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Your choice is to either have your CEO ask you stupid questions or have your CEO give stupid answers to questions because they didn't ask someone who knows the answer.
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May 26, 2023 21:22
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LLSix posted:A bit of background. I write software for a company whose customers are very averse to updating. Some of our customers are still using versions of our software from over a decade ago. I too have worked in manufacturing.
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May 26, 2023 23:01
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yeah it's a good answer and I gave something similar to it a lot
Chopstick Dystopia fucked around with this message at 12:24 on May 27, 2023 |
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May 27, 2023 12:01
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After about 2 years in an TLM role as an engineer I'm about to get pushed over to the management ladder. For those who have walked the line between IC and EM, what are the long term tradeoffs and career prospects on either side? Should i fight to stay in an engineering job title for long term employability and sanity?
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May 29, 2023 04:16
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I don't know about you, but I actually enjoy the management side a lot more and the ability to do it without being expected to deliver a full dev's worth of code at the same time is a blessing. I've also seen enough people getting fed up with it and swapping back to the IC track that I wouldn't expect it to shoot you in the foot unless you completely forget how to code or something.
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May 29, 2023 22:01
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LLSix posted:
Amazing
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May 30, 2023 07:58
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Paolomania posted:After about 2 years in an TLM role as an engineer I'm about to get pushed over to the management ladder. For those who have walked the line between IC and EM, what are the long term tradeoffs and career prospects on either side? Should i fight to stay in an engineering job title for long term employability and sanity? The advantage of the management track is that you can always switch back to IC, and as long as you're still a competent IC, I think it gives you a leg up in a crowded market. Do you enjoy managing people? If so, then you'll be good. Just make sure you're an EM first and aren't expected to write code day to day.
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May 30, 2023 17:29
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I’m in the interview process for a (game dev) start-up company, to potentially be a lead / principal and one of the first 10 employees. It feels like I might be in a position to start talking equity or something like that. Has anyone got any advice for what’s reasonable to ask for, or recommended resources for learning more? It’s EU-based, if that makes a difference.
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May 30, 2023 18:13
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Artemis J Brassnuts posted:I’m in the interview process for a (game dev) start-up company, to potentially be a lead / principal and one of the first 10 employees. It feels like I might be in a position to start talking equity or something like that. Has anyone got any advice for what’s reasonable to ask for, or recommended resources for learning more? It’s EU-based, if that makes a difference. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3768531&pagenumber=241&perpage=40 Same stuff for any other tech company. What's the runway. Figure out if the founders are bad humans. Where is their funding coming from? What's their valuation, and does it make sense? Salary should be strong. You should have some equity in some form (probably options), but you should value it at a massive discount relative to book value.
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May 30, 2023 18:34
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Great, thanks!
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May 30, 2023 19:24
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Remember that the absolute numbers around valuation, shares outstanding, etc. also don't really matter with an early-stage startup. Those can all get diluted into pennies the second the company does a big raise, and the founders might choose to take that route even if the company is profitable and growing. The question is "what am I being offered relative to my coworkers?" and then "how much do I trust the founders not to gently caress me over?" Serial entrepreneurs are often more difficult to work for but are actually easier to read here, because they have a massive interest in being able to take trusted people from their tech team from company to company. (Where their current tech team came from is another good thing to ask about.)
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May 30, 2023 19:29
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Artemis J Brassnuts posted:I’m in the interview process for a (game dev) start-up company, to potentially be a lead / principal and one of the first 10 employees. It feels like I might be in a position to start talking equity or something like that. Has anyone got any advice for what’s reasonable to ask for, or recommended resources for learning more? It’s EU-based, if that makes a difference. The YOSPOS interviewing thread has a bunch of suggested questions for startups in the OP. Definitely worth taking a look there.
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May 30, 2023 19:38
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Thanks for the encouragement. I'll try diving in to the full EM side and see how it goes. I'll miss my coding flow states but realistically that went out the window with the TLM role anyways.
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Jun 2, 2023 01:32
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You realize after rolling out a feature to a small experimental set of users that the success metrics you originally chose will not give you the information you wanted. You: A. Use the data you do have to estimate the information you really want B. Instrument the feature to collect the metrics you now actually want and work on other tasks while data is collected for another week or two C. Just skip collecting metrics, it's a very simple feature that we're probably not going do much with after launching it There's no business consequence for delay but this is a pet project of someone several levels above you and your team and they're impatient to see it rolled out to everyone. There's a separate committee of unrelated people who need to approve everything before it's rolled out more widely and they expect to see evidence the feature is worth having.
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Jun 9, 2023 19:07
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oliveoil posted:You realize after rolling out a feature to a small experimental set of users that the success metrics you originally chose will not give you the information you wanted. You: All three are acceptable in different circumstances imo. How big of a business impact can this have? Can it be negative? Or only neutral at worst and perhaps positive if it goes well? The higher the potential impact and the more room you have to tweak the feature based on the data, the more im inclined to get the data right and wait (B). But if its just, like, adding a smiley face to the checkout flow then im all for (C).
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Jun 9, 2023 19:40
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oliveoil posted:You realize after rolling out a feature to a small experimental set of users that the success metrics you originally chose will not give you the information you wanted. You: C. Let the pet project dude and the committee fight it out. At the minimum, you look like a go-getter that's trying to go around the red tape. Best case scenario is that pet project dude and the committee fight it out and one side loses, which will make your job easier. The alternatives either involve creative lying (which probably will work, but is a career risk if you get called out and no has real upside) or delaying the project and pissing the pet project dude off (which is a career risk as well.) C is no risk, high possible reward.
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Jun 9, 2023 20:31
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Always get metrics otherwise your work isn't worth anything. It's worth as much as you can prove it's worth.
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Jun 10, 2023 02:52
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How's PHP stigma these days? I haven't used it in a while, nor would I choose it, but I'm highly skilled with it. Would my resume be better if I include PHP or leave it off?
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Jun 12, 2023 14:52
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cum jabbar posted:How's PHP stigma these days? I haven't used it in a while, nor would I choose it, but I'm highly skilled with it. Would my resume be better if I include PHP or leave it off? is it the majority of your career, or just one stack in a long list of stacks? If it's the former, then de-emphasize it. If it's the latter, then it's good to include it, shows that you're multilingual.
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Jun 12, 2023 15:10
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It's just slightly less than half of the code I've been paid to write. I'd like to be able to tell stories about the horrors I've resolved, but sometimes I doubt others believe in the possibility of making good PHP code if they don't know the language themselves. Speaking of obsolete web backends, I just applied for a Perl-centric role 
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Jun 12, 2023 16:02
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PHP has been having a bit of a moment on dev twitter since a bunch of high-follower accounts started talking about how Laravel is a really good way to build web apps.
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Jun 12, 2023 16:46
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Yeah, Laravel has basically revived it from being 90's tech to a decent modern choice.
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Jun 12, 2023 18:47
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I've been getting intro calls from self-driving car companies, mostly on the strength of having done gamedev recently. But they keep hoping that I have deep in-depth simulation knowledge, because that's what they want for coding their engines and AIs. And I don't. I completed a game, in Unity, that has a ton of content and systems in it, which is a hell of a feat. But each of the individual things in it is not terribly complicated. It needed to not be terribly complicated in order for me to finish. So I'm having trouble talking up my experience and getting those followup calls. 
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Jun 12, 2023 22:04
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I've been getting intro calls from self-driving car companies, mostly on the strength of having done gamedev recently. But they keep hoping that I have deep in-depth simulation knowledge, because that's what they want for coding their engines and AIs. And I don't. I completed a game, in Unity, that has a ton of content and systems in it, which is a hell of a feat. But each of the individual things in it is not terribly complicated. It needed to not be terribly complicated in order for me to finish. So I'm having trouble talking up my experience and getting those followup calls. Production code also needs to "not be terribly complicated in order" to ever ship. Simplifying complex problems is a skill, and a valuable one. This is especially true of safety critical software.
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Jun 12, 2023 22:22
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I assume the self-driving car companies are looking for high-fidelity real-time physics-based simulation engines, and yeah, you're not going to get into that with a background in general software plus some Unity experience. There are groups who use Unity outside of gamedev, though, and there may be some opportunities there. Military simulations are also probably going to be a big thing for a while and if you're OK with doing that work (and you can reasonably get a secret clearance) it's worth checking out.
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Jun 13, 2023 00:00
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ultrafilter posted:I assume the self-driving car companies are looking for high-fidelity real-time physics-based simulation engines, and yeah, Agree They want to hire like, the lead developer of X-plane or DCS World John Carmack type person
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Jun 13, 2023 00:11
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Hadlock posted:Agree $105k/year, no 401k match yet while we run lean but maybe soon!
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Jun 13, 2023 01:14
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Honestly if you just fled russia to avoid being drafted and were living out of a suitcase in Turkey right now that is probably a pretty good deal The DCS guys probably have a pretty good deal carved out with Russia already though
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Jun 13, 2023 01:21
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Probably the more appropriate thread for thisAway all Goats posted:Against all odds I managed to land an interview for a Database administrator position at a hospital. I guess I passed the preliminary SQL query test. This is my first IT related job interview that wasn't a student co-op/internship position.
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Jun 13, 2023 01:42
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I guess I feel like my repeated issue is that employers are looking for people that have done deep dives on specific technical areas. My specialty is being able to adapt to any highly technical domain, but in the current environment that's not enough to get hired, you have to already have what they're looking for.
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Jun 13, 2023 03:47
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When it comes to highly technical work, you really do need some depth. Breadth is good, but it's not enough.
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Jun 13, 2023 03:51
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i don't think "being able to adapt" is really a specialty. bright new grads can do that. it's a good thing of course, but it's also the more resume-friendly way to say "one year of experience, ten times." surely there are skills you've developed over your career that people without your experience don't have. _those_ are your specialties. the poo poo you've seen and learned over your ten years (or whatever) means that you probably have good meta-skills. iirc you made a game. that shows an ability to lead projects, a proven track record of responding to customer feedback, deep understanding of resource vs product tradeoffs, etc. your specialty doesn't have to be algorithms or networks, but at this point in the career it ought to be more than "i'm good at learning stuff"
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Jun 13, 2023 06:01
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Achmed Jones posted:networks, but at this point in the career it ought to be more than "i'm good at learning stuff" Agree Find a common thread (or lie gently) and build a narrative around it that shows progression and maturation and why you're actually a senior and not just a junior+ seven times over. My background includes finance healthcare and payments so while I've got a bog standard "story" I've been fine tuning for about 7 years I'll tailor it to tie in one of those three industries to their product/business model, and gives the hiring manager an easy sell to their boss as to why I'm an excellent pick and low risk choice
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Jun 13, 2023 06:29
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Achmed Jones posted:i don't think "being able to adapt" is really a specialty. bright new grads can do that. it's a good thing of course, but it's also the more resume-friendly way to say "one year of experience, ten times." surely there are skills you've developed over your career that people without your experience don't have. _those_ are your specialties. the poo poo you've seen and learned over your ten years (or whatever) means that you probably have good meta-skills. iirc you made a game. that shows an ability to lead projects, a proven track record of responding to customer feedback, deep understanding of resource vs product tradeoffs, etc. your specialty doesn't have to be algorithms or networks, but at this point in the career it ought to be more than "i'm good at learning stuff" Hadlock posted:Agree As a persistent job hopper, my typical story centers around being able to understand products to bridge the technology org to non-technical stakeholders and having a deep understanding of where organizational and engineering processes fall over and how to set them right. Basically "I've seen more poo poo than most people with 2x my years in industry, and I know how to save you from it" It's enough to get me into manager+ and staff+ roles. Interviewing is a skill, and practice works. It's yet another different skill to become good at, but at the heart it's storytelling. At the end of the day the questions you need to resolve are: "does this person understand the problems we're hiring them to solve?" and "can they execute against those problems, and help grow our teams to become more capable?". You just need to align your story with the role you're looking at. If you apply for roles you honestly believe you can perform, building those narratives should possible.
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Jun 13, 2023 14:00
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leper khan posted:As a persistent job hopper, my typical story centers around being able to understand products to bridge the technology org to non-technical stakeholders and having a deep understanding of where organizational and engineering processes fall over and how to set them right. Basically "I've seen more poo poo than most people with 2x my years in industry, and I know how to save you from it" Used this exact tactic to sell myself into the job that turned into my first manager position. "I've seen a billion ways to do it wrong, I can keep you heading towards doing it right" It's an effective selling point.
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Jun 13, 2023 15:41
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“I've seen a billion ways to do it wrong, and now I know not to step in poo poo” doesn’t sell as well, unfortunately.
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Jun 13, 2023 17:14
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Depends on if you're applying for an EM job in an office or ranch hand at a pig farm
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Jun 13, 2023 18:35
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Hadlock posted:Depends on if you're applying for an EM job in an office or ranch hand at a pig farm You said the same thing twice
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Jun 13, 2023 22:00
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Pollyanna posted:“I've seen a billion ways to do it wrong, and now I know not to step in poo poo” doesn’t sell as well, unfortunately. I ran outages for a major tech company for a decade, including being part of a lot of in-depth technical discussions around repairs/etc, which left me with a ton of useful insight into exactly that topic. I can confirm that people were much less interested in that and way more interested in 'But do you have X years of Y experience' when I tried cutting over into dev instead at that company. Which is a shame, because once I finally was able to transition over to a dev role, my team is super excited that I have all that experience and are trying to push me towards promotions because as it turns out it actually is useful.
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Jun 13, 2023 23:34
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Falcon2001 posted:I ran outages for a major tech company for a decade, including being part of a lot of in-depth technical discussions around repairs/etc, which left me with a ton of useful insight into exactly that topic. I can confirm that people were much less interested in that and way more interested in 'But do you have X years of Y experience' when I tried cutting over into dev instead at that company. Thing is, I mean “stepping in poo poo” as in getting involved in dumpster fires and getting involved in difficult decisions and critical(ly hosed) projects. At my last job I took a pretty major role in part of our stack, but in my current job I saw the politics, organizational issues, and mismanagement and judged that getting more involved/taking more responsibilities was not worth the stress and hit to my mental health. Especially when neither promotion nor career growth are guaranteed by doing so…I’ve got a lot to talk about and ask regarding my future career prospects, but I still need to collect my thoughts.
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Jun 14, 2023 15:09
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