Resume Advice Thread - November 03, 2018 CS Career Questions |
- Resume Advice Thread - November 03, 2018
- Daily Chat Thread - November 03, 2018
- A letter to all "Please write an original 40-60 word poem about your current or most recent job into the text field"
- Data Science offer with 50% salary increase, here is how I did it
- Are filipinos hispanic when applying to jobs
- Would you quit if you learned that you would be working with a low-quality codebase?
- Just another happy ending after 300+ applications
- trying to plan out my recruiting process within a somewhat narrow timeline
- How can you judge the engineering culture of a company you are possibly going to be working at?
- How is the job market in LA?
- Twitter University Internships
- What field involves more math (especially higher level)?
- Succeeding at an HFT firm internship
- Stuck on Binary Tree Questions
- Goldman Sachs Intern Life
- Susquehanna International Group
- Autodidact, 10 years in 1 job, Gonna start looking
- Defense software vs startup?
- What kind of internship should a CS upper division student try to apply for with no professional experience?
- What should I do if I'm not accepted into university?
- Transitioning from SysAdmin to Software Engineering
- Young and self-taught with a dream job but no motivation or purpose, what to do?
- Amex Do I Have A Shot?
- An anecdote about the company called "The League"
- How can I explain oil and gas to a bunch of robotics people?
- CS internship in the UK for high school graduate?
| Resume Advice Thread - November 03, 2018 Posted: 03 Nov 2018 12:06 AM PDT Please use this thread to ask for resume advice and critiques. You should read our Resume FAQ and implement any changes from that before you ask for more advice. Abide by the rules, don't be a jerk. This thread is posted each Tuesday and Saturday at midnight PST. Previous Resume Advice Threads can be found here. [link] [comments]  |
| Daily Chat Thread - November 03, 2018 Posted: 03 Nov 2018 12:06 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: 03 Nov 2018 04:51 PM PDT ... What the fuck??? Edit: Downvote me all you want. This is a joke of an application. Complete turnoff for intern applications [link] [comments]  |
| Data Science offer with 50% salary increase, here is how I did it Posted: 03 Nov 2018 03:19 AM PDT First moveAfter graduating in Maths, I wanted to do Data Science. I eventually joined a company doing credit risk analytics. However,
Perhaps this has to do with the credit risk industry being highly regulated and traditional. Moreover, the office culture wasn't the most pleasant. I felt increasingly demotivated in my work. (I wrote more details on this and on how I dealt with it in another post.) I also felt that the longer I stayed in this job, the harder it would be for me to leave. The next stepI received an offer to work at an AI startup through a personal connection. Things will get better! I thought (in hindsight, not really...). Few months in, I sensed that the company had no clear direction, and I was pushed to non-tecnical/management roles, which was not originally covered under my job description. I knew working in a startup often meant going beyond assigned roles to keep the company alive, but I also firmly knew what I wanted - to learn AI and implement AI models, which was one of the main reasons why I joined the start up in the first place. That's when I came up with an 11-hour work day:
I will be honest- there were days, even weeks when I lacked the energy and motivation to follow the schedule. But the thought of not learning what I wanted to learn pushed me into action. If there is only one app that I could have on my computer, it would be this app called Be Focused (the free version is sufficient). Everytime before I start work, I set a 50-minute timer and dedicated all my energy to getting serious work done. Whenever I find attention wavering during this time period, I would look at the timer and tell myself "xx minutes left, it would pass in a blink of an eye!" and then return to work. Sure enough, the timer ends before I even realise it. Then I would take a 10-minute break and repeat the process. Applying for jobsThe startup didn't work out in the end, and I found myself having to apply for job earlier than I expected. It was tough - the tech landscape in my country (not the US) is not well developed, and most companies are only willing to hire experienced Data Scientists (4-6 years). To cope with my lack of on-the-job experience, I highlighted my initiatives to self-learn, personal projects and online courses I have completed in my resume. I soon came to realise, reality doesn't follow a fairy tale-like storyline. Just because I worked hard doesn't mean the universe will give me what I think I deserved. A company I liked and applied to gave me a take-home assigment with a one-week deadline. I put in ~15 hours of work to complete it and felt I was my best work. However, the company felt it was insufficient and implied I should have put in more effort in the assignement. Another company invited me for an onsite, where the interviewer rudely snapped at me for not being able to answer a technical question. But then I got lucky - a recruiter from an analytics firm contacted me on LinkedIn and after few rounds of interviews, they offered me a job as a Data Scientist with a 50% pay increase. My learning pathI curated my learning path based on my background. I did a maths degree and have never been formally exposed to Python. Therefore, my learning path is mainly geared towards addressing my weakness in programming. If you are like me - want to become a Data Scientist but lack the programming skills, I hope I can help you with the following tips:
I would like to hear your opinion on...I feel it is unfair for companies to give week-long assignments to candidates as part of their screening process. In my opinion, it's like doing "free work" for them, without the guarantee of being hired or paid. That's why I was reluctant to spend beyond 15 hours to complete the take-home assignment. I might have a one-sided view on this matter, so do let me know your thoughts on this. Also, if you are from a non-programming background and trying to become a Data Scientist, how did you make up for the lack of programming knowledge or experience? [link] [comments]  |
| Are filipinos hispanic when applying to jobs Posted: 03 Nov 2018 03:28 PM PDT This has always confused me because the Philippines is a country located in Asia but with Spanish heritage. The definition of Hispanic is "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race" (US Census Bureau), so it's not a mutually exclusive racial category. The Philippines falls under this category strictly by that definition. Yet many jobs only allow you to choose one option, or if you're mixed race, "Two or more Races (not Hispanic or Latino)," which I also wouldn't pick, because either (a) I'm Asian only, or (b) Asian and Hispanic, which this option doesn't apply to. Also are there any drawbacks from refusing to identify your race? [link] [comments]  |
| Would you quit if you learned that you would be working with a low-quality codebase? Posted: 03 Nov 2018 11:44 AM PDT I'm a senior developer that has been working 6 months at current company. The company has complex SaaS app with 5 years of commits. The code is tightly-coupled with no prior concern for standards (e.g. DRY, SOLID, design patterns). Seems that everything up to this point was built by junior developers, so there was no one guiding them on quality standards or best practices. Working with this code has been a dreadful/stressful experience. The code is not intuitive, it's hard to reason about, there are no unit tests, there is no documentation. If you change one thing, 3 other things break, and you can't know in advance that something will break. A lot of my time is spent asking developers how things work (most have been working here 2 years of less), because that's the only way to understand the complexity. And yet, most developers don't know the entirety of the systems, so we are constantly pushing commits to production (which we test with QAs), but then we find bugs later on of other cases we didn't consider [or knew to consider] that broke. So basically, the technical debt is so bad it could take 3+ years to reduce (while still building new features simultaneously). The company seems to want-to select and enforce better processes, but the culture to develop that standard seems to be lacking. The current culture has much more momentum built around "pushing features out the door at all cost". I have the experience to bring much-needed structure to this company, but I feel like there's just too much to fix here. At a certain point, is it even worth trying? I feel like it might also be career suicide, because while I'm helping this company to reduce technical debt, I won't be shipping value-add features that would get me the big raises and bonuses. And I also won't be working with the latest technologies that other companies will want. Have you ever left a company because the programming standards were too low, or the culture did not care about quality, or there was too much technical debt? If a company has a lot of technical debt that impacts ever piece of work you do, what conditions would it take for you to still continue working there? [link] [comments]  |
| Just another happy ending after 300+ applications Posted: 02 Nov 2018 10:03 PM PDT I know you guys like hearing these. I was in the same boat many of you are, decent school, no internships, decent grades, little/no projects. I bought an hour of time from u/fecak, a mod here that provides resume services. Shot out tons of applications, messaged recruiters at certain companies (the latter never led to anything, though), and eventually got a phone interview from a defense contractor. (I did have a few calls and one interview prior to this that I did not get offers from, though) Phone interview was not LC/algorithm related at all. Just some OO questions, some OS questions, etc. Got invited for an onsite, where I spent only about 1.5 hours in front of a whiteboard writing a function that solved the quadratic equation, some basic UML, and a memory management question (all in C++). They told me they'd give me an offer on the spot. Pay is great (even negotiated it up), relocation and sign-on bonus included, and the company seems great. No DS&A, no weeks of Leetcode bullshit, no CTCI, and I got a (hopefully) great job. So keep on. Took me 7 months of applying (5 of which were post-grad). You can do it, too. [link] [comments]  |
| trying to plan out my recruiting process within a somewhat narrow timeline Posted: 03 Nov 2018 03:25 PM PDT I graduate at the end of the fall semester, and I'm currently on the job search for full-time positions. I have a couple friends at companies I'm interested who said they can refer me for interviews, but I'm trying to schedule everything such that all my interviews occur solely within the month of January. This is for three reasons:
Is there any way to have my interview process for companies planned so they all start and end within January? For example, do applications via referral generally tend to convert to an interview relatively soon, like within a week or so? Alternately, are companies usually willing to accommodate applicants who are overseas during the interview process? I'm worried saying I'm abroad for a few weeks will just sound like an excuse. [link] [comments]  |
