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Just noticed this thread and realized its probably a good place to put down some stuff I've been thinking about my career and its future and hopefully get some outside input. I've been a developer for almost eight years at this point and have written code all over the stack and in way too many languages (written code professionally in C, C++, Obj-C, Python, Ruby, Scala, ActionScript, PHP, Javscript). I've been lucky enough to work at two of the biggest names in tech and got to go through Y-Combinator with a startup I founded with my best friend and eventually leveraged to get acquihired at my current employer. All of this churn is largely because I've got massive ADHD and start to get bored once I've actually gotten comfortable and feeling competent at what I'm doing. I love and thrive on the stress and adrenaline that comes with a new position where I feel in over my head. This means after about a year I inevitably start looking to move on to something new. This has worked pretty well so far at continually moving my career forward as I'm constantly jumping into new challenges that are way above my skill level and force me to learn. The one issue though is at this point I've become much more of a jack-of-all-trades developer, one whos good at picking up a new project or language and implementing things quickly but I lack a specific domain I could call myself an expert in. In the first quarter of last year I transferred into security tools oriented work which I really love as infosec used to be a passion of mine that got dropped in favor of the significantly larger SWE salaries. I'd really like to be able to find a specific area of the security field that I can actually delve into enough to eventually call myself an expert but my constant direction changing would make that impossible. So my first question is, does anyone have any suggestions on staving off the need for something new my brain seems to always get once I'm no longer completely terrified in my job? I'm lucky to have gotten a chance to move back towards security and don't want to ruin it by jumping ship for the next shiny challenge. If anyone else has had a similar feeling of wanderlust and has been able to quell it, I'd love some advice. To document my second dilemma, I was tech lead on my last team and in moving over to security tools I knowingly took a step back in seniority in order to do work I found more interesting. In moving I also knowingly pushed back a promotion in engineering level by about a year. Recently, the two senior engineers on my team have moved on to other teams and we've brought on four new grad junior developers. At the same time the management structure above me has been shaken around (my manager, whos not really an engineering manager is leaving, my new manager is an engineering manager but also manages a couple other teams). These events combined to make my work in the last two months involve significantly more "management" type work. I've spent probably 1/3 of my time doing things like writing project roadmaps, mentoring the new engineers and helping them get up to speed, writing project progress reports, participating in planning meetings, and working to hire and interview new people (the latest of the four newbies picked our team largely through my doggedness). Theres currently a search for an engineering manager to place between my current manager and my team, ie someone to concentrate specifically on security tools. Because of the work I've been doing recently, I've been asked about my interest in possibly moving into the management track. I've really enjoyed the management stuff a lot more than I had originally thought I would, and could definitely see myself enjoying doing more of it, but the idea of not having producing code as my main job focus scares the crap out of me since for a long time I thought it was the only thing I was any good at. While its tempting, I'm just not sure if its a direction I'd like to head. I also have to wonder if I'm simply considering it because I'm at the time where my ADHD would have me looking for a new challenge. So I'm looking to see if anyone has any experience making this kind of transition and what their experience was? Is the management side of things fun and challenging? What are people's opinions on the better decision for long term career outlook? In 5 years am I going to have a harder time finding a job if I move to management? Theres no financial reason to do it or not, my company has good equal promotion tracks for both engineers and managers, so its totally a career style choice. I apologize for the length, I'm brain dumping about two weeks of internal monologue. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
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Feb 24, 2014 19:12
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Cryolite posted:Is it common to reach senior-level in salary and expertise in one stack and then switch to a completely different stack while maintaining the previous salary? Anyone else here do that? What was your experience? It is definitely possible, but you have to be confident in your ability to learn and perform quickly. If you're have a self-image of "I can't compete with people who already spend 40 hours a week working with these things" you're going to portray that outwardly and aren't going to be able convince people to pick you instead. If you're smart and interested in the topic theres no reason not to believe in yourself. Meeting actual engineers who do the work you want to do and getting them to refer you to go around the dumb recruiter resume filter will also greatly improve your chances. Really the easiest method for doing this is probably finding a company that makes it possible to move within the organization. I've been at Facebook for the last three years doing basically this transition from senior SWE to a security engineer role. Its gone "hired as pure SWE" => "transfer to security oriented development position" => "transfer to security specific position". I've kept my salary and leveling throughout (actually getting promoted one level during) but doing this probably cost me a bit leveling/raise/bonus wise. I'd probably be a level higher by now if I'd stayed a SWE and my reviews have lately been more "meets all" instead of "greatly exceeds" which costs me a bit in bonuses, but I'm significantly happier with my current role and had I not made the switch I'd likely be burned out at this point.
