|
lifg posted:I've never understood counteroffers, it seems like a sign of a bad compensation plan. But then I've never angled for or received one. Before I'd have gone interviewing, I would've already exhausted all the usual channels for getting things fixed. I can't imagine they'd pull out all the stops and actually fix things just because some individual contributor showed up with an offer in hand. Minimal upside from a counteroffer, but all that downside like this article mentions.
|
# ? Apr 10, 2017 04:55 |
|
|
# ? May 27, 2024 03:22 |
kitten smoothie posted:I can't imagine they'd pull out all the stops and actually fix things just because some individual contributor showed up with an offer in hand. And even if they did, it's not a good thing that a company took until you were basically walking out the door to makes things right. If that's what it took once, that's probably what it will take every time in the future.
|
|
# ? Apr 10, 2017 05:07 |
|
minato posted:I was a SRE at Facebook (they call them Production Engineers over there). I do SRE work for a much smaller company and it's super interesting with lots of cool problems to solve but gently caress me this is cool as hell. Any Facebook goons know if there's a Production Engineering presence in the Boston office? The recruiter I spoke to was recruiting for NYC, SF, and Seattle but I'm not looking to relocate.
|
# ? Apr 10, 2017 05:08 |
|
Similarly, any Facebook duders have some hot tips about their SWE interview process? I have a first round phone screen set up in about a week and have been preparing, but any resources about what they look for or what to expect would be nice. This is my first time with one of the tech giants. I have some material from one of their recruiters, and a copy of CTCI, if that helps.
|
# ? Apr 10, 2017 05:27 |
|
For phone screen problems, work out the problem before you start writing code. That sounds like an obvious thing, but I saw people get bogged down in language semantics before they'd hit the crux of solving the problem. The interviewer is not there to check how well you know the language, focus on the problem. If you make it through to the interview process, FB will give you lots of info in advance on the types of questions they'll ask. The thing they're looking for is "signal" that you know your stuff and would make a good culture fit. They're not trying to catch you out with esoteric knowledge questions, but there will be a point where they hit your knowledge wall, and you need to recognize that: say that you don't know the answer, but make a reasonable guess. Don't try to bullshit. At the end of the interview they'll ask if you have any questions for them. It's considered very bad to not ask any questions; instead, demonstrate your curiosity and passion with some questions about the company. E.g. "How do you do QA on software that's deployed continuously?"
|
# ? Apr 10, 2017 06:08 |
|
minato posted:For phone screen problems, work out the problem before you start writing code. That sounds like an obvious thing, but I saw people get bogged down in language semantics before they'd hit the crux of solving the problem. The interviewer is not there to check how well you know the language, focus on the problem. Also make sure you talk out what you're thinking. If you sit there silently your interviewer doesn't know WTF.
|
# ? Apr 10, 2017 06:34 |
|
Blinkz0rz posted:I do SRE work for a much smaller company and it's super interesting with lots of cool problems to solve but gently caress me this is cool as hell. Flaming June posted:Similarly, any Facebook duders have some hot tips about their SWE interview process? I have a first round phone screen set up in about a week and have been preparing, but any resources about what they look for or what to expect would be nice. This is my first time with one of the tech giants. The ironclad expectation of Facebook engineering is that every interview candidate will be able to code, period. No exceptions. AIUI, if they have done engineering at Facebook, they have written code in an interview. CTCI is a good book. I basically read the questions, outlined the general solutions, and then transcribed completely each solution, and repeated on the ones that were harder until I felt comfortable. Forced me to digest and re-apply the concepts that I had used less of in recent memory. I'd do the same thing for any future interview, so that isn't FB-specific, though – we're generally discouraged from offering too much specifics. The process is reasonably fair IMO, though rather selective, so don't feel too bad if you get a 'no'. You can expect a focus on thinking algorithmically and translating that to either actual code or almost-code-pseudocode. You may also spend some time talking about architecture as well. Someone who was doing recoverably well once choked and ended the interview early because they thought they bombed. They hadn't. If you need to gather your thoughts, say so, or if it isn't distracting to yourself, you can use the interviewer as a rubber duck for your thought process. Definitely bring your humility and intellectual openness, and leave the ego at home. Facebook has crazy smart people. Even people who make it through the process and get hired often struggle for some time to cope with not being the smartest in the room anymore. This happens a lot: Facebook being radically transparent and communicative internally can breed impostor syndrome like no other if you're not paying attention, because tons of interesting and smart people are constantly having interesting and smart conversations in view of others.
|
# ? Apr 10, 2017 10:46 |
|
apseudonym posted:Also make sure you talk out what you're thinking. If you sit there silently your interviewer doesn't know WTF.
|
# ? Apr 10, 2017 13:03 |
|
This is all valuable stuff, so thanks for the insight.
|
# ? Apr 10, 2017 13:48 |
|
wilderthanmild posted:And even if they did, it's not a good thing that a company took until you were basically walking out the door to makes things right. If that's what it took once, that's probably what it will take every time in the future. Is there anywhere that gives raises as fast as changing jobs? I think the advice you're giving here is "only work at Google" and even then only because Google starts with high enough pay that it'll take a while for your salary to slump down to the level that other companies can compete at. If your boss is awful, or you hate your coworkers, or your job is boring then I don't know why you'd even listen to a counter-offer. If you tell your boss "everything is great" but then come in the next day and ask for a 50% raise or you quit, that could make them think less of you, sure, because that's really poor communication. But if you've got an otherwise-great boss and enjoyable job, and you get a "standard" raise when you'd asked your boss for more, then why would they be upset when you come back and say "hey I did some research and here's what other companies are paying an engineer exactly like me." It seems like bad advice to say "don't take a counter-offer" when you really mean "does the counter-offer adequately address all the reasons that you left?" And it should be really, really obvious what the answer to that is: rear end in a top hat boss + $30k = no, 2 hour commute + $10k = no, I wish I had $10k + $15k = yes.
|
# ? Apr 10, 2017 15:05 |
|
I'm presently working as a Java developer and Big/Small Data Engineer, but would like to transition into embedded development, and applications that drive physical objects. Problem is, I'm not really sure where to start with picking up skills/credibility for such a transition. I've started dicking about with rPis and plan to learn Arduino, but I don't think that's quite enough for a compelling resume in that space. Would a Computer Engineering Masters degree be the way to go? Any good boot camps or certifications?
|
# ? Apr 10, 2017 16:20 |
|
Skandranon posted:I don't suppose you can share more? This sounds interesting. Sorry, tease I know, but I don't want to say much more. Just don't accept a counter offer It might work out, it probably won't. Mniot posted:But if you've got an otherwise-great boss and enjoyable job, and you get a "standard" raise when you'd asked your boss for more, then why would they be upset when you come back and say "hey I did some research and here's what other companies are paying an engineer exactly like me." Right, you should do this. Negotiate for a raise, based on your value and your research of what market rates are. Everyone knows you can leave, you don't need to prove that by telling them you have an offer. All that says is you're too stupid or naive to not straight-up blackmail your boss for more money.
|
# ? Apr 10, 2017 17:41 |
|
VOTE YES ON 69 posted:Sorry, tease I know, but I don't want to say much more. Just don't accept a counter offer It might work out, it probably won't. Agreed. The article linked before covers the big reasons (http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2012/03/26/why-you-shouldnt-take-a-counteroffer ) with #2 and #4 being the big ones for me. They're basically #2 - they know you were looking to leave so they'll start looking for your replacement ASAP and #4 - it took you getting an offer from someone else for them to pay you what you were worth, what makes you think you won't have to do that again in 2-3 years if not sooner? If money was the only reason, their inability to give raises that keep employees paid at a market rate (or close) for their skills is a problem (though a very very common one). If money wasn't the only factor then you shouldn't even consider a counter offer. I've been with my current company almost a decade so I don't know if things have changed much, but I doubt it. For the 15 years or so before this job not a single employer gave raises that kept pace with market rates and changing jobs was the only way to get a decent salary bump. My experience was large companies outside of Silicon Valley. Most, if not all of them, had a system where 1-2% was the average "You were OK" raise with a "max" of 3-5% depending on the company. Of course they'd go over that for counter-offers. I had one company that was open to rehiring me but could only pay what I wanted if I was in X position but they weren't allowed to re-hire with that big of a promotion within a certain amount of time due to policy and wanted me to come back with a promise of a promotion and raise 6 months later. Yeah... no. The bigger the company the more draconian their rules about raises and promotions, usually, because you're just one employee out of 5,000 or 15,000 or 150,000.
|
# ? Apr 11, 2017 00:00 |
|
Achievement unlocked: received call from drunken recruiter
|
# ? Apr 12, 2017 01:18 |
|
fantastic in plastic posted:Achievement unlocked: received call from drunken recruiter But now you gotta tell us about this conversation.
|
# ? Apr 12, 2017 17:46 |
|
fantastic in plastic posted:Achievement unlocked: received call from drunken recruiter My best recruiter call was "I'VE GOT A BILLION DOLLAR OPPORTUNITY WITH A BILLION DOLLAR COMPANY!!" it was probably meth or coke in her case.
