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i thought it was a good first post, figured I'd share a bit of my experience. Graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering in '05. At my school there was a large overlap between Computer Science and Computer Engineering. You could take the exact same coursework and get either degree depending on the electives: CS took computer graphics, databases, user interfaces, statistics CE took 3-4 circuits/electrical classes and a second year of physics (electricity/magnetism) As far as I remember through '05, I don't think ABET (the only accreditation body I'd really heard of) covered computer science programs, and that, and amongst other things made it so there were a lot more internships and scholarships for 'engineers' that hit Comp E and not Comp Sci. ABET does cover computer science now, but I think there's a certain amount of inertia that keeps people from considering CS a 'real' engineering degree. I got an internship with the government my sophomore year that was only available to 'engineers' and that's what started my career off. Now, there's not much software development to be done as a government civilian (not contractor) because the mission then and now is really more supervising contractors who are doing the work*. That means I got a lot of project management experience combined with my own development projects and the work I put in on my own time put me in a good spot to leave the government and get a job I'm really happy about in a mid-size development shop that uses both the project management and development skills, which is nice. Take-aways from my perspective:
* there are government science and research installations out there, but it's rare and not that dissimilar from academic research. The customer is whoever wants to read your paper or give you grant money. Lurchington fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Dec 28, 2010 |
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Dec 28, 2010 23:17
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Kilauea posted:No but the ABET accredits computer science. I kind of metioned this in earlier post, but I don't think people (as evidenced by Plorkyeran) really think of CS as something that even has a oversight/accrediting body. So, sometimes there's going to be a certain number of things that are available only to 'engineers' which may or may not bother you. Also, if you're considering transferring to another university entirely, I feel it's not out of whack to suggest looking at what your school provides for computer engineering. In my case, there's was a loooooot of overlap and could be something that's worthwhile for you. Here's the ABET-provided page to scare you into choosing an accredited program: http://www.abet.org/why_choose.shtml, it kind of just speaks to how other accreditation/certification bodies require an ABET certified program, which isn't surprising. My sense of the whole thing, is that if your university has a positive reputation in the area of the country you want to work, it's probably fine. But, I graduated before accreditation became an issue. Lurchington fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Jan 13, 2011 |
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Jan 13, 2011 22:18
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tef posted:unless you're expected to do a whole slew of client facing work, a dress code is a sign you may be writing middleware. My company's dress code is 'clean clothes; no sweatpants' That said everyone we've interviewed in the last year wore a suit, so I'm usually of the opinion that unless you just don't own a suit that fits you right, it's probably the best first impression you can go with.
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May 22, 2011 05:18
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It's meaningless in the sense that ABET only started accrediting CS programs within the last 5-6 years, so it's not a big deal. That said, there are a fair number of US government jobs that have on the requirements line "engineer" and in that case, ABET accreditation is the metric they use for that. Those jobs aren't bad aside from the fact that you're not making anything, instead doing project management.
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Jun 27, 2011 03:47
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well, depending on the job and potential co-workers, it may be as simple as a sanity check that you can explain what's going on in that regex and explain some variations on the problem based on other constraints. Regular expressions are (in my opinion) one of the easier things one could copy and paste after googling, without understanding what it actually is.
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Aug 22, 2011 19:18
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it is posted:Last semester, I got 2 offers. I put in my 2 weeks for the one I'm working now. Is there a protocol for seeing if the one I turned down has room for me? eh, two joke answers so I guess I'll balance this one out. I'd suggest just emailing the first level POC (HR person?) and asking if they're still looking to fill the/a position. Don't email whoever you interviewed with if it's a team/dev lead of something. The POC will either know that there's a hiring freeze or they'll ask the person you interviewed with what they think.
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Jan 10, 2012 21:24
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Otto Skorzeny posted:Yeah, it was their offer. I might err on the side of asking for relocation cash rather than a salary bump unless that's a crazy thing to do. it's not crazy, but asking for money that goes on the salary history has the not-really-obvious side effect of given you a bit more money each year you get a percentage-based salary adjustment.
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Apr 13, 2012 23:42
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Enough about Test Driven Design. It's all about Documentation Driven Design (yes, I do agree with a lot of the points here, and loved the talk in general)
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Apr 22, 2012 05:04
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pigdog posted:That isn't by any means an alternative to TDD, which works at a lower, code component level. Sorry for the confusion, I didn't intend to imply that this actually was a replacement for TDD, and I don't think the talk did either. You're right in that they complement each other, which is that's why I posted it in here. As an extra bit of perspective on development that happens before code is even written. Congrats astr0man! 
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Apr 22, 2012 16:40
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shrughes posted:Yeah, that's why D.C. is a terrible place to be a programmer. Eh, my whole career has been in DC with 7 of it working with DOD, and while there's a lot of grindy, "ENTERPRISE SHOP" type of stuff with government contractors (although in fairness, most of the programming is done somewhere else, and the management/oversight is done here) there's just a lot of jobs period and not all of them are bad. - For the web programming crew, there are a huge for non-profits and trade associations and they all need web development so there's a good bit of freelance that's not "Crazy Joe's local plumbing" - There's a very large amount of federally-funded scientific research/labs in the area (e.g. http://www.jhuapl.edu/, http://www.nvl.army.mil/ where I used to work) - a big focus on cyber security (my current gig) thanks to a lot of bank headquarters and all the homeland security stuff - Mythic Entertainment and Bethesda Softworks are local and I know/knew a few folks there - yes, there's a lot of defense contractors and sub-contractors, and some of them a code mills. But there are a surprisingly large of amount of 10-12 person startups that make good software that brings in a lot of money (right before they get acquired by a prime contractor. Think of it as this area's IPO equivalent) reasons NOT to live in DC: Hot and humid all summer, spring and fall are both like two weeks While there can be really great food, it's as expensive and not quite as good as a San Francisco or NY You've hosed up somewhere and aren't going to pass a background check for security clearances (clearances do open up a lot, especially in DoD) you' could be looking at $1000-$1200 rental with 2-3 roommates for a room/townhome rental out to ~50-60 minutes in traffic from the city ~50-60 minutes in traffic translates to 15-20 miles reasons to consider living in DC if you're looking for your first job: there are a LOT of young people who move to DC for a couple of years or so (then move somewhere else) thanks to a congressional staff job, or military, or public service, etc. So it's not hard to find people in that age bracket who are doing social things practically zero hit from the recession in both real estate and unemployment despite my earlier comment about food, there's a lot more here than dozens of other places I've visited or lived, so still a plus (with that one reservation about price) Edit: should add that yes, there are a lot of jobs that aren't in the city, so that affects the commute. For example, I work in Reston. Lurchington fucked around with this message at 13:09 on May 17, 2012 |
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May 17, 2012 04:59
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Sab669 posted:Just curious, what determines if one is able to get security clearancces? Obviously it varies from level to level, but generally speaking. These days it's more likely to be denied clearance due to really bad credit (the old "I'm in debt and vulnerable to doing stupid poo poo to get out of debt" thing) than anything else, so it may be worth getting your yearly free credit report and cleaning up anything that you think is wrong or implies that you're in worse debt than you are (e.g. consolidated your student loans but your old unconsolidated loans still show as "open")
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Oct 16, 2012 01:11
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) and am a US Citizen, born and raised.
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This post immediately above mine echoes my thoughts on this. Especially if you're using selenium to test a fully JavaScript app like something using Ext. in that case there's really no good way to record tests, and you're pretty quickly going to end up writing the full load of utility methods and abstraction layers to write maintainable/readable test suites. That sounds very much a dev thing. Screenshot-based tools like sikuli, or apps that don't have the inherently asynchronous annoyances of JS over the Internet are perhaps in a better place for non-devs Lurchington fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Feb 23, 2013 |
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Feb 23, 2013 21:54
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Sarcophallus posted:While I don't particularly care for Cerner, I did like what I saw about KCMO. I'm primarily considering CA, Kansas City and Washington D.C. for my relocation, in that order of preference. Though it's a bit hard for me to make a decision since I've not spent any appreciable amounts of time in those places. Washington DC only because it seems like the easiest place to find a job, and CA because I want to escape sub-freezing Winters. Kansas City seems moderately temperate, but I've liked just about everything I've read about it. My whole career has been in DC, and although there's a lot of good engineering being done out there, there's a lot more enterprisey, crank out what the customer wants contracting. So be prepared. Also DC has a veritable worst-of list when it comes to weather, (Rain? Sleet? Snow? Hot? Humid? Really humid?). Also, the kind of outrageous cost of living that comes with the nation's 2 richest counties acting as suburbs. That said, you are right that there's a lot more tech jobs than people now, and complaints aside I'd rate DC in the top 10 places to consider living if you're young.
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Feb 26, 2013 23:56
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Ithaqua posted:"Product owner" is the job title? I'm agreeing here. You're familiar with the positive things that agile tries to emphasize, don't sweat the fact that it was differently named.
