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Just interviewed at a reputable Silicon Valley BigCo today. I was told I'd get an algorithms interview, a systems/architecture interview, and two iOS-focused interviews. So what I *actually* got was four different tree/graph traversal questions, and was told I needed to not write pseudocode, and write in Objective-C instead. Recruiter for said company claimed that their interview process was not the same process it was several years ago. Feeling pretty bait-and-switched, since I was preparing accordingly. And I had to get up before 7am to make it to this interview on time. (EDIT: I considered putting this in the Coding Horrors thread but since it's more of a commentary on a frustratingly bad industry hiring practice, I put it here.) Doctor w-rw-rw- fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Jan 16, 2016 |
# ? Jan 16, 2016 02:04 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 07:10 |
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:So what I *actually* got was four different tree/graph traversal questions, and was told I needed to not write pseudocode, and write in Objective-C instead. "Write this in ObjC, but when you hire on we're most likely going to have you do your job in Swift instead"
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# ? Jan 16, 2016 03:50 |
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Vulture Culture posted:This is true. I've never once had a job I've been qualified for. Learning is fantastic -- it's the most important part of basically any knowledge work job, really -- but your time is going to be much better-spent if you look at the problems you need to solve, and then become an expert in the ways to solve them, instead of having amazing breadth of knowledge at nothing in particular and then never using 90% of it. Over the course of your career, you will forget more than most people will ever know. Doh004 posted:I'd expect the presentation aspect for a higher level position, not just an engineer. Is this a leadership/managerial role Cryolite?
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# ? Jan 17, 2016 18:59 |
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necrobobsledder posted:I've had mostly the opposite experience in many respects - I've been pretty overqualified for most of my jobs and only getting worse (which is why I'm just quitting and just focusing on projects to make up for the sheer bullshit of bad enterprise employers). It is important that you actually fail some interviews on raw technicals - if you aren't, you aren't aiming for high enough tiers of companies probably. This is a pattern that is pretty much career suicide for an industry that demands its professionals constantly learn something new and where the primary value of senior persons are from relevant, pretty technically deep ways that form the foundation of the body of a technology company's "secret sauce."
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# ? Jan 18, 2016 02:48 |
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I received this in the mail via StackExchange,quote:I hope this note finds you well. I am extremely impressed by your extensive C++. I'm thinking where the hell do I show extensive C++ knowledge, certainly not on my profile or GitHub account? Oh, it's a recruiter
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# ? Jan 23, 2016 01:08 |
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I got one like that a couple months ago. Made me mad enough for some reason that I actually bothered to reply with something to the effect of "thanks for not bothering to read my profile before spamming me".
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# ? Jan 25, 2016 16:17 |
My favorite was a 3 month contract position for working with PHP. At the time the only things on my resume were all .Net stack stuff on the desktop/server end and no web development. As a bonus it would have involved moving to loving New Jersey of all places. I also got another one offering a 1 month contract with the vague description of "Cleaning up Active Directory and Team Foundation" for some company. It was still described as a "Software Developer" position, despite there being very little chance of writing any software other than maybe some scripts to automate the tasks. That one was also well out of my State.
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# ? Jan 25, 2016 16:43 |
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A recruiter one contacted me with a job posting that repeatedly emphasized the need for Java .Net skills.
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# ? Jan 25, 2016 17:07 |
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Doghouse posted:A recruiter one contacted me with a job posting that repeatedly emphasized the need for Java .Net skills. You found the mythical users of J#
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# ? Jan 25, 2016 17:14 |
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wilderthanmild posted:As a bonus it would have involved moving to loving New Jersey of all places. New Jersey is awesome outside of the NYC-adjacent northeastern parts and the Philadelphia-adjacent southwestern parts. Here is your helpful guide to New Jersey: New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Jan 25, 2016 |
# ? Jan 25, 2016 17:14 |
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https://twitter.com/erowidrecruiter is the best recruiter.
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# ? Jan 25, 2016 17:15 |
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quote:Rails development team working in a small fish on the couch, smoking pot, drinking coffee, looking out at times. quote:Office in the bay area with only sheets for walls and doors. I dunno, sounds pretty typical to me.
