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Guinness posted:Officially accepted that offer. Have to/get to drop the bomb at my current employer tomorrow. Both looking forward to and dreading it. There's really nothing realistic they could counter with, so I guess at least it'll be easy to be firm about it. Money aside (and it's a big aside), the numerous lifestyle upgrades and relinquishing of people management to focus on technical leadership is so very appealing. Very much same, good luck to you! Giving notice is such an uncomfortable conversation but it's always like, bitch you made me do this
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Mar 13, 2019 03:25
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Erwin posted:The company has chosen option C, which is that an engineering manager does 40 hours of billable work, manages some engineers, and doesn't get additional pay, just the "satisfaction that come with being a manager." So just log 40 billable work hours and use 3 of them at least for management. gently caress em.
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Mar 13, 2019 03:54
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Gildiss posted:So just log 40 billable work hours and use 3 of them at least for management. You probably have to log those billable work hours against a specific contract, and doing that when your work isn't actually specifically for that contract could be problematic. (Or maybe it's not, I'm not a lawyer, but it feels unwise)
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Mar 13, 2019 05:23
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Has anyone done IT/dev-related volunteer work for nonprofits? I'm thinking about volunteering for some and wonder if I could capitalize my skills from my career for those. Would something like, say, an animal shelter need a website or a database?
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Mar 13, 2019 07:17
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Schneider Heim posted:Has anyone done IT/dev-related volunteer work for nonprofits? I'm thinking about volunteering for some and wonder if I could capitalize my skills from my career for those. Would something like, say, an animal shelter need a website or a database? I once did a weekend hackathon thing that was all charity work. Mostly charitable enterprises needing CRMs, websites, stuff like that. It was a fun little event. I worked on a Drupal site for a local Christian camp.
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Mar 13, 2019 18:59
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Schneider Heim posted:Has anyone done IT/dev-related volunteer work for nonprofits? I'm thinking about volunteering for some and wonder if I could capitalize my skills from my career for those. Would something like, say, an animal shelter need a website or a database?
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Mar 13, 2019 20:12
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I'm going to an onsite interview next week for a Software Development Manager position that's intended to include some actual development, and there's only one question I'm dreading: what's your greatest weakness? I suspect this has been hashed and rehashed a zillion times, but I really want to slam-dunk an answer to this horrible question. The main problem I'm having is that I've necessarily eliminated most of my professional weaknesses over time, which is one of the reasons I've been able to attain my current SDM position. So I'm left with some really lovely weaknesses, and I'd like some opinions on which one I should go with: - My short-term memory sucks. Before mitigating I would seem scatter-brained, because if I got distracted I would absolutely forget something. I've mitigated this quite effectively through the use of detailed to-do lists, immediate follow-ups with emails after conversations, and I always carry pen and paper around with me to record info. - I occasionally suffer from Imposter Syndrome (but then, don't we all?). In a way it's a bit reassuring, because I know I'm not suffering from Dunning-Kruger, but it can be momentarily distracting and sap confidence, which is rather important for an SDM to have! I've mitigated this by gathering a catalog of wins in my head, particularly ones that highlight my expertise. It's hard to say I don't know what I'm doing when I can quickly solve problems that several other developers have struggled with for extended periods of time. - When I get interrupted while I'm in the deep concentration zone, I often cannot keep a flash of momentary frustration off my face. This usually leads to profuse apologies on their part. The mitigation on my part is that I do my best to reassure people that it's really no problem at all. - I'm not sure it's so much a "weakness" as it is a strong preference, but I'm not visually-oriented and really dislike working with UI, and consequently struggle to remain focused while doing so. I've mitigated this mainly by taking on the stuff nobody else wants to do. But, when I must work on UI, I make sure to do so while I'm fresh, like first thing in the morning, so I can barrel through it and get to the stuff I really enjoy. So, oldies, what say you? Which is the least lame weakness? I'm tempted to go with the UI one simply because it's the least likely to even be on the radar in the new position, where I can, y'know, tell *other* people to do UI.
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Mar 13, 2019 23:16
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This is going to be revolutionary I know, but why not be honest? You don't want to work anywhere that expects triangulated answers to this question, and it should be explicitly asked to weed out bullshitters.
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Mar 13, 2019 23:39
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runupon cracker posted:Software Development Manager position that's intended to include some actual development This is a red flag that often indicates that you've got management responsibilities on top of engineering team-lead responsibilities. Some places hedge their bets by saying you'll be 50/50 on your time between the two, but this just means that the number of hours you work each week will swell to something more like 75/75. quote:I suspect this has been hashed and rehashed a zillion times, but I really want to slam-dunk an answer to this horrible question. The answer to this question is less about honest soul-searching and more about selling a negative that can be considered a positive. Forget your first two points, as those paint you as someone who will struggle with the management portion of your position. The third and fourth ones aren't bad, so I would suggest sticking with those. The third one at least shows that you have some emotional IQ and are at aware of other people's needs. A little rewording on the fourth one can show that you are someone that is willing to suck it up and eat your vegetables before jumping into dessert. Management can include some unpleasant duties, like having "the talk" with a report about a performance improvement plan, dealing with prima donnas on your team, and having to micromanage and nudge people. Showing that you aren't overly fond of these aspects, but are willing to power through them, is important.
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Mar 13, 2019 23:41
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Vulture Culture posted:Make sure you're around to support it or you define a transition plan with whoever comes in after you. One thing nonprofits don't need is to be committed to a new workflow, process, or web presence and then not have anyone around to support it after the fact. True. I used to do some work for a non-profit - they actually gave the development job I applied for to someone else, but asked if I could sort out their hardware and software issues. Their previous guy had set them up with a bunch of Ubuntu boxes that they never used because they couldn't work out how do anything with them (probably because they didn't know the root password, and it was a pretty elderly desktop environment on there). Staff were actually bringing in their own laptops from home just to use Windows 7 and Excel. I ended up taking them through the process to get free nonprofit licenses from MS, cleaned everything out, actually setup a password on their wifi, and did a large amount of cable management, actually found drivers for all their printers and scanners and they were really very happy.
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Mar 14, 2019 00:38
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runupon cracker posted:... I've been asked this a few times but unfortunately I can't remember what I answered. Be honest, but phrase them in a positive or humorous manner (depending on the interviewer and how well you are getting on), avoiding negative terms and words, and anything that might give a hint of insecurity; * I can get very deeply involved in problem solving, and sometimes I can come across as standoffish, even though that is certainly not the case. * I enjoy my work, sometimes so much that I need to remind myself to turn off or address other tasks. * I'm naturally a highly organised person, but it does mean I spend a fair amount of time taking notes and planning. * I'm very strong on backend and frontend development, but I definitely have a preference for backend. The interviewer likely knows the techie mindset, can sympathise and recognise all the behaviours above as positive things in moderation. If they try to dig deeper on any aspect, they may be trying to identify a specific issue they've had with previous staff (antisocial, or dishonest, or lazy), try and identify what that worry is from their line of questioning, and try and find a way to reassure them. cynic fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Mar 14, 2019 |
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Mar 14, 2019 00:51
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hendersa posted:The answer to this question is less about honest soul-searching and more about selling a negative that can be considered a positive. I completely disagree. I think doing this comes out sounding like bullshit, no matter how well thought out, and interviewers can tell. When interviewers ask this question, they're not looking for the most clever answer, they're trying to see if you're an ego lord who thinks they can do no wrong. Being able to own up to one's shortcomings is important, and people who can't tend to be impossible to give feedback to. Personally I would go with the short-term memory thing, because it's clear that you recognize a problem, realize it's on you to fix it, and you've developed strategies to help mitigate it. Plus it is actually useful for your manager to know - if they know that you are poo poo at receiving verbal directions, they can email you instead.
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Mar 14, 2019 01:15
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2nd Rate Poster posted:This is going to be revolutionary I know, but why not be honest? I do want to be honest, which is why I listed things I truly consider to be weaknesses.
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Mar 14, 2019 01:27
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hendersa posted:This is a red flag that often indicates that you've got management responsibilities on top of engineering team-lead responsibilities. Some places hedge their bets by saying you'll be 50/50 on your time between the two, but this just means that the number of hours you work each week will swell to something more like 75/75. From the POV of those being managed I would much rather work for someone who still codes than a paper pusher. My best managers have been the managers with the best technical chops.
