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Volguus posted:What does git have to do with it? SVN may be what they use in some teams in Google (according to that testimony it is in that team), so checking out the entire repo for work is not that crazy (not advisable normally though). I think that's part of the joke? Obviously he didn't have a choice if he was going for the self driving car code. I'm surprised Google is using SVN, but maybe that is one of their espionage countermeasures. "Downloaded the whole repo? Another Uber spy, dispatch the Black Ice!"
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# ? Mar 21, 2017 22:14 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 07:04 |
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Git wouldn't have changed a thing. He demonstrated intent to acquire company secret that he was not supposed to access in his normal work assignment and he took step to try to hide his illegitimate access. Why Google Stores Billions of Lines of Code in a Single Repository https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11991479
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# ? Mar 21, 2017 22:14 |
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Skandranon posted:I think that's part of the joke? Obviously he didn't have a choice if he was going for the self driving car code. It's usually nothing more exotic than bets and acquisitions end up with their own weird tech stacks that take time to migrate and integrate. And yes, that was part of the joke.
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# ? Mar 21, 2017 22:43 |
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mrmcd posted:Like dude if you're gonna download a whole repo, make sure it's on git. Full backups and commit history are in every client by design, so it'll just look like your normal work. Amateur hour! Also, lol at not bothering to check those logs until a supplier accidentally sent a "lidar by
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 02:36 |
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PCjr sidecar posted:Also, lol at not bothering to check those logs until a supplier accidentally sent a "lidar by With 100k+ employees, is kinda hard to check all the logs all the time. I mean, the guy was part of that team after all.
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 02:38 |
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Volguus posted:With 100k+ employees, is kinda hard to check all the logs all the time. I mean, the guy was part of that team after all. If you are the size of Google and your Infosec team doesn't have a rule on your internal Splunk knockoff to automatically check when any high level employee quits for anomalous behavior within the last month (oh, like downloading thousands of files and gigabytes of data from a sensitive repo), your Infosec is incompetent. Maybe if they had had Adwords on that data they would've seen it?
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 03:14 |
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mrmcd posted:Like dude if you're gonna download a whole repo, make sure it's on git. Full backups and commit history are in every client by design, so it'll just look like your normal work. Amateur hour! Reminds me of a guy I worked with at a previous company who quit when I told him his fantasies of becoming some kind of IT management weren't going to happen and we were poo poo-canning his pet project. He yanked a hard drive out of his computer as he was leaving because: "I bought it myself, see, here's the receipt!". Yeah, OK, that's totally legit and not suspicious at all. Maybe you should've deleted this repo export you left on the root of the system drive with all the work you and your friends did on your personal side project on the company dime. That whole "cooler facebook for cool people" project is really gonna go places buddy, especially with amazing talent like yours heading it up. Can't recall for the life of me why were so stupid as to let go talent of that scale... He also took some other company property with him but HR decided it was worth the loss if we never had to deal with him again. One of his genius henchmen that left with him REALLY GOT ME by setting their desktop background to an image of the login screen and unplugging their keyboard and mouse. Their total value add to the company after a year or two was a website that managed to have a different piece of functionality that was broken in every browser, but the ring leader really had all the latest hot poo poo buzz of the week lingo down along with his cultivated 'l33t hax0r' attitude of barely concealed contempt and the whole "I'm doing you a favor even being here" thing so non-techy people thought he was amazing. I mean why would you act like that if you weren't amazing?
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 08:38 |
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There's no way in hell I'm good enough for Google. My impression is that people who work at Google do hardcore CS algo work or are really good at server maintenance or C optimizations. That's something I don't have the education or experience for. I'm talking out of my rear end, yeah, but they're a whole 'nother level.