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# ? Jan 26, 2016 01:02 |
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Ithaqua posted:New Jersey is awesome outside of the NYC-adjacent northeastern parts and the Philadelphia-adjacent southwestern parts. You forgot the circle around Atlantic City. Also the circle around Camden is too big.
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# ? Jan 26, 2016 06:07 |
Ithaqua posted:New Jersey is awesome outside of the NYC-adjacent northeastern parts and the Philadelphia-adjacent southwestern parts. It was more about moving states away for a 3 month contract gig. Not sure where it was exactly anymore, but if those circled areas are the major population centers, I'd bet it was there.
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# ? Jan 27, 2016 17:51 |
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Did a Google on site yesterday and this morning I'm worried it wasn't hard enough. I think I just leveled up in neurosis and imposter syndrome.
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# ? Feb 2, 2016 16:51 |
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mrmcd posted:Did a Google on site yesterday and this morning I'm worried it wasn't hard enough. I think I just leveled up in neurosis and imposter syndrome.
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# ? Feb 2, 2016 16:54 |
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Vulture Culture posted:Unless their hiring practices have changed, they'll probably call you in another three times over the next six months before making a decision The interview coaching session I went to the presenter said that they really don't want to do more than one onsite unless they screwed something up on their end. The example he gave was they once forgot to check if the candidate actually spoke English conversationally (???) so they had him come and have lunch with a few people (turns out he did) before giving an offer. Also it's funny how many other companies are now trying to clone the Google method but in their own half assed broken way. Anyone looking for a job now enjoy doing HackerRank style online code pad phone screens, followed by 6 hours of whiteboard coding graph and recursion problems.
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# ? Feb 2, 2016 17:03 |
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mrmcd posted:Also it's funny how many other companies are now trying to clone the Google method but in their own half assed broken way. Anyone looking for a job now enjoy doing HackerRank style online code pad phone screens, followed by 6 hours of whiteboard coding graph and recursion problems. Facebook's process was much better conducted, btw. Took only a handful of days from phone call to onsite to offer.
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# ? Feb 2, 2016 17:22 |
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mrmcd posted:The interview coaching session I went to the presenter said that they really don't want to do more than one onsite unless they screwed something up on their end. The example he gave was they once forgot to check if the candidate actually spoke English conversationally (???) so they had him come and have lunch with a few people (turns out he did) before giving an offer.
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 00:48 |
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Vulture Culture posted:DigitalOcean wanted me to write a web crawler that output a site map of assets. I told them I didn't have time for that poo poo. Yeah, unless they meant literally a simple tool like "scan document for <a> tags, add to graph and recurse for any URL on the same domain" that seems a bit excessive. I've had a few places give me offline coding assignments, but they were simple projects of an hour or two most, focused on algorithm design and no more than a few classes.
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 00:58 |
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Welp. I hate my job. I've been doing front-end web javascript development for years, and it used to be okay. But now enterprise bullshit has infected it and you have to have 60000 tools piled up into just the right house of cards to even start building something. And even when you do get to work on the actual product code, everyone wants to use the latest flavor-of-the-month. I want off this run-as-fast-as-you-can-to-stay-still Red Queen treadmill. I come from a Java background, and do some light Android development as a hobby. I am interested in machine-learning, wearable technology (Android Wear in particular), the Dart programming language, and not being a goddamn manager. I want to work on a product that end users will see, not b2b marketing/finance/whogivesashit. Where do I even begin looking for something that I'll actually look forward to going to work for?
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 18:07 |
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5TonsOfFlax posted:Welp. I hate my job. I've been doing front-end web javascript development for years, and it used to be okay. But now enterprise bullshit has infected it and you have to have 60000 tools piled up into just the right house of cards to even start building something. And even when you do get to work on the actual product code, everyone wants to use the latest flavor-of-the-month. I want off this run-as-fast-as-you-can-to-stay-still Red Queen treadmill. I don't know much about the first two, but I wouldn't put much hope on Dart. Dart isn't likely to go anywhere because there will never be a native runtime for anything but Chrome, so it will mostly be used in 'transpile to JavaScript' mode, which puts it in the same box as all other transpilers. Which TypeScript seems to be winning, as even the Angular2 team decided to re-write the while library in and to primarily target TypeScript. If you don't completely hate JS and browser development, and just hate your current environment, I would take a look at TypeScript, Angular, and React. There's lots of cool stuff going on in front-end land, and Angular/React experience can easily seal new jobs.
