Resume Advice Thread - March 24, 2018 CS Career Questions |
- Resume Advice Thread - March 24, 2018
- Daily Chat Thread - March 24, 2018
- My PM made an error and dumped the blame on me, and my boss blasted me for it. What is going on here?
- One week into my internship at a small startup, just got another offer from a company I'd love to work for. Should I leave?
- Senior devs: Will you answer code challenge-type questions for a company before you ever get on the phone?
- Feeling comfortable at work
- Have you ever seen a workplace seriously improve its environment or culture?
- Mixed Feelings about First Job
- Which internship would benefit me more?
- My first developer job is remote. How do I adapt and get the most out of it?
- Prestigious university not known for CS for undergrad?
- List of companies giving out homework?
- First internship, should I quit?
- Non-solicitation agreement for an intern
- Whats the Difference between Computer Science and Data Science
- Should I wait until I have a freecodecamp.org certificate to apply for front end web dev internships?
- What are the most marketable skills/technologies for a new junior dev right now?
- Whats software engineering exactly because I'm getting mixed signals here.
- Start at a big company or a start-up after a front-end boot camp?
- Successful folks - what does your leetcode grind look like?
- Should I delay responding to a recruiter in order to get more prep time?
- Is a CS Minor enough?
- What are your work hours?
- I will be working after Masters (with previous work exp). New Grad vs Senior roles
- Offered the opportunity to "design my own job requirements" as a sales engineer. Good idea?
- Non-CS Major applying to CS jobs, feeling discouraged, want advice on which actions to take now
| Resume Advice Thread - March 24, 2018 Posted: 24 Mar 2018 12:07 AM PDT 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 - March 24, 2018 Posted: 24 Mar 2018 12:07 AM PDT 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]  |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2018 06:43 AM PDT I'm the technical lead on my company. The company is not big but we have a couple of PMs, team leaders, devs, etc. A few month ago we got the chance to re-write 20 apps using front end tech (instead of PHP, .net, etc). The official directive was that only Javascript, html and css could be used. Job was done using open source libraries (jquery, jquery ui, uri.js, etc), and everyone was happy. Two weeks ago a similar job came up (single app) and my PM asked me if it was feasible. It was feasible, and a third-party library with a license was required to do it. I told her this and the ball pass on to her. Before contacting the client and telling him a license was required, she pass this by our boss and he blasted her because "we are not supposed to deploy code not written by us without the client's authorization, and if there's a license involved, things are even worse". She said to him: "I was going to contact the client because coding_rex told me this could be done", offloading the blame onto me. My boss was furious and, during a company meeting with all the devs, he blasted me in front of everyone. He told me the same thing he told her. I tried in vain to explain that "we had already done things like this and that I thought it was implicitly ok to do so, especially since a) it is common practice to use third-party libraries, and b) I thought we were authorized by the client to do so, given we are thr only ones authorized to do dev on their platform". It served no purpose. He had an objective that evening: telling me that covering our asses was more important than anything else, and the client IT had to approve everything. Things are calm now, and I told him again in private why I did what I did and he said everything was ok, but the situation still bothers me. He also said that what happened wasn't my fault, and he will deal with the PM later, but that doesn't change what he pulled in front of EVERYONE. He trusted my PM inspite the fact she keeps making mistakes and decided to take this out on me in front of everyone while all I did was try to help and used the same guidelines we had been following until that moment. My boss was involved first-hand when we converted those 20 apps a few months ago, and HE SAID NOTHING BACK THEN. Now, all of a sudden, this stuff is a problem... I'm constantly under the impression that I'm expected to perform well and go the extra mile but I also get treated like this. He sure as hell didn't have any problem with my approach when I magically found a way to pull the 20-apps job in 50% of the time making him earn thousands of dollars... From now on, my PM will get everything in writing and she better do the same, and I sure as hell won't do anything extra to help her out on her job. But why do you think my boss did this to me? edit: the client is the biggest we have and accounts for 80% of all our income. In private, my boss told me that "my job is not to act as PM, but only tech lead". I explained one more time that all I did was give advice on the tech and it's not my fault if my PM decided to take it directly to the client. In other words, it's ok when I do my job plus extra if things turn ok, but if things turn bad, then hey, "I overstepped". Is this normal? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2018 05:17 PM PDT I feel guilty leaving one week in since the team/manager has been really nice, but I think I have to do what's best for myself. The offer is for a far more established company, higher pay, a tech stack I like a lot more etc. Is it wrong of me to leave? My parents seem to think so, saying I made a commitment to this company but I think that's kind of an old frame of mind, I don't think I owe them anything [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2018 04:48 PM PDT I sent my resume around recently just to see what sort of stuff comes my way and I've noticed that a handful of companies want me to answer a whole packet of standard code challenge questions before I've spoken to anyone. While maybe a junior dev who is desperate to get on at his dream company would do this, I don't like the idea of wasting 1-3 hours of my time filling these out when there's a chance I wouldn't even be interested in the job after a 30 minute call. What are your guys' feelings? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2018 08:58 AM PDT So I just started my first programming job and it's strange and wondering if I will grow out of it. I don't feel comfortable at work to become productive. It's strange. I can't get my mind to settle down to do what I need to do or figure out what i need to do. I am struggling to think about how to solve problems. I took my work home with me over the weekend and i was more productive in 2 -3 hours then i was in 2-3 days. Has anyone felt this before? Does it go away? Remembering back to school, i was the same way. Wouldn't get shit done during in class coding time but pumped it out at home. How do i break this mold? [link] [comments]  |
| Have you ever seen a workplace seriously improve its environment or culture? Posted: 24 Mar 2018 06:39 PM PDT I frequently see on this subreddit (and elsewhere) people complaining about the general crappiness of their workplaces. I'm talking about things like:
Usually, when someone asks how to deal with these issues, the suggestion they're given is to find a new job. That isn't without good reason either. Often times, there are issues with the company's culture or management that are not possible to resolve on your own. Maybe your manager is a real-life character from a Dilbert comic, or maybe you're the only one on a team of 10 with any idea how to code (despite everyone else on the team being developers). Regardless, it's easier to change your job than it is to change your workplace. But what if people want to improve? Have you ever found yourself at a job where there was a serious effort by your team or by management to get better? What did they do to improve? How did it end up? [link] [comments]  |
| Mixed Feelings about First Job Posted: 24 Mar 2018 03:48 PM PDT I did a lot of research on the company before I accepted the offer for this job. When I looked online for reviews and feedback, this is what I gathered: reputable, good pay, perks (free snacks & drinks), work with newer technology, good benefits, etc. However, after some months of working, I realize that I'm growing dissatisfied. One trivial reason is no snacks are provided, not even a coffee machine (bummer...) But the main reason is, as a new grad (with low self-confidence), I really value guidance and help from mentors/coworkers...and I haven't been receiving that here. I have been assigned tasks, but I'm struggling and don't know who to turn to for help. When I ask questions, coworkers usually avoid the question and redirect me elsewhere. On occasion, some would even reply in disbelief, "How do you not know what [something] is?" (Keep in mind that this full time position didn't have a specific prereq of any kind except a cs degree). Responses like these make me feel discouraged, and makes me wonder if I even qualify as a software engineer... There are moments in the past weeks where I thought of applying for different jobs elsewhere. But I'm afraid/concerned that I'm complaining about trivial things, and that I might experience even worse things elsewhere. To be honest, this is more of a rant for myself to clear my confusion. But it would be nice to hear from others about what their first job experience was like. Am I overthinking? Should I see how things turn out, or just start job hunting again? Thanks for taking the time to read this :) [link] [comments]  |
