Interview Discussion - January 04, 2018 CS Career Questions |
- Interview Discussion - January 04, 2018
- Daily Chat Thread - January 04, 2018
- What are some job options for a bad software engineer who can't get any developer roles?
- Feel like I'm just memorizing solutions for firecode/leetcode problems. This isn't good, is it?
- I'm honestly losing complete hope at this point.
- There's cheating everywhere at my college. How do you deal with this?
- Yet another "Joined company, turns out my team writes horrible code" advice thread
- Senior Devs: What kind of autonomy do you have?
- "BS Computer Science or equivalent"
- In my first job out of college and want to move on.
- Is there a specific language or certain path I should take to land remote work?
- I'm a CS post-bacc. Should I pretend like my former life never existed?
- Web app or Hadoop development?
- People who have worked for at least 10 years and in multiple companies, do you keep your re.sume single page?
- Moving to London from U.S for personal reasons
- Would it be possible for me to start a career in the cs field any earlier with the position I'm in.
- I feel like my school has irreverent CS courses, and lacks courses I need to be successful.
- Questions about my kid in 8th grade that is interested in software/computers.
- Finding more "LeetCode" style problems in front-end than back-end
- Oracle vs Bloomberg for internships
- Took off almost 2 years after graduating, looking for jobs now. But have no idea where to start.
- Fall of 2018 Grad - When to apply for full-time jobs?
- I feel like I don't do any work and I don't learn anything in my job. What can I do?
- How to I work on code that is well over 10 years old and has next to no documentation?
- Will it look really bad for my career if I never move to a more people-oriented role?
- What matters more? Professional experience or personal projects?
| Interview Discussion - January 04, 2018 Posted: 03 Jan 2018 11:07 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 - January 04, 2018 Posted: 03 Jan 2018 11:07 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]  |
| What are some job options for a bad software engineer who can't get any developer roles? Posted: 04 Jan 2018 08:03 AM PST I love the software engineer role, but I suck at it. At my previous job, I constantly needed to ask other engineers for help and could barely do anything on my own. I got bad performance reviews, but managed to hang on for a few years. Recently, I quit my job and moved back to the Bay Area to take care of my parents, but haven't been able to land any software engineering jobs there. One problem is that I have a bad memory. I've been studying Cracking the Coding Interview and doing practice whiteboard coding, but my mind goes blank when tested under pressure. I'm also unable to explain too much about the previous work at my old job because I didn't contribute that much. What are some next steps I should take? Are there other job options I should be looking into? [link] [comments]  |
| Feel like I'm just memorizing solutions for firecode/leetcode problems. This isn't good, is it? Posted: 04 Jan 2018 10:00 AM PST Especially with firecode lvl 3+ and leetcode medium+, I feel like I make horrendously little progress. I know and can implement the basics of binary trees/linked lists/queues/stacks/etc, and I know what recursion (break big problems into smaller problems until you hit a base case!!11!) is. However, especially with anything involving recursion or DP, anything beyond a simple Fibonacci sequence or finding the size of a tree leaves me completely flabbergasted. Once I've seen (and skipped) the solution 2-4 times, I can implement it without a problem, but I feel like this is just memorization of the technique, and I question how much this actually benefits me. Reading through the solution in the first place, I can totally follow their logic, but I can never implement it on my own. Do you have any advice? I've studied this stuff off and on since I got my first post-grad job this past summer but have made no discernible progress. Is there any hope for me, or am I better off just punching the clock at my defense contracting SWE joke-of-a-job for the next 40 years? [link] [comments]  |
| I'm honestly losing complete hope at this point. Posted: 04 Jan 2018 10:57 AM PST I just graduated from a good state University. I graduated with two internships but a really bad GPA. I couldn't find a job during the semester due to class and the fact that a lot of on campus interviews ask for GPA so I had to resort to online sites like LinkedIn, Glassdoor etc but I NEVER hear back. Here is my resume Wether it be a big company or a company I've never heard of, I just never seem to hear back. Is it something with my resume or just an overload of people applying to these things? [link] [comments]  |
| There's cheating everywhere at my college. How do you deal with this? Posted: 04 Jan 2018 07:07 PM PST It's to a point where you basically have to cheat if you want an A. If you don't, someone else will take your place in the bellcurve. [link] [comments]  |