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 18:12 |
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Dart is just fine in compile-to-js mode. The benefits I like about it are actual strong-typing, class-based, IDE integration, the pub repository/tool, and integrated build system. That all carries over even if you compile down to js. I've looked at Typescript, but never used it. It seems much better than plain js, but not nearly as good as it should be, plus with Typescript you've still got the house-of-cards build situation where you have to have babel, npm, some other testing framework, etc. We use React at work, and I'll admit that it's had more staying power than the prior half-dozen frameworks we went through, but that just means it's lasted a couple of months. We've already gone through several different flux implementations, and there's always a new shiny one around the corner. quote:There's lots of cool stuff going on in front-end land... There's certainly lots of stuff going on. None of the popular stuff seems particularly cool. Maybe polymer. I'm not concerned about my ability to get a new job with javascript/React. I'm concerned that I'll hate it just as much as this one. Has anyone in this thread jumped off the javascript front-end tilt-a-whirl and gone to something that feels more mature?
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 18:33 |
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5TonsOfFlax posted:We use React at work, and I'll admit that it's had more staying power than the prior half-dozen frameworks we went through, but that just means it's lasted a couple of months. We've already gone through several different flux implementations, and there's always a new shiny one around the corner. This honestly sounds like more of a problem with your workplace than with your domain. Most workplaces I've been at pick one toolset that's reasonably current at the time they start working, and then they stick with that toolset for at least a decade. Your managers need to learn to say "no" when your developers say "hey, let's try out X new tool I've been reading about!"
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 18:40 |
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5TonsOfFlax posted:Dart is just fine in compile-to-js mode. The benefits I like about it are actual strong-typing, class-based, IDE integration, the pub repository/tool, and integrated build system. That all carries over even if you compile down to js. I've looked at Typescript, but never used it. It seems much better than plain js, but not nearly as good as it should be, plus with Typescript you've still got the house-of-cards build situation where you have to have babel, npm, some other testing framework, etc. You don't have to https://github.com/basarat/typescript-script But as always it's better to transpile ahead of time.
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 18:44 |
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5TonsOfFlax posted:Dart is just fine in compile-to-js mode. The benefits I like about it are actual strong-typing, class-based, IDE integration, the pub repository/tool, and integrated build system. That all carries over even if you compile down to js. I've looked at Typescript, but never used it. It seems much better than plain js, but not nearly as good as it should be, plus with Typescript you've still got the house-of-cards build situation where you have to have babel, npm, some other testing framework, etc. I don't know what you mean by the 'house-of-cards' thing, it can run completely on it's own, like Dart. The reason I think TS is doing best at this moment is it is a pure superset to JS, so it is a lot easier to translate JS and JS libraries to work with TS, and your mental model of what is going on does not get too perverted by your higher level thinking. You may have actual strong typing when executing in the Dart VM, but when you compile down to JS it is gone. TypeScript doesn't try to do anything more than compile time checks, which is honestly all I really want. I came from a C# background, and I do like some of the additional flexibility JS objects have. TypeScript lets you be as restrictive or flexible as you want. TooMuchAbstraction posted:This honestly sounds like more of a problem with your workplace than with your domain. Most workplaces I've been at pick one toolset that's reasonably current at the time they start working, and then they stick with that toolset for at least a decade. Your managers need to learn to say "no" when your developers say "hey, let's try out X new tool I've been reading about!" It sounds like you hate your workplace more than the frameworks. I've been working in AngularTS land for a solid year, and there's been no fuckery about adding/switching frameworks.
