DEAR PROFESSIONAL COMPUTER TOUCHERS -- FRIDAY RANT THREAD FOR March 29, 2019 CS Career Questions |
- DEAR PROFESSIONAL COMPUTER TOUCHERS -- FRIDAY RANT THREAD FOR March 29, 2019
- Daily Chat Thread - March 29, 2019
- How do you keep from burning out at your job?
- How old are you and what are your career goals? How do you plan on achieving them?
- What makes a "rock star" intern in tech?
- Criminal record in IT/compsci career... (Help)
- Maintain Good Connections With Old Supervisors
- Minoring in something totally not related to CS
- I know this type of post is made alot, but I finally beat the odds.
- Relocated for job as team lead, got bait and switched
- Are any other new grads still looking for a job with no luck?
- What is your job like?
- How does management compensation fare compared to a more traditional engineering or technical role?
- Summer Internship vs Self-studying (+ prepare thesis) during the summer semester?
- Salary Negotiations
- Triplebyte? So many ads on reddit for me.
- Software Engineer at Disney Streaming Services?
- Freelanced for several years, having trouble getting back into a "regular" SWE job at a larger company
- If you could easily switch from full-time to part-time, would you?
- When should I be applying for jobs?
- Anyone here ever rejoin with a company they were laid off from?
- Need advice on how to market myself for a job search
- Has anyone transitioned into a teaching career after getting their degree in CS?
- Can i get some help looking for titles in the IT engineer/Infrastructure ladder?
- Tough (but exciting choices): Cornell M.Eng or UMass Amherst M.S.?
| DEAR PROFESSIONAL COMPUTER TOUCHERS -- FRIDAY RANT THREAD FOR March 29, 2019 Posted: 29 Mar 2019 12:07 AM PDT AND NOW FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT. THE BUILDS I LOVE, THE SCRIPTS I DROP, TO BE PART OF, THE APP, CAN'T STOP THIS IS THE RANT THREAD. IT IS FOR RANTS. CAPS LOCK ON, DOWNVOTES OFF, FEEL FREE TO BREAK RULE 2 IF SOMEONE LIKES SOMETHING THAT YOU DON'T BUT IF YOU POST SOME RACIST/HOMOPHOBIC/SEXIST BULLSHIT IT'LL BE GONE FASTER THAN A NEW MESSAGING APP AT GOOGLE. (RANTING BEGINS AT MIDNIGHT EVERY FRIDAY, BEST COAST TIME. PREVIOUS FRIDAY RANT THREADS CAN BE FOUND HERE.) [link] [comments]  |
| Daily Chat Thread - March 29, 2019 Posted: 29 Mar 2019 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]  |
| How do you keep from burning out at your job? Posted: 29 Mar 2019 07:32 AM PDT I am a full stack developer for a small startup. Well kind of, we were 1 company and then sold all our assets and products a couple of years ago and then formed a new company. So I've been with the same group for 8 years. Sales has been slow, we've rewritten our product 3 times and tweaked it several more times to fit demos and prospective customers but in the end we still have no sales. It's been a while and now deadlines have seemed to drift away. Urgency is gone. I am currently writing a Android app to complement our server product but I am having a hard time focusing. I know what needs to be done, but with so many rewrites and lack of sales I'm finding that I have no drive. I could leave and find a new job that will change things up but I hate the broken interview process and do really like working here. I'm sure other business go through similar downtime, What do you do to keep yourself in the game and from losing drive? TLDR: Job is really slow right now, can't seem to focus on the tasks at hand due to an underlying thought that any thing i write just goes to the trash, which may not be true if we get a customer. How do you keep yourself focused? Thank you There has been so much advice provided. Talking with a lot of you has been pretty therapeutic. I may have discovered that it might just be my time to find the next great adventure. But here are some of the best tips I got so far:
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| How old are you and what are your career goals? How do you plan on achieving them? Posted: 29 Mar 2019 11:11 AM PDT This question is always asked by managers and interviewers and I'm never sure how to answer it. I think it would be beneficial for everyone to see goals, plans, timelines of our fellow cscareerquestions members. [link] [comments]  |
| What makes a "rock star" intern in tech? Posted: 29 Mar 2019 03:34 PM PDT I'm a soph starting my first FAANG internship in bout a month and I wanna put my best foot forward during my time there. I always hear about past interns getting ranked, getting higher FT offers as a result, etc. But what really makes someone a top intern? Is it about working hard and staying the extra hour (seems contrary to tech culture)? Is it about technical preparation before the internship? In my freshman internship, as long as I showed up, did my job, and communicated with manager, I'd get a good review. What are some things I can do this summer to distinguish myself? Whether ur a past intern or manager, please chime in! [link] [comments]  |