| Yet another "Joined company, turns out my team writes horrible code" advice thread Posted: 04 Jan 2018 04:55 PM PST Long time lurker, first time poster. I joined a large software company around six months ago. The main product is software, there are hundreds of developers. It's a "cool" company, with lots of agile, beanbag chairs, good vacation policy, decent pay, strong financial, etc. It made sense for me to join because of the pay, perks, challenges, and a good item on my resume. I've got roughly four years of experience at this point so I'm somewhere around a mid-level developer. Today I came to realize that my team produces horrible code. This isn't my first job and I know that code written to solve business needs can't be perfect. I also know that you can't judge code you didn't write because you don't know the circumstances it was written in. But I've seen horrible projects from the past and my team started building a new project with a very generous deadline and it's essentially a rehash of all the past problems. In short, it's full of procedural code, a big ball of mud, a single change requires changing dozens, sometimes hundreds of lines of unrelated code. The biggest proponent of this way of things is the team lead himself who once scolded me for making a function too short because "function calls are expensive" (we work in Python). I'm the newest member of this team and I'm hesitant to approach this issue, I don't want to be seen as "that new guy that comes in and tries to change everything". Has anyone been in this situation? I don't see any way of changing things, but I need to wait a few more months before I can change jobs. Are there other alternatives I could try? Some kind of hearts & minds thing I could try at least? [link] [comments]  |
| Senior Devs: What kind of autonomy do you have? Posted: 04 Jan 2018 05:22 PM PST What's your work schedule? How much control do you have over your work? Can you choose or launch your own projects, or are you assigned to project work? [link] [comments]  |
| "BS Computer Science or equivalent" Posted: 04 Jan 2018 04:05 PM PST I see this on job postings a lot. What is "equivalent"? BS in Information Technology? BS in Cloud and Systems Admin? BS in Software Development? BS in Data Management? [link] [comments]  |
| In my first job out of college and want to move on. Posted: 04 Jan 2018 07:47 AM PST Hi all, I graduated with a CS degree in June 2016. In May, right before graduating, I accepted an offer to work at a relatively small non-tech company as a data scientist. I admit that I accepted mostly because the pay was good and I was pretty worried about graduating without employment, but also because I was excited to work on some of the things that came up in the interview. Now, I recognize that it was a mistake and I want to move on. I want to find a tech company where I work with other competent engineers. Is 6 months too soon to start looking for another job? Should I hold out for longer so I can complete more projects and put more experience and time on my resume? [link] [comments]  |
| Is there a specific language or certain path I should take to land remote work? Posted: 04 Jan 2018 06:48 PM PST Based in NYC and studying JavaScript currently (self-taught) and hope to work as a front end developer. Is there a certain way I should go about obtaining more junior level remote/freelance work. I know most of the time you have to show some experience first, but I have heard of people getting remote work as their first CS position. Ultimately, my goal is to work as a freelance web developer. Any advice or help is appreciated, thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| I'm a CS post-bacc. Should I pretend like my former life never existed? Posted: 04 Jan 2018 04:13 PM PST I have a degree in policy and few years of experience in fintech, but more on the fin side. I'm about to finish a post bacc in CS and am looking for a software engineering job. Should I omit all of this from my resume so that it doesn't look like I changed careers midstream? I also had like 4 jobs in 3 years (you won't see this on my resume, but there are a couple of gaps), so I don't really want that to come up in a reference check. One consideration is that my prior degree is from a target school, while my post bacc is online and not prestigious. Also, they might wonder how I completed a BS in a year. However, my prior work experience wasn't particularly technical. Is it better to chameleon as an extra fresh grad, or will an employer find out in the background check process anyways? Here is my resume if that makes it easier to see: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x67P5MP7SwJLNuZtl0eq8z-deseUABOS/view [link] [comments]  |
