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Are there jobs in tech that don't look like a gap for programmers/developers? Low key want to get out of current job but I think I suck at programming interviews
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Jun 7, 2021 21:28
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| # ? May 30, 2024 11:47 |
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PM maybe? Something like a dedicated scrum master is rarer, but also an option. These jobs need their own set of skills though, I don't think it would be a good idea to jump into one of these roles if all you're doing is trying to kill time while you practice coding interviews for a job you really want.
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Jun 7, 2021 22:04
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Anyone have any experience working for a consulting firm? Just had some interviews last night with one. They're a smaller firm but with a national presence. I really liked talking to everyone there and it seemed like a cool place going by what they were telling me, but it seems like consulting can be very hit or miss judging by what I've read online.
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Jun 8, 2021 15:40
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The client is going to make it or break it.
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Jun 8, 2021 15:42
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The relevant things from the actual firm are mostly how much pressure you're under related to billable hours and how they pick clients. If you're expected to get 40 billable hours per week, that means you're going to be working quite a bit more than 40 hours. Most of your working time is spent with clients and not other people at your consulting firm. Some firms don't care about anything other than the client's ability to pay, and some will be more picky. The latter are usually better to work for.
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Jun 8, 2021 16:27
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Plorkyeran posted:The relevant things from the actual firm are mostly how much pressure you're under related to billable hours and how they pick clients. If you're expected to get 40 billable hours per week, that means you're going to be working quite a bit more than 40 hours. Most of your working time is spent with clients and not other people at your consulting firm. Some firms don't care about anything other than the client's ability to pay, and some will be more picky. The latter are usually better to work for. Thanks, this is helpful to know. Something they kept repeating multiple times is how they've been expanding and that they don't have the manpower to take all the jobs coming their way, so they've been pretty picky with clients/telling lots of folks no. So, at least based off of what they're telling me, this could be a positive sign.
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Jun 8, 2021 16:50
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Plorkyeran posted:If you're expected to get 40 billable hours per week, that means you're going to be working quite a bit more than 40 hours. It's not been the case for me - in fact, we had a company-wide meeting where they pretty much told us that we're not allowed to work over 40 hours, and if we have to we need written, signed permission from like 4 higher-ups from the company and client. For each day with >8 hours. I have no idea why, but I assume that some people were "working" 12 hours a day every day.
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Jun 8, 2021 16:54
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Plorkyeran posted:The relevant things from the actual firm are mostly how much pressure you're under related to billable hours and how they pick clients. If you're expected to get 40 billable hours per week, that means you're going to be working quite a bit more than 40 hours. Most of your working time is spent with clients and not other people at your consulting firm. Some firms don't care about anything other than the client's ability to pay, and some will be more picky. The latter are usually better to work for. Also good to find out if you are expected to travel (maybe not now, but later). If you are expected to travel, find out if their engagement contract specifies that travel hours are billable. I had a terrible assignment where I had 16-18 hours a week in transit to/from the client and travel was not billable. So I was essentially working 50-60 hour weeks counting time spent traveling, and maybe able to eke out 32 billable hours at best, assuming I worked on the plane.
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Jun 8, 2021 16:57
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kitten smoothie posted:Also good to find out if you are expected to travel (maybe not now, but later). If you are expected to travel, find out if their engagement contract specifies that travel hours are billable. That's seriously hosed up. What did you do?
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Jun 8, 2021 16:58
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marumaru posted:That's seriously hosed up. What did you do? Ultimately the problem resolved itself. I finished that project, 2008 recession went full throttle, and I quit because we weren't getting any new business.
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Jun 8, 2021 17:02
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marumaru posted:It's not been the case for me - in fact, we had a company-wide meeting where they pretty much told us that we're not allowed to work over 40 hours, and if we have to we need written, signed permission from like 4 higher-ups from the company and client. For each day with >8 hours.
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Jun 8, 2021 17:40
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The other thing to find out about is how they handle bench time (where you're on payroll but don't have an active engagement).
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Jun 8, 2021 17:46
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In my experience there were two different types of clients: Staff augmentation: you're pretty much an employee of the client, but usually you get a big ol' CONTRACTOR badge and don't get invited to any events. Off-site: you work at the consulting company office, sometimes the team is all from your company, sometimes it's a mix between your company, other companies, and the client. This one is the one where you need 40 billable hours per week on top of all the work you do for your host company. It was pretty much impossible to get raises/promotions unless you put in a poo poo load of effort on top of those 40 billable hours.
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Jun 8, 2021 17:51
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Ensign Expendable posted:In my experience there were two different types of clients: I've done the "working as a contractor onsite" to getting hired thing a couple of times. If you're not great at interviews or have some other kind of background problem that might make a company hesitant to do a direct hire (e.g. career switcher, being older), it can be a good way to sneak in through the back door. Granted it's always better to just interview and get the job rather than do the onsite contractor thing if you can swing it.
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Jun 8, 2021 18:10
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fourwood posted:I haven’t done consulting, but my experience from government/defense contracting is that you have to bill 40 hours but then there are a lot of non-billable events like all-hands, lunches, trainings, etc. that you’re expected to do but, again, aren’t billable. Ah, yeah, I've only done remote consulting. I can see how on-site could be different. I'd definitely bill them for all that by default though, unless my company explicitly told me not to.
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Jun 8, 2021 18:24
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Bruegels Fuckbooks posted:I've done the "working as a contractor onsite" to getting hired thing a couple of times.
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Jun 8, 2021 18:51
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Bruegels Fuckbooks posted:I've done the "working as a contractor onsite" to getting hired thing a couple of times. If you're not great at interviews or have some other kind of background problem that might make a company hesitant to do a direct hire (e.g. career switcher, being older), it can be a good way to sneak in through the back door. Granted it's always better to just interview and get the job rather than do the onsite contractor thing if you can swing it. This was explicitly disallowed by our contracts, not that these places were the kind I would ever work at on my own.
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Jun 8, 2021 19:12
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Huh. I always figured there was never a full-time position sitting at the end of those things. It really depends, and is rarely a sure thing. A company hiring 1099s as "contract to hire" is often scammy. Not always, but often. This is different from consulting. Working as a consultant (a W2 employee) for a firm, where you are then contracted out as staff aug is much more like working as a fake FTE at your client. At least as a developer, you tend to be "part of the team" but from an HR/biz perspective you are a contractor and a second-class citizen of sorts. But you still get benefits and such from your consultant firm mothership. It's a bit of a grey area for transitioning from a consulant/contractor to FTE but it's absolutely something that happens fairly frequently despite it often being "forbidden" in contract verbiage. Through a mix of workarounds and companies just not caring to pursue enforcement, it's something that does happen. Like I said, grey area. I wouldn't plan your career on it though, it's case by case. Guinness fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Jun 8, 2021 |
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Jun 8, 2021 19:14
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Does working at the same client forever with no deadline, ever, count as working as a fake FTE, or is that normal?
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Jun 8, 2021 19:19
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marumaru posted:Does working at the same client forever with no deadline, ever, count as working as a fake FTE, or is that normal? This is extremely common at contracting/consulting firms loaning out people to big corporations as staff aug on open-ended T&M contracts. Think aerospace/defense, governmental, even big (old) tech. It's the easiest money in the world for the contract shop. Minimal overhead, easy 40 hours a week on site billing, low risk of losing the contract, charge $225/hr at a cost of $150/hr and keep the change. The contractors end up doing it for so long they forget who they actually work for and start saying they just work for their client, which for most practical purposes is true but technically/legally false. This definitely starts to blur the line between "consulting" and "body shop contracting" though.
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Jun 8, 2021 19:26
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Guinness posted:at a cost of $150/hr god i wish
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Jun 8, 2021 19:47
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marumaru posted:god i wish I meant total cost to the business. Employee salary + benefits + administrative overhead.
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Jun 8, 2021 20:03
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Guinness posted:I meant total cost to the business. Employee salary + benefits + administrative overhead. Yeah. You'll see people who actually make 105~110k a year get billed at $225 an hour. So it's not struggling start-up type places that are employing these types of contractors.
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Jun 8, 2021 21:37
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I mean, I'd love to make 105-110k a year...
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Jun 8, 2021 22:10
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marumaru posted:I mean, I'd love to make 105-110k a year... Time to job hunt, then. According to the BLS the median software developer salary in the US is 110k. That's not even new grad salary in the figgielands, much less mid-senior salary/total comp. Since this is the oldie programmer thread, I'm assuming you are a developer with some experience. You can go out and get it. Probably a lot more.
