Big 4 Discussion - February 21, 2018 CS Career Questions |
- Big 4 Discussion - February 21, 2018
- Daily Chat Thread - February 21, 2018
- PSA: When doing a white-board problem, verbalise your thought process before writing code.
- I do basically nothing at my entry level job. Almost no training provided. What should I do/How do I deal with this?
- Do I need to get a PhD in order to get a job in Machine Learning? If not, how best do I go about getting one?
- Computer Science Jobs that Involve a lot of Travel
- Success Story. Thanks to this great community for making my dream come true.
- Changing careers.
- HomeAway employees?
- Why are tech wages so much lower in Canada than in the US?
- Declining an Offer I Already Accepted for a Position I Really Want.
- Conversation with my dad last night
- Best demand/supply ratio skill for CS?
- Why is this sub so anti grad school?
- Reddit Internship for Engineers?
- How to learn the last 10 percent?
- Why does everything I want to do require a PhD?
- Does University matter for Computer Science
- Fidelity Leap tracks
- What apps do you use for communication in a professional setting?
- I want to switch jobs but am afraid of not finding a job / disappointing people.
- Being confident about job prospects with a math degree and not looking back
- Are specialized publications hurting my job hunting?
- What does good documentation look like and how does it handle revisions?
- Am I punching above my weight with these Kaggle challenges?
- I need a career advice for Security Software Developer
| Big 4 Discussion - February 21, 2018 Posted: 20 Feb 2018 11:07 PM PST Please use this thread to have discussions about the Big 4 and questions related to the Big 4, such as which one offers the best doggy benefits, or how many companies are in the Big 4 really? Posts focusing solely on Big 4 created outside of this thread will probably be removed. Abide by the rules, don't be a jerk. This thread is posted each Sunday and Wednesday at midnight PST. Previous Big 4 Discussion threads can be found here. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Daily Chat Thread - February 21, 2018 Posted: 20 Feb 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]  | ||||||||||||||||
| PSA: When doing a white-board problem, verbalise your thought process before writing code. Posted: 21 Feb 2018 11:52 AM PST Had an interview today, and as part of it I got a white-board problem. I verbalised my thought process about how I was planning to solve it, and the interviewer just said "You nailed it", and moved on to the next question. All I had written on the white-board was a function declaration. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 21 Feb 2018 07:33 AM PST I am halfway through my fourth week at my first job. My title is Support Analyst. I work in the customer service department of a decent sized software company.
I hardly do anything all day. My manager went on vacation for 3 weeks right when I started. My 'mentor' that I was 'assigned' that was supposed to help me/show me the ropes got a promotion a few days after I started and changed teams. I had 1 week of 'functional' training. Which was basically just teaching me how to use the software that I'm supposed to support (it's designed to teach clients how to use the software). So it was fairly trivial.
My days consist of asking the guy left in charge of my team if he has any work for me or anything he can teach me. So he asks around other teams for anything I can do. Usually he will come back after an hour or two with a menial task, that he has to show me how to do anyways, and honestly can be done in an hour or less. And that's pretty much it. I review what small task I've done, go through all the steps multiple times to make sure I know how to do it. And then I don't do anything for the rest of the day.
The first week was onboarding, basic stuff, and a couple of meetings. Second week was functional training all week, which doesn't help too much because I am technical. And last week and this week I have just been doing small tasks and nothing the rest of the day. Also my company offers these online training modules, that have pretty much nothing to do with my job, stuff like info on their products and anti harassment training, but I finished all of them last week.
My manager comes back next week so maybe things will change then but I sincerely doubt it since she had nothing for me to do before she left. I am not sure what else I am supposed to be doing. I am here and willing to learn and work, but it doesn't seem like anyone here is willing to teach/help me.
This is my first job out of college so I am not quite sure what to expect. I can't really look for another job because I literally just started, I have student loans/car payments/etc and am flat broke, the pay is actually pretty damn good for an entry level I believe, and most of all I had a horrible gpa and no internships so I was just happy to land this job.
