DEAR PROFESSIONAL COMPUTER TOUCHERS -- FRIDAY RANT THREAD FOR August 17, 2018 CS Career Questions |
- DEAR PROFESSIONAL COMPUTER TOUCHERS -- FRIDAY RANT THREAD FOR August 17, 2018
- Daily Chat Thread - August 17, 2018
- The salary shaming/jealousy in this sub is toxic and ridiculous. We should encourage candidates to try to get higher salaries, not shit on them.
- Name and Shame: FDM Group (a consulting company)
- Name and shame: Ghosted by Groupon
- To those who graduated with no internships/experience, how was it finding your first job?
- Does University Choice Matter?
- Name and Shame: RBC Royal Bank of Canada
- Full of doubts: Lack of self confidence
- Name and shame: Samsung/worldlink
- Is it normal for your mental health to spiral out of control while looking for your first job?
- Just got fired from my first job, what do I do now?
- What language do you use for work, and what do you build with it?
- Applied to a company before realizing I had a friend that worked there ... withdraw and use the referral?
- TCS is my first opportunity in 8 months after graduating
- Lying to get off work early so I can go meet with new company for possible hiring?
- In over my head - only developer at the company
- What are some good entry-level career options for someone who doesn't just want to code all day?
- Name and Shame: General Dynamics Mission Systems
- Chase finance career or get into tech now?
- Getting a CS career with a diploma in Game Development.
- Best way to prepare for upcoming internship?
- What are my career options if I don't want to touch any HTML?
- New york city new grads is COL difficult?
- How do you actually "apply for internships"?
| DEAR PROFESSIONAL COMPUTER TOUCHERS -- FRIDAY RANT THREAD FOR August 17, 2018 Posted: 17 Aug 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 - August 17, 2018 Posted: 17 Aug 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]  |
| Posted: 17 Aug 2018 03:47 AM PDT (aka Name and Shame3: Electric Boogaloo) I've been seeing some posts were people are like "oh, I'd like to make $X what do I do" or "I personally want more than $X" and other people shit on them. It's been a consistent theme that I've been seeing here:
All of these points are toxic. Regardless of how true they are, when someone asks "how do I make $X", these answers contribute nothing to the discussion. The toxic aspects are:
But worst of all, you are projecting your own values onto the candidate's. That is not your place. When someone asks for salary advice, you should either tell them if it's possible (and if so, how to achieve it - whether it be LeetCode + Big-N or FinTech) or if it's not really possible. The market decides what a candidate deserves - not you. If you don't know what the market is dishing out, you can't provide much more helpful information beyond this point. Telling candidates how they should live is not your job unless the candidate specifically asks for this advice (i.e. "how can I live in SF on $80K?") Even cost of living is irrelevant to this debate. If a candidate asks "how do I make this much", saying "you shouldn't want that much" is off-topic and unhelpful if you don't also tell the candidate how to achieve their goals. What salary someone wants to seek stems from entirely subjective factors and is not our place to judge. It may be their life goal. It might be part of their grand plan to take over the universe. Their great-grandfather on his deathbed might have said "Jimmy, you must make $200k as a new grad, or our honor is forever tarnished!" driving Jimmy to do everything he can to satisfy grandad's last wish. What's helpful is telling Jimmy how he can achieve his goals. Perhaps we can add a bit of anecdote: "BTW I was able to take over the world on just $100k." What's not helpful is telling him that he doesn't need/doesn't deserve/is to obsessed with his salary. We don't know what drives him, what his circumstances are, and what he wants out of life. Finally, we as a group should be pushing towards higher salaries in the field. We should actively encourage candidates to seek out high salaries, as this raises the bar for all of us. It's kind of bizarre that people here are using their jealousy to bring people down rather than their experience to help people up. TL;DR - if a prospective new grad asks "I really want to make $200k/yr out of college", our anwers should be "get a job at a FAANG", NOT "You're entitled and don't deserve $200k" or any of the above. [link] [comments]  |
| Name and Shame: FDM Group (a consulting company) Posted: 17 Aug 2018 01:15 PM PDT I've seen the recent Name and Shame trend going on here, and figured I would get in on the action. One of the recent shames was about a consulting company Revature (which I was also unfortunate enough to be involved with); and it reminded me of my experience with a similarly shady consulting company known as FDM Group. FDM is very similar to Revature, but they offer consulting services for a variety of technology related services, not just Software Development. As they put it "FDM Group is a global professional services provider with a focus on IT, FDM brings people and technology together." One of the most interesting parts about the position was the client list. FDM has dozens of fortune 500 clients, I believe Bank of America was even one of their clients. I thought any experience with a company of that size would look amazing on a resume for a future job. For a little background