Interview Discussion - February 21, 2019 CS Career Questions |
- Interview Discussion - February 21, 2019
- Daily Chat Thread - February 21, 2019
- Tips for staying focused for a full 9-5 day of work?
- People who entered software development having studied a different subject at university: what's your story?
- What is something you’ve bought that has increased your quality of life as a software engineer?
- Not making progress on LeetCode
- Devs who have been fired for performance...
- I've noticed some companies, as part of the application process, will ask me to describe something unrelated to the job, that I'm an expert in. What if I'm not really an expert in anything?
- For those working on the hiring side of CS: would you hire a bootcamp grad?
- More senior level question: Stay or go?
- 2nd year computer science student - no internship responses yet after successful 1st year.
- How much money do I ask for?
- What do I do now?
- Would a UX/UI position be fitting for a person with an IT degree?
- How to deal with a terrible code-base / quality?
- Should I negotiate as an intern with experience?
- How to find work quickly?
- What's a good conference for newer developers
- Able to pick up new skills quickly - but just as quickly forget them
- Switch Teams or Find New Job?
- What does experience really mean in the CS industry?
- Do I need to give my future employer my medical information?
- How do you learn a new language (when under pressure)?
- How do you keep notes or remember the code?
- What are cloud consulting career paths like?
- Thinking about accepting Sandia internship but unsure about living in Albuquerque. Any thoughts?
| Interview Discussion - February 21, 2019 Posted: 20 Feb 2019 11:05 PM PST Please use this thread to have discussions about interviews, interviewing, and interview prep. Posts focusing solely on interviews created outside of this thread will probably be removed. Abide by the rules, don't be a jerk. This thread is posted each Monday and Thursday at midnight PST. Previous Interview Discussion threads can be found here. [link] [comments] |
| Daily Chat Thread - February 21, 2019 Posted: 20 Feb 2019 11:05 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] |
| Tips for staying focused for a full 9-5 day of work? Posted: 21 Feb 2019 07:52 AM PST I find i work better in a very free form schedule, but my work requires me to be there 9-5 every day. As a result I have a few short productive spurts each day of 1-2 hours each, but that still leaves me with 2-3 hours a day of staring at my computer screen, humdrumming about what I can work on that won't take as much mental effort. Any tips on this? Also, is it normal to look at the clock around 1pm each day and get all depressed thinking, "dang, another 4 hours of this"? Edit: Thanks so much for the suggestions! This is super helpful. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 21 Feb 2019 05:39 AM PST Just interested to know how easy it is to enter a career in software development having studied something totally different? [link] [comments] |
| What is something you’ve bought that has increased your quality of life as a software engineer? Posted: 21 Feb 2019 03:26 PM PST I am looking to get a gift for a friend who is a software engineer, but am not sure what to shoot for. I just got my first job as a software engineer too, but I can't really think of anything that has radically helped me through school, etc. [link] [comments] |
| Not making progress on LeetCode Posted: 21 Feb 2019 11:44 AM PST Hey I'm looking for some advice. I've been working through leetcode questions and just can't seem to get to the correct answer. I just feel like I'm stuck or making negative progress. I was wondering if anyone has gone through this and how they have dealt with it. Thanks a lot in advance :) [link] [comments] |
| Devs who have been fired for performance... Posted: 21 Feb 2019 02:35 PM PST .. how did you bounce back? I am trying to bounce back by working on a personal project that a friend of mine can use for her business. I am not giving up. I love programming. I went through all the motions: pitching ideas to her, getting ideas from those ideas, writing down requirements, designing ERDs, designing classes based on needs (i.e. designing singletons for the API and database, respectively; creating a controller class that handles interactions between the API and DB), and throwing myself into the deep end. I tinker with it off and on and have it at about 50% done in < two weeks. I am happy with my progress. But i want to know how you got through the feelings of not being cut out for dev work after being fired for performance. Unemployment sucks. I have had people tell me that i am definitely cut out for it if i am able to do what i am doing, but it doesn't stop the feelings of incompetency. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 21 Feb 2019 06:48 AM PST Usually these are for positions I'm pretty interested in. I'm currently in an analyst role for my company's IT helpdesk, and most of the roles I've been applying for are hybrid helpdesk/analyst/developer roles that will hopefully catapult me into the webdev side of the business. I've noticed this has come up a few times towards the end of an application process and I'm curious about it. Usually they want me to put together a video, power point, or some kind of documentation teaching them how to do whatever I'm an expert in. Thing is, I'm not really an expert in anything, at least not anything good. The things I know about either wouldn't impress an employer, or are just odd (like the professional/Linkedin equivalent of 'burping the ABCs'). I'm sure they're looking for things that would make a standard developer into a 'rockstar', or evidence that people did humanitarian programs in Africa or something. I have several chronic conditions that take up most of my energy and budget. Most of my life has been short stints at manual labor jobs, short bouts of homelessness or couchsurfing, right now I live with my mom, you get the idea. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to be learning the skills to be competitive in this field and also completely irrelevant skills so that I look like I'm well rounded. [link] [comments] |
| For those working on the hiring side of CS: would you hire a bootcamp grad? Posted: 21 Feb 2019 08:52 AM PST Self explanatory question. I was admitted into a pretty good program in Salt Lake and am looking to switch careers [link] [comments] |
| More senior level question: Stay or go? Posted: 21 Feb 2019 09:48 AM PST Throwaway for obvious reasons. Not sure how many here can relate or have been in an analogous situation but thought I would try. This may be a bit stream of consciousness but I have a lot of information to unpack. Here is my current job situation as I would describe it more publicly.
Here is the problem as I see it more privately.
My wife thinks I should just stop giving a fuck and ride out a lucrative situation and then exit on reasonable terms. I am having a hard time imagining doing that for the next year or so. I am more inclined to try and negotiate a lay-off which would preserve my 2019 comp while giving my org a more controlled landing. I could also just quit. Anyone been in this situation before? Any advice? More info needed? [link] [comments] |
| 2nd year computer science student - no internship responses yet after successful 1st year. Posted: 21 Feb 2019 01:45 PM PST I'm a currently a 2nd year computer science student in the UK (on a 4 year degree) and I've had no response to internship applications as of yet. Last year I had a 100% response rate to internship applications and achieved a research internship at a fairly sizeable company, while this year, I attained a place on the dean's list so my CV should have only inproved since then. I've found the whole thing fairly demoralising and I'm not really sure what to do from here out other than do my own project this summer and do more coursera courses. My university seems to only offer research positions to students in their penultimate year so that's not an option either. If anyone has any advice on steps I could take to get an internship or on what I could do to prepare my CV for next year I'd be really grateful thanks! [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 21 Feb 2019 12:41 PM PST Hello everyone, first of off, thank you to this community for helping me so much through the process of becoming a programmer with no formal work experience or degree. I landed myself an internship at a digital agency in Los Angeles as front-end developer. The company would like to move forward and hire me as a full-time front-end developer and they asked me to write out a proposal and with how much I want to be paid. I have no idea how to move forward. Please any advice would be very helpful. Again, thank you r/cscareerquestions the most helpful subreddit I've ever used in my six years of reddit. (this is a throwaway). [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 21 Feb 2019 04:21 PM PST This has more than likely been asked before but couldn't seem to find it. So I just graduated 2 months ago from a pretty decent college and finished off with a 2.8 GPA(I realize I'm probably already kinda screwed right off the bat). I've got some experience from hackathons and have projects and have actually gotten quite a bit of interviews ranging from less popular local companies and even made it to the final round for a couple of big N throughout college and kind of recently. However, I've literally bombed every single one. In fact, I feel I've only now started to get pretty good at these leetcode problems (I'm at around 90+ and I still don't feel that great at answering them) because I just have a lot more time on my hands now that I'm done with school (I really should have balanced my time better during but there's no point looking back now I guess). Anyway, a lot of these new grad positions I've applied to only seem to hire within the first 6 months after college and because I've failed so many of these interview processes they all tell me to reapply around 6-9months later so it's looking like I can't apply until August or so. But 6-9 months from now I'm not technically a new grad... It's looking like the only thing I'll be able to add to my resume when I can reapply is an open source project or so and maybe just improving my GitHub. Is this even going to change anything for me? I messed up a LOT in college and went through issues with coming out, anxiety, failing classes, and sometimes just not putting enough effort. I feel like now that I'm better at interviewing and trying more it's going to be a lost cause. What should I be doing if I can't find SOME kind of professional experience to add to my resume especially since internships only allow me to apply if I'm still pursuing a degree after the internship ends? I also really want to move somewhere on the west coast of the US since I'm not near any large tech areas and I just like it over there. TLDR: I'm a new grad with a low GPA and very little if any professional experience who's only now getting his shit together 2 months post grad. I don't think I can find better professional experience to add to my resume by August(what I assume is the next hiring cycle) and I probably only have one more chance to reapply to these companies before I'm no longer a "New Grad." What do I do? [link] [comments] |
