Resume Advice Thread - February 10, 2018 CS Career Questions |
- Resume Advice Thread - February 10, 2018
- Daily Chat Thread - February 10, 2018
- Does your company ever feel like a cult
- What can I do to create a project for my GitHub that follows professional standards and impresses employers?
- Tech company bathrooms
- Why is it that as you advance in your career, your work becomes less technical? Sounds counter intuitive but what do I know about the real world.
- Emerging industries in computer science
- I start my FIRST internship on Monday!
- I tried to quit. I couldn't? I need advice from someone other than myself on this
- Got my first internship what are good tips for the future?
- Does GPA matter in CS?
- IDE Dependence
- What are the pros and cons of doing a co-op during the school year?
- New Hires, How Stressful is Your Job?
- University making job-seeking seniors sign "ethical pledge" that seems to be more about not making the university look bad than anything ethics related.
- Need help figuring out a path forward
- What is a reputable website to get freelance work ?
- Masters computer science vs cybersecurity
- West Coast / East Coast couples
- I don't hate CS, but I don't love it either.
- What level of math should I study up to if I want to be very good at algorithms?
- How do I get a job at Intel?
- List of US Companies that hire off-term (fall/winter)?
- Rejecting a coding challenge?
- Front-End Developer working on Enterprise Cloud PaaS Software
- Is it worth renting a car to attend a Microsft recruiting event?
- Trouble Deciding Next Career Move, Currently Employed... Don't hate job, but stuck in technical purgatory
| Resume Advice Thread - February 10, 2018 Posted: 09 Feb 2018 11:07 PM PST Please use this thread to ask for resume advice and critiques. You should read our Resume FAQ and implement any changes from that before you ask for more advice. Abide by the rules, don't be a jerk. This thread is posted each Tuesday and Saturday at midnight PST. Previous Resume Advice Threads can be found here. [link] [comments]  |
| Daily Chat Thread - February 10, 2018 Posted: 09 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]  |
| Does your company ever feel like a cult Posted: 10 Feb 2018 12:14 PM PST Where people talk less about money and business and more about your company's "mission" [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Feb 2018 06:12 AM PST So I'm making an app and I really want to make it presentable as a piece of code on my GitHub. What things can I do to make it as impressive as possible for employers? I want to present it as if it was made in the work place. I'm assuming design patterns, evidence of project management etc? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Feb 2018 04:09 PM PST Honestly, at every place I worked at the men's room was always full, all stalls in use, compete with grunting and smell. Going to other floors didn't help. Anyone else experience anything like this??? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Feb 2018 10:37 AM PST I thought as someone advances in their career they become more specialized and would act as a knowledge resource. [link] [comments]  |
| Emerging industries in computer science Posted: 10 Feb 2018 07:00 PM PST What industries in computer science have the most potential to explode soon? Which industry would be a wise choice in terms of getting an entry level job? [link] [comments]  |
| I start my FIRST internship on Monday! Posted: 10 Feb 2018 06:57 PM PST What are some tips? My pay is quite low, $13/hr but it's my first internship as a 2nd year in CS so what can I say? ¯_(ツ)_/¯ [link] [comments]  |
| I tried to quit. I couldn't? I need advice from someone other than myself on this Posted: 10 Feb 2018 06:23 PM PST I have been working for 5 months at a startup in Montreal (Canada) winning in the range of 45k-55k CAD. Front-end developer. I have a bachelor's degree in CS from McGill university. On Tuesday, I handed in my resignation letter, but eventually it all lead to me staying. I have no plans, nor offers lineup, I am just completely fed up with things. I may or may not have roughly 50k CAD in savings from inheritance. Reasons for leaving:
Reasons for staying:
Things I worry about:
I doubt anybody is going to take me with 5 months experience at a startup. Should I try to stay for as long as possible? Look for positions while waiting for them to fire me? I just don't know what to do, or how to do it. I hope you can help. Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Got my first internship what are good tips for the future? Posted: 10 Feb 2018 06:32 AM PST I got my first internship in a company in FL the pay isn't anything special but it's more than any job I've ever had in Florida ($15). It seems I will be doing some type of product testing for the QA team by writing scripts that mimic a user interacting with the project. I've never worked in a office before so what are some great tips to set my self up for the future, especially for networking because I'm not sure if that means just talk to people or if networking is something different from that This internship seems like one that can last multiple semesters if I want (so like of like a part time job with very flexible hours) I'm wondering how long I should stay before the internship goes from internship to underpaid employee. I'm a student with a 2.81 gpa and with just one silly side project that helped me get this internship so I just want to make the most out of it for my future since I know that being sub 3.0 gpa makes it harder to get internships by just applying, and that I have to show up in other areas. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Feb 2018 06:47 PM PST I'm wondering if GPA correlates with how much you make in CS. GPA: Pay: [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Feb 2018 12:40 PM PST Throughout most of my education, I've done almost every assignment in an IDE. I've gotten lazy about certain things (I did forget the import for Hashtable, etc), but I understand all of it. The IDE truly allowed me to get a lot done, receive a good grade, and move on with my life. I've decided that I'm not interested in staying in my hometown and want to apply to more competitive programming positions in bigger cities. I feel comfortable with all of the data structures/brushing up on that stuff, but I'm having some difficulty getting the code to compile in one shot (write in vim -> paste in Leetcode). There's usually a syntax error somewhere (missed a capitalization on a method/class, dropped a semi-colon, etc.) I've been practicing, but it continually drives me up a wall. Any thoughts/recommendations/ideas? Do I just need to be more careful, or is this a 'attention to detail' matter that will reflect poorly on me? As a note, the companies I worked at previously asked me the standard 'what is polymorphism, describe the difference between left join/right join, etc.' The two other places never asked me to write flawless algorithms in one shot. [link] [comments]  |
| What are the pros and cons of doing a co-op during the school year? Posted: 10 Feb 2018 06:15 PM PST i'm at a school that doesn't have a mandatory co-op program so i've just been pursuing summer internships for experience so far. i managed to secure an internship for summer 2018 but was interested in doing a winter/spring co-op. it would be very helpful if someone could give their opinion on doing a co-op and help outline the pros and cons career wise. would doing a co-op let me negotiate for more $$$ as a new grad? how might my job search be impacted if I graduate in the winter instead of spring? would a winter co-op jeopardize my chances of getting a full time offer with my summer 2018 internship? Thanks for the responses! [link] [comments]  |
| New Hires, How Stressful is Your Job? Posted: 10 Feb 2018 12:12 AM PST I recently joined a Big 4-whatever straight out of college. While the role is somewhat of a dream job, it is exceptionally demanding (think most weeks being like finals week). I don't think a lot of thought on this sub goes into life after you get the offer, so I'm curious to hear how other's experiences joining the industry have been. Edit: Appreciate the responses here, and I think it's consistent with my experience (industry, org, and position along the critical path will drive demands). I was really intending to get at the fact that while incredibly cool to work at some of these places, you're getting paid to solve hard problems at the end of the day. For me at least, my focus was on getting an offer with only a vague sense for how that translates to day-to-day work. In hindsight, the grind actually began once I had the offer, and while I'm twice the engineer I was a year ago, in no way have I coasted through the role like sometimes gets portrayed here. I wouldn't discourage anyone from pursuing high profile companies for this reason, but think it's good to remember that the interview probably won't be the hardest part of the job. Also for those curious, the work is in Linux systems programming dealing with OS fundamentals and GCC configuration at fairly large scale. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Feb 2018 09:36 AM PST One of the statements in bold is like "I understand that it is unethical to continue accepting interviews after accepting an offer verbally or in writing and that I must immediately cease my job search upon accepting an offer. There are virtually no circumstances, with the exception of a personal or family tragedy that would legitimize reneging on an offer." So if a student accepts a low-ball offer from a relatively unknown company because thats all that was on their table at the time. But they get offered an interview from one of the Big Four that offer way more compensation a month later, they have some sort of ethical obligation to turn that down? What if that student decides they don't want to go into that type of development (front-end, really wanted to do back-end) or wants to attend graduate school instead? I think this clause is completely ridiculous and seems to be designed to manipulate impressionable students. A standing job offer isn't an indentured servitude situation, and that its alright to reneg if you give the previous employer reasonable notice. [link] [comments]  |
| Need help figuring out a path forward Posted: 10 Feb 2018 10:41 AM PST Hey everyone. Thanks in advance for reading this and for any insight you can offer. I'll try to keep this as concise as possible. Lack of some specifics for the sake of anonymity.
tl:dr I currently develop software using a unique language and IDE. I believe I have marketable skills and experience that would make me a good developer/software engineer, but I am 1) concerned those skills might not be as marketable/generalizable as I think and 2) I am lost as to exactly how to market them in a way that makes any sense. I can't ask anyone I currently work with because I don't want anyone to know I'm trying to move on from the company.
