuck yet. In retrospect I probably didn't push hard enough for internships my first two or three years of college. I kept my searches mostly to the job fairs and really didn't take advantage of the online job/internship boards until I was a senior and felt like I needed to be looking for more serious work. But I don't think there's much I can do about that now other than polish my resume and apply to whatever looks like a good fit and do whatever's possible to make money or develop my skills independently. I'm getting enough call/write-backs and hearing enough nice things about my interviewing chops that I presume I'm not hosed forever, and my living situation is perfectly stable right now, so it's not like I'm going to starve if I don't find something immediately. I just need to get my foot in the door and get some experience at a place that isn't lovely. Skandranon posted:Maybe do the first lesson (HTML, CSS, jQuery), but skip the Ruby & Backbone stuff. Take a look at AngularJS or React if you want one of the hotter MVC frameworks for web dev. Noted, thanks. Spiritus Nox fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 05:00
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Yeah, if you aren't reasonably comfortable with HTML/CSS/javascript get used to them. Beyond that I'd look into making some basic web applications, solve simple problems like a basic twitter clone or a simple forum like platform. Work out the preferred ways to do project layout, handle multiple users and proper auth, responsive web design, database interaction and versioning/migrations, and unit testing. When you're happy with it start again providing only an API and build the UI in Angular/React. You can do this in ASP.Net MVC if you want to go the C# route, I'm not sure what the Java equivalent is but check that thread if that's where you want to go, or there's Rails but I think most people would recommend skipping that one unless it's still big where you live. Python is still a semi-reasonable choice for this too but again you'll have to check what the current preferred frameworks are. You should be using source control, writing tests, you could try automated UI testing with selenium, and if you want something to talk about with interviewers set up a build/deploy pipeline. Hosting with Azure or AWS is pretty cheap for basic dev work and lots of tools have a free tier that's good enough, so set up a github/TFS online/bitbucket repo, build/test CI server (eg. TeamCity or Jenkins CI), automated deployments (Octopus Deploy or similar). Being able to explain setting up something like that as a fresh grad would be pretty good.
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Aug 17, 2015 08:02
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Spiritus Nox posted:So I graduated from college yesterday with my shiny new Comp Sci degree and, while I have some plates spinning, I don't have a job yet. I was thinking I'd study up on web development, since we did almost none of it in my curriculum and it seems like the sort of thing that both constitutes a gaping hole in my knowledge base and shouldn't be excessively difficult to get a basic competency in. At first blush,The Odin Project seems like a good place to start, but I was wondering if anyone on here had any feedback on that site or recommendations of other places I might look for free/cheap resources on web development. The guy that created The Odin Project has also started Viking Code School, which appears to have a pre-work section that is nothing more than an updated and polished version of Odin. I used Odin and found it very helpful. http://www.vikingcodeschool.com/prep http://www.freecodecamp.com/ is a free MEAN stack online bootcamp. So you can check that out too. If you go through everything it's supposed to be like 800 hours. https://www.codecademy.com/ might be a bit rudimentary for you, but they have some good hand-holding lessons for HTML/CSS/JS/Angular, etc. edit: the bulk of what I learned on the Odin site was really from Hartl's book. https://www.railstutorial.org/book It's a great tutorial for a Rails stack. pistolshit fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 16:02
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Spiritus Nox posted:I just need to get my foot in the door and get some experience at a place that isn't lovely. Don't hold your breath on that whole 'isn't lovely' part. Unless you get really lucky your first job or even jobs will probably be crap. Finding a good employer is a skill in of itself and being able to spot red flags during an interview is something that only comes with experience. Most entry-level jobs have very limited autonomy and you'll generally be seen as disposable. Half because you won't be allowed to do anything besides grunt work and half because they expect you to pick up and quit after a year or two anyways. So yeah, just don't be too picky or get your hopes too high when getting started and you'll do fine. Once you have a few years under your belt you'll have a much clearer vision of not only what work you want to do but the exact work place you want to do it in.
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Aug 17, 2015 16:29
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Necc0 posted:Don't hold your breath on that whole 'isn't lovely' part. Unless you get really lucky your first job or even jobs will probably be crap. Finding a good employer is a skill in of itself and being able to spot red flags during an interview is something that only comes with experience. Most entry-level jobs have very limited autonomy and you'll generally be seen as disposable. Half because you won't be allowed to do anything besides grunt work and half because they expect you to pick up and quit after a year or two anyways. Fair enough. Thanks.
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Aug 17, 2015 17:00
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Spiritus Nox posted:Fair enough. Thanks.
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Aug 17, 2015 17:07
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:Post your resume either here or in the BFC resume thread and work off of the feedback. There's always room for improvement. Sure. I got some criticism back at the start of the summer and tweaked in then, but I've modified it since then so it can't hurt to take another look. I'll post it later today.
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Aug 17, 2015 17:16
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Can I get some feedback on my resume? https://db.tt/YH0bKEng Thanks! Going to replace the address with my github profile once I have something worthwhile to show.
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Aug 17, 2015 17:25
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I know there are some people that work at Amazon / "Amabots"  in COBOL, any of you read the New York Times article / care to comment?
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Aug 17, 2015 17:43
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Throwing my Resume out there. Have at it, goons. https://www.dropbox.com/s/suolwxhcn6bstet/Anonymous%20Resume.doc?dl=0 Thanks for any feedback, as always.