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Jun 8, 2021 22:25
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Salaries have jumped up a lot since 2015 Talented juniors are making 120-130 in my area, seniors start way way north of 150, one recruiter I talked to said that they couldn't fill a west coast senior position because the salary band was too low at 150-200 H1B are a lot harder to get now, plus the international labor market largely went home during covid, and there's no juniors coming in from outside the country until travel restrictions are lifted
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Jun 8, 2021 22:48
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All of this, plus even if you're not in the figgieland, everybody and their grandma is open for remote hires nowadays. My shop was a basic "butts in seats" place but has had to adjust to the new market developments.
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Jun 8, 2021 23:14
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I have asked questions before about changing careers from a completely unrelated field and aiming for project management more than the technical nuts and bolts. What does the thead think about the dearth of semiconductors ? Is it worth it getting a basic education on IC design, and eventually aim for that area, or will supply problems be a thing of the past in 6 months? Thank you in advance.
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Jun 9, 2021 10:18
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Semiconductor shortages are application/industry specific. There's a high-end, meaning small feature size (video cards, for example), semiconductor shortage because of shitcoin mining. There's a shortage in low-end, large feature size automotive semiconductors because all the big manufacturers canceled their orders at the beginning of the pandemic but demand for new cars didn't drop as much as they anticipated. These are manufacturing, not design, bottlenecks. I'm not sure how much knowing how to design an IC overlaps with manufacturing, but I suspect that varies quite a bit considering both ARM and AMD just do design, for example. Someone else here probably knows more about that overlap.
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Jun 9, 2021 14:53
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marumaru posted:I mean, I'd love to make 105-110k a year... You know Rails? I've got a Rails spot open in that range, just haven't had time to advertise for it.
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Jun 9, 2021 16:20
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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.
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Jun 9, 2021 16:57
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Uh oh, I'm sorry guys, I started something with mentioning my open spot. Gotta keep that in the jobs thread.
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Jun 9, 2021 17:26
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Oh.. My bad. Was directed here from another thread.
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Jun 9, 2021 17:37
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Better yet, head on over to the SA Code Discord!
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Jun 9, 2021 17:38
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I don't think IC design is something you can pick up in 6 months...
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Jun 9, 2021 20:06
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My current place still only pays me 115k base in the middle of Boston, even though I’m considered senior. Pretty sad, honestly.
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Jun 9, 2021 21:16
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Guinness posted:Since this is the oldie programmer thread, I'm assuming you are a developer with some experience. You can go out and get it. Probably a lot more. I'm not that experienced, definitely not 10 years into my career like (seemingly) everyone else here is. I'm mostly here to learn from you all. marumaru fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Jun 10, 2021 |
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Jun 9, 2021 21:34
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HappyHippo posted:I don't think IC design is something you can pick up in 6 months... Obviously not, but I'm focusing on project managment, so it's more about getting a technical overview. Kind of leaning away from that idea after the helpful comments.
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Jun 9, 2021 22:01
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Dawncloack posted:What does the thead think about the dearth of semiconductors ? Is it worth it getting a basic education on IC design, and eventually aim for that area, or will supply problems be a thing of the past in 6 months? To build on Munkeymon’s response, semiconductor supply issues and availability of semiconductor designers aren’t directly related. You may have heard of supply problems specifically affecting certain types of semiconductor fabrication processes, like 3nm or 5nm, but that is a tiny fraction of all semiconductors designed and produced in the world. It’s not a case of IC designers needing to scramble and come up with brand new designs to replace those processes in order to compensate for the current fab problems. The world just needs capacity to build the drat things and for fab foundries to stop catching fire and flooding and so on. It would also be nice if shitcoiners stopped being stupid fucks and buying up supplies of certain specific products but we can’t have everything in life. All that having been said: If you want to get into semiconductor design, that’s great! There will still be a need for designers in the future because the industry isn’t going to go away. In fact there was news a few weeks ago about a Taiwanese foundry exploring opening a factory in Phoenix even among the current troubles.
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Jun 9, 2021 22:06
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Pollyanna posted:My current place still only pays me 115k base in the middle of Boston, even though I’m considered senior. Pretty sad, honestly. Nah Boston is just like that. Move out to SF for the Megabucks or Austin/NY/Seattle for not quite as much but still more.
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Jun 9, 2021 22:59
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