| Which internship would benefit me more? Posted: 24 Mar 2018 08:07 AM PDT I have a clear goal of wanting to intern at State Farm next summer. Reason for this is, its very good for my location/settled in the area already/etc. I have a few options right now (rejected from State Farm this summer, but wanting to reapply for next summer) I have an offer from Raytheon (Defense contractor) An offer from At&t And an offer from Allstate (Their competitor insurance company...). I'm definately leaning towards At&t or Allstate. I see At&t as the bigger name, but would picking Allstate influence my chances a lot since they are both insurance for next summers internship applying? Edit - Wanted to give a shout out to this sub. For the past 2 years I never thought I could compete with others for internships, until January 2018 where I just started applying like crazy and got offers. Definitely failed a lot of interviews, but I'm happy I took the courage to do! [link] [comments]  |
| My first developer job is remote. How do I adapt and get the most out of it? Posted: 24 Mar 2018 01:57 PM PDT A bit of background, I am currently 21 years old, I studied programming for 2 years in school and I taught myself web development. I worked on personal projects and some freelancing gigs here and there. I wanted to get some real world experience to enhance my skills and learn more. I started applying and I got hired as a php developer by a company here in my country, which offers remote developers to work with their clients directly (team extension). I never programmed in php, my stack was MEVN (Mongo, Express, Vuejs, Nodejs). I had a 1 month training in php and right after that I joined a remote team who are using php/symfony. In the beginning I had some hard time coping with the project and understanding the stack they're using as I had tasks to do from the first day, but after the first two weeks I started picking up and productivity raised, also the type of tasks I get became more complex than before. But what sucks is the communication with the remote team is very poor, I have 5 min calls in the morning with their CTO, and chat rarely with the other devs on slack. Sometimes I get stuck with some error and trying to figure out a solution, only to know that it's solved by 1 command or script they have. Or sometimes I need more details on some business logic I find no one to turn to, and I'm expected to deliver on time. What I think according to what I heard from other developers, is that in your first job as a junior developer you get some pair programming or mentoring In order to hone your skills and get better. I feel that I'm receiving none of that and I get stressed to accomplish my tasks on time which leads to working overtime and weekends. What should I do to get better as a programmer as a junior developer and get the most out of this job? My goal is to learn more and become a good programmer. If you need to know any more details feel free to ask, thanks in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| Prestigious university not known for CS for undergrad? Posted: 24 Mar 2018 05:39 PM PDT Hi, I'm a high school senior with the choice of going to University of Notre Dame or Northeastern University for CS. Northeastern seems to have the stronger CS program, and the co-ops would be good for experience. Notre Dame doesn't really have a well-known CS program, but would the name help for getting interviews? [link] [comments]  |
| List of companies giving out homework? Posted: 24 Mar 2018 11:35 AM PDT So the other day someone posted a URL with a list of companies that don't include whiteboard coding in their interview process. People on here also often complain about companies giving project work for the interview process. Does anybody know a URL that lists companies which give you a project to do at home? Basically this list filtered on "home": https://airtable.com/shr5TdnpVYVTpeRrN/tbluCbToxQ2knSLhh But then companies who do whiteboarding + take-home project...anybody know any of these companies other than Pinterest? [link] [comments]  |
| First internship, should I quit? Posted: 24 Mar 2018 09:10 AM PDT I couldn't find a full time job out of graduation so I jumped onto an internship at a start up that took me in. I get paid as an intern part time but I'm working just as much as their full time employees and over time from home. There are deadlines and I am told to work from home as well. This weekend I am also on call. I just woke up to a bunch of messages from my boss telling me I need to fix some things. The internship length is the whole year and I'm only in month 3. I was thinking about quitting and devoting all my time to full time job hunting. What do you guys think? I no longer find this internship fun or exciting. Requirements are thrown left and right with no one coming to a consensus about them. The project is headed in a direction I am not enjoying as well. I want to know if I'm being a baby about it and tough it out or if it's reasonable for me to want to leave. I'd ask for a raise since I'm working as much as the other employees but I am not trying to stay here, I am trying to get out TLDR: Internship pays me part time. I work full time and overtime from home. Project is no longer fun to work on. Should I quit? [link] [comments]  |