on me, as an Undergrad I was a dual major in Computer Science and Cybersecurity. This particular consulting position I applied for at FDM was a cybersecurity position; although I had a few Computer Science friends go through extremely similar experiences to the one I am about to describe. I applied to the position after being contacted by a recruiter on LinkedIn, we talked briefly about my background on the phone; after I threw around a few Cybersecurity buzzwords the recruiter seemed extremely eager to get me onto the next step. The position initially sounded like a very exciting opportunity. It promised 8 weeks of salary-grade paid training in NYC, paid housing throughout the training period, paid travel expenses, up to a $1500 relocation package once you were placed with a company, and a variety of other small benefits like this that I cannot exactly recall. The catch was, you had to work as an FDM consultant for two years; if you left before the 2 years were up, you would be billed for all of the expenses FDM incurred on your behalf during your time there. The recruiter said this was usually around $30,000. I had this conversation with the recruiter sometime in early February. I now realize in retrospect how many red flags were there, but I was somewhat desperate for a job and decided to carry on with the interview process. FDM claimed that 80+% of their consultants went on to work for the company they were placed to after their two years at FDM was up; which seemed like an easy way into a mid-level position at a fortune 100 company only two years into my career. The first round interview was a one-way video response screening, or as /u/berk_thrwaway so elegantly put it, "[the] lamest method of interviewing that I have ever come across." For those that don't know, you are prompted with a question on screen, and then given 1-2 minutes to record a video response to that question. Absolutely none of these questions were technical, and many of them seemed like questions aimed at managing subordinates (even though this was a starting consulting position). The next round of the interview process was two separate Skype interviews with two different employees. These employees were somehow even less personable than one-way video interview, and they asked the exact same questions. My second interviewer called me 45 minutes later than expected, did not email me telling me he was running late, and did not address that he was 45 minutes late when he finally did call. A few days after this conversation I was notified by my recruiter that FDM would be extending me an offer, and that I was "their top candidate" for the position. Since I was their "top candidate" I would be guaranteed housing during my training in NYC (something that I was previously told was guaranteed). I was also told that the start date was June 25th. The recruiter I had was a pretty cool guy, and even encouraged me to keep looking for other positions during this time, which thankfully I did. While I was happy to have received an offer, everything started to go downhill shortly after that. About a week later, I received the formal offer letter; $45,000 for the first year, $51,000 for the second year, and NYC minimum wage during the 8 week training period. The salary being relatively low became quite a concern to me, as you have no idea what company you are going to be placed with after you complete your training. $45k a year in Kansas is much different than $45k a year in NYC. FDM had also gone back on the original job listing (which I had luckily downloaded), promising salary-grade pay during training. I brought up this discrepancy between the offer letter and the job listing to my recruiter, who said that the job listing must have been a mistake as all of their employees receive minimum wage during training. Another weird thing about FDM was they wanted letters of recommendation from all of its new employees, after they had already made the decision to hire them. We were told to bring two letters of recommendation with us on the first day of training, as well as a myriad of other paperwork and disclosures, that I luckily never filled out. In early April the 15-20 consultants that were getting hired with me were all invited to a WEBX on how to fill out a specific health-related benefit package, as well as getting the chance to ask general questions about the company. Half of the Webx participants could not figure out how to connect their audio to call, and a number of them called in from landlines and had no way of seeing the PowerPoint presentation. I might be a little harsh here, but I have no idea how these people were expected to somehow become CyberSecurity/Software engineer consultants in 8 weeks, when they lacked some of the most basic computer knowledge. Everyone that did manage to get their audio connected was extremely personable and well spoken, which I assume is how they breezed through the 100% non-technical interview process. At some point in late April, I received notice that FDM had reached its budget to house new employees during training, and would not be funding my housing during training in NYC. At this point I had already received an offer for much more money from the company I currently work for, and decided to try and leverage this offer with my FDM recruiter. The recruiter told me that the minimum wage pay during training and $45k-$51k salary was entirely nonnegotiable. I ended up accepting