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Pilsner posted:If you're aiming to be a developer, I wouldn't take that job. It doesn't sound like it will give any worthwhile dev experience, just testing and random tasks, as other posters have said. Just reread this post and it got me a little curious. This company has less than 20 people, and judging from these past 2 days, I'm working pretty closely with devs. Do you think that there would be more collaboration between QA and devs at a small company, and it would be easier for me to move up to a developer role, moreso than at a large company with segregated departments? Has anyone here worked in QA roles and moved up to developing? If I don't see any chance of moving up within the year, I'll definitely keep interviewing, but I'm just hoping that there is things I can learn about development in this QA role.
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Dec 14, 2016 07:27
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I've seen people move from QA to developer. Once at Bank of America, no less. I think it's actually easier to move around in larger companies, because cogs are easily replaceable. If you want to be a developer, having "developer" on your resume will help get past resume screens. But having a job is better than not. If you get work as QA, just start automating everything. That's the kind of activity that future interviewers will like to hear about.
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Dec 14, 2016 17:08
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I've seen a few people moving from QA to developer, but it is difficult. If you're struggling to find a developer position and don't have good credentials I'd say take the QA job. But if you're fresh out of college and still feel like you have good prospects, don't settle.
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Dec 14, 2016 18:14
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Zero The Hero posted:Don't worry, the only fight I even considered was asking for more. I just don't think I have it in me. I don't even know what I'd ask for. I do question if I'm worth it - I have two and a half years experience in their stack, and I live in the SE where wages are normally lower, and 83k just sounds absurd to me. But I'm going to take the job anyway. The worst they can do is fire me. 83k is still below the nationwide median. Admittedly you're still early in terms of experience, but if you've got a good basis of knowledge in the stack you're using, 83k is nowhere near 'absurd'
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Dec 14, 2016 19:03
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Hargrimm posted:83k is still below the nationwide median. Admittedly you're still early in terms of experience, but if you've got a good basis of knowledge in the stack you're using, 83k is nowhere near 'absurd' In my area, it is literally the highest compensation I've ever heard of for a developer with 2 1/2 years experience.
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Dec 14, 2016 19:41
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Pretty interesting. I am 3 days into the job already and these other QA guys are terrible teachers. They just leave me alone at my desk until I ask for work to do, they give me a 20 minute CSS bug to fix, I'll make the fix and then let them know, and they'll say "cool" and then they ignore me until I ask for more work again. For 3 whole days now. Seriously. I spent all afternoon watching Lynda tutorials bc I was so bored. I'm done asking them. They're just not teaching me how to do my job. They're just not speaking to me. It's almost as if they didn't need to hire me. WTFFFFFF teen phone cutie fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Dec 14, 2016 |
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Dec 14, 2016 20:16
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Grump posted:Pretty interesting. I am 3 days into the job already and these other QA guys are terrible teachers. You need to ask whoever supervises you guys where you're supposed to go to get bugs to work on without asking co-workers.
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Dec 14, 2016 20:38
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These guys are my supervisors. They're the heads of the department. The only guys above them are the CEO and the Director of Operations. There's only 18 people at this company. I know where to go to see the tickets but there's not much I can do besides try and fix something myself and send one of the two guys the fixed code, but they spend all day answering and fixing tickets anyway, so i don't know what the gently caress i'm doing here
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Dec 14, 2016 21:04
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So I started that job. signed the contract, almost choked when I saw the salary, etc. How do I make sure I can leave this job when the project is over in two years with a good shot at a better developer job? Is it a resume thing? Is it a projects on the side thing? What makes you go from first dev job making below median salary but incredibly higher than my phd stipend, to medium salary?
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Dec 14, 2016 21:09
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Grump posted:These guys are my supervisors. They're the heads of the department. The only guys above them are the CEO and the Director of Operations. There's only 18 people at this company. Learn as much as you can. Look at the tickets and fix stuff. If you do their job better than they can, you'll get noticed.
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Dec 14, 2016 21:19
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Grump posted:These guys are my supervisors. They're the heads of the department. The only guys above them are the CEO and the Director of Operations. There's only 18 people at this company. That's probably not a bad idea. If they spend enough time copy+pasting your changes, they might get the message and give you the access you need to do it yourself, which I'm guessing is the impediment, yes?
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Dec 14, 2016 21:39
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lemonslol posted:So I started that job. signed the contract, almost choked when I saw the salary, etc. How do I make sure I can leave this job when the project is over in two years with a good shot at a better developer job? Is it a resume thing? Is it a projects on the side thing? What makes you go from first dev job making below median salary but incredibly higher than my phd stipend, to medium salary? The bare minimum get the next job. - Do work that is good and looks good on a resume. - Make sure your boss likes you. - Occasionally do something interesting.