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 19:02 |
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I was at a place that went from jQuery to Angular and is still on Angular and despite being enterprise to the toes, I don't think anyone ever complained about how tough the builds were - everything went through Jenkins easily enough and people shared Vagrantfiles that referenced internal Gem, Yum, and PKI protected web artifact servers with little fuss once it was actually built. None of this would have bene possible if we chased flavor-of-the-month build system or yet-another-view-framework.5TonsOfFlax posted:I come from a Java background, and do some light Android development as a hobby. I am interested in machine-learning, wearable technology (Android Wear in particular), the Dart programming language, and not being a goddamn manager. I want to work on a product that end users will see, not b2b marketing/finance/whogivesashit. 1. You need to focus on something material and of career benefit. Be honest about whether you're committed enough to sink your teeth into something and become a serious expert in a topic area before even trying. Nobody gives a drat about smart people with their hands in dozens of trendy topics - that's actually best to be in the domain of technical leadership here actually. I've never heard of anyone that's dissatisfied with their career when they have truly focused their time and energy effectively on things that can bring them happiness / contentment. This is something I own up to and perhaps you need to as well. 2. Your workplace is what sucks more than anything else because you mentioned the dreaded E word. Enterprise as a rule is a complete and utter shithole for anyone that actually cares about their job trying to actually uh... do something. I've worked for or consulted in lots and lots of Fortune 100 or public sector non-tech companies and they are unilaterally crap for motivated, talented developers and they will stay that way because they view tech as something they're dragged into doing and proceed to MBA-it to the ground as it becomes more important. The Fortune 500 as a whole is built around making the lives of managers and shareholders happy, not customers or employees. It is unlikely to change within our lifetime unless there's a major revolution across the world on the order of magnitude that makes WWII look like a teenage girl fight. You can go work at a b2c start-up (not even enterprise - that's just the same thing again) and experience a completely different set of struggles and stress entirely for substantially less compensation in the end in all probability. 3. Attitude is something that needs to be assessed carefully next to your technical goals because if you hate frontend BS work now, what's to say that you won't feel the same once you're knee deep in machine learning land where you're writing dog photo recommender systems to run in real-time or running CNNs on buttholes (I am literally doing this on the side and it is sadly much cooler than anything I've worked on for half my career - spectral analysis of buttholes for years of my life is better than 5 months of writing monthly P/L reports that nobody will read because $1M / yr is not enough to care about in a Fortune 100). Machine learning is one of those things that will likely lead you down a path of working at a big company again if you really are serious (and if you are, you should probably get a PhD to eventually get somewhere that the interesting problems are that even academia won't touch effectively). Hardware companies are getting destroyed right now in the marketplace (GoPro is getting reamed and doing lay-offs and I believe the folks that make Fitbits had a down valuation alongside some other unicorns recently).
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 21:27 |
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necrobobsledder posted:(I am literally doing this on the side and it is sadly much cooler than anything I've worked on for half my career - spectral analysis of buttholes for years of my life is better than 5 months of writing monthly P/L reports that nobody will read because $1M / yr is not enough to care about in a Fortune 100). Are you working on this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ
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# ? Feb 4, 2016 22:01 |
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Twice in the last couple of weeks I've gotten "oooooh, so close. but no cigar." responses from two different large silicon valley companies everyone would recognize the names of. This isn't doing my impostor syndrome any favors. I completely agree with the feedback they were nice enough to give each time, and ordinarily just sitting in an office and cranking on code I would've solved things of that caliber without having any trouble (evidence: I ship often, and complex systems at that), but get me in front of a whiteboard and it's like panic-flop-sweat-engage-retard-mode time. No point in this post really except frustration and anxiety is a lovely combo. I know it won't last forever, that practice will help, etc. but this on top of creeping burnout at my current gig has me considering taking up full-blown alcoholism as a hobby.
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# ? Feb 4, 2016 23:26 |
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It's tough, isn't it? Interviews often suck at identifying good people and lots of good people don't have good interviews. Keep at it and keep your chin up.
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# ? Feb 4, 2016 23:42 |
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volkadav posted:ordinarily just sitting in an office and cranking on code I would've solved things of that caliber without having any trouble (evidence: I ship often, and complex systems at that), but get me in front of a whiteboard and it's like panic-flop-sweat-engage-retard-mode time.
