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Would love to hear thoughts. I'm on one of if not the most interesting teams, of about 40 teams in my company. We brought an idea through from nothing to general release and now we're incrementing with new features. Things are pretty steady. Another team, which is pretty unstable currently, reached out trying to recruit me. Part of me is torn. I like the stability and the ability to work on my interesting side projects. On the other hand, I think I could really prove myself and bring stability to the new team. Thoughts?
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May 11, 2019 20:41
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Why are they unstable? You need an answer to that to make a decision.
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May 11, 2019 21:14
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It's a bunch of developers put on a team that have never been on this kind of a team before. I have been on a similar team for about a year now. I'd probably bring a bunch of stability and direction for the engineering culture of the team.
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May 11, 2019 21:18
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Is it as a lead or some other higher profile position?
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May 12, 2019 05:36
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With the given information, this sounds like an office politics question. What tangible benefit do you expect to derive from sticking your neck out on this? If the answer is nothing then stick with the cool job you've got. If the answer is something then weigh how much you want that something.
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May 16, 2019 05:16
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Interviewed at a startup today because the CEO called me 4 times ontop of emailing me. And just...wow. You really gotta live and breathe code to work at a place like that I’m assuming. I met one of the devs and he straight up told me he was in the office until 3am 
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May 17, 2019 23:18
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Could be cool if that also means he comes in at 6-7pm.
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May 17, 2019 23:29
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Sounds more like they eat and breathe self loathing
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May 17, 2019 23:36
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There's nothing wrong with sacrificing your entire waking life to a startup... if you are getting a serious equity stake (think percent not points) as compensation and you reckon a liquidity event has better than even odds.
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May 18, 2019 04:41
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Hey folks, any advice on evaluating a contract job? I've only ever worked salaried full time, but there's a good chance I could get an offer for this contract position within the next few days. The pay is great, the technology is interesting (TypeScript, Apollo/GraphQL, React, etc.) and the supervisor seems like a really nice guy who's very comfortable with flexible schedules. My only hesitation is that I've never done contract/hourly work before. The recruiting agency that's helping me with this offer will provide health care/W2/standard benefits so I don't have to worry about those, and from the number crunching I've done, even if I take some solid amount of time off, I still come out significantly ahead financially, so it all together seems like a really good deal. Any red flags I should be looking out for? So far the only flags seem to be that the glassdoor reviews are more or less really bad, but none of them seem to match up at all with what I'm seeing so far (glassdoor says they have a strict schedule, interviewer mentions he comes into work around 10 am, things like that). Meeting everyone in person on Friday to get a feel for the place, but other than that, I'm finding few reasons to say no to this gig.
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May 23, 2019 05:13
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Contract, temp to hire, etc. jobs generally suck. My one contract, I was asked to leave orientation for an hour while the new hires all got swag bags and were told about their sweet benefits. The benefits are generally worse. If you need a job, take it and keep looking. Even if none of the things I mentioned don't apply to you, I'd still be seriously weary about the negative Glassdoor reviews. How many reviews are there and what's the average?
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May 23, 2019 15:01
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I'd look elsewhere personally
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May 23, 2019 15:23
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As someone who worked long-term contract for almost a decade, it can be lucrative but also stressful and aggravating. Contract terms vary from place to place, but generally the benefits will be worse than if you were an FTE unless your vendor company is huge (HCL benefits were actually pretty good). If you’re planning to start or already have a family, a contract position adds the stress of knowing your position could end or change at any time. Yes, the same is true with any job, but the concept of being a vendor resource means you and your company can be exchanged for another or your work terms shift and you’re left with the decision of either shifting with them (moving roles, departments, buildings, states) or finding new employment. On the plus-side, if you’re flexible your vendor company can just move you to another applicable contact. If you’re not, you’re in for hard choices. The aggravation (for me, at least) is being treated like a lesser-than a lot of the time and being contractually barred from participating in company events, perks, and other job benefits. If you’re working at a place for years and are treated as a team member for work, it stings a bit to be told “oh, right, you can’t come to this, sorry” or the company having sweet holiday hours and everyone’s salary except you vendors, so you need to scramble to make up hours or eat the financial loss while everyone’s on a four-day weekend. Coming in as a vendor on a contract-to-hire gig can work if that’s where you’re interested in laying down your future. It’s typically somewhat less competitive in terms of requirements and if you meet their needs and they hire you you’ve basically skipped the line for your position. This is how I got my current position and I was pleasantly surprised at how well the whole process was managed. I’m sure it doesn’t always work out, though. tldr: Contract jobs are a gamble and can be unstable but can work out if you’re able/willing to risk it.
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May 23, 2019 17:20
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From what they told me, they're looking to ideally hire someone after 6 months, but they need to fill the position quickly so they're wanting to do a contract to hire position so they can avoid some of the HR paperwork that can delay things. Felt like a reasonable explanation to me. As far as risk goes, I'm moving in with my girlfriend next month but we're still far away from having any kind of family or anything like that so I'm in a decent enough position to take a gamble. I'm definitely going in tomorrow with my alerts up but so far I haven't seen anything alarming. In any case, I also have two other places that might hopefully lead to offers soon as well, so hopefully those other ones pull through and are more promising.
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May 23, 2019 17:40
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Question from the other side of the table. We’re trying to hire a new engineer for months, someone around my level, but we’ve had very very little success finding someone that can pass our whiteboard problem. (I’m giving our process the benefit of the doubt here and biting my tongue.) The problem is basically “here’s a grid, we want an algorithm that fills in everything of x color”, a typical CS/algorithms q. We’ve had a range of people from boot camp graduates to CS grads, and no one’s gotten it right. I’m looking more for the thought process and communication abilities, but there’s also a major interest in literally getting the question right. Still no dice. In my opinion, I don’t think we’re in a position to be picky here. We’ve got a lot of work on our plate and we badly need more hands on deck. But, I’m not really sure if we should just completely change our priorities and process and change how we interview people. What should we do? i mean if i was in charge of the process we’d really not use that question but man w/e
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May 23, 2019 17:57
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Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question, but I'm having problems figuring out how to get your whiteboard problem wrong unless the candidate has literally no understanding of basic concepts. As described, the base inefficient solution only requires basic understanding of loops and conditionals.
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May 23, 2019 18:02
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I’m not involved with the interviews (except for one), so I don’t really know how it goes. The one I was there for had the guy write a bunch of Java classes with abstractions like doFillGrid() and nothing else, and had trouble understanding the question. With some prompting, he got through some of it, but I don’t recall if he actually got it right.
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May 23, 2019 18:05
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Pollyanna posted:Question from the other side of the table. We’re trying to hire a new engineer for months, someone around my level, but we’ve had very very little success finding someone that can pass our whiteboard problem. (I’m giving our process the benefit of the doubt here and biting my tongue.) The problem is basically “here’s a grid, we want an algorithm that fills in everything of x color”, a typical CS/algorithms q. We’ve had a range of people from boot camp graduates to CS grads, and no one’s gotten it right. I’m looking more for the thought process and communication abilities, but there’s also a major interest in literally getting the question right. Still no dice. To be honest we had a similar problem with recent grads and interns so we changed our coding questions to a more simple "Prove you can do an optimized for loop with some arithmetics and outputs". Even then, we have so many software engineering / comp sci. students/grads failing this it's mind boggling so I don't think making the question simpler is really an answer.
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May 23, 2019 19:06
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PierreTheMime posted:As someone who worked long-term contract for almost a decade, it can be lucrative but also stressful and aggravating. Contract terms vary from place to place, but generally the benefits will be worse than if you were an FTE unless your vendor company is huge (HCL benefits were actually pretty good). That part about holidays never occurred to me when I was working in-house. I’m not tech but I’m tech adjacent and would work with a team on on-shore contractors. Whenever I got dismissed early for holidays,’I’d always forward the email to the contracting teams despite the fact that I was totally not the person who owned the contract. gently caress. I hope those guys got paid every time I kicked them out.
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May 23, 2019 20:00
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"go though this grid and do things on each point" is not only trivial to implement(badly, on your first attempt, to buy time to think about a better one at least), it's one of those things that is so common on code challenge websites that companies often ban the question. Floodfill is a good example of that. I would wager your interview process itself is failing you here and not the question. They're looking to hire someone at your level, right? Have them mock interview you and see how it goes.
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May 23, 2019 21:11
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Pollyanna posted:Question from the other side of the table. We’re trying to hire a new engineer for months, someone around my level, but we’ve had very very little success finding someone that can pass our whiteboard problem. (I’m giving our process the benefit of the doubt here and biting my tongue.) The problem is basically “here’s a grid, we want an algorithm that fills in everything of x color”, a typical CS/algorithms q. We’ve had a range of people from boot camp graduates to CS grads, and no one’s gotten it right. I’m looking more for the thought process and communication abilities, but there’s also a major interest in literally getting the question right. Still no dice. Out of curiosity, is the problem anything like this? This is a take-home problem I did from last December (didn't hear back from them): https://codesandbox.io/s/j4vxv514ry?fontsize=14 Love Stole the Day fucked around with this message at 23:23 on May 23, 2019 |
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May 23, 2019 23:20
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Pollyanna posted:Question from the other side of the table. We’re trying to hire a new engineer for months, someone around my level, but we’ve had very very little success finding someone that can pass our whiteboard problem. (I’m giving our process the benefit of the doubt here and biting my tongue.) The problem is basically “here’s a grid, we want an algorithm that fills in everything of x color”, a typical CS/algorithms q. We’ve had a range of people from boot camp graduates to CS grads, and no one’s gotten it right. I’m looking more for the thought process and communication abilities, but there’s also a major interest in literally getting the question right. Still no dice. What does getting that question right actually tell you about a candidate's ability to do the job?
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May 23, 2019 23:59
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Love Stole the Day posted:Out of curiosity, is the problem anything like this? This is a take-home problem I did from last December (didn't hear back from them): https://codesandbox.io/s/j4vxv514ry?fontsize=14 yikes lol. this code is bad!!!!
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May 24, 2019 02:02
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Pollyanna posted:Question from the other side of the table. We’re trying to hire a new engineer for months, someone around my level, but we’ve had very very little success finding someone that can pass our whiteboard problem. (I’m giving our process the benefit of the doubt here and biting my tongue.) The problem is basically “here’s a grid, we want an algorithm that fills in everything of x color”, a typical CS/algorithms q. We’ve had a range of people from boot camp graduates to CS grads, and no one’s gotten it right. I’m looking more for the thought process and communication abilities, but there’s also a major interest in literally getting the question right. Still no dice. When you say the right answer do you mean an answer that solves the problem or is there a specific "right" answer completed in an exactly specific way or is there a bar of performance that is relative for judging success? As said by others iterating over a grid and changing values is trivial in any language, so I'm confused how no one could do it.
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May 24, 2019 02:53
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ultrafilter posted:What does getting that question right actually tell you about a candidate's ability to do the job? Sounds like it gives a very basic baseline of "can write code"
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May 24, 2019 07:05
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Pollyanna posted:Question from the other side of the table. We’re trying to hire a new engineer for months, someone around my level, but we’ve had very very little success finding someone that can pass our whiteboard problem. (I’m giving our process the benefit of the doubt here and biting my tongue.) The problem is basically “here’s a grid, we want an algorithm that fills in everything of x color”, a typical CS/algorithms q. We’ve had a range of people from boot camp graduates to CS grads, and no one’s gotten it right. I’m looking more for the thought process and communication abilities, but there’s also a major interest in literally getting the question right. Still no dice. I don't understand your reluctance to changing your "priorities and process." The current process isn't having the desired outcome, so what are your other options? Wishing? Praying? If your objection is based on principles (this hiring process should work, or somesuch) then you don't have any options but waiting and hoping.
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May 24, 2019 10:55
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Seconding have them mock interview you
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May 24, 2019 11:35
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Dumb Lowtax posted:Seconding have them mock interview you Yeah, this is a good idea. If not you, find your most junior person that is still worthwhile to hire. Also, hiring front-end people is really hard right now in general. So it may also be worthwhile to make sure your company isn't operating under 2010 "Any web developer will be happy to work 60 hours week for 50k and barebones benefits" mentality. If your throwing lovely bait that may be why your catching lovely fish.
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May 24, 2019 15:50
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Impostor syndrome is telling me to run screaming from mock interviews, but I agree that’s our best bet. I’ll float the idea next week.Lockback posted:Also, hiring front-end people is really hard right now in general. So it may also be worthwhile to make sure your company isn't operating under 2010 "Any web developer will be happy to work 60 hours week for 50k and barebones benefits" mentality. If your throwing lovely bait that may be why your catching lovely fish. Technically they’d be full stack i.e. allaround Rails monkey. I have no insight into compensation but mine is okay (could be better).
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May 24, 2019 22:49
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Thing is, even if you perform badly it'll only help the case. You aren't a bad employee. If you were, you already told have been fired. But you haven't been, so you're good. If you bomb the interview, it means that their hiring process is wrong, not you. They'll know they're pushing away candidates that are capable and that's a big big problem.
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May 24, 2019 23:25
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Question. If I am asked to write a function in JavaScript to reverse a string and remove vowels and return it, do I want to use built in functions, or write my function from scratch? They were not clear. Or both?
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May 24, 2019 23:40
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I never care if a candidate uses the entirety of a language’s features. Although it’s a pretty trivial problem either way.
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May 24, 2019 23:41
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dantheman650 posted:I never care if a candidate uses the entirety of a language’s features. Although it’s a pretty trivial problem either way. Yeah it seemed like just sometime to see if I'm worth even looking at. I'm just wondering best practice. I'm finally applying to jobs now that I've been working with node.js and mySQL for a bit. Hopefully I'll get a bite soon.
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May 24, 2019 23:53
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It's going to require both so you may as well use both.
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May 25, 2019 04:16
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Flat Daddy posted:yikes lol. this code is bad!!!! You could give some feedback instead of just being snarky, you know.
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May 28, 2019 18:50
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Pollyanna posted:You could give some feedback instead of just being snarky, you know.
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May 28, 2019 22:44
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Love Stole the Day posted:it's too bad he can't apply that same discretion to his posts when venturing outside of YOSPOS. gl on the next one
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May 28, 2019 22:57
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JawnV6 posted:it sounds like a senior dev did a private code review at your request entirely for your benefit and your response is... making GBS threads on their decorum? Sorry, but guy was pretty dickish considering this is the help newbies get jobs thread.
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May 28, 2019 23:05
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sorry for the troll language, here's the pm (this wasn't for public consumption so a couple disclaimers. 1- like I say later, this is subjective, so other react devs im sure have different opinions, but im sometimes an interviewer so even if im dumb my opinions are an example of what's goin on at the other end of the table 2- my comments on BoardGenerationForm onchange stuff was probably overly nitpicky on second read but im not opening up the code again to confirm ) quote:Love Stole the Day wrote on May 24, 2019 20:58: quote:ok heres a much more detailed breakdown than you'll ever get from your interviewer also Love Stole the Day posted:He didn't like my comments, he didn't like that I separated concerns across multiple components (i.e. he insists that I should've had a single top-level component be responsible for everything because it was a small take-home project), he didn't like that I used React.createRef as opposed to prop drilling, and he didn't like that I documented my confusions about the assignment's instructions. if this is your honest to god summary of my review then no wonder you're sending out ten thousand resumes and getting nothing back dude Flat Daddy fucked around with this message at 23:41 on May 28, 2019 |
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May 28, 2019 23:18
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The Fool posted:Sorry, but guy was pretty dickish considering this is the help newbies get jobs thread. in conclusion Flat Daddy posted:if this is your honest to god summary of my review then no wonder you're sending out ten thousand resumes and getting nothing back dude
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May 28, 2019 23:51
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