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Dec 14, 2016 21:40
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One more thing: I'm in charge of tracking my own hours. Should I track 2 hours for every 1 hour while I am still figuring stuff out? I can't imagine that I should track 5 hours for something it may take someone else 1 hour to do.
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Dec 14, 2016 22:34
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lifg posted:The bare minimum get the next job. Network at meetups. Practice interviewing.
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Dec 14, 2016 22:35
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lemonslol posted:One more thing: I'm in charge of tracking my own hours. Should I track 2 hours for every 1 hour while I am still figuring stuff out? I can't imagine that I should track 5 hours for something it may take someone else 1 hour to do. You're new. That
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Dec 14, 2016 22:36
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lemonslol posted:One more thing: I'm in charge of tracking my own hours. Should I track 2 hours for every 1 hour while I am still figuring stuff out? I can't imagine that I should track 5 hours for something it may take someone else 1 hour to do. Absolutely not. One hour is one hour.
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Dec 14, 2016 22:36
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lemonslol posted:One more thing: I'm in charge of tracking my own hours. Should I track 2 hours for every 1 hour while I am still figuring stuff out? I can't imagine that I should track 5 hours for something it may take someone else 1 hour to do. Always track one hour for one hour.
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Dec 14, 2016 22:39
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lemonslol posted:One more thing: I'm in charge of tracking my own hours. Should I track 2 hours for every 1 hour while I am still figuring stuff out? I can't imagine that I should track 5 hours for something it may take someone else 1 hour to do. Adding to all the other comments... This mentality is a very slippery slope. Before you know it, you'll working Christmas Eve at 10pm. Stick up for yourself, this should never happen and if it does start job searching immediately.
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Dec 14, 2016 23:30
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If you spend four hours doing something wrong you've learned how to NOT accomplish something. That is still useful information. Put down four hours. Programming is full of that. You're going to fail. A lot. It's OK; all code is bad.
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Dec 15, 2016 01:59
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Munkeymon posted:That's probably not a bad idea. If they spend enough time copy+pasting your changes, they might get the message and give you the access you need to do it yourself, which I'm guessing is the impediment, yes? Sorry. I don't think I was clear in my last post. My problem is most of the support tickets are for issues where I need access to the backend, which I don't have. So I'm pretty much S.O.L. Pretty much all I have access to do is look at the support tickets and think "hmmm....I wonder why this issue is occurring." I only saw one on the list that was a visible front-end issue, and even for that I don't have permission to reply to the client or edit the source code. I just put the CSS code in a txt file and emailed my manager the file, but he didn't do anything with it. I checked at the end of the day and the ticket was still open. I'm just going to go to my department head tomorrow and say "Look dude you need to give me work to do. I sat here for 8 hours yesterday doing nothing" This is just ridiculous. Nobody is paying me any attention and not even attempting to show me what I should be doing. teen phone cutie fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Dec 15, 2016 |
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Dec 15, 2016 05:58
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lemonslol posted:One more thing: I'm in charge of tracking my own hours. Should I track 2 hours for every 1 hour while I am still figuring stuff out? I can't imagine that I should track 5 hours for something it may take someone else 1 hour to do. I'm basically dogpiling but: one hour is one hour. Doesn't matter how long it takes someone else to do a thing, you do it in X time, track X time. Everybody else has different levels of experience than you do, and has been at the company for a different amount of time than you have. There are going to be major differences. Do your best to learn things and get things done and you should be fine.
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Dec 15, 2016 10:27
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Grump posted:I'm just going to go to my department head tomorrow and say "Look dude you need to give me work to do. I sat here for 8 hours yesterday doing nothing" This is just ridiculous. Nobody is paying me any attention and not even attempting to show me what I should be doing. Grump posted:Pretty interesting. I am 3 days into the job already and these other QA guys are terrible teachers. Are these legitimate permission issues? Like you'll eventually get access to the back end, but it needs to be signed off by busy folks and it just hasn't happened yet? Or are these persistent issues where you're never going to get that access? Small companies can seem slow like that. I wouldn't make a lot of noise over something that may resolve in the next week. At my current job I wasn't allowed to look at the source for a week while I NDA'd in. And there might be more productive avenues than going up the chain. Do you know any of the devs? Could you chat them up and ask what they're working on? Maybe they have something you could test or QA that's not gated by permission issues.
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Dec 15, 2016 18:32
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FYI large companies are slow and too. Took me 3 weeks to even get a machine at my last one, and my current one took 2.5 weeks to get admin rights making me worthless until then. Jobs are poo poo, get paid and if they're paying you to be unproductive use that time to learn. In some cases learn something for your next position.
