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teen phone cutie
Jun 18, 2012

last year i rewrote something awful from scratch because i hate myself

Chemondelay posted:

I'm in my second year of a CS degree, returning to study after an aborted career in academic law and legal research, including a couple of years sunk into a PhD that I decided not to complete. I'm due to finish at the end of 2019 (if I don't do an honours year), and I want to hit the ground running ASAP in terms of finding a job in the industry, preferably outside Australia. So I'm looking for internships now for the end of this year.

Looking for some critical feedback on my resume. I'm in the awkward position that nearly all of my experience is in my previous field. My degree program includes a significant research component that is coming up next year, but for now I've tried to emphasise the paltry amount of CS stuff that is there. (I'm working on getting more personal projects done too.) Any help and advice is much appreciated.

Edit: I didn't include the abandoned PhD under the education section, but perhaps that's better than having a seemingly spotty work history?

Since most of your education isn't development related, I would try to both cut it down and move it to the bottom of the page.

It's taking up a lot of real-estate on the page, and at the end of the day, you're trying to prove that you will be a good fit for a software developer role. Maybe try getting that second education section down and add another personal coding project.

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lifg
Dec 4, 2000
<this tag left blank>
Muldoon

Chemondelay posted:

Edit: I didn't include the abandoned PhD under the education section, but perhaps that's better than having a seemingly spotty work history?

Ive seen resumes include phrases like “completed graduate level coursework.” I sometimes assume this is a code for “tried grad school, didn’t like it.”

It won’t be held against you. Programmers come from all over.

ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


Chemondelay posted:

Edit: I didn't include the abandoned PhD under the education section, but perhaps that's better than having a seemingly spotty work history?

Getting into a PhD program is not trivial. Some employers might care about that.

Vinz Clortho
Jul 19, 2004

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'll shuffle things around a bit, and include details of the PhD. It'd be great if I had more project work to include at the moment; obviously it'll be better next year when I've done those research subjects, but it's a bummer in terms of applying for internships now. In the meantime, is it worth including stuff like nand2tetris?

E: Here's the updated version.

Vinz Clortho fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Mar 22, 2018

Ghost of Reagan Past
Oct 7, 2003

rock and roll fun

Chemondelay posted:

I'm in my second year of a CS degree, returning to study after an aborted career in academic law and legal research, including a couple of years sunk into a PhD that I decided not to complete. I'm due to finish at the end of 2019 (if I don't do an honours year), and I want to hit the ground running ASAP in terms of finding a job in the industry, preferably outside Australia. So I'm looking for internships now for the end of this year.

Looking for some critical feedback on my resume. I'm in the awkward position that nearly all of my experience is in my previous field. My degree program includes a significant research component that is coming up next year, but for now I've tried to emphasise the paltry amount of CS stuff that is there. (I'm working on getting more personal projects done too.) Any help and advice is much appreciated.

Edit: I didn't include the abandoned PhD under the education section, but perhaps that's better than having a seemingly spotty work history?
Include the PhD work.

I didn't finish my dissertation and it hasn't hurt me in the least -- the only person that's ever discounted it was the recruiter that tried to neg me into a salary number lower than what I currently make. In fact it's probably helped, because it shows a lot of very important skills.

downout
Jul 6, 2009

I had a blank spot on my resume of about two years, and the few times I was asked about it I explained that I went through two degree programs before landing on CS. After a few interviews I just updated my resume to an uncompleted degree in the programs I worked on. It was time spent on undergraduate programs where I was badly mistaken. My priorities were not good, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I took limited classes and ultimately moved to CS. It was a great decision, and most feedback I've gotten is 'it's important to see when heading in the wrong direction and course-correct".

MRLOLAST
May 9, 2013

Chemondelay posted:

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'll shuffle things around a bit, and include details of the PhD. It'd be great if I had more project work to include at the moment; obviously it'll be better next year when I've done those research subjects, but it's a bummer in terms of applying for internships now. In the meantime, is it worth including stuff like nand2tetris?

E: Here's the updated version.


Ok I looked at it again.
This is for an internship application and you want it to take up a larger space on your CV:

Make each personal project clearer so personal project 1 , put date, language used , tools , time it took you and what you learned.
Personal Project 2 , put date, language used, tools ,time it took you and what you learned.
Make it look professional with referring to the system development life cycle.

