Daily Chat Thread - March 24, 2019 CS Career Questions |
- Daily Chat Thread - March 24, 2019
- For those that are currently socially awkward, and with few friends, how do you keep getting job offers?
- "Bang for your Buck" Leetcode Study Guide / Question List
- Bi-modal difficulty distribution of technical screens, and the 95/5 rule of practice investment.
- Recent CS Grad struggling at work
- Becoming a computer "geek"
- Is anyone moonlighting two different remote jobs?
- Boss may have lied to me about position being remote
- Thoughts on Boulder, CO vs San Diego, CA for similar position?
- Can freelancing + open-source contributions + online courses + books substitute work experience?
- Got two recruitment processes at both a consulting company and the client's, now I'm stuck and need help
- I'm (31) and started looking for jobs about 3 weeks ago. I'm having trouble deciding what I should do and other things.
- Why do people say international students have a harder time getting a job because they're "international?"
- Just had to complete a CAPTCHA on an internship application
- Computer Science Capstone Project (Highschool)
- Entry Level Remote Work?
- Preparedness
- Opportunities in HPC/scientific computing?
- How to Tell When Time to Leave a Boss
- Ways to pickup better 'best practices' amoung other things?
- What are some good software engineering productivity tips?
- What is a CPT report and how do I fill one out?
- Technical vs Management Career Path
- Staying on same team vs. Jumping around teams
- When going over projects, should you be technical or explain the user experience?
| Daily Chat Thread - March 24, 2019 Posted: 24 Mar 2019 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: 24 Mar 2019 11:59 AM PDT I'm both of these things to a tee, and maybe it's just my paranoia but I may be less pleasant to look at as well. I don't smell and I dress nice at interviews but I do have crooked teeth in my smile (never got braces, I'm in my 30s now), and have a lazy right eye so looking at a person, takes some effort to keep my eyes straight. I want to know how you guys do it despite your awkward presentation and also how to stop defining yourself by these qualities. Do you get referrals from some of your few but close friends? I rarely get referred to a job, but one time that I did, I had two on-sites with the company. But the outcome was weird. It felt like the company just blew me off. And it goes on like this with a few phone screens but mostly on-sites. Where do these socially awkward people end up working with? I have to find the companies that are a culture fit for me. [link] [comments]  |
| "Bang for your Buck" Leetcode Study Guide / Question List Posted: 23 Mar 2019 10:46 PM PDT Hi cscareerquestions, Has anyone created a list of leetcode study guide questions that will establish I guess a good "framework" for questions that can be asked? I just want to be efficient and am still working a fulltime job, even though I know it's a good idea to practice as much as possible. Thanks! Edit: Feel free to include non-leetcode links too. I'm fine with practicing on other websites too, just most familiar with leetcode! [link] [comments]  |
| Bi-modal difficulty distribution of technical screens, and the 95/5 rule of practice investment. Posted: 24 Mar 2019 10:06 AM PDT I've done a fair number of technical screens this round, and it seems that their difficulty is a bi-modal distribution:
This difficulty gap can be quite jarring. Earlier this month I passed several screens which were all just LC Easy questions. Then with a different company I suddenly faced a series of hard LC Mediums and LC Hard questions. This suggests a 95/5 rule of practice investment: 5% of the effort will get you into 95% of SWE positions. If you can just solve any LC Easy question, you will literally blast through about 95% of algo+DS technical screens. To nail the remaining 5%, you will have to invest an order of magnitude more effort. x20 does not seem like an exaggeration. You will have to be able to consistently solve both harder LC Mediums and LC Hard questions, which takes a ton of practice. For reference, the "tough" process began with a phone screen featuring an LC Hard question, so you have to solve LC Hard just to get into their process. As a final observation, it's unclear that the effort is worth it. The small minority of "difficult" companies I've encountered were not at all superior to the majority of normal companies. One of the "difficult" minority was a startup with a highly dubious business model, that ended up issuing me an offer that was very stingy on both cash and equity - curiously so for an early stage startup. The other just offered market rate. Neither stood out as far as perks, work conditions, or any other benefits. Their interview process did not inspire any particular wish to join them. In fact, the only manner they stood out is an inordinately high number of arrogant assholes, although that could be anecdotal. The bottom line is that my favorite current offers are all from the "easy" process companies. Which begs the question whether investing 95% of the effort is worth it, when 5% gets you the same end result. [link] [comments]  |
