DEAR PROFESSIONAL COMPUTER TOUCHERS -- FRIDAY RANT THREAD FOR July 27, 2018 CS Career Questions |
- DEAR PROFESSIONAL COMPUTER TOUCHERS -- FRIDAY RANT THREAD FOR July 27, 2018
- Daily Chat Thread - July 27, 2018
- How to best position myself for an internship in summer of 2019?
- People who did a CS masters / phd after a bachelors. Was it worth it?
- How's the tech scene in Las Vegas?
- How many of you are close with your teammates?
- CEO's with Masters Degrees
- How can a student break into the field?
- Internships doing school semesters, a good idea?
- New grad currently employed full time, reasonable to switch companies (into SF/Bay Area) within a year?
- Is frontend really a good choice?
- bootcamp grads - what type of people are the ones who get a job immediately, how about the ones who get a job within 3 months? 6 months?
- As someone who doesn't communicate well, should I be going into tech consulting?
- Hard time staying motivated where I currently work
- Bootcamp or CS Degree for 40-Year-Old
- What is the proper salutation when responding to a "callback" email?
- USA/EU citizen working in UK
- What’s the best resource to get really good at Python in a week and a half?
- Tips for recovering faster from fatigue?
- How to deal with "senior" coworker?
- (Rant) I'm living the Silicon Valley dream for many, and yet I'm miserable
- Leaving during probation.
- Research vs Independent Projects
- What's the latest time people come into the office without being frowned upon? (especially in SF/Bay)
- Choosing the Best Job Title
- Study Group in August
| DEAR PROFESSIONAL COMPUTER TOUCHERS -- FRIDAY RANT THREAD FOR July 27, 2018 Posted: 27 Jul 2018 12:08 AM PDT AND NOW FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT. THE BUILDS I LOVE, THE SCRIPTS I DROP, TO BE PART OF, THE APP, CAN'T STOP THIS IS THE RANT THREAD. IT IS FOR RANTS. CAPS LOCK ON, DOWNVOTES OFF, FEEL FREE TO BREAK RULE 2 IF SOMEONE LIKES SOMETHING THAT YOU DON'T BUT IF YOU POST SOME RACIST/HOMOPHOBIC/SEXIST BULLSHIT IT'LL BE GONE FASTER THAN A NEW MESSAGING APP AT GOOGLE. (RANTING BEGINS AT MIDNIGHT EVERY FRIDAY, BEST COAST TIME. PREVIOUS FRIDAY RANT THREADS CAN BE FOUND HERE.) [link] [comments]  |
| Daily Chat Thread - July 27, 2018 Posted: 27 Jul 2018 12:08 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]  |
| How to best position myself for an internship in summer of 2019? Posted: 27 Jul 2018 08:53 AM PDT Incoming freshman CS major, no programming experience whatsoever. What should I learn and do this year to best position myself for an internship and compete with kids who have been coding since high school etc? [link] [comments]  |
| People who did a CS masters / phd after a bachelors. Was it worth it? Posted: 27 Jul 2018 06:17 PM PDT So, I just graduated in May, got my first full time job since Jan of this year. I was paid very well but really unsatisfied with the work cause it was just CRUD. I was feeling like my CS degree was a 'waste', since I felt that my job (and every other job I was getting was something I just need boot-camp level knowledge for). I took a bunch of grad level classes and loved them and also loved working in research labs at my uni and with tech related student clubs. Going to work became really painful and the dev environment was not ideal. Unable to get any job I liked I decided to go for a masters at a top uni in AI. However now I am questioning this. As possibly I'd need a phd to make something of AI after that. This means many years of living on a budget compared to what I would have had with the job. Just wondering what people's experiences were with grad school. [link] [comments]  |
| How's the tech scene in Las Vegas? Posted: 27 Jul 2018 05:06 PM PDT After years of being a touring musician and doing contract work in between, I'm thinking about my future and getting a full time job. My mother's in a retirement home in Henderson, so I'm strongly considering Las Vegas (other options are Montreal, Canada or Rotterdam, Netherlands). I'm not a new grad, but I've also never really held a job longer than a nine month contract job. Skillset: Full Stack Development (JavaScript [React/Redux, Ember], Ruby, Java, a bit of Python, learning Go), Networking & Security, Penetration Testing, System Administration/DevOps. [link] [comments]  |
| How many of you are close with your teammates? Posted: 27 Jul 2018 07:14 AM PDT My parents both tell me how, when they were in their 20s, they made tons of friends at work and had some great times with them. Going out for drinks after work, hanging out together on the weekends, that kind of thing. Some of them they even invited to their wedding. I've been at my job for a few years now and just don't see that. My team is almost entirely made up of immigrants in their mid to late 30s. Not that there's anything wrong with that of course, but I just don't have a whole lot in common with them to be honest. We get along fine for work reasons, but it's not like we really talk socially at all or get lunch together or anything. It's not like I don't have friends outside of work, but I'd be lying if I say I don't sometimes wish I had more people to talk to at work and wasn't eating lunch at my desk everyday. So I'm a little curious about other people's experiences with this sort of thing. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2018 07:32 PM PDT Why do most CEO's of large tech companies (not the founders, people who started off as an employee and rose up to CEO) and other high position employees have masters degrees? Is it required to get to a high position? [link] [comments]  |
