Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



Pollyanna take the job. go ahead and still interview with the other companies. if you get a better offer, bail on the job you took. it’s not ideal but it’s also not a big deal.

take the job, stop freaking out about every aspect of every interaction you have, and keep on keepin on

it’s really simple. you need a job. you have an offer. don’t shoot yourself in the foot.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



Pollyanna posted:

it’s entirely possible and if it happens ignore me

You’ve been told the same thing repeatedly across like three threads, there’s no way that you’re unaware of this

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



I found the questions but not the explanations

Rex-Goliath posted:
- who do you work with on a daily basis / describe the day to day role
- how are decisions made / how will [team] be asked to accomplish things / who makes those decisions
- what are the company's primary values? what characteristics are you looking for in a candidate in relation to those primary values?
- what would be expected of me for the first / three / six months? What will success look like in this position, how will it be measured?
- what sort of training/mentoring/career dev things are here
- what's the most impressive thing you've seen out of someone else you've interviewed recently
- What do you see as the most challenging aspect of this job?
- how do you set milestones/deliverables for projects and how does your team react when it's clear they won't be met
- when was the last time you took pto / how much did you take / what did you do

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



lol pollyanna’d again!

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



qhat posted:

being serious, if you're in a huge city and using public transport in the winter you'll be getting ill at least once a month or more. i can honestly say being able to drive to work has drastically reduced the frequency of illness for me.

this was not my experience, maybe your immune system is a pos

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



after grad school my incidence of migraines went from 3 or 4 a month to 1 or 2 a year. i didn’t feel particularly stressed at the time, but i had a kid about a year and a half after graduating and migraines are still rare for me so yeah i blame academia

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



Valeyard posted:

A has just offered me a time on Wednesday next week (with the guarentee that they will have a yes/no deicison by the next day)

I have an interview tomorrow with B

you think if B give me an offer by Monday/Tuesday then i should be able to take a few days till Thursday and have decisions from both of them?

yes. nobody is going to give you less than a week or two for a major decision like taking a job. you’re worried about two days. it’s not a pop quiz, it’s a life decision.

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



I mean really you can buy more time than that just asking for more money and “thinking over” the offer (whether or not it’s changed)

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



the page number has good ideas for how to really ace an interview

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



also you shouldn’t work for Facebook

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



i went to an interview for a job that sounded neat and crushed it

still didn’t get the offer, they went with an internal hire

just a reminder to folks: not getting an offer doesn’t mean you screwed up or aren’t good enough

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



one nice thing about third party recruiters is
that they’re incentivized to maximize your salary, and you can just be like “that’s no enough, I want 10k more” and then they can do the diplomatic negotiation thing

but the recruiter I’m thinking of was referred to me by a friend, and I went with him because he had an in with a company I wanted to hire me. I treasure that recruiter

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



surely you’ve done _something_ you’re proud of? if not you should get a hobby!

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



meatpotato posted:


biggest projects recently: repaired a vintage Marantz stereo receiver but didn't finish learning CAD to 3d print broken plastic parts, so it's on a shelf even though the electronics work :/

took apart a vintage bmw, got it running, took it apart again and it's been sitting in a garage for 10 years :/

those are both dope and are the kind of thing I want to hear about in interviews, especially if the alternative is yet another crud app or similar

unfucking a production line is p sweet though, you chose correctly imo

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



if somebody asks me a question like that, it’s like ok I guess we’re gonna talk about toddler jones or ms jones or my research from grad school, but programming-related stuff is gonna come in at like #4 at best

admittedly this doesn’t work at all for filling in a form, but in person it seems fine 🤷‍♀️

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



I wouldn’t interpret it that way, but that might be because my company’s all-hands heavily featured the sentence “do more with what you have”

Ciaphas mention the not-using-the-Internet stuff. I know it’s normal for you, but working that way is such a tremendous handicap that any job requiring that will be pumped that you can do it, and any job not requiring that will be floored that it’s even a thing. you can phrase it as “without access to online resources” or something maybe?

Your skills section has stuff that should be in your experience section. usually the skills part should be languages, frameworks, etc. don’t mention how long you have with it (that becomes obvious in the work experience part), just say “c/c++ application development, lua, git, etc etc”. the skills part is basically a list of stuff that you can do professionally. you can mention hobby stuff too, but make it very clear that hobby stuff is hobby-level, not professional level. of course if you do eg rust as a hobby but have professional-level ability, it’s ok to put that as a proficiency.

do note that I’m telling you basically how to make your resume look more like mine. but my resume tends to be well received and the professional resume-whisperers I’ve showed it to at cons and stuff have basically said “it’s awesome don’t change it.” but if this sounds wrong for the jobs you’re applying to, you probably know your market much better than I do :)

if you want to chat about resume stuff (or have a look at what I have), I’m happy to share with ya - dm me or w/e

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



your language is bad

“hired to assist...” is lame

“rewrote legacy ADA95 application in C++ as part of an 8-10 person team” conveys the same information, except it says you did stuff. your version says they hired you to get coffee, and you may or may not have done that

basically all your work experience reads like this. don’t lie or mislead, but don’t shy away from being like “yo I did a hard thing and did it well”

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



corlas right - I stand by my rec re: language but v2 is way better than v1

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



a recruiter just sent me an email to work at a startup called samsara

im buddhist

lollllll

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



it’s actually worse than that, the company Kormac applied tonisn’t particularly tdd-heavy at all, the interviewers were just being goofy

if it were “just” tdd zealotry I’d be less annoyed than I am right now 🤷‍♀️

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



I interviewed with a company today and it was a startup but I also really liked the company and if the figgies are right maybe I’ll do it but change is scary. as much as my current position frustrates me it’s a p great gig so leaving would not be easy

The interview itself went really well tho

We’ll see what happens I guess 🤷‍♀️

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



Boiled Water posted:

I see you’ve also interviewed with palantir

lol I just noped a palantir recruiter hard, they're on the prowl

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



the never use an external recruiter thing is dumb tbh. good recruiters just aren’t hitting you up out of the blue on linked in. those who do are trash. good external recruiters operate by referrals and having a stable-ish set of companies they place for. it’s super nice letting a competent professional negotiator get your figgies (and you don’t have to be guarded about current salary, what you want, etc)

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



Gazpacho posted:

i hate hoodies so much. What a boring, repressive thing to wear. I am angry. ANGRY ABOUT HOODIES.

pullover hoodies 👎

zipup hoodies 😻

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



jit bull transpile posted:

seriously. I get 12 sick days and 12 vacation days and that was from day one.

that’s 16 hours more. that’s also horrible. if you have to lie about being sick for a system to be ok, it’s actually a bad system

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



DuckConference posted:

there’s also a 1 week shutdown at American thanksgiving and Christmas

oh that helps a ton, for real. what I normally see is 10 company holidays + n weeks; if the company holidays are the standard one-offs plus a couple week-long blocks rather than just getting a day or two around the autumn/winter holidays that’s waaaaay better than I was thinking (I was very much like “wtf apple”)

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



the message your resume sends is “this guy is full of poo poo.” it has nothing to do with lacking “it” technologies.

I’m not trying to be a dick but that resume is actively working against you. it’s not “needs improvement,” it’s “makes you look terrible and I’d throw it away unless the pipeline was totally empty.”

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



Munkeymon posted:

"well the last time I had to think much about how a red-black tree works internally Skater Boi was charting but uh..."

Hoffmann?

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



PokeJoe posted:

one my friend works at wants me to write javascript for android :sigh:

this person is not your friend

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



wait you think background checks are where the company that’s going to hire you calls up your listed universities? that is not how it works.

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



ok background checks are basically a search of court documents for poo poo that comes up, plus employment and university checks. because name changes (trans-related or otherwise) are public, the background check company can trivially see that James Computerman attended university as Jane Computerlady, but there’s no need to divulge that info to the client (that is, to the company that wants to hire James)

background checks are done by third parties, so it’d be trivial for the information they give to the company that wants to hire you to be “yup James computerman worked at a, b, and c and has no criminal history, he got a BS from barbados university in 2008”. there’s no reason for them to add “oh also James is trans and used to be called Jane computerlady”

reference checks are where hr calls the phone numbers you put on the application, they’re a totally separate thing

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



ShadowHawk posted:

the average adult isn't even awake at that point

lol what

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



is the average adult a college student to you?

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



I used to down ibuprofen like candy and then one day my body decided that ibuprofen ruins my stomach now. it’s generally ok if I’ve eaten recently but it’s bad enough and enough of a dice roll that I generally choose between having a drink and not hurting when I have a headache or something

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



yes, tylenol works to make me not hurt. that’s why I have to choose between having a drink and not hurting. I guess I could drink and take it but I prefer having a liver that works

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



I guess there’s like aleve though, it doesn’t work as well for pain but I also dont remember it ruining my stomach. but tbh it’s been a real long time since I’ve take that

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



any company that's recruiting in not-their-local-area will fly you out and put you in a hotel. amazon and google put you in the fairmont, but any company'll put you in a decent hotel. my current place put the family in a holiday inn; it would've been a nicer hotel but we were driving up with our dog to check out the area

some companies will put you up for 2 nights if you're going a long distance, but not all. when i interviewed at raytheon in baltimore from the west coast, they'd only do one night, but amazon would've given me two nights interviewing in seattle from southern california. i had them reschedule though 'cause basically i just wanted to get a beer with a friend in seattle, go to sleep, go interview, and then go home to ms. and toddler jones.

also some good news for the thread: i passed the amazon and google on-sites and got a verbal offer from amazon. now i'm terrified that google will fall apart before the offer is made (that is, during placement) and that the amazon offer will vanish before the google offer materializes and i'll be stuck with nothing

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



Notorious b.s.d. posted:

this almost never happens

if you are waiting on an offer from google, tell the amazon rep that you are waiting, and you intend to wait, and you're quite serious about waiting

set a date to check back in

that's awesome to hear, thank you! amazon knows about the google thing (and vice versa) and they said that they weren't looking to strongarm me or anything, i'm just super nervous. the google positions are in kirkland and sunnyvale and my brain kinda just shuts down when i think of bay area cost of living and making decisions like this. the last time i went job hunting, it was because i was pretty sure i was gonna get laid off if i didn't (the company sold its main product), but this time i just sort of put myself out there and two months later i have these offers and can't really convince myself it's not all a big mistake

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



levels.fyi seems pretty good for comp numbers. certainly better than glassdoor

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



Ciaphas posted:

WRT relocating, how much assistance can I expect or reasonably ask for (if any) when it comes to getting out of an apartment lease?

I think I'm due to re-sign in April and would likely switch to month to month if I can, but that's quite a lot more expensive to stretch out

for a big company (google, amazon, etc) you will be well taken care of. they’ll generally give you points you can spend on full service moving, finding a new place, preview visits, etc and there’s also a “just give me money and I’ll do it all” option. my experience is that the package is very generous but I’ve no idea if what I got is above/below/right at average. I want to say that paying for lease breakage was one of the things we could pick.

my old/current company (then ~700 employees, now ~1500, tech company that is not public) would reimburse up to 10k when I moved for them; I think what would reimburse was defined by the IRS. we were reimbursed for the move and mileage, but nothing else. we ended up about $1500 out of pocket (well, out of signing bonus) paying for our old rent until the (fair + good) landlords found a new tenant. my relocation package was quite good by the company’s standards at the time.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply