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So how does one go from discovering a Bronze Age cemetery in Mongolia to programming... My resume has a “natural languages” bullet in my skills section (I’m a computational linguist so it’s actually relevant), which includes both Vietnamese and Modern Standard Arabic, and when I was interviewing for my first full time position, I many times got a question from people very inelegantly asking about my ethnic background, like I bet half my phone interviews came from people wanting to know if I was mixed Vietnamese and Arab French imperialism is a motherfucker okay So to the newbies, agreed with the above, play the game and milk whatever differences you have that could be construed positively for all they’re worth IMO
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Jan 25, 2021 23:53
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once you get that first dev job everyone treats you differently. the first one is the hardest to land so do all the extra things like creating public projects to stand out.
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Jan 26, 2021 01:22
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Mecca-Benghazi posted:So how does one go from discovering a Bronze Age cemetery in Mongolia to programming... I studied archeology in college and did my field study in Mongolia, which is a really awesome place to work because no one's done poo poo out there, so you can be walking along doing a survey and suddenly realize you're surrounded by gravesites. Very beginner friendly experience.
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Jan 26, 2021 03:26
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hendersa posted:I apologize if I got anyone's feathers ruffled by posting. My intent was to give another data point to the newbies reading the thread by giving some concrete details on how the filtering process works during hiring at my particular org. Some insight into the opaque evaluation process going on behind the scenes. I thought that was an awesome post, by the way. Awesome, and extremely realistic about how the process goes. Every new person should at least review what you've written, that's about spot-on to most places I've seen. No link to github or discussion about outside projects = instant circular file, I don't know how this doesn't get communicated at school. I get that "university is for education, not jobs training" but the whole "if you do computer science and want to get a job as an adult, you should do this" seems like a very educational fact to pass along to people paying for said education.
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Jan 26, 2021 05:33
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Hadlock posted:I thought that was an awesome post, by the way. Awesome, and extremely realistic about how the process goes. Every new person should at least review what you've written, that's about spot-on to most places I've seen. Until college programs actually teach software development instead of computer science this selects for a very specific population who have the time and prior knowledge and, shockingly, also tend to be overwhelmingly white males.
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Jan 26, 2021 14:33
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Blinkz0rz posted:Until college programs actually teach software development instead of computer science this selects for a very specific population who have the time and prior knowledge and, shockingly, also tend to be overwhelmingly white males. What do you recommend instead?
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Jan 26, 2021 15:04
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ultrafilter posted:What do you recommend instead? Blinkz0rz posted:Doesn't matter if you're hiring for embedded or web dev. Juniors are an investment. Hiring almost exclusively for aptitude will get you an extremely limited, homogeneous pool of candidates that might already have a sense for what they're worth and unless your comp is very competitive you'll be out of luck. Also explicitly avoiding PLU and having some consideration for diversity in your hiring pipeline.
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Jan 26, 2021 15:33
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OK. How does that help you filter resumes from a stack of 200 when you only have time to interview 20-40?
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Jan 26, 2021 15:35
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ultrafilter posted:OK. How does that help you filter resumes from a stack of 200 when you only have time to interview 20-40? Random selection
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Jan 26, 2021 15:37
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The Fool posted:Random selection This with the required stipulation that no demographic or credential filtering is done ahead of time because that's a surefire way to weed out people of color, women, and unconventional applicants
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Jan 26, 2021 16:01
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hendersa posted:I apologize if I got anyone's feathers ruffled by posting. For the record I think your post was fine, I just don't agree with the way you do your filtering 
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Jan 26, 2021 16:30
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Jose Valasquez posted:For the record I think your post was fine, I just don't agree with the way you do your filtering
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Jan 26, 2021 17:05
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Part of the problem is most of us at some point hired people without the right skills thinking "This person has such a good attitude they are bound to succeed" and have had it completely blown up in our faces. It's also important to note that development IS different from other jobs. It pays way better and unlike the weird aerospace engineer example earlier it is possible to do a 4 month bootcamp and be qualified for a job that puts you in the top 20% of earners in the US. Its competitive.
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Jan 26, 2021 17:30
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Jose Valasquez posted:For the record I think your post was fine, I just don't agree with the way you do your filtering 
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Jan 26, 2021 18:42
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Lockback posted:Part of the problem is most of us at some point hired people without the right skills thinking "This person has such a good attitude they are bound to succeed" and have had it completely blown up in our faces. What excuse do you use when you hire someone with the right skills and have it blow up your face?
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Jan 27, 2021 06:45
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I've been working on a little React crud app as a portfolio piece, aiming for a job as a junior web developer (mind you i have 2 years of a comp sci degree left so it might be a while). Can any of the pros/hiring in here have a look at it and give me some feedback (does this show potential, would it help me get a job) ? https://www.jacksonblair-react-crud-demo.com/#/landing
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Jan 31, 2021 06:35
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to me it seems the reason why companies are picky/hesitant about bringing on juniors is that they are "an investment" that is liable to leave the second they switch from becoming a liability to becoming an asset unless you have some other way of keeping them around. once they are capable of contributing at a normal developer level of course you should pay them like one or they will leave, but then why bother going through the effort if you could have just hired someone at that level to begin with?
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Jan 31, 2021 08:04
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my homie dhall posted:to me it seems the reason why companies are picky/hesitant about bringing on juniors is that they are "an investment" that is liable to leave the second they switch from becoming a liability to becoming an asset unless you have some other way of keeping them around. once they are capable of contributing at a normal developer level of course you should pay them like one or they will leave, but then why bother going through the effort if you could have just hired someone at that level to begin with? Because they don't want to pay reasonable rates for a mid or senior either. The companies being absurdly picky about hiring juniors are the ones that expect miracles at 65k from a brand new college grad. Why in the world do you think they'd suddenly pay market for candidates that have experience?
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Jan 31, 2021 15:19
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Vilgefartz posted:I've been working on a little React crud app as a portfolio piece, aiming for a job as a junior web developer (mind you i have 2 years of a comp sci degree left so it might be a while). A bunch criticism incoming. Please don't take it harshly - I am approaching this from the perspective of someone sifting through 100+ resumes: * Ditch the login/signup. As a recruiter or someone in charge of hiring, I am not going to take the time to sign up. This might be tough considering you want to show off that you have database CRUD integration. One approach is to make a shared Guest Login - you can set up a script to delete the data every 24 hours. * Come up with a better title than "Demonstration Website" - something like {YourName} Portfolio is probably going to be better. * Your header has a Circle and Home icon that both take you home. Ditch one of them. * Your contact page needs more. How about your name, LinkenIn, Github, maybe a blurb about you, etc. Some basic styling and a splash of color could be good here. Find a site that generates a color palette and just use it. * I'm not sure what's going on with the "Default Profile Image" link in the footer * Add a favicon and a site title (it's just called React App in the Chrome tab right now) I actually did make an account, so here's some stuff about the actual app: * You should add a `title` attribute to the icons - it's not clear what some of them are. * The entire process of picking a date range is immensely confusing. I'd add a Date Range label, remove the "After" and "Before" buttons, and go check out how other calendar programs allow range selection. I'd suggest having a mini-calendar pop up in-line on the page, which closes on date click. Also, the "Getting date range start" information looks like a warning (don't use red, generally, unless you want to indicate some error state), and the verb "Getting" implies that that program is doing something, and the user needs to wait. If you like your current UX, I'd change this to "Select the start date" or something like that - make it an imperative. * Remove the "Clear" button when there is no date range set * Remove the "Search" field when you are in Calendar view * When there is a filter that filters out all events, the main button still says "Add a first post" - the easy change is to just make this button always say "Add a new post" Overall, it's actually pretty impressive for a junior web dev - you clearly have React chops and I haven't found any bugs or showstopping issues. You're not applying to be a designer or UX designer, but the unfortunate reality is people will still judge your portfolio on its design. Calendars are tough in general nd this project is fairly ambitious. It will absolutely help you get job and stand out from the crowd. If I was hiring for a junior web dev, I'd definitely schedule a phone screen based on this, assuming I took the time to log in. What I'd want to talk to you about is what you created from scratch and what you leveraged libraries for, how you're managing state, and how the calendar interactions work. I'm happy to go into more detail anywhere or clarify anything. This is really a great start, and with some more polish could be quite impressive. Harriet Carker fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Jan 31, 2021 |
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Jan 31, 2021 17:04
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Vilgefartz posted:I've been working on a little React crud app as a portfolio piece, aiming for a job as a junior web developer (mind you i have 2 years of a comp sci degree left so it might be a while). Agree with dantheman650, this is a very impressive project and beyond what most entry level people have. I did have a "spinning star" when trying to make a post. Not sure why, but its not a big deal. I went back and posted again and it worked fine. I agree that some UI tweaks would help. Also a few options, like being able to change the date format for example. I would also want to dive into the source on this if I was interviewing. I'd expect you'd get questions like "How did you salt the passwords and how would you make it more secure if you needed to" and questions about how you architected this along with pros and cons about your choices. You don't need to make perfect decisions, but you should be able to talk about how you would do it differently if it needed to be scaled bigger/better/whatever. If you're looking for more stuff, being able to upload different media and then show it different ways would be cool. But to be clear, this is already a great project.
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Jan 31, 2021 19:48
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my homie dhall posted:to me it seems the reason why companies are picky/hesitant about bringing on juniors is that they are "an investment" that is liable to leave the second they switch from becoming a liability to becoming an asset unless you have some other way of keeping them around. once they are capable of contributing at a normal developer level of course you should pay them like one or they will leave, but then why bother going through the effort if you could have just hired someone at that level to begin with? Picky != hesitant. Companies are picky with juniors because you post an entry level position and you get 30-100 resumes and a large portion of them are not up for the job. So you can say "I only want people who can show me examples of their work" because your pool is STILL big enough to cut down further. If you only had a couple applicants you wouldn't be able to be as picky. There are coding bootcamps which can make you qualified for a $60-$80k job in the span of 12 weeks. This kind of democratization is great but it means A LOT of people are incentivized to go through it even if its not a great choice for them, or who got through the bootcamp by cheating or skirting by. Hesitant on juniors is for a myriad of reasons, but yes the perception of: "Right when someone gets good they will leave unless I pay them what I can just get someone off the street for" is a reason. Another is a companies ability to train, as an industry very good coders are frequently incentivized to go to management which isn't always the best place for them. The skills of being a good backend dev isn't the same as being good at coaching and mentoring. I've definitely found there's tons of value in getting entry level people up, and have made a good career out of it, but those skills to do that are not as common as they should be. And not all places are, but there are more entry-level candidates as there are entry level dev jobs so the scarcity is going to look especially rough, especially this past year. Here's another tip: Hiring managers mostly don't care what new-hires make. We don't get leftover money, I've never worked anywhere where bonuses were tied to employee salary (what a perverse incentive THAT would be). We mostly have bands people need to fit in, and its really hard to change salary after someone is in the door. My main reason for wanting to pay someone less is that is slightly easier to get adjustment money if your coming in under budget, but you want adjustment money when someone is underpaid so underpaying someone right away just causes the problem you're trying to solve. This is why negotiating is so important, an extra 5% or whatever means absolutely nothing to me. There may be problems with the pay bands, for sure, but those are set by people disconnected from who is reviewing resumes. This could be different for places like startups or where you're directly working for owners but at a company with any size the hiring managers are looking for people who are the best fit whose salaries fit in a payband. If my payband is $80k-$100k no hiring manager is going to pick the worse guy at 85k vs the better guy at 95k.
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Jan 31, 2021 20:04
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No sane hiring manager. That qualification is important.
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Jan 31, 2021 20:09
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Well I didn't get the job, but now I know some basic JS, which will probably make React a lot easier, which will probably make getting hired much easier. Got a call from another recruiter right after who started with "I need you to do these 17.5 things as part of the interview process. We pay 45k non negotiable". So I'm not doing any of those 17 things. I'm desperate, but I'll go back to waiting tables before doing that.
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Jan 31, 2021 21:17
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I think I might’ve asked this before, but do any of you know a resource where I can pay someone to look over my code and be like “oh this needs fixing” etc? I’m a freelancer working on a BIG project and I’m terrified of coding myself into a corner via being a stupid newbie. Thanks
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Jan 31, 2021 21:26
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dantheman650 posted:A bunch criticism incoming. Please don't take it harshly - I am approaching this from the perspective of someone sifting through 100+ resumes: Lockback posted:Agree with dantheman650, this is a very impressive project and beyond what most entry level people have. I did have a "spinning star" when trying to make a post. Not sure why, but its not a big deal. I went back and posted again and it worked fine. Thanks both of you for taking the time to have a look and give me some critique, it is hugely helpful. I'll implement/work on all the stuff you've mentioned. I think i could talk about everything i've done on it fairly comfortably (database, JWTs, API, React), though some of the structural decisions i made in React i'm not sure are 'correct'. The default profile image link is just attribution to the designer of the image, i think ill stick that somewhere else lol.
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Feb 1, 2021 02:08
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Vilgefartz posted:...some of the structural decisions i made in React i'm not sure are 'correct'. The default profile image link is just attribution to the designer of the image, i think ill stick that somewhere else lol. Can you explain some of the alternatives you considered and why you made the choices you did? If so, you have nothing to worry about.
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Feb 1, 2021 03:07
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Yeah, if things are too correct and sterile it'd actually be worse. I'd much rather see someone say "I first started like this and got a bunch of ideas and had to re structure like this, but even now I think I'd need to go back again to do that". That is much more realistic and shows a more organic approach. I've known people who can't start a project unless they know exactly what every piece looks like and are unwilling to change anything, those people are a bear to work with.
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Feb 1, 2021 17:33
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Hello goons. I'm not strictly speaking a newbie, but I make up for the difference by being terrible. I switched from software to the education profession ~5 years ago with only a couple of years of software experience under my bent. My family had Covid inspired relocation over the summer and I'm interested in trying out the remote-work software scene. How does this resume strike you? (Note - I'm aware of the broken link to https://mrkennedy.ca/rln, but I'm not at the right machine to update this anonymized version).
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Feb 1, 2021 18:18
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Newf posted:Hello goons. You might get some help at the resume thread too: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3553582 For some advice: I like the layout. I'd swap the education and skills section unless you are looking for more edu type roles. Your job experience is just descriptions of what those jobs are, a hiring manager will know that. You should emphasize accomplishments. The math circle is a good example of that, but you should try to get a couple at each job. Your projects are ok, though the lydia one seems kinda light. I wonder if it might be better getting rid of it. What are you looking for? You're background might be better fit for instructor at a bootcamp or something. But if you have some ideas as to where you want to go you might get better advice.
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Feb 1, 2021 18:29
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I'd suggest not to bold the project names unless they are very strong. In terms of your design hierarchy, they visually stick out the most to me. I'd also put more quantitative bullet points for your software experience and how you helped impact business. Instead of listing off languages at the end, you can say something like "Built X that drove Y impact, using [pogramming language] and [framework]/[tools]." You want to highlight how you did software work, and how good you were and will potentially be to new employers.
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Feb 1, 2021 19:50
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I just took the TAA at Hack Reactor. 60% of what was on there wasn't on the prep material that they provided, which was mostly arrays and strings. Anyone know how they properly assess? I didn't bother running my code the entire assessment cause none of it was on the prep..
False Toaster fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Feb 3, 2021 |
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Feb 3, 2021 00:22
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I went to hack reactor, but that was like six years ago. It's very likely they have changed since then, but when I applied the majority of the assessment grade came from using higher-order functions, particularly functions as arguments to other functions. I don't know if it's any consolation, but I failed my first assessment, but I only had to do a code project in order to re-apply. I also failed the next two assessments. 
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Feb 3, 2021 01:08
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Mecca-Benghazi posted:So to the newbies, agreed with the above, play the game and milk whatever differences you have that could be construed positively for all they’re worth IMO On that note, I'm going through the application process for undergrad internships at the moment. Although I'm doing a CS degree at the moment, I've also done a degree in Gender Studies, and have experience (that doesn't make it onto my resume) doing other stuff related to that, i.e. being a counselor, doing research, volunteering etc. For behavioral interviews I've been mostly sticking with examples from CS/data science projects/internships, but there's a good number of questions where other experiences would be pretty relevant, and would highlight the stuff that I'm trying to get across in my other answers (i.e., problem-solving skills, learning techniques, collaborating effectively). I think they'd probably stand out more - like today there was a question about 'helping others', and I answered with something about a project I'd worked on, but I could also talk about like, working with homeless youth at a queer outreach center. All else equal, is there value to using these alternative answers, or is it generally better to stick with stuff that's more obviously relevant to stuff that might come up in whatever job I'm interviewing for? How would y'all suggest making that decision? I want to make sure that I get across that I have technical skills, but a lot of those other experiences heavily informed how I make decisions, balance competing demands, work in teams, etc. as well.
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Feb 5, 2021 00:16
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foutre posted:On that note, I'm going through the application process for undergrad internships at the moment. Although I'm doing a CS degree at the moment, I've also done a degree in Gender Studies, and have experience (that doesn't make it onto my resume) doing other stuff related to that, i.e. being a counselor, doing research, volunteering etc. For behavioral interviews I've been mostly sticking with examples from CS/data science projects/internships, but there's a good number of questions where other experiences would be pretty relevant, and would highlight the stuff that I'm trying to get across in my other answers (i.e., problem-solving skills, learning techniques, collaborating effectively). I think they'd probably stand out more - like today there was a question about 'helping others', and I answered with something about a project I'd worked on, but I could also talk about like, working with homeless youth at a queer outreach center. All else equal, is there value to using these alternative answers, or is it generally better to stick with stuff that's more obviously relevant to stuff that might come up in whatever job I'm interviewing for? How would y'all suggest making that decision? I want to make sure that I get across that I have technical skills, but a lot of those other experiences heavily informed how I make decisions, balance competing demands, work in teams, etc. as well. Those skills are great to mention. I'd also make sure you have line items in your resume with that stuff, you don't need a ton of detail but being someone who can handle stress and mediate disagreements is a huge plus in the software world, not to mention desire for cultural values that embodies. Some places only care about you being a robot that writes code, but those usually aren't very good places to work anyway.
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Feb 5, 2021 17:03
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So I was finally kicked out of Korea and have started job searching back in the US of A in earnest.  And so far nothing. The lack of 3 years of experience in anything feels like an unsurmountable barrier. But I did get an offer from Revature. The pay isn't great, and I will have no control at all on what they train me for. And also it's funny to think my 6.5 years of university are less valuable than their 10~12 weeks of training. But despite the low pay and relocation requirement, it's pretty tempting. The review sites all give them pretty high reviews, but I thought I would ask this thread just in case someone knows something I don't. I feel like if I can just get that 2 more years of programming experience, a lot more opportunities will starting being available to me. Is Revature a good place for me to build experience, or am I just being impatient in my job search?
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Feb 5, 2021 21:10
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What's Revature? Just how bad is the pay?
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Feb 5, 2021 21:43
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rt4 posted:What's Revature? Just how bad is the pay? "minimum wage for your area" At least for the 10~12 weeks of training, then I get bumped up to a stunning $45k per year for the first year, or $55k for places with high costs of living. Though the company you're sent to might buy out the contract for more. Edit: They are company that hires people, trains them, and then sends them off to work at other companies. Shadow0 fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Feb 5, 2021 |
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Feb 5, 2021 21:51
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Do they force you to repay them for the training if you leave within a certain timeframe?
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Feb 5, 2021 22:19
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ultrafilter posted:Do they force you to repay them for the training if you leave within a certain timeframe? If I break the two year contract, yeah. Unless it's for medical reasons or they let me go or a few more cases. But I want the two years experience.
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Feb 5, 2021 22:22
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Never take a job that expects you to pay them, for any reason. It's a scam.
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Feb 5, 2021 22:26
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