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Mar 4, 2015 11:59
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bonds0097 posted:That's another advantage of remote I forgot to mention. I have a nice mechanical keyboard and don't ever bother anyone with it unless I accidentally forget to mute myself while typing during a conference call. Mechanical keyboards rule. But yes, I'd do go insane if I worked in an office where people had them. You can get a mechanical keyboard that isn't deafeningly loud dude. Browns feel almost exactly like blues and are quiet enough to use in an office. Clears are supposed to be real nice too. Safe and Secure! posted:Don't all the huge companies do that? Amazon, Google and Microsoft do it, and I thought I heard that Facebook does it, too. IANAM but as far as I can tell Facebook does something similar to stack ranking but theres no pre-prescribed percentages for each level so its possible for there to be no one in the "should be fired" ranges.
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May 19, 2015 16:37
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Cryolite posted:If you're a software developer with a few years of experience and claim to be a lead developer at your current position, should you send a thank you e-mail after an interview? Just don't track down your interviewer's personal email address and send them an email there thanking them for the interview. Yes I had this happen.
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Sep 15, 2015 15:33
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Pollyanna posted:Oh poo poo, I'm actually kind of terrified of the coding screen for Twitter. I don't know what they'll be quizzing me on, and I'm imagining it being all in Scala... I guarantee you unless you're applying for a specific position like Android developer, the programming interviews will be choose-your-own-language. Really though, you're over thinking everything.
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Sep 15, 2015 18:11
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mrmcd posted:I can't tell if I'm old of if this is possibly to dumbest way to design software and the world has gone crazy. Yes. Also learn Go instead.
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Sep 15, 2015 20:17
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Monkey Fury posted:Not too long ago, I applied for a Python-based job at a major newspaper. They sent me a Hackerrank test that could only be done in C or C++ b0lt posted:I applied for a position as an Android developer and I got interviewed in C++ and Objective-C I meant just my comment about Twitter in particular! Theres tons of places that ask language specific questions for both good and bad reasons. Figuring out if thats the case is a good question for the recruiter you talk to before hand.
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Sep 18, 2015 03:21
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since I haven't touched C since I was about 16, I... haven't heard back since submitting it.
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sarehu posted:One thing that always annoyed me when interviewing people is that there's no non-buggy shared programming text editor website. Actually, for some time, etherpad was OK. But then it started getting glitchy. coderpad.io is the best I've found. Has in browser running as well. Bruegels Fuckbooks posted:Promotions typically aren't salary increases anymore, just more work and a potentially better job later. Don't know where you've worked but you are getting screwed if you think this is even close to true. Seriously you're suggesting it's reasonable for people to take on more responsibility on the promise of potential benefit at some unknown point in the future? Anyone who takes on more work without more pay is getting taken advantage of. pr0zac fucked around with this message at 13:41 on Sep 18, 2015 |
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Sep 18, 2015 13:18
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:I think this is how the industry outside of Facebook works. Performance reviews are yearly, not every half, and there are often vague or no criteria for leveling, so people tend to get screwed unless they snag a title change and then use it to upgrade to something better. Facebook isn't my first job and while I'll admit its better than most places I would never take treatment like that anywhere. The idea that its considered normal to not get a raise when you get a promotion in an industry where companies are spending millions lobbying the government to create more VISAs cause they can't hire enough people is kind of ridiculous. I mean, I get that its a stereotype that developers are self-martyring workaholics that let themselves get taken advantage of and worked to death, but I will still insist the people that fit that stereotype are being dumb about it. School of How posted:open the file in my text editor, type in the change, switch to the command line, do git commit, ssh prod, git pull, sudo service uwsgi restart. That this workflow does not include "get my code reviewed by a peer" or "push to testing tier" says a lot about the place you work.
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Sep 18, 2015 18:31
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School of How posted:I'm the only programmer. Its actually more efficient for there to be one programmer than for there to be a team in some situations. Because I wrote all the code, I'm just as capable as anyone else to review my own code.Maybe some people couldn't work under those conditions, but I've adjusted to it after doing it for so many months. To be clear, I wasn't criticizing you personally. Your situation sounds awesome and the only way I could see it being better would be if you were working those 12 hours remotely. I think more people work similar hours a week and pad the rest with dicking around than admit it. I mean, everyone posting in here right now is almost definitely doing it on work time.
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Sep 18, 2015 19:04
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sink posted:Sorry -- completely missed that part, I shouldn't have skimmed. Talk to recruiters. This. Put up a github. Also go through and rewrite every single one of your job experience descriptions on your resume to highlight anything even approaching development. Its all about the framing.
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Oct 6, 2015 05:52
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Hadlock posted:Hey, real talk for a second, I just got done having dinner with my friend who apparently is a finance manager at Apple in Cupertino. She deals with payroll so I gave her the $130 figure everyone has been parroting as being a starting salary out here. When I started 8 years ago as a developer in the rear end end of Apple (OSX Server) my salary was $87k. I don't think anyone is quoting $130k as starting salary for someone new right out of school, thats more what I would guess is the median for engineers in general in the bay area.
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Oct 26, 2015 03:21
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Hadlock posted:Is it wrong to just totally not care about stock? I guess stock is a nice bonus, but anything above $115 is just gravy and goes in to the sailboat fund. 2/3rds of my net income over the last 3 years has been stock. In large part because the stock price has increased 3.5x in that time. It's worth considering when you calculate total compensation, especially if you think the company will grow in the next few years.
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Oct 26, 2015 06:21
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:I mean, if it's Facebook, sure, it matters. if it's some random startup, assuming not much will come of it is probably a reasonable bet. Well yeah, thus my saying it's worth considering. There's a lot of people that joined Facebook when it wasn't a reasonable bet that are now massively wealthy. There's a lot of people that joined other startups at the same time that made nothing. Figuring out your thoughts on the direction the company is going is a part of figuring out what the stock is worth to you. It's not a calculation that's guaranteed to be correct but it's worth taking the time to think about to correctly value an offer.
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Oct 26, 2015 06:42
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Very few companies give out stock options now in favor of restricted stock units.
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Oct 26, 2015 17:45
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Hadlock posted:Closest I've been to NYC in 17 years was Newark airport almost four years ago, I have no desire to go back (that is unless someone offers me a job out there and I can find a place for under $1900!) How the poo poo does a place in the Tenderloin (the second one) cost $2800 now what the christ. I mean, the fears of the TL are definitely blown out of proportion, I lived there for a year and loved the area and the people in it, but I moved there cause it was cheap at the time. That said, I lived 3 blocks from that place (in the bad direction) 6 years ago when there had been even less gentrifying in the area, and it was great. Basically the TL is where the homeless people go when they "go home" so you'll see people sitting around on the street talking with their friends and doing (and buying) drugs and less of them busking for money. I had a lot of really weird and hilarious conversations while living there. Also  ing at the idea of having your own place in San Francisco, wanting to have a social life, and expecting to have any money left over at $125k. Especially enough for a sailboat. Your calculations also don't include the couple thousand and change you're gonna spend yearly on public transit costs. A Caltrain monthly pass from zone 1 (SF) to zone 3 (MV) is $179.00, so $2148 a year.Do you know people who live out here already? Will you have an existing social structure? If not, where do most of your new coworkers live?
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Oct 28, 2015 18:25
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I'd argue the common wisdom is the common wisdom because it should be your default choice in that situation if you have no indication you should be choosing differently. There are definitely times when entertaining a counter-offer makes sense. It should be pretty clear when thats the case though and if its not you should err towards the null hypothesis.
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Nov 6, 2015 20:12
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Rurutia posted:I know at least some of the big software companies cap salary. I know Amazon and I think Microsoft both cap at 150k. I wouldn't be surprised if Google does as well. As you go up in rank, your expected bonus (cash and stock) % increases. This would be really surprising to me. I'm only familiar with Facebook who I know doesn't cap salary, but I'd be very surprised if anybody they compete with for candidates doesn't do similarly. In fact you can confirm this isn't the case by looking at h1b data: http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=FACEBOOK+INC&job=software+engineer&city=&year=All http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=GOOGLE+INC&job=software+engineer&city=&year=All http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=MICROSOFT+CORPORATION&job=senior+software+engineer&city=&year=All Really wanna know who the person who got over a million dollar salary to work for Google in Pittsburgh is... pr0zac fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 23:36
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Mortanis posted:Haha. That's a whine and a half rant. Hope you're getting paid really well.
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Feb 12, 2016 22:44
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Ithaqua posted:Anyone interview with SpaceX recently? A recruiter just reached out to me, and hey, space. Sounds neat. I once got a recruiting email from SpaceX congratulating me on my impressive work at Google. I have never worked for Google.
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Aug 11, 2016 15:21
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Is every recruiter loving inept as gently caress? No. But the ones that aren't very quickly find better, less stressful and soul destroying jobs. My team's one good recruiter is now my team's TPM which is great for our organization's workflow but is murdering my incoming candidate quality.
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Aug 11, 2016 19:56
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I applied to Google NYC last night on a whim. They got back to me at 9am today. Aren't Google recruiters notoriously bad or something? Their recruiters are generally OK. Their recruiting process is horrible. Expect to wait a month after the interview before getting a decision. The recruiter will check in weekly to let you know to keep waiting though!
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Aug 15, 2016 14:49
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Good Will Hrunting posted:So do people basically go through the motions at Google and then only apply to other places only once they've gotten rejected? Cause that timeline doesn't really work thrown in the mix with a regular job hunt. People who want to work at Google bad enough do yeah. Most people just get other comparable jobs. I actually legit think the terrible recruiting timeline Google has is a culture fit filter to remove people who don't want to work at Google enough to wait. I imagine it probably works pretty well for them as that.
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Aug 22, 2016 18:06
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Google's timeline is unusually long because of their committee system for making final hiring decisions which most other companies don't have. Means you have to wait until the next time the committee meets which if badly timed could take a while. Its a trade off that guarantees the decisions are more standardized. Facebook's process is definitely a lot faster but probably more varied between teams with the major delay being some rear end in a top hat engineer taking two weeks to submit feedback.Stinky_Pete posted:Now my plan is to work at Google for 5+ years and then see if I can get in at Valve. 5+ years is a long drat time to work for a company, especially if you're considering it a stepping stone. Spending 6 years at Google isn't a bad decision by any means but if you really want to work at Valve you should try sooner rather than later. If nothing else, it'll give you context on what their interviews look like.
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Aug 22, 2016 19:17
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The problem is the assumption that programming ability is the only skill that makes someone a good developer, especially in a large company. The fact is an average programmer thats a good communicator and teammate is much more valuable than a 10x programming savant thats impossible to talk to or work with to the majority of employers. Failing to understand the importance of soft skills is what keeps most developers from succeeding in their careers as well as they could. Good Will Hrunting posted:a glorified babysitter like our head of HR who makes over $200k or "account managers" that make $120 for sending loving polite emails This for instance demonstrates a pretty immature understanding of how a company functions as a whole. Seriously, go get lunch with one of those people sometime and ask them about their job and what they do all day. You'll likely find it interesting, have a better understanding for the value those people provide, and maybe learn a bit that will make you more effective in your job.
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Aug 23, 2016 17:44
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Good Will Hrunting posted:The recruiter emailed me and said they'd like to schedule my "follow-up phone interview". Yesterday my interviewer asked if this was my first phone screen and I said I didn't know there was more than one and he said that sometimes they schedule two? The recruiter said "one or two" when I first talked to her. But I'm guessing the first guy was on the fence about me or something so they'll do a second before they decide whether or not they'd like to bring me in. I really love doing interviews, esp phone screens cause I actually really enjoy talking about what I do and generally don't work places I don't like a lot, plus gives a break from staring at a computer all day. That said 90% of my feedbacks that asked for a follow up phone screen were cause they booked the thing at 10am and I wasn't awake enough to give a drat or remember enough to get good signal. I imagine a lot of people are similar. So don't let it get you down that they asked for a second.
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Aug 31, 2016 14:34
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I usually lead off an interview question by saying "well here's the brute-force solution, it runs in O(lovely) but it'll get you your answer". Takes like twenty seconds, shows that I can actually solve the problem as stated, and may help identify what exactly needs improvement in the optimized version. Plus it gets me talking, which is a lot better than the interviewer asking a question and then me staring at the whiteboard for 20 seconds going "Hmm...maybe, but no...hm..." This is correct. Interviewers can't read your mind and this is by far the best way to quickly demonstrate/confirm you understand the problem. I've had a few interviews where the candidate wasted 20 minutes working in their head before putting something down that's completely wrong because they didn't actually understand the problem. (Most) interviewers are not assholes and would prefer you succeed since it's really uncomfortable on the other side too when an interview is going badly. Working from a naive solution makes it a lot easier to talk out loud as you think since you've got something structured down to work from. Talking out loud while you work gives the interviewer chances to suggest hints or give clarification. Also it just makes the interview less awkward increasing the chance the interviewer remembers the experience positively. Also remember (good) interviews are as much about judging thought process and ability to work through a problem as it is about whether or not you put the correct answer down. If you don't talk and don't put down iterative attempts I have no clue whether you reached the answer by creative reasoning or because you memorized it last night. In a similar vein, if you're completely stuck but know how you'd figure it out if you were in front of your computer explain that cause you're at least demonstrating some ability to figure stuff out in real life. You should avoid saying "I don't know" as much as possible.
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Sep 3, 2016 03:10
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Got contacted for a position where the bottom end of the salary range is what I make now and the top is about 10k lower than what I want but still a 20k raise. However, the requirements seem steep for this range (I "meet them all" - I just feel like someone at this level should be getting paid a bit more especially because it's a known start-up in a major city). If you've got the time it's always worth going through simply to see what they offer and to have a competing offer to play off any others you get assuming you're actively looking right now.
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Sep 27, 2016 19:50
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hendersa posted:The recruiter said it was going to be a one-hour interview. The company's HR also said it was going to be a one-hour interview. I told this engineer that I was going back to work and that I had already gone well over the hour I had allocated for the interview, and he said, "but... everyone does this test when they come in!" I apologized, said that I wasn't going to do it there, but that I would be happy to take an hour or two and look at it later that evening after work. He rocked back and forth on his feet for a few seconds before he said "ok, but I need to give you my cell phone number in case you have questions." He was insistent on giving me his number and he kept telling me to be sure to call him if I ran into trouble. This sounds like a great test of both your ability to read code and recognize problems and have a constructive conversation with someone about the issues. If anything I'd say more interviews need to test things like this compared to yet another tree serialization question.
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Oct 9, 2016 21:53
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Pollyanna posted:My parents are skeptical of my job (which has improved quite a bit recently!) and are starting to not-so-subtly push me into going back to school/the military via getting an infosec job (long story). My impression of infosec as a field and industry is kinda negative. Really, the only reason it's being suggested is "people are getting hacked lots!" therefore job security, but that says to me to avoid the field instead of getting into it. If you don't want to work in infosec please don't work in infosec. The increased focus on the field because of all the recent "cyber" stories has increased the number of lovely candidates I have to filter out enough already. Especially since infosec is a really nondescript term including everything from development work to ITish software/hardware management to penetration tests and code audits to research into complex mathematics. "Getting an infosec job" is only slightly less nonsensical a phrase than "getting a computers job".
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Nov 1, 2016 23:49
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Why would you listen to your parents? Chances are that they have no idea about the current state of education and employment, especially in our sector. I don't think any of my mom or dad's career advice has ever been remotely close to passable, let alone "good". Unlimited vacation is a scam in part for exactly this reason. Your boss has the right idea. If you're taking less than five weeks off you're letting them take advantage of you (calculating based on a relatively average 20 days vacation plus five extra days for them not considering vacation days a payable benefit they need to pay out at the end of your employment). For exact numbers I've taken 34 days off so far in the seven months I've been at my current employer, but fifteen of those were traveling to South Africa when my mom died.
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Nov 2, 2016 15:09
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Good Will Hrunting posted:4 of the last 5 places I've interviewed wanted me to do take-home assignments. 2 of them we're 4+ hours, one took about 3, and my estimate for the last is that it will take me 8+. This is really becoming the in thing now. I wouldn't mind it if I could do it and then post it on my github as a personal project for exploring another language or something but otherwise, yikes. My current team uses one of these pretty liberally and I've been in an ongoing conversation with the other hiring managers about it for a while since while I do think take-homes could theoretically be useful, I don't think our current one is that great. My general issues are with it being rather open ended meaning performance is pretty strongly tied to available free-time and the metrics we're using to judge it not being that clearly documented (I work in security so theres a development part and a security auditing part). Generally how bad do people think take-homes are as far as quality of signal goes? Does it seem like something that could be made valuable? Esp interested in the experience of people from the hiring/interviewer side at places that use these things.
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Nov 8, 2016 20:08
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Good Will Hrunting's saga in this thread is a really good argument for the benefit of relying heavily on networking to find new jobs. Cause good lord going it alone seems like some poo poo.
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Dec 16, 2016 23:19
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I had an interview this morning and it went really well! I didn't have anything negative to post! Really hope you land it and its cool and good work, cause seriously man you seem like a pretty good developer and the poo poo you've been dealing with to find a job is just nuts.
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Dec 19, 2016 21:39
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I got the offer for a 30k raise with a 7.5k increase in my bonus. I didn't tell them what I was looking for but I did tell them how much I had received in a previous offer and that they were going to have to beat which they did. Do I still negotiate? Am behind on this thread, so Good! Don't worry about not being good enough. Just work on growing into the job and be open about asking for help and advice early on. If your new manager doesn't suck, one of their jobs is to help you grow as an engineer. In other news, taking 9 months off to study in order to try to get a job at Google is apparently NOT a good method. https://medium.com/@googleyasheck/i-didnt-get-hired-here-s-why-21f26d4784d5#.4q9kzd3fj quote:The thing that bothers me is that I didn’t even get a phone screen. I didn’t even talk to a recruiter over the phone.
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Jan 11, 2017 18:34
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