| Recent CS Grad struggling at work Posted: 24 Mar 2019 01:41 PM PDT I recently graduated with a BS in CS with a GPA of 3.0+ and one internship. I am really strugging with coding at work and its hard for me to get things working without asking for help. I feel like school failed me at coding however I understand the theory and logic. I have a hard time traslating the logic into code. If someone was in a similar situation could you please advice on how you got better? Any other general advice from anyone else is also welcome. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2019 06:04 PM PDT I do not mean to offend anyone. When I use the term "computer geek", I am referring to someone who is deeply passionate about computers,technologies, etc. that may be or may not be outside the scope of their career. For some context, I grew up with little experience/contact with technology/computers and spent my first years at Uni studying pre-med. I recently made a switch to computer science and the more I learn in my classes, the bigger I realize the tech field actually is and with that, the more I realize I won't be taught in class. I want to be more invested in the field (for the sake of my career, but also just because it helps me see the broader picture) but I am not sure how. Any specific resources people can guide me towards that pertain to the part of the field that isn't directly classroom/theory-related [link] [comments]  |
| Is anyone moonlighting two different remote jobs? Posted: 24 Mar 2019 01:27 PM PDT I was in a remote Data Scientist role for two years and I accepted a remote Senior Data Scientist job a few months ago. So far, I have been able to deliver by working about 14 hours from 5am to 7pm, 6 days a week and organizing my schedules / meetings to avoid time conflicts. Is anyone else currently doing something like this? Also, is there a way for one employer to find out about the other job and how do you prevent that? [link] [comments]  |
| Boss may have lied to me about position being remote Posted: 24 Mar 2019 06:58 PM PDT Two months I got a job offer from a company that I previously worked for. They told me it would be remote and that I could live anywhere I liked. So I accepted the position, and since then, they've had me come to the brick and mortar office every other week for meetings. These meetings could very well be done over a Skype call. What really bugged me though, was when I told them I would be moving to a city five hours away from the office, they seemed hesitant and told me I couldn't do that. Which I thought was weird because they told me I could live "all the way across the country" if I wanted. These people have been trying to get me to work for them for the last six months, and I'm under the impression they only offered me remote work because they wanted to get me to accept. So what is the most professional way to go about this? Im early in my career, and left my first job out of college for this position. So I'm worried if I tried to find a new job at the city where I was planning on moving to, I'll look like a job-hopper. [link] [comments]  |
| Thoughts on Boulder, CO vs San Diego, CA for similar position? Posted: 24 Mar 2019 12:43 PM PDT Hi, I'm a new grad and am deciding on where to go for my first job out of school. For one offer I have the option of being in San Diego vs Boulder, are there any major advantages/disadvantages to one over the other? Also, that is for an embedded programming position and deals with RTOS's, which sounds pretty neat. However, I'm worried it wont be as neat as I think it will, and I won't learn as much about CS that I could at another position. Any thoughts on this? Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Can freelancing + open-source contributions + online courses + books substitute work experience? Posted: 24 Mar 2019 07:34 PM PDT |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2019 10:24 AM PDT I'm looking for a dev job in an area with not so many opportunities. I applied for a job at company 1 a month ago and got no reply for 3 weeks so in the meantime I got contacted by a consulting company for the same kind of job and did an HR and a technical interview with them that went very well. I understood that the client was company 1 but wasn't sure if it was for the exact same team. Right after my tech interview for the consulting co., I got a call to arrange an interview with co. 1. I said ok without knowing if it was part of the process of the consulting co. or through my own application. I did the interview and discovered that it was for my own application, I told the staff of co 1 that I already had an advanced process with the consulting co. to which they replied that it's not for the same position, they indeed look to have consultants through that company in their team but they're looking for an internal dev too. The interview went ok but I understood the job (senior position) has a lot of responsabilities for a very chaotic environment with numerous clients, stacks and apps, sounds risky, painful and exhausting. I'm not yet a senior and would prefer a less stressful position, I figured they did want to see me because they may lack better candidates. On the other hand, the consulting co. has a lot of advantages: it would be less stressful because I would be an extern, they are a reknown global IT consulting co. which would look good on my CV and give me an experience in consulting, they offer great mobility (I'm not sure to stay longer than 2 years there at the