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I came into the subforum intent on hopping into the newbie thread, but saw this and thought it may fit my situation a bit better. I'm 37, I've been working as a "developer" for around 10 years now, but between the projects being kinda stalled, technology-wise, my position in said teams being less developing and more maintenance and me being a complete an utter idiot and just cruising on minimum effort instead of, you know, trying to learn beyond what I was asked to do, I kinda know gently caress all. I've worked in IT since 2001, was hired early 2008 as a Java developer when all I knew about programming were 2 semesters worth of C++ because they needed someone who knew English could hold a conversation with the US team; as my manager put it at the time: "It's easier to teach you Java than it is to teach the rest of the team English". I started learning to read code and doing some really easy debugging, and at some point someone figured out I had a knack for working with UI (on Swing. Remember Swing?), so I became The Swing Guy, which you can guess didn't do a lot for my coding knowledge. I switched jobs, and kind of the same thing happened. Started out doing some light coding, ended up doing swing when I fixed a hosed-up screen and they went "oh you know swing!". Switched jobs again, ended up at HP; tech was super outdated because it was a legacy application, which also meant almost no new features to develop and mostly maintenance work on existing code. Whatever new code had to be developed meant copying/pasting existing classes and tweaking them to fit the new functionality. Java 1.4, Websphere 6, only moved to Java 1.7 when Websphere 6 reached EoL and we had to swap to 8 (I think 12 was out at the time). No frameworks, base java only, final destination. Stayed way too long because I was working from home 95% of the time, pay was not terrible and it gave me time to go to class and have a life, so I just... cruised. Then pay was suddenly poo poo, I realised I was stagnating and decided to gently caress off. So that brings me to the now: I got a position as an L3 support role, which on paper meant having the chance to learn some proper programming since I'd be working closely with the dev team, but in reality I'm just an L1 with extra steps, haven't seen a single line of code in months and just gently caress this. I know my way around java and can read/modify existing code and with some guidance I can write something from scratch, some sql, some design patterns, unix, version control, dependency management... well, you get the idea. I have an approximate knowledge of many things, mostly just from being in the industry for so long, but I'm not good at any. Well, no, I have a mean regex-fu, did a lot of that poo poo at HP since the application was mostly a parser. I'm seriously considering emigrating to Europe at some point in the not too distant future since my country is going to poo poo and I know some countries over there are hiring devs left and right, but I'm not sure I'd pass an interview as I am at the moment. I know I need to sit down and start learning/practicing, but I have no idea what. It feels like I'm a bit late for going full java with all frameworks (and it seems it'd be really hard to learn some of this stuff on my own instead of on the job) so I considered going frontend and learning HTML/JS/Angular/React but I'm sure how realistic/useful this would be. Sorry about the E/N-ish textdump. /edit: gently caress me that's even longer than I thought and a pagesnipe at that. Doubly sorry. 
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Dec 10, 2019 15:21
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Mini Rant time: I'm going to overhaul the Interview process for backend developers here for both Leads and Senior ICs, and I'm terrified I'm going to fall into the pattern of cargo culting what a FAANG would do for no good reason. This industry sucks, I wish there was viable research on what's effective in hiring, and not what makes you lucky at literally guessing my mind.
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Dec 10, 2019 16:19
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Maybe I can help, I am from the Netherlands and over here companies are eager to hire a dev with a pulse and experience, provided said dev can display some proficiency. Where are you from, would a company here need to take care of a visa? Other things that would help to know: What do you want to do? Really, what role would make you happy? If you want to do java, I would REALLY advise you to do a demo project in Spring Boot, using OpenJdk11 or 13. Nothing fancy, an implementation of kalah with a proper test suite and local running and so on for example. Using some of the spiffy stuff from the later versions or go crazy with Kotlin right away. It is not a bad thing to be a goto guy, but you need to stay current. I am 42 and moved in the role of dev at 37 after working in test for over a decade. I am doing fine but try to stay relevant to possible employers. ps: "It's easier to teach you Java than it is to teach the rest of the team English" is similar to how I was hired as a tester: "We don't know how to do it either, you'll learn!" I think it is great we got a chance! Hughlander posted:This industry sucks, I wish there was viable research on what's effective in hiring, and not what makes you lucky at literally guessing my mind. a: Not an rear end in a top hat b: can write readable / comprehensible code c: is able to add value to a team Any process that gets you a feeling for these points should be good. Keetron fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Dec 10, 2019 |
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Dec 10, 2019 17:18
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Keetron posted:Maybe I can help, I am from the Netherlands and over here companies are eager to hire a dev with a pulse and experience, provided said dev can display some proficiency. Where are you from, would a company here need to take care of a visa? Other things that would help to know: What do you want to do? Really, what role would make you happy?  Reason I was thinking Netherlands is that, from what I understand (big citation needed here), the company potentially hiring me wouldn't need to sponsor me for a visa. I can apply for a work visa myself at the embassy as long as I have a standing job offer from a company registered at the [name of body governing immigration], which would (I hope) make it easier for any prospective employer to take a chance with me, since they wouldn't need to do anything other than wanting to hire me nor pay up for an expensive visa. Regarding what I'd like to do... I'm not sure, to be honest. I mentioned Java since it's "what I know"; I know of Spring Boot but other than some intro videos or base tutorials I've no idea what actual work on that looks like and, to be completely honest, I'll learn/do most anything if it gets me out of here. If I had a chance to pick, though, I think I'd like to go into frontend. I kinda like UI and UX and I got some graphic design background from uni, so I may be able to use that? Keetron posted:ps: "It's easier to teach you Java than it is to teach the rest of the team English" is similar to how I was hired as a tester: "We don't know how to do it either, you'll learn!" I think it is great we got a chance!