| How can a student break into the field? Posted: 27 Jul 2018 07:25 PM PDT Sophmore Information Systems Major thinking about adding a Computer Science minor here. My current work experience is Wendys for about 7 months, Walmart for about 3, and dollar tree for about 3. When I go to school I would really like to get a job more tech relevant but have no idea where to start. I am also a bit antisocial/awkward so am not sure if a phone job is my thing but I am trying to fix that flaw and some business/public speaking courses seem to be helping. [link] [comments]  |
| Internships doing school semesters, a good idea? Posted: 27 Jul 2018 08:39 AM PDT Hi everyone, I am a rising sophomore and I have got a few interviews for swe positions during the upcoming fall semester, that are near my school. My only concern is that maybe it might be too much because I also want to keep solid grades for the semester. But I feel like having the extra experience might put me in a better position when January comes around. For context I am currently interning this summer at a start up so I am wondering if I need the extra experience in the fall to have a better shot at large companies. One position that I think have good shot at is at a large company so I feel like the name might be a good add to my resume, right now I just have start ups on there. For those that have interned during a school semester, how did you manage it and how much did it help you? Thank you! Edit: for context my school is pretty top tier (top 40) but the CS program is pretty small ( cant even be a primary major) . That being said the CS classes are pretty time consuming since they are taught by great professors... there just aren't enough of them. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2018 04:52 PM PDT I recently graduated from a mid tier UC with a CS degree, currently employed in a large (non big-N local company). I've landed in a great situation at my current job specializing in my desired career path as a full stack developer. However, my partner and I are planning to move to SF area within 1-2 years. We are planning to be in the Bay Area after a careful consideration of both family situation and career opportunities. I know this is going to suck going through the entire interview prep/CTCI routine again, but it is a challenge I am willing to take on. Is it a sensible decision to leave this first job as soon as a year? How competitive is the job market in SF for full stack engineers? What is a reasonable timeline for me to start preparing again? [link] [comments]  |
| Is frontend really a good choice? Posted: 27 Jul 2018 11:31 AM PDT I'm still pretty new to the industry (got a job out of college) and I've been working for over a year now and I was contacted today about potentially getting switched from my backend oriented team to a more front end focused team. I was told I was being considered because I displayed some interested in web development work. Which is true, but it was more "I want some experience in web dev to make me more marketable" and less "I want to be a front end developer." I'm asking this question because I've seen a lot of talk (read, complaints) over my years in school and on this sub about front end development. The team is a new one and will be focused on building the mobile portion of our company's product so it's exciting because since there's no precedent we'll have a lot of freedom in design choices and what not. All that being said I don't want my career to be focused on front end work. I learned a lot during this 1 year of java backend work, but I'm afraid I'll forget most of it mainly focusing on frontend stuff. I did relay these concerns but I was assured that there'll be backend work too. I was told that if I didn't like it arrangements could be made to put me on a different team but I wonder if that'll make me look bad or like a quitter. I'm still green in this industry and may be overreacting. Idk. Any input appreciated, thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2018 12:33 AM PDT I'm curious to know, what personality, educational background, knowledge, etc did a person who received a job offer immediately have? How about for those who found jobs within 3 months, or 6 months, or were unable to find a job [link] [comments]  |