my current company's offer, and emailed my FDM recruiter in early May to let him know I was accepting a different offer and never received a response. On June 22nd I was emailed by another FDM employee about what to expect about starting work on Monday morning. I quickly emailed him back to let him know that I had already told my recruiter I had accepted another offer. He responded very personably, wishing me the best of luck, and let me know that my recruiter had left FDM close to two months ago. A Computer Science friend of mine actually went through most of the same process I went through and experienced many of the same things; including the broken housing/pay promises. He attended a week and a half of the FDM training before receiving an offer from another company in NYC, and said that the training was "a disorganized mess." Half of his fellow trainees left within the same time he did, none of them had their housing/local transportation costs covered by FDM, all of them were told they initially would be during the interview. He actually talked with a couple of people working there that had recently completed training, but had not been placed into a company yet; by their own accounts they did almost nothing all day except wait to hear back from companies about placement. One person he met at the NYC had actually been placed at a company in South Carolina, received the $1500 from FDM to relocate, relocated and lived/worked there for 6 months before the company terminated all of its external contractors. He was told to move back to NYC and work from the NYC office until he could be placed again. Overall, FDM group struck me as extremely cheap and shady. They seem to pray on the naivetés of recent college graduates, and abuse them for two years before turning them over to another company. My advice if you are going through the FDM interview process is to receive an offer from them, and use the more "glamorous" parts of that offer as leverage for any other offers you might get; I would not recommend getting involved with the company. [link] [comments]  |
| Name and shame: Ghosted by Groupon Posted: 17 Aug 2018 09:28 AM PDT I interviewed over the last two weeks at Groupon for a data scientist position. The process was going smoothly and quickly at first. I chatted with a recruiter, who quickly set up a phone call with the hiring manager. 10 minutes after the phone call, the recruiter got back in touch with me to schedule the on-site interview. A six and a half hour on-site. I've done plenty of 4-5 hour ones, but this seemed a little excessive. My lunch meeting with the hiring manager went very well and was super informative. Three hours of the interviews were from people in unrelated positions assessing "culture fit", all asking the same questions about my previous experience. One tried to get a little technical asking me questions about statistics and how I would judge a model by its R-squared value, but he didn't really know the anything about statistics and thought "higher is always better" so I was sort of caught in this awkward position of finding a way not to talk down to this guy and tell him everything he said was wrong. My really awful experience started in the 6th hour of interviewing, when I talked to one of their head data scientists. To give some context, I have an advanced degree from a top school and was a data scientist at a Big 4 company performing almost this exact same job. This guy was not interested at all in discussing how one might go about solving the particular problems he gave me - he had one very particular answer in mind for each one, and rudely interrupted me at every opportunity to tell me "what would really help me in this interview is if you said this...", which of course was solving this very broad complicated problem in his exact way. He kept looking for particular buzzwords and when I didn't know the buzzword, he scoffed "You've never heard of X?!" The whole interview was him trying to prove he was smarter than me and talking down to me. To top it off, he used the end of the interview to ask how many Coursera/Udemy courses I've completed, as if my Big N experience and years of graduate school were not good enough. The recruiter the next day called me, and I told him I enjoyed some of my conversations, but I was frustrated by the one guy who was talking down to me and being rude to me. He was very apologetic and said he would look into the problem and I would hear back the next business day about their feedback and an update on the issues I experienced during the interview. He said he didn't want to lose a candidate like me because of one bad interviewer. I was in the final stage of another FAANG interview, so I told them I needed an answer ASAP. Here we are, over a week later, and my 3 follow-up emails have all been ignored. This is the third time this year I've been ghosted after an on-site interview. When did this type of behavior become acceptable? How can you not have the courtesy to send someone a one sentence email telling them they didn't get the job after they spent an entire day with you in person? P.S. Groupon's office is terrifying. You are greeted upon entry by a 10 foot severed cat's head in a spaceship, and there are scary cat logos throughout the office. [link] [comments]  |
| To those who graduated with no internships/experience, how was it finding your first job? Posted: 17 Aug 2018 01:52 PM PDT How was response rate on applications? How long did the search take? What do you think made up for your lack of experience? Where was your primary job search location (local, out of state)? Resources used to find jobs? Did you have to start out with a less-than ideal job? Where did you end up on the expected salary range? I am a May 2018 grad still on the hunt. I have received 2 call backs so far, one (my first) I did not make it past phone screen. The second I managed to get the the 3rd round (on-site) but I received no offer. The rest I have had either no response or did not make it past resume screens. Generally feeling worse w/ each rejection which makes it harder to stay motivated for job searching, studying, and working on projects. I know I am in a lucky situation as far as rent, bills go, but my savings is quickly running out and student loan payments are just around the corner. Anywho... I would love it if you would leave your personal story... good or bad. Or, if you are/were not in a similar situation, just some general advice. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Does University Choice Matter? Posted: 17 Aug 2018 02:47 PM PDT Quick question, I'm going into grade 12 atm and have started thinking about university school choices. Does the university I choose matter for when I'm done and looking for a job or should I go to what is cheap/close/what I want to reduce my debt afterwards Edit: I have an almost guaranteed co-op at my moms work if i'm close to home. They do camera's for planes/helicipters/military vehicles and such and they'll do there best to put me in a programming related position Edit 2: from Ontario [link] [comments]  |
| Name and Shame: RBC Royal Bank of Canada Posted: 17 Aug 2018 12:22 PM PDT DISCLAIMER This is in a RBC overseas branch (i.e. not in Canada), RBC back in Canada may be totally different. INTERVIEW I was asked a FizzBuzz level question. I see so many fresh grads cannot get a job and have to resort to Human Cattle markets like Revature and FDM. Try RBC instead, at least RBC do ask you to repay 20000 if you breach the 2 year contract or something. The only technical interview involves given [1,2,3,4,5], return [2,4,6,8,10], and only that. My interviewers said I was a instant hire when I suggested this can be solved in one line [x*2 for x in [1,2,3,4,5]] It also involves nonsensical logical reasoning tests during the application like https://i.redd.it/mpggb29lj1f11.png. THE JOB I've already heard of software engineers being treated as second class employees in bank, in RBC, if you are a software engineer outside of Canada, you are probably a fourth class employee. Your emails to Canadian offices do not get answered. I have to chase for a response on average 5 times per email. You also get all the grunt work, I heard of some Data Science or Blockchain, but they are all based back in Toronto, a software engineer overseas will likely get Sharepoint or something equally a career ending. I got lucky and got a Python/JS full stack web dev role, not dead end things like Sharepoint. RBC is also one of the last remaining places that uses COBOL. All my purchase forms to be reimbursed have a field that says "IS THIS RELATED TO MAINFRAMES and Z/OS?" You don't have admin access to your PC. You can only install pre-approved software (digitally signed) named myHandsInstall from IT. So for Java you can only have Netbeans or Eclipse without plugins. Somehow PyCharm is there, but not IntelliJ. The versions given are also old, I only got Python 2.7, but not 3 onwards. For Java, only 6 is available, Java 8 coming soon(tm). Every single package manager in existence is blocked by the corporate firewall. NPM is blocked and so does PyPy. I suspect even if there exists a package manager that wasn't blocked, it won't be digitally signed by internal IT, so Windows wouldn't let me install them anyways. When I asked my teammates, they shrugged and told me to make due with the Python standard library. Eventually my manager got PyPy unblocked, but NPM remains blocked, so we painstakingly reinvented the wheel by (attempting) to manually re-implement the node modules. My manager eventually quit and I was nominated to take over his duties without actually being promoted and without pay raise. Big red flag I know, but those are direct orders from the department director. I can see why my manager quit, he got into some argument from some management consultant that just got his MBA from Harvard (and without writing a single for loop in his life) that open source (and Python) are bad, C# and Microsoft stack good because synergy (the logic is supposed to be web browsers running on Windows work better loading websites made in Microsoft/C# stack), also you can also blame Microsoft if anything goes wrong. Big brass accepted the "consultancy" and orders us to throw every bit of our Python Django server code away and rewrite it from scratch in C#. Since Microsoft products are not free unlike Python, I quoted my boss the standard Microsoft prices, 14k USD per CPU core on SQL Server Enterprise, we have a 8 CPU core server, so SQL Server alone will cost you 14k*8 = 112k. Add things like Visual Studio, we're looking at 200k in Software licenses alone. Director was not pleased at this 200k bill out of nowhere. Also you have to buy from a approved software license reseller, which jacks ups the prices. You cannot directly go to Microsoft as per company procedures. At the end the reseller quoted me exactly 500k "as a token of gesture". When I told my boss of this 500k, I got fired over "poor performance in controlling budget." [link] [comments]  |
| Full of doubts: Lack of self confidence Posted: 17 Aug 2018 05:38 PM PDT Hey all, First of I would love to say how much I appreciate this community I just joined tonight, I'm glad to be part of this. So my question in short is: "How to boost my self-confidence and be more optimistic about my career?". I'm student in European university (I graduate in two years) which is ranked top 5 in computer science programs nationally, I see myself as a very average programmer and have a loooooot to learn to a point sometimes I feel like an idiot (not sometimes almost 24/7). I have some achievements in my pocket that are not as impressive for me as people say: I won my college competitive programming contest and topped my class in all CS courses and worked as a part time developer in some projects (some have seen the light of the day, others did not). Yet I always feel non competent the more I read and see some folks' answers on Stackoverflow or some codeforces highly ranked users' solutions. Which results into thinking that I'll never get a good job since there are hundered thousands better than me What can I do to boost my self confidence and start feeling optimistic about my career and life as whole? I love programming, I enjoy writing code and problem solving, I'm trying to get better, but I always feel not good enough and incapable to join a company where I get paid well. [link] [comments]  |
| Name and shame: Samsung/worldlink Posted: 17 Aug 2018 03:58 PM PDT This is in USA. Did a lot of back and forth with a person named Gayatri who works for worldlink-us.com which I assume is a recruiting firm retained by Samsung They sent me a homework case for predicting market share with confidential sales data for an Analytics Manager position (My resume says I've done similar things for top consulting firms) I send them my analysis. A few days later I get a meeting invite for a call with hiring manager. When I dial in, no one is on the call. I follow up with the recruiter over phone and email, no response. A few days later, a story appears in newspaper saying "Samsung projected to be the market leader in phones in XYZ geography surpassing Apple" Feel free to draw your own conclusion, but I'd definitely suggest that you don't waste your time with worldlink and be weary when you get homework cases that look like professional grade project work. [link] [comments]  |
| Is it normal for your mental health to spiral out of control while looking for your first job? Posted: 17 Aug 2018 11:23 AM PDT A bit of an exaggeration of a title I admit, but the closer I'm getting to graduation without a job lined up, the less functional of a human being I'm becoming. I've stopped working on my projects and readings and I'm putting less and less effort into the job hunt every day. It's gotten to the point where I'm starting to consume raw butter for dinner because I'm too lazy to eat. My entire thought process is a giant feedback loop revolving around my unemployment and constant rejections and as a result, I continue to perpetually lowering my expectations for post graduation prospects as each mistake I make drives home the point that I am, for a lack of a better word, mediocre. This seems pretty normal honestly. I feel like everyone in my position felt like this. But how did it feel afterwards? [link] [comments]  |
| Just got fired from my first job, what do I do now? Posted: 17 Aug 2018 08:14 AM PDT I was just let go 6 months after being hired. The company has a 6 month probationary period for all new employees, and for my final 6 month review I was told my performance has not been satisfactory and I was being let go. I had been working on a major project for the company and before this review was told I was doing a great job. I managed to get it done before all this, and it turned out really well. I learned a lot of new things at this company, and this really sucks. Should I put this job on my resume? It is my only real experience in CS outside of college and a few projects. [link] [comments]  |
| What language do you use for work, and what do you build with it? Posted: 17 Aug 2018 10:16 AM PDT Part of the reason I can't find work is because I don't know what's going on within different companies, what's trending and why. Obviously, I therefore don't know how to position myself. In the past, I believed the very vague advice that "web development is in demand"... I didn't realize that there are a ton of aspects to web development, so you can't just learn whatever. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 17 Aug 2018 07:21 PM PDT Friend is willing to refer me and I'd like to use referral but not sure if it's too late now. I see an option to withdraw (I applied today) but not sure what the ramifications are there .. if I'm better off using the referral for another role and just let chance do its thing with the one already applied for. [link] [comments]  |
| TCS is my first opportunity in 8 months after graduating Posted: 17 Aug 2018 07:13 PM PDT I've read some horror stories but I am worried the longer I wait, the harder it's gonna be to find a job. I thought it'd be easy being a woman willing to travel with a Comp sci degree but it's been harder than I thought. Is it worth spending maybe a year (max) with tcs to save up some money and moving forward, or should I continue my search for something else? I hate my current job making $11 an hour so if I'm gonna be miserable I might as well be miserable with money and "experience" Any input is greatly appreciated [link] [comments]  |
| Lying to get off work early so I can go meet with new company for possible hiring? Posted: 17 Aug 2018 07:09 PM PDT TL;DR: Lied to my current job so I could get a few hours off to go to a job interview at a far better company. Feeling ashamed of this. My job's pay and treatment is pretty subpar. I managed to score a very promising job interview at another company on the same day that I work...sooo I decided to lie to my current boss about why I needed to come in late to work. I work part-time, I'm a student, so it's not like the big leagues. But I still feel really bad about this. But now that I think about it, how do people get time off for job interviews without lying? Am I in the wrong for lying and saying that I have an appointment? This other job gives actual breaks and pays far more. I just am feeling some shame and guilt for lying. Even though I've been screwed over by my current job too many times. [link] [comments]  |
| In over my head - only developer at the company Posted: 17 Aug 2018 08:09 AM PDT I just started a position at a small 15-person clothing company where I am the ONLY technical person in the entire company. They had a freelance web dev for the past 10 years who just left and they wanted a full-time software engineer. The current codebase is an absolute mess. It's in php, it's got just as much commented out code as uncommented code, and the only comments in english are "// not sure why this works - don't touch it" The system is pretty big and after speaking with everyone they were asking for dynamic features that don't play well with php and codeigniter's static page design. I made the executive decision that if I was inheriting the codebase and I am going to be working on it for the next X years, it's appropriate to do a rewrite. I let them know it would take 5-6 months and they said "okay". I have checkins every week where I tell some guy who's in charge of marketing that I did lots of configuration and he says "okay, keep it up". Every week I make a small amount of progress on this new site, and every week I find something terrifying about the old site that I'm not sure how to fix. The auth guards are really buggy, no user input is being sanitized, and applying a 15% off coupon on something that costs $19.99 will break everything. I could use some advice on where to focus my efforts. Should I be solving these issues with the old site before I move on? Should I deal with it until the new stuff is ready. Should I split my time between both evenly? Has anyone been in a situation like this before? [link] [comments]  |
| What are some good entry-level career options for someone who doesn't just want to code all day? Posted: 17 Aug 2018 02:51 PM PDT I'm in my final year and interested in jobs which don't require me to code all day but ideally include a mix of coding and interacting with people. After doing internships, I've realized the typical Software Developer job does not suit me at all and I can't find anything else better, any suggestions? I've considered freelancing but the downside is the lack of socializing and consultant jobs as well but they don't pay as much and includes way too much travelling. [link] [comments]  |
| Name and Shame: General Dynamics Mission Systems Posted: 17 Aug 2018 06:40 AM PDT I go to what I feel is a pretty meh state school in the midwest, although among employers it's CS program seems to have a pretty good reputation. I'm a non-traditional student who has a meh gpa as well, between a B and B- average. I never put much stock in gpa, I also have a slight learning disability that affects my test taking ability, and I don't really want to work for an employer who has such a hard line for GPA that they won't even look at my multiple internships and projects. That's my personal philosophy and values, I understand that others won't share them but this was the only time I was outright treated like shit by a potential employer because of it. My worst interview ever was with General Dynamics. Actually, my worst two interviews ever were with General Dynamics. I interviewed with them after approaching them at the career fair at my school. I think working for a defense contractor would be kind of cool and an interesting experience, and they asked me to come in the next day. I go in and the next 45 minutes is essentially the main interviewer hammering me over my gpa. Like, just reaming me over it. It wasn't even a discussion, he talked way more, and there wasn't a single CS or engineering question. I tried my best to stay positive but after a certain amount of time I just shut down and that was that. The one question that stuck out to me was "How do you expect to be successful in your professional life if you're not successful in your academic life?" Me being a glutton for punishment that I am, I approached General Dynamics again. Again, I made them aware of my gpa and asked them if we were actually going to talk about CS and not just my gpa, "sure!" they said. They said wrong. What was supposed to be a 60 minute interview lasted all of 20 minutes. Again, hammering me over my gpa to the point that I shut down, shook their hands, and left. No CS questions at all. I then got a very weird, cryptic email about how the interviewer "saw promise in me" and would like to interview me again sometime. Yeah, no thanks GD Mission Systems. EDIT: I made this comment below, but I think it explains my position better
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| Chase finance career or get into tech now? Posted: 17 Aug 2018 05:10 PM PDT Hello everyone I majored in liberal arts and I've developed an interest in tech and finance careers. I took some business courses in undergrad and took a coding course through Udacity and liked both fields. To break into tech, I'm thinking about doing a second degree in CS that will be fully funded by my parents and plus I'll be living with them so I'll get free food and housing. I'll also get a very small stipend for gas, food, credit card bills, etc. My parents don't want to fund my finance aspirations though. I'll have to take out a 50k-100k (tuition) loan to get an MSF at a top business school so I can get front office roles. The best thing is doing what I like the most but I haven't done a finance or tech internship so can't decide between both. I'm thinking about learning finance/accounting and taken an excel course to get finance roles to see if I like it. On the other hand, I can do a 3-month bootcamp to see if I like coding. [link] [comments]  |
| Getting a CS career with a diploma in Game Development. Posted: 17 Aug 2018 02:29 PM PDT Edit 1: Added an example of a CV and Resume Hey guys, first time posting here so sorry if I'm misunderstanding a rule or something in this post. I'm a recent grad in game development. I know a few programming languages, I've made a few apps/games, but my program didn't have a co-op and I screwed up getting a summer internship. So, I'm sitting here, not quite sure what to do. I've applied for a few different jobs in town in the programming languages I know, and I've picked up web development in an attempt to broaden the sort of jobs I can apply for. But I haven't even gotten as much as a phone interview. Should I be going in person? I'm pretty comfortable talking to and meeting people in person, but I'm not sure if that's an acceptable approach. Should I be having someone professionally write my CV or resume? I don't want to go back to school and start an entirely different program, but now that it's been three months since I graduated, I'm beginning to become concerned that I'm not going anywhere fast and that my field of study in college is a massive turn off. At this point I'm lost and not sure where I should be going... Resume and CV example (I change this depending on the job posting): [link] [comments]  |
| Best way to prepare for upcoming internship? Posted: 17 Aug 2018 02:27 PM PDT I start my next internship in about 2 weeks from now and they use quite a few different things that I'm unfamiliar with. In particular:
Of those 5 tools, I've used JavaScript in the past and also used SQL in the past (not MySQL in particular though). I have no experience using PHP and I also don't know much about version control and unit/integration testing. I have a few hours after work everyday that I can spare to prepare for my next internship, but I was just wondering what would be the best way to do this. I have 2 options that I'm considering:
The Python book doesn't use PHP or MySQL, but I'm a lot more familiar with Python and I think that I will learn more about web-development fundamentals with that book compared to the PHP tutorials. The PHP tutorials are also more about using PHP with MySQL and don't contain any JavaScript at all, so I don't know how useful they'll be in my case. At this point, I'm leaning towards going through the Python book, but it would be nice to get another opinion on what I should follow through with. Thanks for taking the time to read! [link] [comments]  |
| What are my career options if I don't want to touch any HTML? Posted: 17 Aug 2018 01:55 PM PDT I'm very passionate about programming and computers in general but I really can't stomatch web dev or anything related to HTML, what are my options to pursue a dev career and how viable are them? I graduate in about 2 years and I still don't really know about which field to focus. [link] [comments]  |
| New york city new grads is COL difficult? Posted: 17 Aug 2018 07:45 PM PDT I was a bit surprised to hear that ny devs are usually starting at 65-80 k even though its either the first or second most expensive city to live in next to silicon valley where even really basic companies are giving out 100 k. Does the salary increase by a lot after the first few years? Are there massive bonuses? How do you afford the rent? [link] [comments]  |
| How do you actually "apply for internships"? Posted: 17 Aug 2018 07:05 PM PDT I hear everyone on this sub saying theyre starting to apply for summer 2019 internships and I'm wondering whats the exact steps theyre taking? From what I understand, for most of the bigger companies applying online is the same as throwing your resume into a giant black hole. Apparently Google has something like 3 million applications a year... like wtf. So does everyone here have someone to refer them to all the companies theyre applying to? I know some people say they send 100+ applications and Im wondering how this is even possible. For most of the smaller companies on the other hand, such as local ones and such, their apps arent even open yet for summer 2019. [link] [comments]  |
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