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# ? Feb 5, 2016 00:15 |
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This morning I was offered to relocate to San Francisco -- alternative: find another job since my office is closing -- at pretty minimal notice. SF seems neat, but isn't quite my dear, dark, dreary Sweden (fun fact: San Francisco, apparently famous for poo poo weather, gets half the rainy days and twice the sunshine hours of my beloved hometown!). This really wasn't on my radar and now I've got 3ish weeks to decide whether or not to uproot my entire life. I'm tempted, I'm in a situation where uprooting isn't impossible, but I've never been relocated halfway across the globe before so I have no clue what to expect. Any advice? Stuff the relocatees of the thread wish they'd known/done/checked beforehand? I'd be more specific but I really didn't see this coming and am still pretty shellshocked. I love my job, and the relocation is essentially to keep doing it, but I'd be changing virtually all of my coworkers, managers, etc and it's scary as hell.
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# ? Feb 5, 2016 00:29 |
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Mniot posted:Have you tried telling the recruiter this? I've had people with nice-looking resumes who crash and burn at the whiteboard and they they say "yeah, I'm really bad in front of a whiteboard ". And I just wonder why they didn't try to set my expectations in advance, because by the end of the interview it's much too late. If setting expectations that way was accepted in any significant way, wouldn't it completely invalidate the concept of whiteboarding? At that stage, you might as well just not bother with the entire exercise for anyone.
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# ? Feb 5, 2016 00:37 |
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Xerophyte posted:This morning I was offered to relocate to San Francisco -- alternative: find another job since my office is closing -- at pretty minimal notice. SF seems neat, but isn't quite my dear, dark, dreary Sweden What's your visa situation, how much will you get paid?
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# ? Feb 5, 2016 01:02 |
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Xerophyte posted:This morning I was offered to relocate to San Francisco -- alternative: find another job since my office is closing -- at pretty minimal notice. SF seems neat, but isn't quite my dear, dark, dreary Sweden (fun fact: San Francisco, apparently famous for poo poo weather, gets half the rainy days and twice the sunshine hours of my beloved hometown!). This really wasn't on my radar and now I've got 3ish weeks to decide whether or not to uproot my entire life. I'm tempted, I'm in a situation where uprooting isn't impossible, but I've never been relocated halfway across the globe before so I have no clue what to expect. San Francisco doesn't have poo poo weather. It's famous for its microclimates where walking 3 blocks can feel drastically different, but the worst it gets is "oooh, it's a bit foggy and chilly." No snow, hardly any rain during winter, almost zero rain during the other months. I'd say go for it. You'd be moving to Silicon Valley, which is an incredible career opportunity as one of the world's biggest tech hubs. It's got its downsides for sure; high cost of living, and you'll be leaving a (comparative) socialist paradise. But a tech salary mitigates most of that.
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# ? Feb 5, 2016 01:02 |
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Xerophyte posted:This morning I was offered to relocate to San Francisco -- alternative: find another job since my office is closing -- at pretty minimal notice. SF seems neat, but isn't quite my dear, dark, dreary Sweden (fun fact: San Francisco, apparently famous for poo poo weather, gets half the rainy days and twice the sunshine hours of my beloved hometown!). This really wasn't on my radar and now I've got 3ish weeks to decide whether or not to uproot my entire life. I'm tempted, I'm in a situation where uprooting isn't impossible, but I've never been relocated halfway across the globe before so I have no clue what to expect. Three weeks wouldn't be nearly enough time for me to make the decision to move to the other side of the planet. Not out of the blue like that. That's me. I don't know what your salary is like over there but make sure you are very clear on the cost of living (housing in particular) in and around SF, and figure out what your commute would be like.
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# ? Feb 5, 2016 01:07 |
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I'm not a big fan of SF since the city is kind of dysfunctional (probably very dysfunctional looking at it from a Scandinavian perspective), but from a software career perspective working in the bay area is really great (aside from how much of your salary goes to rent). But you should probably, like, visit first before you decide. Have you ever been to SF?
