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So I was on the phone with our software vendor working through some issues/bugs/feature requests and I've worked with the co-CEO/head of engineering for about a month during our proof of concept, and today one of their software engineering managers offered for me to come work for them. It sounds like it would be a pretty good job, they're in the flatiron building in downtown SF, have been around a few years and keep getting multi-milion dollar seed funding rounds from venture capitalists, decent growth, and it would throw me in the heart of the silicon valley startup culture which I would probably thrive in given my previous history at other employers. Also I really "get" how their software works and how to apply it in large environments, which is where they want to head. So I started plugging in values in to google and cost of living calculators, I found two things 1) my current salary of about 60K in Dallas would require 98K in SF to continue the same quality of life I'm enjoying here 2) the average software dev "only" makes 103K in SF Assuming they offered me 100K, a) would they? b) is $60k in Dallas really equivalent to 100K in the bay area? Or are there other factors to take in to consideration? Also I live a 3 mile leisurely bike ride from downtown/my office here in Dallas. I'm guessing I'd have to pick up a 1 hour commute each way to get rent below $2k/mo in the Bay Area? I currently live in a ~1400 sq ft 2 bed/1 bath with a real garage and big enough yard I have a garden and a hammock and can toss a frisbee around in the back yard. c) If I really am the rock star in training I think I am (we all think that, right?) how fast can I see my income rise above the 100-110 range? Or is 120K pretty much the ceiling for developers in SF? I haven't looked in to this at all. Hadlock fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Aug 20, 2015 |
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Aug 20, 2015 05:23
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So starting off with "120K is what I would need to move out there because it would be a direct trade in real cost of living adjustment" would be an acceptable tactic?
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Aug 20, 2015 06:19
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I went from one hour each way down to 12 minutes each way and it changed my life. I didn't realize how soul sucking commuting is until my commute got a lot shorter. Now that I have a shorter commute I won't even consider a job unless it's within 30 minutes of my house, or the pay is enough that I can afford to move close to the office. I'm sure having kids who are in school will impact that kind of freedom in a few years though.
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Aug 21, 2015 08:21
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Do you want to do "programming" or something more specific like game programming or enterprise business programming or web front end, etc? For the first two C# is worthwhile. Cisco just rewrote the client for one of our products in Java recently, and our other major product is almost entirely written in C# and VB6. JavaScript would be something to learn if you plan on putting the words "web 2.0" on your resume. The free online MIT computer science course starts you off in Python which is nice because it starts you off in a scripting environment which lets you struggle through syntax issues without having to also learn and gently caress with a compiler which is it's own hurdle. It's called open courseware if you want to look it up.
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Aug 21, 2015 20:27
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Here's that link to the MIT OpenCourseware http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00sc-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-spring-2011/ My buddy started with this six years ago and is now living in the country Colombia working remotely for some company in the UK writing python code so apparently it works ok. I got through the end of the 2011 version of Unit 2 and it's all very good, not too dry and includes youtube videos of all the official MIT (yes, THAT MIT!) undergrad lectures. You can probably burn through it in a week if you're especially brilliant, a month and a half if you really have no experience with for loops and don't know the difference between a double and a float. There's 27 lessons. Go hawg wild.
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Aug 22, 2015 01:40
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Ok I am researching rent basically everywhere from Mountain View to the outer fringes of SF proper, it looks like $2500/month buys you a 500 sq ft flat and chances are they will up your rent next year. Is it really that expensive out there? $2500/mo gets you 2000 sq ft in some parts of downtown Dallas. I'm living in 1400 sq feet and not really ready to travel back 10 years to when I was living in a 600 sq ft shoe box. Surely there are some better deals? Following the 30% rent rule, at 100K/yr you're looking at $2700 a month which doesn't buy you much at all. It's hard to believe people are living in the bay area long term and willing to sacrifice that kind of living space. Do people work their asses off for a few years in SF, then relocate to a sane area for the same money but lower cost of living once they have some contacts? Is there a Bay Area living thread? I don't want to poo poo up this thread too much.
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Aug 28, 2015 06:22
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fence hopper posted:My question is, is a program that is obviously used for pirating books ok to showcase on a resume or talk about in an interview, do interviewers care about that? I guess if I did talk about it I could use Project Gutenburg books as an use case. Or does something like that only work when talking about downloading linux iso's on an internet comedy forum. My github account has the word "lolocaust" prominently displayed in one of the projects and I have three standing job offers 
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Sep 3, 2015 01:44
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Anything under an hour in Dallas/DFW area is considered the norm. Six million people with two north-south highways and two east-west highways. Plus all those assholes from the exurbs and Forth Worth commuting in. I have two coworkers who live in Denton and commute to Downtown Dallas (40 miles) My friend lives in Addison with a 10 minute commute, and took a job in Irving which is a 45 minute commute for a 20% pay raise. As someone in your mid 20s I think a 1 hour commute each way is worth it if you're doing it to move your career forward for a year or two, but I can't imagine doing more than a 30 minute commute each way as a grown-rear end adult with two kids and a house to look after.
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Sep 7, 2015 21:47
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I have some real bump on a log coworkers who work from home often three days a week Some days they have actual work to do, some days if you call the IP phone at home it just goes to voicemail Most days they're in the office they look like they're browsing ebay, so it looks like that's probably what they're doing when working from home, too. They never reply to group emails, never take proactive action, never speak up in meetings, never volunteer for anything. But they do work quickly to finish whatever task they're given, so they can go back to bidding on the latest gadget on ebay as fast as possible. Technically they're doing their job, but they look lazy as gently caress and zero people are surprised when they get passed over for promotions and raises. If you're making more than the average income in the area, you're expected to take initiative and lead, not follow. The problem is, once you get labeled as a follower it's hard to change that impression. But technically, they're doing their job, and they're quite good at the limited group of things they're willing to tackle. But I've never ever seen them volunteer to tackle anything before without being asked or at least prompted to. In your case it sounds like your boss has the impression that you're screwing around at work barely meeting basic goals, and wasting time goofing off on your video game hobby at work. And there's not a lot of confidence that you're going about solving your primary goals in an efficient manner (which might lead them to believe that you're finishing your goals fast but spending the rest of your time goofing off) All of my side hobbies are strictly firewalled from my work stuff. When I work from home, I run my VPN from a dedicated VM that only has the VM software installed. I can't imagine actually installing personal software on a work PC. Anyways, if your manager is noticing, it's not because they noticed, they're too busy for that poo poo. Someone else complained to their manager that they missed a deadline because X developer (you) didn't get them Y on time, and threw you under the bus about your game development hobby/side carrer (doesn't matter if it's true or not) and that developer's manager talked to your manager and gave them the filtered version of that story. The problem is your manager trusts his manager friend more than you, so you're kind of screwed. Looking for a new job and starting over sounds like a good plan at this point, or at least transferring out of that manager's group. I had installed some personal software (folding@home) on a work computer when I first started working as a professional and was asked to remove it, and then his boss found me browsing slashdot a couple of times on breaks, and it sort of snowballed from there, finally I did something that wouldn't have gotten a well liked senior employee fired, but gave them enough cause to let me go. If you're already on a downward glideslope it's possible to turn things around, but if you're not perfectly sure what you're doing wrong it's going to be really hard to fix it. I would uninstall any not-related work software from your computer, set any personal websites (gmail, facebook, etc) to 127.0.0.1 in your hosts file, and then show your boss some cool utilities you're working on to make everyone's life better at work. Or some commits to existing utilities in the workflow chain at work. Get him fixated on how helpful and useful you are and something he can brag to his boss about you for, instead of apologizing for you being a liability. Pollyanna posted:From what I can tell, I don't work less than my peers. I certainly may be biased or wrong, but I have no way to prove that Always give 110% compared to your peers to account for observer bias. If someone is saying you're not a hard worker there's probably some truth to it. Hadlock fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Sep 7, 2015 |
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Sep 7, 2015 22:20
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We don't have a good way to track performance at work either. We instituted a ticketing system last fall and that's helping. It's nice to be able to point to tickets and say "we have 4 people in our group, and I'm doing 85% of this kind of ticket, and 50% of all tickets combined" or some such. Not all workflows go through our ticketing system though. Mainly, I just chime in on group emails every 90 minutes or so, or email my boss and one or two other coworkers directly my opinion of the topic. Something like "yes! I'm glad they're doing X, that will save us a bunch of time when we're doing Y next month." or "I wish they would do it this other way, because it's going to impact us when we try merging these two projects next year and the last time we tried doing unit conversions it took way longer than expected" or whatever. Proof that you're engaged and paying attention and not just watching youtube videos all day at home on how to make the perfect homemade mayonnaise or something.. I still browse slashdot/google news at work daily, mainly while I'm eating lunch at my desk, but I (I think) get away with it because once a month I poo poo out something that saves our group 10 man hours a week. I think my boss hates it but more often than not when he comes by I'm working on something productive so he's never brought it up.