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Dec 10, 2019 19:02
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Edmond Dantes posted:Hah, Netherlands is one of the two countries I was considering, the other one being Germany. You guys already have a Queen from my country, thought you wouldn't mind harbouring another Argentinean You still need to get a company willing to sponsor your visa, even if the process is easier which means applying while far away. Spring is simply a framework to take care of all the standard stuff that is in a webservice, such as http controllers and dependency management. Spring boot is Spring but made even easier. If you want to do FE, it means learning JavaScript as well as a framework, which is why I said SpringBoot. However, if you WANT to do UI/UX, by all means, build stuff in JS and learn React. Just know that the JS ecosystem is a dumpsterfire. Getting rejected because you don't know HipsterTech3 is code for: you are too old. The trick is to stay ahead of this curve and stay relevant by learning RobustTechV2 that has been out a while and leveraging your experience in maintaining code. Let me know if you build something you dare to showcase using the tech of your choice and I can start recommending you to some of my local recruiters. Also send out CV's to companies here that you think are interesting to you. Again, let me know if you need help in getting a list of companies hiring. Ending with a Very Positive Thing: doing maintenance for a longer time shows loyalty and persistence. Not laziness and cruising. Jobhunting is like marketing and the product is you.
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Dec 10, 2019 19:45
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Hughlander posted:Mini Rant time:
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Dec 11, 2019 04:34
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Hughlander posted:Mini Rant time: As disappointing as it is to fail in this way, in general, as someone with an unrelated degree, I'm kind of glad for the structure of tech interviews because it gives me a fairer shake to actually prove my skills than I think I would have otherwise.
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Dec 11, 2019 04:36
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The FAANG interview process is probably actually good for picking out the smartest junior engineers. The problem is that it just absolutely sucks for picking out senior people, and there's no really easy fix, and the FAANG companies aren't incentivized to fix it because they never run out of candidates.
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Dec 11, 2019 05:21
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ultrafilter posted:The FAANG interview process is probably actually good for picking out the smartest junior engineers. The problem is that it just absolutely sucks for picking out senior people, and there's no really easy fix, and the FAANG companies aren't incentivized to fix it because they never run out of candidates. Yeah I mean, what would you do differently? Most people's complaint is that there's too much trivia, but to the extent we take that seriously we're just making it easier, right?
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Dec 11, 2019 13:32
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Yeah I mean, what would you do differently? Most people's complaint is that there's too much trivia, but to the extent we take that seriously we're just making it easier, right? You could get better signal with work samples/longer form assignments and questions on how inter-team communication should work. This is problematic because it preferences people with abundant free time and is timely enough on the candidate that they can only earnestly run one or two at once.
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Dec 11, 2019 13:52
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We have our folks interview with product and UX as well and those interviews are weighted heavier when we're interviewing more senior candidates. It's not perfect but it's good to have an interview focused around cross-org collaboration.
