Resume Advice Thread - April 21, 2018 CS Career Questions |
- Resume Advice Thread - April 21, 2018
- Daily Chat Thread - April 21, 2018
- 2 years ago I graduated with a MATH BA and a 2.2 GPA. Today I'm a full time Software Engineer II AMA
- Got accepted into Revature, am feeling unsure.
- Job outlook in Nashville
- Leaving my first job, afraid I don't know enough about "real" coding
- How does this field affect your social/romantic life?
- Finally got an internship.
- Online job postings are relatively very ineffective
- How does the industry view a Statistics and Computer Science degree from UIUC?
- Software Engineers, what is your opinion on Oak Ridge National Laboratory?
- Work/life balance and salary concerns...
- Making an app in one day...
- At a Low Point, When to Quit?
- Just tried TripleByte... went horribly
- How many of you don't have a real passion for what you do? Simply you're good at it, don't mind the work, and enjoy the salary/benefits that come along with it?
- How best to leverage my professional background in the arts and fitness when applying as a developer?
- Internship vs Job
- 27yo engineer changing fields to CS currently completing masters degree; should I look for internships?
- Which speciality will be best for future employment?
- Did I burn bridges by canceling on the hiring manager?
- How do I leave my contract to hire position and justify applying to fulltime positions within same company
- Internships for CS Graduates?
- How valuable is going to a top school for a Master's degree (non-thesis)?
- I was offered a seat for Business Intelligence System Infrastructure grad. cert. at Algonquin College. Would you recommend it ? And how is IBM Cognos doing against other BI tools ?
| Resume Advice Thread - April 21, 2018 Posted: 21 Apr 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 - April 21, 2018 Posted: 21 Apr 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]  |
| 2 years ago I graduated with a MATH BA and a 2.2 GPA. Today I'm a full time Software Engineer II AMA Posted: 21 Apr 2018 08:22 AM PDT Short story, I fucked around in college and got most Cs...got a B every once in a while and a Single A. I graduated in 4.5 years with a Math BA, CS minor and no internships or personal projects. It took me 4 months to find a job, which in hindsight, relative to people that post on this sub seems like a miracle. I stayed at that job for 8 months. Once I had experience, I didn't have a problem getting interviews. People stopped asking about my education and GPA. I took a job that doubled my salary. I went from 40k to 80k. I have been working for over a year and two months ago I got promoted from a junior dev to a full dev. With the salary to match. 100k, two years after college with 2.2 and no cs degree of internships. Also, Its a second rate state college that no one ever heard of. [link] [comments]  |
| Got accepted into Revature, am feeling unsure. Posted: 21 Apr 2018 12:35 PM PDT I've been out of school for a year, and looking for a job almost as long, and I do believe I could get something local, although not glamorous if I held out for a bit longer. Revature is often described as being a "last resort" type of job, and I feel like I probably should be going for it at this point, but I feel like the amount of unknown variables regarding the program is stressing me out more than not having a job did. Most of the people who seem to have posted about it were either still in or recently completed the training portion. Is there anyone who has worked with them and completed their two year contracts, what has your professional life looked like since the contract ended? I'm really nervous about failing out of training, I have CS degree, but ended school with a 2.7. Training sounds intense, and I'm afraid that it might be too much for me to handle. How difficult is the training for someone who has a CS background, but not the best study skills? I decided to do training in Reston, does anybody know what the housing situation is truly like there, The few experiences I've seen written about were pretty bad. How much time are you given to relocate when they place you? I am looking for responses from people who've actually had experience with Revature, since I know a lot of the information regarding them is speculative. Any additional information you think would be helpdful would be appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2018 05:49 PM PDT Are there are a lot of unfilled software developer positions in this city, in particular? [link] [comments]  |
| Leaving my first job, afraid I don't know enough about "real" coding Posted: 21 Apr 2018 07:18 PM PDT Hey y'all. I've been working at the same company since college, and it's been pretty miserable. Low pay, using a proprietary tool set, micro-managing managers, etc. For the last 3 years I've spent all my time being down about myself, instead of actually trying hard to get a new job. At rock bottom, I finally got a therapist, and I'm now at a great place in my life. I've always been so afraid of technical interviews, but I've buckled down the last few months. I'm pretty confident in my algorithm and data-structures. System Design questions still kind of trip me out, because the tool we use at work abstracts away any sort of scaling and parallelization considerations. I'm worried that I've wasted 3 years of my life and dug myself into a hole. I love working with Python, and have been doing side-projects with Flask. I'm just worried that I'll ace an interview and then the team will get frustrated with my lack of knowledge. How can I get over this fear? Is it valid? [link] [comments]  |