| Would a UX/UI position be fitting for a person with an IT degree? Posted: 21 Feb 2019 07:43 PM PST I am finishing my BS in Information Technology, and was thinking of going into UX or UI. Is this a suitable career for my degree? [link] [comments] |
| How to deal with a terrible code-base / quality? Posted: 21 Feb 2019 01:28 PM PST I'm currently student and got a job-offer from a German company who ask me to work (for now) for a year. Since I was interested and never got into a professional environment i was excited and now I'm there for around four months. I would never say I'm a good programmer, but I always try to follow best-practices and code-conventions. But instead of finding a "professional" environment with documented and clean code I found a total mess, mostly maintained from work-students. And it's not even legacy code on which I'm currently working, rather it's really new stuff like node, vue, etc. on which I'm working on. There is absolute zero documentation (and comments), almost zero modularization or code-splitting and there are only god-classes with around ~2000 lines without a line-break and mostly rows with around ~300 characters. I can totally understand, if there is no time to write clean code as most do in their solo projects, but I'm talking from projects which have (almost) no deadline, are almost 2 years old and there was / would be plenty of time to improve such things. It would be even easier to rewrite everything instead of refactoring it what I'm currently do. But the worst aspect from all of this is that the lead developer has / sees still hope in these things, and even ships it into production. For me it's a real torture to see such things since there was a lot of time for planning, creating an architecture and developing a rather clean code base. Now my question is, did you all faces also such problems and how did you dealt with it? And, if i wanted to, how would you talk (as a newbie in the company) to the lead developer to tell them about such major problems. And sorry if my English is a little bit messed up. [link] [comments] |
| Should I negotiate as an intern with experience? Posted: 21 Feb 2019 02:12 PM PST Hello, I have 8 months previous experience as an intern. I could return to the previous company I worked at at the same pay rate. I am also applying for a company that generally offers 20% less and I was wondering if I can get them to match salary? I feel like I have leverage because I have more experience than most interns, and I am almost done my CS degree. Is this a normal thing to do? Or are intern salaries standardized? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 21 Feb 2019 01:04 PM PST I have a BS from a good school, and used to own an international consulting business where I trained/hired people, talked strategies with clients, and worked directly with many startups (including YC startups) where I was paid quite well for my knowledge of application development (backend), data modeling / analysis, algorithms, & DevOps. I recently went through a series of traumatic life crises and basically everything I had going for me including my work and future plans fell apart. I'm trying to get back on my feet, but I'm not ready quite yet to commit to a full time job, as I really don't want to rush the application process. I am looking for something to do in the meantime, and I figure I could be helpful to someone, but I dont want to waste my time on platforms like UpWork. I really need to stay busy right now, but I'm having trouble finding anything between small freelancer tasks and full time jobs. I used to find consulting jobs easily but they came mostly from my network and I've let previous colleagues take those. I'm currently in LA, but I can really travel anywhere. Thanks! [link] [comments] |
| What's a good conference for newer developers Posted: 21 Feb 2019 06:27 AM PST I'm looking at conferences to attend over the next year, but being a newer developer I dont want to go to one where I'd just be lost the whole time (although having never been to one, it might be that none are that way, or a mix). What would be a good pick? Edit: Java, Angular, web dev, security, AWS....those areas would be priority for me [link] [comments] |
| Able to pick up new skills quickly - but just as quickly forget them Posted: 21 Feb 2019 04:38 PM PST In my job(s), a lot of my work isn't really particularly working with a single stack and learning it. I'm more all over the place solving problems using whatever it is all over the place, which is nice because I touch on a lot of stuff but I forget it. Last year, I had to stand up a Java application and now at this time, I feel like I forgot how to code in Java (not really but a lot of it is lost). Lately I've been using a lot of Python. The other month I was using Powershell. The month before that was Salesforce... you sorta get the idea. I love sowing problems, but the problems I solve are so vast that I'm almost like a generalist. How do I show I'm even a professional or good at technology when I'm spread thin and wide in my job duties. And when I have to learn something, I just pick up enough knowledge to solve whatever issue I needed to get done, nothing more, because then it's onto the next. Any advice for a guy like me? How do I sell myself as specialized when I'm like a Swiss army man? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 21 Feb 2019 07:23 AM PST Hi, I am currently on the styles team of a financial tech company. I was hired last July. I do some coding in Javascript, Jquery, HTML, CSS. The job was originally as a web designer but I lacked design skills so they hired me in a more of a development role. I find myself with a lot of free time in the day after I finish my projects and they don't have work for me to do(I asked). There's a tech team in my company and they said in November maybe I can switch to it after a year. I want to be a software developer so that seems ideal for me, although they start off by doing support work (debugging). Should I wait until next November or next July to ask to switch to the tech team? Honestly I want to switch earlier bc I don't have work to do, but I don't know if they will let me on, because they recently hired three new developers. Or is it better to look for a new job even though it's only been 7 months? A recruiter contacted me about a front end software engineer position that I'm interested in. Or should I wait for July (after 1 year of work) to apply to jobs? [link] [comments] |
| What does experience really mean in the CS industry? Posted: 21 Feb 2019 02:43 PM PST So I have been watching the "Tech Lead" on YouTube, mostly because I appreciate his humor, but also because I am considering computer science as a life-long career having worked in web development for a while. He makes this argument that software engineers or computer scientists will always have a more difficult time maintaining lifelong success, compared to other fields. For example, whatever a doctor or lawyer learns in their 20's, they can take with them into the rest of their career. Their experience is an investment that grows over time. In computer science though, I think he's saying that a person's experience will depreciate over time, because of the nature of technology. So, older programmers must constantly work on maintaining employability instead of simply reaping the benefits of the career they worked so hard to build in the first place. How much of this is true? What early experiences have you had which actually paid dividends later in your career? [link] [comments] |
| Do I need to give my future employer my medical information? Posted: 21 Feb 2019 01:58 PM PST I just got my first full-time gig in software engineering, and I am super excited about it! However, my company is requiring a medical evaluation and sent me a form asking for past surgeries, a list of medications and current height, weight and blood pressure. I have major depression but I don't want them to know that. Is this a common thing in this industry? Do I need to provide this if I want a job? EDIT: They are requiring I go in for a one hour medical evaluation as well. EDIT 2: This is for a well-known company in the Midwest. The position is for a full stack developer. [link] [comments] |
| How do you learn a new language (when under pressure)? Posted: 21 Feb 2019 10:33 AM PST Hi, everyone. I'm experienced with front-end development but my current job requires that I code A LOT using Ruby On Rails. The whole dev team is back-end focused and I'm struggling to keep the same pace. I can work greatly with front-end and design and I already completed several tasks in this area. I just had a performance review and the team leader and the owner of the business told me that I'm doing great, but I'm still feeling very sad and really not capable at the end of the day, to the point where it's a struggle to wake up and start working every day. Any advices of how can I improve this situation? [link] [comments] |
| How do you keep notes or remember the code? Posted: 21 Feb 2019 09:40 AM PST Hi all, I work on a project with a relatively huge code base (1+ million lines of code). The code base that I work on was not written by me from scratch. When I have to deliver new features, I basically reuse someone's code or patch the code. Though I understand core architecture, I keep on forgetting the architecture or lines of code when someone comes to me with a quick question. What are some ways to solve this issue? If this subreddit is not appropriate for the question, please point me to the right one. [link] [comments] |
| What are cloud consulting career paths like? Posted: 21 Feb 2019 08:22 PM PST I'm starting a cloud consulting job at a Big N company and want to plan for career growth from here. Unlike SWEs, everything I see on Glassdoor for these positions makes it look like the salary cap is pretty low and easy to reach quickly. Where do you go from being a solutions architect/SCE/PFE at Amazon/Google/Microsoft, and how do you keep increasing your responsibilities/compensation along the way? [link] [comments] |
| Thinking about accepting Sandia internship but unsure about living in Albuquerque. Any thoughts? Posted: 21 Feb 2019 08:17 PM PST Basically the title, kinda nervous about it. Heard crime is high and city is not nice. Anyone with experience interning around there? [link] [comments] |
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