| Criminal record in IT/compsci career... (Help) Posted: 29 Mar 2019 04:45 PM PDT It's so depressing and eats my soul every time when I think about it and there's no one to talk to. No friends, or at least not close enough to confide something like this. Can't afford therapists, if they do anything at all. I was a young IT technician with high school and some college background, and got lucky enough to get my foot into the door. Work has been mostly IMAC ( Install Move Add Change) for about 2-3 years. For compsci majors, it's just basically replacing the hardware and ensuring that the original system and specs are preserved albeit in new hardware. It's generally simple line of work; creating image, transfer and push the image to new hardware. Improvise and adapt depending on how good the imaging process is and mostly trying to fix any technical issues afterwards. I've seen some programmers who can do cool things that make our job look like very inefficient execution with their bash scripts and with the rise of automation and AI (little confused why people say this as it's not true AI but imitation of very complex algorithms derived from machine learning), I really want to be a useful asset and be part of such industry. Make decent money, and achieve financial freedom. One major issue apart from teaching myself hard somehow, network with right people and getting lucky is that I have a criminal record I won't be able to erase for 10 years minimum. I'm not really asking any particular question. I'm hoping to hear any successful stories as to how people like me overcame this Herculean dilemma and eventually managed to end up with successful career and happy ending. And perhaps a specific blueprint as to how they got there. In Canada, it will take 10 years minimum to get pardoned/seal their record as far as background check is concerned in the industry. I didn't want to ramble too much but if you want to hear greater context, please read below. Hoping for some constructive environment and just someone I can relate to talk to... and hoping very hard to be rehabilitate and live a life I dream everyday :( --- I have a pretty decent chance of facing criminal conviction concerning indictable offense relating to damage property. In the US, I believe they are called felony charge. This can be a career destroyer especially when every single jobs I've applied and did required criminal background check. Even minor offense like summary offense or misdemeanor in US could make or break your job application before competition even begins. Worst case scenario I could finish school if they even bother accepting me and spend 4 years or a little more to get a degree while trying very hard to find a job. I'd like to avoid joining college bubble personally but my record will make me very unemployable and I feel finding a decent job would be an act of God when looking at the market and googling a little. I can always self-teach myself but it's very difficult to stay motivated to learn and invest time when you are constantly worrying about job security and keeping the cash flow sufficiently enough to survive. Sometimes I hope I end up killing myself doing some great deed for others so that my suffering here will be short and quick, and would have paid my debt sin-wise to achieve happiness in the afterlife. I often get depressed but I don't show it as I mask it with my extroverted nature which helps temporarily but it doesn't change my grim reality. I'm not gifted enough to be an outlier, but smart enough to have high goal standard and hoping to do what I love and achieve financial independence so I can spend my life with some option and retire reasonably while doing something I love without worrying about negotiating salary like volunteering. I dream of being able to live my life again like in games, but I can't. I got no one to talk to but to hustle my job as best as I can and wait to see how damaging my punishment will be :( [link] [comments]  |
| Maintain Good Connections With Old Supervisors Posted: 29 Mar 2019 07:39 AM PDT Everytime I work a job, my supervisors really like me and are happy with me. But when I move jobs, I feel like my supervisors gets unhappy with me and that bridge sorta gets broken. I'd like to maintain good connections rather than feel like everytime I change jobs I'm burning bridges. Sometimes I think this is all in my head, but one of managers before said he was disappointed I left the team. And it's not like I left the team on a whim, I put in 2 weeks and left according the book. How do I not feel like I'm leaving a burning trail after I switch jobs? [link] [comments]  |
| Minoring in something totally not related to CS Posted: 29 Mar 2019 07:03 PM PDT Even though I like programming, at the same time, I really love history and East Asian politics. So I was thinking about minoring in Political science or something. However, is there a way to make this minor useful in the tech industry? [link] [comments]  |
| I know this type of post is made alot, but I finally beat the odds. Posted: 29 Mar 2019 06:39 PM PDT I did it! I finally got an internship offer. After 400+ applications and facing all the odds (freshman, international student), I accepted an offer that pays well for the area! Im so excited right now and just wanted to share my accomplishment. Here are some tips to those in similar situations to me who are close to giving up: 1) Refine your resume. I cant stress this enough. My first resume when I started applying to companies vs what it is now is a world of difference. Get this down. In my opinion, stick to black and white latex format. It looks professional. 2) DO NOT GIVE UP. I was done the interview process with a company when they declined me due to being an international student. I was on the brink of tears and just wanted to give up then and there. But I didn't. I kept going and eventually I was rewarded. I had people on here tell me that it was too late for internships but I didn't listen to them at all, and I don't regret that decision that all. Believe in yourself. Thats all you need. 3) Study for interviews rather than preparing for them. I think taking a more academic approach to interview preperation helped me a lot. Knowing answers to basic behavioral questions of the top of your head is a must. And yes, you need to be ok with grinding leetcode. It sucks, but thats the reality of the industry right now. Hope my advice helps! Keep in mind point number 2. [link] [comments]  |