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Dec 15, 2016 19:05
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Gildiss posted:FYI large companies are slow and too. That's what I'm thinking of just doing at my current job. I'm not convinced I'm learning anything useful for my future and it's all just busywork that gets blown away randomly. Sure it pays nice, but the longer I stay here the more hosed I am if I leave for whatever reason. The work I do is uninteresting, badly directed, and doesn't help advance my career, and that worries me. 
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Dec 15, 2016 21:38
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Pollyanna posted:That's what I'm thinking of just doing at my current job. I'm not convinced I'm learning anything useful for my future and it's all just busywork that gets blown away randomly. Sure it pays nice, but the longer I stay here the more hosed I am if I leave for whatever reason. The work I do is uninteresting, badly directed, and doesn't help advance my career, and that worries me. Learning how not to do things is also valuable.
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Dec 15, 2016 22:11
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Gildiss posted:FYI large companies are slow and too. Having a slow ramp-up time for new hires is so old school. A fresh dev should have a computer ready and plugged in at the desk on the very first day, including monitor, keyboard, mouse, phone, etc., and a "welcome to Company X" binder detailing the user's login/password, email account, intranet location, etc. They can then spend the first day installing their developer machine, tools, frameworks, and so on. I'm not saying they should necessarily make something productive on their second day, but the company should have a schedule ready for the first week or two, with introductions to various relevant people, IT systems, architecture, business concepts, etc. From then on, it's time to get coding under the mentorship of a senior dev. I'm not saying you should quit immediately if it's a slow start, but just saying, the company is wasting their money and boring their new hire to death otherwise.
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Dec 15, 2016 22:50
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Yeah I did pretty much nothing almost every day at my last job. We had no development processes, no real oversight, and everyone worked solo most of the time. I tried being productive and just ran out of work and had to beg for more. Boss would just say he "would look for something" and never get back to me. I eventually just gave up on that. I would basically go 2-3 weeks doing literally no work whatsoever and then through sheer force of boredom I'd find something to do and become hyperproductive for a few days. Over the course of two years I'd say I averaged maybe 1-2 hours of work a day. And for some reason my boss and management constantly praised me and gave me great reviews and raises  TBH it was nice for a while. I would just spend all day reading and learning as much as I could. I had a lot of freedom to try different things, spend lots of time rewriting and refactoring things, building components that I thought would be useful for future projects. After two years though that turned into refreshing the forums for 8 hours a day, hoping someone would make a new post in a bookmarked thread, and wanting to just blow my brains out.
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Dec 16, 2016 00:03
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Pilsner posted:Haha, that is crazy. I had a laptop on day one at my job. However, it was like 6 weeks before I had a proper mouse and keyboard; probably a bit over two months total before I had a proper dev monitor. Didn't have a dual monitor set up until 4 months in. Had to use Eclipse for way too long; when I tried to get an IntelliJ license the expense account that month was out so I had to wait. Try using IntelliJ on a tiny laptop monitor. It's painful.
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Dec 16, 2016 02:37
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Pilsner posted:Haha, that is crazy. I started a new job a month ago and they had all that ready to go for me along with an actual properly printed name plate for the cubicle. I was amazed.
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Dec 16, 2016 09:20
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Pilsner posted:Haha, that is crazy. I worked at a huge defense company and when I first started, I was unable to do anything for the first three months. Just being able to install visual studio with a license took about a month  I was already applying to other jobs two months in.
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Dec 16, 2016 14:46
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I'm a dummy and posted this first in the working in IT thread. A bunch of questions that may or may not have been answered. If there's resources I missed in the OP then feel free to tell me to gently caress right off. Are there any programming certs one can get to signal that one is not a dumbass? Most of the certs thread seems to be geared more towards IT and administration. In the same line as the last one, how viable is getting into programming/dev without a bachelor's? For reference, I have a two year engineering degree with somewhat of an unofficial focus on programming and computer stuff. I got into college, and I have pretty much all the base requirements for a 4 year degree, but I was initially in engineering until learning that I am depressive and don't do well in an unsupervised setting like that. I am a bit rusty and would need to do some brushing up, but I am fluent in java, almost as fluent in C/C++ and know a good amount of HDL. Beyond that most of what I have done is dabbling. In language agnostic areas, I'm familiar with the basic data structures and choosing when to use them and the like, along with not coding like an idiot who doesn't care if anyone can read and maintain his code. My entire data structures course was held to pretty much professional commenting and style guide standards. I was pretty drat proud of that B (I think it might have been the highest grade in the class). Judging from the OP, the answer may be "Suck it the gently caress up and finish the four year in night school or something, which is ok, but I would appreciate any other answers people have. With that skillset in mind, are there any obvious things to learn that would increase employability? I'm currently working outside of computers, but I have plenty of time at work I could spend reading books. Finally, if any MD people want to weigh in on the job market here, I'd appreciate that, but not expecting much from this one.