Goals I want to find a job as a software developer/software engineer.
Background I'm a mechanical engineer by education, however my undergrad internship was at a software startup. The product's end users are mechanical engineers, hence the relevance to my educational background (the internship was in QA). It lasted 3 months, after which I moved into a full time position as an implementation engineer deploying the product to customers. I spent roughly 6 years working my way up to a senior position in that role before moving laterally to an internal product development role. I've spent roughly 4.5 years in this role where I now manage a team of developers and report to the CTO. I'm glossing over a ton here. What I'll note is that while the processes differ between the implementation and internal dev roles, the technical specifics as they relate to my skill set are more or less a constant.
More Technical Detail... I feel like in order for you to have context, I've got to give some more detail. So, a bit about the product I work on. 50,000 ft view:
The pre-processor, along with the rest of the application, is written in Java. What I'm referring to here as the primary algorithms applied to the data produced by the pre-processor are written in a proprietary language within a homegrown IDE. At execution time these algorithms are run through an interpreter which is written in Java.
The language itself can be described as a declarative, dynamically-typed scripting language (though some aspects might be considered weakly-typed...). There are some SQL-esque conventions. It supports Java regex, and there is some ability to call Java methods directly. The IDE shamelessly imitates Eclipse and includes a debugger, code profiler, call stacks, breakpoints, dynamic expression evaluation, etc. The algos themselves include data structure creation/manipulation, tree traversal, inheritance, and other stuff you'd find in your average moderately-complex program. The overall system, however, is staggeringly complex. To understand why a proprietary language was chosen at all rather than using something like Python/Javascript/etc., you'd have to ask the company founders.
The dev team I work in employs Agile. My small team of developers is part of a slightly larger Scrum team. We conduct 2-week sprints, hold daily stand-ups, interface with key stake holders, etc. I lead cross-functional team meetings. I write functional specs for/collaborate with the Java developers writing the code for the pre-processing algorithms to ensure my algos receive the expected data in the expected format.
I use SVN and Jira. I do code walk-throughs. I branch. I merge. I do performance optimization.
My Questions
PS - I have an intermediate level of proficiency with Java, but it's the only general language that I'm familiar with at this point. I'm actually currently enrolled part-time at my local university in a class on Java. I'm 2 weeks in and I realize that I could probably take the final exam and pass. [link] [comments]  |
| What is a reputable website to get freelance work ? Posted: 10 Feb 2018 09:50 AM PST |
| Masters computer science vs cybersecurity Posted: 10 Feb 2018 12:04 PM PST I am looking at the omcs program at Georgia tech with a specialization in computing systems would that be a better fit than a masters in cybersecurity if I were to ever want to get into security? [link] [comments]  |
| West Coast / East Coast couples Posted: 10 Feb 2018 08:22 AM PST About a month ago my girlfriend moved to NYC to pursue a top opportunity in her field. I'm working at a unicorn in SF but my dream has always been to work for a Big 4. The unicorn I work at does have an office in NYC but it would require finding a new team which I'm OK with but would take a lot of push on my part. I have spent the past month applying for the Big 4 without getting any offers. I'm finding the distance difficult and miss her a lot. Most of those companies allow me to apply again in a month. Should I try another round of interviews next month or should I focus on pushing for the location change internally? I've been working in my current role for 4 years now and am looking for a change, but was hoping to secure a new offer before moving. Has anyone been in a similar situation? What is/was your plan? [link] [comments]  |
| I don't hate CS, but I don't love it either. Posted: 10 Feb 2018 02:08 PM PST Hi everyone, I am a current freshman in my second semester, and I am majoring in CS. I had no coding experience prior to college, and last semester I took an intro course. I liked the intro course, and did really well in it. However, now I'm taking Data Structures and Algorithms, as well as the next CS course, which is more of a hardware class using an Arduino.
I'm realizing that I liked the intro class because there were lots of little puzzles that you had to code your way out of, and it was fun. But now my two CS classes seem kind of overwhelming and I am struggling to keep up. Data Structures and Algorithms, and all the proofs that we have learned so far, are not making much sense to me, and I am not really enjoying the other CS class.
I talked to my cousin and he said that the hardware-oriented class is just one that you have to bear through, and you dont have to know that stuff later, which was reassuring. But I am not like many people both on Reddit and my CS classes who have a passion for coding, spend their time on side projects, and love it. I don't hate it, but its more just...I don't know, just something I do for class.
I'm just kind of confused if I should stick it out or switch. Problem is I have no idea what I would switch into. I'm taking an intro to accounting class which is nice, so I guess that's what I would switch into, but then again I may find out that the rest of accounting is not like the intro class.
Do you guys have any advice? Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| What level of math should I study up to if I want to be very good at algorithms? Posted: 10 Feb 2018 05:42 AM PST I'm doing the first year of a computer science degree, currently at community college but transferring to a 4-year institution. I often hear that data structures & algorithms are the most important thing you learn as an undergrad, so I want to do my best. My target college has two computer science majors, "Computer Science" and "Mathematics & Computer Science." The core CS classes and discrete math requirements are the same for both majors, but the first major only goes up to Calculus 2 and then has you to take electives in a variety of miscellaneous CS topics like mobile development, web development, computer graphics, data science, user experience design, digital forensics, and so on. It also requires a technical writing class which has a long waitlist. The second major replaces those electives with math courses, and has you go up to Real & Complex Analysis. My goal is to be able to do the hardest level of interviews for recent grads, which I assume would be Google/Facebook level. As of now I haven't ever taken a data structures & algorithms courses, so I don't know what to expect. I've heard that linear algebra is necessary for harder algorithms, so that makes me lean toward the math-heavy degree. But to be honest, I don't know what to anticipate, as I'm just a first-year student. So, how high should my math level be if I want to, say, do lots hard-level problems on Leetcode? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Feb 2018 01:52 PM PST Hi, I'm a freshman CS major at a small state school and I've always wanted to get a job at Intel. What should I be doing now to stand out in the future for applications/interviews? Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| List of US Companies that hire off-term (fall/winter)? Posted: 10 Feb 2018 07:48 PM PST |
| Posted: 10 Feb 2018 07:45 PM PST Recently I've received a coding challenge for an internship. They want me to build a single screen app to display a 10 day weather forecast. To be honest, I feel that this challenge is too difficult for me. I have never built an app in my life, and I have no idea how to use the API to get a forecast. I am hesitant to spend time on this because I am very busy with school... Would it be bad to just send an email to the recruiter saying that I am unable to complete the challenge at this time? Or should I sacrifice my schoolwork and just try it? [link] [comments]  |
| Front-End Developer working on Enterprise Cloud PaaS Software Posted: 10 Feb 2018 07:39 PM PST Will working as a Front-End Developer on an Enterprise Cloud PaaS Software Team pigeonhole me into only Cloud-based teams in the future? The technologies that I will be using are JavaScript (React), Node.js, HTML5, CSS, TDD + Kubernetes/Helm. Will the additional Kubernetes/Helm exposure be beneficial or a hindrance for as future-proof of a first job as possible? [link] [comments]  |
| Is it worth renting a car to attend a Microsft recruiting event? Posted: 10 Feb 2018 07:12 PM PST I got an email about a recruiting event for Microsft. I would either have to rent a car to go there which could be difficult since I might not be able to find parking later near my apartment. Otherwise I could take a bus there and Uber back. I estimate it will cost me between $30-$50 to attend. I've talked to others and they told me they never went to recruiting events they just applied on the website. But when I applied on the website no one ever contacted me. Is it productive to attend recruiting events? I attended ones for other companies before and nothing ever came of it so I don't want to waste my money renting a car or taking an Uber to go. Another factor is currently I live in Seattle but want to move to the San Francisco Bay area. Would it be a waste of time to attend events for companies in Seattle? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Feb 2018 10:24 AM PST Throwaway account... probably not necessary, but doing it anyways. Sorry if this gets a bit long. I am in the midst of a career choice which I really am having trouble making up my mind about. I am presently working as an Mid-to-Senior Level Applications Developer earning slightly under $100K salary plus benefits in the mid-west. I have had a little bit of a struggle over the past 3 or 4 years with a 6 month stint (layoff) and a couple of ~1 year jobs due (one due to leaving for the job which I ended up being laid-off at and the other due to a change in ownership), but have not really struggled to find work. I have worked in my current position for over a year. I enjoy my coworkers and the management in my department is very flexible when it comes to flex-hours and needing time off to handle pretty much anything. They are very patient, almost to the point of there not being enough pressure, and are more than willing to let us explore new ways, when possible, to complete our tasks. The team is small with a total of 10 or so people in IT, half of which are developers. There is some development which is outsourced as it is legacy and we devs would not consider it (Java) one of our primary languages as we are mostly a .NET house.
I presently focus on automating engineering software as I have a background in engineering and product design. Think of someone who handles software which allows users to enter certain parameters and produces a complete set of 2D/3D models and drawings.
My biggest complaint is that the company (read upper management) has a terrible habit of stringing employees along when it comes time to implement new initiatives. This has led to a culture of many things being band-aided together which creates a large amount of technical debt and inefficient processes. For example, there is a large project we were supposed to be dumping many resources into a few months after I started, but we are now looking at it starting the 3rd quarter of this year, if not later... almost 2 years since I came on board. I feel as though my company has a history of making poor decisions and doing what it can to continue to milk the cash cow for as long as possible without investing in upgraded tech. We have a relatively small IT budget and it shows. We operate loosely on Agile principals, but lack the manpower to truly implement most of the suggested industry best practices. There is almost no peer review and most of my testing ends up being performed by a select group of end users (I do very much enjoy the majority of my end-users, but believe the director of their department is leading them in the wrong direction).
What this has meant for me is that I have been stuck in what I would consider technical purgatory. I have spent the vast majority of my time in a spaghetti-code hell written in VBA by a poor programmer over many (15+) years (think 0 code reuse... almost nothing broken out into functions or shared libraries). The lack of foresight and defensive coding has also turned much of my time into handling tickets for random edge-case bugs which should have been considered during the initial development time.
I am a .NET developer and have been able to implement some newer technologies such as creating web applications running in the cloud providing APIs to both VBA and other C# applications. I have made many improvements and added features to the VBA codebase, but at its core it is still terrible. I'm sure if you have read this far you would start thinking... 'well, why not go forward with rewriting this terrible code base'... the problem with that thought is the fact that there is another large, looming project, with a continually moving target date which would render almost all of the legacy code base obsolete.
Now, enter the struggle: I have recently been reached out to by a well-established organization who is looking to build up a team from scratch. There have been upper management changes within this organization which has truly helped streamline their focus. The person heading up this team is well-respected. I have had friends work for/with this person in the past and have had nothing but great things to say. The job is remote (I presently work ~25 minutes away) and would not really require much time spent traveling to their main office. The pay and benefits would end up being similar to what I am earning now (~95-100K plus full benefits, if not slightly higher). The company has an existing, successful product which would now be considered legacy, but have spent a substantial amount of effort planning the development, re-architecture, and release of their new product. Practically no code will be used from the existing product. They are very focused on creating a highly flexible system which will not carry over technical debt from the legacy product. The tech stack chosen to develop the new product aligns perfectly with what I would consider to be my primary focus (.NET Core web applications). Many of the industry best practices are being utilized within this team such as Test-Driven-Development along with a Fail-Quick-Pivot-Quick mentality (legacy product has many features which are rarely used due to lack of communication with customer).
In my mind, from a technological and career advancing standpoint, the new opportunity would likely provide much more potential as I would be focused in working within the latest technology underneath a proven leader while implementing many of the industry best practices. My biggest hold up comes from the fact that it is obviously a risk changing jobs. I am concerned that I am going to ruin an opportunity to 'clean up' the last few years of my resume and fix the couple of hiccups I have had with 3 jobs over 3 years. I feel as though I could put in good work and somewhat 'coast' along in my current position for many, many years and I may or may not get to a point where I am truly working in a modern tech stack and implementing best practices. It is difficult to really even think about leaving my current team due to how flexible they have been with me and the high level of support they have provided. On the flip-side, I am stuck in legacy code purgatory and am not truly confident the organization will be taking the steps needed to pull me out of it. Words have been spoken, but not necessarily followed through with by the organization. Another thing to note, the city I live in has significant demand for .NET developers and many companies are struggling to fill these roles. What is your taken on this situation? Do you have any suggestions as to how you would go about making the decision?
TLDR: Enjoy team at current job. Role is somewhat specialized as I have an engineering background and work with automating engineering software. Direct management is flexible and understanding. Not many development best practices implemented within IT group. Dot-NET developer stuck in legacy-code hell (VBA) written by a poor programmer. Upper management keeps changing target dates for initiatives which have the potential to eliminate need for legacy code. Could probably coast and work here for many years, but concerned my career-growth will be stagnant. Have opportunity to join a team and work remotely with a known leader who is implementing best practices within a fresh code base. Would be working with latest tech in my stack. Salary and benefits are similar. Not a done deal, but thus far seems there is a high probability of making it happen. Struggling to make a decision. [link] [comments]  |
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