Resume Advice Thread - February 16, 2019 CS Career Questions |
- Resume Advice Thread - February 16, 2019
- Daily Chat Thread - February 16, 2019
- One hundred years of leetcode. Novel story.
- How do you manage school and an internship?
- Accepting a job when I know I am leaving in less than a year?
- Anyone have experience looking for a job before graduating while pregnant?
- Career Trajectory (I have none)
- Take a gamble with own project or get a new job?
- Company keeps pushing release date out, and it's interfering with my life.
- What are some of the best companies to work for as a "lifer" for a steady, chill career?
- How do Leetcode questions translate into real work? Do they at all?
- TIL after leetcode premium expires you lose access to your old problems that you did but are usually subscription only
- Yet another "Networking or Programming" question, help pls
- Digital Hardware Career Options?
- As a professional programmer, how many hours a week do you dedicate to improve your technique?
- Large vs Medium companies.
- Definitive Logic Behavioral or Technical
- Careers for CS graduates outside the tech industry
- Need to move to San Diego/LA area for sudden family issue. Have TS/SCI clearance.
- How much of a barrier does only being good at Python present when applying to jobs targeting Java?
- Nervous for first internship
- I can learn new things on the job but I'm not very motivated to learn for my own. How to get motivated on my own time?
- 2yrs experience, what to learn now?
- What do you do when you run out of stuff to do at work?
| Resume Advice Thread - February 16, 2019 Posted: 15 Feb 2019 11:06 PM PST 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 - February 16, 2019 Posted: 15 Feb 2019 11:06 PM PST 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]  |
| One hundred years of leetcode. Novel story. Posted: 16 Feb 2019 09:59 AM PST I read this sub and it fascinates and astonishes me how a few corporations had shaped the modern perception of the hiring process for the entry level positions over the past decade. I have my own opinion, and please take it with some grain of salt. Also if you think that I'm shitting on leetcode and related platforms, and despise the brilliant people who can really do cool things about the programming - I apologize, it is not my intent ( and English is my fourth language, so I'm still learning it it my late 30-ies). I use leetcode and hackerrank and codeforces myself. I used projecteuler and some TopCoder stuff way before those fancy coding dojos were born. For fun - because I like puzzles. Many people don't. And I don't use leetcode etc for interviews, ever - for the reason that will be clear below. I work as a software engineer for almost 2 decades. I've been in the positions of junior dev, senior, principal, director of engineering, CTO. I hired and fired a couple of hundred people, and interviewed over a thousand engineers for various positions during my career. So I know something ( or at least I think so ). What I learned so far - it is extremely unlikely that the leetcode knowledge of some fancy DP-related problems or optimizations would drive the hiring decision. Seriously. I would literally kick ass of anyone who will assign an entry-level developer a task that requires serious algorithmic skills. This is not how it works. As a junior dev you're supposed to not damage the system beyond some control boundaries where the damage could be mitigated. This is what it is. I've seen it way too many times when a smart guy thought that he's the smartest frog in a pond and tried to introduce some optimizations that would crash the integration testing environment ( of course if you have any ). Or tried to replace some "old and obsolete" code with a new fancy library that had some unforeseen side effects. You won't be doing the actual feature/performance related coding from the beginning. Not for a couple of months, for sure. Your task would be to fit the process. If you can commit some refactoring of some test in a week - that's great. If you can build the project locally with no help, just using (incomplete) README.md and googling the build errors, then fix the build and update that README.md - I'll buy you a drink. And this should give some hints on what people like myself would really look for ( may be there are not many ones, but many of my colleagues and random people on various internet forums tend to agree ).
So when I look at a resume for an entry-level or mid-level position, I'm looking for the signs that you know things from the list above. I will look at your github repo. I will browse the code and see whether you have tests. If you have TravisCI badge that actually shows that all the builds have passed - you already in shortlist for an phone interview. If you have clean interfaces that you use instead of implementations ( and you can explain why ) - you're 80% way down to getting the offer. I will ask you for, well, how to find the maximum in a sorted array to understand whether you really attended your classes. May be how to calculate N-th element of Fibonacci sequence. Or reverse that damned array. That's it. Anything else is pointless. It's unlikely ( but still possible ) that you will be developing a new high-efficient routing table for Cisco or may be throttling for Nginx. Most likely you will be building the systems that should be easy to maintain, easy to fix and easy to understand. And there's no leetcode involved. Hope that helps someone to review their goals. FAANG is not for everyone, there are plenty of jobs available. And if you hate lettcode and kill yourself trying to solve 1000 easy, 150 hard and 1 super-hard one hoping that it will get you a dream job - chances are you'll just get frustrated and drop off. [link] [comments]  |
| How do you manage school and an internship? Posted: 16 Feb 2019 04:40 PM PST I just landed my first internship and was wondering what kinds of things I can do to succeed at work and school? I will only be working part time, but my courses are getting very difficult. How do you manage your time? [link] [comments]  |
| Accepting a job when I know I am leaving in less than a year? Posted: 16 Feb 2019 04:09 PM PST Hi CS Career Questions, this is more of a business etiquette question than CS specific question, but I thought this subreddit would be a good place to ask. I am a soon-to-be-graduating college senior. I have a job offer from my current internship, but I recently interviewed for a different position that I am much more interested in. However, if I were to get an offer from this other job then I would not be able to start for up to 9 months after because of the schedule of the hiring process. I'm almost certainly going to accept the first offer, since I don't want to be waiting around with no income for up to 9 months. My question is: If I were to accept the first job, knowing that I am planning on leaving in a relatively short time, should I be respectful tot hem and tell them up-front, or would it be fine to just tell them nothing at first and then only speak up a month or two before I leave for real? [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone have experience looking for a job before graduating while pregnant? Posted: 16 Feb 2019 07:29 PM PST Dear all I really need your advice and help. Really complicated situation. I am a current graduate student and I am going to graduate on December,2019. I just got a great summer internship offer two weeks ago. And the summer internship has large potential to become a return offer. But I just found out I am pregnant yesterday. And the baby should be delivered around 10/28. It really takes lots of my effort to get the internship offer and I think I still should go. Is there awkward to have a pregnant intern? I know in this case I may not get the return offer anymore, I will still try my best. I just can't give up the opportunity and I still think I should go to intern (even in another state). Now my concern is is it still possible that I can find a job before graduating? Will any employer accept me in this situation. Since the baby will be delivered before the graduation, and I have my husband's mom to help to take care the baby, I am available to work once I graduate. Should I delay my graduation to keep my student status in case I can't find a job? I really need a job after graduation because I am in financial stress. And I don't have a choice. I have to keep the baby because I have experienced a miscarriage last year. My parents have blamed me a lot for the pregnancy, I am in great stress. My husband can't help a lot because he earned little and hard to support the family. Thaknkkkkkkkkkkkkyou so much!!!!!!!!! [link] [comments]  |
| Career Trajectory (I have none) Posted: 16 Feb 2019 03:38 PM PST Hi /r/cscareerquestions, I have been reading and learning from this sub for a while, but have never asked a question. Now I really do have a big question I think it's worth asking: Basically, I'm kind of lost in terms of "Career Trajectory". I'm almost 30 and have been working for a small/unknown company for 5 years now, I guess I have never thought about my "Career", I like being a SWE and doing the job I do, I'm not burnt-out or depressed. But I came to realize that simply doing a (good) job is just not enough, I'm probably a case of "lack of career trajectory" according to FANG folks. My point is: I want to fix it now, even though I might have already wasted 3+yrs comparing to FANG new grad hires. Can someone give me some advice on: How to plan a "Career Trajectory"? And how to do it with a disadvantage? I really feel like even though I wasted 3-5 yrs, it's still not too late to change/fix that. (More specifically, if FANG hiring committee is reviewing resumes with Stanford Masters Degree and 3 yoe at Microsoft all day long and then they see my resume, how can I stand a chance? Also how to move up levels if I'm lucky enough to get hired? Should SWE switch between jobs every 2 yrs to move higher? Or should I give talks in conferences to make myself "famous"? Other ideas?) (I do understand leetcode/sys design is a must, and I'm practicing, but what else? Or is that all?) Anyways, feel free to share any advice related to "Career Trajectory". Thank you in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Take a gamble with own project or get a new job? Posted: 16 Feb 2019 06:34 PM PST I am 22M and live in rural town in California. I have been programming for 10 years and software engineering is my passion. I have created a few websites and small software projects for fun but I've made little money from it so far. I have no formal education outside of high school. I currently have no debt and ~$40k in savings distributed across cash, Roth IRA and some bonds. I was hired at a local internet service provider (ISP) three years ago as my second job ever. I very quickly moved up to General Manager and have been running the place with little supervision for two years now. I got to greatly expand my knowledge of networking, sysops and management, however I am not learning new things as much anymore. I feel pretty plateaued and bored. My take home salary went from $26k to $40k to $50k during this time. The owner of the ISP, Ron, owns a few local bars and restaurants that he spends all of his time at. Ron is a tech guy and a business guy. He saw the need for better restaurant management software so him and I started to build a software suite. We build features based on problems he has day to day running the restaurants and managing staff. I've been the sole developer on this project and been working on it for two years part time, along side the internet business. Ron paid me for my time programming, however he wanted to give me more motivation for the project and made me 33% partner / owner of the software. I started to get frustrated with how long it was taking to get the software sell-able and wanted to dedicate more time to it. So I took a large pay cut down to $25k, just enough to cover expenses, to try to reduce the hours I work at the ISP. The problem is that it didn't work. I tired staying at home more to focus on programming but I would have intense anxiety and stress about the ISP and things I need to do there. Things fell behind and I felt like a failure. I decided to do the programming from my office at the ISP instead. For the last six months, I work ~36hrs a week doing ISP work and another ~30hrs a week programming. I have no problem working long hours and I in fact very much enjoy it. However, I've come to realize there is no way I can reduce my hours at the ISP, I would just have to quit. Ron wants to use the resources from the ISP to jump start the software company. Things like infrastructure, staff and raw funding will come, for free, from the ISP until the software can stand on it's own. The software is in daily use at Ron's restaurants and performs very well. I believe in the software and I believe in Ron's ability to sell and build success. We also have plans for the next two software suites we'd like to build. We have our first customer coming on board this month with two popular restaurants. The way I see it, best case, the software can pay my rent in two years. My dilemma is that I'm sick of working at the ISP, the monotony and stress is killing my motivation to do anything. I don't work on the software nearly as much as I'd like. I also have occasional, once every two months or so, panic attacks / breakdowns from working at the ISP. I think Ron would be very upset if I quit the ISP and I feel it would damage our relationship. The ISP is important to the success of the software company and I wouldn't be contributing to the ISP anymore. I feel stuck. I have a few programmer friends who live and work in Silicon Valley. They are encouraging me to find a job there and start building my career that way. I feel I could do fairly well there and be making $100k+ within a few years, even without a degree. But I wouldn't own my own business and I feel that freedom is important to me. I feel like I'm wasting valuable time working at the ISP. The ISP is shrinking, it is not going under but it is downsizing and will downsize more in the near future. Ron is too cheap to pay for the right person to fill my spot. If I leave, it will downsize faster. However, the ISP is and will continue to be very profitable for at least 5 years. Should I quit the ISP and focus on the software full time. Or find a new programming job and work on the software in my free time. Or continue to suffer and push through it? Xposted to /r/Advice [link] [comments]  |
| Company keeps pushing release date out, and it's interfering with my life. Posted: 16 Feb 2019 02:21 PM PST I live on the East Coast, my family on the West Coast in SoCal and Phoenix. I've also been applying for jobs in the California area because I want to advance my career and be closer to family. Previously I mentioned to my company I was extremely dissatisfied with the inflexibility of work. They added a "pseudoremote" policy and said I could work remotely if need be. I've used it a few times since then, just to visit family. Right now I have a few interviews that are on the table that I'm afraid I'm gonna miss and they're pretty big opportunities, and I do mean TOP companies in the field. There's a good chance I won't get them, but I made it to the onsite stage and want to at least try. Now, however, they've been in hard grind mode for around 5 months. For the past month, I thought we saw the light at the end of the tunnel but they just kept pushing it back another week. Every week seems to end with "just one more week of all your effort you guys!", culminating in long days, working weekends, etc. Not even to mention the interviews, visiting family, etc, holy shit am I just burned out. I am so sick of this product I can't stand to even look at the codebase anymore. This is becoming a huge impediment to me. I've asked if I could work remotely and they declined, saying it's just too busy. I ask if I can take time off and they seem to be extremely negative on the prospect of that. In fact they seem pretty reliant on me for any of this to work (I'm a senior engineer and one of the two top engineers). At this point, they seem to be relying on not a single mistake to be made in order for this to be released. A single person takes a sick day and we would miss it. What should I do? [link] [comments]  |
| What are some of the best companies to work for as a "lifer" for a steady, chill career? Posted: 16 Feb 2019 02:56 PM PST I've been contracting pretty much all of my career of over half a decade but it's rather unstable. Work is very transient. I want to move into a full-time developer job and possibly stick through it for the rest of my career. As an IC there's not much financial stability in this side of the industry. Although I have worked in offices, for many team projects, I never technically have been a W2 so I'm missing out on other perks and benefits. What companies are great for hiring just about anyone, even contractors who aren't exposed to much challenging work, and just stay in the company indefinitely? They'd have to be a company that's been around for decades, and possibly offer incentives that vest over time, rewards that grow the more time you stay there. I also don't seek much in career progress. I don't intend to become a principal engineer, or manager, or architect. For me being a senior or lead is my idea of "reaching the top". Good places for this? Places that don't mind if you don't want a promotion for a long time, but let you be a "lifer" and stick around indefinitely? [link] [comments]  |
| How do Leetcode questions translate into real work? Do they at all? Posted: 16 Feb 2019 02:27 PM PST Serious question. I was thinking about this since the company I'm interviewing for seems to like linked list questions. Finding the middle of a linked list, finding the intersection of two linked lists, etc. It made me think: in the real world, are you going to be using these algorithms a lot? Or is it mostly just a hiring thing? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Feb 2019 07:35 PM PST So sad, I was just reviewing some old problems I did on leetcode but after my premium ran out I realized the problems I submitted answer for are now locked as it redirects to a page saying to buy more premium. :( I wish I knew so I could have saved my old answers somewhere and now I have to redo these problems not knowing how I solved them before... [link] [comments]  |
| Yet another "Networking or Programming" question, help pls Posted: 16 Feb 2019 12:34 PM PST Hello everyone. Basically the title. For context, I live in Europe. So I'm a bit torn between these two. I'm thinking of getting a degree in Computer Engineering, however I've learned that the course eventually branches out into two directions, one towards programming and databases, the other towards networking. Thing is, I have no problem with either desk work or more practical work (although ideally I'd like to do both in order to keep it varied). I like programming, but not to the point of building incredibly complex programs. Programming-wise, I'm tending more to the side of web, phone apps and possibly videogame development (this last one would be something to do in my spare time perhaps as a side project, there's absolutely no way I'm getting into the main videogame development industry). I feel that my current qualifications are enough for that, although there is definitely room and desire for improvement, which could happen during the degree. I have also a strong interest in networking, mostly due to the technical aspects of it: conceptualizing, setting up networks, cable work, support, configuration... There's also a bit of curiosity in regards to cybersecurity, which I feel the need to learn more about even if I don't especialize in it. There's also a bit of an interest in the electrotechnical field, which sort of connects both the computer degree and my current qualifications (have a degree in sound engineering and almost zero knowledge of electricity due to the artistic nature of the school I went to). So there's a need to somehow fill the "hole" in that field and in a way unite all these qualifications. There is however something else that is troubling me... from what I've read lurking around Reddit threads (I could be wrong though), there might be more advantages to taking a certain degree and then "stepping down" to the other field, instead of the other way around (the example I saw was someone suggesting taking a computer engineering degree, then stepping down to the electrotechnical field through job experience/external resources/home practice I suppose). I'm not sure how relevant this "stepping down/up" aspect to my question, so if any of you could clear that up I'd be grateful. There's also the problem in regards to the future... I'm afraid of eventually running into trouble in the long run for picking a more technical field. Do you feel networking is at risk of being somehow automated to the point that only programmers become relevant in this field? Sorry if this text seems a bit confusing, I wrote this in a bit of a rush. Also there are a ton of questions running through my head at the moment, but hopefully I managed to be clear about them. My thanks in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| Digital Hardware Career Options? Posted: 16 Feb 2019 10:51 AM PST Hi Reddit, I have an interview coming up with a large tech company in digital design and verification. I'm curious if anyone here has any experience in these roles. If my ultimate goal is to work in embedded/system level software, how valuable would my hardware experience be? Any advice or interview tips would be appreciated. Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| As a professional programmer, how many hours a week do you dedicate to improve your technique? Posted: 16 Feb 2019 12:11 PM PST I'm reading Uncle Bob's Clean Coder and I'm loving it. In the book he says that a professional developer must work around 60 to 70 hours per week. 40 hours for his job, the rest of the time to improve his skills. More specifically, he says that a developer should dedicate 3 hours of his day (weekends included) to study. This includes reading books about programming, trying new things, side projects, etc... Things out of your comfort zone. What do you think about this? I'm struggling to study 1 hour after work! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Feb 2019 05:46 PM PST I'm curious why so many engineers want to work at Google or Other big companies over the medium sized ones, especially when you often have more room to grow at smaller companies. [link] [comments]  |
| Definitive Logic Behavioral or Technical Posted: 16 Feb 2019 05:34 PM PST What questions do they ask and are they behavior or technical? [link] [comments]  |
| Careers for CS graduates outside the tech industry Posted: 16 Feb 2019 01:25 AM PST Those who left tech industry, where are you working now? Particularly CS graduates who realized it is not for them or jobs where a technical background can be useful If it is too general or if it fits better somewhere else, please tell me. (computer-science-related job - so I thought it fits here) [link] [comments]  |
| Need to move to San Diego/LA area for sudden family issue. Have TS/SCI clearance. Posted: 16 Feb 2019 04:11 PM PST I'm looking at clearancejobs.com and indeed but I'm wondering if anyone knows any specific places looking for someone with my clearance. And if anyone knows how in demand it is over there. I really need to get over there as quick as possible but I also need income. Currently I recently started to work for an IA in DC. If anyone can give me any advice or referrals please let me know. [link] [comments]  |
| How much of a barrier does only being good at Python present when applying to jobs targeting Java? Posted: 16 Feb 2019 04:05 PM PST tldr; Basically, what's better in terms of landing a job? Become highly proficient in Python with minimal Java knowledge OR intermediate knowledge of Python and Java? I've been working on becoming better at Python and looking at job offers that mostly want someone interested in Java. I have Java programming experience, but it's very minimal and I don't think I could answer most questions concerning Java stuff. Should I not even bother applying to jobs that don't list Python as a language? Or, will companies be able to work with me if I show my proficiency in Python and explain that I could become good in Java if given time? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Feb 2019 12:13 PM PST I start my first week at my new internship this week as a software engineer and I so scared of being overwhelmed and failing. I did the coding challenge right and it's 50% pseudo code but obvi was good enough for them to hire me . I'm a 3rd year in college and past all my software courses, but I've never worked on a large website with a large server before and I'm still learning how working in a team in the industry works. If anybody has been in this spot before let me know! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Feb 2019 03:08 PM PST I know I should be acquiring new technical skills all the time but I am more hype when I am doing it at work. At home, I'd rather be doing other things and from what I heard that is okay, the majority of us are not "hardcore" in our programmer jobs. I also hear it can be bad. If you're not learning constantly you're putting yourself at a disadvantage. This learning stops when I lose a job (and it's happened twice before). I lose all energy and life becomes much less meaningful to me. I've also been in states of financial turmoil before, and while this is motivating enough for some people, to me it has the opposite effect. When I lose a job and run low on money I mentally shut down and don't want to think of anything don't even want to leave home. How do I stop the habit of responding to a crisis like this? [link] [comments]  |
| 2yrs experience, what to learn now? Posted: 16 Feb 2019 09:06 AM PST I have 2 years on the job as a software engineer, and I work in a dated technology. We do JSF with Primefaces on a large commercial web application. The architecture:
We don't really do anything modern: no hibernate, no containers, no testing, and we just got on to git and maven... I plan to jump to a new place in the next year, what should I focus on in my spare time, to make sure I'm a modern Java Enterprise developer when I make the jump? I'm also attending university for a master's in CS. I plan to go down from full time to one class so I can focus on modernizing projects. Where to start? What do I need, what's nice to have, what can be left to learn at the next place? Edit - can't leave now because my partner is in the Air Force and we probably will move in the next year. So I'd be getting a job where we are at only to move and abandon it in a few months. [link] [comments]  |
| What do you do when you run out of stuff to do at work? Posted: 16 Feb 2019 11:15 AM PST On my next workday, I will have no idea what to do because I've already finished what I was assigned. Should I just tell my manager straight up "Hey, I ran out of stuff to do"? [link] [comments]  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from CS Career Questions. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment