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They're actually used more often at smaller companies since it's basically a way to outsource part of your own interviewing process.
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May 18, 2021 00:44
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IME they’re used at smaller company interviews, but the problems are easier and the expectations are much lower. The last one I had to deal with was called Coins On A Clock, which was just really pointless and no interesting trade offs.
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May 18, 2021 00:49
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Those are some interesting points that I didn't think about for smaller companies, makes sense since the amount of applicants seems to be astronomical these days. At least now I know what to expect and absorb study material on my own time instead of doing a full weekend of cramming. Definitely nice to have a bit of a confidence boost about my job prospects and opportunities out there.
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May 18, 2021 01:58
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The past decade or so for me with on-and-off coding interviews has involved basically some kind of dynamic programming problem with the typical format of trying to do it recursively, then being told that's not good enough, and then turning it into a mathematically recursive problem where you're just rolling up some number. At this point, I can tell it's coming if there isn't a need to keep a path of some kind to a solution, just some kind of maximum/minimum/true/false result. At this point, I kind of hate this intent with dynamic programming even though the more I see about the history of it in its purer form, the more I appreciate it as a method of thinking. It wasn't even a method of programming when it was invented. It was just given that name so the researcher could continue to get funding. My current take on it is it's supposed to be a method of turning a complicated problem into something like a state machine, but you don't literally describe all the states. You just declare your state variables, what you do with them, and what you infer from the result. Edit: Pre-screens were pretty much all like this; in-person wasn't. Rocko Bonaparte fucked around with this message at 03:10 on May 18, 2021 |
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May 18, 2021 03:05
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System design interview stuff: What are some typical ways for storing stuff that would have long lists of keys? I'm thinking things like who liked something, a list of invitees for large events, and stuff like that? I saw a suggestion in an example to use a wide-column database for that kind of thing, but what I saw about them when looking them up in detail didn't imply that kind of thing.
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May 19, 2021 08:03
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A lot of this depends on what interactions you plan on having with the data. Often you plan to interact with the data for several different use cases, in which case you might denormalize and store it in several different ways. The "classical" way of storing this that you'll see in a relational databases course is that you have a table with, e.g. userid and postid, along with any other data you want to store about the relationship between the user and the post. In the extreme simplest case, perhaps just the presence of a row in the table indicates a like. But your DBA would be rather upset at you if you did a COUNT(*) WHERE postid=? on every single page load to determine how many likes a post has - instead you'd probably denormalize your data and store a total count of likes for each post somewhere, and keep them up-to-date as users like and unlike posts. The reason you might see a wide-column database suggested here is that storing sparse two-dimensional mappings (like the userid x postid mapping above) is the whole point of a wide-column database.
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May 19, 2021 08:31
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Not sure if this is the right place, but... hi, everyone. I have discovered a love of coding through learning Java (I'm still pretty raw with it and basically still a beginner), and want to do web/software development. So, I am taking UConn's new bootcamp for that. Starts mid-July and runs for six months, it's a full-on experience, working with other coders, career services, the works. I'm going to be spending the next 6 weeks I have before starting learning as much HTML/CSS/JS as possible through FreeCodeCamp and other services. I guess I'm just here to introduce myself - I'm sure I'll be a regular visitor and contributor to the thread. Quick about me - I've spent 15 years in the service industry - various managerial/operational roles in popular coffee shops, and I consider myself pretty darn good with people management, optimizing work flow, communication, etc. and I'm excited to have that skill-set to bring into my new career, whenever that may be.
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May 19, 2021 14:20
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:System design interview stuff: What are some typical ways for storing stuff that would have long lists of keys? I'm thinking things like who liked something, a list of invitees for large events, and stuff like that? I saw a suggestion in an example to use a wide-column database for that kind of thing, but what I saw about them when looking them up in detail didn't imply that kind of thing. Are you assuming that the event and the invites are a single record? It may not be optimal but a common pattern would be to store the events in a table and invites in another table as individual records.
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May 19, 2021 19:04
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Would having a software development certificate from a community college add any value to the resume of a self learner? By some accounts my local CC has a decent computer science program and courses can be taken online. They issue certificates for software development in various languages that require 5-6 courses. I’m having trouble abandoning the idea of formalizing education through the community college, but I’m certain that I could learn what I want to know faster on my own. Seems like if I ever find myself competing for an actual development job, then I’m competing against CS degree holders and the certificate won’t matter. If I’m competing for an accounting role that is impressed by Python and ~analytics~, then once again the certificate doesn’t matter because I’m relying primarily on my accounting background.
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May 19, 2021 20:57
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Grump posted:round 4, 4.5 hour interview coming up. Because I guess the round 3 hour long live coding session didn't sell them. finally got the offer on this one. they ended up asking for a second hour-long live coding session, and then tried to pull a 3rd one on me until I refused and said i've already made my point 
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May 19, 2021 21:03
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Nice  I hope you attached your old Leslie Knope avatar to that reply
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May 19, 2021 21:46
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Mush Mushi posted:Would having a software development certificate from a community college add any value to the resume of a self learner? By some accounts my local CC has a decent computer science program and courses can be taken online. They issue certificates for software development in various languages that require 5-6 courses. I’m having trouble abandoning the idea of formalizing education through the community college, but I’m certain that I could learn what I want to know faster on my own. In general we undervalue community colleges but I think you're right that there's not a ton of value here.
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May 19, 2021 21:57
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Mush Mushi posted:Would having a software development certificate from a community college add any value to the resume of a self learner? By some accounts my local CC has a decent computer science program and courses can be taken online. They issue certificates for software development in various languages that require 5-6 courses. I’m having trouble abandoning the idea of formalizing education through the community college, but I’m certain that I could learn what I want to know faster on my own. The biggest value is if you need some structure to learn something, which is perfectly fine and not a problem. But a good portfolio will trump a certificate so do what you need to do to build a good portfolio. Whether that means taking classes or not is up to you. An exception to this is something like "Front End Design" which would benefit from actually learning from a person, but probably not so much your basic Python or DB certs.
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May 20, 2021 01:18
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Is there a good text resource somewhere going through all the major database categories in some detail? For example, I was looking up what kind of database to use for logging and found this Stack Overflow thread: https://stackoverflow.com/questions...ing%20argument. That has a lot more interesting details and side bits than I would have ever known about any of the technologies. I don't think I really need that level of detail for any kind of system design interview, but I'd definitely be more comfortable talking about my data store if I had this second layer of exposure. My backup plan here is to pretty much just follow thread and terms and try to assemble that myself with mixed success.
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May 22, 2021 00:31
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“7 Databases In 7 Weeks” is a good bet.
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May 22, 2021 00:43
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fawning deference posted:Not sure if this is the right place, but... hi, everyone. I have discovered a love of coding through learning Java (I'm still pretty raw with it and basically still a beginner), and want to do web/software development. Welcome, and best of luck on the career change.
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May 22, 2021 00:47
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Is there a good text resource somewhere going through all the major database categories in some detail? For example, I was looking up what kind of database to use for logging and found this Stack Overflow thread: Designing Data-Intensive Applications
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May 22, 2021 18:42
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CPColin posted:Nice lmao was seriously considering adding it to my glassdoor review of their trash interview process I almost feel bad taking a job with such a ridiculous interview and enabling them even more.
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May 24, 2021 14:53
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Bleh I really need some advice. Backstory: I was mostly done with a PhD in a totally unrelated and useless subject, funding got cut/academic job market is dead, have been programming for ~10 hours a day every for a little over a year now. I worked through a bunch of books and completed one big personal project (a protocol analyzer-ish thingy; it's not amazing but it works as a proof of concept at least and I learned a lot about low-level-networking, 10k-ish lines of code ). Problem : Almost all of that time was spent writing Haskell. I took some probably-bad-advice from people on the Haskell irc/reddit ("Stick with the language! You'll find a job!") and it's not working out. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places but as far as I can tell there are like 12 Haskell jobs in the world and half of them want you to have a doctorate in type theory. I haven't even gotten an interview in the 3-4 months I've been applying. For the past few months I've been working on a pseudo-dependently-typed (using singletons) game engine/client for a TCG game where (most of) the rules are enforced at the type level. I think it'd make a really impressive portfolio piece when finished. The core stuff (logic engine, card building dsl, web-client in purescript, netcode) is done but I dramatically underestimated how long it would take to figure out sql/authentication/security/cloud deployment stuff. My original plan was to try to finish that in the hopes that it'd be enough to land me a Haskell job, but my wife (who had been paying the rent w/ freelance work) got sick with long covid and I kind of need a job ASAP. I think that means I need to give up on that project/Haskell and pivot to something where there are... more than 12 jobs. So I need to learn another language where there are more jobs as soon as humanly possible. A *lot* of the stuff I learned in Haskell (and I got pretty deep into the language, I'm competent w/ type level programming and template Haskell etc) doesn't seem to transfer at all to more commonly used programming languages. I kinda get the gist of how basic OOP concepts work but I can tell it'll take a ton of practice to be able to organize large programs around them as effectively as I can with monad transformers/etc right now. All the algorithms and data structures I'm familiar with are functional. The only way I know how to organize data is with algebraic data types. I'm used to immutability (etc). On one hand, I feel like I should learn Scala with one of the pure FP libraries since it at least has monads / the Haskell experience is actually relevant / etc. But part of me is worried that all this functional programming stuff was just a waste of time and no one will hire someone without a CS degree to do it because FP is considered advanced or obscure or whatever. On the other hand, learning something like python feels like starting over from scratch because it's just so different to what I know, and I don't think I'll be able to pick it up that quickly. Any suggestions? (Sorry for the long post!)
