|
Nintendo Kid posted:Well it stopped being natural touch typing positions a while ago once keyboards started changing. Yeah, I meant it was created that way for what they were using at the time.
|
#
¿
Oct 24, 2014 04:04
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 15:18 |
|
|
go3 posted:Quick, concise and to the point. Recruiter that screens based on salary and nothing else. lovely.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2014 07:43
|
|
|
go3 posted:Ability gets you a job. Bullshit gets you a career. Bullshit is the first step to getting a job, though (getting past the automatic keyword screening).
|
|
#
¿
Oct 28, 2014 04:03
|
|
|
myron cope posted:I like this job except the money is really bad ($25k a year). Dude.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 29, 2014 04:27
|
|
|
NippleFloss posted:He should. But people like to throw around "you're getting hosed" in here based on a few details about salary without any understanding of the persons local labor market or job situation. It's stated as if you'd be a moron to work for that little. But the U.S. in general is grossly unfriendly to labor and relatively poorer areas are even more so, so saying "you're getting hosed" as if it's something that the employee can easily fix by just demanding more money or finding a better job is insulting and blinkered. The minimum wage is still only 8 bucks, if that, in a lot of places, and help desk work often won't pay much more than that because it's treated as roughly the same as cable internet or phone support in terms of skills required. You can certainly hope to move on quickly from it once you've got a bit of a resume, but you've still got work somewhere for a bit to get that resume. Just because a ton of other people are getting hosed worse doesn't mean he's not also getting hosed. More to the point, his question was basically, "Should I just keep doing this for an arbitrary period of time, or should I start looking for something better?" To which people replied, "you're getting hosed at that pay rate, there's nowhere to go but up, start looking for something better now." It was advice he solicited. So no, it's actually not insulting that people told him that he should look for something better.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 29, 2014 23:01
|
|
|
evol262 posted:Heads up: if you're not a pro, it doesn't belong. Including Linux. Because if you're not a "pro", you probably don't have "working knowledge". It's possible, but very unlikely. It's not 2004. I can find people with professional Linux experience pretty easily. Nonsense, especially for something like having working knowledge of Linux, and for someone who's probably going to be targeting entry level jobs. Hell, I've seen job postings that have more or less that exact phrase as a "nice to have." A better tip would be, if you have a skill in your list, back it up with a specific duty or accomplishment involving that skill.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2014 12:32
|
|
|
Tab8715 posted:Again, if when he confronted me someone spoke up it would have been a lot easier but nobody did. You said the rest of the class was shocked. That means they saw, right? So what if they didn't speak up RIGHT THEN? Big public setting, people don't want to stick their neck out and make waves (see: your entire response to the situation). You go to HR, you make a formal complaint, and a competent HR department will interview everyone in the room, in private where they may feel more comfortable talking about it. That's if Bob doesn't immediately fold the instant HR comes to him with a formal documented complaint. Some people act much differently to people above them than they do otherwise.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2014 01:12
|
|
|
Dark Helmut posted:I agree with what everyone is saying because that's my stance. However, in trying to be a team player, I'm trying to see the other side too. I'd much, much rather references be done over the phone; this goes for anyone I list as a reference and anyone who lists me as a reference (though I'm young enough in my career that I haven't been in that position yet). I accept that it's probably easier for everyone, in terms of schedule/time spent, to use an email with a questionnaire, so I'll speak to your other points. "Less personal" and anonymity are not positives. The people I use for references know me, they have said they want me to use them as references, they're genuinely happy with what I've done for them, and they want to help me and see me do well in my career. A phone call is going to get so much more real information across; tone of voice, word choice, any gushing they do, none of it would come across in a survey. And frankly I don't want it to be anonymous. If my prospective employer has to call a courthouse and ask for "The Honorable <name>," and that person answers and says good things about me, that's going to carry so much more weight than an anonymous bunch of 10s. Reports and graphs, really? For references? Even if the people I use don't put down all 10s, what does that tell me exactly? If it's anonymous, it won't tell me which of my references is unexpectedly giving me a bad score, so I can't cut them out of my list. What other purpose would it serve? If you want a point to take back to your bosses to convince them to let you continue to make calls, try this. One of the things I hate most about recruiters is their tendency to ignore the fact that I'm an individual. They ignore things I tell them about my goals, they ignore parts of my resume, they ignore my wishes (telling them to not change my resume, telling them to not contact my current employers, telling them not to send me to this or that company). I'm just another interchangeable machine to them. Learning that a given recruiter operates or thinks of me this way is the very fastest way to completely sour the relationship and make me never work with them again. I know you've said you (and presumably your company) do not operate that way, and I would think your company would want to go out of its way to not even appear to be moving in that direction.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 5, 2014 20:42
|
|
|
Dark Helmut posted:I appreciate all the feedback, and this in particular. And yes, I copied and pasted this all into an email and sent it to her... Sweet! I hope it helps and that my passion isn't interpreted as crazed ranting. Also my question wasn't rhetorical: Can you tell me what is the intended purpose of the reports and graphs? Particularly for a candidate?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 5, 2014 23:51
|
|
|
bpower posted:I am so loving happy. Congrats man. Just a suggestion though, when you talk about the code base in the future, be tactful. You never know what was written by people your boss respects, likes, plays golf with, or who godfathered his children. I'm not saying he's going to turn on you, it's just professional. You can be frank about all the problems you see; if a piece of software has a security flaw, for instance, by all means point it out and prioritize it accordingly. Just don't editorialize. The code base is not "comical," instead you "can see several areas where we could significantly improve things." Language like that.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2014 09:28
|
|
|
Inspector_666 posted:Isn't there a way to use absolute value in most languages anyway? Yes. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that this person probably didn't know about absolute value as a mathematical concept. Edit: More likely, since we're talking about a (presumably crappy) outsourcing firm, the person just isn't a programmer. Their task is to display all money values without signs (probably because negatives or losses will be colored red or put in parens or something later). They learned how to manipulate strings. So they just make it a string and manipulate the string. They are thinking about everything in terms of what is displayed on a screen or a sheet of paper, not what the value represents. Just a guess. Che Delilas fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Nov 9, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Nov 9, 2014 04:49
|
|
|
bpower posted:This is exactly it. Thats some Holmes poo poo right there. Nah man, it's just a really common thing in the development world. Decision-makers find out that you can get code written for a tiny fraction of what you'd pay for a local developer, so after they get done drooling all over their keyboards, they jump on it. What they don't understand is that what they're paying for from local develoeprs is education, experience and passion, the last of which drives us to actively improve our skills and understanding of the craft. So they get their application for a song. Except it looks a little rough, and it doesn't do everything it should (at least, not all the time), and everyone who starts using it hates it. The company has to pay more to the outsourcing company to fix things, and some things will get fixed and other things will break. Maybe the outsourcing company starts taking longer and longer to respond to problems (oh and since they're literally on the opposite side of the world, there is no real-time communication of any kind, so every tiny issue and question/answer session takes days or weeks instead of hours). If the software is important enough, maybe you have to hire more techs to support it and continuously un-gently caress databases the program touches or documents it creates. Man, this cheap program sure got expensive, didn't it? I don't know why "you get what you pay for" is such a hard lesson for companies to retain, but they seem to have to re-learn it for any new situation they encounter.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 9, 2014 10:08
|
|
|
Dark Helmut posted:Just FYI you iced my coveted "poster of the week" with this post and several others equally as insightful. Heh, thanks man. Dark Helmut posted:People are crazy. Allow me to post the resignation letter one of my consultants sent to EVERY MEMBER OF THE DEV TEAM at my client, without consulting me first. This was about 6 months after I started recruiting. I don't think I've posted this here, but take a long, long drink from this cup of crazy. Crazy. My letter tells them when I'm leaving and thanks them for the career opportunities, full stop. Any discussion of transition plans or how I'm going to wrap up in my final weeks I leave to in-person verbal discussions. The letter is just something with dates and signatures on it for the employee file, as far as I'm concerned. Mrit posted:Does this also apply to the West Coast? I will be looking for a more system admin type job in the next year or so, but I grew up with the honest belief that ties were for weddings and funerals. Everything I've seen and read tells me that the west coast is a more casual environment, generally speaking. I'd research the company, look at their website, and even ask the person setting up your interview what the general dress code of the office is like and if a suit would be too much for the interview. I figure if they think less of me for the impertinence of asking a question, that would tell me everything I need to know about the company.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 12, 2014 04:51
|
|
|
Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:I understand it's best to provide real numbers in resume bullet points (such as: Reduced cost by $X / Increased efficiency by Y%). This system processes revenue for reporting and analytics, but it's not necessarily generating revenue. Also, the system could go on the way it is with a single point of failure and no real security, so what we're doing is improving the infrastructure. How would this be translated that into "real numbers" for a resume? Estimate the cost of the original system failing, say your new system prevents/guards against the potential loss of that amount.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 12, 2014 16:24
|
|
|
Sheep posted:I had a guy wearing a denim jacket, jeans, and sneakers on Friday. I'm fine if you show up in business casual but don't show up looking (and acting) like a logger slash axe murderer. Somebody's prejudiced against Oregonians. 
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2014 18:04
|
|
|
DrBouvenstein posted:the actual primary guy didn't answer a single page after midnight (which was four, about one an hour from 1:30 to 4:30.) Sounds like this guy has things figured out.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2014 19:31
|
|
|
Lord Dudeguy posted:Yeah, "it's a tough economy", my rear end. Turned it down and was immediately berated by the CEO for being a "mercenary". Who isn't a "mercenary," by that definition?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2014 01:36
|
|
|
Punc posted:She also did a counter offer (yea, not gonne happen), so it's even weirder that she wants to keep the guy who in her eyes apparently sucks? Thanks boss for the nice chat You probably figured this out, but if she hadn't brought up your allegedly far-below-par skills a long time ago, like in previous performance reviews, then she's full of poo poo. She's probably personally insulted that you don't want to work for her anymore (egomaniacs and narcissists get this way), and felt the need to put you down in response. Incredibly petty and unprofessional, and I would have been tempted to tell her that. Only tempted though; I actually am a professional. Just don't take what she said to heart.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2014 11:09
|
|
|
Richard Noggin posted:That's more than my 20 year mortgage on a $230k house (1700 sqft) on 16 acres, and my oven doesn't share wall space with my television. Just sayin'. What bubble?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2014 01:42
|
|
|
Punc posted:Continuing the resignation story: my boss lady (the same one who said I wouldn't be good enough for my next job) just begged Look, all this stuff she's pulling on you is deliberate, cynical emotional manipulation. She first tried to play feelings of fear by attacking your self-confidence, now she's trying to play on feelings of guilt or obligation by asking you to stay longer. She's trying to find an angle, a lever that will work on you. Hell, the fact that she outright lied about what the legal notice period was should tell you all you need to know. You shouldn't be feeling bad about leaving, you should be swimming in vindictive satisfaction. You're obviously inconveniencing this bitch, and even if you only realize it now, she clearly deserves it.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2014 20:16
|
|
|
GOOCHY posted:Hi there, forums poster Punc. You work in IT. If you are smart you are a mercenary. Hope this helps. Pretty sure he mentioned that he's contractually obligated to give 3 months, which implies that he's in a country other than the U.S. For the record, I would totally accept a required notice period in my own jobs if companies were bound by similar terms. Che Delilas fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Nov 22, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2014 03:28
|
|
|
spiny posted:"IS THAT A CAPITAL 5 !!!!???!!" "No, it's a lowercase 5 in the Imperfect Subjunctive."
|
|
#
¿
Nov 27, 2014 02:22
|
|
|
"Wow that's a lot of posts since I last checked, I wonder if... yep." I mean, it doesn't really matter if he's trolling or not. He's getting the attention he wants either way.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 27, 2014 04:25
|
|
|
Don't know why you people are still engaging him. He comes in here once a month and posts something stupid and provocative out of absolutely nowhere and gets 30 bites on it, then backseat moderates and says it's getting off topic, then fucks off for another month. It should be obvious by now.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 27, 2014 04:33
|
|
|
Misogynist posted:The important thing to remember is that you can't take your family to the grave. You can if your family name is Benjamin.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2014 20:28
|
|
|
Contingency posted:"Cards are important. You should have brought them." Sounds like a former car salesman got promoted to management.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2014 01:09
|
|
|
Drone posted:Aside from his office politics, which are getting worse and more frequent, my current boss is actually a really good friend and I generally enjoy the work I do. It can be very frustrating, but my coworkers are all great when politics aren't being showered down upon us from above. And my boss kinda saved me from 18 months of unemployment by offering me this contract, so there's more than a little bit of feeling beholden to him involved. Okay, if he's a good friend he'll be open to you sitting down with him and telling him how unhappy you are that he screwed you out of a project you really wanted to be on purely for office politics, and that you would really appreciate it if he'd put you back on it now, please, because this is your career and you want that experience. Picture that conversation in your head. Do you see it going well? If not, if you instead imagine that he will fly off the handle or if you worry that you might get fired for bringing it up, then congratulations. You will have realized that your boss isn't your friend. I'm not saying bosses can't be friends; they can. It's just that some people are extremely good at putting on a show of being one of the guys, a buddy, someone you listen to, someone you trust, someone you invite to holiday cookouts. They talk a good game. And then they find the smallest opportunity for personal gain and stick the knife in. I'm not saying your boss is one of those. But ladder-climbers (and I assume that's what he's doing if he's increasing his politicking) don't have friends at the office. They have rungs.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2014 21:50
|
|
|
Drone posted:I sent an email to the VP saying I'm definitely interested in the position. He's already forwarded a note to HR that I've expressed advance interest before the job is internally posted. That job in itself will be very stressful, but the team is all pretty good and the benefits are great. Good for you. Just make sure before you actually agree on anything that there's enough tech work to keep you challenged/interested or otherwise help you with your actual career, and that it's not just a gopher position. Oh, and be prepared for your current boss to take the fact that you applied to another job as a personal betrayal. He may not be a narcissist, but he's already tried to manipulate you with a lie obvious enough to insult your intelligence, so just from what you've said so far he's tripping more than one of my alarms. It wouldn't shock me. Don't be afraid, though. As long as you don't curl into a fetal position, this is going to be a good thing for your career, one way or another.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2014 11:48
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:So googling the answer is an acceptable method then? Because that is sort of how I approach any problem usually, read the error message and type it into google to get something more descriptive than the error message, ideally find that someone else had the same problem and posted the solution. You've expressed some incredulity that this kind of stuff is a real job that you get paid relatively decent money for. I'm going to try and shed some light on this for you, because people like us (techs, nerds, smart people) tend to get down on themselves for not knowing enough and don't appreciate that they have real skills. The TLDR is that we have internalized a lot of little things that allow us to work with computers on a level that most people never get to. The first major point is that we are computer literate, while the vast, vast majority of people are not. Computer literacy as I define it is basically the ability to figure out how to do something on a computer that you haven't done before. If we want to do something new, we use our heads, we think critically, we categorize, we rule things out. Perhaps you've seen this: http://xkcd.com/627/, which while simplified for the sake of humor, is a pretty damned good summary. Most people never get there, they learn specific procedures by rote memorization; Creating a Word document. Printing a Word document. Logging off for the day. Checking their email. Running this month's payroll. If they want to learn anything new, they must have an illustrated step-by-step tutorial for the exact version of the thing they're using and God help them if a single screenshot is out of date. The instant anything goes wrong, these people go into vapor lock. If they follow their normal steps (or if they think they did) and they don't get the same result they always get, they don't know what to do except try the same thing again. If there's an error message that pops up, they panic. Even if the message tells them exactly what to do, they are lost because it's something they've never done before. Googling the error message won't help them because their minds are not prepared to process the information (I'm generalizing here, many people have some ability to look beyond what they know, but a shockingly large number just do not). This segues nicely into my next point... Googling it is a skill. It's hard for us to think of it that way because we do it all the time and we don't think about it. Googling the problem or error message sounds simple, but that's not the only thing you're doing. When you google an error message or problem, in your head you are taking dozens of little details about the problem space and sorting and prioritizing them. What's the program where the error is occurring? What is the user trying to do exactly? What operating system are they running? Can the problem be hardware related? If yes, what hardware? What model of that specific hardware are they using? Has this error happened before? Does it happen at regular intervals and/or specific times? What antivirus are they running? What web browser are they using? You gather some of that information (depending on the kind of problem you're looking at) and you construct a google query. You're able to do that extremely rapidly because you have used computers a lot, and you're familiar with what information is likely to be relevant. It's very nearly automatic. There's a world of difference between "My computer is slow" and "Google Chrome 38 youtube video stutter and mouse latency" as search terms. Terrible example, but my point is that you have the ability to analyze, think critically, and quickly process and sort information about these devices and their problems, which are real skills that most people never acquire. Che Delilas fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Dec 10, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2014 02:29
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:It's hard to get my head around is all Well, people in our industry tend to like learning and improving. Some people just don't, and will do everything in their power to avoid it. It's an alien mentality to people like us, so just be aware that it exists so that it doesn't blindside you and cause you to make some poor user feel like a moron (incidentally, this is the more rare and valuable skill for IT people to have - being able to work with people, especially non-tech types).
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2014 05:02
|
|
|
flosofl posted:Legally (at least in the US) your previous employer can do nothing but say that you were, in fact, employed there from date X to date Y. They are not allowed to disclose information regarding your departure or any other information regarding your time there. I'm almost completely sure that this is not the case. They are legally allowed to say much more than that you were employed from X to Y. quote:They open themselves to legal action from you if they do. This is why they don't say more than that, for fear of a libel/slander lawsuit. The population is litigious enough in general that there's no reason for a company to take the risk that some disgruntled ex-employee will take any opportunity to sue them. It certainly doesn't gain them anything to tell another company that you flipped off your boss on your way out. But they're still legally allowed to. ---- Flosofl is right in terms of his advice though: If some hiring manager or recruiter is audacious enough to ask you about your current salary, which is completely and utterly irrelevant to the new company and new job, don't tell them the truth. Hell, I'm more inclined to tell them that I don't think it's terribly relevant and that I'm sure we can come to an agreement on a compensation package once we figure out if we're a good fit for each other. As for the job title, I'm a fan of ignoring my company-provided title in favor of using something recognizable that applies to what I actually do. I'm a software engineer. My job titles have been things like "Staff Programmer" or ".Net Developer." I put "Software Engineer" on my resume.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2014 11:26
|
|
|
Not to mention the fact that you seem to have a solid plan and that you haven't said anything about the company "owing" you that much. No reason not to ask them for that much. Honestly I'd frame it in terms of the fact that your responsibilities and hours have ballooned so much that you're basically doing a new job, so it's time to re-negotiate your job description and compensation to suit. I mean. Don't be surprised if they laugh you out of the room just on the basis of "30%" since managers seem to be hard wired to look at a percentage and completely discount all other circumstances. But still no reason not to ask at this point.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 15, 2014 01:02
|
|
|
Tab8715 posted:Is Google everyone's de facto search engine? Why did you spoiler that? I use Google because of inertia, mostly. I'm used to it and the way it presents its results, both normal and image/video/etc., and I don't really give a drat about the information gathering under normal circumstances. I have no idea if Bing is better at crawling "Microsoft's stuff," whatever that means, though Google has never had any trouble coming up with the MSDN page for whatever C# library or function I need documentation for, so there's one anecdotal data point for you.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2014 17:54
|
|
|
Tab8715 posted:Mine has a uhh range of 4-6% but we have to stay 5 years or nothing. That's the shittiest deal I've ever heard of that actually involves having a 401k at all. That kind of match/vest would be worth exactly zero dollars to me in any salary/benefits negotiation, and I would go out of my way to let them know that. (Not giving you advice here, just saying) Che Delilas fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Dec 17, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2014 18:22
|
|
|
Tab8715 posted:It's the first one I've had that's actually growing Just having another avenue through which to reduce your taxable income is a big deal, even with no match. But I would struggle not to laugh in the face of someone touting that match as an actual benefit. 5 years is a long-rear end time in this industry but most places with that kind of schedule at least have it somewhat progressive. All-or-nothing is ridiculous.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2014 18:26
|
|
|
Misogynist posted:The most valuable piece of interpersonal communication you can ever master in systems administration is how to say "no" to people. You're going to be doing it a lot. Not if you pattern yourself on half the people who have come through these threads, you're not. Japanese Dating Sim posted:I get 3 weeks sick, 3 weeks vacation, and 15 paid holidays, 10 of which start next week. I hate these discussions because the Europeans always drop in to brag and make everyone in the U.S. feel lovely about our bullshit libertarian erosion of worker protections as if living it wasn't lovely enough already (Would gladly be taxed more if it meant I got guaranteed healthcare and any loving law that made employers have to think twice before just shitcanning someone they didn't like).
|
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2014 00:11
|
|
|
Mr Shiny Pants posted:I just started reading this thread and I know it's from way back but I just want to say that this is wonderful post. Thanks! You're welcome. I enjoy this kind of analysis, and people in general have a lot of problems putting themselves in someone else's shoes and looking back at themselves objectively. In the case of IT people, we're so good wit computer that we lose our appreciation for how significant it is.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2014 14:04
|
|
|
myron cope posted:I'm mostly worried about the HR questions. I hate those type of questions. I don't even really have an answer if they ask why I'm interested in a new job. I think I just overthink the questions. That's an easy one. "It was time for me to move on." "I wanted to branch out." "I felt like I had reached the limit of what I could accomplish there." Pick any kind of vague, say-nothing statement and gun it for all it's worth. Don't let on that you know you're not saying anything substantive either; own it.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 22, 2014 23:13
|
|
|
Dr. Arbitrary posted:I'm pretty new to linux stuff, is that really what regex is all about? Finding ways to transform the text output of other commands into something usable? Not other commands, any text. Like if you have a log file with a berjillion entries and you want to find every instance of "Wakka wakka" followed by 47 characters followed by a date, you can write a regular expression that describes that pattern. The patterns can get as complex as you'd ever want. The problem is that the syntax is heinous and you can very very easily write a regular expression that almost matches what you want, or matches what you want and other things you don't want, and it's not always apparent where the problem is or even that there's a problem at all. They're also very hard to read, if say you need to go back and change a regexp you wrote a while ago or just figure out one that someone else wrote.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2014 06:47
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 15:18 |
|
|
Earl of Lavender posted:There's a notorious regex, like, a page long, used for checking email addresses to make sure they're actually email addresses. This one? http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html It should be noted however that this is the abusive edge case, so you know, don't let it put you off if you're interested. Regular expressions can be real useful.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2014 08:26
|
|