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Pie Colony posted::thinking: If doubling the size of the problem increases your running time by a constant factor, the overall time complexity is logarithmic. As an example, consider looking up an element in a tree. If you double the size of the problem (the number of elements in the tree), that only adds one layer to the tree, and so your running time increases by a constant factor (the time to check one layer).
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May 8, 2020 01:59
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Coronavirus stuff rendered my small business completely non-viable for at least the next year, so I've decided to take the leap into trying to teach myself how to program as to hopefully be able to get a job doing it in the next year or two. I found the FreeCodeCamp Youtube channel, and have been following along with their Python tutorials. I've actually been having a lot of fun with it, I'm disappointed in myself for not pursuing this earlier.
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May 11, 2020 14:06
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Lead By Example posted:Coronavirus stuff rendered my small business completely non-viable for at least the next year, so I've decided to take the leap into trying to teach myself how to program as to hopefully be able to get a job doing it in the next year or two. I found the FreeCodeCamp Youtube channel, and have been following along with their Python tutorials. I've actually been having a lot of fun with it, I'm disappointed in myself for not pursuing this earlier. That's turning lemons into lemonade. It's a good skill to learn and not too difficult once you learn to get over the first few hills.
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May 13, 2020 02:57
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Just how bad is the job market right now? I'm in a contract position right now. It's technically a contract-to-hire situation and I was supposed to be converted to full time last December, but management keeps dragging their feet and just renewing my contract. It's not the worst situation in the world. The job is fine, the pay is fantastic, and I get along with everyone well. There's zero doubts about continuing to renew my contract, and a massive chunk of the company is contractors, so it's just part of the company culture. I have (not that great) health insurance through the recruiter. Only issue is no 401k contributions and technically no real sick or vacation time, but they usually throw me a few days of vacation time here and there. It's for a very large company that is going to have no issues surviving in the current pandemic given the nature of their business. I was told they were going to convert me in December when I first joined, then that got moved to first or second quarter this year. Now I'm being told Q3 at the earliest. I miss being able to take time off whenever I want and it's starting to impact my mental health. Plus I'm a little bitter about the wishy-washy messages about getting converted. Should I just bare through it and be glad I have a job? Or are things still overall pretty ok with tech hiring? For what it's worth, since early March the number of recruiters reaching out to me on LI has dropped off dramatically, not sure how much of an accurate barometer that is for anything. I'm in a city in the midwest and have roughly 2.5 years of experience. I'm thinking of starting to send out a few apps in the next couple of days.
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May 13, 2020 17:37
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The Dark Wind posted:Just how bad is the job market right now? I'm in a contract position right now. It's technically a contract-to-hire situation and I was supposed to be converted to full time last December, but management keeps dragging their feet and just renewing my contract. It's not the worst situation in the world. The job is fine, the pay is fantastic, and I get along with everyone well. There's zero doubts about continuing to renew my contract, and a massive chunk of the company is contractors, so it's just part of the company culture. I have (not that great) health insurance through the recruiter. Only issue is no 401k contributions and technically no real sick or vacation time, but they usually throw me a few days of vacation time here and there. It's for a very large company that is going to have no issues surviving in the current pandemic given the nature of their business. Nothing should stop you from looking around for something better. You're probably going to have more trouble than a normal situation (my company got waves of applications as companies servicing on-ice industries, like vacation rentals, did mass furloughs), so there's going to be more competition. But what your company is doing to you is a classic bait and switch, they don't have any actual plans to hire you I'd bet.
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May 13, 2020 17:58
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My department is laying off people and I got the short end of the stick. I'd rather not move because of the coronavirus, but luckily there seems to be some jobs nearby. My question is what do I say when they ask why I left my current job. Surely not that I was laid off, but it's already suspicious I'd be seeking new work during the coronavirus, so I'm not sure an excuse like "I wanted something different" would hold up.
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May 28, 2020 19:49
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SardonicTyrant posted:My department is laying off people and I got the short end of the stick. I'd rather not move because of the coronavirus, but luckily there seems to be some jobs nearby. are you being laid off because your company's going through covid-related downturn? If so, 100% say "I was affected by covid-19 related layoffs." I was laid off in late March and every single company I've talked to has responded positively to it.
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May 28, 2020 19:53
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ketchup vs catsup posted:are you being laid off because your company's going through covid-related downturn?
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May 28, 2020 19:56
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SardonicTyrant posted:Yes, it's because of covid downturn. Whew, I was worried. You're fine. the bigger issues will be a) companies freezing hiring during uncertainty b) companies still hiring tightening experience requirements
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May 28, 2020 20:01
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Yeah, there's a job opening nearby and I've got juuust the right requirements for it.
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May 28, 2020 20:02
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My company is hiring right now and having been laid off due to Covid is by no means a problem (actually it’s good because it means you’re available to start immediately and we don’t have to wait for you to give notice at your old job and stuff). Tons of folks in all sorts are getting laid off because of Covid and we’d be assholes and also idiots if we held it against them. No reason not to be frank and honest about it. ketchup vs catsup posted:You're fine. the bigger issues will be This is true. My company falls under b. We’ve been trying to hire for these positions since before the pandemic, and back then, our problem was not being able to find anyone up to snuff. Now our problem is that we are up to our eyeballs in highly qualified candidates who’ve suddenly become available because of Covid layoffs (or have started looking around because they want to jump ship). We’ve not officially tightened requirements or anything, but the bar has been raised a whole lot and we have the ability to be extremely choosy.
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May 28, 2020 21:46
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I was really ashamed after being laid off a couple years ago and dreaded interviewing. But everyone I talked to was very cool about. A senior director (who I still don’t know why he even interviewed me as he would’ve been three or four levels above me in a different chain of command) even just wanted me to talk about that and how I processed it. Would not recommend getting laid off again, but it also wasn’t as scarlet lettery as I thought.
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May 28, 2020 23:57
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I got let go (somewhere between laid off and fired) from my last job (they hid their mission well, after joining I didn't vibe with it, they paid me severance to not speak poorly of them) and I dreaded interviewing as well. Was super easy to get a job. Actually had to stop applying to places because I was getting too many interview requests.
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May 29, 2020 00:36
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Trevor Hale posted:Would not recommend getting laid off again, but it also wasn’t as scarlet lettery as I thought. Why would it be?  Getting laid off speaks badly of your ex-company's owners and finances, not of the employees it could no longer afford.
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May 29, 2020 00:59
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Dumb Lowtax posted:Why would it be? Companies lay off the employees they value the least. It’s rational to think that if you get laid off you weren’t pulling your weight.
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May 29, 2020 01:13
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ketchup vs catsup posted:Companies lay off the employees they value the least. It’s rational to think that if you get laid off you weren’t pulling your weight. Not really. The entire point of a layoff is that your employer would like to keep you around more than they want you gone (which is why it's not a firing), but they're forced into getting rid of people because of external circumstances. Sometimes people are laid off because their entire team/division/business unit is shut down. Sometimes people are laid off because they're too expensive. If someone's a super high performer, but also costs a ton to keep around, then the simplest solution to budget headaches is to let that person go. Sometimes people are laid off purely at random, or by senior leadership handing direct managers a list of who on their team is going to be gone tomorrow. I know of one fairly large tech company - not a FAANG but a place you've heard of - that recently pulled this stunt. Their lower-level managers were pissed at some of the losses. And, yes, sometimes people are laid off because they're not very good at their jobs, but they weren't quite bad enough to outright fire and go through the hassle of finding a replacement. There's nowhere near enough of a signal there to make it rational to jump straight to, "if you get laid off, you weren't pulling your weight." Getting fired is a bit of a negative sign. Getting laid off really isn't.
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May 29, 2020 02:03
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There's generally two kinds of layoffs that happen durring a recession 1. cut all the new people, they're still learning, and/or don't have the deep knowledge that makes them indispensable 2. cut all the dead weight people who are just collecting paychecks and do no work, but they know deep knowledge that makes them useful 2-3 times a year and it's too much hassle to fire them It's really easy to cut #1, they probably weren't producing enough to be helpful yet anyways It's not too hard to cut #2 as their knowledge won't be needed much as business is going to be really slow for the next few months If you look at the layoffs, number of people getting laid off is much higher on either side of 40. People under 35 are usually pretty junior and only been with the company a couple years at best. People over 45 start getting fat, happy and lazy and produce less work. Number of layoffs in this recession so far, the 32-45 age range has been impacted the least. I was in my mid-20s during the last recession and I remember both myself and a lot of my peers got hosed hard due to our status/junior level. TL;DR if you're under 35 and get laid off people will understand. If you're 35, been with the company for 4 years and get laid off people are gonna wonder who you murdered. If you're over 45 lol you got laid off because you're too old, how did you even get in our interview funnel (sad but true)
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May 29, 2020 02:13
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Or the entire company went bankrupt and laid off everyone and it means none of those things
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May 29, 2020 03:15
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I’m exactly 35, I’ve been with my company for 9 months, and survived a layoff today. 
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May 29, 2020 03:41
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ketchup vs catsup posted:Companies lay off the employees they value the least. It’s rational to think that if you get laid off you weren’t pulling your weight. no
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May 29, 2020 17:45
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JawnV6 posted:lol definitely glad to be wrong on this one. please educate me.
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May 29, 2020 17:58
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ketchup vs catsup posted:definitely glad to be wrong on this one. please educate me. It’s just what Space Gopher said. When lay offs happen, the company almost never just lines up all the employees from best to worst and chops off the bottom. It’s normally teams and divisions. Managers do have some ability to fight for some employees here and there, but it’s political. I’ve been laid off. My team’s product never took off the way the company hoped, so they put it into maintenance. I was overpaid, and they knew I wasn’t happy. Laying me off was the right choice.
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May 29, 2020 19:58
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Another pro layoff move is to layoff your more expensive employees, which are usually the ones that have been around the longest and know the most. It is a good way to save money in the short term and really gently caress over institutional memory in the long term
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May 29, 2020 20:19
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ketchup vs catsup posted:definitely glad to be wrong on this one. please educate me. it's just world fallacy. you're making the assumption that the company's actions are going to be morally fair and bring fitting consequences. companies are full of people who sit behind desks and who have no idea what is going on, and the notion of the corporation in the abstract as even having competition as a goal is laughable when compared with the reality of corporate america. layoffs etc. are rarely for cause, as laying people off for performance makes you look bad as a manager!
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May 29, 2020 22:55
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Thank you for the insightful responses, I wish I'd brought this subject up a couple months earlier.
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May 30, 2020 00:05
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Got accepted to Flatiron, have a background in database management and know some basic web development as a hobbyist but be real with me, is it a good idea right now. The Economy
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May 30, 2020 00:14
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I mean, "The Economy" right now typically means not having a job, so if you got an offer I think that means congratulations, you won at the economy. I'm not...sure what you're struggling with?
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May 30, 2020 00:19
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Vincent Valentine posted:I mean, "The Economy" right now typically means not having a job, so if you got an offer I think that means congratulations, you won at the economy. I'm not...sure what you're struggling with? Flatiron is not a job, it's a programming bootcamp.
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May 30, 2020 00:20
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Doc Fission posted:Got accepted to Flatiron, have a background in database management and know some basic web development as a hobbyist but be real with me, is it a good idea right now. The Economy I did a bootcamp and it was a really good choice for me career wise. The one thing I will say is that you have to hustle a bit harder to get your first job. Some people expect that paying for a bootcamp is basically all they need to do to get a dev career. It's really wise to start trying to network and build out your skillset beyond the curriculum you'll have to do. I just got a new job based on being unhappy my old job cut my pay due to covid, so I think you'll be fine doing what you're doing.
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May 30, 2020 00:59
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I've hired a few people out of bootcamps but I require a portfolio of projects they've built and can talk intelligently through the code. If you go through a bootcamp but don't have concrete examples of your work I'm going to assume the bootcamp didn't do you much good. The examples don't have to be, like, enterprise level stuff. But you should be able to build some interesting tools and have them on your Git. Also on layoffs: If you have been laid off from the last 4 jobs all before 2 years then yeah, that will be a red flag. 1 or 2 layoffs through a career (especially around 2008 and now) are pretty normal and sorta expected if you're talking to someone who's been in the industry for a decade+.
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Jun 2, 2020 18:54
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Lockback posted:I've hired a few people out of bootcamps but I require a portfolio of projects they've built and can talk intelligently through the code. If you go through a bootcamp but don't have concrete examples of your work I'm going to assume the bootcamp didn't do you much good. In a vacuum which would you say you'd prefer, multiple projects that are decent and work but aren't necessarily pushed to their maximum, or one project that's just as polished as possible? I ask because while I like my primary personal project and I think it's pretty cool when I actually get to explain how it functions, I'm starting to think I should move on to something more approachable even though there's definitely things I can think of that would add to my main one(proxy layers for even more encrypting, etc), especially since a lot of my trouble is getting interviews in the first place
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Jun 2, 2020 20:54
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:In a vacuum which would you say you'd prefer, multiple projects that are decent and work but aren't necessarily pushed to their maximum, or one project that's just as polished as possible? Show off something that you actually use. “Polish” isn’t a great way to look at working projects, because in real life products are always messy and filled with TODOs and have a README full of promises. It’s frustrating when I look at portfolios and they’re filled with toy projects like “implement a coffee shop using objects.” You do want to have unit testing and good commenting and general cleanliness, but don’t worry about making every line a thing of beauty. The best interview in the world was a beginner who showed off his twitter bot that anyone could play MMA against via DMs. It was messy, but he solved real problems in the code.
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Jun 2, 2020 21:39
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lifg posted:Show off something that you actually use. “Polish” isn’t a great way to look at working projects, because in real life products are always messy and filled with TODOs and have a README full of promises. It’s frustrating when I look at portfolios and they’re filled with toy projects like “implement a coffee shop using objects.” You do want to have unit testing and good commenting and general cleanliness, but don’t worry about making every line a thing of beauty. Okay, thanks. I'll def put in unit testing as it's something I'm weak on and need to practice anyway Also been grinding through the Hard problems on AlgoExpert and whichever goon's friend said "that one dynamic programming trick you see everywhere" sure nailed the feeling of this. Feels like the solution to everything is just "make a second array representing the indices"
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Jun 3, 2020 01:52
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:Okay, thanks. I'll def put in unit testing as it's something I'm weak on and need to practice anyway It's also good if you can articulate 1) how you planned what you were going to build 2) any unexpected challenges you ran into 3) how you dealt with those challenges. Showing your thought process and how you work through things is a big part of the interviews that I've taken part in. Almost all of the (good) ones emphasized that it wasn't always about being correct, it was how you handled the attempt Lockback posted:I've hired a few people out of bootcamps but I require a portfolio of projects they've built and can talk intelligently through the code. If you go through a bootcamp but don't have concrete examples of your work I'm going to assume the bootcamp didn't do you much good. So in regards to this (good practice and I am glad to see people doing it), generally a bootcamp will have you building a portfolio of projects but those can be rather rote and simple. Mine during my time was a website that could play songs I uploaded, a chat page, and a really lovely Reddit clone. A friend of mine always went above and beyond, moving really far beyond the boundaries of the assignment to experiment with whatever fun ideas she could come up with. It led to her developing an insanely polished skillset when it came to visual design. If you can take the projects you get given (hopefully get given) and use those as scaffolding to build something even more, it will pay off. Also yeah, write good tests. The tests can be the commentary for your code if they are solid enough. My dev background is entirely Ruby (until I start my Java job next week  ) so I think clean, well written code/tests is better documentation than comments in the code. But my experience isn't universal so do what feels right to you and just be ready to talk about it.
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Jun 3, 2020 02:04
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Yeah in general I agree with the advice above. Tons of polish isn't required, something you use is a plus. Generally I'd prefer a couple projects doing different things so I can zero in on things I care about. Having good unit tests and good documentation can really help you stand out. Also, I'm going to look at your commit dates and your bootcamp dates so I'll probably figure out if a project is a school one or if you really are someone who tinkers in your own time.
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Jun 3, 2020 03:37
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How do whiteboard algorithm interviews work nowadays? The last time I did some were 12 years ago before I decided to gently caress off to grad school and academia. Back then everything really was just on the whiteboard, but I'm now wondering if they'll actually put your code against a test suite like Leetcode does. On Leetcode, I get caught by a fair amount of degenerate inputs (like empty list inputs), so I was just wondering if this is something I should be working hard to tighten up.
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Jun 3, 2020 12:14
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The advantage of the interview format is that the interviewer gets to talk to you about your code throughout the process, instead of you just writing your code and then throwing it over the wall to be judged. Interviewers aren't going to throw your code into an automated test suite, but you should definitely expect the interviewer to ask you about edge cases, and it's not the best look if you claim you've handled everything while the interviewer sees one that you haven't handled. Often the problem will be deliberately under-specified, and the interviewer will expect you to ask - or, decide for yourself and justify - what the output should be in particular degenerate cases. It's generally fine to put off handling them until after you've finished the meat of the problem, but if you tend to overlook them entirely then it's probably worth brushing up on that sort of thing a bit more.
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Jun 3, 2020 15:06
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Ok, thanks. That's definitely helpful. It's something I'm already trying to improve, but I still get occasionally tripped up on. Another similar question: if I decide to interview in some language, is it ok if I don't get the structure of some standard library call exactly correct? Again, this is just stuff I get called out on in Leetcode.
Hamming Cube fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Jun 3, 2020 |
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Jun 3, 2020 15:30
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Hamming Cube posted:Ok, thanks. That's definitely helpful. It's something I'm already trying to improve, but I still get occasionally tripped up on. Another similar question: if I decide to interview in some language, is it ok if I don't get the structure of some standard library call exactly correct? Again, this is just stuff I get called out on in Leetcode. A good interviewer will not care if you don't have the standard library memorized. Not all interviewers are good though
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Jun 3, 2020 15:38
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It depends on the function. I would expect you to know the signatures for very common ones, but outside of that reasonable guesses are OK. Some other people are more picky.
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Jun 3, 2020 15:38
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