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baquerd posted:This is only true statistically, as in when you look at a population as a whole. In practice you will have many real and potential opportunities to drastically improve your salary if only you have the proper skillsets and ability to apply them. That's very true, I entered the workforce making a horrible salary, and 7 years later, it's triple what it was when I started. Now I make a reasonable salary for the field I'm in. I did have an amazing bit of luck when I changed jobs last; I said "I was making X, I want 20% more than that" and they didn't even bat an eye, because it was right in the middle of the posted salary range, and it was fair for the job/my level of experience at the time. A lot of employers would have balked or tried to lowball me, but this one didn't!
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2011 02:54 |
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# ¿ May 4, 2024 16:04 |
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Here's an interview tip: Don't put things you've never used before on your resume. I just interviewed a guy today who, when asked about WCF and MSMQ, said "Oh, my current company uses those. I've never used them, but I want to learn!" Of course, he also took 30 minutes to get a non-working implementation of FizzBuzz to the point where it would even compile. I've seen so many people fail to code FizzBuzz correctly that it almost makes me wonder if it's a valid test. What do you guys think?
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# ¿ May 11, 2011 02:43 |
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kimbo305 posted:The more I interview people, the more frustrated I get with people not asking questions about what I want -- requirements and expectations are key to both artificial interview questions and real software engineering! See, that's the thing... most of the people we get have such fundamental problems that understanding the requirements doesn't even factor in. I've seen people not know the mod operator, I've seen people people struggle with creating a for loop, etc. This last guy had 12 years of coding experience on his resume, and he knew concepts and could discuss them intelligently. I just don't understand how you can know all about abstract classes and dependency injection and then not be able to bang out a for loop with a couple of ifs. The only explanation I can come up with his that there are a lot of people who go for rote memorization.
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# ¿ May 12, 2011 01:07 |
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Melted_Igloo posted:I dread interviews for many many reasons Well, yes, if they're standardized on one version of a development platform and you haven't used it, then you might not be a good fit. My company is on .NET 4.0. We're not using many new .NET 4 features yet, but we definitely will be over time. That's why we ask interviewees what the latest version they've used both personally and professionally. We understand that larger companies are slower to adopt new technologies, so saying "I've been playing with .NET 4 at home!" and having a brief chat about the new stuff that they like is good enough. Someone who's like "Nah, I've been using .NET 2.0 for the past 5 years and I've made no effort to keep on top of recent developments in my field" is a huge red flag.
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# ¿ May 13, 2011 02:50 |
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Mobius posted:So yeah, just get some projects under your belt however you can. Contributing to open source projects isn't a bad idea, although this is a case where I definitely need to practice what I preach.
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# ¿ May 15, 2011 20:36 |
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The rule I've always heard (and always lived by) is: You can never over-dress. Unless they explicitly say "dress casually," you wear a suit.shrughes posted:No no no no no no no no no. You're not applying at a bank, right? This is the software industry we're talking about. Don't wear a suit, don't wear a tie. Clean jeans and a nice shirt is right. I just wanted to specifically quote this and say that I'm pretty sure you're insane. New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 03:26 on May 19, 2011 |
# ¿ May 19, 2011 03:17 |
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Hey guys, I have an interview next Friday. I'm going to wear a suit. Here's my latest set of interview horror stories: We're interviewing for a lead architect position. We have a standard phone screening containing all of your favorites (abstract class vs interface, some general philosophical questions, etc). This is all C#, for reference. This guy, an architect/CTO with 20+ years of industry experience, thought that: - You declare a method as "virtual" if you want to use it in remoting - You use abstract classes to get around access modifiers - (my favorite) Dependency injection is used for debugging and has something to do with stack traces (???????). But he's been unit testing with nUnit for 5 years!
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# ¿ May 21, 2011 01:05 |
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subx posted:I think these programmers are the same type as the office workers that don't know how to use a computer. You're probably right, it's just that I would expect someone who's applying for a position as an architect to have skills beyond those of a senior developer. Most of the guys we've talked to are below our most junior. I'm spoiled, though; the guy who left and created this vacancy was a genuine badass. At this level, we're most likely getting all the dudes who haven't written production code for a decade or longer and are used to saying "We need a widget that does X" to a team lead that handles the actual design. New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 02:51 on May 21, 2011 |
# ¿ May 21, 2011 02:49 |
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I went on a pretty horrific interview for a C# senior dev job today. Here's a list of the things that the company doesn't do: - Project planning - Source control - Unit testing - Continuous integration - Cross-training Here's what they do do: - Let former developers keep part of the code-base hostage - Release poo poo whenever - Get random tasks assigned from management - Make lots of excuses about why they can't institute change The technical assessment part of the interview was equally unimpressive. I was asked 3 things: 1) Write an algorithm to reverse a string on the whiteboard. This is actually a good interview question; I ask the same thing when I'm interviewing folks. I think I blew the guy's mind on this one; I used the LINQ Reverse() method. I had to explain what LINQ was to the interviewer, which led to an explanation of extension methods, which led to him asking me to do it again, the "normal" way. 2) Make a class "A" with a constructor 3) Make a class "B" and have it inherit A. I'm 99% sure I'm going to get an offer, and I'm 100% sure I'll be politely refusing.
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# ¿ May 27, 2011 02:29 |
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No Safe Word posted:Why would you use LINQ to answer that question? Well, I wouldn't loop through the characters in a string and build a new string in production code, I'd use .Reverse(). If I had someone do it that way in an interview, it would lead to some chatting about LINQ, lambdas, etc. I'd follow up with "given a List<int>, get everything greater than 5" or something like that.
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# ¿ May 27, 2011 12:10 |
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umbrage posted:1a) Clever is a low bar for some companies. I wouldn't want to work somewhere where clever was a low bar. My goal is to be the second dumbest person on the team. It still beats today's interview... It was for senior dev/team lead, and they forgot to mention that I'd be the only .NET developer, web-only, and that all of their non-web stuff was written in Powerbuilder and they had no plans to migrate away from it. I only found out when I asked if I was going to meet with the team I was going to be leading, and was told "they really wouldn't have anything to talk to [me] about," because none of them know .NET. Also, they use PVCS for source control. I'd never heard of it, and now that I've read about it, I certainly don't want to use it. New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 19:23 on May 27, 2011 |
# ¿ May 27, 2011 19:12 |
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umbrage posted:That's funny--I've always said I wanted to be the dumbest person, but you make a good, subtle point. And I get your point earlier... if I hadn't already been thoroughly unimpressed, I would've put the standard decrementing for-loop solution down, and then followed it up with "but check out this super duper neato way!" Oh well. I've already scheduled another phone interview for next Tuesday. I'm pretty depressed by the places I've been interviewing with, but saying "I'm depressed because I don't want to work for these companies that want to pay me six figures (or close to it)!" is such a lovely reason to be depressed. I really just want to write cool code in an environment that's not soul-crushing. I'd even take a minor pay cut, if it came down to it.
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# ¿ May 28, 2011 08:05 |
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Bag of Carpets posted:is anyone really enjoying what they're doing? Absolutely. The software I'm working on is fairly cutting-edge and interesting, there's a lot of flexibility for creativity in our new development, and I have a fantastic team of ridiculously smart people who know what the gently caress is up. I'd love my job forever and ever except for one thing: The upper management of the company doesn't get it. They fight us every step of the way, from "your tech screening is too hard, it's driving away qualified candidates!" to "Agile development doesn't work! We can't force the team to work on more projects at once than they can reasonably complete in a two-week period!" to "the sales team SHOULD be able to sell features that don't exist and then act indignant when told that the feature isn't designed, estimated, or scheduled for development yet, and to stop lying to customers" I saw our CTO fighting the fight every single day, until he finally quit in order to maintain his mental health. Now the entire team is jumping ship, one person at a time. If management was actually reasonable, I'd have no problem sticking around, even though the positions I've been interviewing for pay 15-20% more.
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2011 02:09 |
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Good stuff to know in general: -Abstract classes, interfaces, how the two are different - protection levels (public, private, protected, internal), - design patterns (know at least 2 or 3 and be able to explain what they are and when they're applicable) - generics (try to come up with some use cases that don't involve collections for extra cool dude points) Anyone who comes in to interview with me is miles ahead of the other candidates if they talk about unit testing and inversion of control. I'm still expecting strong fundamentals, but knowing how to unit test properly and build loosely-coupled applications is excellent. Oh, and don't bullshit. If you outright don't know an answer, say "I don't know." If you think you might know, still answer, but let them know that you're taking a stab. If you're stabbing in the right neighborhood, that's at least a good sign. If you try to bullshit on everything you don't know, the interviews will know, and they will not hire you. Software development is a massive field and everyone has gaps in their knowledge. The important thing is to know where you're weak and improve on those areas. Speaking of improving... time to get back to learning MVC. This is a real nightmare for me because my HTML skills haven't been exercised to any degree since Netscape 4-era. New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Jun 9, 2011 |
# ¿ Jun 9, 2011 00:19 |
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Hibame posted:I must be the worst at in person interviews. I just got another call saying that the company I just interviewed for is going with the other candidate. This is becoming a reoccurring theme for me it seems. I get to the in person interview either locally or flown out. Do the normal chat about their company and about some of the stuff I worked on in school. Take their tests which I normally finish quickly as they a simple enough. Possibly meet the rest of the team and tour around the building. I think the interview will have gone well. Wait a few days then I get a call saying they do not want to move forward with me. I don't mean to be a dick, but are you actually as good as you think you are? If you're a .NET dev, I'd be more than happy to give you our phone screening (via phone/skype, even!) and let you know how you do.
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# ¿ Jun 9, 2011 23:43 |
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Pram posted:Yes I realize programming certs are useless but I was mostly curious if it has any value as resume fodder. Probably not though I'm guessing. It depends on the level of cert. Microsoft's certs are pretty good, especially as you get higher up. Basically, a guy who's an MCPD is probably pretty good, or at the very least, not a total moron.
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# ¿ Jun 15, 2011 00:48 |
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Plorkyeran posted:having certs means that you're a bad developer because a good developer wouldn't need to get them I hope you're being sarcastic, because that's bullshit and it's a bullshit attitude. I've known fantastic developers with and without certs. note: I don't have any certs.
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# ¿ Jun 16, 2011 00:23 |
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Cicero posted:Has anyone heard about this? Excerpt: I just signed up and took some of the C# tests. There are some good questions on fundamentals, but it's mostly easily Googleable minutiae that I wouldn't expect a developer to know off the top of their head.
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# ¿ Jun 21, 2011 04:09 |
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shrughes posted:Whether you suck or not at your first CS classes will be a function of your innate intelligence and whether you go to class and do homework, not a function of any attempts at "preparation" you do before then. We've disagreed in the past, but this is a statement that I wholeheartedly agree with! Intro CS isn't that tough. It gets thorny in the 300/400 level classes, though! I'll never forgive my compilers and interpreters class for dragging my GPA down. The professor was awesome and died recently, though, so I forgive him.
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# ¿ Aug 6, 2011 08:04 |
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Chokes McGee posted:2) I already have a job I've been at for about a year. These days, employers generally have no loyalty to their employees. Don't feel obligated to stay out of loyalty to the company. Do what's best for you and your happiness.
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# ¿ Aug 18, 2011 04:08 |
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Orzo posted:Okay, I have a question about a really bizarre phenomenon I've come across when giving interviews. One of the questions we use to ease into CS topics is to ask the candidate to describe a few sorting algorithms that they're familiar with, and then depending on what they say we go from there. Anyway, some ridiculous number like 6 of the last 10 candidates have said 'binary sort.' What the gently caress. That isn't even a thing, or if it is, it's almost certainly not what they meant. Why does everyone keep saying this? Did they have CS backgrounds? I remember a little about sorting algorithms from my college days, but I haven't had to actually implement a sort since then. At this point, if you asked me "how does a quicksort work?" I'd just shrug. Something involving partitioning.
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# ¿ Aug 20, 2011 02:40 |
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I'd never heard of the Sleepsort before tonight. Evil genius. Here's my 5 minute C# implementation! code:
New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Aug 20, 2011 |
# ¿ Aug 20, 2011 05:41 |
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Bag of Carpets posted:I've begun to apply for various web application developer jobs, most using PHP for development. I've been freaking myself out a little bit reading things like Five Essential Phone Screen Questions and this thread for the concepts I should be learning. (Big-O, algorithms, data structures, design patterns etc.) I do not have a CS degree, but have developed a good amount of code myself, so if an interview has the basis of "Prove to me you can code something" I should be fine but I worry about CS conceptual knowledge. That "5 essential phone screen questions" is a bit on the harsh side, honestly. Knowing computer science fundamentals doesn't hurt, but it hasn't come up in any job interview I've been on in the past 5 years.
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# ¿ Sep 8, 2011 03:00 |
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Eggnogium posted:Even funnier because the gist of the scripting section is "Why would you do this in a needlessly inefficient way when there are already tools to ease the process?" He also predicts which candidates will be inferior based on their preference of text editor.
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# ¿ Sep 8, 2011 03:37 |
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Pie Colony posted:For all the people that have worked as an interviewer- I've had bad experiences or insanely high expectations, but most people I've interviewed were terrible, and this is for midlevel-to-senior developer positions. Like, 20% of the phone interviews were worth in-persons, and of the in-persons, only a handful were worthwhile. Generally speaking, a good candidate who bombs on an easy question will probably get a few more off-the-cuff questions in and around the same area, just to get a sense for why they didn't know it. Experience gap? Rote memorization failure? Misunderstanding?
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# ¿ Oct 19, 2011 03:12 |
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Cicero posted:Keep in mind though, that even if the vast majority of interview candidates are idiots, this doesn't actually mean most career programmers in general are idiots. Competency is negatively correlated with time spent looking for a job; good coders get hired rapidly, sucky ones take forever to find a job, and thus go through far more interviews. That's very true. Good programmers are never on the market for long. Even if you like someone and extend an offer, there's a decent chance they'll end up taking a different offer, or just not want to work for you for whatever reason. Sulk posted:Is it just my imagination or are 80% of jobs completely skewed towards C# right now? Looking through some postings, pretty much all of the development jobs in the area seem to list it as a requirement or preference. I'd still like to learn Objective-C (as I've been trying to), but it seems as if there's no real market for it right now. It varies from region to region, but in the northern NJ/NYC area, C# is a very hot language. It works out great for me! Objective C is a lot more of a niche language at the moment, for better or worse. New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Oct 20, 2011 |
# ¿ Oct 20, 2011 02:58 |
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Sulk posted:I'm basically looking in that general area, Philadelphia included, so it's basically the same thing. I'd say 4/5 jobs that are posted on Craigslist want C# programmers. I feel like Objective-C is going to be extremely hot in 2-3 years, but it's tough because I feel like I should learn what's most in demand (at least regionally) right now. Is it a poor sentiment to have? Every time I look at job postings I just get sad Learn what you want to learn! Some people learn Piet and Brainfuck for fun.
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# ¿ Oct 21, 2011 12:38 |
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optiuum posted:Thanks for your reply. I have explained why, and constantly said to these people that making sure this stuff works is really job #1. Its been pushed back to job #20 anyway. If management isn't listening, there's only so much I can do about that. If you don't think their expectation is realistic (it isn't), then you need to provide them with a more realistic timeline. Tell them each piece of the project, the effort involved, why that effort is involved. If you can deliver individual features, let them choose what order the features are delivered in. The time line should be given in terms of a normal work-week, not an insane 100 hour work-week. If they still refuse to listen to reason, then get the gently caress out of there as fast as possible, and learn from your mistake in working there.
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# ¿ Oct 22, 2011 22:35 |
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Contra Duck posted:What you said is fine. The only really bad answer there is "I would like to remain in my cubicle churning out code". Say something that indicates you have ambition, like how you'd like to be leading projects/designing large scale whatevers/involved with clients/managing a team/blah blah blah. Yeah, I've always answered that question by saying that I want to be a technical lead / architect, just not a manager. Never a manager.
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# ¿ Nov 2, 2011 02:58 |
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A MIRACLE posted:~cross-posting from the IT careers thread~ Reputable recruiters are fine; I went through Robert Half for my last job and they were honest and reasonable. If you're getting half market rate and you're actually good at programming, get a new job ASAP if they won't raise your salary to something more reasonable. There's no reason right now to not be getting paid fairly. I've raised my salary by 22% this year, and I just got another offer for 30% more than I was making at the start, and I turned down an offer for 40% more because the job looked loving soul-crushing. And I wasn't even that far underpaid. Of course, it's so highly dependant on your location. I'm within commuting distance of NYC, so I'm set as long as I don't mind an hour train ride each way. That said, I start my new job in a few days and I'll be doing consulting. I've never consulted before and I'm slightly scared.
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# ¿ Nov 29, 2011 03:06 |
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Sulk posted:I got a call/voicemail from a Robert Half rep earlier today about some sort of mobile development position, but I didn't respond because (through a quick Google search) I saw a bunch of places saying they were dishonest/disreputable. The guy sounded like a regular person though and a native English speaker, and was actually calling from an office in the city and not halfway across the country. I just wasn't sure if it was really worth the effort. My general rule of thumb is that if you type the name of a company in on Google and "[company name] scam" shows up within the first four auto-results, that it's probably a scam. Robert Half is definitely reputable. I didn't really enjoy working with them, though, and probably would generally avoid recruiters again in the future. careers.stackoverflow.com is a great site if you're looking for work. It's a lot smaller than the other job hunting sites, but employers that know enough to advertise on a "hip" site like stackoverflow are probably pretty good.
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# ¿ Nov 29, 2011 04:42 |
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w00tz0r posted:Reading this thread, I'm really starting to think I'm being underpaid. What's the general pay scale for someone a year out of school in the Vancouver area? I'm thinking about asking for a raise, but I'm not sure how to approach my boss about it. Salary.com can give you a decent starting point, but keep in mind that salary can vary a lot between different types and sizes of companies. If you work for a giant software company, your salary is going to probably be a lot higher than someone who works for a small insurance company, even if you're doing the exact same type of work at both. [edit] I don't know if there's a Salary.com-equivalent for Canada, sorry. New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Dec 7, 2011 |
# ¿ Dec 7, 2011 15:16 |
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Sab669 posted:Looking at that website, when I searched "Software Engineer" and "Quality Assurance Engineer" it said about $58k was the average for central Rhode Island. Looking for "Web Developer" it proposed a Java Developer position instead, which has an average of $81k? I have no idea, but that doesn't sound right to me at all. It's pretty accurate for the NYC area, in my experience. Just use it as a ballpark figure... I generally assume that +/-10% of the median it gives is reasonable.
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# ¿ Dec 7, 2011 16:21 |
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hayden. posted:I recently finished a business degree but only realized until it was too late that I would have rather done something like software engineering instead. I want to get into career programming (I'd consider myself amateur level at this point, but I'm learning quick). What would be the best way to do this considering I don't have the degree? Some options I've considered: Option 4. A graduate degree means fuckall when hiring software developers, unless, for example, you did your masters degree in some area of machine learning and my company is looking for an expert in machine learning. I've seen people with no college degree at all who were badass software developers and had no problems getting jobs.
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# ¿ Dec 13, 2011 01:30 |
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hayden. posted:I can understand a graduate degree on top of a regular CS degree wouldn't mean much, but considering I have nothing to show right now on a resume that I can actually program it seems like it'd help at least to the same extent as an undergrad in CS. Go to Github or Sourceforge and look for an interesting project in your language of choice. Start contributing.
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# ¿ Dec 13, 2011 13:13 |
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Milotic posted:Depends on what your reasons for leaving are. Also make drat sure you stay at your next job for a long time because stuff like two jobs in two years and applying for a third raises flags. Yep. I jumped ship in July, then again in late November, and I was grilled extensively on why I was looking to leave after 5 months. I also knew I'd be locked into the new job for at least a year. I'm debating even putting the 5 month stint on my resume.
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# ¿ Dec 30, 2011 07:39 |
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^^^ God, I'm so bad at those spatial IQ test questions. I guess I'll never be employed in the highly competitive industry of drawing patterned paper that folds into boxes.shrike82 posted:I've been helping my team with resume vetting. What's the URL? Personally, I couldn't care less if someone is "smart" in any measurable way other than being able to write bad-rear end code, as long as they're passionate about writing software, fit in with the rest of the team and regularly bathe. New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Jan 20, 2012 |
# ¿ Jan 20, 2012 04:48 |
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shrughes posted:That's a ridiculous absurdly low rate. $20 * 2000 hours is $40k per year. For software development. You are completely undervaluing yourself. Move to Boston (or NYC or Chicago or California or anywhere but Rhode Island). And for contracting that's even more absurd than a $20/hr wage. Agreed. Although I live in the NJ/NYC area, the cheapest I've ever seen competent outsourced development go for was about $100/hr.
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# ¿ Jan 20, 2012 22:05 |
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A good answer to the "how much do you want?" question is, "Oh, I'm not greedy. Whatever you make will be fine!" (Note: never seriously say that)
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# ¿ Jan 21, 2012 06:59 |
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# ¿ May 4, 2024 16:04 |
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Sab669 posted:"I look forward to deleting most of your emails. There's nothing wrong with being "edgy" in your job ad, but basically saying "hey potential employee: you're probably not good enough to work here!" would immediately turn me off.
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# ¿ Jan 24, 2012 20:20 |