| As someone who doesn't communicate well, should I be going into tech consulting? Posted: 27 Jul 2018 11:05 AM PDT I have a small stutter(minor, 10-20% of the time I speak), I also speak sometimes too quiet or fast. I will get really nervous doing stuff like presentations. I'm a grad(2.1 degree in CS) looking into tech consulting or being a software developer. I think I'd enjoy both, but my programming are no more impressive than my communication. I don't know if I'd be able to even get a job as a graduate software developer with my coding skills. I need to improve a lot. Should I just apply for both positions and see what happens? Any thoughts or advice? [link] [comments]  |
| Hard time staying motivated where I currently work Posted: 27 Jul 2018 04:55 PM PDT When I'm at work, I feel so demotivated. I feel that some of it has to do with the company, and some of it has to do with me and my habits. We're an older software company. It's 15 years old, and we use ASP.NET webforms. This is my first developer job, and I've been a developer here now for 9 months. I'll start by listing some of the problems that I have with the company, and then I'll list problems with my habits. I do also want to point out that I enjoy working with everyone at my company. Literally everyone. They're all nice and friendly people. I'm also the youngest. I'm in my mid-twenties, and the next developer youngest to me is 45, with the next person after them being in their mid 50s.
I recognize in this last point that this is on me. The pressure and stress along with the guilt has motived me to try and make changes in my life so I am more productive. This brings me to things that I've tried to work on in relation to me and my habits. When I'm at work, I've tried so many different ways to change up my routines in order to be more productive. I've tried coming in earlier and I've tried coming in later. I've tried waking up extra early (2 hours) so I can give myself time in the morning to do what I want before I go to work. I've tried increasing my caffeine, I've tried cutting it out. I bought a dumb flip phone and locked my smart phone away in a safe at home so I'm not tempted to surf the web while I'm at work. I have no social media accounts. I've blocked websites on my computer. I don't have git on my work machine so that I can't download any projects that I'm working on at home and be tempted to do something more fun. I'm now leaving my credit card at home so I'm not tempted to buy any junk food from the vending machines at work because I find myself just eating because I'm bored. I've gained 15 pounds since working my current position. I've tried listening to specific music, closing my office door, shutting the blinds to my window etc. I feel like I'm running out of options or ways to try and force myself to work, and what ends up happening is that I still just don't do anything. These past two weeks have been especially bad, because the person who's supposed to be overviewing my project has been on vacation. They've told me that I can email them any questions that I may have, and they keep themselves open, but I never have any questions because I never get into the project enough to start working. I'm writing this because I just came home from another day of sitting in my office and staring out my window for hours. I wrote maybe 20 lines of code total today. I know what I need to do, but I just feel completely unmotivated to do anything about it. I feel like I just wait for the day to end so I can go home and write code that I enjoy. I feel so bad. Since this is my first developer job, I can't tell if I just don't like writing code professionally, or if it's the company that I work for. When I express this to my wife and friends, they tell me that I should find a different gig because I spend a lot of my free time coding (be it projects or just random code golf. My wife kind of yells at me because I've always brought laptops to code on when we go on vacation). I love learning new languages and design patterns, reading books on computers and computer science papers, talking to people online about code, etc. But when I'm at work, I just cannot bring myself to do this work. But I can't leave this job, partly because (a.) they're depending on me to work on this project, (b.) I have less than a year of professional coding experience, and (c.) I need money (Although I'm paid way less than I should be for my area, roughly $10k less than the low end for junior devs in the area according to glassdoor). I realize part of this was ranty, and it just felt good to get it off my chest, but I still feel like I'm out of options and I'm defeated. I don't think making any more changes to how I approach my job are going to help motivate me at this point, but I need to finish this project and I need this job. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to motivate yourself? I need to just get to it at least for the time being until I can be in a position to find a new job. I understand that work is work at the end of the day, but I don't feel like I should dread going into work this much -- especially when on paper, it's what I want to do, and I enjoy doing it in my free time. [link] [comments]  |
| Bootcamp or CS Degree for 40-Year-Old Posted: 27 Jul 2018 06:23 AM PDT I'm a woman, close to 40 years old, considering a career change. I'm interested in Computer Science or possibly Data Science. As of now, I lack that degree, but I do have a proclivity towards math and programming, and over the years I have amassed a lot of knowledge by self-teaching. I am weighing my options now, trying to decide between going back to school for a proper degree, or attending a bootcamp. Attending school would take me about 6 years, because I would be unable to do so full time with my present job. Considering my age, a bootcamp seems to be a more practical solution, but will the fact that I don't have a degree get in the way of my career change? Another concern that I have is starting out with an entry-level position. I managed to work my way up the ladder, and I'm not sure how I would feel about moving down to the bottom rung of the ladder. Could my age possibly be an advantage here and perhaps help me skip the entry-level position? Or the opposite - is my age a hindrance? As you can see, I could use some help sorting this out. I thank you all for your insights. [link] [comments]  |
| What is the proper salutation when responding to a "callback" email? Posted: 27 Jul 2018 07:51 PM PDT Apologies for what could appear to be a generic question that isn't CS specific, but my experience in this field has been distinctly different than in my previous one. Hi Richard, Now, should I be opening my reply email with "Hi Jeffrey," or "Hi Mr. Skilling,"? The former seems quite informal and I would never have thought to do it in my previous work, but then their email to me almost invariably would have opened with "Hello Mr. Grubman" instead of "Hi Richard". [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2018 07:50 PM PDT I see a lot of answers for this going in the other direction, but I may be considering options for moving to London to be with my girlfriend. I have both USA and EU citizenship (Ireland). With all the changes in policy recently, can anyone advise me how challenging it would be to get work authorization in England? Would I have to have a job sponsor me, or could I kind of just 'show up' as an EU citizen (I realize this may no longer work like it did when the UK was in the EU). [link] [comments]  |
| What’s the best resource to get really good at Python in a week and a half? Posted: 27 Jul 2018 07:50 PM PDT I have a Very Important Phone Interview that just got scheduled for the week after next. I'm proficient enough in Ruby, been working in it for a little over two years (it's my first engineering job), and I have some experience in Python with one of the services we have. I am nowhere near as proficient in Python, but they want to interview me in it anyway. This is one of the "big ones" as far as companies go, so I really do not want to fuck this up. My current plan is just to hit Hacker Rank hard and see how far that gets me. Any other ideas from out there? [link] [comments]  |
| Tips for recovering faster from fatigue? Posted: 27 Jul 2018 07:40 PM PDT I am working 50 - 60 hours a week and by Friday my body/mind is pretty tired and I am so full of hormones that on some Fridays cannot think straight. It takes me about Sunday afternoon to get brain/mood back in the "ready to fight/ready for challenge" mode. I started working after a break of 2+ years (was doing Masters) and feel that I am doing something wrong with my work and after work habits. I sleep about 6 - 7 hours every weekday. I am just looking for tips that would help me feel more motivated/alert on Thursday, Friday and ways by which I can reduce the recovery time - Friday evening to Sunday afternoon - to something shorter Should I drink beer or something on Friday or do something eventful on Friday that would help me de-stress. [link] [comments]  |
| How to deal with "senior" coworker? Posted: 27 Jul 2018 01:15 PM PDT For context, I've been at my company for 3 years right out of college. Tech stack we are using is .NET MVC and more recently .NET Core + AngularJS. When I started, on our team, we had 2 more senior developers were leading the project on the .NET side of the project. However, when they left about 2 years ago, I was sorta the only dev on the .NET side of things. So I took charge of the project. I was capable enough to continue on, and I was given advice from other seniors on other teams whenever I hit a roadblock. Eventually, we needed to hire a new dev, out of necessity of the workload. So my boss hired someone with 10 more years of experience than I have about a year ago. At first I was relieved. Although the project was proceeding and hitting all the targets, as a less experienced dev, I had no idea if what I was doing was the best approach, if the architecture of the project was optimal, etc. So now I have someone to look over my work, and in general be assured of my development practices. Over the past year, however, he's come to me asking questions on how to do things on a regulars basis. And the times I've consulted him, he lead me down the wrong path multiple times or just straight up didn't know. And the questions he asks makes me doubt whether he truly has an understanding of what is going on. To be fair, we are transitioning to dot net core and to AWS infrastructure and services, but it's not like I'm not learning things too. He should be able to figure things out on his own. Take today for example. We were working on angularjs, which he has no experience in (neither do I besides the 1 sprint ramp up time we both took). We are using ui-router along with the $state service. He asks me "hey, when you transition from one state to the current state, it isnt transitioning." I haven't experienced this before but I just Google "ui-router reload same state" and it's literally right there, just set a flag. Now I'm OK with answering these types of questions and being the go-to guy for certain things, but is there something I should do? This guy is on the team to fill a particular lead role, but he's not. It just bothers me that he's so incapable at times, but at the same time I'm not sure what the proper way to bring this up. [link] [comments]  |
| (Rant) I'm living the Silicon Valley dream for many, and yet I'm miserable Posted: 26 Jul 2018 09:48 PM PDT (Note: Some scenarios may be true, may not be true, or are incredibly exaggerated in order to obfuscate my identity. This is also hastily written as I wanted to get this out of my chest rather than holding onto it for all of time and letting the sadness and frustration consume me) So I work in a startup in one of the hottest tech hubs. They pay me incredibly high for someone of my seniority, the work life balance is great, and the people are nice. And yet I'm miserable and I'm frustrated with company to the point where I've completely lost faith in it. By the company I mean everything: the product, the leadership, my team, my manager. Just everything. They're all terrible and all guilty of actively enabling this terribleness and it pains my heart to admit that I wouldn't trust 99% of the company to do anything that requires an iota of brainpower. I never expected to completely lose my faith, but it's been happening slowly for a while with:
I've done my best to hold on to that honeymoon phase (I joined fairly recently), telling myself that we're still a startup and we'll grow out of it slowly, but it's becoming more and more apparent that no one cares. Deep down inside I have a shrewd suspicion this is because as long as we hit "xyz" numbers that's all that matters and we're able to hit those numbers despite the completely blatant mediocrity (probably thanks to our sales team). Since we're hitting our numbers, why should we do any more? In addition, I haven't learned much since I've joined the company. Well, to clarify I've learned a lot by myself thanks to some incredibly talented and passionate mentors I've been incredibly lucky to even have access to. It's just that within the company, I haven't learned anything positive. Here are some of the things I could have picked up if I opened up my mind to the company:
At this point, this is where you gasp in amazement at how incredibly talented and passionate the engineers I work with are. What makes this even more sad I'm pretty certain most of them know what they're doing everything wrong, but they don't care for aforementioned reasons. It happened during the quarterly all hands meeting: our company is going through a rough patch of many senior devs all leaving at roughly the same time (some may have left on good terms, some may have not). As expected, there's a lot of turmoil surrounding these events. As our leadership rambled on and on about our numbers and and what's next for our product, it confirmed my deeply held suspicion that they were completely disconnected from the product. The way they talked about our users and our product was incredibly mechanical, as though users are simply just an meager building block to get us revenue: nothing more and nothing less. The more they talked, the more it was apparent that every single one of them had either rarely or never even interacted with the product. I'm pretty sure if we were to interact with the users on a more intimate and direct level, we would probably just use it as a major marketing gimmick (this may or may not have already happened). Quite frankly, I'm pretty sure they don't even care enough to as long as we're hitting our target numbers. When it came to discuss the cultural aspects of my company, I expected to hear more from our leaderships. I expected them to express sadness that these senior devs who were so critical to the company had left, that they too feel the same way that we do, and that they were doing whatever they can to help remedy that talent disparity. What actually happened was that they spent roughly 10 minutes telling us that they were aware of the issue. This is nice to know, but telling us that doesn't take 10 minutes. Based on the lack of anything in their response, I'm 99% sure we're just going to continuously churn in terrible coders that have 10+ years of experience but are still complete trash at coding anything harder than a for loop as a "solution". This all hands was so captivating that the moment I got to my desk, I whipped out my credit card and immediately bought a year's subscription to Leetcode. Even though grinding algos is a horrible, mind-numbing process that sometimes makes me want to curl up into a ball and cry, it's a game that I have to play if I want to leave for a company where I can truly grow as an engineer. I'm sure as hell not going to learn anything here besides how to not get dragged down into the filth of mediocrity. But on the other hand, maybe I'm just being a spoiled millennial. I know most people would kill (figuratively and literally) to be in my position, yet I feel so empty inside. I don't want to spend the majority on life sitting at my desk with a large blob of drool crawling slowly down my face no matter how much I'm being paid; I want to learn from the best and build cool shit. And I'm sure as hell not doing that in a company that's only mastered the "shit" part. Deep down inside, I feel like I want people to read this and be like "hey this sounds like my company (maybe it is actually your company)" or "hey I'm guilty of some of the things this dumbass is complaining about". If you are thinking about these things and you're wondering how you can help out a coworker who's feeling frustrated about these things, a little bit of caring goes a long way. Just putting a little extra effort into learning and writing good code or maybe a little effort into QAing your code can go a long way for your coworkers and the company. Software engineering is a team game; it's not always about getting the gold medal for churning out spaghetti the fastest, it's about working together in a team and supporting your teammates, and actually giving a shit is a great way to support your teammates. ./end super spoiled millennial rant [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2018 05:52 PM PDT Have you ever left a job during probation with no other job lined up? What was your reason and how did you explain it to other employers and did you put it on your resume? Did you give notice or no? How long did it take for you to find a job? [link] [comments]  |
| Research vs Independent Projects Posted: 27 Jul 2018 01:29 AM PDT How doing research with a professor during the school year look to recruiters for undergrad summer internships? I've heard some people say that they prefer independent projects because those are more similar to software development, but on the other hand, research seems like it might be more concrete (you have a professor vouching for you in a sense). [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2018 05:41 PM PDT I'm wondering what are the common hours and cultural expectations for web devs to come into work? Currently, my office is ok with me coming in at around 10:30AM everyday and I see that as a really nice perk (and it is also because my manager is understanding) as I have sleep issues. What are other's schedules like and what would be frowned upon in your office in terms of a "late" time to typically arrive? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2018 05:16 PM PDT I'm looking for a little help on deciding on a job title with my supervisor. I work for a startup that is developing an app. I started out doing customer service related to technical inquiries. Now I do a lot more, all of them quite technical. "Tech Support," no longer seems to fit. Furthermore, I am planning on going into scientific software engineering/data science, so I am trying to advocate for a more professional sounding job title than "Tech Support," which I don't think would look good on my resume. So my goal is to have a job title that sounds professional and would be looked down upon by future employers. Here is a bit more about what I do. Sometimes I write python code to process data and work with APIs, including the Zendesk and ActiveCampaign (Email Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales CRM) APIs. I have been promoted to managing everything related to our contacts in ActiveCampaign and I will be frequently interacting with ActiveCampaign through its API with python code. I am often tasked with improving workflows related to business and customer support with automated pipelines where possible. Any suggestions? How does "Technical Operations" or "Technical Operations Specialist" sound? Any insight would be much appreciated! Thank you.
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| Posted: 27 Jul 2018 05:16 PM PDT Hi guys, I have a study group that will be doing mock interviews on Google Hangouts throughout August at 18:00 pm Pacific Time and we are looking for more people. The only requirements are 100+ leetcode problems solved or if you worked through most of EPI/CTC. Also we are looking for people who can make more than 4x a week. PM me if interested!Cheers! [link] [comments]  |
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