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Sep 7, 2015 22:50
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Kumquat posted:My commute most days is nearly two hours each way. I've wondered this before, if you're spending 4 hours a day on the road, what's stopping you from renting a crappy $400 a month apartment down the street from the office and furnishing it with a cot, easy chair and TV for use during the week? If you leave the office at 5 and get home at 7, that gives you three hours a day of personal time before 10pm, then wake up at 6 to leave the house at 7 to make it to work at 9. Just doing laundry and the dishes takes maybe three hours a week, that represents 20% of your free time. Good luck joining a club or having drinks with friends after work, let alone a social life. Even at $2/gal I think having a second home would be cheaper than driving. Plus the ability to have a social life. God drat.
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Sep 8, 2015 18:17
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Cicero posted:You could try biking: http://bikeportland.org/2013/01/30/bike-commuters-are-happiest-and-other-psu-research-tidbits-82448 We have a very active bicycle commuting thread  http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3627612 Ok I'll drop the subject now
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Sep 8, 2015 21:59
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Serious question: If the guy interviewing you lists Something Awful on his Linked In page, and you realize that he's a goon Do you ask him during the interview if he has stairs in his house?   
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Sep 16, 2015 04:48
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sarehu posted:Get a job, get the gently caress out of rural PA, and stop being a poor. Basically, this Take grandma out to lunch, get her to cut you a check for $1000, then pay her back by christmas. If it gets you in to a real job, loving do it. End of story. Eat ramen for the first two months if you have to. Git 'r dun. If your family can't help you out, sell your brother's spare car. Do you want to be a pussy your whole life, or be successful? Take some knocks to get you where you need to be, then pay back your debts with interest. Hadlock fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Sep 18, 2015 |
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Sep 18, 2015 05:50
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By your 10th or so cover letter you should have strings of one or two sentences you can plug together like legos. I'd say 40% of my cover letters are recycled from the previous one. Cover letters make a bigger difference when you've already got a foot in the door via a friend referral and you want to cement the job with their boss.
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Sep 19, 2015 23:46
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I would trade it for three extra days of vacation a year. You may never use the stock but you will always use the vacation, and extra vacation days are ~forever~.
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Oct 3, 2015 06:03
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I had the job in the bag but their boss was just crazy disorganized when it came to personnel decisions, salary changes etc. I had to follow up on my hiring, acceptance letter, both promotions. I had to call back five times before my then boss and HR got their act together. Sometimes hiring the new guy takes lowest precedence over things your future boss' boss is asking him to do.
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Oct 8, 2015 02:23
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Sick days as far as I can tell yeah are either mental health days, or if you're under 30, "too hung over to come in to work". A lot of single moms take sick days to deal with their kids being sick. Especially the first six weeks after school starts back up and the kids re-infect eachother. Any sane office is going to tell you to just loving stay home if you're obviously legit sick as they don't want you infecting the rest of the office.
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Oct 10, 2015 06:15
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E: wrong thread
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Oct 31, 2015 19:26
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I don't think anyone has ever requested a reference. I stopped putting references on my resume, that's one free line you're burning up on a formality that you could stuff full of A- or B+ -grade buzzwords, skills, projects etc. instead.
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Nov 15, 2015 07:32
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Smugworth posted:Is this a normal way to screen potential candidates? Totally. As you mentioned, it's called "networking", which puts you in the top 50% of the applicant pool, and allows you to bypass having to play résumé keyword bingo just to talk to a human. Just make sure every sentence out of your mouth is about positive experiences with classmates and teammates. It sounds like you have really strong communication skills, which are often times more important than raw programming talent. People who are brilliant programmers but can't convey their ideas clearly to others are way too common in this industry. Being able to code and more importantly explain what the hell you did or plan on doing is a skill that can't be taught from a text book.
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Nov 20, 2015 06:49
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I don't think his first language is English. Swit - Can you try typing up your situation and details in your native language, then feed that in to google translate?
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Nov 22, 2015 01:15
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There are a LOT of expenses involved with moving out. New kitchen stuff, new bed, a whole suite of cleaning supplies, bath mats, towels, wall clocks, hangars, a mirror etc etc. Lots of piddly stuff but those first 6 months are expensive, on top of rent, rent deposit, utility deposits, cell phone bills/repairs etc plus the moving truck itself and all the furniture/stuff that gets broken in the process. If you can start a new job (stressful!) and then move 3-6 months later, that's the way to go. It will nuke your dating life but you're looking at $10-12k a year in savings that first year. Plus logistically it's a huge, huge pain to do both at the same time. I would definitely move out within 18 months though, especially with a good job. There's no reason to stay at home past 23 if you have a job that pays better than a retail sales associate.
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Nov 24, 2015 21:19
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Yeah you can get by on not a whole lot, but quality of life goes WAY up and stress goes way down with a couple of simple things. They vary from person to person but I can say that having a tile floor in the bathroom, the bath mats makea huge difference. I never had a mirror until I had a live-in girlfriend but it saves a lot of time going between the bedroom and bathroom in the morning. I've kept my kitchen stuff down to a place setting of 4, that way dishes can't go undone for more than 4 days. I've been in some people's apartments who own 12-15 plates, and there's a tower of dirty dishes in each sink it's insane. I'm currently packing and I'm trying to get my life down to 24 boxes after living in 1400 sq ft of suburban space to go live in 700sq feet or apartment living in a major downtown area. It's interesting making snap decisions if you REALLY need that arc welder or spare set of bicycle handlebars you bought four years ago. My stuff won't arrive until mid-december, so until then I'll be sleeping on a cot with my laptop and eating out every night and living out of a suitcase for 2 weeks. I imagine I'll like my new apartment a lot better when it doesn't echo and I have warm fuzzy bath mats again.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:06
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JawnV6 posted:Books are the hardest. I didn't get rid of a single sheet of paper until we had to move from 1200sqft into 500, now I angrily go to the bookshelf to quote from something that I haven't owned in years. Yeah that was a big reason to convert to E-reader. I used to cart around 1000lbs of books spread over 5 or 6 boxes, after my buddy moved to China, then Seattle, then finally Texas, he jettisoned all his books and got the important ones as e-copies. Now his entire book collection lives on an 8GB USB thumb drive (As backup) and his Kindle. I've adopted sort of the same mentality.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:49
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All of my childhood toys (TMNT, GI Joe, micro machines, etc) except the SNES disappeared when my mother moved to her new house, along with probably a decade's worth of Nintendo Power magazines  The comic books always come with me, however. My uncle learned that lesson the hard way when he was growing up.
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Nov 25, 2015 01:37
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I generally ping them after day 4 and 7. People doing the hiring, typically are really busy with other stuff.
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Nov 26, 2015 00:39
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NovemberMike posted:This isn't even remotely true. I'm pretty sure he was joking.
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Dec 3, 2015 07:43
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kitten smoothie posted:https://github.com/jlevy/og-equity-compensation Please add this to the OP, I was looking for something like this about three months ago.
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Jan 13, 2016 05:30
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Necc0 posted:Uhhh- I mean yeah you definitely want to contribute to your retirement don't get me wrong but what does going up tax brackets have to do with it? As you go up tax brackets, your income is taxed at higher and higher rates. Stuff that is tax advantaged (health care, commuting costs, student loans etc) come out of your income pre-taxes, which makes your total taxable income lower, which means you pay less in taxes. This year I get to write off about 10K in expenses related to moving and other things. Which once you move in to the 28% tax bracket add up fast. Starting this year my company will take out my public transit ticket pre-tax which will save me about $1200/yr after taxes. Below about the $70,000 mark most of these tax writeoffs are rounding error stuff, but 1-2% tax breaks at the 100K mark, those add up really fast.
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Jan 18, 2016 05:07
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I would take the internship with your dad, become good friends with his boss, and immediately turn that in to a follow-up internship for the next summer. Also keep working the angles on getting an internship elsewhere for the following summer, but walking out the door with 2 years corporate experience puts you way ahead of your peers, both on paper and in terms of practical experience.
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Jan 26, 2016 17:44
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ToxicSlurpee posted:It's also problematic in that my sense of humor is pretty offensive and it shows in the games. On one hand non-game world. The game world also seems to want people with way more experience than I have. My github account has references to "lolocaust" and people keep hiring me
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Jan 26, 2016 20:44
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Facebook got so frustrated with PHP, they designed their own subset of the language to deal with it's shortcomings. I forget what it's called but they did publish an open spec, if only to help train fresh meat. I haven't worked with anything involving PHP that didn't make me want to do violent things. I'm not sure if it's the language itself, of the Fischer price mentality of the developers using it but it has a well deserved bad reputation in the post 2004-era.
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Jan 27, 2016 09:12
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Intro to linux class is probably less helpful in the long term, but it will make you loads more effective at doing your homework and experimenting with code projects in the short term. Being fluent in the command line is a big factor in being a productive superstar programmer and it's best to get a start now. Also, check out MIT's open courseware, their Computer Science 101 starts you off with Python and is a great world-class introduction, youtube lectures, full texts, source code and even lab assistant lectures, etc. 20 minutes a night for two weeks will put you way, way ahead of your peers if you don't already have exposure to programming. http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-096-introduction-to-c-january-iap-2011/
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Jan 30, 2016 06:25
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There are approximately 9 million jobs in NYC In a state of 20 million, that's approximately 1 in 2 jobs* Law of averages says a huge portion of the jobs available in your area will be in NYC if you're within 90 minutes of the city. *discounting the whole tri-state area effect Weather on the peninsula is pretty well regulated by the Pacific Ocean at 65-85 year round. It's once you get in to Sacramento away from the cool ocean water that it becomes miserably hot in the summers.
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Feb 1, 2016 22:12
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Due to the super bowl it's Work From Home Week for our team. Day 1 went really smoothly, so he announced that we're either going to go full time WFH or "at least three days a week". 50 minute commute each way is starting to look like it's paid off.  I've done 12, 20, 45, 50 and even 60 minute commutes each way before. You're loving nuts if you commit to a job with over a 45 minute commute each way. That's loving murder on your social life, work/life balance, and simply sanity.
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Feb 2, 2016 05:33
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Doghouse posted:Why is that? Just curious. We really wanted to hire a guy, our office is in silicon valley. Then we found out he lives in Sacramento, which is about a 3 hour train ride from our office. He did not get the job. My boss was not pleased when they found out I was living in SF and would be commuting down the peninsula, as yeah it does impact your ability to be effective at work when you're commuting 2 hours round trip every day. Had we not known he lived in Sacramento, we probably would have hired him and he would have been totally useless. He wasn't willing to relocate as his girlfriend was attending college where they lived and they weren't willing to split for the job. I don't think I would hire someone who lived more than 45 minutes away. You're probably losing 2 hours a week of productivity for every 15 minutes further away that person works than 45 minutes. It's draining.
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Feb 3, 2016 20:31
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What is the pay situation like out at GE Research in San Ramon? It looks like engineers are averaging about $99 but other positions can run as little as half that?
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Feb 23, 2016 18:03
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sarehu posted:Oh it's great, good people are pulling down $300-600K there. That... does not match glassdoor at all, where are you hearing that? What about their marketing staff, operations people, etc?
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Feb 25, 2016 08:02
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My best friend since 2nd grade had a wife in another country, lost both full time remote jobs, was racking up credit card debt in Miami, I got him a crackin' awesome job and me a $2500 referral bonus, he gets to live in San Francisco down the street from me, wife gets to move to America Everything is awesome   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cQgQIMlwWw
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Mar 8, 2016 07:14
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