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MetaJew posted:Jumping into this thread real quick: I have a interview tomorrow for a digital IC/RTL design position. At a couple of the places I've interviewed, they have had me meeting with either someone from HR or the recruiter at the very end of the day. It's probably a culture/fit interview, which is usually just a final filter to see whether you're an insufferable dweeb or whether you can actually interact with people in a friendly sociable way.
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Mar 6, 2020 05:50
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Also, don't underestimate how bad some technical managers can be wrapping things up. Having the recruiter kinda finish things off can help with a smoother "Here are next steps" conversation and maybe help if the candidate might have some questions that there wasn't an otherwise natural place to ask. If you have managers who have those kinds of skills this is superfluous, but HR might not be able to make that assumption universally so they may just want a quick final conversation.
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Mar 6, 2020 16:35
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MetaJew posted:Jumping into this thread real quick: I have a interview tomorrow for a digital IC/RTL design position. At a couple of the places I've interviewed, they have had me meeting with either someone from HR or the recruiter at the very end of the day. They’re trying to pump you for salary info after the technical sessions have drained you. Apply to positions in Cali or MA (?) where it’s illegal to ask your prior salary. And get the range of the position prior to being live on the spot. personally, I lean into the awkwardness. I’m awkward all the time, any discomfort at negotiation I just channel that inner dweeb who’s mildly curious about the question but doesn’t see the point in answering. “Oh, I just want to work on Interesting Problems, I’m sure you’ve done your research and the compensation is competitive for the market and skill set” HR people spend a shitload of time having this conversation. They are better practiced, they have more information, they will play you if you don’t prep. It doesn’t matter if you sit there in silence for 5 minutes instead of saying a number. Do a dry run with a colleague friend or family member where they just keep asking you for a number.
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Mar 6, 2020 18:54
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Don't get pissy or argumentative (unless this or other reasons result in you not wanting the job). Playing the happy idiot is fine, or just doing variations ofJawnV6 posted:“Oh, I just want to work on Interesting Problems, I’m sure you’ve done your research and the compensation is competitive for the market and skill set”
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Mar 6, 2020 20:35
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Thanks for the tips. The HR guy apparently was working remotely and the hiring manager at the end of the day failed to call the HR guy up on the conference phone at the end, and instead escorted me out. I really hope I get this job. I just got feedback from my interview with Amazon and turns out they're not going to make an offer, which feels really lovely. Sure sucks to get laid off (reduction in force) right before an epidemic-induced recession. Fingers crossed.
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Mar 7, 2020 02:47
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I got sent a 90 minute online screener (codility) for a job interview that requires I use java/c++ for some of the questions and javascript for the others. I'm rusty at both and kinda expected I'd be able to use python for my code tests. Obviously I need to brush up on those anyway but I'm also real busy for the next couple months. Is this common?
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Mar 11, 2020 14:01
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Business posted:I got sent a 90 minute online screener (codility) for a job interview that requires I use java/c++ for some of the questions and javascript for the others. I'm rusty at both and kinda expected I'd be able to use python for my code tests. Obviously I need to brush up on those anyway but I'm also real busy for the next couple months. Is this common? Are those the languages that the job will be asking you to code in? If so, that's pretty normal. I've also never had a 90 minute screener actually take longer than about 15-20 minutes so keep that in mind. But I've seen examples here and elsewhere where they gently caress this is up badly and the languages aren't even relevant to the role you're applying for. If this is you, I'm sorry, you should run as far as you can from this job.
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Mar 12, 2020 22:38
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computer science is not software engineering. "industry best practices" has nothing to do with computer science. stop getting CS degrees if you're going to be writing iOS apps for startups. you don't need computability theory to write a restful api. a CS degree is what you get if you're going into something like compiler design. if you're going into compiler design, i hope to god you mastered git before you graduated highschool, because you're never going to make it without being exceedingly savvy and obsessively interested in programming computers in the first place.
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Mar 13, 2020 01:07
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Dont Touch ME posted:computer science is not software engineering. True. But I'm going to take the bikeshedding bait on this topic. The best explanation I read was that formal CS is a foundation for the rest of your career. You will know the right questions to ask and things to Google should you need to really optimize your application, or at least avoid using the wrong data structure for minor things (and a 6mo data structures course might be overkill). The software engineering part, tools of the trade, how to write clean, maintainable code, frameworks, can be learned on the job. A CS education may also open up opportunities in specialized areas like, as you mention, compilers. Not everybody knows what exactly what they want to do out of college anyway. I write CRUD apps to help sell socks, even though I participated in a high-performance computing extra curricular and did some undergrad research in GPU compiler optimization with ML (which, turns out, I found very boring). I like the software engineering aspect of my job over the technical "correctness" of algorithms, turns out. I enjoyed my CS education, the gen ed portion of a BS less so, and find use here and there for bits and pieces of different courses. Kind of wish I hadn't had to take digital logic, though. And at least at my company, there's a certain amount of distrust in bootcamps among the rank and file (not saying it's warranted), although management is interested in testing out cohorts of bootcampers. People with CS degrees will naturally weigh the value of a degree more heavily. Smugworth fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Mar 13, 2020 |
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Mar 13, 2020 01:47
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deffo. CS is about stuff like how the Godel incompleteness theorems intersect with the Church-Turing thesis. it's certainly not a secret key to being an agile supa killa cryptoguru 1337 code ninja scrum master on the blockchain like me  also vim is useless because emacs exists. heh, hope that helps, script kiddies
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Mar 13, 2020 02:45
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Dont Touch ME posted:deffo. CS is about stuff like how the Godel incompleteness theorems intersect with the Church-Turing thesis. Via diagonal proofs?
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Mar 13, 2020 04:20
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Dont Touch ME posted:deffo. CS is about stuff like how the Godel incompleteness theorems intersect with the Church-Turing thesis. it's certainly not a secret key to being an agile supa killa cryptoguru 1337 code ninja scrum master on the blockchain like me gross.
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Mar 14, 2020 14:40
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Something something pumping lemma
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Mar 15, 2020 23:05
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Dont Touch ME posted:computer science is not software engineering. You need it if you want to write iOS apps for Google though so sign up friends
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Apr 1, 2020 00:41
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Does anyone have advice for getting a part-time position? I have 5 years of experience, mostly as a front-end engineer, and just trawling Indeed, the pickings appear to be slim.
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Apr 19, 2020 21:17
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Cheston posted:Does anyone have advice for getting a part-time position? I have 5 years of experience, mostly as a front-end engineer, and just trawling Indeed, the pickings appear to be slim. Any reason you're not looking for a full time position?
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Apr 20, 2020 05:45
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Space Gopher posted:vim doesn't provide anything special to a software developer over the many other extensible, customizable text editors out there. The only things that differentiate it are universal availability (important for sysadmins, sure, but not devs), and a steep learning curve that lets people feel really smart for using a text editor. You might be surprised how many devs occasionally have to do adminish things, depending on the job. Basic vi (not even vim, some of us have developed for eg AIX) enough to fix a config file is a good skill to have.
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Apr 20, 2020 19:01
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Almost done with a course for the baseline AWS cert exam. Is this thing actually going to be worth anything on a resume? Like 80% of the questions just seem like loving ad copy for AWS
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Apr 20, 2020 19:10
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:Almost done with a course for the baseline AWS cert exam. Is this thing actually going to be worth anything on a resume? Like 80% of the questions just seem like loving ad copy for AWS It's a cert, so no, there's no value in it. Certifications are meaningless and it will, at best, get you past an HR screen. And I say this as someone who has a poo poo load of certs due to work requirements.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:39
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:Almost done with a course for the baseline AWS cert exam. Is this thing actually going to be worth anything on a resume? Like 80% of the questions just seem like loving ad copy for AWS It won't be guaranteed to help, but it's better than nothing... and since you'll never know why people never respond to your job applications, you don't have anything else to work with for improving your response rate. So imo just do it if you have nothing better to do with your time.
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Apr 20, 2020 22:01
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:Almost done with a course for the baseline AWS cert exam. Is this thing actually going to be worth anything on a resume? Like 80% of the questions just seem like loving ad copy for AWS If you're applying to a small company who doesn't really know what they're looking for, or you're doing contracting or whatever it can help. Especially if the company only got two applicants, you have three certificates, and the other guy has none, they are going to weight your resume a lot heavier than the other guy Once you've been around the block a few times and you have built up your professional network (as much as I hate those meetups and stuff, they can be quite valuable especially if you're green) the cert is less useful. I would weight someone's cloudformation/terraform repo on their github page over an aws cert, but I'd weight the aws cert over the random guy off the street. If you have both an example repo, plus the cert, you're definitely making the short list. HR people most times are trained to help hire stuff like accounts payable clerks, etc. They have no idea what it is you do. A cert helps get you past the "HR screen" often more times than not. That said, in 12+ years of doing this stuff nobody has ever asked about a cert, except maybe one rear end in a top hat business owner back in 2010, and it was more of an offhand comment. He's also the only guy who ever followed up on my formal education documentation stuff. Hadlock fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Apr 21, 2020 |
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Apr 21, 2020 00:20
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Alright thanks for the advice all. I have a voucher for the test fee so I'll prob go ahead and take it in a day or two after a little more study, and if I pass I'll just put it on there but not expect much, and if I fail I just won't bother paying to retake it
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Apr 21, 2020 01:29
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:Alright thanks for the advice all. I have a voucher for the test fee so I'll prob go ahead and take it in a day or two after a little more study, and if I pass I'll just put it on there but not expect much, and if I fail I just won't bother paying to retake it This is a solid gameplan. You should take free tests especially if they are in an area outside your job experience, makes you look like you are a better "T" Shaped person, but in most situations I wouldn't push people to spend their actual money.
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Apr 21, 2020 14:25
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huhu posted:Any reason you're not looking for a full time position? I can handle the drop in income and I want to
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Apr 21, 2020 19:11
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Cheston posted:I can handle the drop in income and I want to ^^ Absolutely, if I had my house paid off, I would only be looking for 20-30 hrs a week of work, mostly to give me structure to my week. I've got better things to be doing
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Apr 21, 2020 19:27
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I don't see a lot of part time programming jobs with decent pay. The only people I know who got them were full time employees who wanted to step back, and negotiated for it.
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Apr 21, 2020 19:52
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Maybe check contracting firms? Though that may be more "6 weeks on, 6 weeks off' part time rather than 20 hrs a week part time.
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Apr 21, 2020 20:46
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This may also be some real cart-before-the-horse poo poo since I haven't had much interest in most of my applications to begin with, but is there a ballpark difficulty I can expect for whiteboarding/technical assessments on okayish companies in the SF area? I've been banging my head against Leetcode for the last month or two after being dogshit at algos since I started last year and I finally feel like I'm getting the hang of them, but I have no idea how the listed difficulty levels map to actual interview questions Kind of a vague/lovely question but any pros here have some insight?
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May 6, 2020 04:45
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:This may also be some real cart-before-the-horse poo poo since I haven't had much interest in most of my applications to begin with, but is there a ballpark difficulty I can expect for whiteboarding/technical assessments on okayish companies in the SF area? I've been banging my head against Leetcode for the last month or two after being dogshit at algos since I started last year and I finally feel like I'm getting the hang of them, but I have no idea how the listed difficulty levels map to actual interview questions A few months ago, I had a long conversation with a super interesting person in the tech industry. She's a multi-time math olympiad champion and competitive programmer. She's like top 1% of the industry and works for the US Federal government. I got to pick her brain about hiring practices, algorithm puzzles, and whatnot. My big takeaways were: - Algorithm puzzles and multiple interviews/onsites suck but they only make you do it because the industry can't find a better correlation/causation, so it's worth the time and energy to just study that because the payoff is much higher if you learn to play the algorithm lottery and to network as opposed to gaining practical experience by making stuff - Because she spends all that time doing those puzzles and competitive programming stuff, she has very little experience with actual day-to-day SWE stuff - The only reason she was able to get jobs after University was because of people paying attention to the top finishers in the math competitions and programming competitions - Almost all of the algorithm puzzles that Jane Street, AirBNB, Facebook, etc make you do fall into two buckets: tree/graph traversals and "this one dynamic programming trick that you see everywhere" - All of the puzzles that the big places will give you are variations of Medium-tier difficulty Leetcode problems, and if you do an onsite they'll usually throw in a Hard one that you're not supposed to finish, just to see how far you can get with it - She has only ever done one algorithm puzzle that wasn't on Leetcode in any of the places she has interviewed at (she has only ever interviewed for top 1%-paying jobs and companies). Everything else has always been on Leetcode, so that's the place to be. She said that Facebook's new grad package is about the same as Google's (187k), that Jane Street's is 375k, that Two Sigma's is 185k, and that Airbnb is in the middle (217k).
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May 6, 2020 05:16
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It's a total crapshoot. Keep applying and you'll eventually get lucky.
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May 6, 2020 05:16
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The entire application process for new hires is an absolute mess. You can expect a 1% return or less on applications submitted, and what you will run into in an interview will vary so wildly it's impossible to determine what to expect in one unless you know someone from there, and knowing someone from there is how you get fast tracked to hired in the first place so it usually doesn't even matter in that case. For the record, the only code challenges I've done are the ones everyone has done(flood fill, tree transversal), and one where they had me build a stopwatch app live.
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May 6, 2020 06:38
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When people get asked a problem in an interview that they've done before do they pretend it's the first time they've seen it and go through the motions of "working it out", or are you meant to come clean and say "yeah I've done this before"?
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May 6, 2020 10:46
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Unless they ask you if you’ve seen the exact problem already, there’s no need to volunteer that information.
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May 6, 2020 14:19
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Love Stole the Day posted:A few months ago, I had a long conversation with a super interesting person in the tech industry. She's a multi-time math olympiad champion and competitive programmer. She's like top 1% of the industry and works for the US Federal government. I got to pick her brain about hiring practices, algorithm puzzles, and whatnot. Thanks! This is all really helpful information. I've been starting to be able to solve problems in the medium-hard 30-40% pass range so hopefully I'm not too far off. Def need to improve at graph traversals(I'm fine with trees) and dynamic programming tricks though ultrafilter posted:It's a total crapshoot. Keep applying and you'll eventually get lucky. Vincent Valentine posted:The entire application process for new hires is an absolute mess. You can expect a 1% return or less on applications submitted, and what you will run into in an interview will vary so wildly it's impossible to determine what to expect in one unless you know someone from there, and knowing someone from there is how you get fast tracked to hired in the first place so it usually doesn't even matter in that case. Yeah, that's what I keep trying to tell myself, but I'm built pretty poorly for it psychologically. Then again, I don't suppose anyone really is  e: also while I'm here and clumsy at big O poo poo, if a problem is like "this needs to run at logN" and your eventual solution runs one operation for every two entries you add to the array, is that good enough to be logarithmic or is it still considered linear? TheIncredulousHulk fucked around with this message at 01:56 on May 7, 2020 |
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May 7, 2020 01:53
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:e: also while I'm here and clumsy at big O poo poo, if a problem is like "this needs to run at logN" and your eventual solution runs one operation for every two entries you add to the array, is that good enough to be logarithmic or is it still considered linear? One operation for every two entries is linear.
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May 7, 2020 02:16
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whatever you did to make it 1 per 2 could possibly be nested, then you get log
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May 7, 2020 02:24
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New Yorp New Yorp posted:One operation for every two entries is linear. Well poo poo, I should have figured. It was probably too easy to do the way I thought to do it taqueso posted:whatever you did to make it 1 per 2 could possibly be nested, then you get log Maybe. In retrospect I think it was probably expecting you to do a modification to binary search
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May 7, 2020 02:30
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:Maybe. In retrospect I think it was probably expecting you to do a modification to binary search Not much else you can do in log N and even then the input has to already be sorted.
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May 7, 2020 03:39
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A pretty good way to think about big O for common runtimes is to ask what happens if your input doubles in size. If it adds a constant amount of time, you have a logarithmic algorithm. If it takes twice as long, you have a linear algorithm. If it takes four times as long, you have a quadratic algorithm. That ignores some parts of your code that don't depend on the amount of data you're working on, but if you can't identify that pretty quickly, big O is not your biggest problem.
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May 7, 2020 03:50
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ultrafilter posted:If it adds a constant amount of time, you have a logarithmic algorithm. :thinking:
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May 8, 2020 01:27
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