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 14:26 |
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Pollyanna posted:There's no way in hell I'm good enough for Google. My impression is that people who work at Google do hardcore CS algo work or are really good at server maintenance or C optimizations. That's something I don't have the education or experience for. I'm talking out of my rear end, yeah, but they're a whole 'nother level. People that work at Google are, usually, a) not jerks, b) reasonably intelligent, and c) willing to apply themselves. That's it; there's no secret sauce there. Sure the company makes big noise about hiring the best and the brightest, but that's just PR. There's far too many employees for them all to be MIT valedictorians. And besides, one of the best ways to improve yourself is to push yourself to achieve goals that you aren't certain are reachable. Do some studying, refresh yourself on interview questions, and apply for a few big-name companies that have offices near you. Also they aren't all doing really low-level, highly-optimized coding. Who do you think builds and maintains the reams of websites that Google runs?
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 16:55 |
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Pollyanna posted:There's no way in hell I'm good enough for Google. My impression is that people who work at Google do hardcore CS algo work or are really good at server maintenance or C optimizations. That's something I don't have the education or experience for. I'm talking out of my rear end, yeah, but they're a whole 'nother level. Pollyanna, this how you don't make the sort of jumps in your career that you seem to want right now. Just Apply. Let the company tell you no, don't do their work for them. Personal Anecdote: I've been working on making a shift in my career from enterprise-scale backend stuff and management to embedded development. I got a TI Launchpad, made a couple Github projects and a gift for my wife to prove I wasn't totally incapable of learning, and then started applying. One company said "we like you but you can't be an embedded developer, how about a project manager?" Oh well I tried. One company said "Okay you can be a developer, hired" and in the thirteen months I worked there I got a lot of experience...not exactly in what I wanted to do, but I got a lot of exposure to the ideas and mentality and Hardware World in general. It can be done, but you can't do anything by not sending a resume. Google or Facebook or whoever is your personal Big Name I'm Not Good Enough For won't even know who you are if you don't tell them!
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 16:57 |
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Also there's no real penalty for applying and failing -- companies don't blacklist people that don't make the cut, unless you're a complete jerk at the interview. In fact I got my position after failing to pass the interviews twice before.
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 17:16 |
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I agree with what everyone else said, make companies reject you, don't automatically disqualify yourself. Plenty of people who work at Google were surprised when they were hired.
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 17:39 |
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Pollyanna posted:There's no way in hell I'm good enough for Google. My impression is that people who work at Google do hardcore CS algo work or are really good at server maintenance or C optimizations. That's something I don't have the education or experience for. I'm talking out of my rear end, yeah, but they're a whole 'nother level. Google's interview process is a bit long, and now that I'm older and crankier I'm not fond of how they treat every interview like you're a junior developer. But I've done 3 interviews with them and I felt like I learned a lot every time. It's definitely worth your while to apply. Here's one of the interview questions (from several years ago) that I remember clearly: quote:Imagine that you've got an alphabetic keyboard being displayed on a TV screen: I think if you try it you'll find that it's not that hard. There were some harder questions, and I didn't get an offer on any of my tries, but you should try to get an on-site and feel good if you succeed there. Once you do OK-ish at a Google interview their recruiters will hound you for the rest of your life, so that's a fun ego-boost!
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 17:56 |
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That's...not as bad as I expected. It seems to boil down to figuring out how to represent a movement delta from point A to point B plus a button press, then reduce over the list of points to get a full list of actions. The last time I got a question like that, it was at Twitter where they had me try and write some kind of A* algorithm for a 2D matrix encoded in strings, and I totally ate poo poo over it. I expected something like that. I kinda got it into my head that applying to companies was based on company need (i.e. what postings they've put out) instead of a "pull" where the applicant goes directly to the company. That might not be the case. Maybe I'll try my chances...
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 18:06 |
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I thought my first Google phone screen interview was a pretty good and practical but challenging question while the second one was an embarrassing nightmare done by someone who should never interview a candidate again. That said, you should never get single company tunnel vision. I also really dislike the whole "go through all these rounds" poo poo before hearing anything about what you might be working on because I know a handful of people there who are doing stuff they really hate or who keep getting shifted to different projects and departments and that's been frustrating for them.
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 18:10 |
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Pollyanna posted:The last time I got a question like that, it was at Twitter where they had me try and write some kind of A* algorithm for a 2D matrix encoded in strings, and I totally ate poo poo over it. I expected something like that. Graph theory questions are very common in interviews in general, so it's worth knowing how to do breadth-first and depth-first searches (and what the differences are between them), and to have some basic understanding of what's different about A*. For example, in the problem Mniot posed, how would you solve the problem if the cursor is allowed to "wrap around" (e.g. from A to Z or from A to E in a single step)? Your approach of using deltas could still be made to work if you added a bunch of special casing, but there's another, graph-based approach that remains simple. Then you can think about expanding that problem to, say, picking out letters from a grid that has 1000 elements in it, or 1000000 elements...how do the different approaches scale?
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 18:19 |
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Yyyeah that makes sense actually. This is the kinda stuff I need to learn Graph theory is my weakest subject, and I still don't run into situations where I need to dive deep into it. I guess if I wanna pass these interviews I need to practice these problems. I have a copy of Cracking the Code Interview cause I saw the problems in it and got discouraged, thinking I'd need a CS degree to do them. I'll take another look at it. Friggin everything becomes a graph problem somehow, bleh.
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 18:44 |
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oliveoil posted:Why not both? I think no matter what my niche is, I'm going to aim to become more effective at it, so then the question is: what niche? Do I have one already? If not, do I just pick one and see if I can hack it? My point is you don't need a niche. You can take that route, but it isn't necessary if you're good at what you do.
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 18:47 |
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There's no secret sauce in a CS degree either. It's just some focused learning. I'm confident you can find a CS Algorithms online course you can take, which will cover most of what you need. Really it's just getting some experience with using a variety of algorithms, even on toy problems. That experience will then be available in the future, so when you need to solve problems that look similar, you can say "Oh, I should apply X to this." I'd say that a good CS degree consists of a few courses of "learn to write code that has decent formatting/structure/comments", some "here's a bunch of algorithms and how long they take to run", some "here's a bunch of data structures and what they're good/bad at", some "here's the math underpinning a bunch of this stuff", and some "here's some specific domains (like web programming, databases, embedded systems, compilers, etc. -- any given student probably wouldn't do more than 2 or 3 of these) that you can do a deep dive on." A lot of those can be replaced by real-world experience, especially if you make a conscious effort to try to improve and learn from your experiences. Really the problem with graph theory is that it doesn't usually show up in real-world situations, but is very popular for interview questions. That's not to say that it's useless, just that even a skilled developer rarely has cause to make use of it while performing their job responsibilities.
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 19:07 |
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FWIW, I've had good luck using InterviewCake.com for my latest batch of interviews. It'll run you through the vast majority of white boarding / coding stuff you'll be seeing. Much like cracking the coding interview but for some reason this seems more concise to me. I got my rear end kicked a bit last night by an iOS pre-interview coding challenge, diving back into it again tonight. We all go through this, it makes you better in the long run! Gotta apply for jobs you're interested in and go for the moon shot. Worst case you get some good feedback.
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 19:24 |
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Well now I'm becoming convinced to apply for Google. And speaking as someone with a CS degree, it spooks me too. Gotta get reacquainted with B-trees.
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 20:35 |
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Pollyanna posted:There's no way in hell I'm good enough for Google. My impression is that people who work at Google do hardcore CS algo work or are really good at server maintenance or C optimizations. That's something I don't have the education or experience for. I'm talking out of my rear end, yeah, but they're a whole 'nother level. csammis posted:Pollyanna, this how you don't make the sort of jumps in your career that you seem to want right now. Just Apply. Let the company tell you no, don't do their work for them. hello impostor syndrome my old friend +1 to csammis. TooMuchAbstraction posted:People that work at Google are, usually, a) not jerks, b) reasonably intelligent, and c) willing to apply themselves. That's it; there's no secret sauce there. Sure the company makes big noise about hiring the best and the brightest, but that's just PR. There's far too many employees for them all to be MIT valedictorians. Same wrt/ Facebook. Any company that tells you they hire the top 1% is REALLY just telling you that they don't pick 99% of resumes they get. Granted, they probably hire pretty well, but there is no metric for "best", just a bunch of guesswork and apparent success after the fact. And especially with the big ones, they get a TON of resumes that are extremely and very obviously unqualified. You having decent grammar and ability to think about programming abstractly already makes you more qualified than many, many people. Now you just gotta roll the dice and see if you fall somewhere around or above the threshold these companies are working for. There's a big amount of personal effort involved in getting to that point, but luck is also a part of it. TooMuchAbstraction posted:Also there's no real penalty for applying and failing -- companies don't blacklist people that don't make the cut, unless you're a complete jerk at the interview. In fact I got my position after failing to pass the interviews twice before. Pollyanna posted:I kinda got it into my head that applying to companies was based on company need (i.e. what postings they've put out) instead of a "pull" where the applicant goes directly to the company. That might not be the case. Maybe I'll try my chances... I think salaries are so high in tech in part because companies are desperate to hire. If they wait until they have a concrete need, risk would grow out of control, and if they thought in those terms then they might stop hiring or fire when the need is gone. The need for someone smart to build something knows virtually no bounds, especially at successful/growing companies, so many application processes worry about what specifically they're hiring you for until they've decided you're worth betting on and investing in (training, benefits, salary, $$$). tl;dr: If you think you have room to challenge yourself and grow, study up (drilling myself on Cracking the Code Interview repeatedly really helped, good choice), send that resume in, and let the companies turn you down before you turn yourself down. --- Personally, I'm not so much a fan of Google because my interviews with them have always been dysfunctional, like their recruiter wasn't paying attention or the interviewers didn't actually care about me or following the process the recruiters claim Google follows. But YMMV. My interview experience with Facebook was extremely smooth. Doctor w-rw-rw- fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Mar 22, 2017 |
# ? Mar 22, 2017 20:49 |
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Google is extremely cool and good and I highly recommend anyone interested apply. Failing my first interview with them prepped me to pass my second, so don't get discouraged if that happens!
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 21:05 |
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The last several posts have been cool and good and now I'll shoot for the stars and try for the big companies in NYC/Seattle.
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 21:41 |
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Mniot posted:Google's interview process is a bit long, and now that I'm older and crankier I'm not fond of how they treat every interview like you're a junior developer. But I've done 3 interviews with them and I felt like I learned a lot every time. It's definitely worth your while to apply. Not trying to discourage anyone, but this question is on the simple side of what I would expect and prepare for. If someone asks this in a non-phone interview I'd expect the follow up with wrapping, I.e using a graph. If you want to do well at interviews at Google, etc you should have a good understanding of trees, maps, graphs, and dynamic programming. Maps probably being the most common since they are used everywhere. Asking questions about specific algorithms or obscure data structures is loving dumb though.
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 21:46 |
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About all I can remember about dynamic programming is that it's like recursion except you cache results, so it trades runtime for memory use in situations where you make repeated calls. I've been lucky enough that I haven't been required to explain things further than that in a long time.
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 22:19 |
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Pollyanna posted:There's no way in hell I'm good enough for Google. My impression is that people who work at Google do hardcore CS algo work or are really good at server maintenance or C optimizations. That's something I don't have the education or experience for. I'm talking out of my rear end, yeah, but they're a whole 'nother level. All most of us really do is take data in one format and copy it into data in another format ... and then get that code through productionization and security review which really is just like some form of CS hazing.
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# ? Mar 23, 2017 01:18 |
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Paolomania posted:All most of us really do is take data in one format and copy it into data in another format ... and then get that code through productionization and security review which really is just like some form of CS hazing. Some of us do rad things and have never touched a protobuf. I've given a lot of interviews at Google, personally I love graph questions since they let me see how you think through a problem from being given the description to writing code the code for it to spotting issues in your code/algorithm. The advice I always give people is to take an algorithms textbook and pick some random word problems out of them and solve them completely (come up with a solution and then code it up). But applying doesn't hurt, worst thing you get is a no.
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# ? Mar 23, 2017 01:28 |
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One of the two lead developers at my place put in his resignation; he's finally had it here and I don't blame him, I've been thinking of doing the same for years but effort. We work in software dev, doing webapp stuff. Three days later, we all now have huge scary forms to sign. It's a non-compete. I don't even know if I should sign this poo poo or just quote:3. Conflicting Employment. I agree that, during the term of my employment with the Company, I will devote my full time and efforts to the Company and I will not engage in any other employment, occupation or consulting activity, nor will I engage in any other activities that conflict with my obligations to the Company. quote:5. Notification of New Employer. In the event that I leave the employ of the Company, I hereby grant consent to notification by the Company to my new employer about my rights and obligations under this Agreement. quote:8. Covenant Not to Compete. This sounds way over-reaching for what we do. quote:10. Arbitration and Equitable Relief. And this feels like we're signing our rights away to contest any of this bullshit, should it come up when seeking new work. This whole thing feels like retaliation for our lead quitting, and the owner is trying to get him to sign too, despite already being on the way out the door. Keep in mind that we aren't new employees signing this -- I've been here for over 5 years, and everyone else has been here for at least 3 months. This is just now landing on our desks, and required to be returned by Friday. Supposedly the owner will (at his discretion, of course) strike some terms if you bring them up, but only on a case-by-case basis. This whole thing just feels like poo poo. I wish I had a lawyer I could ask. Are agreements this harsh the standard? It feels like this is way, way worse than what I've seen elsewhere.
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# ? Mar 23, 2017 01:46 |
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Zamujasa posted:One of the two lead developers at my place put in his resignation; he's finally had it here and I don't blame him, I've been thinking of doing the same for years but effort. We work in software dev, doing webapp stuff. Either that, or strike out all the terms you find objectionable, and dare the owner to fire you over it. stealth edit: also, non-competes are illegal in California and possibly other states; worth checking if your state is one of 'em.
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# ? Mar 23, 2017 01:57 |
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Zamujasa posted:
Generally with non-competes, or restrictive contracts in general, there has to be something you're receiving in return (aka, consideration.) This could be considered a new job, but you already have an existing job. What makes this discussion interesting, is that you can play hard ball and not sign, which would be a strong bluff. If your employer fires you over it, they may be in some poo poo if the NC doesn't pass legal muster. Unfortunately, you need a lawyer familiar with Nevada law to give you advice. Maybe you could pool some funds with the other employees and pay for one to look it over.
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# ? Mar 23, 2017 01:58 |
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The advice to is basically exactly what I'm taking. I was waffling on it because I like the stability even though the job sucks, but this flaming turd really pushed me past that point.quote:The conventional wisdom passed from Nevada lawyers to their business clients has always been to draft reasonably broad non-compete provisions. If a court found that the provision was too broad, the court had the power to lighten the restriction, but still enforce the agreement. Thousands of non-compete agreements in Nevada are drafted in this way. All of them need to be revisited. B-Nasty posted:Generally with non-competes, or restrictive contracts in general, there has to be something you're receiving in return (aka, consideration.) This could be considered a new job, but you already have an existing job. What makes this discussion interesting, is that you can play hard ball and not sign, which would be a strong bluff. If your employer fires you over it, they may be in some poo poo if the NC doesn't pass legal muster. One of the other developers is talking with a lawyer, but I'm told they won't be able to review it until Monday, and the boss wants this signed by Friday. TooMuchAbstraction posted:Either that, or strike out all the terms you find objectionable, and dare the owner to fire you over it. This is the nuclear option I'm considering. I really, really don't like this agreement, and I'm in a position where if I'm let go there's literally nobody else here who knows how to maintain poo poo.
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# ? Mar 23, 2017 02:06 |
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Zamujasa posted:One of the other developers is talking with a lawyer, but I'm told they won't be able to review it until Monday, and the boss wants this signed by Friday. Somebody pressuring you to sign this RIGHT NOW OH MY GOD THIS IS SO DAMNED IMPORTANT PEOPLE ARE DYYYYIIIIINNNNGGGGG SIGN IT SIGN IT SIGN IT SIGN IT SIGN IT SIGN IT SIGN IT SIGN IT SIGN IT SIGN IT SIGN IT SIGN IT SIGN IT SIGN IT SIGN IT OH GOD JUST SIGN IT is one of the biggest red flags in existence. Your boss just outed himself as a tremendous rear end in a top hat. Seriously, It's a knee jerk reaction to him losing somebody important. Instead of thinking "hmm, if they're looking for greener pastures maybe I should give them reason to stay" he's thinking "wow, gently caress I have to slap handcuffs on right now!"
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# ? Mar 23, 2017 02:18 |
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Zamujasa posted:One of the other developers is talking with a lawyer, but I'm told they won't be able to review it until Monday, and the boss wants this signed by Friday. Tell your boss that you won't sign it until your lawyer finishes reviewing it and advising you, and just let that hang out there. If he flips his lid over a reasonable request, then you have your answer as to what to do. In any case, I'd probably refuse to sign and see what happens. Then immediately start using company time to look for another job.
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# ? Mar 23, 2017 02:21 |
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:There's no secret sauce in a CS degree either. It's just some focused learning. I'm confident you can find a CS Algorithms online course you can take, which will cover most of what you need. Really it's just getting some experience with using a variety of algorithms, even on toy problems. That experience will then be available in the future, so when you need to solve problems that look similar, you can say "Oh, I should apply X to this." I recommend the Coursera course and the book associated with it. I read the Algorithm Design Manual which is also good but IMO Sedgewick is clearer/easier to read. edit: But on the other hand if the object is an interview probably just get Cracking the Coding Interview instead.
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# ? Mar 23, 2017 03:15 |
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B-Nasty posted:Tell your boss that you won't sign it until your lawyer finishes reviewing it and advising you, and just let that hang out there. If he flips his lid over a reasonable request, then you have your answer as to what to do. I'd strike every word and then sign, that's what I think of crap like this dropped on my desk after 5 loving years holy poo poo. After that amount of time at one company, in this industry, they'd have no call to insult me like that. quote:10. Arbitration and Equitable Relief.
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# ? Mar 23, 2017 06:14 |
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If someone tried to make me sign that contract, I'd resign my position at their company on the spot.
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# ? Mar 23, 2017 06:40 |
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Yep, time to get out there. Use it as an opportunity to work on something you're really excited about. You can have stability and a cool project to work on.
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# ? Mar 23, 2017 06:47 |
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I once had an employer offer a 'revised contract' after a year or two of working for them. The ownership threw a bit of a fit when I insisted a revision("but everyone else signed it!") because of a clause defining something like 'output' in terms so broad that a daydream or meeting-doodling would qualify, and then later attempted to also define the applicable period of company ownership of my output as being that of my employment, retroactive, and not as "time where I'm on-the-clock". I told them to change it if they wanted me to sign it and at the 11th hour they did, but were very upset they had to pay their contract lawyer for an hour to get on the phone with me and discuss what sort of language I would actually accept. I really should have seen it for the red flag it was and not waited another year for them to do even crazier stuff before I left.
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# ? Mar 23, 2017 12:27 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 07:04 |
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Is it bad form to reach out to a company directly if you've been going through a recruiter for the whole process? I had an interview on Tuesday with a company and I thought it went really well. It was set up by a recruiter I've been talking with. After the interview, I spoke with the HR lady from the company and she asked about salary, and I told her to speak to the recruiter regarding that since that's what my recruiter asked me to do. She said they should have an answer in a day or so. I followed up with my recruiter yesterday and she said she hadn't heard anything. I wrote a "thank you" letter to my interviewers and passed it on to her and she said she'd forward it to the HR lady who would forward it to the people I spoke with. So I called up the recruiter today and didn't get to speak with her, but spoke with a guy she works with who has me set up for another interview at a different company today. He told me my recruiter hasn't reached out to the company yet to find out what's going on. I really want this process to be over and don't want to have to go on this other interview today if I get an offer from this other place, so I'm wondering if I can just reach out to the HR lady directly and ask if they've made a decision? I don't want to wait around for my recruiter to reach out and also don't want to be annoying by calling her 3x a day to find out what's going on. This whole thing just makes me anxious as poo poo and I would really appreciate a 'yes/no' as soon as possible.
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# ? Mar 23, 2017 16:30 |