| How can you judge the engineering culture of a company you are possibly going to be working at? Posted: 03 Nov 2018 08:46 AM PDT At my first job out of college, I got incredibly luckily in that I had no idea what kind of engineering culture I was getting into and it turned out to be amazing. I have learned a ton and have worked on some pretty interesting projects. While I have gotten a couple good raises since starting, it doesn't compare to the bumps you get when switching companies. So I have started looking around. My number one priority for the next company I work for is that it has a strong engineering culture. I want to work with smart people and make sure the company sees the value in its engineers. What I am unsure of is how to judge the culture of a company during the interview process. I have gone through a couple screens at a company that seemed promising, but then I was sent a technical challenge and it was... simple. Pretty much the equivalent of fizz buzz. It basically required me to make a switch statement of ten different question strings and echo the answer. Eg. "What is your name?" They said the on site is more cultural than technical so if this is the extent of their technical vetting, it makes me concerned about the talent that is there. I haven't completely ruled it out, but I am skeptical going into the next round. So I'm curious on how I would go about judging the engineering culture of a prospective company. What kinds of questions do you ask? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Nov 2018 01:41 PM PDT I'm a non-cs major who completed one software engineering internship and I have a few cool projects on Github that I did for school. I think my lack of a CS major might be holding me back. I applied for jobs in the Bay Area, I got tons of hacker ranks, and completed most of them passing all test cases. Having said that, the Bay Area is a very competitive area to get a job. I used to live in LA, so that's why I am considering the area. [link] [comments]  |
| Twitter University Internships Posted: 03 Nov 2018 03:45 PM PDT I've searched this sub for the Twitter summer internships and it's leaving a bad taste... I was actually given their Hackerrank challenge in August but I put it off because of no good reason. I just finished the hackerrank today and I managed to solve the first and last problem but I only passed 12/15 tests on the second problem (I think my solution was too inefficient). I'm wondering if anyone knows if this even matters? Did I submit too late, or does Twitter even care about their challenge? Should I even be putting hopes for Twitter? [link] [comments]  |
| What field involves more math (especially higher level)? Posted: 03 Nov 2018 01:38 PM PDT Hey everyone, I was just wondering, out of Machine Learning vs. AR/VR, which field do you guys think involves the heaviest math needed (the higher level the better)? Currently an undergrad looking for a career that has a lot to do with math, because that's what I love, and I need to start selecting tech electives soon. Thank you for any help you can provide! **Edit: I am not looking to get a PhD, I want to get a masters and then move into industry, so being a researcher wouldn't be an option [link] [comments]  |
| Succeeding at an HFT firm internship Posted: 03 Nov 2018 02:50 PM PDT Super excited to say that I recently accepted an internship offer at a Chicago-based HFT firm. If you've worked in hft, trading, or just in chicago, especially as an intern, what were your experiences? wondering:
[link] [comments]  |
| Stuck on Binary Tree Questions Posted: 03 Nov 2018 04:24 PM PDT I am going over EPI for preparing interviews, but I am genuinely stuck at binary tree chapter after breezing through previous chapters. I believe I just don't know how to approach each question. Could anyone who have studied tree extensively help on how to master the topic/concept? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Nov 2018 07:04 AM PDT Hey y'all, I recently accepted a position with GS for an internship this summer in NY. Anyone that has went through this before, could you tell me about ur social life there? I am a bit worried since I will be the only intern on my team and it's my first time in NY. I'll also only be 19 during the time of the program so I really can't even go to bars or anything. So for those of you that were in a similar situation, how was your social life? [link] [comments]  |
| Susquehanna International Group Posted: 03 Nov 2018 05:58 PM PDT Would appreciate some inside info on SIG in Philly, how is engineering culture, is it a good place to work in general? Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Autodidact, 10 years in 1 job, Gonna start looking Posted: 03 Nov 2018 01:49 PM PDT Throwaway account because my other one can be traced. Details slightly falsified (e.g. LargeCorp is a made-up name) for same. I'm an autodidact, and was lucky enough for someone to take a risk on me with their startup about 10 years ago. He sold to LargeCorp about 5 years, and I've been over there. Well, about a year ago, the company restructured me into a new boss, and suddenly, product management just started giving my whole team the cold shoulder. And then out of absolutely nowhere, I got PIP'ed. I was promised my job wouldn't change (should'a gotten that in writing and didn't...) and was actively complaining about management not supporting me or my team on my products all of the sudden when the PIP came across. And at the same time as the PIP: news that my product line I'd been leading for 9 years was being canceled due to "lack of available resources moving forward" (funny, I wasn't involved in the conversation about what the resources dedicated to it--namely myself--were doing instead...). My team was lucky in that I only had part-time people working on my projects aside from myself, so they just switched over to their other projects full-time. As for me, I was suddenly delegated to a bottom of the barrel, entry level position for no apparent reason, working on a project I never knew was supposed to be my job (and thus the PIP). The peak of this was my HR rep directly telling me that I'm right for fighting it, but she can't do anything about it and I should just quit. I just got my performance evaluation a couple months after that PIP, and my boss used a LOT of positive, long term talk with me on that, though. I really wasn't prepared for the PIP because it made no sense whatsoever and was a PIP for a job I never agreed to or had even actually ever been told I was supposed to be doing. So, after fighting the PIP tooth and nail for like a month (how I wasn't just let go in the middle of that is still beyond me), I just gambled on trying to do the stupid damn job while I begin the research on job hunting. It apparently paid off, because my boss laid out a whole 6 month plan of how he wants to use me starting from today and tried to begin a conversation about after that. But I'm miserable, working a job I hate, for someone that my relationship with has been fractured beyond what I really feel is repairable at this point. That's no good. But I'm not in a mad dash to get my shit together, at least. I'm not really scared of being fired any more, and I'm willing to put in enough work so as to keep my value enough to not be fired while I look elsewhere, at least. Not wanting to deal with being unemployed as my only motivation to get any work done for these people, is not good, though. So, out I go. I haven't even had a real job interview in like 14 years. The only resume I've written in that time is the one that LargeCorp asked to have on file when they acquired the startup, so it was completely half-assed and at this point, unusable. I've only had 1 CS job in my 10 years at this career, and no college education at all in CS (no degree at all; I was working on a completely unrelated entry-level social worker certification before I dropped out because this job became secure). I have a large personal project to show, but I'm also still actively working on it (though I finished a totally functional prototype and use it regularly in my life, I'm currently developing it into a web app hosted on Azure, and that's still a little ways off from completion; there's a vague, "Hey, maybe I could just go entrepreneurial myself, with this," but I'm not anywhere near prepared to find the funding within a time that I want to leave my job if I can). From what I see, it sounds like I want to take that 10 year job and separate it up. This is pretty easy. I worked for the first year or two as an independent contractor before being brought on full time to the startup. And then being bought by corp. That's 3 effective jobs I can list (the whole time, until this last year, I was the lead of engineering on the product line, with no real change except to what our products were and how much I delegated vs figured out on my own, but the actually 3 different companies makes an easy split). I don't dare mention anything too specific about this most recent change, though, right? I am working on a massive enterprise level cloud project that I think can provide some benefit to mention, but I'm still even leaning towards just not putting anything about it so as to not have to explain it. I'm still technically in the same position I was before anyway (even though reality is VERY much different, my company claims it's the same job, even). I have a rough draft of my resume going with this job split up into 3 like that and trying to pad it a little extra with my personal project, too. It seems painfully fluffy to try and stretch that any further than a page and a half, though. Is this okay for someone with the kind of experience I'm trying to claim? I really have nothing else to add to it. I had no prior experience in the field or anything. This is it. I'm so NOT interested in corporate jobs, I think, though. I love having a team of specialized people around like a corp can provide, but the difficulty and pain in the ass of small startups thrills me in ways that corporate just leaves me feeling dead inside. Can't say that's unexpected--this isn't the first big corp I've worked for, and every single one has left me feeling the same. I hate it. I love startups, though. They're difficult and I didn't even work on a personal project for like 8 years because I was so busy with the startup projects. But that thrills me. I love it. I've also worked remotely for the entirety of these 10 years (startup was a 100% remote worker company) and have been living as a digital nomad for about half that. Keeping that seems like it's going to be pretty damn tough, but it's a significant reason why I've tried to delay the forced move into the job hunt, too. I found somewhere I'm able to sit still for a couple months to line everything up and start the job hunt, but now I'm also concerned about finding a job with this. As much as I'm in a temporarily stable spot right now, I straight up do not have anywhere I call "home" and am woefully unprepared to change that and my entire lifestyle in addition to starting a new job. I will if I must, but it's just more reason for me to be patient and somewhat more methodical about this, really. Am I crazy to try to look for something to such a high standard first, with my resume (high standard being: pure remote, small startup with lots of responsibility to fill)? I can't imagine anything happening worse than what I've already faced in the last year. Although it is completely toxic for me, it seems to have stabilized, at least. And my boss is talking really positive to me, with long term language and all. So, I think that I have time to be picky, if I don't completely lose my mind in the process. Would love to hear if anyone else has had similar experiences out there or good input that I should add to my thinking about this. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Nov 2018 03:22 PM PDT Deciding between two offers as a new grad and not sure which one to pick. Salaries are within 5k of each other. Defense contractor: slower environment with likely less room for technical skill growth (although it is a rotational program), but possibly better work-life balance and job security Startup: mid-size, with a fast-paced environment where I'd learn a lot of new programming skills I don't have much interest in working for Big4/BigN in the future, but would also probably like to move out of the defense industry into something else like banking/insurance/etc in 2-3 years, and potentially into a non-coding role like pm/team lead within 4-5 years. Should I go with the startup to learn the most technical skills, or would the defense contractor be better since it's a recognizable name on my resume with more opportunities for upward mobility? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Nov 2018 03:12 PM PDT I'm not sure if it's realistic to get a Software Engineer internship for your first one. On 90% of the listings I easily meet all their requirements & ideal skills. I was told by one of the career couselers that I should try other types of internships for my first one in additional to software engineer because I had no experience. Another counselor told me I should go for what I'm interested in. This counselor saw my resume and said it's a good one, she said I have all the technical skills all the employees are looking for. I'm not sure which kind of internship I should look for. [link] [comments]  |
| What should I do if I'm not accepted into university? Posted: 03 Nov 2018 01:35 PM PDT Hello, I finished high school in Syria in 2016, then did computer science at Damascus university for a year and half before coming to the UK in March 2018. Right now, I'm applying to unis for Sept 2019 entry. But I don't have high hopes of acceptance, as my Syrian qualifications are not highly regarded. In case I'm not accepted for Sept 2019, I will be doing British qualifications (A levels, school leaving qualification) and I will apply again for Sept 2020 entry. And of course there's a chance I won't be accepted in 2020 either. So potentially, I may waste 2 years doing nothing useful. What should I do in the meantime? I'm not skilled enough to look for internships. I don't even know what field I want to specialise in. I'm interested in artificial intelligence, but from what I've read here, it's not easy to break into that industry without a degree. I have a vague idea of what I should do, but I need reassurance. I should focus on algorithms and data structures, then learn a multi-purpose high level language, and in case I'm not accepted into any uni, I'll see where things go from there. I'm under a lot of stress and I have no one I can turn to for help, I'd appreciate a different perspective on things. [link] [comments]  |
| Transitioning from SysAdmin to Software Engineering Posted: 03 Nov 2018 07:56 PM PDT I was a Systems Administrator in the military for the past seven years. I was tasked with maintaining Linux and Windows servers, creating a website, maintaining SharePoint, and working on the Help Desk. I have several certs, and plan on getting more. Now that I have transitioned, I am thinking about switching to the Software Engineering career field. Should I go for it, or just continue on the SysAdmin track? I really liked maintaining the SharePoint and Drupal sites. How can I test the waters before I make the dive? Has anyone else done the same? [link] [comments]  |
| Young and self-taught with a dream job but no motivation or purpose, what to do? Posted: 03 Nov 2018 09:05 AM PDT Hey r/cscareerquestions, Throwaway for anonymity purposes. I recently accepted a a senior backend engineer position in a mid-sized B2B startup that pays low six-figures in a medium COL city, but I find the work incredibly boring and non-stimulating and it feels like I am just crunching out meaningless code for a product that no one uses. The work itself is easy and not challenging and there is virtually no stress in the company, and I should have every reason to be happy with my job where I am seeing as I just turned 21 and am entirely self-taught, but for every day that goes by it feels like my career is stagnating and I just see no purpose in whatever it is I am doing. It is getting hard for me to bring myself together to get to work in the mornings sometimes, and I am starting to feel like I should just leave the industry entirely and do something else with my life. What is the career path for someone in my situation? Does anyone else have similar feelings? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Nov 2018 07:37 PM PDT Was only able to complete 2 of the 3 assigned codiliy questions in the allotted time. Leaving the 3rd partially answered. R/cscareerquestions, Do you think I have a chance to make it to an interview? [link] [comments]  |
| An anecdote about the company called "The League" Posted: 03 Nov 2018 07:35 PM PDT |
| How can I explain oil and gas to a bunch of robotics people? Posted: 03 Nov 2018 07:35 PM PDT Redditors, I'd like to make a personal website and I have a few questions for you folks. [link] [comments]  |
| CS internship in the UK for high school graduate? Posted: 03 Nov 2018 07:18 PM PDT I'm graduating high school in January in the US and since I'll have a bunch of extra time I thought I should get an internship. I want to do it in the UK because that's where I'm going to college. I've been having trouble finding internships for people not yet in college. Anyone have any suggestions or companies I should try? [link] [comments]  |
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