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Mar 14, 2019 01:30
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runupon cracker posted:there's only one question I'm dreading: what's your greatest weakness? Interviewer: "What's your greatest weakness?" Applicant: "Well... I'm too honest." Interviewer: "*heh* I don't really think that's a weakne..." Applicant: "I don't give a gently caress what you think." Real answer: they're looking for: - not so arrogant as to think they're perfect - can recognize their faults - makes an attempt to mitigate them Faults with your work process are good, because they're innocuous. Your first example (the short term memory one) is perfect. I don't think it's a good idea to bring up faults that might suggest emotional or social issues like Imposter Syndrome or (say) interrupting people.
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Mar 14, 2019 02:11
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vonnegutt posted:I completely disagree. I think doing this comes out sounding like bullshit, no matter how well thought out, and interviewers can tell. When interviewers ask this question, they're not looking for the most clever answer, they're trying to see if you're an ego lord who thinks they can do no wrong. Being able to own up to one's shortcomings is important, and people who can't tend to be impossible to give feedback to. Totally agree, give them a real weakness. Being able to admit imperfection shows maturity and self-awareness. Dressing up a positive as a negative is easily seen through.
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Mar 14, 2019 02:40
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I can't remember the last time I was asked that particular question. I've always thought it was dumb. If I were asked it now, I think what I'd try to do is talk about something I had been doing wrong, how I recognized it was a problem, and what I did about it. You have plenty of material on that front, you just want to sell it as "I'm not perfect, but I can talk about how I've recognized and compensated for those imperfections in the past." That feels like a more positive direction to take the question in than basically being asked to go dunk on myself for a bit. Unrelated: is anyone else getting a deluge of headhunter emails right around now? They seem to be hitting harder now for me than usual. Which is funny because I am looking to move (but not to your stupid cryptocurrency startup, guys, so stop trying already) but there should be no way they've figured that out.
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Mar 14, 2019 02:53
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I think a bunch of firms have quarterly appraisals based on whatever metrics, and the headhunters are trying to look good.
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Mar 14, 2019 03:02
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Remember when there was that story few years back about how Big Data (advertisers) knew a woman was pregnant before she did? Yeah, like that but for recruiters. 
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Mar 14, 2019 03:20
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DevOps. Is this something worth staying in or should I look to get out? I have 11 years of experience. Last few years are 1 year C# app dev, 1 year JS front end, ~3.5 years of DevOps with Chef/Terraform/AWS. The last half year or so I've been an "SRE" at a new location and the job is honestly mostly meetings and project management so I want to get out of this particular job. I'm not quite sure if I should re-up on DevOps or take a hard cut-over to pure dev. I got spooked at the last DevOps place I was at because it became clear that the org was not interested in stability/repeatability/automation, but would rather pay cheaper employees to hit buttons in the AWS console. My whole department was downsized and outsourced over six months. I was lucky enough to see the writing on the wall and get out before the real layoffs hit. I've done a couple of on-site interviews in the past month and I was passed on for not having as in-depth relevant application development as they would have liked. The other folks on the teams were a couple years out from being full time Rails devs. My nearly five years old JS experience really didn't keep up, so I see my demonstrable dev skills fading. On the other end, I don't want to go full operations because I see those jobs getting sucked up by the cloud. One recent interviewer told me a story about a three DBA team shrinking to being about a quarter of the one SRE's job. I could probably get a job setting up Kubernetes on EC2, but those sort of jobs could easily fade into everyone using cloud managed K8S like EKS. The hybrid role did get me a huge pay raise and easy to land interviews for a few years here, but I have this sinking feeling those sorts of roles will be absorbed into pure dev, pure cloud architect, pure ops. This all might be very localized to my job market, which is Chicago. I might have gotten unlucky by interviewing at a couple of Rails heavy shops in a row. Has anyone seen any slow, broad changes themselves? Any olds here who got into the DevOps space earlier or around the same time as me have similar experiences or nah?
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Mar 14, 2019 03:31
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vonnegutt posted:I completely disagree. I think doing this comes out sounding like bullshit, no matter how well thought out, and interviewers can tell. When interviewers ask this question, they're not looking for the most clever answer, they're trying to see if you're an ego lord who thinks they can do no wrong. Being able to own up to one's shortcomings is important, and people who can't tend to be impossible to give feedback to. Oh, I didn't mean to advise anyone to cook up some clever lie or try to BS the interviewer or anything like that. I meant to pick shortcomings that could be considered to be a positive, too. These two are good examples of that: cynic posted:* I can get very deeply involved in problem solving, and sometimes I can come across as standoffish, even though that is certainly not the case.
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Mar 14, 2019 03:32
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RED TEXT BIG GUN posted:On the other end, I don't want to go full operations because I see those jobs getting sucked up by the cloud. One recent interviewer told me a story about a three DBA team shrinking to being about a quarter of the one SRE's job. I could probably get a job setting up Kubernetes on EC2, but those sort of jobs could easily fade into everyone using cloud managed K8S like EKS. I've been seeing a lot of press releases about automating this kind of thing the last few months. In particular there are a couple of companies that do nothing but write software to automate and streamline Kubernetes related tasks. I hadn't realized they'd been so successful.
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Mar 14, 2019 03:38
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cynic posted:True. I used to do some work for a non-profit - they actually gave the development job I applied for to someone else, but asked if I could sort out their hardware and software issues. Their previous guy had set them up with a bunch of Ubuntu boxes that they never used because they couldn't work out how do anything with them (probably because they didn't know the root password, and it was a pretty elderly desktop environment on there). Staff were actually bringing in their own laptops from home just to use Windows 7 and Excel. I ended up taking them through the process to get free nonprofit licenses from MS, cleaned everything out, actually setup a password on their wifi, and did a large amount of cable management, actually found drivers for all their printers and scanners and they were really very happy. Thank you, this is the perfect example of the work I'd like to do. (You can get nonprofit licenses from Microsoft? Wow.)
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Mar 14, 2019 03:42
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Schneider Heim posted:(You can get nonprofit licenses from Microsoft? Wow.) MS is surprisingly good about this kind of thing. They pretty much give their stuff away to schools and students too. It's probably a net win for them since it ensures they continue to dominate the market, but they could certainly be more evil than they are.
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Mar 14, 2019 03:50
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LLSix posted:MS is surprisingly good about this kind of thing. They pretty much give their stuff away to schools and students too. It's probably a net win for them since it ensures they continue to dominate the market, but they could certainly be more evil than they are. Yeah, I survived for more than 5 years on the free Windows XP/Office 2003 licenses they gave out in my uni. Though I wonder what sort of stuff you can't do on Libre/Open/GDocs.
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Mar 14, 2019 04:30
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Schneider Heim posted:Yeah, I survived for more than 5 years on the free Windows XP/Office 2003 licenses they gave out in my uni. Though I wonder what sort of stuff you can't do on Libre/Open/GDocs. The buttons look different and it confuses common users.
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Mar 14, 2019 10:06
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Schneider Heim posted:Yeah, I survived for more than 5 years on the free Windows XP/Office 2003 licenses they gave out in my uni. Though I wonder what sort of stuff you can't do on Libre/Open/GDocs.
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Mar 14, 2019 12:42
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Vulture Culture posted:LibreOffice is still a slow, bloated shitshow of an interface and Google Docs might as well be abandonware. It's 2019 and you still can't define custom styles Out of curiosity, what makes you say Google docs is absndonware?
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Mar 14, 2019 14:07
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On the topic of greatest weakness, what has always worked for me is to pick something that is genuinely a weakness of yours, but also something that you've become self-aware of and taken steps to mitigate. Don't give a weakness that you've done nothing about or that you only just discovered. Even if it was years ago and you've done a ton of work on it, just say that. I take the question not as "what is your great weakness", but "what is something about your way of working that has been challenging to you or others in the past, and what have you done to resolve it?".
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Mar 14, 2019 14:28
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The Dark Wind posted:On the topic of greatest weakness, what has always worked for me is to pick something that is genuinely a weakness of yours, but also something that you've become self-aware of and taken steps to mitigate. Don't give a weakness that you've done nothing about or that you only just discovered. Even if it was years ago and you've done a ton of work on it, just say that. I take the question not as "what is your great weakness", but "what is something about your way of working that has been challenging to you or others in the past, and what have you done to resolve it?". Yeah, this. If I were interviewing someone, I'd want to know what they're bad at. Nobody is perfect. But someone can be imperfect, aware of their imperfections, and find ways to cover for that in a professional setting.
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Mar 14, 2019 14:42
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My answer to the 'greatest weakness' question goes "I tend to get into Analysis Paralysis, so, to cope with that, I write out my first three to five approaches with pros and cons, rank them and focus on the best. If it turns out to not be the best later, well, hey everyone claims to be Agile, so we'll just refactor it, maybe based on my notes for other approaches." That's true and the part about everyone being agile is jokey enough to lighten the moment. Careful Drums posted:Out of curiosity, what makes you say Google docs is absndonware? Looks like he wants custom styles for some reason.
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Mar 14, 2019 16:13
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The Dark Wind posted:On the topic of greatest weakness, what has always worked for me is to pick something that is genuinely a weakness of yours, but also something that you've become self-aware of and taken steps to mitigate. Don't give a weakness that you've done nothing about or that you only just discovered. Even if it was years ago and you've done a ton of work on it, just say that. I take the question not as "what is your great weakness", but "what is something about your way of working that has been challenging to you or others in the past, and what have you done to resolve it?".  I've only been asked that question once or twice but I talked about how my natural inclination is to procrastinate, then talked about the steps I had taken to mitigate that and talked about concrete ways that demonstrate the improvement
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Mar 14, 2019 20:10
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The Dark Wind posted:On the topic of greatest weakness, what has always worked for me is to pick something that is genuinely a weakness of yours, but also something that you've become self-aware of and taken steps to mitigate. Don't give a weakness that you've done nothing about or that you only just discovered. Even if it was years ago and you've done a ton of work on it, just say that. I take the question not as "what is your great weakness", but "what is something about your way of working that has been challenging to you or others in the past, and what have you done to resolve it?". This is what I do. I talk about how I can get easily distracted, and how it can affect my ability to finish longer projects. Then I talk about steps I take to mitigate, listening to music when I need to focus, break things up into smaller tasks, keep track of them on Trello, etc.
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Mar 14, 2019 20:20
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i got en exit interview questionairre and the answer to literally every question on it was "remote work"
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Mar 14, 2019 20:47
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Careful Drums posted:Out of curiosity, what makes you say Google docs is absndonware?
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Mar 14, 2019 22:54
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Vulture Culture posted:Beyond the recent style updates to make the menu fonts gigantic, I haven't seen a visible update on it in years Man, we should be celebrating when a big company doesn't pointlessly tweak something that still works fine. What important functionality is it missing?
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Mar 14, 2019 23:20
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Man, we should be celebrating when a big company doesn't pointlessly tweak something that still works fine. What important functionality is it missing? Embedded videos and not-terrible math support would both be really nice to have.
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Mar 14, 2019 23:34
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Man, we should be celebrating when a big company doesn't pointlessly tweak something that still works fine. What important functionality is it missing? Sheets was updated in 2016 and regressed XY scatter plots to the point of uselessness. The XY Scatter plot is a cheap hack where it just calls the X-values "labels" so you only get 1 set of X points. The only options I see for "give me 3 colored sets of points" are 1) make 3 charts and throw them together in paint 2) color each point individually with 6 GUI clicks (doesn't work for 100, much less 1000). Or 3) sort all my x-values and bodge the closest points together. Google groups has very helpful answers about how to do this on the old version by adding multiple series, the thread's been closed with a pointer to the new documentation which doesn't mention this use case is now impossible.
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Mar 15, 2019 02:02
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Nippashish posted:Embedded videos and not-terrible math support would both be really nice to have. What unholy reason could there possibly be to embedded videos in a text document?
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Mar 15, 2019 05:15
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LLSix posted:What unholy reason could there possibly be to embedded videos in a text document? It could be a spreadsheet.
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Mar 15, 2019 05:23
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