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# ? Feb 5, 2016 01:20 |
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volkadav posted:Twice in the last couple of weeks I've gotten "oooooh, so close. but no cigar." responses from two different large silicon valley companies everyone would recognize the names of. This isn't doing my impostor syndrome any favors. I completely agree with the feedback they were nice enough to give each time, and ordinarily just sitting in an office and cranking on code I would've solved things of that caliber without having any trouble (evidence: I ship often, and complex systems at that), but get me in front of a whiteboard and it's like panic-flop-sweat-engage-retard-mode time. I recently interviewed at a company where instead of whiteboarding, they gave me printed exercises and paper, a pen, and 30 minutes. I LOVED that (and also got called back for a second interview, yay). It was nice to be able to close my eyes and think for 1-2 minutes, which is something that is very hard to do when whiteboarding. More companies should do this imo Xerophyte posted:This morning I was offered to relocate to San Francisco -- alternative: find another job since my office is closing -- at pretty minimal notice. SF seems neat, but isn't quite my dear, dark, dreary Sweden (fun fact: San Francisco, apparently famous for poo poo weather, gets half the rainy days and twice the sunshine hours of my beloved hometown!). This really wasn't on my radar and now I've got 3ish weeks to decide whether or not to uproot my entire life. I'm tempted, I'm in a situation where uprooting isn't impossible, but I've never been relocated halfway across the globe before so I have no clue what to expect. What's the software development market like in Sweden? Just curious, I don't know what it is like, really, outside of the US. Also, it won't just be changing your coworkers, it'll be a pretty huge culture shock in all likelihood. But congrats on the offer - is it with the same company, just a different location? Doghouse fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Feb 5, 2016 |
# ? Feb 5, 2016 01:29 |
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sarehu posted:What's your visa situation, how much will you get paid? The transfer is on an L1 visa, according to my (former) boss' boss it's very unlikely to be rejected but damned if I know. Salary similarly unknown since no formal offer yet, I'm expecting somewhere around 130k base. Pretty sure the move will happen if I want it unless someone else changes their mind very soon before I sign (always possible), also pretty sure that my current living situation of "nice 55 m^2 co-op, 5 minute walk to the office" isn't happening unless I suddenly inherit the GNP of a small nation. Casually googling real estate prices has tuned my expectations to "shoebox with running water" but I'm expecting the company relocation team will have more info on what I can expect to get with a non-awful commute. minato posted:San Francisco doesn't have poo poo weather. It's famous for its microclimates where walking 3 blocks can feel drastically different, but the w8orst it gets is "oooh, it's a bit foggy and chilly." No snow, hardly any rain during winter, almost zero rain during the other months. Eh, I just see a lot of whining about it every now and then and found it mildly hilarious when I checked. I expect my definition of "a bit chilly" is probably somewhat different than the typical Californian's. Cicero posted:But you should probably, like, visit first before you decide. Have you ever been to SF? Nope. LA and Vancouver are as close as I've gotten, I can just split the difference right? The company relocation package includes a 5-day visit before any final decision which I'll definitely make use of. I'm not going to jump quite that blindly, short notice or not. Doghouse posted:What's the software development market like in Sweden? Just curious, I don't know what it is like, really, outside of the US. Oh, the market here is pretty strong and devs are in demand in most major cities. The salaries are much lower of course, but for comparison my current salary is around 6k USD/month base and my apartment + mortgage + utilities costs 1k. If I did opt to stay I wouldn't be unemployed for any length, the question is only if I'd get a job that was equally interesting. It's the same company, doing pretty much the same thing, otherwise I'd probably not consider it. Changing from the very consensus-driven work environment I'm used to to what seems like a much more competition-driven US work culture is one of my chief worries, yes.
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# ? Feb 5, 2016 01:47 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 07:10 |
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San Francisco is the most expensive city to live in in the United States. We're talking $1500/month for a studio apartment. Its housing market is supremely hosed up, the traffic isn't great (not the worst city, I think that's Atlanta, but still not great), the mass transit isn't great either. The Bay Area in general is a great place to be for a techie that wants job security because there's so many tech jobs here. Just be aware of what you're getting into.
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# ? Feb 5, 2016 01:50 |