| Web app or Hadoop development? Posted: 04 Jan 2018 10:37 AM PST What do you think is the better short and long term career path? I think web app is more popular and building things is always a great skill in demand. And I feel like Hadoop is very niche and has slowed down recently. For web app, I'm talking *React/Angular/Full stack *development. For Hadoop, I'm talking *Hadoop/Big data *developer. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 04 Jan 2018 12:09 PM PST I'm on the fence between making a two page version or a one page version. My boss from 10 years ago (my first web dev job) is now a DBA, but he's been working in databases for 20 years. He suggests at this point, I should expand into two pages, because as software engineers, our contributions on the tech and business side should be bursting with detail. What do you do? [link] [comments]  |
| Moving to London from U.S for personal reasons Posted: 04 Jan 2018 12:06 PM PST I am fresh out of college, first dev job making pretty good money. I may need to move to London for personal reasons. I checked glassdoor and I'm very surprised. The best of the best are being paid around 50k pounds. I'm not saying that's nothing but this is the best there is. Am I missing something? Is London more for fintech? What are some of the top companies there? Is this career suicide? [link] [comments]  |
| Would it be possible for me to start a career in the cs field any earlier with the position I'm in. Posted: 04 Jan 2018 04:56 PM PST I'm currently in community college studying computer science and plan to transfer to get my bachelors degree after that. The only problem is that I also have to work full time and I'm only able to take like 3 classes at a time. On my current schedule it's going to take me 3 years before I even transfer, and then another 3 years before I get my bachelors degree. So is there anyway that after I get my associates degree would it be easy to somehow get a job in the field while I also go to school to finish my degree? Or is this kind of rare? I guess I should just be patient and hope for the best but I started college late and I will be 27 when I'm finally done with school and it can be kind of discouraging sometimes. [link] [comments]  |
| I feel like my school has irreverent CS courses, and lacks courses I need to be successful. Posted: 04 Jan 2018 04:30 PM PST Not trying to blame my school for bad teachings, just curious to what you all think on the courses I have to take to graduate. Current sophomore in a CS program at a no name state school in the US. Currently I have taken these CS related courses: introduction to java programming Data structures and Algorithms in Java Software Engineering/Web Dev In ASP.NET Discrete Mathematics Calc 1 & 2 Calculus based probability. Here's what I'll take next semester: Computational Techniques in Environmental sustainability Ethical hacking Agile Game Development(In JavaScript) Theoretical computer science Calculus based statistics The environmental sustainability course was an elective as well the ethical hacking. My school offered an AI and web scripting course but none of them fit in my schedule. But an agile game development class focused on java script? I would feel this should be more relevant in the B.A degree since it's more web dev focused here at my school. These are the other courses I need to graduate: Database systems Comparative programming languages Computer organization and architecture Networking and parallel computation Operating systems Algorithm analysis Senior capstone Obviously those last few are the big ones that almost every school offers. However, from lurking on this thread to talking to other CS majors from different programs I feel like my school lacks some courses. I often hear other schools require CS students to take up to Differential equations, and Linear algebra. Where as my program only requires Calc 2. Also what about C programming, or C++? I feel like these languages should be touched as an undergrad. The only C++ I've done was outside of class on my own time. And of course I can take the extra math courses, which is what I was considering. But, I'm a year late into the program since I switched after my first year. I plan to graduate next year, but will prolong if I add a math minor. Not trying to sound like a complainer, just curious to what other students, and general people in the field feel about this. Tldr: Here's the courses I will take to graduate with a CS degree introduction to java programming Data structures and Algorithms in Java Software Engineering/Web Dev In ASP.NET Discrete Mathematics Calc 1 & 2 Computational Techniques in Environmental sustainability Ethical hacking Agile Game Development(In JavaScript) Theoretical computer science Calculus based statistics Database systems Comparative programming languages Computer organization and architecture Networking and parallel computation Operating systems Algorithm analysis Senior capstone And I feel like I'm missing vital courses such as C++/C programming [link] [comments]  |