| Non-solicitation agreement for an intern Posted: 24 Mar 2018 08:05 PM PDT Hello everyone! I recently accepted an offer for an internship and was given an offer letter to sign. That letter contains a non-solicitation clause and asks me to certify that I currently have no non-solicitation agreement with another company. I have three major questions:
Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Whats the Difference between Computer Science and Data Science Posted: 24 Mar 2018 06:47 PM PDT Ive always been interested in starting a career in Computer Science, obviously first I would need to major in it at a college. However, a new major I saw was Data Science, and apparently very few colleges offer this as something to major in. I was interested in how this varied to Computer Science and what kind of jobs I may be looking at in the future since online resources are scarce. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2018 06:25 PM PDT Right now I've completed one year of college, I'd like to have an internship, but I don't know if I'd have enough to put on a resume to really qualify for one in the DC/Maryland area. I don't have any projects or any prior work experience in this field, I have been working for 5 years in unrelated jobs however. I also am about halfway to the front end web dev certificate that freecodecamp.org offers and I have a 3.6 GPA so far in college. I'd like to quit my job and do an internship as soon as possible, but I'm concerned that if I apply now I won't have enough on my resume to be accepted, and if I get rejected then they might not consider me later on in the year when I know more. Should I apply now or later? [link] [comments]  |
| What are the most marketable skills/technologies for a new junior dev right now? Posted: 24 Mar 2018 08:31 AM PDT Junior in college. I want to start learning more outside of class but I don't know exactly what I want to specialize in in my career. So, I'm thinking a good plan would be to study up on whatever will likely be in demand for dev positions when I graduate. I hear a lot about web dev so my plan right now is to expose myself to the full stack with a focus on backend dev in Java. Is is this a good plan? Are there any other areas I might consider looking at instead if my only concern is making myself marketable? [link] [comments]  |
| Whats software engineering exactly because I'm getting mixed signals here. Posted: 24 Mar 2018 05:50 PM PDT It seems like everyone here wants to be a software engineer but not a web developer, then people say web developers are software engineers so wtf exactly is a software engineer? Is mobile dev considered to be more of a software engineering role? [link] [comments]  |
| Start at a big company or a start-up after a front-end boot camp? Posted: 24 Mar 2018 07:21 AM PDT A few weeks ago, I've finished a front-end development boot camp which I absolutely loved. I had no previous programming experience and we began with basic HTML and CSS and finished with Angular 5, React, Node.js and MongoDB. Though I don't have a solid foundation in computer science, I feel pretty confident about my front-end skills and so far, all the interviews I've done went well. I've received offers from both big companies (consultancies) and start-ups and I'm now pondering which is a better place to start. I wanted to get a job at a start-up from the beginning as I really love the start-up environment, but at one of the interviews for a big company, the interviewer, who herself worked at start-ups most of her career, argued that a big company can offer better development opportunities like courses, more seniors to mentor you and detailed feedback. I consider myself to be a fast learner and an autodidact, so I don't really feel like I need the perhaps more sheltered environment of a big company. Also, one of the big companies wants to train me as Salesforce developer. Though it would be nice to learn some Java (Apex), I feel that if I get involved with Salesforce, it would be difficult to find a job at a start-up later on as I won't have enough JS frameworks (Angular, React) experience. Since there may be regional differences, I'm considering positions in Europe. Thanks a lot, helpajunior [link] [comments]  |