| Relocated for job as team lead, got bait and switched Posted: 29 Mar 2019 05:58 AM PDT I relocated for a job a few months ago. When I originally interviewed, it was for a team leading position. I was plied on their bonus structure as well as pay, and relocated for that. I have received the negotiated pay. I was the first and only person on my team for about a month. No point was ever raised about my leadership, but I assumed that by process of elimination (since I was the only person), that I was, indeed, going to be team lead. After a month, they hired someone else, who was immediately hired as team lead over me. I'm happy with the work I'm doing, and I'm willing to respect the guy as the team lead, but I feel slighted. I am also worried that not being team lead means I won't get the bonuses that were promised, and that was one of the reasons I chose this job. I like my job and teammates otherwise. Any advice? Tl;Dr -- thought I was making a lateral move with slightly more pay but much better bonuses; am no longer team lead, so I feel this is a career hit. [link] [comments]  |
| Are any other new grads still looking for a job with no luck? Posted: 29 Mar 2019 04:24 PM PDT I've been looking for a job for the past 7 months now. Kind of exhausted, especially seeing alot of my friends in other schools get jobs. Wondering if anyone else can relate to this sense of impending doom. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2019 05:26 AM PDT I am a web dev (PHP/Laravel) looking for a change and currently thinking about data based jobs. What is your current job like on a typical day? What do you enjoy most about it and what is the most stressful part? Edit: this question is open to everyone, not just data scientests/engineers/etc. [link] [comments]  |
| How does management compensation fare compared to a more traditional engineering or technical role? Posted: 29 Mar 2019 06:44 PM PDT I've just started doing some work experience at a software development firm, I'm just about finished my degree and will probably be looking to relocating at the end of the year to a major city (Australia). Throughout my time at university I held a bunch of leadership roles (managing teams and large sums of money) and was involved in a lot extra-curriculum activities. I consider myself a people person and think I would make a good manager sometime down the track. Some of my best marks were in my software-project-management course. I also do love coding and I'm getting better and more confident in my abilities, though I understand I have a long way to go. Straight out of university I will definitely be looking for a junior development role, however I've seen a lot of posts about people here having a good idea about their career progression and where they would like to be. So my question is basically, how does compensation fare between these two positions and what other aspects do you think I should consider? Particularly in regards to work/life balance and how involved a SPM is in the technical side of things as I do really enjoy writing code! [link] [comments]  |
| Summer Internship vs Self-studying (+ prepare thesis) during the summer semester? Posted: 29 Mar 2019 12:19 PM PDT Hello, I am a first year Master student in Computer Science. So, I decided to take online courses (from YouTube). I took CS156 from Caltech channel ( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD63A284B7615313A ). Now, I am taking CS229 from Stanford channel, ( https://www.youtube.com/view\_play\_list?p=A89DCFA6ADACE599 ) and math lectures from Khan Academy. (I was not good at math. but now I like math!!) The problem is that until now I cannot get any summer intern position in ML or DL. I think the reason that I have no experience in machine learning and data science. Also, I have only limited knowledge of machine learning and cloud system. (I just know how to deploy websites on Google Compute Machine.) So the question is… Do I have to find an internship position in Software Engineering? (I know this is also very difficult) Or it is better to study more through off-line lecturers and YouTube and attending hackathons? Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2019 09:45 AM PDT I received my first and only job offer recently for an entry level software engineer role. I was wondering how should I respond to this offer to start negotiations. Should I ask if the salary is negotiable, do I just accept it (67.5k on Long Island), or do I outright say a number that I am looking to get (with reasoning behind it)? [link] [comments]  |
| Triplebyte? So many ads on reddit for me. Posted: 29 Mar 2019 02:20 PM PDT Anyone used Triplebyte? The ad is constant on my Reddit, so finally I decided to take a look. The concept seems pretty legit, it test your technical first and companies can see if passed the tests. Anyone used? [link] [comments]  |
| Software Engineer at Disney Streaming Services? Posted: 29 Mar 2019 08:12 AM PDT Does anyone here have any work or interview experience with Disney Streaming ? Got contacted last week about the position. I searched up previous posts here, but those were not related to the streaming brand. The position highlighted Java, Database languages and AWS services. I would love any recommendations for concepts/technology to study for a job related to streaming services like Netflix/Hulu [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2019 10:48 AM PDT After losing my job at a startup due to budget cuts and a big squeeze from sales (the company was going in the red), I've headed out to look for work again. At the time I have worked for four different companies, albeit small ones. These companies tend to make their business by building websites for other small-ish businesses. So with my experience dealing with small-medium business clients I tried to freelance and seek out my own contract work to help alleviate the job hunt. It did seem like a good call because surprisingly I have not gotten any offers for full time jobs for several years since then. Only my freelance work has kept me afloat, barely, and I am not looking to keep doing that indefinitely. Here's the rub. I now have four years of freelance time, which I list as a single "job" on my resume, and these are clients that are not all necessarily easy to verify due to being hard to contact. That makes me wonder if, despite getting a phone interview with many companies for a full-time job (including some big ones), they are turned off by my full-time jobs gap of four years. I feel like that is a possible big problem in getting offers for full-time work. Not to mention that for the whole past year, I was the only developer working on a project. Doesn't bode well to getting re-adjusted to working in a team with a plethora of developers. Skills I have:
I don't have knowledge of "cloud" tools or web services. That's not the kind of work I've been exposed to. Incidentally some have said that as a freelancer I never really grew beyond my years as a developer because I haven't been exposed to large scale systems. My personal counter point, I think large scale systems is a domain niche, just as much as front-end development or embedded development are niches. But it seems a lot of these larger companies are looking for this kind of knowledge and see me too inexperienced. I was humbled when I took the TripleByte 2-hour test because I thought it sounded like a nice shortcut to interview multiple companies. I bombed that. Said I needed help with said large scale systems and need a mentor. This just gets me more lost and disoriented in where I am on the skills growth side and how to adjust my job search. Do I target junior jobs now? Do I take a crash course on cloud tools? Do I target only small companies, work full-time there as a stepping stone to a larger company? [link] [comments]  |
| If you could easily switch from full-time to part-time, would you? Posted: 29 Mar 2019 07:12 AM PDT I've been seeing a trend of more people wanting to work part time, was wondering how the community here feels about this. [link] [comments]  |
| When should I be applying for jobs? Posted: 29 Mar 2019 05:36 PM PDT Im finishing my MSc in September and have basically been told that I applied to jobs too early... several times... [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone here ever rejoin with a company they were laid off from? Posted: 29 Mar 2019 12:08 PM PDT just wondering if that ever happens. I'm seeing my former company is starting to hire again. As far as I know i wasn't laid off due to performance issues, I was always fine going by my reviews. I was let go they said due to poor asv that year [link] [comments]  |
| Need advice on how to market myself for a job search Posted: 29 Mar 2019 09:10 AM PDT Hey everyone I'll try to avoid rambling on. I'm a self-taught developer with a little over a year of professional experience. I've been a full-stack dev (working on stuff with React/Node & Python/AWS) with the same company entire time but now think it's time for a change. However, I'm unsure how to market/position myself going forward, but I do have a few priorities I'm focusing on. 1. More money (of course) Reading up on this sub, this seems to be the kind of company that people flag to avoid. Unfortunately, I needed to get my foot in the door somewhere and was desperate for decent paying full-time work at the time. As a junior developer, I make a competitive salary in my city. The problem is that I have a senior's responsibilities. I've been the sole developer for my entire employment (though one of the founders writes/has written a bunch data pipelines, which are an Achilles' heel we keep putting more weight on). Right now, I'd say it's time for a raise. The company has expanded over the last few months with several new hires and has current partnership with a major media company (we're in a trial period with them now). I'm curious to see what other offers my experience can get me, and I'm also skeptical that my company will be willing to compete with any offers I might get. 2. More autonomy and/or authority I was given the keys to the kingdom on day one (they've never been keen on best practices). Like I mentioned, a lot people here might flag a job like this, but I thought of it as a challenge. What better way to boost my resume than being the sole dev that helped a startup get off the ground? Part of what's kept me here is this degree of autonomy I've enjoyed. They come to me with mocks and stories, we discuss the details & timelines, then I get it done how I see fit. The code base is littered with a lot of my experiments because I'm always looking for better ways to do things, and I've had a lot of hard-fought victories. Still, The project hasn't collapsed in on itself, and everyone is generally pleased with how the software is turning out. I've enjoyed a close relationship with the founders and never hesitate to bring up questions/criticisms/suggestions. However, they did just hire a new project (or was it product?) manager. From what I've been told, this new hire is going to be the intermediary between the founders and myself. To be honest, it feels like a demotion. I want to be gaining my control in how my work is handled, and I'd be happy to assume more management related duties to realize that. 3. Getting into a more interesting (to me) industry While this isn't (yet) as important as the first two, after a year of letting the company's industry soak in, I'm still "meh" on it. Ideally, I'd like to work in something within politics or legal-tech. Building on #2, I want to be able to take on more ownership/control of my work, but that's a lot more difficult to do if it's not something I'm can see myself engaging in outside of work. tldr; "Junior" developer doing "senior" work, looking for some thoughts on how to sell myself. [link] [comments]  |
| Has anyone transitioned into a teaching career after getting their degree in CS? Posted: 29 Mar 2019 07:57 PM PDT I originally went to school because I wanted to do game design, and got my CS degree. While getting my education, I picked up some small jobs that didn't last longer than a few months, but got me interested in teaching; a summer camp, a class in my university's CSTEP program, and a TA position; all teaching game design / basic CS. It wasn't the full teaching experience, but I greatly enjoyed it. A year after graduating I haven't been able to break into the CS field. I remembered my teaching positions as something I enjoyed and started doing some research to see if I can take my limited experience and degree and get into a teaching program. My research has left me a little confused on if I can even do so, however. I don't know what type of Masters in Education I would even need; at least in NY, there isn't an MSed or MAT in Computer Science. Would I need to apply to something like a MSed / MAT in Mathematics and then try to get a job teaching Math and CS? NYS also has these Alternative Teaching Preparation Programs that have some confusing descriptions I don't quite understand. I tried calling my state's education department to try and get a better understanding of these programs and one of the men I spoke to actually laughed at me telling me my university should have told me this information (I didn't go to school for Education, so I don't see why they would). I had also contacted my old high school cs teacher for info and she ended up telling me she got into teaching so long ago that the requirements today would be vastly different than what she did. As the title says, I'm just wondering if anyone here has worked their way into teaching CS, how you did it, or any advice I can pursue. I feel like my position isn't very typical for someone trying to teach and can't find any examples online of other people doing it. [link] [comments]  |
| Can i get some help looking for titles in the IT engineer/Infrastructure ladder? Posted: 29 Mar 2019 07:57 PM PDT I have been working IT help desk for 5 years, and now i'm pretty good at scripting and system administration. I make changes to our build pipeline, am working on moving us to CI/CD. Currently i am an Operations Engineer. I do support (but 1 -3 help desk tickets a day). Most of my tasks are coding. I don't want to be a software developer. But i like getting our infrastructure automated, ansible, terraform, lots of python. What are my options career wise at this point? I'm looking at Dev-Ops and Site Reliability; but i don't think i'll be good at coding interviews/challenges. [link] [comments]  |
| Tough (but exciting choices): Cornell M.Eng or UMass Amherst M.S.? Posted: 29 Mar 2019 07:53 PM PDT For some background, I didn't study CS for undergraduate (Chemical Engineering degree from MIT). However, I've been teaching high school computer science for the past few years, and had an itch to switch careers and go into industry. I threw out some applications this year and got into the 1-year MEng program at Cornell and the 2-year M.S. program at UMass Amherst. Cornell is the school with the better reputation, but I worry that without a strong CS undergraduate background, I'd drown in a one-year program. UMass Amherst is also in-state for me, which means I'll be paying 1/4 of the cost of Cornell. From a former teaching salary perspective, it seems like the better option. So what do you all think? Is a Masters from Cornell worth it over a much less expensive degree from UMass Amherst? [link] [comments]  |
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