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Dec 11, 2019 14:48
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leper khan posted:You could get better signal with work samples/longer form assignments and questions on how inter-team communication should work. This is problematic because it preferences people with abundant free time and is timely enough on the candidate that they can only earnestly run one or two at once. Yeah, part of the issue with FAANG interviews is that they're more focused on finding excuses to filter people out than they are on getting an accurate assessment of candidate skills. They have a functionally unlimited pool of candidates, so it's not a big deal if they accidentally no-hire a skilled dev; another one will come along soon enough. Once you actually get hired (i.e. got lucky enough to convince people that you know the skills they were testing, and didn't come off as an rear end in a top hat), then they worry about leveling you properly. But the signalling around "what level is this dev" yielded by the interview process is pretty weak; it boils down to things like how quickly you solved problems, which potential issues you foresaw, how extendible your whiteboard solution was, etc. So it's very common for devs to get hired at the wrong level, and have to spend a few quarters proving themselves and being underpaid before they can get that corrected.
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Dec 11, 2019 16:26
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Yeah, part of the issue with FAANG interviews is that they're more focused on finding excuses to filter people out than they are on getting an accurate assessment of candidate skills. They have a functionally unlimited pool of candidates, so it's not a big deal if they accidentally no-hire a skilled dev; another one will come along soon enough. Once you actually get hired (i.e. got lucky enough to convince people that you know the skills they were testing, and didn't come off as an rear end in a top hat), then they worry about leveling you properly. But the signalling around "what level is this dev" yielded by the interview process is pretty weak; it boils down to things like how quickly you solved problems, which potential issues you foresaw, how extendible your whiteboard solution was, etc. So it's very common for devs to get hired at the wrong level, and have to spend a few quarters proving themselves and being underpaid before they can get that corrected. That explains a lot about why we go months upon months without hiring anybody, actually.
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Dec 11, 2019 16:42
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Has anyone been asked to come back for a second interview with a FAANG company after an all-day on-site? If so, what was it like, and did you get an offer or get rejected after the second interview?
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Dec 11, 2019 16:47
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I didn't, but I know people who were hired that did Most likely they forgot to ask you about some class of stuff or _maybe_ didn't get enough info to level (eg you gave strong L3 signal, are clearly not an L3, and they want to get more info so they can appropriately level)
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Dec 11, 2019 16:53
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dantheman650 posted:Has anyone been asked to come back for a second interview with a FAANG company after an all-day on-site? If so, what was it like, and did you get an offer or get rejected after the second interview? I assume you mean a second round of technical interviews? At least at Google I don't think that typically happens; you'd need something like "multiple interviewers cancelled at the last minute" or other extenuating circumstances. I was asked to come back in so I could talk to my prospective manager in person, but that was a get-to-know-you / team fit kind of thing; they made it clear I'd already passed the technical bar at that point.
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Dec 11, 2019 16:55
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Not even a full round - just one more, 45 minute technical interview. My wife interviewed at a FAANG, the internal recruiter told her things were strongly positive but they wanted her to come back for just one more block to check “how she handled edge-cases.” I just find it a bit absurd after a tech phone screen and an entire day of interviewing that they didn’t get the data points they needed. It feels like a game of “how many hoops can you jump through” Edit: I should mention they gave her the choice to either come to the office or do it remotely so it’s not a massive hassle. Just strange to me.
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Dec 11, 2019 17:04
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Probably means they liked you but you didn't meet the bar across every facet so they're giving it a second shot.
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Dec 11, 2019 17:32
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leper khan posted:You could get better signal with work samples/longer form assignments and questions on how inter-team communication should work. This is problematic because it preferences people with abundant free time and is timely enough on the candidate that they can only earnestly run one or two at once. Hour-long home assessments seem bad enough
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Dec 11, 2019 18:50
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dantheman650 posted:Not even a full round - just one more, 45 minute technical interview. My wife interviewed at a FAANG, the internal recruiter told her things were strongly positive but they wanted her to come back for just one more block to check “how she handled edge-cases.” I just find it a bit absurd after a tech phone screen and an entire day of interviewing that they didn’t get the data points they needed. It feels like a game of “how many hoops can you jump through” My understanding of these situations is that usually the candidate did well but there was a gap in what interviewers were checking for that is necessary to support a hire. Like maybe out of all the algorithms interviews nobody asked a question that required a hash table so they can't check the box that says the candidate knows what a hash table is. (that's a made up example)
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Dec 11, 2019 19:10
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dantheman650 posted:Has anyone been asked to come back for a second interview with a FAANG company after an all-day on-site? If so, what was it like, and did you get an offer or get rejected after the second interview? I came back for two additional technical interviews, got hired after.
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Dec 11, 2019 21:30
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Yeah I mean, what would you do differently? Most people's complaint is that there's too much trivia, but to the extent we take that seriously we're just making it easier, right? I have a lot of thoughts about this but the tl;dr version is that we're probably not going to see a much better situation without turning software development into a genuine profession. But that's a complicated issue to say the least, and there are a lot of people who'd end up worse off in that scenario.