|
# ? Apr 12, 2017 18:12 |
|
prisoner of waffles posted:But now you gotta tell us about this conversation. There isn't much of a backstory to it. A recruiter called me and pitched me on a role, I liked what I heard and so I told him to go ahead and present me at my W2 rate. A few days pass, the recruiter calls me and is obviously shitfaced, said something like "I've been having some trouble holding it together today" in the pleasantries part of the call. Eventually he gets around to telling me that the client passed because I wanted too much money. He started to insinuate that maybe if I lowered my rate, he could work something out. I politely told him that my rate's my rate and I'm not changing it, he started to argue, I hung up on him.
|
# ? Apr 12, 2017 19:20 |
|
So I got a guy reaching out to me about a team lead position. I set a date to talk to him on the phone because, hey, why not. I'm not really too interested in the management track, though. I guess long-term I'd like to go more in the direction of principal engineer/architect. Is team lead a step in that direction or would I be putting myself on a track I probably won't like? Or maybe it depends on the company? I've worked two places and neither of them have had formalized "team lead" roles so I can't really depend on experience here.
|
# ? Apr 13, 2017 03:04 |
|
Could be anything from a fancier title to signify that you get paid more to being a full manager with a lovely title. I was a "team lead" at a start-up that was having some trouble figuring out management. I spent ~30% of my time writing code, 50% in meetings negotiating features and 20% on managing my team. The meeting/coding ratio should have been better, but the point was that I'd go to most of the meetings and be aware of all of them so that my team could go to as few as possible. The management tasks included HR crap (approve their PTO requests), schmoozing to keep other groups happy with us, lobbying for another hiring req, trying to get them raises, talking with them about carear growth, and making sure everyone had a balanced workload. I've interviewed at a company where "team lead" just means "probably the best developer on the team" and another where it appeared to mean "VP of software".
|
# ? Apr 13, 2017 04:05 |
|
Mniot posted:I've interviewed at a company where "team lead" just means "probably the best developer on the team" and another where it appeared to mean "VP of software". Yeah. I would ask your contact to explicitly explain what their understanding of "Team Lead"/"Lead Developer" entails. Around here, it seems that "Architect" is the technical track, and "Lead" is more of the management track, though it does vary.
|
# ? Apr 13, 2017 15:48 |
|
Yeah it absolutely depends on the company and you'll need to ask the interviewer when you talk to them. Before you talk to the interviewer, see if you can find another person at that company with the title "team lead" and glean what it is that they do, or see what other titles are at the company to try and make a distinction between "manager" and "principal architect" (if indeed there is a difference). LinkedIn can be a big help for this.
|
# ? Apr 13, 2017 15:50 |
|
Good Will Hrunting posted:This week will be two months at my new job. I've seen virtually no improvement from management in terms of defining the direction of our project, goals, resource allocation or any sort of medium-term roadmap. We routinely spend 45 minutes to over an hour in our daily stand-ups arguing over trivial bullshit. I have no idea what one of the senior engineers does to be honest. Tomorrow I have my first 1 on 1 with my boss. Things have gotten marginally better. The pace has picked up a little bit and I am doing more but I'm still working on a lot of POCs/research that doesn't end up going anywhere because nobody can make a decision. I don't plan on saying anything too intense, but I'd like to bring up some of these issues. Anyone help me with... phrasing to not get me fired?
|
# ? Apr 13, 2017 20:25 |
|
Good Will Hrunting posted:Tomorrow I have my first 1 on 1 with my boss. Things have gotten marginally better. The pace has picked up a little bit and I am doing more but I'm still working on a lot of POCs/research that doesn't end up going anywhere because nobody can make a decision. I don't plan on saying anything too intense, but I'd like to bring up some of these issues. Anyone help me with... phrasing to not get me fired? I would say to just keep it positive. You're happy to work on research & POCs, but would really like to be exposed to more of the business and get your hands dirty with <important application>.
|
# ? Apr 13, 2017 20:31 |
|
Well, yeah it is good and interesting so that won't be hard. And it's all for 1 application - our new pipeline - we just come up with a ton of ideas and they move so slowly because we have to wait for feedback from managers.. which turns into bringing up "I'm blocked by X" at post-daily standup. That leads to hour long discussion about trivial bullshit. No conclusion is ever reached. I just want to ~*~ accomplish ~*~ more and start thinking about ~*~ prod ~*~ and things as a whole, not just compartments of things that never get done.
|
# ? Apr 13, 2017 20:33 |
|
I never, ever want to do front-end development again. Ever. No job I will take from now on will involve front-end. Ever.
|
# ? Apr 13, 2017 20:42 |
|
Pollyanna posted:I never, ever want to do front-end development again. Ever. No job I will take from now on will involve front-end. Ever. I mean, I know React is garbage, but this is a bit extreme.
|
# ? Apr 13, 2017 21:02 |
|
I made the same decision back in 2008, and what I've seen of web development changes since then hasn't really affected my opinion any.
|
# ? Apr 13, 2017 21:13 |
|
Personally my solemn oath is to not do work in another untyped scripting language if I can help it.
|
# ? Apr 13, 2017 21:21 |
|
The nice thing about front end work is that you have something visual and interactive to show at the end. I prefer backend, but it is somewhat less satisfying when three weeks of work results in a different price being charged for freight or whatever based on some arbitrary business rule.
|
# ? Apr 13, 2017 23:29 |
|
redleader posted:The nice thing about front end work is that you have something visual and interactive to show at the end. I prefer backend, but it is somewhat less satisfying when three weeks of work results in a different price being charged for freight or whatever based on some arbitrary business rule. But that's also the bad part because then you get someone tearing you apart for doing exactly what they asked and making you do the whole thing over.
|
# ? Apr 13, 2017 23:40 |
|
We're kind of lucky in that we can just go "oh, [whatever change] is a variance from the original work and will cost $$$", which filters it down to the clients who actually care.
|
# ? Apr 13, 2017 23:52 |
|
RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:But that's also the bad part because then you get someone tearing you apart for doing exactly what they asked and making you do the whole thing over. If you are doing front-end work, you always ALWAYS ALWAYS should have a living PSD with approved changes in it. For this very reason.
|
# ? Apr 13, 2017 23:54 |
|
TooMuchAbstraction posted:I made the same decision back in 2008, and what I've seen of web development changes since then hasn't really affected my opinion any. The tools are way better now than they were in 2008, but what people are using them to do is really stupid. The problem with modern web development is that the whole SPA thing is encouraging businesses to make really huge, crappy web apps with dozens of megs of javascript that by all rights should be desktop applications, and it sucks doing front end on that kind of project.
|
# ? Apr 14, 2017 00:06 |
|
Pollyanna posted:I never, ever want to do front-end development again. Ever. No job I will take from now on will involve front-end. Ever. This is a large part of why I went to grad school.
|
# ? Apr 14, 2017 01:35 |
|
ratbert90 posted:If you are doing front-end work, you always ALWAYS ALWAYS should have a living PSD with approved changes in it. The shop I was working at was not large enough for that and anyway, even when we DID have mockups they'd do the same thing and then they'd be supported by senior management. I dunno it was a bad environment in the first place I guess.
|
# ? Apr 14, 2017 01:39 |
|
Bruegels Fuckbooks posted:The tools are way better now than they were in 2008, but what people are using them to do is really stupid. The problem with modern web development is that the whole SPA thing is encouraging businesses to make really huge, crappy web apps with dozens of megs of javascript that by all rights should be desktop applications, and it sucks doing front end on that kind of project. I'm seriously considering learning mobile because of this. If people are going to insist I help with frontend work I'd really prefer if it wasn't SPAs.
|
# ? Apr 14, 2017 01:43 |
|
jony neuemonic posted:I'm seriously considering learning mobile because of this. If people are going to insist I help with frontend work I'd really prefer if it wasn't SPAs. You're in luck! Nowadays, you can do mobile development with the same technologies that you'd use for webdev!
|
# ? Apr 14, 2017 01:52 |
|
redleader posted:You're in luck! Nowadays, you can do mobile development with the same technologies that you'd use for webdev! There really is no justice in this world.
|
# ? Apr 14, 2017 01:53 |
|
Pollyanna posted:I never, ever want to do front-end development again. Ever. No job I will take from now on will involve front-end. Ever. You're going to have to clarify and justify this better because this is exactly the kind of red flag that will turn a 'strong hire' into a 'no hire' in my eyes.
|
# ? Apr 14, 2017 03:24 |
|
|
# ? May 27, 2024 03:22 |
|
Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:You're going to have to clarify and justify this better because this is exactly the kind of red flag that will turn a 'strong hire' into a 'no hire' in my eyes. I have a recurring nightmare where I'm just nailing an interview and after a good zinger about dynamic programming there's a polite chuckle before the HR rep comes in with a stack of my posts and starts questioning me about them.
|
# ? Apr 14, 2017 03:28 |