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feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

DELETE CASCADE posted:

my former rule of thumb for uk salaries would be to divide your usa salary by 2, since the pound is like $2. but given how hard and deep the uk has hosed itself forever with brexit, i'd demand at least 100k gbp, and nobody's paying that, so gently caress the uk

The pound was last over $2 11 years ago, and that was a freak one-off. It was last regularly over $2 in the late 70s.

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feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

meatpotato posted:

i think i should use some of the time to learn new skills. assembly language seems promising.

Hi how are things in 1995
Why do you think (x86?) assembly language would be useful for your job hunting?

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Xarn posted:

Being able to read assembly so you can find out what fun compiler bug have you ran into today is important. :colbert:

I mean it is for me but my pet home hobby project is a compiler (to native code) so yes there are lots of fun compiler bugs

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

I mean this is regional obvs but in the UK and the Midwest/New Jersey I've always worn a suit for interviews and that always turned out to be the correct choice.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Emacs Headroom posted:

i imagine its banks or crusty old monoliths like IBM that its normal to wear a suit?

not that I have anything against it (suits are comfortable, and nice suits are very stylish), ive just never even been inside a place like that in my short career in the tech biz

It's not normal to wear a suit once you actually get the job, that's only been true of one company I worked for and that was an IT/management consultancy (also a sucky place to work). The discussion is what you wear to an interview, which is different.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

HoboMan posted:

i def mostly post at work

I am posting from work right now :ssh:

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

DuckConference posted:

and also because there were a couple of crazies that filled their cover letter with red flags.

Like what? I'm curious now. 'I am looking forward to working at DuckCorp where I really feel my experience in skinning co-workers and wearing them as a hat will shine through!'

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Sapozhnik posted:

yeah if you switch from swt to something designed more recently than 20 years ago then you're going to have an easier time of it

in other news qt 5 is a lot easier to program for than motif

that's not a reflection upon the language one way or the other

Qt 2 is about 20 years old now and wasnt that much harder to program for. Motif, on the other hand, is plain C not C++ :shobon:

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Sapozhnik posted:

oh god yeah london is loving dire

"yeaahhhh so we basically expect you to live in a closet or spend four hours a day commuting, and you're going to take it and you're going to loving like it because there is literally no work anywhere else in the country"

I have worked in many places in the UK that are not London tbh

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Peeny Cheez posted:

Always apply directly if they let slip the company name. Always. Because gently caress those clowns.

Even if they don't (which they won't, for this reason) sometimes you can figure out what the company is with a bit of careful Googling. Then, yeah, def apply direct and score that extra salary that would otherwise be going to their commission.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Penisface posted:

yeah but dont you think the recruiting company might have a clause in their contract saying they will still get their commission even if the candidate ends up going directly to the company?

if they have a contract of course

How would they know, if the company is also advertising directly? If the recruiting company somehow has an exclusive contract then you're boned anyway.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Penisface posted:

i am assuming that the recruiter can show that they sent you an email and coincidentally right after that you ended up applying at the company for the same position that the recruiter was pushing for

I was thinking more of eg seeing a recruiters ad on a job site tbh

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008


Eh tbf my former employer tried this for a couple of years after they went through a bad patch and drank the agile Kool Aid, it didn't last.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

it's not like programmers in, say, minnesota are unaware that wages double on the coasts. they just don't care. they have houses and families and they would rather face penury than leave

:cawg:

Penury. Sure. Those dudes can afford to actually own their own houses, dude.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Boiled Water posted:

and your coming children, free or cheap university.

Ummmmm not in London (or England in general) you don't.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

“penury” was a reference to the risk of unemployment, not the standard of living

It's not actually that hard to find a job in places like Minneapolis or wherever if you're an experienced programmer? Like, if someone gets laid off from a tech job they're not going to be living out of a cardboard box. They just find another tech job.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

dipshit business people obsess over shoes in the midwest, too. you're being judged whether you notice it or not

if you wear vans to work every day you're the adult equivalent of the kid who eats paste. of course he doesn't think there's anything wrong with it

The only place I've ever worked that might give a poo poo about what shoes someone might wear was a lovely IT/business consultancy in New Jersey which I was very glad to get out of. This woud be a very weird take for like 99% of people in this thread, I think.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

it's probably actually this. Microsoft in particular has been hiring like crazy around Pittsburgh since they acquired Avere earlier this year

Yeah about Raleigh and Microsoft...

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Boiled Water posted:

am I cursed? a second startup has contacted me and asked if I’d like to join them in Canada.

I mean it’s exciting and all and moving to North America could be tops, on the other hand it would be uprooting to say the least.

You are destined by fate to poutine and nanaimo bars my friend.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Penisface posted:

also have you considered starting a little github where you post project euler solutions just so you can add a link to the CV? I have had people request github links in interview processes (with positive results)

My most recent interview was simply 'prove to me you're the guy who wrote the thing on Github you linked in your CV'.

Granted it's pretty neato imo :smuggo:

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Kevin Mitnick P.E. posted:

whats the typical downside for binning a resume? nothing? yeah you might get yelled by downstream but you can cover that with "sorry its all poo poo didn't want to waste your time". the downside of passing people on is getting yelled at for wasting peoples time on interviewing dipshits

The downside is that someone who is good at their job (which is rare) works for your competitor, not you. Sorry if this isn't enough incentive for you.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

foreigners get hella smug about American living conditions because they see poo poo in the news

that poo poo is genuinely horrifying, but it happens to average Americans, not overpaid computer dweebs

working a software job means money and comfort and safety, rivaling or exceeding conditions in every other country on earth

Yeah let me tell you about the time a decade ago I was unemployed from my junior level job going under thanks to corporate bankruptcy and my diabetic wife was living off free samples of insulin from her doctor because we had no insurance.

The entire software industry is not your fancy rear end job in NYC fintech and you should probably acknowledge that.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Kevin Mitnick P.E. posted:

last cobra letter i got said i could have my lovely hdhp for the low low price of $1500 a month. before that was an actually decent plan with copays and a maximum out of pocket that would have made healthcare affordable when i was on the phones, if premiums were 0. $3300 a month on cobra

every time i get a cobra letter the reaction is the same. who is buying cobra coverage. are they on a respirator or some poo poo

Yeah it was basically this. You can be reasonably well paid as a junior software engineer and still get hosed out the rear end on healthcare in the US if you become unemployed. I'm surprised this is even remotely controversial. The fact that it's even worse if you were a steelworker or something is pretty cold loving comfort if you have a dependent with a medical condition.

Edit: in more 'the world isn't NYC' news lol at getting paid 80k as a junior in most of the US btw.

feedmegin fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Dec 3, 2018

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

lancemantis posted:

I think my first job was like a week of combined sick and vacation that jumped to two after 5 years

Let me just say that America is insane. Like I worked in America for a decade and the vacation/sick pay situation sucked compared to back in Britain, but this is just mindboggling. This was a tech job?

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Pie Colony posted:

fortunately any place that drug tests is a place you wouldn't want to work at (e.g. government, non-US companies, etc)

The only companies that I've ever heard of doing drug tests are American. It's certainly not common in Europe.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

FMguru posted:

ive seen it called "herrenvolk socialism"

One might even call it 'national socialism'

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

DELETE CASCADE posted:

According to some study I googled, only 17% of working Americans sleep in until 8

'Wake up by 8' and 'at work by 8' are v different statements though.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

toiletbrush posted:

As a candidate?

I've just finished a do-it-in-your-own-time technical test where I had to refactor, fix bugs and add tests to a blob of dodgy code. I've got a feeling that wether my solution is judged to be over engineered or not will depend entirely on some domain specific knowledge that I was very upfront about not having (it basically comes down to wether the inconsistency in the original code is the bug I was supposed to fix, or necessary flexibility)

Did you ask them which it was when working on it?

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

no, that's what i mean

i have never been able to negotiate my way out of my employer's clauses that purport to own everything i write, even in my own time

every employer says "sure you can contribute to open source, just file tickets X, Y, and Z and wait for legal review"

:(

Perhaps if you wore nicer shoes?

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

mekkanare posted:

Interviewer asked me how my current job makes sure current practices when designing software are best and I had nothing for him. Sorry dude, if it compiles and doesn't mung up the rest of the system somehow it's probably going in. I liked the part where he mentioned how there would be very little legacy code to deal with, and I wanted to mention that last week a coworker found code still in use that invovled checking for people born before 1900.

I mean, it's been a whole two years since the last person born before 1900 died, so that actually doesn't seem that bad? :shrug:

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

2001 was the hottest job market for tech up until today... salaries didn't reach 2001 levels until this year

calgary is just a really lovely job market. but i guess you knew that already, didn't you?

It depends WHEN in 2001 but I was jobhunting then and I remember the job market going to poo poo. Also - are you just going by average salary of new hires? Because guess what happens when companies tighten their belt, stop recruiting juniors and only recruit when they absolutely need someone with specialised skills. Volume is the thing to watch here.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

DONT THREAD ON ME posted:

soooo if i'm being interviewed by a woman, how terrible is it to ask if she thinks the company has a bro-culture problem?

i can think of like 10 reasons why this is a terrible thing to ask but i do genuinely want to know and i dont know how else i could find out. my interactions have all been positive and they say the right things but there's a single glassdoor post that concerns me and the board only has 1 woman on it. i've googled around and haven't found anything beyond the glassdoor post.

could i just say something like 'hey i read this glassdoor post and i was hoping you could reassure me'?

Are you a woman?

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

FMguru posted:

"carpe pecunia", surely?

Pecuniam. Accusative case innit :hist101:

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Get, like, four cats instead

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Dijkstracula posted:

lmao yeah and they started the interview by saying "so I'm sure you remember this encoding strategy from college, ..."

like my dude I went to a b-tier state school equivalent in canada, somehow I think we had different university experiences

I mean my take would be 'my degree is in HISTORY dude I remember poo poo about the taifa kingdoms period of al-Andalus, algorithms not so much'

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Rex-Goliath posted:

i’m assuming the consulting will involve travel? you should almost always be getting a premium if your job involves a lot of travel so this makes taking the startup job a no-brainer to me

Yeah in general consulting should pay more and startups less so this is weird to me. Mind you I've worked for two consulting companies and hated them both, but that could just be me.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

gonadic io posted:

i'm told they have computers in the rest of the country, not convinced they have computer jobs

There are quite a lot of them in Cambridge, as it happens. It's sort of known for it, in fact.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Fart Johnson posted:

Seems like the difficulty has really ramped up in the past few years. When I interviewed with AWS 4 years ago the hardest coding question was solved with a basic BFS.

The older you get, the more senior you are and the more difficult the questions you personally will be asked.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

bob dobbs is dead posted:

Smaller parts of the disk data. Nobody said the subproblems were nonobvious

Gimme something else

One bit of data that lives on a slow disk.

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feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

TheFluff posted:

in other news, a recruiter email came in, claiming they're looking for "a remote full-stack engineer position - USD $50,000 - 175,000/year". what kind of loving useless range is that? $50k would be a laughable lowball for what they're asking for even here.

I'm guessing $50k goes quite a long way in say Chennai, though?

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