| Questions about my kid in 8th grade that is interested in software/computers. Posted: 04 Jan 2018 04:19 PM PST I'll start of by saying money really isn't an issue (my Wife and i bring in about 140K after taxes, this is 4-5 years into our careers, we have time to grow) so we can get him anything that would help him(educationally). I thought you guys would be the most qualified to answer these, sorry if this is inappropriate for this sub. Questions:
I'm not going to discourage him in anyway I just want to prepare him. I'm in marketing and my Wife is a nurse so we really don't know much about this field. [link] [comments]  |
| Finding more "LeetCode" style problems in front-end than back-end Posted: 04 Jan 2018 09:19 AM PST I have been working the past few months on both the front and back end of a custom scheduling application at work. As I have been going through it I have found several problems reminiscent of LeetCode easys (find all items in one array that are not in another, insert object into a list and remove any overlapping objects). The thing is, all these have been in the front end. Back-end is almost entirely wiring up the server side controllers to the DB. Has anyone else found front end to be more "complex" (yes I know these are not difficult problems) than back end? Definitely not what I expected when I started working a year ago. [link] [comments]  |
| Oracle vs Bloomberg for internships Posted: 04 Jan 2018 07:26 PM PST I'm a junior who needs to decide between these two places. Any thoughts? I get the general impression that Oracle is unimaginably old, corporate, and stuffy, and with all large companies it's hard to find a project that feels high impact/is meaningful work. I haven't heard a single good thing about Oracle from glassdoor, this subreddit, or word of mouth, except the fact that it is a good "name" in that it is a tech giant and very well known in the tech world. My team is called the "Fusion Setup Development Group." As for Bloomberg, I've heard generally better sentiment about work culture/not wanting to shoot yourself during full time work, including that the intern program is better organized and there's a mentorship program and everything. The projects they said interns were working on were features to their internal chat or email or scheduling systems, which is not the most engaging work, but maybe as an intern that's asking for too much. Oracle's pay is slightly higher, and I think I'd rather live in California than live in NYC, unless if Redwood Shores is a dead suburban area and it's too far from SF or south bay, I'm not entirely sure. Any advise would be appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Took off almost 2 years after graduating, looking for jobs now. But have no idea where to start. Posted: 04 Jan 2018 08:08 AM PST I took off almost two years doing nothing, I was in a depressed as state. I graduated from University last year with a 2.1 in Computer Science (from the UK). I'm looking to go into either Web Development or software development (Java). I already have a years web development(HTML, CSS, some JavaScript, agile enviroment) experience from my placement year during university.
[link] [comments]  |
| Fall of 2018 Grad - When to apply for full-time jobs? Posted: 04 Jan 2018 01:20 PM PST Hello, I am graduating with a BS in Computer Science in December of 2018. When should I start applying for full time jobs to start in January of 2019? Also, I am planned to go through an internship in the summer of 2018. At which point is it appropriate to put that on my resume? Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| I feel like I don't do any work and I don't learn anything in my job. What can I do? Posted: 04 Jan 2018 07:17 PM PST I work for a government agency and we are co-developing a program that an Indian contractor is building for us and handing over to us. It uses terrible code that is hard to understand and follow, we can't communicate with the team in India who is working on this project because we have one PM that all of our concern and communication go through and he just sets up training sessions which are no help. The project doesn't follow any normal framework, and we can't even use normal HTML tags, everything is a custom tag they build in house. I can't use <input type="button" onclick="function()"; but instead use <FWBUTTON other="onclick=\"function();\"> We also have a hard time even finding work. I've check in one line of code in the past month and it was deleting a <hr> tag. The rest has been requesting documentation, returning invalid defects in JIRA, replying to comments with developers in India so it takes 24 hours to get a response, and trying to use the system we have in place. If I go to work on a defect, I have to try registering an account on it and I usually run into error messages which stop me in my tracks and I have to report it to someone and wait for something to happen. I feel like I am not learning ANYTHING that will be transferable to another job, I feel like I am wasting my time and not doing any