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May 29, 2021 03:14
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If you go looking for FAANG jobs then the people hiring are going to be impressed by functional programming skill (and especially a concrete project done to a proof-of-concept stage with it), and if it's a junior position they aren't going to care at all that you aren't familiar with how to structure an object-oriented program because you can reasonably just pick that up on the job. (Especially since the current trends in enterprise-scale programming are towards functional-style programs with an emphasis on immutability, libraries written with higher-order functions instead of "native" language functionality, etc.) In your situation I would definitely aim for those big companies that can take on someone smart and wait while they get familiar with new stuff that they're using, rather than smaller outfits that will often be looking for someone to hit the ground running. (The fact that they pay better is a nice bonus too). Get your resume and portfolio together and start sending out applications! If you want something to work on in the meantime, focus on learning a "mainstream" language like Python or Java - but focus on the algorithmic "this is what you'll need to solve leetcode problems" stuff.
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May 29, 2021 04:57
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Gnumonic posted:Any suggestions? The Scala FP job market is substantially larger than Haskell, albeit still niche compared to the titans like Java. I'd suggest researching Scala jobs in your area/remote if appropriate, looking for "Cats" and "ZIO" in the requirements. I reckon that's an easier and faster route for you for now, compared to abandoning pure FP and going after more mainstream languages. But if you're not finding enough roles to apply to, pivoting to a mainstream language should be your plan B - it's simply tough to land your first job without a CS degree, and there will be more opportunities there. Scala as a language contains a few different ecosystems within it. Two of these use pure FP: Cats and ZIO. Cats is described as doing "Haskell on the JVM" while ZIO shuns some of the FP terminology and final tagless cruft to present a more intuitive API, but achieves the same aim. Both are great and have an active and passionate community. The biggest drawback of these ecosystems is that new devs need to learn so much underlying FP theory before they become productive, and the whole pure FP shebang doesn't really suit some people. It's hard to recruit cats/ZIO devs. As a Haskeller that won't be an issue, and you have the much easier task of learning the language and a few JVM quirks.
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May 29, 2021 11:39
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Daviclond posted:The Scala FP job market is substantially larger than Haskell, albeit still niche compared to the titans like Java. 2nd this, see what the Scala market looks like in your region. Note though, some places will have 0 jobs, others will have a pretty decent market. So factor that into your decision. I also think learning some OOP skills would help, probably Python, but I agree going all in on that should be a plan B. If you have sharpen your SQL/NoSQL skills, your FP with your academic background might make for an interesting entry-level data engineer, but that can be another super nebulous market.
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Jun 1, 2021 17:25
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I went through the first chapter last night and angels were singing. This was the kind of thing I was looking for. So I think that next would be something about designing good APIs for distributed systems. I'm not even sure what all this entails. Some stuff I know I need: 1. General good design of REST APIs. 2. Good practices for APIs that are continuous. Like, stuff that needs a websocket or similar. 3. APIs for pagination. Something I think I should be able to do after looking through stuff like that is sketch out my transactions from the user up to the point of the database where I'd have to show what the queries look like. IMO I think I'm going to just kind of suck at the database query just from a general lack of experience and will have to paraphrase the query. Some stuff that I think I need: 1. Good APIs for microservices 2. Proper distributed messaging interaction. I particularly am interested in how these messaging services get around the two generals problem. 3. Actually, general judgment calls on what makes a decent microservice. Like, would image thumbnail mangement make for a good general microservice, or do you generally go even smaller and have image duplication detection vary from thumbnails or whatever.
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Jun 2, 2021 17:22
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:
It was a talk at a ruby conference from 2018 but most of the talk is not ruby specific and is just more about the how/why/what can go wrong with service oriented architecture, which microservices are a variant of.
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Jun 3, 2021 15:21
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Here's my dumb question: Where are good places to look for job postings? I'm pretty sure I've got my resume sorted, but I'm not sure where to look for places to send it out. Linkedin?
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Jun 4, 2021 02:30
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long-rear end nips Diane posted:Here's my dumb question: LinkedIn and the careers site of any company's you're targetting. At this point, reply to any recruiters from those companies that have already emailed too.
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Jun 4, 2021 02:41
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long-rear end nips Diane posted:Here's my dumb question: Indeed and just google are also good. I use that a lot of times to get the initial job listings, then go to the company's career website and apply there.
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Jun 4, 2021 02:54
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https://whoishiring.io/ Is a great one for those looking for a specific geographic location.
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Jun 4, 2021 04:59
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I'm hiring senior/architect level full stack (SQL/C#/JS(specifically vue.js)) devs. Comp around $120k-$160k. Here's the JD: Software Architect Job Description Regionally around the midwest/Michigan area preferred but anywhere works really. I'm the software manager and the final hiring/comp decision, so if you're looking for a change, PM me. (This is my first post in this thread so let me know if we're not suppose to post direct job listings and I can remove this!) Garfu fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Jun 9, 2021 |
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Jun 9, 2021 15:07
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You're probably not going to get many hits in the junior developers thread. Try here instead.
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Jun 9, 2021 16:15
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ultrafilter posted:You're probably not going to get many hits in the junior developers thread. Try here instead. Ah woops, thanks.
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Jun 9, 2021 16:57
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My bud sent me a position at his company to apply for. It’s a smaller company and doesn’t have salary ranges online. Is it a “bad look” to ask for a rough estimate for the position? I’d rather not jump through interview hoops only to find out the pay isn’t there
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Jun 10, 2021 20:28
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Eh, I'd do it anyway just for the practice.
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Jun 10, 2021 21:51
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EDITED.
BaseballPCHiker fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Feb 2, 2022 |
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Jun 15, 2021 18:25
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BaseballPCHiker posted:I'm currently working in InfoSec for a major financial institution. My background is in IT infrastructure, primarily networking. I hold a few certs like CCNA, CISSP, AWS:Solutions Architect associate and Security Specialty, and an ITIL foundations cert. I make good money $120k a year with good benefits. I'm roughly 10 years into my career. Networking knowledge is useful in web programming in general so I don’t think this will be an enormous pivot for you. If you want a more immediate pay bump, at your experience level the cloud providers will probably be able to beat your current comp, take a look at their cloud architecture roles - some are networking focused. Edit: with the caveat that you would be client-facing with all that entails, up to you on the tradeoff there. IMO start coding to see if the career pivot is right for you. Make something to make your current job easier (if you can) and go from there if you find that you have a passion for it. Eldred fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Jun 15, 2021 |
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Jun 15, 2021 18:51
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BaseballPCHiker posted:I'm currently working in InfoSec for a major financial institution. My background is in IT infrastructure, primarily networking. I hold a few certs like CCNA, CISSP, AWS:Solutions Architect associate and Security Specialty, and an ITIL foundations cert. I make good money $120k a year with good benefits. I'm roughly 10 years into my career. a) Median senior software dev salary is about 115k. The ceiling is a lot higher, and definitely people working in certain areas make more, but there's no guarantee that the career switch will lead to a substantial increase over 120k. It's entirely possible. b) Most reasonably intelligent people could make it as a software developer. The set of people who would thrive and really enjoy that kind of work is much smaller than the set of people who could potentially do the job. You have to be intrinsically motivated to solve problems, patient, and relatively autodidactic - classes or training sessions will not teach you how to do your job, you will mostly figure that out from endless google searches.
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Jun 15, 2021 19:57
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Eldred posted:Networking knowledge is useful in web programming in general so I don’t think this will be an enormous pivot for you. If you want a more immediate pay bump, at your experience level the cloud providers will probably be able to beat your current comp, take a look at their cloud architecture roles - some are networking focused. Edit: with the caveat that you would be client-facing with all that entails, up to you on the tradeoff there. Thanks for the advice. I think I'll just practice for now in my freetime at home and see if its something I even enjoy. I mean I also dont enjoy home networking haha, but have always been passionate about paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head. Bruegels Fuckbooks posted:a) Median senior software dev salary is about 115k. The ceiling is a lot higher, and definitely people working in certain areas make more, but there's no guarantee that the career switch will lead to a substantial increase over 120k. It's entirely possible. I've always enjoyed being good at my job, but have never LOVED a job, and I doubt programming would be any different. I just want to make as much as I can as quickly as I can and retire. Thanks for the insight into salary as well.
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Jun 15, 2021 21:20
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Cross posting from BFC's resume thread, just because I think I should solicit some actual programmer advice on this too... I have never been one to include a "summary" or "objective" portion on a resume, but I have recently been trying to go for software jobs which are well outside of my current field. Would it be wise to include a "hey, I'm not a software engineer, but here is my current software experience and why I am trying to be a software engineer" kind of blurb? I was thinking something along these lines: quote:OBJECTIVE EDIT: Side question, specifically since this is the programming sub-forum... I also have Harvard's CS50 listed under my education section to show that I have some sort of formalized background in coding. Would this even be worth mentioning though, since it is basically just a free, self-paced web tutorial in computer science? Gin_Rummy fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Jun 15, 2021 |
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Jun 15, 2021 22:10
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Is breaking into software engineering really just a challenge to see who has the time in their life to do these loving hacker rank challenges?
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Jun 16, 2021 01:03
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Wolfy posted:Is breaking into software engineering really just a challenge to see who has the time in their life to do these loving hacker rank challenges? Yep. Don't want to accidentally hire someone who has hobbies or obligations outside of work.
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Jun 16, 2021 01:06
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