It is fine to have it repeated from what you put on the top regarding languages and tools just to drive it home.

KernelSlanders
May 27, 2013

Rogue operating systems on occasion spread lies and rumors about me.
I have a PhD and I've hired people with PhDs. A PhD program you dropped out of is still experience and better than not having it, and if anything dropping out because you realized you wanted to work in industry anyway is evidence of good judgement. Also, it's much, much better than a resume gap.

Shirec
Jul 29, 2009

How to cock it up, Fig. I

Tsunami Redux posted:

Shirec you should abandon your coding career to write a novel chronicling your interactions with your boss and your desperate struggle to escape your dilbertian company. I've heard that the secret to good fiction is to create characters and then do terrible things to them, and it seems like your working day is pure nightmare fuel. I think your book would sell millions.

On a serious note, I really hope you land a better gig soon.

Once I have gotten to the happy ending, I’ll think about it haha.

Currently I’m trying to contain my anxiety because my boss messaged me around 7 last night about a chunk of code I had been writing, and assuming I’d be working on it at that time. So I ended up working until 10ish, before I figured I had a good stopping place.

This morning, surprise! Turns out all my code is garbage! Why wasn’t I putting this in Redis queues? Why was I carrying this set of data throughout the process? Why was I querying the database like this? Weeks of effort where I had been updating, showing, and talking about what I was doing, all of that is trash.

So now I’m re-writing it all from the ground up, with structure charts and flows he created, that I could have used weeks ago, instead of just being asked to architect the whole thing myself.

Except this time I get a super strict deadline with the constant reminder of my previous failure!!!

Xarn
Jun 26, 2015

Shirec posted:

Once I have gotten to the happy ending, I’ll think about it haha.

Currently I’m trying to contain my anxiety because my boss messaged me around 7 last night about a chunk of code I had been writing, and assuming I’d be working on it at that time. So I ended up working until 10ish, before I figured I had a good stopping place.

This morning, surprise! Turns out all my code is garbage! Why wasn’t I putting this in Redis queues? Why was I carrying this set of data throughout the process? Why was I querying the database like this? Weeks of effort where I had been updating, showing, and talking about what I was doing, all of that is trash.

So now I’m re-writing it all from the ground up, with structure charts and flows he created, that I could have used weeks ago, instead of just being asked to architect the whole thing myself.

Except this time I get a super strict deadline with the constant reminder of my previous failure!!!

At this point I think you are legally allowed to kill him, because nobody would convict ya :v:

rally
Nov 19, 2002

yospos
I’m about to have my first ever interview for a software engineering internship, gained via networking and, for lack of a better term, social engineering. I am about to start my senior year in college and was recommended to this company’s intern recruiter by a professor of mine. I also have three people who are on the team there recommending me as someone who would fit in with the culture and team. Despite all the people backing me I’m nervous as gently caress for this upcoming interview as I have never had my technical knowledge or skills put on the spot in front of a panel of people more skilled and knowledgeable than I am. I guess my point is I really hope they ask me to whiteboard fizzbuzz.

Shirec
Jul 29, 2009

How to cock it up, Fig. I

I went out to lunch with a coworker and was feeling a lot better, more relaxed.

Working this afternoon, I was excited cause I solved a small weird problem that had an esoteric cause, and I went out to tell my coworkers. Boss was holding court and I thought I’d say I figured a thing out and go back to work. He’d been asking about it so he’s want to know, right?

Started to say what I’d discovered and he interrupts and insults me, and then dismissed me by turning away.

I’ve got a coding challenge waiting for me at home tonight for an interview. I’m so tired but I know I’ve got to get this stuff done.

Now he’s complaining about getting rid of car models and booth babes at conventions.

Fellatio del Toro
Mar 21, 2009

Shirec posted:

This morning, surprise! Turns out all my code is garbage! Why wasn’t I putting this in Redis queues? Why was I carrying this set of data throughout the process? Why was I querying the database like this? Weeks of effort where I had been updating, showing, and talking about what I was doing, all of that is trash.

- Me, every time I finish anything

Fellatio del Toro
Mar 21, 2009

The best part of starting any new job is the knowledge that you will never again be responsible for all of your old code

Ither
Jan 30, 2010

The purest truth.

KernelSlanders
May 27, 2013

Rogue operating systems on occasion spread lies and rumors about me.

Fellatio del Toro posted:

The best part of starting any new job is the knowledge that you will never again be responsible for all of your old code

Cinaedus Defututus
Mar 21, 2018

by FactsAreUseless

Shirec posted:

Now he’s complaining about getting rid of car models and booth babes at conventions.

...leave this company

Vincent Valentine
Feb 28, 2006

Murdertime

I started this job a year and a half ago. I was hired as a junior front-end engineer, and I was given junior front-end engineer tasks. This is fair. I was moved to another project within my first month to work with another engineer. I was to continue being given junior engineer tasks. This is also fair. Almost immediately(like, within an hour of the discovery that there was another engineer on the project), this guy says "Oh thank god, that means someone else can work on it now" and straight-up quits. No two weeks, nothing, just loving bails. I was given an extreme sink or swim situation where I had to figure out and do a lot of work on a codebase that was so horrendous that an engineer left the moment the could do so with a clear conscience. I managed to swim, came out a lot better for it. I became the lead on that project, and the lead on two others over the course of the following year. High praise all around, company is glad to have me, etc etc.

That said, I had been mostly working solo. Our front-end team(that's me) was in the US, and our back-end, devops, etc teams were all outsourced. This caused a bit of a problem, as a project manager might say "Hey, why is this thing broken?" and then I'd be on the hook for fixing it because I was the only person awake in the entire world that could do it. That means over the course of the year I learned Java, servers, devops, database, etc all pretty strongly. It had honestly been an invaluable experience, because it meant I advanced my career at a tremendous pace, far more than I had expected.

Fast forward to earlier this week: We are more or less sunsetting all but two projects. As a result, I have been moved onto one of those two projects, and am sitting on a team that actually has other front-end devs on it for the first time in a over a year. The team lead saw that I was hired on as a junior dev, and assigned me a task as such: Please add a field to the form on this page, and send the text to the server. Deadline is two weeks. If you need any help, please ask. If you need an extension, please give at least 3 days of notice so that the sprints scope can be adjusted accordingly.

Of course that took like 10 minutes, and I informed the team lead as such. I can't close the ticket as "complete" because the API that it interacts with has not been updated to have the field that requires the text value, so I can't send the information over. As soon as that field gets added, I'm done. I can fix that field in less than ten minutes. "No, you're a UI dev, that's not your territory, we can't risk you breaking anything"

I haven't had anything to do all week. I am not being given new tickets, because I am a junior developer, and the other tickets are "too hard", and technically I have tickets open. I'm gonna fuckin' lose it, y'all. I was not happy about receiving junior pay while doing senior work, that's for sure, but now I feel like I'm being treated like a child.

On the bright side, now I have time to work on personal projects to expand my resume. I wanted to work at Blizzard because I'm a huge nerd, may as well make a game or something.

downout
Jul 6, 2009

Vincent Valentine posted:

I started this job a year and a half ago. I was hired as a junior front-end engineer, and I was given junior front-end engineer tasks. This is fair. I was moved to another project within my first month to work with another engineer. I was to continue being given junior engineer tasks. This is also fair. Almost immediately(like, within an hour of the discovery that there was another engineer on the project), this guy says "Oh thank god, that means someone else can work on it now" and straight-up quits. No two weeks, nothing, just loving bails. I was given an extreme sink or swim situation where I had to figure out and do a lot of work on a codebase that was so horrendous that an engineer left the moment the could do so with a clear conscience. I managed to swim, came out a lot better for it. I became the lead on that project, and the lead on two others over the course of the following year. High praise all around, company is glad to have me, etc etc.

That said, I had been mostly working solo. Our front-end team(that's me) was in the US, and our back-end, devops, etc teams were all outsourced. This caused a bit of a problem, as a project manager might say "Hey, why is this thing broken?" and then I'd be on the hook for fixing it because I was the only person awake in the entire world that could do it. That means over the course of the year I learned Java, servers, devops, database, etc all pretty strongly. It had honestly been an invaluable experience, because it meant I advanced my career at a tremendous pace, far more than I had expected.

Fast forward to earlier this week: We are more or less sunsetting all but two projects. As a result, I have been moved onto one of those two projects, and am sitting on a team that actually has other front-end devs on it for the first time in a over a year. The team lead saw that I was hired on as a junior dev, and assigned me a task as such: Please add a field to the form on this page, and send the text to the server. Deadline is two weeks. If you need any help, please ask. If you need an extension, please give at least 3 days of notice so that the sprints scope can be adjusted accordingly.

Of course that took like 10 minutes, and I informed the team lead as such. I can't close the ticket as "complete" because the API that it interacts with has not been updated to have the field that requires the text value, so I can't send the information over. As soon as that field gets added, I'm done. I can fix that field in less than ten minutes. "No, you're a UI dev, that's not your territory, we can't risk you breaking anything"

I haven't had anything to do all week. I am not being given new tickets, because I am a junior developer, and the other tickets are "too hard", and technically I have tickets open. I'm gonna fuckin' lose it, y'all. I was not happy about receiving junior pay while doing senior work, that's for sure, but now I feel like I'm being treated like a child.

On the bright side, now I have time to work on personal projects to expand my resume. I wanted to work at Blizzard because I'm a huge nerd, may as well make a game or something.

You need to talk to your boss. Like asap. In fact you probably should be putting in resumes if you are still getting junior pay, and it isn't corrected. You probably should have demanded a pay raise when - "I became the lead on that project" - this happened.

How the gently caress does your boss not see this situation?

Murrah
Mar 22, 2015

Vincent Valentine posted:

I started this job a year and a half ago. I was hired as a junior front-end engineer, and I was given junior front-end engineer tasks. This is fair. I was moved to another project within my first month to work with another engineer. I was to continue being given junior engineer tasks. This is also fair. Almost immediately(like, within an hour of the discovery that there was another engineer on the project), this guy says "Oh thank god, that means someone else can work on it now" and straight-up quits. No two weeks, nothing, just loving bails. I was given an extreme sink or swim situation where I had to figure out and do a lot of work on a codebase that was so horrendous that an engineer left the moment the could do so with a clear conscience. I managed to swim, came out a lot better for it. I became the lead on that project, and the lead on two others over the course of the following year. High praise all around, company is glad to have me, etc etc.

That said, I had been mostly working solo. Our front-end team(that's me) was in the US, and our back-end, devops, etc teams were all outsourced. This caused a bit of a problem, as a project manager might say "Hey, why is this thing broken?" and then I'd be on the hook for fixing it because I was the only person awake in the entire world that could do it. That means over the course of the year I learned Java, servers, devops, database, etc all pretty strongly. It had honestly been an invaluable experience, because it meant I advanced my career at a tremendous pace, far more than I had expected.

Fast forward to earlier this week: We are more or less sunsetting all but two projects. As a result, I have been moved onto one of those two projects, and am sitting on a team that actually has other front-end devs on it for the first time in a over a year. The team lead saw that I was hired on as a junior dev, and assigned me a task as such: Please add a field to the form on this page, and send the text to the server. Deadline is two weeks. If you need any help, please ask. If you need an extension, please give at least 3 days of notice so that the sprints scope can be adjusted accordingly.

Of course that took like 10 minutes, and I informed the team lead as such. I can't close the ticket as "complete" because the API that it interacts with has not been updated to have the field that requires the text value, so I can't send the information over. As soon as that field gets added, I'm done. I can fix that field in less than ten minutes. "No, you're a UI dev, that's not your territory, we can't risk you breaking anything"

I haven't had anything to do all week. I am not being given new tickets, because I am a junior developer, and the other tickets are "too hard", and technically I have tickets open. I'm gonna fuckin' lose it, y'all. I was not happy about receiving junior pay while doing senior work, that's for sure, but now I feel like I'm being treated like a child.

On the bright side, now I have time to work on personal projects to expand my resume. I wanted to work at Blizzard because I'm a huge nerd, may as well make a game or something.

Edit: You know, I really am not sure/ dont know what Im talking about

Murrah fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Mar 24, 2018

pigdog
Apr 23, 2004

by Smythe

Vincent Valentine posted:

Of course that took like 10 minutes, and I informed the team lead as such. I can't close the ticket as "complete" because the API that it interacts with has not been updated to have the field that requires the text value, so I can't send the information over. As soon as that field gets added, I'm done. I can fix that field in less than ten minutes. "No, you're a UI dev, that's not your territory, we can't risk you breaking anything"

I haven't had anything to do all week. I am not being given new tickets, because I am a junior developer, and the other tickets are "too hard", and technically I have tickets open. I'm gonna fuckin' lose it, y'all. I was not happy about receiving junior pay while doing senior work, that's for sure, but now I feel like I'm being treated like a child.
Post a comment on the ticket saying that you have the thing ready to go on your end, and just.... talk to people? Tell them "hey I'm done [for the time being] with my tasks from my end and I need something to do, can I help you out with something?" Here's a chance to shine and be proactive (and maybe pick a thing you like to do). No need to quit the job over it.

huhu
Feb 24, 2006

pigdog posted:

Post a comment on the ticket saying that you have the thing ready to go on your end, and just.... talk to people? Tell them "hey I'm done [for the time being] with my tasks from my end and I need something to do, can I help you out with something?" Here's a chance to shine and be proactive (and maybe pick a thing you like to do). No need to quit the job over it.

That sounds like a great way to spend the next 6 months re-proving who you are and not growing at all.

speng31b
May 8, 2010

downout posted:

You need to talk to your boss. Like asap. In fact you probably should be putting in resumes if you are still getting junior pay, and it isn't corrected. You probably should have demanded a pay raise when - "I became the lead on that project" - this happened.

How the gently caress does your boss not see this situation?

Exactly this. Get the pay rise and title increase to prove what you've accomplished. You can't expect people to treat you a certain way based on past performance alone. Get the title at least; you're under no obligation to disclose past salary in an interview.

Also - not to put into question the value of your accomplishments - but early in your career, when you realize how easy it can be to add value across the stack in an environment others are not pulling their weight - it's tempting to think that you've graduated to senior overnight and become a real expert.

Make sure you don't get "big fish in small pond" syndrome. That will come across badly in interviews at places you'd actually want to work. Don't walk into an interview with a career network engineer and tell them you're an "expert devops" based on your experience putting out fires at a company where the standards were lower.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Shirec posted:

Once I have gotten to the happy ending, I’ll think about it haha.

Currently I’m trying to contain my anxiety because my boss messaged me around 7 last night about a chunk of code I had been writing, and assuming I’d be working on it at that time. So I ended up working until 10ish, before I figured I had a good stopping place.

This morning, surprise! Turns out all my code is garbage! Why wasn’t I putting this in Redis queues? Why was I carrying this set of data throughout the process? Why was I querying the database like this? Weeks of effort where I had been updating, showing, and talking about what I was doing, all of that is trash.

So now I’m re-writing it all from the ground up, with structure charts and flows he created, that I could have used weeks ago, instead of just being asked to architect the whole thing myself.

Except this time I get a super strict deadline with the constant reminder of my previous failure!!!

You didn't fail. Not even close.

As a junior dev with some experience, you've got certain responsibilities. You should be able to implement simple features by yourself, recognize when you're out of your depth, ask for help when you need it, work with other team members productively, and use feedback to improve your work. You should be developing your sense of larger system architecture, best practices, and platform idiosyncrasies, but you shouldn't be expected to handle them by yourself. Doing those things well, without help and guidance, is senior dev work.

As your manager and tech lead, your boss has responsibilities to you, too. He should be creating a positive work environment, doing his best to match work assignments to people's skills and specialties, making judgment calls about the overall structure of the system, and providing effective feedback and guidance. None of those things are easy, and even good managers will screw them up semi-regularly in the same way that even good devs will write boneheaded bugs from time to time, but he should be making an honest effort towards all of them.

You've done your job and lived up to the responsibilities of your role. Your boss has, under duress, started to make a few judgment calls about the system. He's utterly failed to create a positive environment, give you tasks that you can handle, or give you good feedback. If he sat in design and code review for your work, signed off on it, and then came back and said, "no, that's not going to work, you need to change it," then he should be prefacing it with an apology for a big miss on his part.

The conclusion here is still just "your boss is an awful human being and manager, and you should leave," but you should know that this is absolutely not normal and you're not the one who failed.

Space Gopher fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Mar 24, 2018

pigdog
Apr 23, 2004

by Smythe

huhu posted:

That sounds like a great way to spend the next 6 months re-proving who you are and not growing at all.

:what:

I mean, I don't follow your train of thought at all.

As described, that's a clear cut communications issue. The OP is clearly more qualified than they expected, which needs to be communicated. The OP can't actually finish the task due to dependency they can't fulfill, so either getting the access to fix it themselves, or figuring out how to coordinate this with someone who could, is also a communications issue. On the other hand it does nobody any good to sit idle. Asking the team how (s)he could help with sprint goal or whatever else they're working on might be a good idea, since the rest of the team could be busting their rear end in sweat on something, and might appreciate a helping hand.

pigdog fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Mar 24, 2018

Vincent Valentine
Feb 28, 2006

Murdertime

downout posted:

You need to talk to your boss. Like asap. In fact you probably should be putting in resumes if you are still getting junior pay, and it isn't corrected. You probably should have demanded a pay raise when - "I became the lead on that project" - this happened.

How the gently caress does your boss not see this situation?

I didn't ask for a pay raise because, to be completely honest, this job always had an expiration date and so I didn't want to rock the boat and risk changing things up. The chain of events that led to me being the lead engineer on that project was largely being defaulted into the position, and then being tasked with re-building the team given a pool of candidates selected by the project manager. Once the team was set up I was to lead the engineering team to grow it. I found out much later that the project manager on this team was unaware that I was a junior(I was largely handed to them by my supervisor, not the project manager I was assigned to), and I believe that if he knew in advance I would have been pulled off, assigned elsewhere and then someone else would have taken that spot. I was a little worried about proving myself at that point, I didn't want to say my workload was too heavy so early on because I was still shaking off the last bits of imposter syndrome, so I just bucked up and did it. My supervisor knew what was going on, and told me that if things were looking bad they were going to step in, but thankfully everything worked out.


speng31b posted:

Also - not to put into question the value of your accomplishments - but early in your career, when you realize how easy it can be to add value across the stack in an environment others are not pulling their weight - it's tempting to think that you've graduated to senior overnight and become a real expert.

On the one hand, I genuinely do believe I have accomplished a lot very quickly, beyond just contributing across the stack. On one of the projects, I ended up having to restructure not just code, but also redesign the architecture as we were selling the project off to a Korean client that does things differently across every single aspect of the stack, from how it's edited all the way to deployment. That was a huge undertaking that, to be frank, I was not at all confident we were going to successfully pull it off and even less confident in the project manager saying "Yeah, you'll be fine, just work with them and figure it out".

On the other hand, you're right, and I do not at all have some delusions of being some code wizard. I pulled off a lot of stunts that ended up being very successful, but I am not at all under the impression that if I sat down with a devops expert that I would do anything other than embarrass myself. That being said, the work that I was doing was absolutely beyond what the other seniors at my company were being doing.


With regards to all the newest problems: I have absolutely spoken up about this. I spoke up with it when the ticket was assigned, after I was done with it, and then had a sit-down with the team lead and my manager the following day. They basically told me that the tickets I am assigned are not indicative of my skill or their beliefs in my abilities. But that the remaining tickets are too hard for someone in my pay grade, meaning that the people who get paid more than me need to pull that weight to justify their salaries, versus me pulling more weight outside of mine. As of now, no one is really struggling to meet sprint goals, so they feel like their workload distribution is pretty solid overall even if mine personally is off. Last year we had financial troubles that only ended up being solved within the final days of the fiscal year, so any major raise this year is extremely unlikely until we can prove that that won't happen again. I am not happy about any aspect of it, but the logic behind it makes sense.

I'm not quitting anytime soon, but like I said at the beginning I was never intending on staying here forever. I'm not at all interested in marketing analytics and want to work in a field where I actually have an interest in the product being built. That said, I'm not in any rush to bail, and what I meant about expanding my resume in the meantime is that I have plenty of free time to do so and for at least the next few months, it looks like that isn't going to change. I'm a year and a half into this job, I figure I'll round it off to an even 2, take the holidays kind of easy and then look for a new one hard after the new year.

I'm mostly just frustrated and venting, and using that venting to get other peoples insight on what I should do to build my knowledge base. I like web development as I can take the skills I use at work and apply them to projects I build at home. But I was thinking of picking up C++ to have the potential to do UIs in other software, although I hear it is tremendously difficult.

PokeJoe
Aug 24, 2004

hail cgatan


Asking for a raise when you're doing work way above your pay grade is not rocking the boat. They literally said the work you want to and could do is for people that get paid more than you. Ask for more money and do the harder work.

lifg
Dec 4, 2000
<this tag left blank>
Muldoon
The annoying truth is that most companies consider your compensation negotiation complete when you start the job. After that you only get cost of living increases and moderate bumps for promotions. The idea that, “I’m doing the work of an X so I should get paid as an X,” rarely holds water, and often conflicts with the company’s internal rules on salary changes.

There’s a reason why programmers change jobs every 2-4 years, it’s partially to stay fresh, and partially because you’ll never get as big of a salary bump as when you start a new job. These days, the bigger and better-run tech companies are doing a good job of changing that dynamic. But for companies outside of Silicon Valley, moderately sized, or simply very traditional?, you’re up against intractable bureaucracy.

speng31b
May 8, 2010

lifg posted:

The annoying truth is that most companies consider your compensation negotiation complete when you start the job. After that you only get cost of living increases and moderate bumps for promotions. The idea that, “I’m doing the work of an X so I should get paid as an X,” rarely holds water, and often conflicts with the company’s internal rules on salary changes.

There’s a reason why programmers change jobs every 2-4 years, it’s partially to stay fresh, and partially because you’ll never get as big of a salary bump as when you start a new job. These days, the bigger and better-run tech companies are doing a good job of changing that dynamic. But for companies outside of Silicon Valley, moderately sized, or simply very traditional?, you’re up against intractable bureaucracy.

This is sometimes true, but it's important to note that you never know unless you keep an open dialog with your boss and actually ask. I know people who have been stagnant in their careers doing great work because their bosses just assume they love being an IC and would hate to take on management responsibilities. If you're a really good IC, bosses sometimes won't move you out of the role you're kicking rear end at without prompting - why would they want to lose their most effective IC? It's up to you to explain to them how you'd actually add more value in different role.

downout
Jul 6, 2009

lifg posted:

The annoying truth is that most companies consider your compensation negotiation complete when you start the job. After that you only get cost of living increases and moderate bumps for promotions. The idea that, “I’m doing the work of an X so I should get paid as an X,” rarely holds water, and often conflicts with the company’s internal rules on salary changes.

There’s a reason why programmers change jobs every 2-4 years, it’s partially to stay fresh, and partially because you’ll never get as big of a salary bump as when you start a new job. These days, the bigger and better-run tech companies are doing a good job of changing that dynamic. But for companies outside of Silicon Valley, moderately sized, or simply very traditional?, you’re up against intractable bureaucracy.

Yes, but if your title/position is Jr Dev, then there is something the manager can do. And if they do not, then it is time to find a new job.

lifg
Dec 4, 2000
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Muldoon

speng31b posted:

This is sometimes true, but it's important to note that you never know unless you keep an open dialog with your boss and actually ask. I know people who have been stagnant in their careers doing great work because their bosses just assume they love being an IC and would hate to take on management responsibilities. If you're a really good IC, bosses sometimes won't move you out of the role you're kicking rear end at without prompting - why would they want to lose their most effective IC? It's up to you to explain to them how you'd actually add more value in different role.

Good point. Definitely keep your boss in the loop about your frustrations and career goals.

B-Nasty
May 25, 2005

Just remember that as you start to move into Senior-level experience (and hopefully decent pay), that you'll need to start slowing down your job hopping.

Take someone in their mid-late 30s. If they've been working professionally since 22, that could be 5-7 jobs if they've been following the 2-3 year hop plan. At least outside the tech hubs, it's going to start becoming a red flag if you're unable/unwilling to put in some serious time at a company. This actually works out fine, as the salary jumps will start becoming hard to find as you naturally start to top out.

None of this applies, of course, if you are being treated poorly, underpaid, or your skills are dramatically atrophying. Hopefully by that age you should be able to recognize good companies/opportunities and learn where you can settle in for a longer stretch.

Shirec
Jul 29, 2009

How to cock it up, Fig. I

Space Gopher posted:

You didn't fail. Not even close.

As a junior dev with some experience, you've got certain responsibilities. You should be able to implement simple features by yourself, recognize when you're out of your depth, ask for help when you need it, work with other team members productively, and use feedback to improve your work. You should be developing your sense of larger system architecture, best practices, and platform idiosyncrasies, but you shouldn't be expected to handle them by yourself. Doing those things well, without help and guidance, is senior dev work.

As your manager and tech lead, your boss has responsibilities to you, too. He should be creating a positive work environment, doing his best to match work assignments to people's skills and specialties, making judgment calls about the overall structure of the system, and providing effective feedback and guidance. None of those things are easy, and even good managers will screw them up semi-regularly in the same way that even good devs will write boneheaded bugs from time to time, but he should be making an honest effort towards all of them.

You've done your job and lived up to the responsibilities of your role. Your boss has, under duress, started to make a few judgment calls about the system. He's utterly failed to create a positive environment, give you tasks that you can handle, or give you good feedback. If he sat in design and code review for your work, signed off on it, and then came back and said, "no, that's not going to work, you need to change it," then he should be prefacing it with an apology for a big miss on his part.

The conclusion here is still just "your boss is an awful human being and manager, and you should leave," but you should know that this is absolutely not normal and you're not the one who failed.

Thank you, and thank you for expanding on why it's a problem. I know enough, from working as an accountant, to know something is wrong, but I don't know how to explain it to others, except for the big stuff like the gaslighting etc.
I finished a coding challenge and am waiting for hear back, nose to the grindstone and all that. My boss mainly ignores me now (I'm practicing out of sight out of mind which is working really well).

Vincent Valentine, I hope you are able to get more engaging work or bounce soon. One of the reasons I got into dev was I was bored to tears by accounting, and there's nothing like twiddling your thumbs to make one restless.

Pixelboy
Sep 13, 2005

Now, I know what you're thinking...

Shirec posted:

Now he’s complaining about getting rid of car models and booth babes at conventions.

Walk away. Now.

Cirofren
Jun 13, 2005


Pillbug

Vincent Valentine posted:

I'm not quitting anytime soon
You should though, because this:

Vincent Valentine posted:

As of now, no one is really struggling to meet sprint goals, so they feel like their workload distribution is pretty solid overall even if mine personally is off. Last year we had financial troubles that only ended up being solved within the final days of the fiscal year, so any major raise this year is extremely unlikely until we can prove that that won't happen again. I am not happy about any aspect of it, but the logic behind it makes sense.

Is them saying they don't care enough about your professional development or engagement to give you the work that you want, they're not going to pay you more money if they don't absolutely have to, and they're not going to give you work that justifies paying you more.

FZeroRacer
Apr 8, 2009
So I want to actually start attending conferences and do the whole networking thing to improve my chances of finding somewhere new plus pick up some new knowledge. I'll have to pay for them all out of pocket however, because my company won't send me to conferences (even if they're relevant to my work). I mainly do a lot of C# work so I've been looking at Microsoft Build. The price is, well.

Are there any other conferences I might be missing with more reasonable prices? I can afford the ticket price and all, but putting that much down on a single conference is giving me pause.

Xarn
Jun 26, 2015
Check for local(ish) user groups? They are a good start for networking and if you start presenting, the real conf might magically become free :v:

Slimy Hog
Apr 22, 2008

I think I'm getting underpaid at my current job; other than going through the application process and getting offers, is there a good way to determine my worth?

downout
Jul 6, 2009

FZeroRacer posted:

So I want to actually start attending conferences and do the whole networking thing to improve my chances of finding somewhere new plus pick up some new knowledge. I'll have to pay for them all out of pocket however, because my company won't send me to conferences (even if they're relevant to my work). I mainly do a lot of C# work so I've been looking at Microsoft Build. The price is, well.

Are there any other conferences I might be missing with more reasonable prices? I can afford the ticket price and all, but putting that much down on a single conference is giving me pause.

There are a lot of conferences that cost less. Just need to search well in advance (because tickets often sell out) and find what is available within reasonable distance. The meetup app is also a good tool for finding local groups.

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lifg
Dec 4, 2000
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Muldoon

Slimy Hog posted:

I think I'm getting underpaid at my current job; other than going through the application process and getting offers, is there a good way to determine my worth?

Where do you live?

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