| How does this field affect your social/romantic life? Posted: 21 Apr 2018 07:53 PM PDT How true are the stereotypes? Is it really that bad? There's a lot of greatness to be had in CS but it seems like a field of a solitude for a lot (not all) of people. Thoughts? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2018 07:39 AM PDT I am from Electrical Engineering 3rd year graduate. I was working on my coding skills mainly DS and Algo from December till now after seeing how my friends got internships in CS companies. I was working my ass off and very stressed about it. During these tough times od segmentation faults, this very subreddit and ask programming helped me a lot. Yesterday, I got internship offer in a CS company through our college only. We have our 6th semester finals going on right now and I am so excited to finally start this part of my life that I can't focus on my examinations. I have my examination on Monday and have not started studying. Due to preparation of interviews, I completely neglected my electrical courses and now I feel like I am going nowhere. I don't want to fail exams. This is just me ranting out and hoping someone would reply and give me some advice. [link] [comments]  |
| Online job postings are relatively very ineffective Posted: 21 Apr 2018 07:37 PM PDT MSCS grad at a top 20 college in the US looking for internships. After 7 months of applying to more than 150-200 companies with customized cover letters and resumes, I was interviewed by just 3 companies (including Google) but was not able to convert those into internships. Due to the opaque hiring system, it is very hard to understand what is going wrong. The replies take months and end with one of those standard template rejections. Most companies do not bother to reply at all. Given I was able to get through a resume screen by Google and two other companies, I felt that perhaps my resume and cover letter were good enough. Fast forward to last week where we had a career fair at our college. A friend who had gotten an internship at XYZ company was invited by his manager (who also was planning to attend the fair) to meet up for a light chat. My friend mentioned that he knew a person looking for an internship and asked the manager if he would like to see my resume. The manager asked if I was around and then we had a 20 minute chat about projects and courses. Next day I received an offer letter. This got me thinking. Is this the way hiring is done? Hundreds of people apply to online job postings or attend career fairs and talk to recruiters. Are these just done for formality sake? Meanwhile, people get offers by knowing the right people and being at the right place at the right time. Is the job of a recruiter to minimize work for themselves or is it to search through and look for the best candidate for their company? Recruiters openly talk about the phrase "Networking with a Purpose" Does it not seem unnatural to build "professional"relationships just so that you can ask for a referral later on? Should you always talk their way into a company? Can the company not recognize a candidate's capabilities and skills? [link] [comments]  |
| How does the industry view a Statistics and Computer Science degree from UIUC? Posted: 21 Apr 2018 07:33 PM PDT I'm debating whether to go to UC Irvine for Computer Science or UIUC for Statistics and Computer Science. I'm not sure yet if I want to get a masters or just go straight into the industry. I'm currently interested in Machine Learning and Data Science specializations. I would appreciate it if you guys would give me some advice given that you're in the industry right now. Thanks, I really appreciate it! [link] [comments]  |
| Software Engineers, what is your opinion on Oak Ridge National Laboratory? Posted: 21 Apr 2018 06:43 AM PDT I am a research data scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and I am trying to get some insights into what the level of awareness/perception that the software engineering community has about ORNL and the national lab system in general. Particularly when it comes to applying for jobs. The national labs are well known within the science community, through post-docs and the standard academic channels, but it seems to me that when it comes to software engineering that awareness (or interest?) is much lower (with possible exception in HPC). This difference manifests itself in the hiring process. For research-based science positions there are tons of qualified applicants, however for software engineering openings, it's a struggle to get even a hand full of reasonably qualified people to apply. What I am trying to figure out, is why that is the case? We do a ton of cool, globally impactful work using all the latest technologies and have thousands of smart people from all over the world (~5,000 employees). In a blind resume, I would think ORNL would be somewhat of an attractive place for a software engineer to work. I would love to get everyone's thoughts/experiences on this. Some prompting questions I have, feel free to answer all or none…
Any feedback would be helpful even just commenting, "I've never heard of ORNL" is probably the most insightful of all :) Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Work/life balance and salary concerns... Posted: 21 Apr 2018 04:16 PM PDT There's probably a million of these posts a day, but I wanted to get some insight from other students/professionals. I am currently a student pursing my BS in CS online. I have a mechanical engineering degree from a top engineering school 5 years ago. I've been self studying code for about 1.5 years (OOP stuff) and I have been into computers since I've been very young. I've built my own PCs, always troubleshoot, all that fun stuff. I love being around computers and technology. I decided to go back to school to pursue CS and try to make a career switch. Right now, I make a six figure salary in the oil business, and really have a great work/life balance. Sometimes I need to work longer hours, but generally when I leave work, Work stays at work. The industry is kind of meh, so the market isn't as good as CS. I've completed a couple of classes already and am doing very well. My TAs say I was the top of my class and the code I write is very creative, clean, and efficient. I enjoy the problem solving and have fun coding. This term, I'm in a class that requires us to code 40+ hours a week with multiple projects due per week. The pace is kind of nuts, and on top of my full time job it is unbearable. I'm not enjoying coding as much anymore, as I do not even have time to take a dump, let alone go to my uncles funeral out of town, visit family, hang out with my dogs and girlfriend, exercise, cook.... I have been thinking recently, if I don't like coding for these extended periods of time with requirements of these complex projects, what will the workplace be like? If I dread these assignments (console games / projects in C++), how will I feel about working at a company and doing it professionally? I really feel that the spark is long gone. I went to a local hackathon today to shadow some teams and see what it was all about, and I couldn't help myself but thinking the applications that the teams were working on were kind of uninteresting and I couldn't really get excited about them. Lots of it was way over my head, but the general idea of what they were building was a little meh. I couldn't see myself doing what they were doing professionally (it was web dev stuff). I also have concern about work life balance with CS. Is it any good? Are your bosses on your shit all of the time? Is it super transparent where you can't even have a day "off" (have a day where you hang out and aren't super productive but still at work)? I know the salary is generally good, and I'm making a switch because I want to work with computers - not for higher pay. But I also don't want to lose money (student loans from my first degree). I see six figure salaries and they are at major companies that are next to impossible to get into, and I know it is an absolute GRIND to earn that money. It seems that in order to earn the six figure salary, you need to be constantly on top of your game, coding at home, coding at work, literally coding all day every day. I cant even find enough light in my life to do a fucking console application at this point and feel burnt out. I love the idea of building applications from the ground up, but these assignments are annoying me with their obscure requirements (requiring use of triple pointers instead of a vector in C++... I get it is to make us learn dynamic memory allocation, etc). I think I already answered my question, but I was wondering if it is even worth pursuing this degree anymore. Like, if I try to find a job that matches my six figure salary, am I going to be completely giving up my life with a hardcore workplace?? Am I going to have to be ON all of the time to really earn that salary? TLDR : I like to hang out with my friends, hike, work out, cook, race bikes, see family... I have a major life outside of work. Will CS allow me to do that while still having a relatively high paying-low stress job like the one I have now in mechanical engineering? Or will it be a constant grind to earn that higher salary? I know I can do it and complete the coursework if I really push myself, and I know I have interest, but I'm just wondering if pursuing this career is a mistake and I am mistaken with the lifestyle that it brings. Maybe IT is more for me? I just don't know what to think. I know I probably will get grilled with my outlook here and a lot of "why are you pursuing this degree GTFO you don't belong here, if you don't like console apps then you arent truly into CS" but I really feel lost. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2018 06:17 PM PDT I had a job interview for a software developer position at the school I currently attend here on the west coast. I in no way qualified for it, had limited experience and only know python and a little js. My current degree is mobile application and web development and I am a year and a half in. job interview went rather well and I gave them honest answers. Post job interview they give me a few projects I guess to test my skill. First one is too make an interactive website with a few forms with js/html/css. The second project they want me to do is make an app. Which I have never done before. They have given me two days. I don't expect to get a job out of this, I never did. Just wanted the experience. But I am curious as to why they would give me two days for this and is it a realistic timeline? I managed to finish the first project but I am currently looking around on how to finish the second. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2018 01:50 PM PDT Hi. I am a self taught developer who has a degree in a social science (Security Studies major) I wanted to pursue development as a career because I like making games, tools and apps and fit in with the tech community. Anyway. I was able to pick up a job a couple of years ago and things were swell. Long story short. I had to leave after 9-10 months and now I'm I the Bay Area pulling my hair out because I suck at technical interviews. My maths background is pretty poor and I struggle with abstraction. I think it's because I have a tendency to really want to understand the full picture of a problem when that's not always useful. It also causes me to go down paths and trip myself up. Then I panic. I go blank and just freak out. Recently I've been going hard on leetcode. I am getting better with graph search and tree traversal problems, but there is so much to learn and I worry I won't get there fast enough. (What if I don't have the mysterious "programming brain"?) This has been an arduous journey over two-thee years and maybe I'm not 'developer material'. Basically, how do I know when to quit? Is it true some people just can't work with the abstract nature of development? Is it worth it to keep going or am I playing into the sunk cost fallacy? Has anyone here been in a similar situation? Where the idea that never getting past a tech interview is slowly becoming more and more apparent? Just wanted to vent because I am feeling pretty low atm and need to make some tough decisions. Cheers. [link] [comments]  |
| Just tried TripleByte... went horribly Posted: 21 Apr 2018 05:16 PM PDT I have about 6 years experience, mostly at a couple of Big-N companies (5 years or so). Anyway, decided to try mostly for interview practice. Not really looking to leave, but want to brush up. If anyone else is looking at doing this, I'd say the biggest takeaway is the time crunch is pretty ridiculous. They start out with a coding question that's not unreasonable (no algorithm wanking), but I got through about 3 of the parts. I think I just approached it wrong, should have rushed. They asked me a bunch of questions. Didn't know the database stuff. Knew some of the web stuff. Did pretty good on the low level stuff. Then debugging, here's where it really just went off the rails. 4 failed tests. Finished the first one fine. Got stuck on the second one. Still don't really understand what was going on. Wouldn't let me try the third or fourth. again, 30 minutes. 4th thing was design a search thing design question. Didn't really pay attention honestly, bailed on the call at that point. Pretty clearly wasn't worth my time. So that's TripleByte. High standards I guess? Actually a pretty solid interview, I just couldn't get it done in time. Not a huge fan of that part. Good news for the people who stress about the big-N and such. I've been there for years, mid level, do fine on reviews. The bar is lower than you think. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2018 05:14 PM PDT Story behind the question: I'm starting university this coming Fall in the USA as a freshman. In the grand scope of all the academic and extracurricular work that I've done as a high schooler, I can easily say that my brain is half and half: half artistically minded, half logically/ scientifically/ mathematically minded; that is to say I've done equal well in both areas and consider myself a well rounded student. My personal interests and passions lay in the arts (music, literature, etc.), however, I also find myself interested and able to excel in the stem field. If I were to choose a major/career in stem (specifically CS), I believe I'd be able to do well and enjoy it, but, at the end of the day, simply lack the passion for what I do. Furthermore, I couldn't-- and probably wouldn't at all-- see myself doing many stem/cs extracurriculars so to have a very ornate resume. Considering this, I feel as though my personal life would be fulfilling with all the artsy fancy-shmancy things that I do, but my career wouldn't be anything particularly special, unless I find ways to integrate them (which are definitely possible and I don't rule out). But my question to you all is: are there any of you who find yourself in this position of certainly being capable to perform the job, and not even minding it, but seriously lacking the passion for it? Edit: This question extends to all areas of CS: developing, sales, management, etc. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2018 04:54 PM PDT I used to be a professional ballet dancer in my mid to late teens until I switched to teaching it and Pilates. That's what I have done for the last 5 years before deciding to go to college for a CS degree (continued teaching throughout my degree). Now I am about to graduate in May and have been wondering how best to include the skills I gathered from those last 9 years of working in a very unrelated field. I feel like the soft skills gained from choreographing dance pieces and teaching clients rehabilitating from injuries are huge, but I am not really sure an employer cares. This is my current resume Resume. The about me hyperlink still works and does link to my site. Very open to feedback on that as well. But as you can see I really don't expand on my past professional life in my resume as I feel it is just not relevant. Am I right in this thinking? Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2018 04:53 PM PDT So for the summer I have two kind of probable opportunities lined up, an internship and a job. I've had a phone interview with HR and the project manager and I'd say those two interviews were pretty good(but it's not a for sure thing) and I have a library aide job lined up. So the interview would pay $15 but the commute would be about 1.5-2 hours round trip. The library job has a commute of 6 minutes and pays $18-$20 per hour. My car also gets about ~14 miles per gallon. The internship would be a great opportunity considering it's my second year in college (I'll be here for 3 more) so this internship could set me up for bigger opportunities in the future. But the library job pays more, I'd put less on gas, I could use the money for tuition, and I could buy cool stuff. Also I'm not really great at programming, I spend 2x time on projects to get them done compared to my classmates and it takes me a while to understand concepts. I'm definitely leaning the internship but then I have doubts of wether I could do what they want me to do and if I'd just get fired if I can't meet their standards. If I have to choose between the two, which one should I go with? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2018 08:18 PM PDT I'm 27 and have worked for about 6 years as a pretty successful electronics engineer. Over the last 3 years though I have been pivoting slowly to data science. I'm about 25% through a MS right now and late last year left my old job to go to school full time. I have about 1 year left to complete my degree now that I am taking a full course load. I do have some personal projects under my belt but the fact that I never worked as a full data scientist seems to be holding me back. It occurred to me that I could look for an internship this coming summer, instead of taking summer courses to finish my degree earlier then looking for a full time position. I'm a bit worried that I'm too old though for internships; Thoughts and advice would be appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Which speciality will be best for future employment? Posted: 21 Apr 2018 07:48 PM PDT As a software engineering student I was wondering which branch I should specialize in for the best chances at employment? This is something I'm thinking about in the long term, say, 20+ years from now. Some of things I was contemplating about were Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Data Mining and Blockchain technology. Of course it is difficult to foresee the future and know what will be in most demand. But, if anyone has some insight on the general trend and could enlighten us it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Did I burn bridges by canceling on the hiring manager? Posted: 21 Apr 2018 07:47 PM PDT I've been in the process of interviewing for the summer internship for the past couple of months now. Last week a recruiter reached out to me about an internship position at an international mid-sized company. I had the short phone screening on Monday and it went super well! I told her that I didn't know too much about the company but would love to hear more. We discussed the company's work and the recruiter told me the hiring manager wanted to speak to me on Friday. I thought the work was pretty cool and did some more research + watched some videos throughout the week. On Thursday afternoon a Big 4 I interviewed with way back made me an offer. The recruiter sent me the offer letter later that evening so I signed it. I was thinking I didn't want to waste the interviewer's time so I sent an email super, super early Friday morning to the other company stating that I would still love to chat but can't be considered for Summer 2018. I also reiterated my thanks and apologized for the inconvenience. I expressed my interest for a possible new grad position when the time came and asked if I could reach out. It's in a city I might like to work in in the future and I still thought the work was very cool. I didn't get a response so I'm wondering if I should've handled this situation different for the future. Thanks people! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2018 07:35 PM PDT So I've been working for a company I really like for about 1 month now, as a contract to hire. My contract is supposed to be 6months+, but I can probably get a full time position if I apply directly to them within the same company. The pay difference would be about 20k more, so my question is how do I go about doing this? Would it look bad when I apply to the fulltime positions of the company when they see I've been working as a contractor for one month? How do I talk to my manager about this and what are some things I should be careful of? I really want to stay with this company but I took the first position I got out of college which happened to be the contractor position I'm currently in, but I want the full-time position because it's basically the same thing I do with a higher pay. What do I do? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2018 07:26 PM PDT It seems like most companies require internships that are only available to current students. I took a position during school as a tutor focusing on technology (WordPress, digital editing) and thought that would be nearly equivalent, considering I was a DB admin and full stack WordPress dev when I wasn't tutoring anyone or writing documentation. Are there many companies that offer internships for CS Graduates, though? I feel like I'm lacking in experience and that's why I haven't had many calls about applications, so if anyone knows of any, I'd love to hear some recommendations. [link] [comments]  |
| How valuable is going to a top school for a Master's degree (non-thesis)? Posted: 21 Apr 2018 07:15 PM PDT TL;DR: I'm a Canadian undergrad in math, wondering if it would be worthwhile to attend a top US school for a non-thesis Master's degree, as compared to doing the same at UWaterloo or University of Toronto. I'm an undergraduate at the University of Waterloo, majoring in Combinatorics and Optimization, due to graduate with a BMath a year from now. I am also working on a CS minor, and on my co-op terms I've been working in software positions. Ultimately I want to work in software. To solidify my CS knowledge and hopefully gain a little bit more legitimacy as someone who knows about CS, I plan on getting my Master's in CS. I'm not very interested in academic research. Subject-wise, I'm not interested in data science or machine learning so much; I prefer low-level programming, though I don't have in mind any specialization more specific than that. Waterloo doesn't really use GPA, but my average is in the high-80s or low-90s. To start with, I've been looking at the course-based Master's degree with co-op option at UWaterloo and the Master's of Science in Applied Computing at the University of Toronto. What I'm wondering is if it's worth looking for and applying to similar programs at big-name schools in the US. While I know UW and UofT are relatively highly-ranked CS schools internationally, I realize they don't have the same reputations as CMU, MIT, or Berkeley, for instance. I could apply to those schools, but I don't know how much of a difference attending one of them would make to my career, or how to weigh that against the inconvenience of applying to and attending one of those top schools. Here's a summary of reasons not to go to an American school:
I'd appreciate your thoughts on how much more valuable a non-thesis Master's degree from a top US school is than one from UW or UofT. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2018 06:29 PM PDT algonquincollege.com/sat/program/business-intelligence-system-infrastructure/#courses The program will make use of IBM Cognos. How is it doing against other BI tools and what are the career prospects ? [link] [comments]  |
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