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Aug 17, 2015 18:34
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Spiritus Nox posted:Throwing my Resume out there. Have at it, goons. Get rid of the relevant coursework section, no one is going to use information there. Also get rid references, only provide them when asked for.
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Aug 17, 2015 18:51
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Spiritus Nox posted:Throwing my Resume out there. Have at it, goons. Given that you don't appear to have much of a work history, you might be better off using a skills-based resume layout instead of a chronological. Then you can showcase more of your school work. (assuming you have more)
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Aug 17, 2015 19:39
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Looking for a bit of advice. I'm currently at a state university pursuing a B.S. in Computer Science. I'm actually doing this under a second bachelor's degree program -- I'm in my early 30s and I've basically wasted the last decade of my life following a liberal arts degree and a law degree. I left my law firm job a year and a half ago and decided to go back to school to pursue something I genuinely enjoy doing, but unfortunately due to my prior work experience I have very little in the way of skills and absolutely no portfolio to speak of (and I also only managed to take my intro course this summer, so my course work isn't really up to snuff yet). After working with the career services department at my school I've basically got it in my head that given my current course planning -- I'm set to complete the whole degree in about two more years -- I need to start applying for internship work either this September or October in order to get an internship next summer, which will put me in a better position to pursue a fulltime job afterward. So right now I'm kind of panicking and trying to think of a way to generate...something with what little I know so far in order to have something to show employers. I have friends who have been in the industry for a while and they've recommended setting up a Github, contributing to open source projects and generally creating a repository of exercises and things so at the very least employers can see how I code. However, I feel sort of paralyzed by a lack of ideas of things to do and I just don't know where to start, as I'm overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information out there. Again, right now I have very little in the way of actual knowledge apart from the little Java that my intro class taught to illustrate the concepts as well as some basic web dev stuff from doing things on Codecademy. I'm just looking for some idea on how to get started on projects to practice and take what I know further, so I at least have something to show people and talk about when applying for internships. As an aside, what are people's thoughts on ageism in tech? I think my biggest fear out of all of this is that I am going to finish this degree in two years and find that people won't want to hire me because they could get someone ten years younger who is willing to accept a lower salary.
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Aug 17, 2015 21:09
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I think if ageism was a real problem, you'd see all these old people on the job market that you'd be happy to hire. Does anybody see that? No. Your problem of figuring out what the heck to do is typical. My biggest worry reading your post is that you just have virtually no computer time and thus are basically no good at programming. Here are three projects for you to do. Feel free to skip some if they seem too easy: 1. Make a command line RPN calculator: it takes a line of input 7 2 3 + * and outputs the result, 35. 2. Make a command line infix calculator: it takes a line of input 7 * (2 + 3) and outputs the result, 35. 3. Make a tetris game. Go! Oh and if there's so much information out there and you're bogged down by it, remember that all you need to know for the first two is how to read command line input one character at a time, and for the third, you just need some way, any way, to draw rectangles on the screen. sarehu fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 21:24
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I'm in almost the exact same boat and went through the same fear of not having projects, etc. For me, the issue was I didn't really know what I wanted to do with computer science. It was just this nebulous idea of a field. Once I spent some time exploring different realms of computer science and realized I was super excited about machine learning, it was easy for me to start putting together a list of projects. So that would be my recommendation. Figure out what niche of the field you're interested in and then it gets a lot easier to find project ideas you're excited about and thus will see through. And also might help you narrow down internship/work options. For me this also helped me narrow down what languages to focus on so I wasn't constantly bouncing around between all the options. Some possible directions are: front-end web development (html, css, js, etc.) i.e. build a website, back-end web development (ruby, python, js, php) build apis, data structure, security, etc. ie learn about node.js or similar, embedded systems (firmware design, get an arduino/raspberry pi and program it to do something), machine learning (poke around on kaggle.com, build a recommender system, etc.), finance (build an algorithm trader) And poo poo loads of other options (this is just the list of stuff I've explored). All of which have online tutorials and/or books to walk you through a project or two.
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Aug 17, 2015 21:45
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sarehu posted:I think if ageism was a real problem, you'd see all these old people on the job market that you'd be happy to hire. Does anybody see that? No. No, it doesn't work for either case
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Aug 17, 2015 21:47
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sarehu posted:a line of input 7 2 3 + * and outputs the result, 42.  its not even a base13 joke
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Aug 17, 2015 21:49
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Humphrey Appleby posted:Can you replace ageism with sexism here and does it still work? Why, are young people creeping on old fogeys? (edit: And anyway, and the reasoning does still work, in fact, even for single female lawyer developers.) sarehu fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 21:54
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Skandranon posted:Get rid of the relevant coursework section, no one is going to use information there. Also get rid references, only provide them when asked for. Done and done, thanks. pistolshit posted:Given that you don't appear to have much of a work history, you might be better off using a skills-based resume layout instead of a chronological. Then you can showcase more of your school work. (assuming you have more) I might look into it. I don't have a ton of other schoolwork worth showing, but I might see about fitting in some OpenGL stuff I did for a graphics course. Not my toughest work or the most relevant to most jobs, but by nature relatively pretty to look at.
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Aug 18, 2015 03:55
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