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Mar 6, 2013 23:27
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Good Will Hrunting posted:So I saw it mentioned in a post a few pages back, but could someone explain in a more low-level sense what the gently caress DevOps is, because basically every article on Google is complete poo poo and seems to be written for the technology-illiterate managerial buzz-word type. Maybe someone who works at an organization that considers themselves to be part of the "DevOps Movement". It comes down to if you want to release software on a quick turn-around, you need to definitely need your infrastructure poo poo together so you're not doing a lot of manual and one-off builds that are basically unsupportable long term. For us it means that it's not ok to deploy something without proper packaging or configuration management support (e.g. Puppet manifests). I don't really know what the "DevOps Movement" is but if it's like "Agile" maybe the term has gotten over-applied. Edit: I don't disagree with the poster above me, so I guess mine is more bottom line for my work Lurchington fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Apr 8, 2013 |
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Apr 8, 2013 00:19
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Smugdog Millionaire posted:Goons I'm trying to find a job but I must be doing something wrong because I've applied to dozens of places and the best I can get is a rejection email. I'm applying to places all up and down the West coast because I'm looking to relocate. I think I'm a smart and productive programmer but clearly employers don't see that. Is my resume garbage? http://gobiner.github.io/ I dunno, seems pretty solid, although this may be a typo: quote:Worked with existent client code and vendors to provide new functionality such as building in UPS freight shipping on top of an inflexible e-commerce platform existing? edit: as a resume-reader, I always love seeing a github/bitbucket/etc repo, so props there Lurchington fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Apr 28, 2013 |
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Apr 28, 2013 03:29
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unsanitary posted:For managers: breaking against a few of the other answers, but I'd personally prefer a github of personal projects due to two factors: - some folks use internships as paid web browsing time (unfortunately I was one of them and I'm perhaps too sensitive to this) - I'm probably not going to be able to see your code in the event it's proprietary and that means a lot; both because you were self-motivated enough to actually make something* and hopefully it's good code. * actually finish it, and preferably package it in some way for general consumption (put it up on node package manager, python package index, deploy your site somewhere, etc)
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Apr 30, 2013 23:23
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FamDav posted:Honestly, I get so much more out of reading through the response to our 1-day coding problem in terms of coding ability that I wonder why more companies don't do it. I'm HR person vetoed it saying that it could get us in trouble if it looks like we make prospective employees "work for free" or something 
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May 1, 2013 13:53
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Doghouse posted:Also, do you know how similar other offices are (Any of them in Americam but Reston, VA and DC in particular) to Mountain View? I work/live in Reston, but not at Google, and I had always been under the (perhaps incorrect) impression that it's mostly about providing government services/contract management than it is about engineering/making new things. Reston Town Center is a nice enough location that doesn't remind me at all of northern California (where my in-laws are).
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Jun 13, 2013 05:24
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gucci void main posted:Cronyism is always nice, but the fact still exists that smaller/not The Big Two markets are sorely lacking in this department. To add, some language/framework communities are absolutely full of idiots and/or assholes. See: JS, Ruby/Rails. This can make it a lot harder to get in. I'm not 100% familiar with the community, but I'd probably recommend C# as your best bet for a regular job with normal people. DC is flush with junior folks due to the prime defense contractors vacuuming them up. This is mostly enterprise-Java and some C/C++ and we've had a hard time hiring from that pool for people who can do more than "implement the functions from this Interface Control Document." I'm at a python shop and I'm perhaps too close it, but it's a pretty sweet community compared to some of the other stuff out there.
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Jun 16, 2013 19:20
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I'm really interested in the work being done at a local place that does contract stuff for government projects. I recall reading some bad things about government contracts somewhere though. I don't remember if it was here or not. I've had experience working as a government civilian with large/prime contractors and as a contractor myself at a smaller company. I'd venture to say that the problems you've read are primarily with a prime contractor like the Boeings or the Lockheeds. A local place that is putting out a specialty and high quality product is fine. A good thing to ask is if you're position is about billable hours or the company being contractor to fill a seat. This has the unfortunate side effect of encouraging mediocrity in hiring sometimes and there's not a lot of incentive for the company to pay more for top talent. When the company is contracted to provide a specialty product, and they're committing to improving and maintaining this product or suite of products. I think under these circumstances, contracting is similar to any other small company making a product for a small group of customers: hope the benefits and people are great
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Nov 1, 2013 04:25
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kitten smoothie posted:You have to either be invited, or gain access by "proving" you're a developer with characteristics that satisfy them. Brutal, I have a good enough github account to get randomly spammed by recruiters, but NOT good enough to rate having an SO careers account. The injustice I tell ya...
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Mar 3, 2014 03:04
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Doghouse posted:Maybe time to look for a new job? That's a pretty significant amount of money Agree. Renegotiating for more PTO instead of salary is a reasonable move if you're truly at the high end of your company's range, but that's probably not the case here.
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Mar 17, 2014 04:25
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