good for the world, and I am extremely frustrated because I feel incompetent not getting anything done at work. I am 25 with 3 years doing desktop support and 1 year now doing this "Java Development". I have been looking at jobs and I have learned any of the skills they are asking for. We don't use agile, I haven't made any web services, I don't have any database experience because the framework has its own custom tool to save devs from having to use SQL, etc. I feel like I have no option but to start looking for entry level jobs at a private company, but I don't want to start a "fresh out of college" career at 25 when I just had a child. Do you guys have any suggestions? Have you been in a similar dead end job? Is this shit normal?? Please help, I'm having a breakdown due to how frustrated I am right now. [link] [comments]  |
| How to I work on code that is well over 10 years old and has next to no documentation? Posted: 04 Jan 2018 06:58 PM PST Hey everybody. This is really just a post for me to vent about my frustrations, but if anyone has advice that may actually help that would be amazing. I've been assigned to a project for about a month now to "repair and update" a program that a small number of our company's customers use. The source code for the program is horrendously outdated. To give you an idea of how outdated, I'll list some of the libraries it uses, and when those versions went out of date: Installshield 11.5 - End of lifecycle in 2009 WinDDK Windows Server 2003 - speaks for itself PDFLib 3 (I think) - PDFLib 4 was released in 2001 The documentation for those libraries, nowadays, is nearly nonexistent. The current versions are still going strong, and have plenty of documentation, but migrating a library across a 10 year divide to the newest version isn't particularly easy, I've found. What's worse, is some of the code for our program was written by a French company who we sometimes get contract work from, and a lot of the comments are in French (which I took in highschool, but come on). The documentation for our program is nowhere to be found, and some of the libraries aren't even vanilla. For example, we're building the PDFLib library from its source code (don't ask me why), and some of the code in the PDFLib source code has comments from one of the french developers, so I don't even know if the things I'm trying to update from PDFLib 3 to PDFLib 9 even existed in PDFLib 3 in the first place! I just wanted to vent about that. I've only been at the company for around 2 months now, and I mostly like the other things I'm working on. It's just this project from hell that's fucking with my confidence and making me think I'm incompetent even though I'm reasonably sure no normal person would be able to fix it. [link] [comments]  |
| Will it look really bad for my career if I never move to a more people-oriented role? Posted: 04 Jan 2018 06:57 PM PST And I don't mean like becoming a project manager or chairperson. I mean the roles from the programming/technical track that are more people-focused, like lead developer or CTO. At the programming jobs I've worked at, people just pass along bug fixes or feature requests for me to fix/implement. I work with others, but I rarely lead others or mentor them. And so far I feel fine with that. But I don't know if this is gonna be a stigma later on, unless I switch gears to do something more. I have few social skills. I'm not interested in office games. I don't like to "act" or beat around the bush at interviews. Networking with others is a hassle to me. I don't use social networks like Facebook and Twitter* cuz honestly my life is boring as fuck, not interested in making friends at work (I just have close friends outside of work). The only time I look for work is if I lose my current job. But I'd rather work in a more stable place, maybe more "enterprise-y". The work I currently do, I focus on it and do it very well. Not gonna lie, I don't take the initiative often. I like doing things with a "set and forget" mentality. And I want to keep doing it as long as I meet company expectations. I'm not really into networking or leading. Does anyone else have this feeling? Can I keep going like this in my career indefinitely? *I guess LinkedIn can be an exception to the social media rule. I do have a profile on LI for professional work info, and to apply to jobs I find from there. [link] [comments]  |
| What matters more? Professional experience or personal projects? Posted: 04 Jan 2018 06:56 PM PST I have a little of both but more of professional (such is the struggle of interning while in school) Would you say that 1-3 years professional experience would outweigh a few personal projects? Or if someone is looking for a position, should they build up their GitHub as well before applying? Legitimately not asking for me, just curious. [link] [comments]  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from CS Career Questions. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment