Interview Discussion - May 31, 2018 CS Career Questions |
- Interview Discussion - May 31, 2018
- Daily Chat Thread - May 31, 2018
- I got a job! Thank you, and a word of advice.
- What was the most soul sucking dev job of your career? Why was it the most soul sucking?
- As a junior, how do you keep your self esteem up when your code gets ripped apart on code reviews?
- 2 Years Out of School. Need Advice.
- How hard is it to get an entry-level job in IT without any internship experience?
- Surviving as an engineer in sales-driven company
- Coworkers strive to maintain status quo
- Can I quit job before even starting / right when I start / during training if better opportunity arises?
- Doing work you dont agree with
- Do the hiring staff check your individual letter grades?
- Should I take an offer from Fortune 100 Tech Company in an Ops role or look elsewhere if my end goal is a pure coding job?
- I am seeking career advice to decide between two options: Unpaid internship to potential paid internship or work on side projects/ learn on my own ?
- Doing research in ML/AI with only a Master's?
- anyone who's been through/currently in the Infosys Associate Position (USA)?
- Last year of CS and I don't know what CS is
- Struggling to ramp up in a brand new programming language and environment
- Got taken on for an SRE role with the team knowing I lacked in development skills
- Feel so lost in my internship
- What tutorials/online resources helped you to write cleaner, more maintainable code?
- What should every software engineer know? What classes should he take? Such as Boolean Algebra.
- Which role has the most potential?
- CS grads what type of developer were you at your first job?
- Landed my dream job but now I feel super nervous and underqualified. How do you deal with feelings of incompetency?
- self-taught older [almost 40] - advice
| Interview Discussion - May 31, 2018 Posted: 31 May 2018 12:07 AM PDT Please use this thread to have discussions about interviews, interviewing, and interview prep. Posts focusing solely on interviews created outside of this thread will probably be removed. Abide by the rules, don't be a jerk. This thread is posted each Monday and Thursday at midnight PST. Previous Interview Discussion threads can be found here. [link] [comments]  |
| Daily Chat Thread - May 31, 2018 Posted: 31 May 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]  |
| I got a job! Thank you, and a word of advice. Posted: 31 May 2018 12:28 PM PDT Hi! I've been reading this forum for a bit over a year. I finished my B.S. this past semester and today I signed an offer! I feel it prudent to say "thank you", as without advice from this sub, I don't believe I'd have been hired nearly as quickly after school. Two major pieces of advice that helped me were:
I had no side project, no professional experience, and no work experience except some food-service, IT work for my school (a job I got before I was even a CS major), and a fairly successful Twitch channel. I also had a below 3.0 GPA. I looked through a number of the "resume sharing" threads to create my resume, and despite that, I was contacted only once by a company I applied to online. That said, I went to just one career fair at my school, and was interviewed by 3-4 companies, given technical tests by 2, and got a job offer from one. As for the contract negotiations, I was given an offer that I felt was far better than I deserved: 4 weeks PTO, above the standard starting salary, a great environment to improve as a programmer, and much more. I was extremely excited and almost signed immediately, but because of everything I've read on this sub, I decided to ask for an increase to the salary despite not having any other companies I was talking to. They ended up meeting exactly what I asked for, and I'm all set to start and excited! Here's my advice to everyone who's about to finish school:
I'm sure there's a number of you here who are in the same boat I was a year ago, and this sub isn't always the best for your self esteem, but you're getting into a really good field, and there's probably more work to go around than you think! here is a link to my resume, it's very basic and has just school projects on it, because there isn't much else I had to put on it. Hopefully it helps someone! [link] [comments]  |
| What was the most soul sucking dev job of your career? Why was it the most soul sucking? Posted: 31 May 2018 05:49 AM PDT |
| As a junior, how do you keep your self esteem up when your code gets ripped apart on code reviews? Posted: 31 May 2018 07:19 AM PDT Doesn't happen every time, but when it does it hurts [link] [comments]  |
| 2 Years Out of School. Need Advice. Posted: 31 May 2018 06:18 PM PDT Hey everyone, hoping to get some guidance on my situation. So I've been out of school for 2 years now, and haven't landed a CS job yet. I'll admit it has been largely my fault as for the past year or so I kind of lost motivation and confidence and my search stagnated. I did fairly well in school, but after being turned down at a few interviews I lost confidence and instead of remedying the situation correctly by preparing better I did the opposite. Which was a big mistake. Anyways I've been working as a cook to pay the bills, and decided that I really need to do something before I dig myself further into a hole that I can't get out of. I've started brushing up on the coding fundamentals, mainly C#, and looking for jobs again, but everything seems so daunting. So, i figured I'd take a shot and ask for advice here. Should I enroll back into school for a few classes to get back into things? Should I keep brushing up with online resources and just apply to everything? Are there any better ways I can go about this? I intend to spend the next month or so putting in some serious study time with various tutorials and such. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| How hard is it to get an entry-level job in IT without any internship experience? Posted: 31 May 2018 05:43 PM PDT In other words, is it worth doing an IT internship at a random company in order to get an entry-level IT job? [link] [comments]  |
| Surviving as an engineer in sales-driven company Posted: 31 May 2018 07:30 AM PDT Does anybody have any tips for surviving and possibly thriving in a sales-driven company as an engineer? By sales-driven company, I mean a business where the primary goal is generating net new sales and is steered by salespeople rather than designers, marketers, product managers or engineers. Everything else take a backseat to more sales. SalesForce, IBM, Oracle are the canonical examples of this type of organization. Background The big thing that irks me is the drive to implement the bare-minimum amount of crap to cross off a requirement, rinse, repeat. [link] [comments]  |
| Coworkers strive to maintain status quo Posted: 31 May 2018 05:33 AM PDT Edit: I'm fudging some details for anonymity, sorry if something seems off because of that Edit 2: management holds this viewpoint as well. We're aggressively working to understand or replace old systems, but this just uncovers more problems and strengthens the information advantage these devs have I'm an experience dev who recently-ish joined an HPC company (A) that purchased a branch of a company, (B). B used to be the best at what it did, but was eclipsed by its competitors and the parent company lost interest. As a result, only the code and a few engineers came over. A is technically strong and sees this as the opportunity to revamp B's poor+outdated tech while keeping the strong non-tech aspects. However, B's codebase is 30 years and ~10 million lines of accumulated spaghetti, and only the ~3 most senior engineers who joined, who have each been with B 20+ years, understand how anything works. These devs haven't changed their worldview in ~20 years and are hyperprotective of any code they wrote. Any change to fix broken features, add new ones, or even plain optimizations (performance is important in this industry) is resisted by these developers. Benchmarks, customer complaints, or hardware documentation just results in the goalposts being moved, and these devs drop the 'we won't tell you how things work' bomb to get their way when cornered. Customers are leaving/not joining because of missing features and bad performance, which really sucks for me and my coworkers since there's an extremely generous profit sharing scheme in place. My coworkers and I are all experienced in this field and have built these systems from the ground up, so we know what we should be doing. Has anybody worked with people who behave in this way or have some advice? I worry that continuing like this won't be good for my wallet or my career advancement. On the other hand, an old coworker of mine from our last startup wants me to come lead a technology team at his current place. It's far less name recognition, probably worse commute and work-life balance, but a proper career advancement and might get me unstuck from this morass. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 May 2018 07:11 PM PDT So I got an offer from a Big-Name IT Consulting company, and it's not exactly what I was hoping, however it is the ONLY offer I have after 2 months of interviewing. I am most likely going to accept so I have a job for starting in the fall (Just graduated), however, I'm going to continue to apply to jobs. I had quite a few interviews with diff companies (6-7) about and will spend time evaluating why I wasn't hired and strengthen my resume in the mean time. My question : Since my new job starts in the Fall (training starts then), if I get a better offer from some other company in the mean time before I start while I've already signed on this offer, is there something to lose? Is this a big 'Don't Do This' in this industry? The only thing I can think of is that I'll most likely burn my relationship with this company, however I don't care for this company already because of their ridiculously low offer and benefits. TLDR : Accepted offer I'm not particularly crazy about with company I'm not crazy abt but it's only offer I have; Start in few months; Will quitting for a better offer/company before I start / start training with this one harm me in someway? Is this a bad practice / 'Don't Do' in the CS industry? Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Doing work you dont agree with Posted: 31 May 2018 08:31 AM PDT I know jobs are for a paycheck first and foremost but I see no reason to one cant enjoy or not be frustrated with their tasks at the same time. There has been an initiative to cut down on costs in my department. Understandable when its a trade off between performance and cost, but not at the cost of system stability. We were on a platform that failed a couple times a week due to network/resource allocation/etc issues and we had to keep track of failures and manually intervene. We switched to using a new platform and havent seen it fail once in 3-4 months. However, due to budget cuts, we are told to move back to the old, unstable platform to save ~1-2K per month. I work at a fortune 500 company, not a small startup, and disagree with this because its now "pinching pennies" to me. They only see the platform cost and not the cost to pay for engineers to migrate and more importantly, monitor and fix job failures on this unstable platform instead of expanding the product. How do you do work that you dont agree with? Work that you know will fail or cause more hassle than benefit? [link] [comments]  |
| Do the hiring staff check your individual letter grades? Posted: 31 May 2018 09:15 AM PDT Is it very common for the hiring staff to check your individual grades and ask you about it during the interview phase? This is for an entry-level job. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 May 2018 08:28 AM PDT Basic data:
I have been in Network Engineering for 6 years (with some highly respected certs) and I know some Python (basics + some basic algorithms [I read Grokking Algorithms cover-to-cover]). After learning Python I realized that I want to write code for the rest of my life. I really enjoy solving problems in code - I get a huge rush when I get the right answer. It reminds me a lot of when I did math in high school and would get the right answer which I really enjoyed. Anyway, because I love code; I want to give up on NetEng. I had been looking for ways to bridge the gap and I ran across a fortune 100 tech company availability (which asked for both NetEng and programming skills). I interviewed with them and they gave me an offer. However, the coding portion of the interview was extremely basic. Not a single algorithms question. Just doing highly basic things with the output of a show command in a multiline string format. So at this point I'm wondering: will there be a lot of opportunity at a fortune 100 tech company to do heavy coding in this department/role? Will there be opportunities down the line to transfer to another department that does more coding/algos? Or should I start grinding out more LC, reading more algos books and interviewing elsewhere? I have zero "real" experience as a developer - all I've done is written scripts for automation of tedious tasks in a NetEng context. Any advice is appreciated especially from someone currently working at a fortune 100 tech company. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 May 2018 02:56 PM PDT I just got offered an unpaid internship ( Ruby on Rails development) that will be a paid internship once I learn enough to contribute to company's source code. As of now I think it would be a great experience to learn from a mentor and learning setting up development environments and working on real projects. But I also think I can spend and dedicate my time towards learning by myself. I also think why not both? I could do both side projects and internship over summer. [link] [comments]  |
| Doing research in ML/AI with only a Master's? Posted: 31 May 2018 07:46 PM PDT Do you guys think this is possible? I'm not sure if I'd be willing to do a PhD (because the time it would take up), but I really do think I'd much prefer research over software development. [link] [comments]  |
| anyone who's been through/currently in the Infosys Associate Position (USA)? Posted: 31 May 2018 09:56 AM PDT I recently got an offer from infosys for the associate position based in Palo Alto, CA; wanted any advice/experiences from those who have already been through it about whether it is worth it? I feel a bit overqualified since I have coding experience but no other job offers right now so thinking I should just take it. Thank you!! [link] [comments]  |
| Last year of CS and I don't know what CS is Posted: 31 May 2018 03:46 PM PDT Yes, I know it involves programming and solving problems, but I don't understand how you could be hired/work in CS. The heaviest class I've taken so far effectively had the class solving old problems (Traveling Salesman Problem or rewriting the C++ STL) or trying to prove complexity and Turing reductions and I feel like there's no way these could be representative of what the industry is actually like. From personal experience and talking with people, I'm learning more and more that anything you could possibly want to do with CS has already been done and is available in open source code online. It makes me wonder what a few dozen (or a few hundred) CS people with 9-5 jobs actually spend their time DOING. In some capacity I get that new problems are surfacing, particularly with more advanced research as well as the few startups that actually offer new or unique services. The problem here is I don't see how these would require more than one or two computer scientists either. Bring in some guy, have him provide some Turing reduction to show that your new problem is basically an old problem, then stitch together a solution from more preexisting open source software. When I apply myself to my work I perform above average, but I'm still aware that I'm not smart enough to be able to formally prove that my solutions are the best solutions, nor do I perform well enough to develop the next microprocessor, artificial intelligence, or figure out some famous unsolved CS problem. It sounds as though performing non-trivial tasks in the industry is obscenely hard to the point where the entire planet probably doesn't need more than a few thousand (good) computer scientists. Yet despite this, there are millions of CS majors out working in the field and if you were to eavesdrop on one of them during a random day at work I have no idea what you would actually catch them doing. What the fuck am I doing with my life? [link] [comments]  |
| Struggling to ramp up in a brand new programming language and environment Posted: 31 May 2018 07:29 PM PDT I was hired 2 weeks ago at a large non-FANG tech company. I was interviewed in Ruby and JavaScript, which have been my specialty since I started coding professionally 2 years ago. I specifically told them in the interview that I have no professional experience in Java, but am interested in working in it. I joined a team working in Java, Ruby and JavaScript and have been working almost entirely in Java. So far it has been a struggle. My first Java task is large and I've made very little progress in about a week, aside from writing a basic and incomplete integration test that reuses existing code. I've been having tons of problems building this codebase on my local machine and figuring out how to use an IDE after only using text editors and the command line in previous jobs. My only Java success so far has been making a couple easy bugfixes in a day. What do I do? I feel the pressure as I am definitely not delivering and am paid far too much to be making such slow progress. [link] [comments]  |
| Got taken on for an SRE role with the team knowing I lacked in development skills Posted: 31 May 2018 07:23 PM PDT And as grateful as I am (it was an internal move), I feel shitty because I lack basic fundamentals in regards to programming such as algorithms, data structures etc. We code mostly in python. I'm half venting, and half looking for advice on this sub. I was a college dropout due to many reasons which prevented me from attending school. Some even because of myself. Now, I'm looking for ways to fill in the knowledge gaps that are missing. What materials / books / classes can I take on so I can become a better asset to my team? This job is basically my dream job, that I lucked into. I don't take that for granted one bit, and badly want to do all that I can to learn. Does anyone have any experience with this course? https://www.udemy.com/share/1000i4AEIfeVhWRw==/ /end rant / cry for help [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 May 2018 03:22 PM PDT So I have an internship with a pretty decent tech company and I like my team. But, I feel like I have no grasp on the tools and technology the project I'm working on uses. I was given a high-level overview of the presentation and I think I understand the abstraction, but I was thrown into the deep end when given the actual code. My mentor just send me the codebase of the project, which has like a dozen files, each with about 400 lines of code, in a language and framework I do not know. I brought this up with my manager and mentor and they seemed understand enough, and said I have some time to pick up the language's intricacies (because this isn't just "create and run function in this language" but uses stuff more unique to the language) and understand the codebase. However, I feel like this is just a whole lot of stuff in a very short time. How do you guys deal with this? Where do you even start? My particular case is asynchronous programming in TypeScript (so async-await and promises) and there aren't too many tutorials online. I want a return offer with this company so I would like to try my best. Any help is appreciated. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| What tutorials/online resources helped you to write cleaner, more maintainable code? Posted: 31 May 2018 06:56 PM PDT I know I can find a million sources on Google, but I'm wondering what are the best tutorials/online courses that you guys have found? I've gotten MUCH better over the years and my coding isn't terrible but I still feel that writing well structured code (that makes sense to other devs) is one of my weaknesses that I want to improve. The problem with most tutorials is that they focus on specific problems (how do you do feature X) and don't really focus on large scale code and don't always show the simplest/cleanest way to do things. I'm mostly self taught and the majority of my professional experience has involved me being the only developer on my platform so even though I try to make it clean and maintainable I want to make sure I'm using proper design patterns and using best practices. (mostly looking for Android/Java) [link] [comments]  |
| What should every software engineer know? What classes should he take? Such as Boolean Algebra. Posted: 31 May 2018 06:33 PM PDT So far I'm reading Algorithms by Robert Sedgewick, Ch 2 so far, and know Java syntax. I like to learn this summer. [link] [comments]  |
| Which role has the most potential? Posted: 31 May 2018 07:45 AM PDT Im looking for insight on career growth (financial, mission, responsibility, networking) ... this is not about CS/technical growth. Most jobs, just like school, haven't been as aiding there as my own individual effort; therefore Im not worried about which role offers a better technical outlook. I do all the "cool" things in my free time.Im 26, single, nearing the end of student loan debt, no other expenses really other than living the young single life. Im lucky enough to be good at something in the most financially giving industry. Ive also served and have a clearance. Both roles offer potential in the federal space, but both are pretty different with salary financials (benefits are basically the same so Im excluding them). Role 1: pre-sales based, $190k 70g/30c -- commission average is 95-100%, $60k RSU 4 years at 25% vest, no sign-on Role 2: consulting based, $160k, $10k sign on bonus, bi-annual bonus opportunity (performance based) How different are these roles in terms of the growth I mentioned? How different are these roles financially? Part of my thought is that the pre-sales based role can really grow the more successful our sales team becomes at selling a successful product (influence many areas of federal space). Im not sure the consulting role has this growth potential. The RSUs are also interesting, but if the stock doesn't grow much, then I might not be making more than the bonuses I can earn in the consulting gig. I actually think work/life balance will be a bit better in the pre-sales role. Both enable me to grow in terms of "experience". One relies on a product, the other relies on winning contracts -- both in stellar positions as growing companies. [link] [comments]  |
| CS grads what type of developer were you at your first job? Posted: 31 May 2018 06:09 PM PDT Just wanted to get a feel for what type of developer most people get hired for as there first job out of University. Front end,iOS,backend etc. Location would be helpful too. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 May 2018 02:05 PM PDT Thanks to this sub, I landed my first job - and dream job, in my dream field, at my dream company. I am excited. I feel vindicated; tens of thousands of hours of hard work poured into my hopes and dreams, and now I feel validated. But I also feel underqualified. I graduated from a target school, but everyone on my team has a Masters or a Ph.D. There are various big names on my team and the team I will be working with; architects of major frameworks and accomplished "movers and shakers" in the industry that I could not even hope to hold a candle to. I was just an undergrad two weeks ago. It seems to me that the position I was hired into was not for new grads; my total compensation, interview questions, conversations, and the level of specialization hint at this. Yet they hired me anyways. I can't help but feel like I'm woefully underprepared for all this. I feel panic chipping away at the edges of my thoughts whenever I think about the fact that I start in a handful of days. I realize more and more that so much of my success can be attributed to luck. I feel like I've been riding the razor's edge between happenstance and success; that if my life was ever-so-slightly-different, none of this would have ever happened, despite no change in my level of knowledge or ability. I just happened to click on that link and apply to that job. I just happened to submit this essay and get into this college. Slightly different college essay phrasing here, slightly different browsing habits there, the lack of a conversation then, and none of this would have happened. I know this reasoning is destructive, but I can't help the thoughts regardless. How do you all deal with feelings of incompetency before beginning your first job? How do you deal with being ridiculously underqualified compared to your peers? Note: I'm not looking for approval, validation, or affirmation. I'm just trying to explain where I'm coming from - why I feel the way I do. Rather than trying to reaffirm/validate me, I would appreciate how you overcame your own feelings of incompetency if you experienced them before your first job. [link] [comments]  |
| self-taught older [almost 40] - advice Posted: 31 May 2018 08:37 AM PDT hi - i am a self-taught [around 25 years, lol ] coder with a variety of small finished, larger half finished and abandoned projects. these projects are all very unprofessional and i'd rather not show any examples at the moment [ none are on github ] at this point in my life, i'd like to get into doing programmnig as a profession. i don't care about being in silicon valley working for google or whatever, but i'd like to be employed as a programmer. what can i do to best showcase my skills to potential employers? thanks - [link] [comments]  |
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