JawnV6 posted:Sometimes you don't want an A with a bunch of preconceptions. You want a moldable C you can train your way into an A.
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Feb 8, 2014 01:27
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biochemist posted:Barf. Kept coming up with O(n^2) solutions even with handholding. Following up on what FamDav said, here's a nice checklist for problem solving (nicked from Skiena): 1. Can you brute force it? 2. Is there an ordering? 3. Would sorting help? 4. Would ignoring some parameters help? 5. Would approximation be easier? 6. Are there any subproblems? 7. Go take a look at Polya. coffeetable fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Feb 8, 2014 |
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Feb 8, 2014 01:31
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Pollyanna posted:"35 hours billable client work and 5 hours of open-source contributions per week" (I'm not even paid for 40 hrs/week!?). Just to clarify: this is a good thing. Typically, entry-level consultants are expected to maintain 100% billability (despite the fact that you have no control over whether you're billable or benched really since you're not the one getting new business). Getting to spend an hour a day (or whatever) working on open-source projects sounds pretty sweet. Google does something like that with its 20% time, my company does 10% time that we can devote to research or documentation (hahaha) or whatever. Consulting can be very stressful because you're always worried about getting your billable hours (particularly since there's often a billability bonus).
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Feb 8, 2014 02:19
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Cicero posted:I just read the article and it sounds really intense, with Pollyanna's level of experience I have a really hard time seeing that work out. That said, even trying out would be good experience. Honestly, with Pollyanna's level of experience it sounds like potentially a week of training for free. Paired programming with experienced devs is probably the best way to learn how to program.
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Feb 8, 2014 03:00
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Cicero posted:That's not what that means. For consultants, billable hours are, well, hours where you're doing client work that you can charge the clients money for. Ohhh, ok. That makes more sense. quote:I'm confused, I thought you were talking before about finding jobs in the Boston area to relocate to? Did you think a company would pay to relocate you for part-time work? I was tipped off to their location nearby and heard they would at least consider someone with my level of experience, so I decided to apply. Ideally, I'd like to work in Boston. quote:It sounds like you don't really know whether you actually want to be a software engineer, because if you did it probably wouldn't bother you much to have to switch to part-time school for a master's program. You already have a bachelor's in a technical field, so even dropping out wouldn't have much impact on your career path if you got good work experience right from the get-go. I can't do anything with my bachelors I think. At least, none of the obvious progressions from it would accept me (medical devices want someone with industry experience, research and Boston companies want PhD's, etc). As for the Masters, it's a backup plan but again: this is an online terminal Masters with no research or lab component, meant for people who already have a career. I can't just sit around doing nothing else while I finish it. And...there's a complicated story why I'm in it, but either way I'm still not sure if the field has good career opportunities in it. I could drop out, but 1. I'd need something to do instead and 2. powers-that-be would poo poo their pants (however, I have had fun doing that lately and would not hesitate to do it again). Mostly the first issue, though. Anyway, the reason why I was worried over going to part time is that it'd be money down the drain for one class (prolly) and that it'd take longer, but since the MS will take a couple years to complete I might as well start getting a career going. Also, it depends on whether I can juggle all of this  quote:A whole week for interviewing does sound kind of crazy though, that'd definitely put me off, especially if it's unpaid. v  v I mean yeah, if it's a week's worth of paired programming, at least it's experience.EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:You will learn more pair programming with people that know what they are doing than you would doing basically anything else, so in my opinion you would be insane to not at least go and try this out, viewing this as a training bootcamp. I kinda agree. I'm not sure I want to work at the company, but hey, I live basically right next door to their offices. It's not a big deal to me. quote:They also only ask one fifth of people they interview over Skype to audition, and you have neither "some professional programming experience" nor Rails knowledge, so you might not even get it. That too! quote:I would agree with you about this for a lot of people but this is basically a godsend for Pollyanna.  JawnV6 posted:Sometimes you don't want an A with a bunch of preconceptions. You want a moldable C you can train your way into an A. This actually weirds me out, personally. It's like Epic with "we'll train you!" and then you can never work for anyone else again cause you only have skills for that company. bonds0097 posted:Just to clarify: this is a good thing. Typically, entry-level consultants are expected to maintain 100% billability (despite the fact that you have no control over whether you're billable or benched really since you're not the one getting new business). Getting to spend an hour a day (or whatever) working on open-source projects sounds pretty sweet. Google does something like that with its 20% time, my company does 10% time that we can devote to research or documentation (hahaha) or whatever. I think I get why they do the 35-5 split then. I can't think of any OS projects, though. NovemberMike posted:Honestly, with Pollyanna's level of experience it sounds like potentially a week of training for free. Paired programming with experienced devs is probably the best way to learn how to program. I agree. It's something.
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Feb 8, 2014 03:23
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Don Mega posted:How do they expect to hire any experienced developers that are currently employed? There is a 0% chance I would take a week off from work just to interview with 1 company. I imagine this means they prefer to hire freelancers, whose schedules are already relatively self-determined. Cicero posted:edit2: A whole week for interviewing does sound kind of crazy though, that'd definitely put me off, especially if it's unpaid. I'm fairly sure that not paying someone for that would be illegal.
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Feb 8, 2014 03:25
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Pollyanna posted:I think I get why they do the 35-5 split then. I can't think of any OS projects, though. If they're a Rails consultancy house, odds are you're going to be extending various open source Ruby gems, and I imagine your 5 hours/week of contributions will largely be dealing with the administrivia involved with sending and following up on pull requests for those.
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Feb 8, 2014 03:33
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Pollyanna posted:I can't do anything with my bachelors I think. Biomedical Engineering is one of the faster growing fields in the country, there's lots of jobs. This hard data would seem to indicate there's lots of growth and even jobs in your area: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/biomedical-engineers.htm http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172031.htm A cursory search via indeed seems to turn up a fair number of entry-level positions that only require a BS. I think it's cool that you're trying to learn to program and all that, but it seems like you spend a lot of time on these forums making excuses for why you can't do the things you claim you want to do. So maybe take a step back, figure out what it is you really want to do and just do it. You claim you're a good problem-solving, so figure out a solution.
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Feb 8, 2014 03:40
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bonds0097 posted:Biomedical Engineering is one of the faster growing fields in the country, there's lots of jobs. This hard data would seem to indicate there's lots of growth and even jobs in your area: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/biomedical-engineers.htm http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172031.htm A cursory search via indeed seems to turn up a fair number of entry-level positions that only require a BS. Pollyanna posted:I was tipped off to their location nearby and heard they would at least consider someone with my level of experience, so I decided to apply. Ideally, I'd like to work in Boston. quote:I agree. It's something.
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Feb 8, 2014 03:44
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coffeetable posted:Following up on what FamDav said, here's a nice checklist for problem solving (nicked from Skiena): One last one which just happens to be the crux of this particular problem is "Can you allocate more memory, use a complementary data structure, or otherwise trade more space for less time?"
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Feb 8, 2014 03:46
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I live in the Boston area. I have an unrelated degree but I'm working as a software engineer. How much experience should I have before I can look at jobs approaching six figures? I'm trying to figure when it makes sense for me to seriously look for a new job. I'm really happy with my job except the pay isn't that good.
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Feb 8, 2014 03:49
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A general tip: don't talk yourself out of interviewing with the few (only?) people who have returned your inquiries, man.
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Feb 8, 2014 03:50
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:How much experience should I have before I can look at jobs approaching six figures? You need zero experience to get 6 figures right now apparently.
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Feb 8, 2014 03:54
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perfectfire posted:You need zero experience to get 6 figures right now apparently. Most of those people starting jobs at Big Software have done a summer internship.  RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:I live in the Boston area. I have an unrelated degree but I'm working as a software engineer. Cicero fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Feb 8, 2014 |
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Feb 8, 2014 03:56
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rsjr posted:A general tip: don't talk yourself out of interviewing with the few (only?) people who have returned your inquiries, man. I'm not  I just had some questions about them.
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Feb 8, 2014 03:59
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Man, Pollyanna why are you investing time in a graduate program designed for people who don't need experience when the one thing you really really need is experience?
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Feb 8, 2014 04:11
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Pollyanna posted:This actually weirds me out, personally. It's like Epic with "we'll train you!" and then you can never work for anyone else again cause you only have skills for that company. Epic is going to train you in a technology that nobody will ever want to hire you for. This company will train you in a fairly extreme form of Agile and Ruby, both of which are extremely marketable right now. This is the opposite of Epic.
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Feb 8, 2014 04:18
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Cicero posted:Boston is a pretty good area for tech jobs so you could probably start after just a year or two. Obviously your odds of making it past the resume filter get better the more experience you have, but there's not really any downside to trying even when inexperienced. Yeah. I just really hate trying to juggle interviews when you have a job so I don't want to go too far down that road if it's not going in a positive direction. NovemberMike posted:Epic is going to train you in a technology that nobody will ever want to hire you for. This company will train you in a fairly extreme form of Agile and Ruby, both of which are extremely marketable right now. This is the opposite of Epic. You know, it doesn't apply to me, but I always wonder about what happens to people who join one of these places using MUMPS or COBOL or some obscure in-house language when they go and want to get a new job.
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Feb 8, 2014 04:21
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Yeah. I just really hate trying to juggle interviews when you have a job so I don't want to go too far down that road if it's not going in a positive direction.
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Feb 8, 2014 04:24
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USSMICHELLEBACHMAN posted:Man, Pollyanna why are you investing time in a graduate program designed for people who don't need experience when the one thing you really really need is experience? Because my parents freaked the gently caress out when I said "I don't really want to do grad school right now, let me try and get employed" after I graduated and have hounded me ever since about doing at least a Masters, then when my employment offer with Meditech fizzled out and my other leads went cold I figured "poo poo, I'm just wasting money right now, might as well move back in" and decided to take that MS offer because I figured that it would be a chance to learn a skill that could help me get a job, but then I realized that the best part of grad school is getting access to a research facility and getting experience in a lab and this MS wouldn't offer that and after going through a bit of it it became increasingly obvious that it wouldn't really work for me for various reasons but stopping would make my parents poo poo my pants because IF YOU DON'T GO TO GRAD SCHOOL YOU WILL NEVER GET A JOB NEVER EVER. It's a loving embarrassing story and probably explains a lot. I'm still picking up the pieces from lacking a spine. And to be fair, I like bioinformatics but I'd have to go to a traditionally structured grad program if I want to continue in it, because a terminal MS just doesn't work for me. In fact, I hate to add yet another uncertainty to the pile, but I might look to transfer back to my alma mater since they offer a Bioinformatics program as well and my performance on this MS could help me get in. Enough about me though, holy poo poo.
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Feb 8, 2014 04:27
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:You know, it doesn't apply to me, but I always wonder about what happens to people who join one of these places using MUMPS or COBOL or some obscure in-house language when they go and want to get a new job. I don't know about MUMPS but COBOL is pretty marketable and very well-paid (at the expense of your happiness and sanity). The legacy COBOL codebases aren't going anywhere any time soon and they're all over the financial industry. The legacy coders on the other hand are mostly pretty old at this point and won't be around much longer, so fresh blood is needed. A friend of mine works at Capital One doing UX and many of her co-workers are 50-year old COBOL devs (who don't understand the very concept of UX).
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Feb 8, 2014 04:30
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bonds0097 posted:I don't know about MUMPS but COBOL is pretty marketable and very well-paid (at the expense of your happiness and sanity). The legacy COBOL codebases aren't going anywhere any time soon and they're all over the financial industry. The legacy coders on the other hand are mostly pretty old at this point and won't be around much longer, so fresh blood is needed. A friend of mine works at Capital One doing UX and many of her co-workers are 50-year old COBOL devs (who don't understand the very concept of UX). Well, OK. I mean, like, my friend is working at a company where they had their own proprietary language they designed ages ago and that was all they used. Gotta be a drag when you decide you're ready to move on.
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Feb 8, 2014 04:33
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Pollyanna, you really should try to get into a bioinformatics program and drop out of your current one. It is such a hot and applied field, you would totally get funded at any half decent school including a stipend and tuition. I'm in a related field and starting salaries for you guys should be on the 80k+.
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Feb 8, 2014 04:34
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Rurutia posted:You really should try to get into a bioinformatics program and drop out of your current one. It is such a hot field, you would totally get funded at any half decent school including a stipend and tuition. Considering that, actually. Transferring is still a thing at the grad level, right?
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Feb 8, 2014 04:35
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If you haven't been driven insane by MUMPS and just want to leave Epic, I'm sure there's a lucrative consulting career ahead of you.Rurutia posted:Pollyanna, you really should try to get into a bioinformatics program and drop out of your current one. It is such a hot and applied field, you would totally get funded at any half decent school including a stipend and tuition.
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Feb 8, 2014 04:36
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Pollyanna posted:Considering that, actually. Transferring is still a thing at the grad level, right? Why would you transfer? It sounds like the current program isn't anything like what you need. I'd just start from scratch.
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Feb 8, 2014 04:37
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Yeah I'd say either drop the current program (if you can). Or, if you get into the hashrocket thing, drop everything and do that. Your parents will poo poo themselves but you wont care when you get an 80k/yr job 6 months from now. Also just stop listening to your parents forever. These are the same people who told you to get into daytrading.
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Feb 8, 2014 04:37
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bonds0097 posted:A friend of mine works at Capital One doing UX and many of her co-workers are 50-year old COBOL devs (who don't understand the very concept of UX). How much does she get paid and where does she live? I would totally do COBOL for a great salary in a good area.
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Feb 8, 2014 04:38
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Rurutia posted:Why would you transfer? It sounds like the current program isn't anything like what you need. I'd just start from scratch. No, I mean that my undergrad university has its own graduate program in Bioinformatics, so I was thinking of applying to that. What stopped me last time was a lack of rec letters and not having a high enough GPA, though. Either way, it's only one option. USSMICHELLEBACHMAN's idea is good too, and has the added benefit of being slightly faster. USSMICHELLEBACHMAN posted:Also just stop listening to your parents forever. These are the same people who told you to get into daytrading. They did tell me to go into daytrading because "you'll be at home a lot for this masters anyway and you're on the computer a lot", but they themselves do not daytrade. What they do, is buy and sell at night, after work, based on the recommendations of this old geezer that uses his "super secret algorithm" to tell you which stocks to buy and asks you to pay monthly for access to it as well as money for attending his classes, and then wonder why they're losing money. You see why I'm trying to get a job now!? Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Feb 8, 2014 |
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Feb 8, 2014 04:40
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USSMICHELLEBACHMAN posted:Also just stop listening to your parents forever. This is really the ne plus ultra of job-hunting tips.
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Feb 8, 2014 04:40
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Safe and Secure! posted:How much does she get paid and where does she live? I would totally do COBOL for a great salary in a good area. Well, she doesn't do COBOL, she does front-end UX stuff. And she's in Northern VA. I don't know how much she's paid but she seems very happy. She comes back and recruits fairly often and is always telling me how hard up Capital One is for devs and engineers. Another friend of mine graduated EE a few years ago and works as a Business Analyst and he seems very happy too. Sounds like a pretty sweet environment for a bank and they're apparently pretty open to remote work. They seem to have a stupidly large amount of openings based on their careers page (I like that every listing I've looked at says 'Bachelors Degree or Military Experience').
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Feb 8, 2014 04:46
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Deus Rex posted:Your seeking out of a pseudonymous forums poster's LinkedIn profile, some would suggest, could mean you wish shrughes would take a certain someone to PMs I did actually PM him but really this was very small of me and I am quite embarrassed I started taking words on the Internet so seriously. In my mind there is no question that shruges is a super smart guy who has been helpful to a bunch of people here.
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Feb 8, 2014 06:02
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This popped up on HN the other day and I thought it had some good thoughts: Choosing a programming language for interviews
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Feb 8, 2014 06:22
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Cicero posted:This popped up on HN the other day and I thought it had some good thoughts: Choosing a programming language for interviews Just use the language you feel most comfortable with. If that doesn't happen to be one of the main languages the company uses then find something similar. Most popular procedural programming languages are very similar (especially when doing basic stuff). Usually you're being interviewed because there's a match in languages you use and what they use so this is usually a non-issue. And his example program where you read in numbers, do stuff, then output to a file is a bad example. Currently I use PERL for simple file input and manipulation scripts, but I definitely don't use it for interviews. perfectfire fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Feb 8, 2014 |
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Feb 8, 2014 06:44
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Cicero posted:This popped up on HN the other day and I thought it had some good thoughts: Choosing a programming language for interviews Uhhhhh....  Haskell 1.2%, Objective-C 0.4%??
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Feb 8, 2014 07:05
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Steve French posted:Uhhhhh.... I once solved an interview question in Prolog. No I didn't get that job.
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Feb 8, 2014 07:13
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I knew Python was popular but holy poo poo it dwarfs C#. I guess my perception of C# is warped since I'm in New York.
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Feb 8, 2014 07:14
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What's neat is that one reason I was phone screened for my first job out of college is that I had a Haskell project on my resume. What's also neat is that I was more likely to work for somebody interesting enough to know what Haskell is. I chose to do the coding problems and interviews in C++ and C, though. Also lolling at Javascript at 5.2%. Edit: I don't really believe Python dwarfs C# like that. It must be a skewed sample.
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Feb 8, 2014 07:14
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Scala also seems shockingly underrepresented.
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Feb 8, 2014 07:19
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It is the most popular languages based on the data from CodeEval I believe, since if it was a chart about general popularity javascript at 5.2% would be way weird as well as PHP at 3.3% Also I feel like the person who made that "chart"(?) doesn't know anything about making an actual infographic. Yes let's make the circle size based on the language's popularity and then just kind of scatter them about the image. Then to make it even more confusing, let's have them overlap a bit, but not bother to explain whether or not that actually conveys anything we found in the underlying data.
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Feb 8, 2014 07:25
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