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Sorry if we scared you away from the accounting thread, Empress. Anyway, I’m an accountant with no immediate plans to not be an accountant, but I’ve developed an interest in learning how to program, starting completely from scratch. This week I am completing Khan Academy’s computer science principles course. After that I’m planning on selecting courses from the “Open Source Society University” path on github. My long term goal with this is to either continue working as an accountant with a freelancing side gig in software/data analysis, or to eventually find a role that requires both software and government regulatory knowledge. I suppose a third option is that I actually gain enough experience to become a competent full time programmer for things unrelated to finance, but that’s not the goal unless it happens naturally. As things are, I have no need or plan to make any money from this for several years. I just want to dedicate time to learning and creating progressively better personal projects until the day that I feel comfortable doing work for someone else or building a tool worth monetizing — maybe 2 or 3 years from now if I am very consistent? I recognize that this all sounds naive. Feel free to knock some direction into me.
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Feb 19, 2021 18:52
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Mush Mushi posted:Sorry if we scared you away from the accounting thread, Empress. This is great, very realistic and an absolutely effective use of your time. There is another option of being a hybrid tool builder for financial teams (which I have had my team moonlight for on occasion), there is tons of opportunities doing that. Python is almost certainly the place I'd point you to, along with learning how to do stuff in databases (SQL and noSQL). I think you can even look at some of the things you do in your day job that can probably be automated as part of this. One of the best ways to learn is to hack away at a project, and if you can turn it into something that makes your day job easier, or gets you some love from your bosses all the better.
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Feb 19, 2021 19:24
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Mush Mushi posted:Sorry if we scared you away from the accounting thread, Empress. Last year I was able to transition into a software development role at my current company after doing aerospace engineering for ~8 years. I don't think your plan is that naive, it took me about 2 or 3 years of learning on my own (and a lot of luck!) to be able to transfer to my current job. (I was exposed to some programming in my engineering classes in the past too, though.) Finding ways to integrate the dev skills that you're learning into your current work can be a path forward on accelerating your learning like Lockback said. Consistency is key for sure, if you can work at it a little each day your skills will pick up. Once you learn enough dev skills to see some potential of automating some of your work it'll be a boost in motivation too.
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Feb 19, 2021 20:15
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Mush Mushi posted:Sorry if we scared you away from the accounting thread, Empress. But reading your reply gave me confidence and maybe a idea of being able to sell myself as potentially utilizing both or atleast having the knowledge behind accounting. I guess it wouldn't hurt anyways to have the accounting behind me as a emergency plan as I would have the ability to enter the accounting field with my degree, I think. Thanks!!
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Feb 19, 2021 22:20
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Imho there are way too many tech bros that only know how to do tech things and a huge shortage of people that can bring cross-discipline knowledge to the table
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Feb 19, 2021 22:38
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The Fool posted:Imho there are way too many tech bros that only know how to do tech things and a huge shortage of people that can bring cross-discipline knowledge to the table This is extremely true. The best co-workers I've ever had weren't the best programmers but knew how to translate complex concepts for folks who weren't at the same technical level and could communicate those ideas to a diverse audience of stakeholders.
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Feb 20, 2021 16:12
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Hey all, I graduated with a B.A. in English four years ago and I've been teaching English abroad since. I'm realizing now that I don't want to keep teaching my whole life, so I want to start learning how to code and hopefully get to a level of proficiency that can get me a job in New Zealand. Naturally I have lots of worries about my prospects, given that I'll be be competing with local CS graduates, but the good thing about my current job is that I have a lot of free time, and I think I'll be able to devote around 12 hours a week to learning how to code. I also will try to present my degree and current job as positives - I've been explaining things to children who don't speak much English for years, so that ought to make me pretty good at communicating any programming issues to coworkers! I wouldn't say I have experience coding, but I have some level of exposure, because I almost finished a Math degree in college, and used Matlab for a differential equations class, and R for a modeling class. I also took linear algebra and I heard that could be relevant for some programming. But coding in those classes just meant plugging in commands that were given to us, and I never became comfortable in either program. Also, it's been a while since then. What those experiences did tell me, though, is that I will probably enjoy coding for work. My (probably naive) plan is to use these 12 free hours a week to get comfortable with Python (because it is simple and widely applicable) and later SQL (because being able to work with data should make me a better candidate for lots of jobs). I know that I will need to create a portfolio by making my own projects, and I don't know what these will be yet, but I'm hoping that as I get more comfortable coding I will think of stuff to do. I do play a game that could use more user-developed online tools, and I was also thinking about possibly making an app or website to help English teachers in this country find jobs. I don't need to quit my teaching job, so I can keep learning on the side indefinitely, but I would sure like to be able to transition jobs one or two years from now. How does that plan sound to you? I think the most confusing part of this process for me is that there are so many different types of programming jobs out there, and I have no idea which one(s) I should be working towards. Thanks for reading this.
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Feb 22, 2021 07:12
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You could look at job listings and take note of what companies are looking for, it might give you a better idea of what you want to shoot for and tailor your studies from there. If you want to go the fullstack web/app dev route, that sounds like a good plan. Focus on one thing at a time. You'll learn front end as you navigate building your own projects, for example. I'd throw in data structures and algorithms later on to prepare yourself when applying, assuming companies will interview on those.
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Feb 22, 2021 20:40
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What do I do when the dream job I really want has a bit of a lengthy process (like a couple of months) but other jobs while they are also decent if not good and also in the same field I am interested in (the games industry) might offer me a job first. I'd like to not pass up on opportunities, especially as I feel beggars can't be choosers, but I really do want that job that might take longer to get a final answer on; how do I balance entertaining other jobs as to avoid turning them down out of hand while waiting on what the final result is from my dream job?
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Feb 26, 2021 16:44
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Raenir Salazar posted:What do I do when the dream job I really want has a bit of a lengthy process (like a couple of months) but other jobs while they are also decent if not good and also in the same field I am interested in (the games industry) might offer me a job first. While its not a good look to bail on a job shortly after taking it and it's burning a bridge, "Dream Job" would be a good reason to do that. If you're talking about "potential job is marginally better" then I'd say take the bird in the hand and don't worry about it. If potential job is truly much better then I don't think it makes you a horrible person to bail out. And for the games industry, leaving a "typical" entry level game job for one of the few, legit really good ones is probably a real good move even if it means walking away from job #1 after a couple months.
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Feb 26, 2021 18:27
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Lockback posted:While its not a good look to bail on a job shortly after taking it and it's burning a bridge, "Dream Job" would be a good reason to do that. If you're talking about "potential job is marginally better" then I'd say take the bird in the hand and don't worry about it. If potential job is truly much better then I don't think it makes you a horrible person to bail out. To add some clarification, I don't have any job offers yet, but I am in the interview process for I think three or four game studios, one of which (the dream job, which is also a good company to work at w.r.t working conditions) told me up front that their process might take a couple of months; I don't know how long the process will be for the other companies as I've only started taking hackaranks and scheduling screening interviews, but one of them I am having a interview with their team/project lead next week. So basically there's no job offers at hand, but I am worried one might appear before the job I really want to work at can have a chance to offer me, BUT they might not if my proficiency isn't the right level. I'm not in a super rush to take a job financially speaking but I am worried about turning down an opportunity for an opportunity that might not materialize but I imagine the time different between offers is only a few weeks and not months.
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Feb 26, 2021 18:39
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If you can get an offer or two, you can usually use that as leverage to speed up the process at another company. Also, if you receive an offer, you can usually get an extended period of time to make a decision or even get the upper hand in negotiations by telling the offering company you are still actively talking with other companies.
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Mar 1, 2021 05:59
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I just got a “Partially Achieves Expectations” rating from my annual review. Does this ruin my hopes and dreams of being transferred to a similar role under different leadership at the company I work for?
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Mar 3, 2021 18:36
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Faith For Two posted:I just got a “Partially Achieves Expectations” rating from my annual review. That's hard to answer because policies on internal transfers vary a lot from company to company. But if you can get a good rating next year, that'll help a lot. Why did you get that rating, and why are you interested in transfering?
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Mar 3, 2021 18:43
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Faith For Two posted:I just got a “Partially Achieves Expectations” rating from my annual review. I have only ever gotten "meets expectations" at my job, despite going well above and beyond. It's a scale of 1 to 5 points and "meets expectations" is a 2. This is because my managers have a set, total, number of points to distribute to all members of the engineering team, and bonuses are based on the amount of points earned. I have been told, flat out, that the only reason I didn't score higher is because they just ran out of points to distribute. Take a wild loving guess at who consistently gets above a 2.
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Mar 3, 2021 18:46
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Vincent Valentine posted:I have only ever gotten "meets expectations" at my job, despite going well above and beyond. It's a scale of 1 to 5 points and "meets expectations" is a 2. That reminds me back when I did game testing and we found a bug, even if we needed to work as a team to find the bug, only one of us actually got to get credit for it!
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Mar 3, 2021 18:50
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ultrafilter posted:That's hard to answer because policies on internal transfers vary a lot from company to company. But if you can get a good rating next year, that'll help a lot. Because I don’t finish my work on time. And I’m interested in transferring because there was a point last year where I started feeling symptoms of burnout from my work/life balance getting bad. My work life balance has improved since then, but I would rather work somewhere else than stay and hope the leadership team gets better at project management. I work for a large company so I figured it would be easier to transfer to a different site than try finding a job somewhere else.
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Mar 3, 2021 18:55
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just hosed up a code challenge because i ran out of time and turns out my issue was with 1 line that i fixed like 3 minutes after the timer ended. and they passed on me no chance for another interview to explain myself lmbo. interviewing is so broken just kill the entire system ffs
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Mar 3, 2021 18:57
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Faith For Two posted:
This is almost always not true.
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Mar 3, 2021 19:12
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Speaking of code challenges I took one recently for C# and I had a lot of trouble with it because y'know, people don't typically operate well under pressure. Later that night when I was sleeping I bolt upright because I have the realization I vastly overcomplicated the problem and it was way simpler than I initially took it to be. Which is frustrating because that question took up so much of my time I couldn't complete the last question which was trivial. The question was along the lines of, complete the following program, there are two inputs, A and B and they are integers. From these two integers find us the largest possible square, such that for example suppose A is 10 and B is 21, the answer is 7 because 21 divides into 3 7 times and you can cut off 3 from 10 to also make seven. The minimum length of any side is 1 so if A+B is 3 return "No". The way it was phrased tricked me into overcomplicating it, that I had to do some weird optimization puzzle between these two numbers and account for edge cases like what if A or B is 1 and the other is some larger number etc. When I was sleeping I realize it's trivially simple. Just take RoundToInt((A+B)/4) if A+B >= 4 and that's always your answer! Because for the example given, 10+21 is 31, 31/4 is 7.something as 4x7 is 28 with remainder 3; and this works in general!
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Mar 3, 2021 19:16
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Faith For Two posted:Because I don’t finish my work on time. Most companies will not let you transfer if you're under the default expectations or at least not without jumping through hoops and you'd need the manager you're transferring under to solid back it which can be a stretch if you don't meet expectations. You should look into the specific rules of your company. It's a lot easier to switch companies than transfer internally at a lot of companies. You don't elaborate on the issue, but a common problem for junior engineers is to assume the scope of the work they were given is accurate and then never give updates until they miss the deadline. Both of these are easy to correct. You should scope all work you're given and communicate immediately if you can't meet the deadlines and then continue to give updates as you're working so that everyone can stay informed and make decisions if work starts to slip. It's much better to give people a heads up days or weeks in advance rather than on the day they were expecting the work to be complete. Of course your manager may be terrible and thus may not help at all in which case you should find a new job.
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Mar 3, 2021 19:32
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Raenir Salazar posted:The question was along the lines of, complete the following program, there are two inputs, A and B and they are integers. From these two integers find us the largest possible square, such that for example suppose A is 10 and B is 21, the answer is 7 because 21 divides into 3 7 times and you can cut off 3 from 10 to also make seven. The minimum length of any side is 1 so if A+B is 3 return "No". I've read this eight times and I haven't a clue what the actual question was. How can 7 be "the largest possible square"? 7 isn't a square number?
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Mar 3, 2021 21:52
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Faith For Two posted:I just got a “Partially Achieves Expectations” rating from my annual review. They're probably setting you up for a PIP. ultrafilter posted:That's hard to answer because policies on internal transfers vary a lot from company to company. But if you can get a good rating next year, that'll help a lot. lol@staying another year at a company giving a negative review (And make no mistake that is a negative review.) Vincent Valentine posted:I have only ever gotten "meets expectations" at my job, despite going well above and beyond. It's a scale of 1 to 5 points and "meets expectations" is a 2. And here I thought stack ranking went out in 2000s. Why would you ever go above and beyond at a company that pays you back like that. Maybe I'm bitter today but if I received anything other than exceeds expectations from a place I'd bounce.
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Mar 3, 2021 22:04
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Doom Mathematic posted:I've read this eight times and I haven't a clue what the actual question was. How can 7 be "the largest possible square"? 7 isn't a square number? I didn't explain it well (and I don't remember the exact wording), the question is along the lines of "return the largest possible length that make up the sides of the square from the two numbers such that it is the largest possible square" but it also included confusing wording about the nature of A and B.
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Mar 3, 2021 22:46
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Doom Mathematic posted:I've read this eight times and I haven't a clue what the actual question was. How can 7 be "the largest possible square"? 7 isn't a square number? Took me a minute but I think I figured out the prompt. You are given two rods, length A and B. You can cut them into more rods, but not combine rods. You have to make a square out of four equal length rods. What is the largest rod length you can use? Write a function that takes A and B and returns this number. Edit: though that would mean (A+B)/4 is the wrong answer, for something like 4 and 40. So I'm not sure. If it's just "A+B total resources, split into four" that's not much of a problem to solve. Dylan16807 fucked around with this message at 11:13 on Mar 4, 2021 |
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Mar 4, 2021 11:06
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Hughlander posted:And here I thought stack ranking went out in 2000s. Why would you ever go above and beyond at a company that pays you back like that. It was great listening to MS HR rep going "We aren't like some other companies that do {long-winded-explanation-of-stack-ranking}, ..., you might be used to {long-winded-explanation-of-stack-ranking} from other companies, but here at MS we are different" during new employee orientation. Hmmm, if only there was a big tech company that was known for stack ranking until recently... I think its name started with M? 
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Mar 4, 2021 11:42
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iirc they haven't done stack ranking in quite a number of years - maybe a decade or more. however, it's the sort of stain that doesn't wipe away easily
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Mar 4, 2021 12:07
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Dylan16807 posted:Took me a minute but I think I figured out the prompt. I think you're correct, I don't remember the question very well at this point, there had to be some reason why I struggled with it in terms of how it was phrased and I think that's it but I am not 100%. (A+B)/4 might not be correct but on the other hand probably does get me closer to a correct solution. Maybe something like this? code:1 and 8 would still get 2. 4 and 40 would get 10. 1 and 2 would get the fail message. Any issues?
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Mar 4, 2021 16:11
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Raenir Salazar posted:I think you're correct, I don't remember the question very well at this point, there had to be some reason why I struggled with it in terms of how it was phrased and I think that's it but I am not 100%. I'm pretty sure this is a combinatorics problem. Your options are 4 sides from A 0 from B, 3 sides from A 1 from B, etc. Solve for edge cases in the splitting then take the max of those 5 cases. You can probably shorten the number of cases with the larger/smaller swap you have there too - so really it's 4, 3, or 2 sides from large. Either way this is kind of a bad interview problem tbh unless it's a job role that requires math knowledge.
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Mar 4, 2021 20:25
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The next question I didn't have time to do made me sad because it was so trivial, I should have skipped to it. Basically suppose a cartesian plane centered at 0,0; there is given to you a list of X,Y coordinates labeled with letters (A, B, C, D, etc). Return the string consisting of the labels enclosed in the largest circle that doesn't contain any duplicate labels. So if there's 2 A's, only include the one closest to the origin. Just... Make a list of the all the points, sort by distance from 0,0 and add them to some sort of dictionary until there's a dupe and return the result. Easy. I left comments outlining my logic to how I would solve it if I didn't run out of time. Lets hope they aren't testing me for time management
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Mar 4, 2021 21:30
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Was it specified that the circle was centered on the origin?
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Mar 4, 2021 21:38
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HappyHippo posted:Was it specified that the circle was centered on the origin? I believe so, but this was over a week ago so I could be wrong.
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Mar 4, 2021 21:40
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I don't think this requires mathematics knowledge beyond how to measure length, add and subtract. This is mainly a question about being able to turn a question into a working piece of code with a loop. Because a square has only four sides, I think iterating from 0 to 4 inclusive is acceptable here. JavaScript code:
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Mar 4, 2021 21:44
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How do I check if I've been added to some kind of industry-wide blacklist?
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Mar 5, 2021 20:33
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Vincent Valentine posted:I have only ever gotten "meets expectations" at my job, despite going well above and beyond. It's a scale of 1 to 5 points and "meets expectations" is a 2. Wait, who gets above a 2? 
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Mar 5, 2021 20:42
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be good and try hard! 
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Hug in a Can posted:Wait, who gets above a 2? Old white men probably.
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Mar 5, 2021 21:09
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Hug in a Can posted:Wait, who gets above a 2? The people in charge of assigning the points.
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Mar 5, 2021 22:10
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boss at my old company told me in my performance review that I was getting 4/5 because corporate said they weren't allowed to give 5s I guess it was supposed to be a positive comment but it was a lot more demoralizing than just saying I got a 4
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Mar 5, 2021 22:28
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Shadow0 posted:How do I check if I've been added to some kind of industry-wide blacklist? As someone who hires in industry, this is no industry-wide blacklist. (This however also reminds me of The Usenet Cabal from the '90s)
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Mar 5, 2021 22:38
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According to "Cracking the Coding Interview", after a Google hiring committee recommends you an offer, your packet goes to a compensation committee, and then to the "executive management committee". That means the execs of Google have final veto power over every incoming employee. Top Google company execs do double-duty for the spying industry and probably have access to your search history on the downlow and do a whole bunch of other shady poo poo all the time using the resources that only execs quietly have access to. Maybe there's some super exclusive room where the insiders meet to sneakily vet each incoming class of employees via quick searches through their combined web histories, filtering out really risky people who could cost them money somehow. There's your blacklist
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Mar 6, 2021 05:12
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