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Dec 12, 2019 01:03
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ultrafilter posted:I have a lot of thoughts about this but the tl;dr version is that we're probably not going to see a much better situation without turning software development into a genuine profession. But that's a complicated issue to say the least, and there are a lot of people who'd end up worse off in that scenario. Yeah personally I'm not going to vote for something that'll make me unemployable lol.
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Dec 12, 2019 03:27
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Just put in my notice after being at current startup for only 7 months (I started looking 2 months in, I have stories). I'm taking a break from the pandemonium that is "reinvent every wheel out there" and going with something more established an entirely a management/leadership role.
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Dec 12, 2019 05:14
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Doh004 posted:Just put in my notice after being at current startup for only 7 months (I started looking 2 months in, I have stories). I'm taking a break from the pandemonium that is "reinvent every wheel out there" and going with something more established an entirely a management/leadership role. Does this end up being a big deal? I try to make it to around 2 years at least but I've got some promising prospects going now, but my BigN recruiter wants me to try again in six months because I was so close and I feel like I'm pretty likely to take such an opportunity if I have it. Doesn't really make sense to put my life on hold hoping for that though
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Dec 12, 2019 13:46
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Keetron posted:You still need to get a company willing to sponsor your visa, even if the process is easier which means applying while far away. Hey, thanks for that. Almost makes me thing I can actually pull this off. Self-deprecation aside, really, thank you. I'll try and figure out what I'd like to do, project-wise, and start hammering away at it. I had my CV loaded up on Monster Netherlands and Germany for a while and I even got some calls at one point, but I haven't reupped it since the privacy act some time ago, should get to doing that again. I may take you up on that company list offer at some point, and maybe ask you some Netherlands questions once I have things a bit more sorted out if you don't mind. Thanks again.
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Dec 12, 2019 14:51
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Doh004 posted:I started looking 2 months in, I have stories I'm waiting!!!
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Dec 12, 2019 15:03
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rt4 posted:I'm waiting!!! 
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Dec 12, 2019 15:11
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Does this end up being a big deal? I try to make it to around 2 years at least but I've got some promising prospects going now, but my BigN recruiter wants me to try again in six months because I was so close and I feel like I'm pretty likely to take such an opportunity if I have it. Doesn't really make sense to put my life on hold hoping for that though No one will care if you quit a single job quickly to go work at a FAANG. Plus, there's no law that every position you've worked has to be on your resume. If you quit a job quickly multiple times, people will care. If you do that, you're pretty much stuck at your next place for a good long time.
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Dec 12, 2019 16:10
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Achmed Jones posted:No one will care if you quit a single job quickly to go work at a FAANG. Plus, there's no law that every position you've worked has to be on your resume. Makes sense! Thanks.
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Dec 12, 2019 17:08
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Jose Valasquez posted:I don't give system design interviews but I don't think this is generally true. If it was true for you then you had a bad interviewer. Jose Valasquez posted:They probably wanted you to ask questions about what kind of load was expected and to address potential bottlenecks from there. They should have guided you in that direction though if it wasn't the way you naturally went. Yeah, I give these sort of interviews and usually get to a point where I’ll say “Okay, we’ve built this system and it’s working, everyone is happy, but now we’re getting popular and we’re getting more and more users/traffic. Which parts will break, and how do we fix them?“ Going for a simple, relational solution first is fine. Just be clear at the start you want to begin with solving the problem and then adding complexity if you find out you need it, and mention that you know there are other options. Don’t be afraid to ask if there are other things they’d like you to address in a solution too, it doesn’t have to be guessing what they want.