moment so that part is important) and have other advantages with the job and great formations. I got a call from the consulting co. that wanted to send my profile to the client, I told them about my interview at the co 1, we discovered that it was for the exact same team. Because of my own personal application and the ongoing process at their client's, the consulting co told me that they can't send my profile and have to wait for my other process to either continue, which means I would be done with the consulting, or end, which would allow them to propose me as a consultant. Problem is, I'm not even sure I would take the job if it was directly at co 1, but I would definitely if it was through the consulting co. Now, given that co 1 seems very slow at the process, I don't want to get stuck in between and be passive. I was thinking I could call the consulting co. to tell them that I really would prefer to work through them and see if they can suggest me a move. Should I? I also think I could for instance resign from my own personal application at co 1, arguing that I would prefer working as a consultant given all the advantages they offer (mainly mobility) that co 1 can't offer, so that I unblock the situation. Would it work? tl;dr: Applied for a job at co. 1, got no reply. Got contacted by consulting co. for a job at co. 1 in the same team but with much better advantages, went on with the process. Got an interview for the first application. Now I don't want to work for co.1 directly but through consulting co. but consulting co. can't send my profile as long as I have a recruitment process on my own at the client co. 1. What should I do? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2019 11:28 AM PDT Some background. I spent half of my 20s tooling around and the other half going to community college and then university. I have an Associate's degree in Computer Systems Technology, (3.6gpa) and a Bachelor's in Computer Engineering (3.07gpa). I graduated in may of 2017 and worked 3 years in tech support while getting my bachelors, a job I finished in september of 2017. I've taken classes in Java, C#, C++, SQL and C but I'm basically a beginner with all of them. I've taken a 3d printing course which exposed me to some Solidworks, which was enjoyable. And I've taken classes in a million different things because CompE does that. After 09/17 I took some time off to travel but then had some unexpected and urgent medical issues to deal with, so I chose to stay unemployed for the much needed Medicaid benefits. Now I'm pretty much healthy and mostly recovered but it's been about 1.5 years since I have been employed and I am very uncertain in myself and in the next step to take. I've gone to an engineering career fair as an alum and intend to go to another in a few days. I've been filling out applications for desktop support at businesses and at Universities. I've talked to a million recruiters. I've lost a couple of interviews because I have a green card and so I'm not eligible for the citizen only jobs. I also have a ton of debt I need to start paying back in the near future. Another issue is that I have an arrest record, but that was from about 8 years ago. What I want in the end is a decent job making ~55-65k out of the gate, which may be unrealistic at this point. The higher ed desktop support roles are similar to what I was doing while attending university so I thought it would be a good way to get into something I have more experience with, but I'm not certain I can get through the interviews because there are typically a ton of candidates. I can take a level 1 help desk role somewhere but that won't pay what I really need. Or I can try getting a job as a college graduate through a uni career fair, but I don't know where to start with that. I can't pass a technical interview for software dev right now. I've started learning html/css on freecodecamp but I'm far from a whiz in it. I'm waiting on a 3 or 4 opportunities where I've already passed the phone interview stage. I've pretty much failed one phone interview so far, but it was a job I didn't really want, I was using that interview more for practice than anything else. I also was recently invited to an onsite interview of sorts with a small company (10-15 employees) that I talked to at the first career fair. They are looking for a software engineer to do some scada, VBA and database development. I worked with VBA and made a database for the senior design project, which is why they are interested in me, but I fear that my experience in that area is so insignificant that I would be a severe drag on the company and that's hard to deal with when it's such small business. What should I do? What should I concentrate on? It would be nice to land a job in higher ed because free courses. It would be nice to get a job in software dev, dba, or jr sys admin but I fear my experience is just too insignificant and forgotten. tl;dr: Haven't worked in a while, knowledge is rusty, not sure what I can even do at this point. Edit: Which job websites are better? I've tried indeed, glassdoor, linkedin, ziprecruiter, higheredjobs, careerbuilder. Is monster any good? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2019 11:52 AM PDT I often see international students saying that it is more difficult for them to get hired in the U.S. because of their immigration status. I thought federal law prohibits employers from making a hiring decision based on one's immigration status? [link] [comments]  |
| Just had to complete a CAPTCHA on an internship application Posted: 24 Mar 2019 08:03 PM PDT Has anyone here been required to do this on an application? This was my first time seeing it and it's kind of weird. [link] [comments]  |
| Computer Science Capstone Project (Highschool) Posted: 24 Mar 2019 08:02 PM PDT I'm in high school and a member of my school's (semi-prestigious) engineering institute. We do capstone projects senior year and I have no idea what to do! They expect a lot out of me because I know how to program, but I don't know _what_ to program. Does anyone here have ideas on what I could do for it or push me in the direction of related info? Thanks in advance :) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2019 07:53 PM PDT Is this possible? I have been in the electronics/instrumentation field for 10+ years, so it isn't like I have zero work experience. Just got sick of what I'm doing as a career, started messing around on freecodecamp a year ago, immediately knew it was what I wanted to do (always have been a math/ computer nerd growing up) and now I am in the process of getting my software engineering degree. I have a somewhat populated city an hour away (100kish ppl) I would take a job and commute to if necessary. I have kids and a lot of family where I'm at so I'm not necessarily looking to relocate if possible. Anyone heard of this? If I put together some projects that showcase my abilities do you think employers would overlook that I won't have any "real" professional experience in the field? On indeed.com there are at any given time 12k remote development jobs, 2-3k are under the category "entry level". Anyone think this is feasible? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2019 07:45 PM PDT I have interview coming up early next month with one of the top techs. I have been going through leetcode and algoexpert exposing my self to problems and solutions. Unfortunately the questions dont end and I cant possibly study for everything on those sites. How do I gauge my preparedness? Right now If I encounter a problem that I have no idea how to solve my confidence goes down a little more...and I dont think I should take the interview feeling that way. I am thinking of not doing new questions and take it easy. Would love to hear any suggestions. [link] [comments]  |
| Opportunities in HPC/scientific computing? Posted: 24 Mar 2019 12:10 PM PDT Hi all, So I'm wrapping up my grad program which was in ME, and by a strange evolution I've ended up in HPC/scientific computing. I just accepted a position at the Lawrence Livermore lab in their computational lab, and I was really excited about it, but I was just wondering what kind of opportunities are available in this field after the internship is wrapped up? Obviously if I do ok they could extend me an offer, but I was curious what the wider world offers. Are there a lot of jobs in HPC/scientific computing? How do they compare to other dev positions in terms of stress and work-life balance, salary, etc.? I worry that my experience as a developer is I'm also curious what other kinds of dev positions would be open to someone with my kind of background. By the end of my grad program, the mechanical part will have been in renewable energy (I was just interested), then a handful of mathematical analysis classes in ME for controls and PDEs, then like a quarter of my credits were in data science, machine learning, and HPC and optimization, the other quarter in my research project which was technically in the CE department (but had an ME application). My research project was in augmenting a template library for tensor calculus to implement GPUs and then some optimization of the library. Thank you, any insight is much appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| How to Tell When Time to Leave a Boss Posted: 24 Mar 2019 01:37 PM PDT Hello- Have worked at medium size co. for 2 years. Started off as business analyst doing SQL, have taken on several addt'l responsibilities since then including ETL, automated reporting, data warehouse lead, and software developer. Got to point where couldn't get along w/ boss due to repeated demonstrations of disrespect - moreso in past 6 months while I have been working on a piece of software working 60 hours/week for past 3-4 months. Finally escalated issue with his boss, then the boss' boss which was a mistake. Had conversation w/ my boss and his boss following the above and seemed to come to a conclusion where boss and I can continue working together. Exchanged email w/ his boss expressing that I like the co. and the job. Since am a developer and not social at all, I am worried/concerned boss will use his social dominance as way to achieve revenge/make my life a living hell. Especially w/ a new person starting soon. Is this concern overblown or invalid or is it time to just move on? [link] [comments]  |
| Ways to pickup better 'best practices' amoung other things? Posted: 24 Mar 2019 06:47 PM PDT Hi There, I've taken numerous Udemy courses for refreshers. Mostly a waste of time becuase it was entry level. Most courses seem to be entry level, but what about people who want to take their skills to the next level? I'd love to do a course that is 10s of hours where they build a very complicated project from scratch, or pick apart a premade project, I don't really know. I do best when I follow along with an instructor. Anyone know where one can find something like this? Or am I just sort of left to my own devices with farting around. ASP.NET and C# is what I'm looken for [link] [comments]  |
| What are some good software engineering productivity tips? Posted: 24 Mar 2019 09:51 AM PDT As a new grad, I find that my productivity with my environment and work is pretty low. It takes me a while to fully get acclimated with my environment and software tools in order to work effectively in a new setting. I know new grads are not really expected to "know that much" early on, but what are some routines that you do with tools like your terminal, shell, editor, debugger, keyboard, etc that makes you more productive? [link] [comments]  |
| What is a CPT report and how do I fill one out? Posted: 24 Mar 2019 06:29 PM PDT Long time lurker here, this is my first post. I'm recruiting an iOS/Android developer for my startup on AngelList, and I've recently interviewed a candidate completing her Master's degree. During the interview, she talked a lot about fulfilling her summer internship CPT requirements and working at least 20 hours a week. What is this CPT business all about and how should I handle it? I've looked online and searched this sub without finding a clear explanation of it. [link] [comments]  |
| Technical vs Management Career Path Posted: 24 Mar 2019 02:42 PM PDT Two years in as general SWE in a big company. Want to maximize my earning potential, should I go management route or study more to be more and more technical? Also considering developer advocacy / relations -- would this also be a good route? People in advocacy / relations seem to be like unicorn hybrids of social / technical. Any advice is appreciated! Thank you. [link] [comments]  |
| Staying on same team vs. Jumping around teams Posted: 24 Mar 2019 10:26 AM PDT So I've been at my company for 3 years and joined as a new grad. I was on my first team for 2 years and switched to a new team a year ago. As the other new grads around me got promoted this past month, my manager did not put me up for promotion. He gave me a great performance review but told me verbatim I haven't been on the team long enough for him to justify my promotion. I hate to say this, because comparing oneself to others is the unhealthiest thing to do to yourself, but I don't feel great seeing other new grads around me getting promoted already. However I noticed that they were all engineers who have been only been on one team so far. I decided to jump to a new team to build a new skill set and try something completely different. I guess it was the tradeoff of a quicker promotion. My question is, what matters more to you -- jumping around teams and learning new things, or staying on the same team and being a subject-matter export and becoming more senior more quickly? Do titles (senior vs. non-senior) matter when you switch companies? Sorry for the word vom. [link] [comments]  |
| When going over projects, should you be technical or explain the user experience? Posted: 24 Mar 2019 11:43 AM PDT So I'm a senior CS grad set to graduate in about 40 days and I have a few interviews coming up. A lot of them said my projects caught their eye and they want to hear about them more in depth. I'm more or less curious on how I should go about explaining them, and how long I should spend talking about each project. I was thinking it should be user flow -> talk about any technical points about user flow, then continue. For example: the first thing a user will see when visiting the site is a login page. This just used the barebones laravel login, so there's nothing too interesting going on here. After the user creates their account and signs in for the first time, they will be redirected to a "create a profile page". Here they can put in basic info about themselves along with their city and state. A stored procedure is then called and generates the users geographical latitude and longitude using googles geocoding API. The user will then be redirected to the home page which will display users within a certain circular radius around their lat and long. This is done by a math-heavy SQL query which checks if users cities fall within the current users circular radius. The radius is dynamic, and a user can control how big or small they want this radius by using a slider bar which was done using JavaScript. Obviously that's not all the program does, but I don't want to get too wordy for this post. Is that too in-depth, or is that a solid way to talk about a project? I feel like it's useless to sit there and go "well we had an If statement that checked if a user was signed in, and if they were an sql query was called which would be loaded in using a JavaScript function that was hooked to our laravel API". I'm also curious about how much time you should spend discussing one or two projects. Almost all of my projects are web apps, so those are the positions that I'm shooting for as it's what I enjoy the most. One is in Spring Boot, one is in Laravel, and another is in Rails, so I'm fairly diverse there. I'm just confused as to how I should talk about them, and for how long. [link] [comments]  |
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