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A not-very-thorough google search suggests average software engineer salary in Houston is either 75k or 90k. "Write COBOL for pennies" is better than unemployment, but I think you'd have to be a lunatic to stay any longer than it takes you to find anything else.
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Jan 20, 2018 03:04
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Ape Fist posted:Whiteboarding sucks because you definitely get the nerves like crazy and you have no idea whether or not the interviewer is looking for you to just have a general idea of something or whether or not they're actually going to be picky about your syntax. A way better method is to show code, ask them to walk through the code, and make a judgement about their ability from there. "Write code to make these unit tests pass" is actually my favorite method of interviewing, since you get to get a good sense of the candidate's ability to solve real-world problems. Pixelboy posted:COBOL will still be here long after you're dead. Pretty much, but entering into a career path of babysitting legacy code is probably not very engaging or exciting unless that's really what you want to do.
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Jan 20, 2018 03:18
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fantastic in plastic posted:A not-very-thorough google search suggests average software engineer salary in Houston is either 75k or 90k. "Write COBOL for pennies" is better than unemployment, but I think you'd have to be a lunatic to stay any longer than it takes you to find anything else. Entry level? The stuff I found after a quick look suggested 50K + for entry level. If average includes everything from 0 to 20 years experience, then that can be a pretty large range. Like 50 - 200 range.
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Jan 20, 2018 03:23
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downout posted:Given all the feedback from others and my opinion that no job is worth blatantly turning down, it might be best to try to negotiate for more pay. For comparison, I started at relatively the same pay rate in a small city. I do not know what the going rate is for beginning developers in Houston, but I would expect it's 15 - 25% higher than the offer you've been given. Check glassdoor to try to find some relative salaries as I could be very wrong. It might be helpful to discuss you concerns directly with them as part of the negotiations WRT getting stuck (find a better word, typecasted?) in COBOL and concerns with long-term career goals. Generally, I've found good management can appreciate concerns on these terms. My experience is working as a tester for a few months in college. My credentials are a subpar gpa. Which is why I am likely to accept so I can get enough work experience that my gpa doesn’t hold me back.
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Jan 20, 2018 04:40
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downout posted:Entry level? The stuff I found after a quick look suggested 50K + for entry level. If average includes everything from 0 to 20 years experience, then that can be a pretty large range. Like 50 - 200 range. I don't know about entry level, I just searched for the title "Software Engineer", which could be anyone without senior as part of their title. It depends on the org and how well one negotiates.
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Jan 20, 2018 04:47
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Pronounced posted:My experience is working as a tester for a few months in college. A little negotiation never hurts, and most management expects it. edit:wording downout fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Jan 20, 2018 |
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Jan 20, 2018 05:00
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Alright, I mentioned before I got laid off this week. I'm gonna start looking for a new job on Monday and was curious what sites are popular these days for job postings. I'm guessing LinkedIn is a safe bet but other than that I don't know if there's another obvious place. Additionally, has anyone used a site like Triplebyte (or similar) and mind sharing their experience with it? Next week I'm mostly applying to places I can get a referral to but it seems like it would also be prudent to apply elsewhere. I've got about 24 months of experience total at this point, but most of that was an internship so I'm probably gonna be looking mostly at entry level stuff again.
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Jan 20, 2018 05:21
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Radical posted:Alright, I mentioned before I got laid off this week. I'm gonna start looking for a new job on Monday and was curious what sites are popular these days for job postings. I'm guessing LinkedIn is a safe bet but other than that I don't know if there's another obvious place. Additionally, has anyone used a site like Triplebyte (or similar) and mind sharing their experience with it? https://whoishiring.io/ I like that I can favorite ones that I have applied to and will typically note down the date of application. And at the start of every month https://news.ycombinator.com/ has a post where people post their openings, but they are listed on the previous link typically.
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Jan 20, 2018 06:14
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If I’m in the Bay Area and apply to openings in Ireland/U.K. (have citizenship through mom), will I just be sending in a CV (rather than a 1 pager), and in cover letters explaining my resolve / willingness to relocate, and basically sell the company on bringing in a fresh grad from the US?
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Jan 22, 2018 18:01
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Thom ZombieForm posted:If I’m in the Bay Area and apply to openings in Ireland/U.K. (have citizenship through mom), will I just be sending in a CV (rather than a 1 pager), and in cover letters explaining my resolve / willingness to relocate, and basically sell the company on bringing in a fresh grad from the US? Definitely prominently mention you have citizenship because that means they don't have to figure out a visa. Note, if you didn't know already, a regular CV over here isn't like a US academic CV - it's about the same as writing a US resume except 2 pages or so is normal/fine. We get like 20 pages CVs sometimes and that's gonna make an interviewer roll their eyes (though as a fresh grad I'm guessing yours wouldn't be like that anyway unless you plan on listing how you did in spelling tests in first grade or whatever).
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Jan 22, 2018 18:03
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feedmegin posted:Definitely prominently mention you have citizenship because that means they don't have to figure out a visa. Thanks for the reply. I was considering adding my citizenship to both the CV as well as any cover letter. And yes, a 20 page CV would detail my travels through the birth canal.
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Jan 22, 2018 19:05
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Thom ZombieForm posted:If I’m in the Bay Area and apply to openings in Ireland/U.K. (have citizenship through mom), will I just be sending in a CV (rather than a 1 pager), and in cover letters explaining my resolve / willingness to relocate, and basically sell the company on bringing in a fresh grad from the US? Pro tip Dublin is pretty much accepting only cream o' the crop guys right now, but you might get in.
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Jan 22, 2018 21:09
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Ape Fist posted:Pro tip Dublin is pretty much accepting only cream o' the crop guys right now, but you might get in. sadly scratches Ireland off potential move list Hey all, I finally had enough energy/motivation to get draft 3 of my resume up and running, REMOVED would be much appreciated. I feel a lot better about the word choices and whatnot now. Work has been a lot better! Going home at good times, keeping my head down. Boss and I still don't gel at all, but he seems to be less insane rear end in a top hat when we aren't all grinding ourselves down to the bone. He had a 1:1 with me last week where, after a week and a half with training on back end with my teammates, he didn't want to invest any more time currently and wanted me to qualify what I felt I could do with reasonable efficiency. Also wanted to make clear he doesn't want to invest work resources in me learning non company specific things, and if I want to learn more about a library or language, I need to do that on my own time. I've gotten more used to not really ever being able to win ever. I can close a million issues and log all the bugs (as an example, I got taken to task for not writing bugs with enough details, and was given a very specific format to follow and that I need to be taking screenshots of all of it. Co-workers have no such stipulations, and are never told to go back and fix any of their logged issues, or check the backlog to make sure they aren't duplicates), but I mess up something he sees, and it's lecture city. So I'm focused right now on learning and getting better, and trying to keep up my mental wall of not having this experience convince me I am a garbage developer. Thank you all again for the support when it was all a dumpster fire as well, I very sincerely needed it when I first posted Shirec fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Feb 23, 2018 |
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Jan 23, 2018 04:04
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The wording changes are really good, and now it sounds like you've done quite a bit of stuff that can be talked about instead of generic code work, and getting people to talk is the best way to get them interested in you. There are only a couple of spots I think could be improved, namely that I believe it's still worth removing Jr. from your job title, but I can understand if you're uncomfortable about it. Second, "designed" has been a bad choice of word for me in the past but that's my own personal experience so this might be more nitpicky than you care to address. "Design" has come to mean something very different from Development, where designers come up with the site and mock it up using something like https://zeplin.io/ and then tell the developers to build it. I get the impression you built the framework/scripting system, instead of strictly designing it, but I don't know for sure. If you did indeed design it and develop it, definitely leave it as Design so you can have that point in your favor. Like I said, I know that sounds nitpicky but my actual job title right now is UI/UX Designer even though that's not even close to what I do, because the design team heard me use the word "Design" a few times in my interviews and thought that it'd be good to have someone who could do both. I'm still cross about it, but thankfully the title is largely meaningless.
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Jan 23, 2018 05:40
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Definately get rid of the Jr in your title, it's only hurting you. Web Developer is much better. On the off chance someone calls your rear end in a top hat boss, and he says "Nuh uhh, Shirec is a JUNIOR Web Developer" they will likely infer he is an rear end in a top hat and ignore any further comments from him.
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Jan 23, 2018 16:34
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Skandranon posted:Definately get rid of the Jr in your title, it's only hurting you. Web Developer is much better. On the off chance someone calls your rear end in a top hat boss, and he says "Nuh uhh, Shirec is a JUNIOR Web Developer" they will likely infer he is an rear end in a top hat and ignore any further comments from him. Is it worth it to put "Jr." in a job title if you've been promoted past the "Jr. " level in order to show growth? I have two entries under "Experience": Jr. Software Engineer DATE - DATE" and "Software Engineer DATE - PRESENT" on my resume.
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Jan 23, 2018 17:12
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imo, any attention you draw to anything less than perfect is not ideal. Sure, you've grown and are no longer a Jr Dev. But do you want someone to say "hmm, this guy was a Jr Dev for two years, and regular Dev for six months. Might still be kind of green..." Because the guy above you in the stack of resumes didn't have junior in his? I'm of the belief that anything less than senior positions should be ambiguous. Let your interviewer decide your skill level. You can surprise them in a good way just as often as they can surprise you in a bad way.
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Jan 23, 2018 22:24
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You could do something like "Software Developer 2013-present" and then include "promoted from Jr. Developer after 6 months" as a bullet point if you want to show growth without priming the reader to think the way Vincent Valentine suggests they might. I don't think it's necessary, though, if the resume is "sale-able" without that information.
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Jan 24, 2018 01:17
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Thank you Vincent Valentine and Skandranon! And yes, in regard to the design verb, you're right, I didn't even think of the UI/UX overlap. I'll change that verb and drop the Jr~ I've got a few jobs bookmarked and will try and start papering Chicago soon.
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Jan 24, 2018 03:51
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Shirec posted:sadly scratches Ireland off potential move list Looking solid now. One minor suggestion. I would break "Create prototype demo applications based on executive requirements" into two bulletpoints. Mostly because I don't think anyone is going to care if the applications you built were prototypes or demos or whatever as long as they work. At the same time being able to refine vague exec ideas/user stories into deliverable software is super impressive. 1) Refined high-level requirements into actionable tasks. 2) Created applications using new ( technology y/approach z ) and reduced risk by iterating on design while getting stakeholder buyin at every stage. "new" means new-to-you or new-to-company. Being the first person in your company to work with a technology successfully demonstrates an ability to learn on your own. Likewise, building multiple applications using new-to-you approaches demonstrates an ability to communicate well with your coworkers and learn quickly.
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Jan 24, 2018 04:39
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Shirec posted:sadly scratches Ireland off potential move list Nah, dont. Let them decide you are not a fit. https://twitter.com/shitmydadsays/status/4811790555
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Jan 24, 2018 08:14
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Uber employee detected
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Jan 24, 2018 16:50
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No, I just mean that Shirec might be just fine for Ireland but she perceives herself as not being fine for Ireland. You will never know unless you ask!
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Jan 24, 2018 16:51
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What, exactly, is the point of 5~6 hour interviews? How much poo poo do you really have to cover to get to know a prospective employee well enough? And do they have to be half-filled with weird startup-y random factoid questions like "how do you order a list of IP addresses", "what is OSCP" and "design me a system for finding stars"? I think the company wants a networking expert, not a mid-level Rails engineer. I just wish I had found that out before I went in.
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Jan 25, 2018 23:45
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Pollyanna posted:What, exactly, is the point of 5~6 hour interviews? How much poo poo do you really have to cover to get to know a prospective employee well enough? And do they have to be half-filled with weird startup-y random factoid questions like "how do you order a list of IP addresses", "what is OSCP" and "design me a system for finding stars"? They didn't tell you it was going to be 5-6 hours? That's rough. For longer interviews I've generally got a structure for how things we're going to be before I showed up. If they don't tell you, then I'd ask.
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Jan 25, 2018 23:54
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huhu posted:They didn't tell you it was going to be 5-6 hours? To see when you break down.
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Jan 26, 2018 01:09
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huhu posted:They didn't tell you it was going to be 5-6 hours? That's rough. For longer interviews I've generally got a structure for how things we're going to be before I showed up. If they don't tell you, then I'd ask. They shared the schedule with me, I just didn't expect the majority of those hours to be filled with irrelevant theoretical questions and 3 different teams, only one of which I was interested in, getting to grill me on poo poo I have no business knowing about. Really felt like it was trying to ape Amazon or Google or something. ultrafilter posted:To see when you break down. I made it to about 5 hours in before I started getting audibly exhausted and responded to the question "how would you make a scaleable website in Rails" with "I wouldn't use Rails". (to be fair I then proceeded to explain an alternative)
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Jan 26, 2018 01:14
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Pollyanna posted:Really felt like it was trying to ape Amazon or Google or something. They almost certainly were. No one knows how to interview, so they just copy the big tech companies and hope really hard.
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Jan 26, 2018 01:16
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ultrafilter posted:They almost certainly were. No one knows how to interview, so they just copy the big tech companies and hope really hard. It's basically the blind leading the blind.
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Jan 26, 2018 04:15
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I think the point I realized they wanted someone who is clearly not me was when they asked me to design a system to determine the closest, furthest, and mid-distance star from Earth given a CSV of coordinates, a large number machines, and a low processing constraint. I think my mind went blank for five seconds before I gave the stupidest answer involving something that looked like an OTP application. Then there was one about what data structure you'd use to store it and I answered a binary tree which hosed me over cause I wasn't sure how to get the middle star ("Uh, balance the tree?"). It may have also been the point where they judged me for not knowing exactly how an IPv4 address is specified (32-bit integer, I guessed 4 8-bit integers) and were bemused when I didn't know how to translate IPv4 strings to their matching integers. I answered "I don't know and I'd have to research that" to sooooo many questions. It was great at making me feel incredibly loving stupid, which to be fair, I am. I don't know if I'm angry at myself or at them. Probably myself.
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Jan 26, 2018 04:25
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Finally started sending out resumes after putting it off for too long. Boss had a meeting with me today and in order to really start working on the parts of back end he considers important, I have to create a personal project using Redis, Bull, and Sequelize, and show it to him to prove I'm competent/understand enough. We're currently working under a three week deadline before we on board our first client and he wanted to know my commitment levels and that nothing I could currently do with my skills was 'critical' work. This was right after our daily scrum where he went over how much cheaper it would be to have a team in India do this, and he wasn't going to ask us to kill ourselves, but if we didn't perform, he would have to make hard choices. He then went back over that with me personally in our 1:1, except with the extra flavor of telling me that all the front end work I've been slaving over could easily be accomplished by the India team and talking about my pay meant certain work was expected of me and if they cut my pay in half then they'd only expect half the work. If it feels confusing to read, it was confusing to listen to as well edit: Oh and another fun anecdote while I'm thinking this over again, he went on and on about how the India team is more motivated to put out more lines of code because 'they are working to pay for food and we're working to pay for luxuries' Shirec fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Jan 26, 2018 |
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Jan 26, 2018 06:09
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gently caress that
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Jan 26, 2018 06:21
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"I don't want you to feel you have any value, you might get it into your head to leave." The 2018 "Most Abusive Boss" award is yours already.
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Jan 26, 2018 06:44
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It's super cool when people think they can just treat Indian teams like poo poo just because everyone else does and that's always how it's been. Pay them a decent wage, give then normal hours? Hah, why would I do that when I could not do that instead??? 
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Jan 26, 2018 06:58
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Shirec posted:Finally started sending out resumes after putting it off for too long. I'm willing to bet he changes his tune significantly when you put in your resignation. I look forward to that post.
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Jan 26, 2018 07:40
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Skandranon posted:I'm willing to bet he changes his tune significantly when you put in your resignation. I look forward to that post. He will take the resignation as a personal insult and tell Shirec that he always doubted her, that she is a bad person without loyalty and that he will make sure she never works in this town again.
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Jan 26, 2018 08:47
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Shirec posted:Finally started sending out resumes after putting it off for too long. All the pressure and manipulation is about as clumsy and obvious as I've ever heard of. But when you say "create a personal project," do you mean on your own time? Because no. The answer is no. But on the other hand if he wants you to spend your work time training yourself with learning projects instead of solving business problems, I say go for it, at worst you'll find technologies you don't like. Keetron posted:He will take the resignation as a personal insult and tell Shirec that he always doubted her, that she is a bad person without loyalty and that he will make sure she never works in this town again. If he does, the only response is to laugh in his face.
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Jan 26, 2018 09:37
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Jesus Christ  And let him enjoy working with a team 10 timezones away from him who output shite code. Lots of lines of shite code, mind you!
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Jan 26, 2018 11:33
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In about three years you might look back on this and think, "why the gently caress did i ever put up with that poo poo?".
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Jan 26, 2018 14:00
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Che Delilas posted:All the pressure and manipulation is about as clumsy and obvious as I've ever heard of. But when you say "create a personal project," do you mean on your own time? Because no. The answer is no. But on the other hand if he wants you to spend your work time training yourself with learning projects instead of solving business problems, I say go for it, at worst you'll find technologies you don't like. Oh he def means my personal time. I can’t ask my coworkers questions (I’m forbidden from doing this in general too. I’m allowed to ask him but he is very unpredictable in how helpful he’ll be), I can’t rely on anything already coded, and it needs to be a fully working restful blah blah. Basically like a mini second interview. I’m assuming when I leave he’ll start using a code word to refer to me, like he did with the other person that quit. He is only referred to as the graduate. Sometimes he jokes about ‘graduating’ us if we do something dire enough. Also I hope I didn’t come off as making GBS threads on Indian programmer. I’m mostly just frustrated that I keep getting the cost of a team there vs here shoved in my face. I also find it really awful how much my boss emphasizes how there’s a line out the door of people begging to do this work there. downout posted:In about three years you might look back on this and think, "why the gently caress did i ever put up with that poo poo?". I dream of this time
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Jan 26, 2018 14:16
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