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Volguus posted:That's probably gonna be on you since you will probably have to fix/maintain that poo poo. The boss only wants another checkbox on a form and will think you're an idiot that it takes you a week to put it in. That's fine. I don't really care "what" work I'm doing between the hours I'm there. Cleaning up someone else's mess or working on my own project is still just sitting in a chair and typing away at the end of the day.
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Oct 20, 2017 17:42
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Portland Sucks posted:That's fine. I don't really care "what" work I'm doing between the hours I'm there. Cleaning up someone else's mess or working on my own project is still just sitting in a chair and typing away at the end of the day. Wow, you're lucky. I have taught myself to not get emotionally involved in the work that I'm doing, but the "what" part still gets to me. If the code/application I'm working on is poo poo I am not happy nor productive. Maybe that's why I still hate idiocies like the current javascript ecosystem. Frontend web development is loving torture, luckily i don't do it that much. I have no idea how to put myself into a mental state where the "what" is irrelevant.
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Oct 20, 2017 19:31
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Volguus posted:Wow, you're lucky. I have taught myself to not get emotionally involved in the work that I'm doing, but the "what" part still gets to me. If the code/application I'm working on is poo poo I am not happy nor productive. Maybe that's why I still hate idiocies like the current javascript ecosystem. Frontend web development is loving torture, luckily i don't do it that much. I have no idea how to put myself into a mental state where the "what" is irrelevant. Good pair of sound cancelling headphones and lots of good music helps. I'm pretty internally motivated though, and by internally motivated I mean if you pay me well I'll do my best work for the sake of getting paid well regardless of the project. Working on someone else's project, regardless of the project, is all the same to me. When it's 4:15pm I'm loving out of there, it takes me 15 minutes to get back to my car from my office. No I'm not coming to your 4pm meeting.
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Oct 20, 2017 21:22
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When receiving an invite for a 4pm meeting it is good form to propose a reschedule to 7:30 the next morning.
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Oct 20, 2017 21:26
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Keetron posted:When receiving an invite for a 4pm meeting it is good form to propose a reschedule to 7:30 the next morning. If I do that here they'll say yes and show up with coffee and a smile. I hate old people. Best stick to 9:30.
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Oct 20, 2017 21:33
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Portland Sucks posted:Good pair of sound cancelling headphones and lots of good music helps. Oh, I do the work. But if you keep me on a poo poo project (lovely codebase) where I can clearly see that no brain cells have been used in the making of said project ... i''m out to greener pastures. Music, alcohol, yoga, my own personal projects ... nothing helps to keep me there. I don't have the patience anymore to just "deal with it".
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Oct 20, 2017 23:02
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In my experience all development jobs have non-compete clauses and they're never enforced. It would take some Zuckerberg like scenario where you become notorious and rich over some idea which happens to also compete with the same exact business space as your old job. And even then, I've had past bosses tell me "yeah this is bullshit and would never hold up in court"  Volguus posted:Wow, you're lucky. I have taught myself to not get emotionally involved in the work that I'm doing, but the "what" part still gets to me. If the code/application I'm working on is poo poo I am not happy nor productive. Maybe that's why I still hate idiocies like the current javascript ecosystem. Frontend web development is loving torture, luckily i don't do it that much. I have no idea how to put myself into a mental state where the "what" is irrelevant. Amen brother. I used to be full-stack but now I'm all back-end because gently caress that javascript web development mess.
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Oct 20, 2017 23:31
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I'm at my second development job and neither had any sort of employment contract
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Oct 20, 2017 23:35
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Finally getting transitioned to development from support and working on my first app Too bad it's too little too late and I'm leaving soon
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Oct 21, 2017 00:43
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Grump posted:Finally getting transitioned to development from support and working on my first app I assume you're going to development, right?
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Oct 21, 2017 00:55
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Zaphod42 posted:In my experience all development jobs have non-compete clauses and they're never enforced. What's worse is the company after that happens. Had an employee work on something in their own time offered it to the company for the chance to work on it full time. Company turned it down, they quit and went full time on it. It became a unicorn and sold to a public company for 2 billion... Company now has a very draconian what's yours is ours policy.
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Oct 21, 2017 14:26
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Volguus posted:I assume you're going to development, right? Thats the plan yeah
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Oct 21, 2017 15:17
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What ways do you guys recommend to improve as programmers overall? I'm starting my first job on Monday and I'm simultaneously excited/nervous. I don't have a CS degree and I feel impostor syndrome creeping up on me as the day approaches. I've considered getting a Masters in CS in my spare time in the future for the credential (but also I enjoy the topics and would like to learn more), although I'm wondering if there are better ways to use that time to improve my career capital, so to speak. I imagine most of the learning happens on the job, but it probably varies from person to person how much they're improving every day based on what they actually do at their job. Any tips on how to maximize work time? Also, if anyone has any books they also recommend, that would be helpful. I've been slowly working through Clean Code which has been really helpful.
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Oct 21, 2017 18:28
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1) whatever technologies the job uses: master them. 2) anytime you see something that needs to get done (installing a wiki, moving code to Git), volunteer to do it, and become the go-to guy/girl for it. 3) write down everything you do on your first week/month of the job as youre setting up your environment. Put it up on the wiki as the New Hire Guide.
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Oct 21, 2017 18:57
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The Dark Wind posted:What ways do you guys recommend to improve as programmers overall? I'm starting my first job on Monday and I'm simultaneously excited/nervous. I don't have a CS degree and I feel impostor syndrome creeping up on me as the day approaches. I've considered getting a Masters in CS in my spare time in the future for the credential (but also I enjoy the topics and would like to learn more), although I'm wondering if there are better ways to use that time to improve my career capital, so to speak. If you've already got a job as a developer then you've basically just done the thing most people get CS degrees for, and there's not as much need after that. You'll learn way more on the job in the first two months than you would after basically all 4 years of university. Just some specialized knowledge you'd be missing out on, like really deep understanding of data structures, algorithms, even compilers, but you can always learn that on your own time if you're self-motivated enough. There's an insane amount of high quality books, websites and free videos available these days. I can recommend all kinds of books, but what kind of stuff are you working in? "programming" is waaaaaay too vast a field. Web dev? Back end? Full stack? C++? Java? Javascript? PHP? Ruby? Clean Code is a great book and a good start. Here's another great book https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596007124/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 But basically just try to kick as much rear end at your job as you can during the day, and try to write some code and read some books when you're not on the clock, as much as you can stomach. Also try to talk to the other developers as much as you can. Build a rapport with your team so you can ask them questions without having to bug them, be really friendly, and just be really open to suggestions. You can basically sit in the corner by yourself or you can talk to different team members every day, nobody's going to make you participate outside of scrum meetings but the more you communicate the faster you'll learn. Respect people's time if they're in the middle of working on something, but generally people will be happy to walk you through parts of the project or concepts that you don't have experience with, and that gives you a huge head start. Everybody has a different background. Along those lines, try to learn something that your team doesn't know about and then teach them. Teaching others really forces you to grapple with anything you're not confident on and figure everything out for real. lifg posted:2) anytime you see something that needs to get done (installing a wiki, moving code to Git), volunteer to do it, and become the go-to guy/girl for it. This is serious A++ advise right here. Both of these are huge and will get you some attention  It takes a few weeks to get up to speed on a new project even as an experienced developer, but if you can take notes to help the next new guy people love that (most teams "new dev wiki" is way out of date because nobody wants to spend time maintaining it) and then when you can, try to take ownership of some component or project that you feel confident on.
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Oct 21, 2017 19:14
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Thanks guys, those are awesome replies and suggestions. I remember in my previous job (non-software development) I was already doing something similar along those lines. There was a huge turnover in the company and I figured "gently caress I probably won't be here for long, better make this easy for the next guy who has to take over what I'm doing" and left behind lots of notes/documentation/etc. that I wish I had when I was first starting out, so it looks like that was a really solid habit that I'll have to foster even more. The position I've landed is mainly working with C#/ASP.NET (an older version, not core) and Backbone.js, so basically web development. The company is in the middle of making lots of changes and updating their tech, and it sounds like that's the main reason they brought me in (due to my experience in React), so I think I have a lot of great opportunities to be involved with projects from the ground up, as well as have a say in the tech stacks. One thing I really liked that they mentioned while I was interviewing was that if you wanted to use a new tech, you can just make a presentation to the team and if they're convinced, they'll find a way to use it. That's how one of the other teams ended up using Vue.js, so there's definitely lots of flexibility and openness which I figure will be great for learning.
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Oct 21, 2017 19:35
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Clean Code is not a great book, it's a bad one.
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Oct 21, 2017 20:42
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sarehu posted:Clean Code is not a great book, it's a bad one. Uncle Bob is an extremist. His ideas are (mostly) founded in decent philosophy, but then he clings to them like a suicide bomber clings to their vest and will gladly press the button before letting go. I think Clean Code is not the worst place for beginners to start, but I'd recommend not taking him too literally or too far.
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Oct 21, 2017 20:55
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Robert Martin isn't an extremist, he's a Repeater. He takes in information, chews it up, and spits it back out in a garbled up and damaged form because he doesn't have a clue of what he's talking about.
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Oct 21, 2017 21:43
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sarehu posted:Robert Martin isn't an extremist, he's a Repeater. He takes in information, chews it up, and spits it back out in a garbled up and damaged form because he doesn't have a clue of what he's talking about. On the positive side, I will say that the astronomy parts of his videos are almost interesting.
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Oct 21, 2017 22:20
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Open question for any of you guys: when you were trying to get your first job in this industry, what do you think it was, looking back, that landed you the interview(s) you needed in the first place? Was it because you had an extensive catalog of interesting personal projects that demonstrated expertise in a relevant library that the employer cared about? Maybe it was because your Github/LinkedIn page looked really good? Maybe you just knew the right person? Or maybe it was just luck?
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Oct 23, 2017 03:26
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For me, it was that one of the dozens of recruiters who were contacting me actually followed through on a job he had for me.
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Oct 23, 2017 03:31
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PokeJoe posted:For me, it was that one of the dozens of recruiters who were contacting me actually followed through on a job he had for me. Stupid question: how did those dozens of recruiters start spamming you? Did you just click the "spam me pls" thing on LinkedIn and then it just came flooding in?
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Oct 23, 2017 03:36
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Pretty much yeah. Resume on linkedin, indeed, stackoverflow, where ever. Just put some computer words on your resume and you'll start getting calls. One of them may even be for a real job.
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Oct 23, 2017 03:38
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Love Stole the Day posted:Open question for any of you guys: when you were trying to get your first job in this industry, what do you think it was, looking back, that landed you the interview(s) you needed in the first place? Was it because you had an extensive catalog of interesting personal projects that demonstrated expertise in a relevant library that the employer cared about? Maybe it was because your Github/LinkedIn page looked really good? Maybe you just knew the right person? Or maybe it was just luck? I don't know what got me the interview, but I will say what landed me my first job was my personality in the interview. After I came into the interview for my current company, they didn't offer me the job, but they liked me so much they offered me another position. Thinking back, that still blows my mind and it's something I keep in mind before going into interviews now.
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Oct 23, 2017 03:40
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Love Stole the Day posted:Stupid question: how did those dozens of recruiters start spamming you? Did you just click the "spam me pls" thing on LinkedIn and then it just came flooding in? LinkedIn. Straight up. If you have a linkedin profile with any kind of computer keywords on it you'll start getting emails/calls whether you want them or not. Love Stole the Day posted:Open question for any of you guys: when you were trying to get your first job in this industry, what do you think it was, looking back, that landed you the interview(s) you needed in the first place? Was it because you had an extensive catalog of interesting personal projects that demonstrated expertise in a relevant library that the employer cared about? Maybe it was because your Github/LinkedIn page looked really good? Maybe you just knew the right person? Or maybe it was just luck? The one thing that mattered most was probably having a 4-year degree, and that's the only thing that degree was really worth. I learned way more on my own or during internships than from classes but oh well. Find a company that's on a big hiring push and just get your resume in there. Hopefully that'll get you a basic phone screener / online interview. Then from there you just gotta do decent enough or wow their socks off to get the in-person interview. That one's gonna be trickier by far, but again just blow their socks off and you'll get the job. Read "Cracking the Coding Interview" if you haven't yet. Make that your textbook. Work through all the relevant sections and really grill yourself. Its not exactly fun but every minute you spend studying that book will make you vastly more confident when you're in the interview, which will translate to them thinking you're much much better. Lots of people are hiring devs in all positions and all kinds of unqualified people apply and make it to the first step, it shouldn't be crazy hard to at least get a basic phone screener interview. But then you gotta know your poo poo, if you sound wishy-washy then you may not get called in further. And then the on-site interview is the real test, much more serious than the phone/internet one.
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Oct 23, 2017 03:42
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I had a degree and no job, and no idea how to get a job. Then a friend from college told me his company was hiring, and got me an interview. After a good interview, and his strong recommendation, I was hired.
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Oct 23, 2017 04:45
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A random recruiter for a defense contractor found my resume on monster.com and sent me an email that looked a lot like spam but turned out to be legit.
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Oct 23, 2017 05:11
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I worked in another industry and kept making little script or web solutions for repetitive tasks within my role. We were in the same building as a web dev company and I convinced the owner of the dev shop to give me a shot based on those little solutions. Edit: make friends with people and demonstrate skill and passion.
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Oct 23, 2017 06:45
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I said I could do it, passed a basic coding test and got a job. No real experience or education. I might have embellished what experience I did have at the interview. They were very happy I joined and sad when I left after a few team shuffles so I guess it was alright? Admitted: moving from manual software testing to a role as a developer for the testing code (not just scripting) wasn't that difficult. Better answer: when on unemployment benefits in 2004, I was hired as a manual tester with the legendary words: "We have no idea how to do it either so you'll learn on the job." This company went bust after 6 months of me joining them, mostly due to a massive debt incurrent by a bad take-over. By then I knew a bit what I was doing and easily found another job. Keetron fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Oct 23, 2017 |
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Oct 23, 2017 07:24
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I knew someone who told me about an opportunity. I had a demo app, but nobody mentioned it in the interviews and I don't know whether or not it helped.
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Oct 23, 2017 08:18
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Love Stole the Day posted:Open question for any of you guys: when you were trying to get your first job in this industry, what do you think it was, looking back, that landed you the interview(s) you needed in the first place? I got told by the manager that hired me it was the information about the programming projects / open source stuff I did and my performance on a collegiate math contest.
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Oct 23, 2017 08:46
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A portfolio of good projects and open source contributions. I am self taught with boot camp experience, otherwise no college, tech background, etc. I think that heavily influences people's interview clincher. If you have a degree, a good portfolio is far less relevant than it was for me. One of my friends got an interview exclusively because the interviewer just happened to see a pull request by said friend get merged into a library he uses. How you'll get called in honestly heavily depends on who you are.
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Oct 23, 2017 13:04
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Love Stole the Day posted:Open question for any of you guys: when you were trying to get your first job in this industry, what do you think it was, looking back, that landed you the interview(s) you needed in the first place? Was it because you had an extensive catalog of interesting personal projects that demonstrated expertise in a relevant library that the employer cared about? Maybe it was because your Github/LinkedIn page looked really good? Maybe you just knew the right person? Or maybe it was just luck? My first dev job was at an incubator that lasted for like two months. I basically reached out to a bunch of local startups asking if they were interested in taking on a dev apprentice, and one of them was interested. They let me go a couple months later cause they were running out of funding and folded soon afterward. The second one, as a real junior engineer, was after I went to a web dev boot camp. The employer had previously hired someone from said camp and were happy with them, so they decided to try their luck twice. I was there for about eleven months before I left due to disagreement with management (and a couple fuckups on my part), then a couple months later they laid off most of their web engineers. The other engineer they hired made a few data-related mistakes too, and I assume has also since been let go. Basically, it was entirely luck and appearing to be better than I actually am. If you want actual advice, network network network. All but one job Ive gotten have been through connections or personal tactics. Go to meetups for stuff that interests you, connect with people on LinkedIn, schmooze with the cool and experienced engineers, etc. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 14:30 on Oct 23, 2017 |
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Oct 23, 2017 14:26
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Pollyanna posted:The other engineer they hired made a few data-related mistakes too, and I assume has also since been let go. ... oh do go on.
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Oct 23, 2017 14:50
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Was looking for dev work after college. Family friend hooked me up with what was supposed to be a temporary helpdesk job while I looked. Got complacent, wasted two years. Started writing scripts to automate a bunch of helpdesk tasks. Bosses found out I was interviewing for other dev jobs, promoted me to the dev team. Would not recommend this approach.
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Oct 23, 2017 15:19
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lifg posted:... oh do go on. Spoiler: it's gonna turn out that the mistake was giving anyone, let alone a junior-level, write access to prod. Also the company was dead the entire time.
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Oct 23, 2017 15:30
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Munkeymon posted:Spoiler: it's gonna turn out that the mistake was giving anyone, let alone a junior-level, write access to prod. Also the company was dead the entire time. That was actually my fuckup: one of the first things I did was they gave me access to their server config scripts and told me to make some updates to it. I ended up setting the servers to write to the beta/staging DB instead of the prod DB, so customer data was going to the wrong DB for like 12 hours.  It was really stupid and although it was ultimately my fault, I questioned the wisdom of leadership that allowed a junior engineer unlimited and unsupervised access to their server config and logic.The other engineer, if I remember correctly, instead brought down the prod DB for a day or so due to some complicated and touchy logic changes. When youre an analytics company that does hundreds of thousands if not millions of writes per day, thats a lot of lost customer data.  The company is somehow still around even though they let a bunch of people go and had their biggest stars bail after a bunch of data/DB instability woes. I dont think theyve been growing much either...especially since they got a new CEO. Oh well, sucks to be them I guess.
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Oct 23, 2017 15:44
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Pollyanna posted:it was ultimately my fault No it wasn't
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Oct 23, 2017 16:05
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Jose Valasquez posted:No it wasn't In the sense that I pulled the trigger, I mean. But I understand what youre getting at, the reprimand I got afterwards has just stuck with me and only got worse as it was brought up over and over again in 1x1s. It made an appearance in the you should probably leave talk, too. Other fuckups: used a customers CC to test our billing logic since we didnt have a test CC, not realizing that it would charge the customer for the service they were trying to get. That was the final strike, IIRC.
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Oct 23, 2017 16:12
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