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Dec 16, 2016 17:22
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Felime posted:I'm a dummy and posted this first in the working in IT thread. A bunch of questions that may or may not have been answered. If there's resources I missed in the OP then feel free to tell me to gently caress right off. Not that anyone anywhere cares about; don't bother. Felime posted:In the same line as the last one, how viable is getting into programming/dev without a bachelor's? For reference, I have a two year engineering degree with somewhat of an unofficial focus on programming and computer stuff. I got into college, and I have pretty much all the base requirements for a 4 year degree, but I was initially in engineering until learning that I am depressive and don't do well in an unsupervised setting like that. I am a bit rusty and would need to do some brushing up, but I am fluent in java, almost as fluent in C/C++ and know a good amount of HDL. Beyond that most of what I have done is dabbling. In language agnostic areas, I'm familiar with the basic data structures and choosing when to use them and the like, along with not coding like an idiot who doesn't care if anyone can read and maintain his code. My entire data structures course was held to pretty much professional commenting and style guide standards. I was pretty drat proud of that B (I think it might have been the highest grade in the class). Very, but be aware that it will be harder to get those initial interviews. Not so much harder that your time is better spent getting a CS degree. If you know literally anyone in a programming role at some company who can be a referral / reference for you, that is worth more than a 4 year degree. Felime posted:With that skillset in mind, are there any obvious things to learn that would increase employability? I'm currently working outside of computers, but I have plenty of time at work I could spend reading books. Practice coding interview problems. Go to coding meetups and network. Pick a language / framework (like Java & Spring) and focus your practice and applications to that.
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Dec 16, 2016 17:48
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It'll depend on the type of work you want. But in general a four year degree won't be better for than four years of working. Get a GitHub account, and make something you're actually proud of. Not something from a book. One guy I interviewed without a CS degree (whom I gave a huge thumbs up to) made a twitter bot that let people play a text-based MMA game. It wasn't much, but he talked about it like a programmer would.
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Dec 16, 2016 20:17
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Felime posted:words I joined a local meetup. I never went but they circulated a lot of job offers on their mailing list. Made a github and started working on poo poo I needed to use IRL. Submitted some code to programs I already use in my everyday life. I'm on a very old computer so most of my tools are command line, an some things needed fixes or features. Updated my resume ( I wrote my resume in latex, but I only did it because I use latex in my everyday life). Then when I saw a job circulating, I threw my resume at it, and then spent the time between resume to interview building something in the language/style of what the interview needed the person to do. When I got to the interview, I was honest, and I said I didn't know much about programming professionally, but I wasn't scared of the command line, I had an active github, and I built something with the thing, and I had some issues with it. I got offered a job on the spot. YMMV, because I am a PhD student so I think that it raises some eyebrows, but it is in a humanities subject--so there is nothing I know that you don't know.
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Dec 16, 2016 21:29
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Probably also a good plan to shake the rust off. Last thing of substance I coded was a little program to merge some text files for Hearts of Iron 3. I wanted the vanilla resources but borders out of the randomizer mod. Nothing spectacular, but there were enough files I did need to put them in a hash table to pair them in a reasonable amount of time, parse and write files in a form readable in another program, etc... Feels less impressive than it sounds, but I can see how having a few examples of actual problem solving would be great for an interviewer to look at. I'll definitely see what holes I can get myself into that programming is useful to get out of and work on building a body of work. What's the appropriate way to add that sort of thing to a resume in a way people will actually look at? What sort of coding meet-ups are there? Big open things? Small clubs? And where would I start looking for something like that I could physically show up at? Most of the collaborative stuff I've looked into and helped with was online only and had people scattered all over the place.
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Dec 16, 2016 21:32
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Felime posted:Are there any programming certs one can get to signal that one is not a dumbass? Most of the certs thread seems to be geared more towards IT and administration. I've done probably 300 programming interviews and reviewed many times more than that in resumes. A resume listing a programming cert is one of the highest correlating data points I've found to "guaranteed to not actually know how to program".
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Dec 16, 2016 23:27
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Doghouse posted:I worked at a huge defense company and when I first started, I was unable to do anything for the first three months. Just being able to install visual studio with a license took about a month I'd feel a lot better about these situations if I could just "work from home". It would literally be more productive for both of us.
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Dec 16, 2016 23:38
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pr0zac posted:I've done probably 300 programming interviews and reviewed many times more than that in resumes. A resume listing a programming cert is one of the highest correlating data points I've found to "guaranteed to not actually know how to program". Programming certs exist? What are they, from Red Hat?
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Dec 16, 2016 23:45
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lifg posted:Programming certs exist? What are they, from Red Hat? Microsoft is the one I've seen the most.
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Dec 16, 2016 23:51
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I interviewed at one company that said I'd have to get some sort of Oracle Java Programmer certification after starting. Presumably part of their government contract?
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Dec 16, 2016 23:52
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