I try to ask people around me to get help but 95% of the people who work in this department of 200+ people are visa workers from a particular country so they aren't entirely too helpful. I've been told recently that my company has a reputation for being a 'bodyshop'. Which apparently means they care more about billable hours than training/creating quality employees, which I'm coming to realize is completely true based on my experience and the number of outsourced/visa employees.
TL;DR I started my entry level job 4 weeks ago, I've received basically no training, and I do basically nothing all day.
Does anyone have any experience with this? Or any advice on what I should do? I have to stick it out because I need the money and 'experience', but I'm not sure how to make it bearable. Thanks all. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 21 Feb 2018 12:13 PM PST Some background on me, I'm currently a master's student in computer science. I got my bachelor's in applied math, and decided that I wanted to switch gears and do computer science because it seemed much more practical and interesting to me. I've become very interested in Machine Learning, both because of its exciting possibilities and because I feel that I am well suited for the field, given my background in math. Is it mandatory to get a PhD in ML in order to get a career in it? A PhD seems like a huge time commitment, and I'm starting to get a little burned out on school and would like to work in industry if possible. If a PhD is not necessary, how should I best spend the rest of my time until I complete my masters in order to get a career in ML? I'm taking pretty much every ML class I can get my hands on in grad school, and I also recently started working ~15 hr/week at a small company where I'll be doing webdev/mobile development work for them. They've hinted that they might offer me a summer internship if I do well, which would be great as I have pretty much no work experience on my resume. However, between my classes and this place I have basically no time to work on personal projects, research opportunities, or interview prep. TL;DR What should I, a masters CS student, prioritize in order to get a job in AI/Machine Learning?
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| Computer Science Jobs that Involve a lot of Travel Posted: 21 Feb 2018 02:56 PM PST I am a junior computer science student. I have had a couple developer jobs recently. I really want to find a job that involves a lot of international travel where I am always going somewhere new. My goal is to be in an office as little as possible. However, I have no clue what kind of jobs would let me do this. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Success Story. Thanks to this great community for making my dream come true. Posted: 21 Feb 2018 12:50 AM PST Hi cscq, I finally got an offer from a Big 4 (MS). I have a 2.8 years experience in fintech. Was looking for a job change for past year. Interviewed only with Amazon, Goldman and MS. I know Big 4 isn't the end of world, but i wanted to prove it to myself that i can do it. And i did. Posting this to let people who are trying to change job know that you too can do it with smart approach, lot of hard work and little luck. My approach was really simple.
That's it. So if you are looking for a job change, my advice is to start simple and do easy questions. Don't try to do multiple things at once. Keep track of your mistakes , fix them, try the same problem after 2-3 days. Try to solve it on paper and make sure you always cover all test cases. Then submit it to OJ. Thanks to all of you for contributing to this great community. I thought I'd try to help a little too. Questions are welcomed . Edit 1 - added the link for Github repo. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 21 Feb 2018 12:30 PM PST So I've been doing this a few years. I used to like software development but the last year or so I just hate it. It culminated when I started looking for a new job and found myself disinterested in every job posting I found. I turned down interviews after realizing I wouldn't be happy st any of those jobs. I really fucking hate this career. Anyone here successfully change careers(or know someone who did). I just need to know that someone out there had done it. I don't even fucking care if the pay is less I'm just so fucking tired of this. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 21 Feb 2018 03:34 PM PST Does anyone here work at HomeAway and are willing to answer a few questions? It's a decent size company but I can't find much on the webs about specific things. Here's some questions I have:
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| Why are tech wages so much lower in Canada than in the US? Posted: 21 Feb 2018 08:24 PM PST From Vancouver's pitch to Amazon:
This just seems so drastic for two countries that are so culturally, economically, and politically similar. What gives? [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Declining an Offer I Already Accepted for a Position I Really Want. Posted: 21 Feb 2018 10:38 AM PST I was made an offer to join a company and I accepted it. The position requires a relocation and was really a last ditch effort. Shortly after I accepted that offer, I was contacted by a different company for a position I really want. I have already passed the technical interview for the position I want and have been invited for the second round of interviews. I am wondering how to best handle this situation. Do I just tell my recruiter I was working with when I accepted the offer that I am no longer interested? [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Conversation with my dad last night Posted: 21 Feb 2018 06:44 PM PST Me: hey dad, I'm working at big mega tech Corp but I've been here 8 years already but I'm thinking of leaving. Mine is in finance and I got a job offer in e-commerce. One problem is it pays less in the first 2 years. Dad: well, lower pay is bad but you'll be able to get experience in a new field. So you'd be shoe-in for another tech job in e-commerce if that's what you want Me: Sadly no. Over the last 8 years or seems like performance on "leetcode" style questions matters, not domain experience, so that's not going to help Dad: that's a shame. Back in my day we needed people with domain experience. Computing time was so precious and mistakes so expensive we put a premium on that. Well, you said there is a new technology you haven't used, nosql and nodejs. Once you learn that you'll be able to get the next great job in that technology right? Me: that will help me in my job, but not the interview, those questions I talked about earlier don't use nodejs or nosql Dad: so if domain and technical experience both are not assessed, then what separates you from a developer straight out of school? Me: I don't know. They seem to do better on these tests which they have been studying for so much. I had to do this as well, but 15 years ago in school Dad: so why leave any job at all except for the money? Me: I don't know —————- And scene. Thanks for reading my little rant [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Best demand/supply ratio skill for CS? Posted: 21 Feb 2018 04:14 PM PST I see the biggest demand for CS right now is web dev, but it also has the biggest pool of candidates, what would be best skill/language to learn in terms of demand vs supply ratio? i.e. if you were to choose a career path to land a job faster. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Why is this sub so anti grad school? Posted: 21 Feb 2018 09:06 AM PST Wouldn't it help me a lot to go from a no-name school to a prestigious 2 years MSc at somewhere like MIT or CMU? Some could say 2 years is a lot, but don't we have our whole lives ahead of us? No rush... right? [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Reddit Internship for Engineers? Posted: 21 Feb 2018 06:12 PM PST I've applied for RIFE this year but got no feedback (will try again next year). But for those who already worked at Reddit, how is the culture and how did the process look like for you? [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| How to learn the last 10 percent? Posted: 21 Feb 2018 06:02 AM PST In my experience with interviews, 90 percent of the questions are data structures / algorithms related. There are plenty of resources for preparing data structures / algorithms all over the web. My question is, as someone who has a quantitative but not CS background, what are some sources / strategies to learn the other 10 percent of non-algorithms content? I really have no idea about where to start when it comes to topics involving OS, networking, distributed systems, threads, http and database optimization. I know that, unless the position calls for it, you won't be asked a very deep question on topics like OS or networking. For a general software engineering position, which of these topics is most important (please include any important topics if I missed any) and what are the important things to learn from these topics? [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Why does everything I want to do require a PhD? Posted: 21 Feb 2018 08:16 PM PST I am a CS student graduating with a bachelors soon and shopping for a full time position. Every area I have found interesting in internships:
seem to require a PhD to work on full time. All of my coworkers in all of these areas on internships have had PhDs. I know one person on a team a few years ago that only had a masters, but they were hired to implement their masters thesis so idk how tf to compete with that shit. Surely there exist some pockets of industry working in these areas that a normal person without a PhD or high citation ratio can exist and solve problems in? Where are they? How do I find them? Plz help [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Does University matter for Computer Science Posted: 21 Feb 2018 02:06 PM PST I am currently studying Computer Science at the University of Guelph in Canada. I am concerned however, the school is not known as being the best school in the area for Computer Science (Especially with Waterloo and Toronto around). Would I have a harder time finding a great job than the students going to these particular schools. Should I think about transferring to one of these schools in the next year? [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 21 Feb 2018 03:52 PM PST Does anyone have experience interviewing for Fidelity's Leap program? Looking for information on all the different tracks. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| What apps do you use for communication in a professional setting? Posted: 21 Feb 2018 07:35 PM PST I'm in my senior year and me and my team have been using slack alot, and I love it, but if there is another app that is used more frequently in a professional setting I would prefer to get some experience with it now. What are you guys using at work? This includes internships. Thank you. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| I want to switch jobs but am afraid of not finding a job / disappointing people. Posted: 21 Feb 2018 03:46 PM PST I've worked for a Seattle genetics startup since college graduation. It's been almost a year. I am not enjoying the job/startup structure anymore and it is a very toxic job. Underpaid. I want to work for a bigger more established company that can give me better mentoring / require code reviews. Nevertheless, I am very worried I won't find a decent job. How long does it take to usually find a job? My family and girlfriend always brag about what I do to people ( help save the world) and I feel like if I quit they will be disappointed in me. And that my cs friends will judge me for leaving before a year. Any advice is very appreciated. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Being confident about job prospects with a math degree and not looking back Posted: 21 Feb 2018 03:45 PM PST Hi, This is rant-ish but I see a lot of other people doing that here and listeners give insightful answers so worth a shot. I am a math grad student and I am leaving with an applied math masters in May from an average tier but big university. I did undergrad at a small liberal art school with good regional rankings but not so famous. I started off as a CS major but didn't like 'love' it. Math on the other hand was my favorite. Calc 1,2, and 3 that I had to take for my CS classes in freshman year made me feel like a hero. I used to prompt answers in class, tutor for those classes while taking those classes. CS just annoyed me with all those compile errors. I decided to double major in math and CS, but as the semesters went by CS just became uninteresting and math felt more intellectually stimulating. My math grade row was all As and Bs while my CS grades were Cs and Bs. I felt unmotivated when we were doing assembly language coding. Theoretical CS and discrete math was fun tho(any CS that had to be done on paper and not on compiler). By senior year CS just gave me depression. I was 9 credits and a capstone away from finishing the CS major when I just decided to not do it and apply to math grad school instead. At the time it felt like the right decision since CS just gave me depression and the classes I had left to take were all taught by this one professor that everyone hated who had bad teaching style and even people who loved CS and aced all classes got Cs in his class( eventually he got fired). I came to grad school but didn't really like it. It felt as if the math that I was studying(ODE, Real Analysis, Topology) was too hard and had no real applications besides teaching and maybe govt jobs(that I am not eligible for since I'm international). Grad level linear algebra and probability are the only classes that I have taken that I feel(or have been told) will be 'useful' to me if I do a dual math/cs career. The only other path that was shown to me was financial math but I took math of financial derivatives and found it boring. I thought of actuarial science for a little bit but after spending a summer teaching CS for a summer internship, refreshing CS on my own, speaking to software engineers working the Bay Area, CS just started to seem interesting and fun. I came back to grad school and took a software engg class with undergrads over here and loved it. We made a web app, did scrum and agile stuff. I started hating all the hard math assignments and starting coding all the time. Now I grind leetcode 'for fun', reading DS&A, CTCI/EPI hoping to come back to a career in CS. I am getting some interviews but none in the Bay. I feel not finishing that major has set me back and I just can't shake this feeling. I mean, at the time CS was just depressing but I guess after studying hard graduate level math that has no real employment ops made CS feel easy? I don't know what changed in me but I just can't shake this regretful feeling of not pursuing BS-CS or MS-CS. How do I just let go? I try to tell myself that nothing bad has happened as I still have a STEM degree after all. I have a couple interviews lined up for a software dev position at a couple banks in 3 weeks. None of them are my dream jobs(I still dream of the Bay) but I should be grateful and work towards acing them and then work my way up but I just can't. I keep regretting going to school for math for another two years, TAing undergrads some intro level math instead of doing something that enhanced by job prospects in todays tech world. I am taking some online data science and machine learning courses these days on coursera and udemy as I only have one class left to take for my degree but that makes me feel even more wasteful towards my schoolwork. Like how these courses feel more useful than all that time and hard work spent doing real analysis homework. Part of me thought of trying to get admission at a top tier CS(machine learning) PhD program after a year of working as a software dev to assuage my guilt of making bad career moves but that's a far fetched thing. I want to find a way to be happy and content with myself and my life choices right now and peacefully finish my degree and go through these interviews. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Are specialized publications hurting my job hunting? Posted: 21 Feb 2018 03:40 PM PST I am a year out of college, I worked at a startup for a year. But I am ready to move onto a more structured job. I have 2 journal publications in bioinformatics from college. I list them on my resume. But I am worried that putting them on my resume will hurt my chances. "He worked in a field not relevant to us." Or "He did this type of research, so he doesn't fit here" Type of thing. I include them more along the lines of trying to show my accomplishments. Should I include them? [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| What does good documentation look like and how does it handle revisions? Posted: 21 Feb 2018 07:04 PM PST I'm new to the industry and the only formal exposure I've had to agile development/ the software development life cycle is what I learned through my senior project course. My basic understanding for the flow of a project is you get the requirements that are numbered, detailed, and measurable. Then from that you create a design and a spec on how to implement those requirements. Then you make a test case document and verify that your spec and requirements match. Is this practical in the real world if your project is continuously being revised or how does the process handle changes once you see implementations turn out different than what you envisioned? Is it more nuanced than that or does that pretty much cover everything? I started working at a new company with a very small team and we don't do any documentation. The higher ups know the projects and have some documentation but it's more so overall scope of the projects and it's only passed down to us the developers through word of mouth. We more or less get told what to work on each week and get revisions at the end of the week. All of the requirements, design, and ideas are all just spoken out loud and theres no formal process for writing anything down. I feel like this is a recipe for disaster but me being the new guy with less than a year experience am not in a position to tell others how things should be done. So far our process works but I only think thats because we are a small team and can get away with it. Our projects aren't that large seeing as each one only has 1 developer dedicated to each one. I'm interested to know what the process looks like for other companies and larger teams so that I can maybe bring up my concerns in future meetings and I can know how things are done at other companies. I'm concerned for the longevity of my career at this company and the experiences I'm missing out on. If things don't change, I can see this being a big reason for me wanting to leave once I've gained some more experience considering this is my first job. If anyone has any good resources on how complex/big projects and teams are organized I'd live to read and learn more about it. Thanks. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| Am I punching above my weight with these Kaggle challenges? Posted: 21 Feb 2018 01:03 PM PST So I'm trying to transition into the data science field. I took a 3-month data science boot camp in late 2016, and on top of that, I've taken some online courses on machine learning. Specifically, I went through Stanford's CS231n (Computer Vision) and CS224n (Natural Language Processing) that they posted online. For those of you who don't know, Stanford's CS department basically posted all the lecture notes, assignments, and lecture videos for those two courses online so that regular people (even non-Stanford students) could go through them. Admittedly, I already knew a lot of the material they posted, and it seemed like much of those courses were sort of a cursory look at what modern day researchers in those fields are doing. I decided to try my hand at this Kaggle challenge. Specifically, it's an image segmentation challenge, and image segmentation is one of the topics CS231n touched on. I tried my hand at it and wasn't really able to get above the 10th percentile of submissions. I tried to look at what some other people were doing and I was shocked. I mean, these people were writing thousands of lines of code and writing incredibly complex models. It seemed like they really knew what they were doing and had a purpose to doing it. They seemed like actual CV researchers. Me, on the other hand? I was kind of just blindly fumbling around. I mean, my model was, like...50 lines of code total and pretty rudimentary. So I'm wondering if I'm kind of out of my depth here with some of these Kaggle challenges. Are they just meant for people with more knowledge of these topics? Are they meant for actual researchers and CV scientists, as opposed to people who just went through some courses online? Or am I just going about this challenge all wrong? [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||
| I need a career advice for Security Software Developer Posted: 21 Feb 2018 01:02 PM PST What career advice can you people give me about this position? How do I start? How is like working as a Security Software Developer? (currently I'am taking computer science courses) [link] [comments]  |
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