DEAR VALUED CONTRIBUTORS -- FRIDAY RANT THREAD FOR January 19, 2018 CS Career Questions |
- DEAR VALUED CONTRIBUTORS -- FRIDAY RANT THREAD FOR January 19, 2018
- Daily Chat Thread - January 19, 2018
- How many of you don't regularly do Leetcode/CTCI?
- What questions do you make sure you ask potential employers?
- Are most computer programmers passionate about programming? If not: is there a divide between the passionate ones and the others? Is it growing?
- What was the most useless CS class you took in college?
- To people who have worked at a small startup as their first job
- I am burned out and considering a change in my career path.
- How to best break into CS careers from other STEM field as I finish my PhD?
- What is the difference between Computer engineer and Computer Science?
- Career crossroads: Power + Clean Slate vs Money + Clusterfuck
- I'm nearing the end of my first year with a tech consulting firm, the pay is good but I feel like the lack of app projects and mentorship is hurting my career in the long term. (Semi-long read)
- Product Management: What is it, what do PMs do, and what is a typical career path?
- Trouble with co-worker and no mentor on development.
- Coding tests preparation, study tips
- Help me on my approach to break into Web Development
- Answered..."Tell me a time where one of your projects at work failed?"... manager hung up and disqualified me.
- Anyone ever look into CS education abroad as a potential direction to take their career?
- How do I answer the dreaded compensation question?
- HireVue experience
- IBM or Capital One
- Post-Bacc Undergrad vs CS Masters - does it matter?
- Weird never-heard of tech major and Computer Science minor, will companies give me a chance, in your opinions?
- checklist for contracting
- Getting into a Machine Learning career...
| DEAR VALUED CONTRIBUTORS -- FRIDAY RANT THREAD FOR January 19, 2018 Posted: 18 Jan 2018 11:08 PM PST AND NOW FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT. CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP DON'T STOP CODING! THIS IS THE RANT THREAD. IT IS FOR RANTS. CAPS LOCK ON, DOWNVOTES OFF, FEEL FREE TO BREAK RULE 2 IF SOMEONE LIKES SOMETHING THAT YOU DON'T BUT IF YOU POST SOME RACIST/HOMOPHOBIC/SEXIST BULLSHIT IT'LL BE GONE FASTER THAN A SPEEDING TRACER. (RANTING BEGINS AT MIDNIGHT EVERY FRIDAY, BEST COAST TIME. PREVIOUS FRIDAY RANT THREADS CAN BE FOUND HERE.) [link] [comments] |
| Daily Chat Thread - January 19, 2018 Posted: 18 Jan 2018 11:08 PM PST Please use this thread to chat, have casual discussions, and ask casual questions. Moderation will be light, but don't be a jerk. This thread is posted every day at midnight PST. Previous Daily Chat Threads can be found here. [link] [comments] |
| How many of you don't regularly do Leetcode/CTCI? Posted: 19 Jan 2018 07:08 AM PST I like tech for its interesting subfields, such as machine learning, computer security, and web development. However, doing non-stop interview prep does not really appeal to my interests in the field when I could be learning new skills. I was wondering how many of you are doing who are not solving leetcode hard problems regularly? [link] [comments] |
| What questions do you make sure you ask potential employers? Posted: 19 Jan 2018 06:33 AM PST Hey everyone! I am a (very new to this) junior developer and am currently being approached by a few companies who are interested in hiring me. Having never been in this position before it's a bit overwhelming and I'm coming up blank thinking of questions beyond the obvious. What questions do you make sure you ask potential employers? Is there anything you wished you'd have known before starting in a role which could have been cleared up by asking questions before hand? Any tips, advice or general comments will be appreciated :) [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 19 Jan 2018 12:18 PM PST It used to be that computer programmers were nerds who fell in love with computing at an early age. They probably started to learn how to use computers, and/or how to write code, before they had a chance to do so in school. Maybe they volunteered code to big open-source projects, and/or to hobbyist projects of their own. But now, being a computer programmer is a guaranteed path to success, like "a doctor or a lawyer" used to be. I'm guessing that this causes people to enter the field in (or after) college who never coded for fun (and probably still don't), who aren't very familiar with its history, who don't wonder about (or try to look into) how various pieces of software work, who aren't interested in learning skills that are not professionally useful. Are most programmers today in the passionate camp or in the second camp? Has there been a shift over the years from mostly-passionate to increasingly-not? What impact does that have? For example, do companies now need stricter methods/guidelines for creating code, when previously they could just trust programmers to come up with something that worked and to test it properly? Background about me and why I'm asking, in case you're curious. I do materials research/testing and stress analysis for a large company in an industry that makes products that some people are very passionate about, but most people in my company are not. Kids out there have posters of our products in their bedrooms (and I was that kid) but most of my coworkers never thought much about these products until our employer offered them a job. So during work, something that I think of as "common sense" has to be spelled out to a coworker ("What does it mean to say that our product encounters a situation called [blah]?"), or I see coworkers doing certain checks only because some stupid process requires them to – because they have not heard of the tragedy that caused this process to require this check. In a way, the most amazing thing about the company where I work is that people who are almost entirely unfamiliar with the history and operation of our products can follow recipe-like manuals and processes and checklists… and be a part of the creation of a successful products, while personally having zero intuition other than about how things go in their narrow field. Only a few people (mostly at the top) have a general understanding of what every part of the product does and how it came to look and work the way it does today. So sometimes I think "I would be nice to work in a company where everyone is excited about the product, knows generally how it works, followed its history since they were kids… like people must at Google!". But I could be totally wrong, so I'm asking. Xpost in AskProgramming , AskProgrammers , cscareerquestions , and coding , because I'm not sure which is the most appropriate for this. Apologies to the mods if they need to remove one that is not in its most appropriate subreddit. [link] [comments] |
| What was the most useless CS class you took in college? Posted: 19 Jan 2018 08:35 AM PST I'm a freshman in college, and just started my second semester. I'm taking Discrete Structures, which was framed by the professor as a math class. After looking over the chapters, I can see its applications to CS, but it made me curious — what was the most useless required class you guys had to take to get a CS degree? I don't have a ton of experience, but from what I've heard and my 8 months of experience at my internship, I feel like there's a disconnect between computer science education and actual software development. Is this true, and if so, which CS classes do you use the least in your daily work? [link] [comments] |
| To people who have worked at a small startup as their first job Posted: 19 Jan 2018 10:20 AM PST How did it go? I currently have an offer from a startup with 15 people and I'm a bit worried on whether the work would be too overwhelming as a new grad. Edit: There are 7 engineers, and the CTO is an engineer. Startup has been around for 3 years. [link] [comments] |
| I am burned out and considering a change in my career path. Posted: 19 Jan 2018 06:08 AM PST This is something I have issues coming to terms with, but I think I have to realize that I am burned out from my current position. I have worked the last 4 years as an IT-security consultant, which has been super fun, but around a year ago I started to hate going to work. So I decided to find somewhere else to work, within the same field but with another company. Which I did... I have been employed the "new" place for half a year, but almost since day one I have hated it. The people are nice, but I dread doing the work. I come early to work, hoping that I am the first one in my department, so I can skip out early for the day, without getting asked about it. I find no excitement in my job anymore, nothing really surprises me. Another vulnerability? Oh, great, toss that in the pile with the other ones with the fancy names. I believed working as a security consultant was my big dream - and it was. But not anymore. So I need to find something else to do. I have recently picked up coding, which I quite like. I like to create stuff, so the plan is to get better and potentially land a job there. I assume multiple people has been in my shoes before, but how did you guys handle it? And sorry for ranting, I just needed it to get off my chest. [link] [comments] |
| How to best break into CS careers from other STEM field as I finish my PhD? Posted: 19 Jan 2018 08:08 AM PST I'm about 6 months to a year from finishing my PhD in physical chemistry and as I'm starting to job hunt I've run into some difficulties. Without getting too much into it, the job that I was banking on and that another lab mate recently went to, turns out to be brutal in terms of both scheduled hours and being constantly on call. After years of of grad school, that's not acceptable to me anymore. However, I have a friend who left and now works as a software engineer and loves it. Personally, I don't have a ton of coding experience beyond some simple apps for iOS made for fun or to make some simple work tasks easier, but I have written a number of python scripts for processing data from different sources in various formats, and written some scripts for modelling and fitting, and my friend thought this might be a good place to start. Does anyone have any experience with breaking into Data Science from other STEM fields? How would I best go about building a portfolio to demonstrate what I know, and what skills would my time be best spent developing? Should I try to learn R? Or would I be better off focusing on my mobile development experience, since I have a couple simple apps as a starting point for a portfolio already? In either case, because of the nature of my experiments (I have to be present to babysit them, but they require relatively little active management) and automation of my data work-up, I can realistically dedicate an average of about 4 hours a day to developing my coding skills without seriously cutting into other responsibilities. At least until I get down to crunch time for finishing my thesis. I also know LaTeX, Mathematica, and basic HTML/CSS for what those are worth. [link] [comments] |
| What is the difference between Computer engineer and Computer Science? Posted: 19 Jan 2018 05:01 PM PST Currently applying for college (in Canada) and I was wondering which path suits best my hopes and dreams (lmao). Basically, I wish to be involved with the research and development of new technologies. One degree looks like an engineering degree (obviously) but the other one (compsci) can only be taken as a minor/major . Kind of confused with all this and it would be greatly appreciated if someone can clear things up. Thank you for your time! [link] [comments] |
| Career crossroads: Power + Clean Slate vs Money + Clusterfuck Posted: 19 Jan 2018 05:01 PM PST Senior level programmer recently joined a company and make very good money however the company I joined is an absolute disaster when it comes to tech: * Minimal unit testing or at all. The pluses: * Have I mentioned how well I'm compensated? * I'm already on the good side of management and might have inside track to manage my own team soon which means much more money. * Work life balance pretty good most days. Having said that, was recently approached about taking over senior position in another company. The pluses are: * Interesting technologies to play with. Going cloud, building out microservices infrastructure, docker, kubernetes and nosql databases. Basically whatever I wanna do. * I get to start from scratch and have major influence into coding best practices and processes * Have budget to create own staff * Become more Architect than senior dev Minuses: * Their tech infrastructure is also a mess right now and so that's why they are revamping * They might not be able to beat current salary but will come close. Will not grow as fast. * More responsibilities means Work life balance might be out of wack for a while * My boss and his boss both are not tech savvy * Not sure I'm qualified since I've never managed this many ppl and have never been an application Architect * Completely new tech stack(Also might be considered positive cause I get to learn) Well that's it. Two roads diverge in the woods which would you take? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 19 Jan 2018 09:59 AM PST I'm nearing the completion of my first formal job as a developer, I'm self-taught with a BS in Mathematics. (Before this, I did a year of contract work by teaming up with freelance designers and agencies turning designs into responsive websites – something I was good at but quite boring after awhile.) I took one of the first offers I got with a tech consulting firm, the pay is good but I feel like the lack of app projects and mentorship is hurting my career in the long term. Quick overview of the year: When I was initially hired I was given 1 month to ramp up on Angular 2 / TypeScript then I was placed on a team with 3 other co-workers for a greenfield app project utilizing Angular 2 and .NET. This went well, I was successful at completing frontend small feature requests from the lead dev, bug fixes, got a lot of praise for my CSS work for the UI and learned a lot about working with Git, the team, project managers, product owners, demoing for the client, etc. The bad was a severe lack of mentorship, all of my teammates were remote in different offices so the mentorship was basically nonexistent, when I did have questions Slack and Skype were less than optimal. I was pretty much on my own. I also rarely got any feedback on my code and PR's (maybe this was a good thing?). Despite that, this sort of work and project was exactly what I was expecting and was really looking forward to continuing to better my skills with JavaScript and front end app development. The next couple of gigs were less than stellar: Second gig - Consulting for a retail company to fix a lot of their styles on their website, in which I learned to work with LESS, fixed some shopping cart bugs (they used Angular 1.5 – don't ask), working with an in-house team, quickly adapting to their Agile and SCRUM but other than that, not much else was learned. Third gig – Consulting for a large manufacturing company for website updates. Essentially just converting mockups to HTML/CSS/JS. Something I've done a million times in the past, while enjoyable, unfortunately not much new was learned. Fourth gig – Creating a website using a CMS called HubSpot. A lot of drag and drop, some custom HTML/CSS/JS work when needed. I learned how to work with the CMS but this is far from app development. Bench Time – Had about 2 months of bench time in which I taught myself Node.js, working with AWS S3 buckets, the basics of backend (creating an API, Database, JSON web tokens for auth) and then built a full stack MEAN app which is almost ready to be live on the web. I think there's a good chance it'll attract some actual users. So as you can see, being a consultant, the projects vary and I'm not really getting the JavaScript / app development experience I want beyond that first gig. There is also a severe lack of formal mentorship and there are no other JS devs in my satellite office, all are data or backend (Java / C#). So I'm a bit lost on where to go from here. Part of me wants to look for a new job where I can work with JS, on apps, and get proper mentorship. Is my limited experience with that first app project and my side projects enough to get my foot in the door somewhere else? I do like the current company, my co-workers, the pay is generous for a Junior dev, but there is no telling what kind of gigs are going to come through the door, the past 9 months have been lackluster. I am mostly concerned about my skills and career long term. I try to keep my JavaScript / Angular skills up with side projects, but coding after work everyday is taking its toll. Any thoughts? [link] [comments] |
| Product Management: What is it, what do PMs do, and what is a typical career path? Posted: 19 Jan 2018 09:18 AM PST |
| Trouble with co-worker and no mentor on development. Posted: 19 Jan 2018 12:12 PM PST My co-worker and I have 2 roles at our job:
We allocate system admin tasks for 5 hours, and development work for 2 hours a day. We are recent hires that are working on a Java enterprise platform we don't have experience with. Currently, we are reading documentations and playing with simple programs to get familiar with the platform. However, I am frustrated with the development responsibility at my job. We are the only "developers" with this platform. We don't have senior developers to help us with any questions. We have to figure out everything on our own. Additionally, I am annoyed by the fact that my co-worker needs hand-holding from me for everything. He apparently has "2+ years of experience in software development". I am doubtful of his Java skills as he just looks at me blank when I talk about interfaces and inheritance. He doesn't ask any questions and only responds with "Hmm, ah okay. Yeah." like a student responding to a teacher who pretends to understand the material so they can move on. I don't think he reads the documentations as much as I would like him to do to keep up the pace. He doesn't know the basic definitions that were provided in page 1. Frankly, I am struggling just as much as this enterprise platform has a huge learning curve. I really want to abandon ship as I am basically on my own with no productive co-worker and mentor for this project. I have been at this job for 3 months now. This is my first job out of college. Is it time to leave and find another job? [link] [comments] |
| Coding tests preparation, study tips Posted: 19 Jan 2018 03:36 PM PST How can i prepare for a coding test(interviews) ? how can i learn the most in the short amount of time? what should the strategy be? should i do a crash course on the languages first and then data structures? [link] [comments] |
| Help me on my approach to break into Web Development Posted: 19 Jan 2018 07:08 PM PST Like many people who had asked here, I'm someone who wants to have a change or career from working in a restaurant to become a web developer. After finishing HTML CSS Javascript, what would be best to learn next to be employed as soon as possible? From many advice I find here people say you need projects from freelancing, which means I'll have to learn full stack since nobody wants half a site with only the front end being done. But from other threads, people say you need to get good at HTML CSS for an entry level position since no one will trust your programming skills at first anyways. Which would be better to get break into the field as fast as possible, learn the frontend design, or full stack for portfolio building? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 19 Jan 2018 12:44 PM PST I was applying at Wells Fargo and got through the phone screening, technical interview and had a behavioral one today. I answered his questions for 30 minutes then he asked me
and I told him about a difficulty we had for one project or two but I had never failed any projects because management would not allow that to happen. I also said, I don't quit easily and always finish what I start. That's when he cut me off and said "Alright, that looks like all the time I have for now. It was great speaking to you. My team will be in touch." And then 20 minutes later I get the "Sorry, we found better candidates..." bullshit email. Thanks for wasting 3 weeks of my life. How else am I supposed to respond? I'm kind of pissed right now. [link] [comments] |
| Anyone ever look into CS education abroad as a potential direction to take their career? Posted: 19 Jan 2018 06:20 PM PST I think it would be really cool to teach CS abroad, particularly in Asia. Do such opportunities exist? If not, anyone have any thoughts about how it might be received if one were to try to start the first one? Perhaps an English/CS school in Japan or Korea? [link] [comments] |
| How do I answer the dreaded compensation question? Posted: 19 Jan 2018 02:24 PM PST (This is my first post! Sorry if somethings are off....) I just graduated with a degree in Web Development and I've been applying like crazy to a bunch of jobs around the U.S. I have had multiple internships for both front-end and back-end development. I have no idea how to answer the "salary requirements" question, as I have no idea how much my skill set is worth. Not to mention, I'm applying to a lot of different locations, so the cost of living is very different in these areas which I would think would change how much a person would make. For my internship I was making $14/h. at 25-30 hours per week. I traveled to Kansis City for an interview (didn't get the job), but the guy said that the junior positions are around low to mid 30's around their area. I feel as though I can't trust glass-door or any salary estimation services online because they always seem to over-estimate. What are your guy's experiences? Can someone help me through this weird and confusing part of my life?! haha. If you would like to see some of my work to get an idea as to what i've done you can visit my website at www.nicolasjmendez.com Edit: I am applying for junior web developer positions. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 19 Jan 2018 12:11 PM PST I have an interview coming up for a summer internship position. The interview is digital (HireVue). From what I've heard it's going to ask behavior and coding questions. I'm just kinda curious about the experience with this kind of interview. Are we able to pick the language to use? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 19 Jan 2018 12:05 PM PST Have an offer from IBM Watson Bay area, 120k which I accepted. Was wondering if an offer from Capital One could be better? On-site interview next month. [link] [comments] |
| Post-Bacc Undergrad vs CS Masters - does it matter? Posted: 19 Jan 2018 06:00 PM PST I'm currently pursuing a post-bacc at a local college and the CS dept asked me if I'd like to transfer to their masters dept instead. The Masters in CS at this school is not your typical Masters program with a research emphasis, in fact, the masters students pretty much take the same classes as the undergrad students. The only difference is that I'll need to pay more for the Masters and the grading is less lenient. The price difference is around $2k a semester. I honestly don't plan on going for the Masters but what do you guys think? As a career changer, do you think it looks better to have a Masters rather than another undergrad degree? I already have a masters degree from my previous field as part of a 4+1 program. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 19 Jan 2018 05:58 PM PST EDUCATION BACKGROUND: I have a degree in something called Interactive Media from a pretty good / well known state school around my area. The major itself isn't well known though... no one ever knows what my major means, and it's never on job application drop downs. My program was a weird combination of web development/design, mobile development/design, video game development/design, and animation/digital art. It was very project-based and I did very well in it, have 3.7 GPA, dean's list all semesters. HOWEVER, the major mostly focused on innovation, ideas, and design over good practices in coding, many students project's were just "ideas" that "could" be something if they "tried harder," a lot of projects I saw being turned in around me looked like absolute garbage, and it was really uninspiring. While Interactive Media had programming, I believe the program would definitely put me at a disadvantage skills-wise if I didn't have my CS minor, because they never taught programming practices. When I joined the Interactive Media program, it was more tech/game/web focused, had more tech classes, but as I am leaving I believe the program has become more art/design-focused in time, due to a lot of students not quite "getting" coding, which has been scaring me a bit for its reputation. I also have seen multiple graduates of the program on LinkedIn and they are working retail jobs and have not found work.
MORE BACKGROUND: I also have a computer science minor and have done these classes: intro to programming, data structures, software engineering, and this semester will do analysis of algorithms, and I've taken discrete math and calculus. My goal is to go to grad school online for Computer Science Master's once I graduate while working full-time. I've also had 2 internships (1 at school, 1 at a large publishing company) in Web Development but only using basic HTML, CSS, WordPress, API and JavaScript.
QUESTION: My goal job would be doing C#.NET development I think, based on the fact that I know C#, and I have web experience, which seems like it might apply there. The hurdle I'm working on right now is learning the .NET framework since I've never touched it, but I have a full semester before I graduate to work on that (although i'll probably be applying to jobs in the meantime). Would I even be considered for a C#.NET dev role or dev intern role with my major ? Wondering if I'm ill-informed and it's actually a bigger longshot than I think it is. I'm not aiming for any remotely fancy companies, but definitely not looking at getting a super lowball salary or working with an antiquated system. What other CS jobs might apply to me? I'm really sick of HTML-heavy web dev, it doesn't challenge me. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 19 Jan 2018 05:58 PM PST What are good technical practices for contracting on personal hardware? Using open source tools and separate OS? [link] [comments] |
| Getting into a Machine Learning career... Posted: 19 Jan 2018 10:25 AM PST I'm in my 3rd year of a 4 year CS MEng course at a respectable UK Uni. Title says it all; I'm thoroughly decided I want to work with AI/ML and doing stuff with Neural Networks etc... But I'm struggling to find out how to even start down this path. My ideal end goal is to be in a decently paid job that involves the stuff mentioned above. So, how do I start going from here to there :P Any advice is greatly appreciated! [link] [comments] |
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