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User posted:An undergrad degree in CS is observably worthless, so you should just treat them like a smart person that went to a boot camp or self taught or something. Run them through your process and be fair. I don't disagree with "run them through your process" (aren't you doing that with everyone?). My experience has been that boot-camp grads have some very surprising gaps compared to a new CS grad. If the boot-camper has all the skills you need or your company is willing to invest, then that's awesome because they're much cheaper. I've mostly been at places where the company needs (or believes it needs) basic understanding of algorithms and data structures which boot-campers rarely have and CS grads generally do. quote:A masters is actually negative signal. It's usually just some con artist who thinks that wasting another year and a half in school is going to bring the big bucks. And it's kind of true, but if you want someone who actually gets things done then hard pass. It's almost always someone from India doing a masters to look for employment. I don't think it's a negative signal, but they're probably not any better than undergrad. quote:PhDs are another matter. If they're from a good program then effectively they actually do have industry experience, it's just been at slave labor rates while their advisor steals all the credit. If you think they are going to be a good fit, then joking about this will virtually guarantee they accept your offer. Weird. I didn't see any CS profs stealing work. (Plenty of that in the humanities at my school, though.) I'd say a PhD applying for a job where it's not a requirement is a mild negative signal. They've spent at least 9 years of school to be allowed to do top research and now they want to work as some poo poo-tier coder? Either their degree isn't actually worth a PhD or they've suffered from some burn-out.
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May 27, 2019 12:55
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Mniot posted:I'd say a PhD applying for a job where it's not a requirement is a mild negative signal. They've spent at least 9 years of school to be allowed to do top research and now they want to work as some poo poo-tier coder? Either their degree isn't actually worth a PhD or they've suffered from some burn-out. Or they got rejected a few times for a lack of real world experience and now they get rejected from entry level jobs because they are too skilled. Seems they cannot catch a break.
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May 27, 2019 13:38
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Mniot posted:I'd say a PhD applying for a job where it's not a requirement is a mild negative signal. They've spent at least 9 years of school to be allowed to do top research and now they want to work as some poo poo-tier coder? Either their degree isn't actually worth a PhD or they've suffered from some burn-out. I have heard this from so many loving recruiters even some years into my career: "You have a PhD, why are you coding?" "Well, I'd like to choose where I live and get paid well and do mostly interesting work AND not have to do all the poo poo that's involved in getting tenured." People don't really get how cutthroat and Hobbesian academia can be. For all its faults private industry is much less stressful and far more lucrative.
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May 27, 2019 14:04
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I echo everyone saying that a CS degree is a very positive signal on a resume compared to a boot-camper. I work at a company in the financial services industry, not FANG where a CS degree may just be assumed.
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May 27, 2019 14:08
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I've hired a bunch of both CS and Bootcamp grads. The biggest difference I've seen is that, generally, the CS grads will probably have a longer tenure in the field vs a bootcamp grad who's doing it because their previous career wasn't what they wanted it to be (rewarding, interesting, lucrative enough) and they're trying it out now. Basically, if you don't burn out after doing it for 4 years at school (and you were probably doing it before university), then you'll probably be fine doing it for the foreseeable future.
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May 27, 2019 14:46
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Mniot posted:I'd say a PhD applying for a job where it's not a requirement is a mild negative signal. They've spent at least 9 years of school to be allowed to do top research and now they want to work as some poo poo-tier coder? Either their degree isn't actually worth a PhD or they've suffered from some burn-out.
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May 27, 2019 16:00
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All the banks that hired from my master's program didn't seem to view it as a negative signal. I think the idea that a master's is bad is something very unique to Silicon Valley, and even there it's mostly the startups.
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May 27, 2019 16:39
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ultrafilter posted:All the banks that hired from my master's program didn't seem to view it as a negative signal. I think the idea that a master's is bad is something very unique to Silicon Valley, and even there it's mostly the startups. It's definitely a thing in the DC area, it seems like a combination of visa nonsense and lifers in government contracting.
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May 27, 2019 16:58
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Mniot posted:I'd say a PhD applying for a job where it's not a requirement is a mild negative signal. They've spent at least 9 years of school to be allowed to do top research and now they want to work as some poo poo-tier coder? Either their degree isn't actually worth a PhD or they've suffered from some burn-out. To add on to everyone else - look at how many people get PhDs every year. Now look at how many research positions open every year. Maybe drop into the grad school thread in these forums. 'You couldn't land one of the tiny number of research jobs available and therefore you must be poo poo' is a nuclear hot level of ignorant bad take.
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May 27, 2019 20:16
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Sign posted:It's definitely a thing in the DC area, it seems like a combination of visa nonsense and lifers in government contracting. You're talking about master's programs in the DC area being kinda poo poo? In general or for CS specifically
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May 27, 2019 21:30
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feedmegin posted:To add on to everyone else - look at how many people get PhDs every year. Now look at how many research positions open every year. Maybe drop into the grad school thread in these forums. 'You couldn't land one of the tiny number of research jobs available and therefore you must be poo poo' is a nuclear hot level of ignorant bad take. I work with a particle physics PhD who worked at Los Alamos National Lab and now he write groovy to configure Jenkins because it's lower stress and pays better. He's a really smart guy and he's a pleasure to work with.
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May 27, 2019 21:34
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prisoner of waffles posted:You're talking about master's programs in the DC area being kinda poo poo? In general or for CS specifically I was referring to people with Masters in the DC area. The only local programs I have any knowledge is are UMD and John's Hopkins which both seem good, although the UMD one seems to have a more academic bent than practical.
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May 27, 2019 21:40
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feedmegin posted:To add on to everyone else - look at how many people get PhDs every year. Now look at how many research positions open every year. Maybe drop into the grad school thread in these forums. 'You couldn't land one of the tiny number of research jobs available and therefore you must be poo poo' is a nuclear hot level of ignorant bad take. As a PhD, can confirm. Grad school is a scam to get professors cheap labor. A lot of people go to it because they enjoy something and do not consider the career path ramifications. User posted:I work with a particle physics PhD who worked at Los Alamos National Lab and now he write groovy to configure Jenkins because it's lower stress and pays better. He's a really smart guy and he's a pleasure to work with. I work at an unnamed place similar enough to that (and get paid to code) but every now and then I dream of cashing out to industry for those exact reasons. If someone threw my resume out simply because it said PhD, well, I guess I probably wouldn't have wanted to work with that person anyway.
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May 28, 2019 00:03
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User posted:I work with a particle physics PhD who worked at Los Alamos National Lab and now he write groovy to configure Jenkins because it's lower stress and pays better. He's a really smart guy and he's a pleasure to work with.
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May 28, 2019 00:28
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Which is the worse career move, PhD or PHP?
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May 28, 2019 00:33
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PHP pay doesn't max out at $30k.
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May 28, 2019 00:52
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rt4 posted:Which is the worse career move, PhD or PHP? getting a phd takes an average of 8.2 years of school to achieve, whereas php proficiency can be acquired by running an internet forum for a couple of months and/or huffing paint (possibly at the same time.) also php pays more. Bruegels Fuckbooks fucked around with this message at 01:32 on May 28, 2019 |
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May 28, 2019 01:17
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I applied for a cloud sysadmin job and they are asking for a tech assessment of three relatively complex cloud formation templates before they will even offer an hr screen. Is that a red flag to anyone else? I checked them out on Glassdoor and there’s a worrying trend of overworking in the reviews. Just wondering if I am being paranoid that they are fishing for free template work.
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May 28, 2019 02:21
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SnatchRabbit posted:I applied for a cloud sysadmin job and they are asking for a tech assessment of three relatively complex cloud formation templates before they will even offer an hr screen. Is that a red flag to anyone else? I checked them out on Glassdoor and there’s a worrying trend of overworking in the reviews. Just wondering if I am being paranoid that they are fishing for free template work.
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May 28, 2019 02:57
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ultrafilter posted:PHP pay doesn't max out at $30k. Certainly biases more towards it than any other plang I'm aware of.
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May 28, 2019 17:15
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Munkeymon posted:Certainly biases more towards it than any other plang I'm aware of.
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May 28, 2019 19:43
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Adding on the the Masters chat. Getting a Masters in comp sci is a pretty traditional way for someone to make a career change. It might not be ideal in the age of bootcamps, but it's pretty weird to call it a negative signal.
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May 28, 2019 20:59
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Mniot posted:I'd say a PhD applying for a job where it's not a requirement is a mild negative signal. They've spent at least 9 years of school to be allowed to do top research and now they want to work as some poo poo-tier coder? Either their degree isn't actually worth a PhD or they've suffered from some burn-out. My phd is in math, not cs, and I can assure you there was nothing 'top' about my research.
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May 28, 2019 23:56
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lifg posted:Adding on the the Masters chat. Getting a Masters in comp sci is a pretty traditional way for someone to make a career change. It might not be ideal in the age of bootcamps, but it's pretty weird to call it a negative signal. The negative signal is in people who don't like computers trying to computer touch The way to be turbo crashingly insanely bad is through actually not liking computers but still doing them. You get more of those from masters than bachelor's or non degreed peeps
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May 29, 2019 00:08
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When a company can’t or won’t budge on base comp, what else do you all negotiate for? Already has unlimited vacation and flexible hours/flexible WFH. Signing bonus? Something else?
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May 29, 2019 00:13
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dantheman650 posted:When a company can’t or won’t budge on base comp, what else do you all negotiate for? Already has unlimited vacation and flexible hours/flexible WFH. Signing bonus? Something else? Unlimited < defined vacation hth Ask for 5 weeks on the balance sheet
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May 29, 2019 00:16
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Signing bonus, stock options, severance package, educational reimbursement
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May 29, 2019 00:21
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bob dobbs is dead posted:Unlimited < defined vacation hth Yeah. I’ve heard this a lot. But asked the engineers there and they definitely use it. At any rate I only have 15 days at my current company. Asked for and received a signing bonus. Woohoo I guess - I’m taking a new job! 17% salary increase and a better title. I’m a Software Engineer III now!
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May 29, 2019 00:49
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I'm impressed at the number of PhDs in-thread, but I don't think you're actually disagreeing with my post. Like, how is "I spent 6 years working 24/7 for $30k/year before I realized that I don't want to do PhD work" not "some burn-out"?
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May 29, 2019 00:53
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dantheman650 posted:When a company can’t or won’t budge on base comp, what else do you all negotiate for? Already has unlimited vacation and flexible hours/flexible WFH. Signing bonus? Something else? Signing bonus and stock/equity (RSUs, preferably, if public) would be the big ones. If its a startup, though, the equity may as well be toilet paper. Heavily, heavily discount the "value" of startup equity, or really most any private company unless there is a clear path to an IPO. Companies are usually pretty willing to offer a fairly substantial signing bonus in negotiations, since it's a fixed one-time cost (excepting clawback situations). My last job offer got sweetened with an extra $10k signing bonus without any hesitation, and that's pretty tame compared to some in the industry.
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May 29, 2019 01:00
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Sometimes applicable: paternity/maternity leave
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May 29, 2019 01:02
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Startup equity is priced perfectly by the strike price
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May 29, 2019 01:08
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Especially if it's a public company, RSUs all the way. If you hold onto the shares and the company beats the S&P even a little (and most tech does), then it will, over the years, be far and away your largest comp factor.
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May 29, 2019 01:11
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(this post is long and gets pretty E/N, you have been warned) Speaking of burn-out, I'm pretty burnt out at my job. Which feels ridiculous, because it's a Good Job in terms of pay, benefits, location, etc, and an Alphabet job to boot. But (as some of you may recall) my team got put through the wringer about a year ago. This culminated in a six-month period during which we had an absentee people manager, 4 out of 6 devs were brand-new external hires, and the 1 of the remainder that wasn't me was the type that just keeps their head down and churns out code with no interest in personal interaction or mentoring. So I spent those six months working like hell keeping the team together and our goals on-track, and getting the newbies up to speed. I was emotionally invested in the success of the team, and we did succeed (or at any rate didn't fall flat on our faces like we would have if I'd imitated the other non-newbie)...but at the end of it I got a really, really lovely performance review process. Our people manager left the company immediately before perf started. Their replacement delivered perf results remotely instead of in-person, and the actual perf results were blinkeringly out of touch with reality. Like, no mention of the leadership work you did or how you kept the team alive, lots of mentioning of how you didn't do much coding and the projects you were nominally responsible for didn't get any attention, and an overall "average" score. Following that was a series of fairly emotional meetings with management that made it clear that they didn't even see what the problem was. They declared that I couldn't get a better perf score because those are reserved for people that demonstrate achievement at the next job ladder level, which I (truthfully) hadn't done (NB this isn't the Google perf scoring system -- here, idiotically, there's no score between "achieves requirements of current job level" and "achieves requirements of next job level"). Considering the functionally-nonexistent amount of support we had, I don't believe it was possible for someone in my position to demonstrate L+1 performance unless they were an under-ranked employee who had past experience working at L+1. Plus, all I was really looking for was a simple "thank you, I'm sorry things got so hosed up here." So yeah, I no longer believe in my leadership, which makes it hard to believe in the job. I haven't enjoyed work for the past ~4 months at least, and it's definitely contributing to depression. Which ironically makes it harder to muster the energy to do a job hunt, even though it's pretty easy to find new Alphabet jobs on the internal job board. I'm having trouble disentangling my burnout for this job from "well maybe now I don't want to do software dev as a career any more", which is a pretty drat scary prospect to contemplate. I've been doing software for ~20 years now (15 professionally), and it's by far the most marketable of my skills. But I really don't want to do it right now. I guess what I'm asking for is perspective, especially if any of y'all have dealt with these issues yourself, and what if anything you did about it. * Included with this was "But hey, if you continue your leadership work and do more programming, next perf review should be different!" Which is a story I've heard the last four perf reviews -- "this cycle you did average, but from everything we've seen next cycle you should get a better rating." I never get negative feedback (except for the one "code more" I guess...not that anyone told me during that cycle that I wasn't doing enough coding), and yet somehow my performance rating never improves either. I'm damned certain that I won't be getting a better perf score this upcoming cycle, assuming I'm still around for it, because my motivation has been in the shitter.
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May 29, 2019 01:55
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:(this post is long and gets pretty E/N, you have been warned) Coincidentally https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/05/28/burnout-official-medical-diagnosis-says-who/1256229001/. TFA posted:According to the health guidelines, burnout is categorized by the following symptoms: Getting screwed on your performance review is par for the course and why company hopping is a thing. I got a "needs improvement" review once at a big company you've heard of because it took me 10 months to deliver a complete bug for bug compatible service replacement, using TDD, for an undocumented special purpose tool when my management had promised it in 9 months. So I changed companies and got a 40% raise. Edit: In my experience at big companies, the line managers don't really have all that much influence over your review. I'd estimate it as around 10-20% manager, 30-40% peers, and 50% director+ level managers' perceptions of you. And since people at that level have no idea what you're actually doing, the results are basically a crapshoot. User fucked around with this message at 03:11 on May 29, 2019 |
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May 29, 2019 03:02
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Sorry man, that sounds lovely. Performance rating systems exist to justify management treating you in A Way regardless of how That Way corresponds (or doesn't correspond) to your actual work. The absence of an actual person paying attention to your team seems like a root cause of the half-assed performance review. Is it also a symptom of your team's work not being seen as very important?
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May 29, 2019 03:24
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:(this post is long and gets pretty E/N, you have been warned) It sounds like your career is a crab walk at this point: not up, not down, just sideways. It sounds like your organization doesn't value the work you did--even if it was what had to be done and it is representative of actual leadership. It also doesn't sound like you have much chemistry with any of these people either. Do you have friends in other teams? I can't imagine anything changing there so you have to find your happiness elsewhere. I wonder what the N+1 kind of requirements are. I'm used to engineering levels correlating to some amount of scope for who benefits on success--or at least who suffers it you gently caress up. At the lowest possible level of something like an intern, there should be little consequence of a kind. At a level higher, you effect your immediate team and your first level manager. At the next, the team and teams and the second-level manager are in trouble too if you gently caress up. And so forth. If you can't imagine spectacularly loving up in a way to have that kind of impact then you're not able to hit that hard and/or you are not in a place where you could even try to hit that hard. So I don't know how your organization lays this all out. Regarding co-locating managers and such, the only time I ever got promoted was the time I had the same, local, manager for over a year.
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May 29, 2019 04:45
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prisoner of waffles posted:Sorry man, that sounds lovely. Counterpoint: I once got an "exceeds expectations" because I had no direct manager for 7 months of that year and expectations were in fact kind of low because of that and I exceeded them. In retrospect it's probably the most fair review I've ever gotten. The review process at big companies is at least 50% luck, or factors beyond your control if you prefer. It's just part of the game so the key takeaway is don't take it personally.
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May 29, 2019 05:06
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User posted:Edit: In my experience at big companies, the line managers don't really have all that much influence over your review. I'd estimate it as around 10-20% manager, 30-40% peers, and 50% director+ level managers' perceptions of you. And since people at that level have no idea what you're actually doing, the results are basically a crapshoot. Yeah, the claim from my direct manager (the new one, not the one that left immediately before perf) was that the director had heard that a project I was responsible for was failing, and that we hadn't made any progress on it in the last six months. Well no poo poo, literally the only work that had been done on the project in the last year+ was getting it to a barely-running state before I got dragged away to work on more important stuff. ...in retrospect this does explain an awful lot.  Rocko Bonaparte posted:It sounds like your career is a crab walk at this point: not up, not down, just sideways. It sounds like your organization doesn't value the work you did--even if it was what had to be done and it is representative of actual leadership. It also doesn't sound like you have much chemistry with any of these people either. Do you have friends in other teams? I can't imagine anything changing there so you have to find your happiness elsewhere. Oh, I'm absolutely not planning to stay where I am. It's just hard to muster the energy to do a job hunt right now, and I'm worried that wherever I end up I'll still be burnt out. I like my immediate teammates. I like the other teams at the company that my team works for. I like the domain. I like a decent proportion of the problems that we have to solve. I don't like having managers who are alternately helpless at project planning, never available, or helpless at politics. I don't like the work load, or the fact that most of the many known issues the team is facing that require assistance from on high have not been addressed. And I'm sick of not getting any recognition for how important my work is. quote:I wonder what the N+1 kind of requirements are. Not that being a linchpin is sufficient to demonstrate L+1 impact, of course. User posted:Counterpoint: I once got an "exceeds expectations" because I had no direct manager for 7 months of that year and expectations were in fact kind of low because of that and I exceeded them. In retrospect it's probably the most fair review I've ever gotten. The review process at big companies is at least 50% luck, or factors beyond your control if you prefer. It's just part of the game so the key takeaway is don't take it personally. This is basically what I wanted, except my company doesn't have an "exceeds expectations" rating, just a gigantic bucket of "performing at L", another bucket of "performing at L+1", and then three smaller buckets for "not quite at L", "holy poo poo you're a failure", and "you're so amazing the CEO wants to have lunch with you". It's the dumbest rating system ever if you want to do anything besides shrug helplessly at anyone who's trying to quantify their supposedly upwards trajectory.
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May 29, 2019 05:21
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:At my level, L+1 is basically "works and has impact at the cross-team level" / "has significant leadership responsibilities". And believe me, if I'd buggered off last perf cycle instead of doing my job, I absolutely would have had (negative) cross-team impact, because a lot of people were relying on my team and our output would have been at minimum halved without me there. Hell, we wouldn't have been able to submit changes to ~80% of the codebase because I'm the only remaining dev on the team with readability in Go or Python (meaning: I can certify a changelist as meeting the style guide requirements, having enough tests, not re-inventing the wheel, etc.). Doing code reviews for everyone else on the team is one of the reasons why practically nothing got accomplished on "my" projects that perf cycle. Sounds like you're credited as senior, but doing staff level work and being told you need to work harder to meet the bar for senior. Polish up your resume and look for greener pastures. Or keep doing what you're doing if the intangibles are appealing. Edit: I'm sure you already know this, but just going to say that at higher job levels (staff, principal, or higher) a SWE will be spending 60%, or maybe as low as 40% or even less on actual coding, because of other duties like design, mentoring, hiring, code reviews, presentations, etc. User fucked around with this message at 06:13 on May 29, 2019 |
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May 29, 2019 05:58
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