Interview Discussion - August 23, 2018 CS Career Questions |
- Interview Discussion - August 23, 2018
- Daily Chat Thread - August 23, 2018
- Best field within tech for someone who just wants to be work 40 hours/week and be employed until retirement?
- I'm a 30 yo mid level .NET developer in Chicago who can't find another job. I hate my current job, and have nothing here in Chicago, no friends, nothing. Am I stupid for considering moving?
- "Just build some projects and apply for jobs" -- How sophisticated does a project need to be before employers will take me seriously?
- It feels like everyone wants to be a Software Engineer after studying computer science. So I must ask, what other jobs are out there for CS graduates aside from software engineering?
- Is there any value to the "whats your greatest weakness" question?
- Common practice? Recruiter demanding exact amount of current salary.
- Analyzing Compensation for Big Relocation
- Should I Move Onto New Opportunities?
- How is blackberry doing recently?
- Careers for those with a strong math background?
- How many years of experience for Senior Engineer?
- When/How to Negotiate
- Working from home.
- Anyone here work abroad(outside US)?
- OS Primers?
- 13 months out of school. Can I apply for "New grad" jobs?
- Would a non-CS degree be useful for CS career?
- How to decide on what kind of salary to shoot for?
- Want to get into cybersecurity but dont really know where to start
- Worth listing a 3.5 GPA for internships?
- Overnight overtime?
- SWE for Solutions Engineering Team at Tech Company
- Working at a small shop - need to move on but not sure I have much to offer
- I have a background in math and statistics and I want to be a data scientist. Where do I start?
- Career Advice on exploring Data Science Vs Looking for a Job
| Interview Discussion - August 23, 2018 Posted: 23 Aug 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 - August 23, 2018 Posted: 23 Aug 2018 12:07 AM PDT Please use this thread to chat, have casual discussions, and ask casual questions. Moderation will be light, but don't be a jerk. This thread is posted every day at midnight PST. Previous Daily Chat Threads can be found here. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 23 Aug 2018 06:53 AM PDT I'm not passionate about tech at all, at the end of the day I'm in it for the money because it gives me financial comfort to do the things I want. What should I get into if I want long term employability and want a consistent paycheck? I know people will say to gtfo if I'm not passionate and I'm just in it for the money, but most people do not have the luxury to do what they want. I can't make as much money from pursuing music, which is my passion, trust me I've heard from many bands in the genre I listen to how they are in a lot of debt from touring and that you need to have other income streams besides record sales, merch, and touring to stay afloat. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 23 Aug 2018 05:08 AM PDT Like the title says i'm a mid level .NET developer living in Chicago. Pretty much stayed within the .NET realm within the last 5 years. My work history has been pretty much a string of bad luck where I am either put in roles where I am not utilized correctly (production support), or bad management. My current job is at a large multinational corporation. I was told coming in that it would be software development and where i'd be on a good sized team. I have been here almost a year, and it has been nothing but production support on a garbage application that no one cares about. I literally either run exel reports everyday, troubleshoot some kind of database issue, and/or mostly sit around not knowing what is going on because everything is so disorganized. My "team" is just 2 people. Me and one other person. I am the only one that knows how to code. I barely talk to my team member. In fact, I barely talk with anyone. If by some chance I am working on some coding enhancement, if I have doubts or questions about something I have no support. I have been searching for a new job since I started here last year and I have nothing to show for it. I either can't close the deal at the in person interview, and/or the fact that I've been in a production support capacity for a year has hurt my career. I pretty much have talked to every employer in this city, and now it has become a situation where I just see the same companies over and over again. I believe I have also been blacklisted by some recruiting firms, since they feel they won't be able to make money from me. This last year, and frankly the last couple years for me have been absolutely miserable. I have no friends, I have no relationships. I wake up miserable every day having to go to this job I hate. I make $90k a year. Most people would look at that and think I am happy and successful and I shouldn't be complaining, yet I am f'n miserable every day. I live on the outer edges of the city limits, so getting into the city proper could take about 40 min by train, and 1 hour+ if you want to get anywhere else. The thing is my rent is super cheap and I can live here as long as I want, no lease. So it's "comfortable". But having any type of social life here is difficult. I can't find any activities that really interest me, and if I do, it all takes 1hour+ to get to with public transport. Driving to the city sucks because parking sucks. All I have here is my parents, sister, and some extended family. I've been thinking about maybe starting a new life somewhere else. I'm just not sure where to move to, where my current skills have a good market. I also don't want my quality of life to decrease. I've honestly been thinking about NYC, but with currently making $90k, if I do find another job there, they most likely might offer me slightly above $100k which from what I hear, still isn't much in terms of COL there. Am I being stupid? I just feel like if I don't make some drastic changes, I will continue to be miserable, and continue to be stuck here. I just feel like nothing is going right for me here. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 23 Aug 2018 03:36 PM PDT This post ended up being longer than I planned, but I hope it's not too long. I hope if I get some answers here then it might help some other readers out there who have a similar situation. I'm a programming rookie searching for a job. I have a small bit of experience, but not much. I know some Java and JavaScript, but I don't have any extensive projects beyond what might be glorified coding exercises ("Build a scientific calculator in JavaScript" or "Use Java Map objects to build a mock phonebook", etc). For background: I went to a bootcamp two years ago with zero experience, and got a six-month contract at a large corporation right after finishing the three month crash course. I got lucky with this situation because my code school had connections with employers around the area, and they knew they were hiring rookies with potential, rather than expecting an experienced developer. Unfortunately, I'm not a fresh graduate anymore, and I don't have the same situation as before where the employers came to us for recruiting. My first job went well at the beginning, and their intention was to teach me and see if I was a fast learner, and maybe I would get a contract extension if they were satisfied with my aptitude. Unfortunately, there was a large company-wide layoff after I had been there a few months, and my boss was one of the victims. For the remainder of my contract, I didn't have anyone to give me assignments or even anyone to rehire me. This was discouraging, and by the end of my contract I had burned myself out on every beginner tutorial but could never make the jump to intermediate. I've been working at various non-programming jobs like bartending since then, but I want to get back into the software development world. Everyone's advice is "build some projects", but I have no idea what is good enough to catch an employer's eye. Do I just need to build some fitness trackers and fake e-commerce websites? Would building some static websites for small businesses around my hometown be a good start? And as an aside, how do I know when I need a framework or when vanilla HTML/CSS/JS will suffice? I often look at other people's porfolios who post here and on r/webdev, and they all look so elaborate and impressive that it's easy to get discouraged. I've been self-teaching, and I know a lot about the mechanics of how JavaScript works, but when I start reading about the larger website/application development ecosystem, it makes me dizzy. But I'm getting side-tracked. I guess I'm looking for some guidance on setting some manageable goals for projects that are within my ability to build, and will make me look decent enough to recruiters. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 23 Aug 2018 02:25 PM PDT 4 hours later edit: The truth is I only have a minor in comp sci and I'm looking for a way to get into software engineering, I've taken all the lower division cs classes and some upper divs but my programming skills is pretty limited (I know things like lists, trees, heaps, sorting, hash tables, big O and that's pretty much it). I'm looking for a field where I can use my coding experience so I can learn on the job as well as get a good boost on my resume. I majored in microbiology and I considered bioinformatics but most positions require a PhD, not going to do a bootcamp since their rep is getting worse and I'm not too excited about the high up front cost. I don't think I can get into a masters program with 3.1 GPA and significantly little related CS experience. I'm currently applying to internships for next summer but I'm having no luck [link] [comments]  |
| Is there any value to the "whats your greatest weakness" question? Posted: 23 Aug 2018 06:49 PM PDT you see this shit all the time in just about every interview? but whats the point? you're either gonna say something thats not that bad, say something that sounds like a real weakness but then immediately say how you've been dealing with it, or pull the "weakness as a strength" bullshit it seems like a total waste of everyones time to even bother asking [link] [comments]  |
| Common practice? Recruiter demanding exact amount of current salary. Posted: 23 Aug 2018 11:28 AM PDT Had a phone screen this morning that seemed to go well until he asked what I was expecting in terms of compensation. I asked what their budget for the role was and he danced around saying it's based on experience and how I interview without giving any ranges. He then asked what I was currently making so I gave him a range and he was like "that's not gonna work for us, we need to know exactly where we're starting from" and I declined to give a concrete number. He told me that I can't proceed in the interview process without giving a concrete number, which I declined to do. This is not common, right? [link] [comments]  |
| Analyzing Compensation for Big Relocation Posted: 23 Aug 2018 05:54 PM PDT I received an offer from a big N company (Bay Area) for 125k base with 100k stock vested over 4 years. No sign on bonus, only mention of annual performance bonus. I have an MS with 3 years industry experience and am making 110k in Indiana. Is that a reasonable offer or one that merits relocation? I'm married with a toddler, so living on ramen in a Bay Area studio apartment is out of the question. [link] [comments]  |
| Should I Move Onto New Opportunities? Posted: 23 Aug 2018 03:14 PM PDT Hi everyone, I'm a full stack engineer at a fortune 50 company, specifically the retail industry. I've been at the company for a little over two years and still haven't been promoted to the next level. My manager and I were in discussion about what it would take to get a promotion (senior software engineer), but he recently announced that he is leaving the company for another job. He has suggested that I talk to my senior manager who is a new guy about my career goals. My manager put in a good word for me to the senior manager and praised me publicly to him, but he says I need to be on other managers' radar for me to get to the next level. I feel like my manager leaving is a setback for me and is delaying my promotion. I noticed that my peers are being promoted, but I am still stuck at an entry level position. My manager mentioned that my technical ability is high, but that I lack visibility. I think his assessment is fair because I am introverted and hate the spotlight. I dislike giving presentations to a large audience and speaking up in general. I've worked on frontend, backend, QA, but I definitely got a knack for DevOps on this job. Lately, I noticed that my current team is quite disorganized as we have no product manager and as mentioned before my manager will be gone next week. Is this a good time for me to specialize and seek DevOps roles or senior software engineer positions? I really like the company and it is doing well, but I feel like my specific situation is looking bleak. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| How is blackberry doing recently? Posted: 23 Aug 2018 07:38 AM PDT How successful has blackberry been recently? I thought they suffered from a downhill long time ago and still they haven't made much progress compared to big hardware companies. Or maybe it's just BB's main focus has been shifted to QNX and just software aspect of it more than hardware? I got an interview with BB and I am not certain how would I go about responding to a question (if asked) "Why do you want to work for our company?" knowing company's products aren't as widely used as obviously before as far as I see. [link] [comments]  |
| Careers for those with a strong math background? Posted: 23 Aug 2018 07:03 PM PDT I spent a lot of time in high school doing math contests instead of coding, but I'm majoring in CS for various reasons (currently an undergrad sophomore). I don't think I'm exceptional at coding although I'm ok at solving puzzles, like interview questions and stuff. I'd like to plan ahead, so what are jobs where knowing more math will give me a bit of an edge (and help me earn more in the long term)? I'm thinking machine learning, but what does it mean to have a career in machine learning other than just writing papers? ETA: I recently looked into quant trading because it seemed math-y to me but the interviews consist of brainteasers in timed settings, numerical sequences, and mental arithmetic, which you have to do accurately and quickly. I'm not the best at that! I'm probably worse than I was when I did MATHCOUNTS in middleschool lol. So that's not the type of math I mean, I'm talking about like proofs and stuff. [link] [comments]  |
| How many years of experience for Senior Engineer? Posted: 23 Aug 2018 02:41 PM PDT Usually, how many years of experience do you need in order to become a Senior Engineer? I saw there is a posting for senior level only requires 2 years of software development experience. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 23 Aug 2018 11:24 AM PDT I'm going to be a new grad soon in December. The company I interned with this summer has set up a call for me tomorrow with what I am fairly sure will be about a return offer. Now I am completely clueless when it comes to negotiation as this will be my first full-time career type job. The ranges I've seen online for this company for starting SWEs are anywhere from 60-85k in a medium CoL city. Ideally I would be happy with 75 and would not like to go below 70. I don't have a whole lot of leverage since I don't have any other offers at the moment, but I did intern at the company so that gives me a slight advantage in terms of ramp up time/training. I've read some things about negotiating, and they're typically always on WHAT to say, not necessarily when/how to say them. So let's say I get the call tomorrow and they offer 65, do I counter right then and there, or ask for time and then set up another call solely for negotiation? Any advice on this or general advice would be appreciated [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 23 Aug 2018 08:59 AM PDT Hi everyone. I just got hired for a job in another part of the country. I will be working remotely. In the past I have had trouble with some distractions at home, which I why I preferred the office, but that really isn't an option. Does anyone have advice about how to be more productive while working at home? Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone here work abroad(outside US)? Posted: 23 Aug 2018 08:31 PM PDT This would be a long shot. Im a recent CS graduate, I am applying for jobs in the U.S., and I havent had much luck. However, my girlfriend is studying in Japan, itd be nice for me to be able to work in Japan even for a few months. I know this is probably impossible given that I dont even speak Japanese and the fact that I have very little work experience. Has anyone here successfully applied to companies located in Asia? If so, what was the process. Thank you very much. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 23 Aug 2018 08:29 PM PDT Need to refresh on OS stuff for a few interviews. Am planning on going back through some of my course material and I do have a textbook as well but it's pretty dense; is there any OS primer like resource tailored for interviews? There's quite a few stuff on coding questions or system design, but I havn't come across much for OS concepts and questions. Anyone know of anything that they found useful? [link] [comments]  |
| 13 months out of school. Can I apply for "New grad" jobs? Posted: 23 Aug 2018 08:27 PM PDT See title. I decided to take a year off after school to travel and work on some side projects that I successfully monetized and raised some startup funding for, but I decided to wind it down and am now looking to jump back into the corporate world. Should I be seeking out new grad recruiters? A lot of positions that aren't suited for new grads are pretty experience heavy so not sure what the best strategy is here. [link] [comments]  |
| Would a non-CS degree be useful for CS career? Posted: 23 Aug 2018 04:25 PM PDT Hi A few months ago, I discovered that I really like computer science. I'm not sure whether to start at a 42 (coding school) satellite campus right away or to continue my studies and get a degree in either statistics (2 more years of studying) or economics (1 more year). Would a non-CS degree be important for career advancement? And would it matter whether I take statistics or economics? Thanks for any advice [link] [comments]  |
| How to decide on what kind of salary to shoot for? Posted: 23 Aug 2018 10:26 AM PDT Graduation is a year away and it seems as though my current employer has the intention of hiring me as a full time developer after graduation. I'm going to speak to my manager about negotiating an offer sometime soon so that if I am unhappy with what they are offering me, I can choose to apply to other places rather than rushing around last minute to get an interview somewhere before graduation. I want to make sure that I am getting the most out of this and not making a salary decision based on Glassdoor and LinkedIn salaries. Essentially, I want to know of any resources you all use to figure out what salary to shoot for when negotiating. How can I take into account cost of living in my area, as well as average pay and come up with a number that makes sense to me and my employer? I don't want to screw myself over or look like a crazy person when talking with them. TL;DR: Need advice/resources to figure out what salary I should be shooting for when negotiating with my employer. I know what I want, but I don't know if that makes sense due to cost of living and other variables. [link] [comments]  |
| Want to get into cybersecurity but dont really know where to start Posted: 23 Aug 2018 12:38 PM PDT I am currently a highschooler. Ive done 1 ctf, not doing to well. I got a 4 on the AP Computer science principles and am currently taking Ap computer science A. The problem is there is so much material and I really dont know how to get into this. I know the sooner i start the better off ill be. Thank you. [link] [comments]  |
| Worth listing a 3.5 GPA for internships? Posted: 23 Aug 2018 07:58 PM PDT Before you pounce I know it's a pretty decent GPA. But I also know a lot of people with 3.8+ GPAs, so 3.5 doesn't seem particularly impressive to me. Will listing a 3.5 benefit me? Or should I just leave it off? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 23 Aug 2018 12:19 PM PDT I support a critical payment application for a major city, but have only been here a few months. Yesterday I was told I would need to work overtime on Saturday for the first time. We are coordinating a network outage, and apparently I will have to monitor the app and make sure no payments are coming through during downtime. They want me to do this during 9:30pm through 3:00am. I get 1.5x OT since I am hourly. I don't mind OT as long as I know how to do the job, after all it is work from home. But the hours will definitely fuck up my sleep schedule, since I wake up around 5:30am for work on a normal day. But anyways, is this type of overnight OT common in the industry? I guess it makes sense, since that is when systems are not busy. But I heard I'm going to have to do this often, which I'm not looking forward to. [link] [comments]  |
| SWE for Solutions Engineering Team at Tech Company Posted: 23 Aug 2018 04:02 PM PDT Hi everyone, if we become a New Grad SWE within a Solutions Engineering Team at a large Tech Company producing Proof of Concept web apps (working with a variety of different clients and technologies) with an emphasis on Cloud technology, how does that compare to working in the product side (Google Maps or Facebook Messenger) at a Big N like Google or Facebook? Do recruiters prefer one or the other? [link] [comments]  |
| Working at a small shop - need to move on but not sure I have much to offer Posted: 23 Aug 2018 07:39 PM PDT Didn't get into programming until jumping to a CS major in school, got out and went to work for the gov't - defense - felt like adult daycare. More time reviewing spec document changes than implementing them. This was old, obscure shit, outside of the docs it was fixes and updates to embedded Fortran. That was 5 years. Went to work for a friend at his "startup." Him and his old IT bosses threw in on starting a work for hire business doing LOB apps for the contacts they had developed. I was the 6th person on board, we at some point started hiring and got up to 12 or 13 in the hopes of getting enough projects in the hopper and new work coming along. Didn't work out... Now we have 3 on salary, the friend retains ownership and is part-time maintenance/management, another owner/manager has bought in. Everything is .NET/Azure. However, we're really at this point an aspnetboilerplate and kendo shop. There's a culture of fear and total risk aversion, we've actively turned down work that doesn't fit into the enterprise-solution-in-a-box we've hitched our cart to. I'm 3 years in. On one hand I've been involved with complex software systems and dealing with keeping them up and running, diagnosing and solving problems while adding on new functionality. On the other I don't know that I can do anything on my own. In maintenance I'm good at adding test seams, capturing enough behavior to buy room for refactoring or just making my new code as distant from the current base as possible. New development I get is typically integrations and background work, I mostly build from the backend while the other guy builds from the frontend and the third guy is devops/PM. Feels like I don't know shit and I can just think my way though how to implement something in a given system after a bit of play and analysis. I'm proficient enough at C#, test-first when I can, most of my experience is probably centered around working with web APIs or libraries and aligning the system with that boundary to meet a goal. I've read about practices and patterns but I've just used DDD, MVC, IoC, etc as you get out of the box with the frameworks out there, never had to scratch together an architecture from the ground up. I don't do any projects on my own time I typically just stay late to figure something out on occasion. That doesn't happen as much anymore. I've been pigeonholed, I've been trying to keep marching through the backlog to expunge everything that's going to be for me so I can get to something uncomfortable. It seems like there's no bottom, however. So it feels like I gotta get outta here just like my last job, it's just stagnation. It feels like I'm a fraud looking to trick someone into hiring me to learn what they do and then just leave once I've learned enough to be relied upon. Is this normal? Or is this just me, do I deserve this for being a slacker/fake? Is there somewhere to go to find a list of .NET job postings to fire resumes off at ordered by salary descending? What the hell do I call myself at this point? What should I be looking to do? I assume I should stay in the industry as long as I can I have no idea what the hell else I can do. [link] [comments]  |
| I have a background in math and statistics and I want to be a data scientist. Where do I start? Posted: 23 Aug 2018 07:35 PM PDT Hi reddit! I graduated from college 2 months ago with a B.A. in mathematics. I also took a bunch of stats courses when I was an undergrad, and I know some SAS, R, SQL, Python, and C++. I want to be a data scientist/analyst, but I'm having trouble finding a job. What skills should I brush up on? What new skills should I learn? When looking for jobs on the internet, which keywords should I use? I'd appreciate any advice you could give me! [link] [comments]  |
| Career Advice on exploring Data Science Vs Looking for a Job Posted: 23 Aug 2018 07:34 PM PDT Background: Graduated last September with a BS degree in Computer Science. Started working for a bank in the NYC area as a software engineer. Don't really enjoy my work as its mostly production bug fixes/minor improvements on current application. Doing some C# front end work these days but apart from that work on the the server side with Java. In terms of skills, I only know Java and have done a bit of Python & R during my undergrad with data science and machine learning courses. Current Situation: Just applied for my work visa extension which will take 2-3 months. Deliberating between started interview prep or try out the online courses in data science. Questions: 1. I want to explore data science as I was a TA for it during undergrad so was thinking about Udacity's Data Science Nanodegree program (https://www.udacity.com/course/data-scientist-nanodegree--nd025). The syllabus seems to be in depth and has lots of projects. Has anyone taken it and what are your thoughts about the coursework? I don't expect it to get me a job but want to see if I'm interested in it.
Thanks for your advice! [link] [comments]  |
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