| Successful folks - what does your leetcode grind look like? Posted: 24 Mar 2018 04:42 PM PDT I don't have a great offer (Big4, but comp is weak) but it seems to be better than all the others I've gotten in terms of liquid compensation so I've stopped looking for now. Instead I'd like to invest more time into leetcode to maybe become a god in a year or two. The problem is I've been trying to do that for the last 3 years but have failed so far. Before, I usually just did the leetcode questions of the companies I was interviewing with and then wrote down notes for the ones I didn't get after trying a lot. That doesn't seem terribly effective though because I keep failing my interviews (in the sense that I don't finish the question optimally) - if I finish multiple in a round I get to the next one 100% of the time in my experience. I've tried different workflows, but if I don't have an interview coming up and I get to a one that I can't come up with an AC for quickly I either give up or get distracted :( This is especially true for DP problems that aren't just backtracking and memoization. So, for folks that have passed tough interviews - what does/did your workflow look like? Do you do anything special? How much time do you invest per day? I've heard its much easier for competitive programming folks but I never did that :( [link] [comments]  |
| Should I delay responding to a recruiter in order to get more prep time? Posted: 24 Mar 2018 04:34 PM PDT hey /r/cscareerquestions , I have 2 years experience but recently started looking for a new job so I've been prepping for a little over 3 weeks now and my plan was to apply to companies lower on my priority list first in order to brush up my skills and get more comfortable with interview process again; however, a google recruiter just contacted me so this will be my first interview if I engage the inquiry. I don't want to interview with google right now, simply because I know I'll do better with more practice later on. Should I delay responding responding to the recruiter in order to get more time to prep? Or should I even not respond to the recruiter and apply to Google in my own time? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2018 04:22 PM PDT I got accepted into University of Toronto for computer science, but the way the school works is you're technically undeclared until your 2nd year where you must reapply to your program choice and this is where some of the more competitive programs have very difficult requirements. CS at this school is extremely competitive since UofT is one of the better schools in the country, but as a result I failed to meet these requirements to Major in CS. I can reapply next year based on upper year courses (where as the initial subject post application is based on first year base CS courses), but realistically speaking, if I'm not getting good enough marks with the first year courses, I don't have much faith in doing so with higher level courses. It seems like it might be time to face reality and change my plans, is a CS minor useful to get a job in the industry? Would I be able to my school's name for more leverage? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2018 04:12 PM PDT At my new company (first full time job), (quote from my manager) "The day begins between 8:30 and 9 and ends around 5:30 to 6 To me, a 9 to 9.5 hour day is way too long. 8.5 is too long already in my opinion. I'm nervous because I've already signed a lease on a new apartment and I'm afraid I'm gonna start a new job that I hate. What are your work hours? [link] [comments]  |
| I will be working after Masters (with previous work exp). New Grad vs Senior roles Posted: 24 Mar 2018 04:00 PM PDT I have some previous work experience of over 2 years. What would be the right role to look for when I graduate from my program ? Will going for a New Grad role reset my previous experience (in terms of career path, salary) or it doesn't matter ? Also, if it does matter, will I be able to negotiate for a senior position when I am offered a role, or at least be fast tracked for promotions (I does vary by situation, but whats your general opinion) ? I know it sounds silly, but I am just concerned if I should only be looking for senior positions if I don't want to reset my "level up" in my previous role. To put it simply, during annual reviews or job search later (if any), will total experience count or will I be considered as a "new grad" despite the experience. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Offered the opportunity to "design my own job requirements" as a sales engineer. Good idea? Posted: 24 Mar 2018 03:45 PM PDT I recently met up with someone in my network at a very fast growing cybersecurity startup. He's the head of research there, and said that I would be a great for one of their customer facing roles. I previously worked as a data scientist for a cybersecurity company, so I adequately know the ins and outs of the field. But I told him that I feel a bit hesitant because I want to avoid just becoming another run-of-the-mill salesman. I want to be able to maintain my coding skills while on the job to some capacity. He told me that's fine and there's a lot of flexibility. Furthermore, he told me to email him with a list of responsibilities that you'd expect to do, and they'll try to fit me in a position that would be good for me. This seems great at first glance because I won't have to be pigeonholed into sales 100% if I don't want to. The job is based out of Cupertino, CA, but there's up to 50% time spent traveling. I was offered a similar position by a competing company based out of NY a while back, and their total compensation was $75k. I'm not sure what this new company's offer will be. Anyone think this is a good idea? I have some hesitations though because I started off my career as a data scientist. However, I haven't been able to land a job for the past 6 months. I'm starting to get desperate for work. At the same time, I've been looking at what other people on this subreddit have been saying about sales engineering, and there's a fair bit of negativeness and condescension. [link] [comments]  |
| Non-CS Major applying to CS jobs, feeling discouraged, want advice on which actions to take now Posted: 24 Mar 2018 12:00 AM PDT I have a few ideas on what my next move should be, but I would love any advice anyone can offer. I recently graduated with a chemical engineering degree, but decided about a year ago that I'd much rather be in computer science. My goal has always been to pursue biomedical research, and my intent throughout undergrad was to pursue a phD in biomedicine. I changed my mind, and would much rather code my way into it; I would still consider a phD later in life. I am in Chicago, and am unwilling to move at this point due to personal reasons (valid and out of my control, easy to explain to recruiters/HR). Education I had some coding experience in high school, but after a few bad experiences in a high school CS class (1 girl out of 25 students, feel free to infer) I decided to put it to the side for a bit. I chose to pursue chemical engineering at a state school for several reasons: although sister school is a big 10, this school was smaller, closer to home, had a lot of research opportunities that would be easier to get than the other university, and had much more access to biomedical and clinical research (if you had a hunch which school I'm talking about, now it's been confirmed lol but please refrain from commenting below). Also, my scholarships covered the low in-state tuition pretty easily, so I knew I would graduate debt-free. The downside is that the state school is not as competitive as its counterpart, and the career services office is terrible. Minors in math and philosophy, concentration in biochemistry. GPA is neither great nor terrible. Work experience I spent the summer after sophomore year working in my university hospital's insurance department, then spent the next 2 summers as an instructor for Girls Who Code. I was financially independent throughout undergrad so I worked in the restaurant industry quite a bit, but none of that is on my resume, and I have a separate service industry resume. I did biomedical research for 2 years, worked on about 5 separate projects, did not finish my main project and chose to leave before completing it. My senior design project was a major engineering technical report (basically we designed an entire plastic factory). I have coded in a variety of languages & took a couple formal coding classes, but I have no major projects up on my Github. I went to 3 hackathons and had projects that won prizes at 2 of them. Main coding languages are Python and C++, I am reviewing SQL right now and am familiar with about 10 more due to either teaching them or dabbling with them in hackathons. They are on my resume but I don't know them as well as Python and C++. I did a lot of data analysis throughout my coursework, just different analysis to typical coding analysis. Goals Around last year I became really interested in data science. Data analysis was always enjoyable in labs for me, and I'm really interested in artificial intelligence, machine learning, NLP, etc. I couldn't devote much time to it while finishing my degree, but I graduated a couple months ago and started taking Coursera courses, specifically the Data Scientist track. I am also brushing up on algorithms and data structures. I am working as a server right now so for the moment, I'm financially stable enough, but the lack of job security in this industry really stresses me out. Because I'm at a low income right now, I applied for financial aid for all the Coursera courses I was interested in and was approved for all of them. Right now, I am only applying to data analyst positions, but I hope to work my way up the food chain into a data scientist position. I want to work in health care or biomedicine, and my long term goal is to participate in biomedical research through coding. Options This is where I'd like some help or input. This is also where it could be relevant to others; I know my request was super specific but hopefully these ideas are helpful to others as well. I know the main thing I should be focused on is finishing up the Coursera courses and putting some projects on my Github, but that's just a process that will take some time naturally. I have been going to relevant MeetUps and attending as many Women in CS events as I can find. In the meantime, should I...
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