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Dec 12, 2019 18:05
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rt4 posted:I'm waiting!!! Aight, some initial things: 1. I was hired originally to run a small native engineering team and to eventually hire out a second fullstack team for an upcoming initiative. My first day I'm in my onboarding meetings and during a break, two Tech Leads walk in and introduce themselves to me because I was "their new manager". Turns out, I was now managing two teams of frontend engineers in addition to the native engineering team. When I confronted my (new) boss about this, I got a "Oh well we ended up shifting the hiring priority for the team and I forgot to tell you and figured you'd be okay with the additional scope". I'm fine with responsibility, but it was the first indication that communication and professional decorum were severely lacking. I'd been emailing with the team and my boss for a couple weeks leading up to my start date and none of that came up. 2. In my first hiring debrief as the hiring manager, we ended up as a group deciding that the candidate wasn't the right fit and below the level that they'd come in as comp wise, so we passed on them. I received a follow up email from the loving technical recruiter stating "This candidate has enough experience, would be an internal transfer and someone from the other company has vouched for them so we're going to extend an offer". My jaw literally hit the floor when that happened, I looped in my boss and our head of HR. I at least blocked the hire, but they kept that recruiter on the job because my boss "had developed a good working relationship with him". Never in my experience had I been overruled, as a hiring manager, by a recruiter. This then lead me to severely question all of our hiring/recruiting practices as odds are these types of decisions had happened before. 3. My second week on the job, company was launching a "Pop Up" shop in SOHO (NYC, shopping district, expensive as hell). We're neither a brick and mortar shop, nor a retailer, which made this decision slightly puzzling. When asked about the why and what sort of metrics we were trying to drive, I received blank stares and a bunch of "CEO wanted to keep the buzz going". So in addition to the 6 weeks of paying premium rental space, this also required a bunch of ad-hoc work by the engineering team to handle the new flows of users and shopping patterns that the service wasn't built to handle. This also required product teams to pause part of their roadmaps to "support the popup". This ended up breaking a fair amount of initial integrations and caused two teams to scramble over the weekend to ensure users could purchase items. 4. Two full product teams (about 10 engineers) were pulled off of their systems and roadmaps for an entire half (6 months) because leadership needed "quick wins" to help some of the internal teams be more efficient on some of the third party services/tools that they used to do their jobs. This resulted in the teams building chrome extensions to sit on top of things to "hack" around some functionality. These were labeled as "prototypes" even though we on the engineering side said this was a horrible idea and it was incurring a crazy about of product and technical debt that'll mean people will become overly dependent on them. The "justification" was that they wouldn't be long term solutions, you wouldn't have to support them, and they'd only be in development for a "sprint or two" and then we'd move on. Fast forward to today and those teams have not returned back to their work, receive production support requests about extensions breaking/not working on people's various computers and the work the extensions provide are now "core" to the business succeeding. RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Does this end up being a big deal? I try to make it to around 2 years at least but I've got some promising prospects going now, but my BigN recruiter wants me to try again in six months because I was so close and I feel like I'm pretty likely to take such an opportunity if I have it. Doesn't really make sense to put my life on hold hoping for that though Not at all, everything can be explained. To be fair, I was at my previous place 4 1/2 years and was in a good spot to move onto a next venture. This one was very, very different.
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Dec 12, 2019 18:25
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Does this end up being a big deal? I try to make it to around 2 years at least but I've got some promising prospects going now, but my BigN recruiter wants me to try again in six months because I was so close and I feel like I'm pretty likely to take such an opportunity if I have it. Doesn't really make sense to put my life on hold hoping for that though I've only tossed 1 resume for too many/too short jobs. IIRC it was something like 10 jobs in 6-7 years.
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Dec 12, 2019 18:54
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All of the jobs on my resume are right around 3 years each, give or take a couple months For my current job I’m over a year in and don’t have any plans to leave but I said the same thing at that point with all the other jobs so 
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Dec 12, 2019 21:42
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Does this end up being a big deal? I try to make it to around 2 years at least but I've got some promising prospects going now, but my BigN recruiter wants me to try again in six months because I was so close and I feel like I'm pretty likely to take such an opportunity if I have it. Doesn't really make sense to put my life on hold hoping for that though It's really common to switch jobs every 2-3 years in this industry. I've been at my current job for 8 years now and when I talk to recruiters or hiring managers and mention that, it's met with surprise. It may even be perceived as a negative, like staying in the same job means you have no ambition or are complacent.
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Dec 12, 2019 21:46
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ultrafilter posted:The FAANG interview process is probably actually good for picking out the smartest junior engineers. The problem is that it just absolutely sucks for picking out senior people, and there's no really easy fix, and the FAANG companies aren't incentivized to fix it because they never run out of candidates.
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Dec 13, 2019 05:19
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i prefer Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Google, or FATMANG for short
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Dec 13, 2019 06:28
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"tech majors"
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Dec 13, 2019 07:07
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Suspicious Dish posted:i prefer Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Google, or FATMANG for short The last movements I’d heard from Twitter was firing dozens of distributed systems people (that my company at the time then recruited) so the acronym likely might need an update
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Dec 13, 2019 08:29
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Is "culture fit" ever anything besides a bunch of unassessed biases and just bullshit overall? A VP mentioned offhand today that it's an important part of hiring. I was surprised by how uncomfortable I felt on hearing it.
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Dec 13, 2019 11:31
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