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    Interview Discussion - March 21, 2019 CS Career Questions

    March 21, 2019

    Interview Discussion - March 21, 2019 CS Career Questions

    Interview Discussion - March 21, 2019

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 12:06 AM PDT

    Please use this thread to have discussions about interviews, interviewing, and interview prep. Posts focusing solely on interviews created outside of this thread will probably be removed.

    Abide by the rules, don't be a jerk.

    This thread is posted each Monday and Thursday at midnight PST. Previous Interview Discussion threads can be found here.

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    Daily Chat Thread - March 21, 2019

    Posted: 21 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.

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    3 years experience and no experience with unit testing / best practices

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 11:54 AM PDT

    I'm trying desperately to find a new job because in my current job, where I have been at for three years, I've probably learned no more than six months of actual experience worth. I should have left years ago but didn't have the motivation with I admit is my fault but that's beside the point.

    Something that is very challenging for me in interviews is when the interviewer prods a bit any asks me about my experience with stuff like unit testing, agile methodologies, properly "deploying code" and so on.

    I have basically never written a unit test before (ive always just manually tested the code I write), I've never engaged in any agile methodologies (my boss just gives me an occasional task and I do it and come back to him when it's done and that's it), and I've never engaged in any best practices when it comes to deployment of software... I basically just move the code from my development environment to where it's supposed to run and hope it works, and change it if it doesn't. Furthermore I have basically no experience working with a team, I do everything independently.

    And it probably goes on. I have so many glaring holes in my experience that most people probably learn in their first year.

    Is there anything I can do to better navigate these interview questions that (rightfully) expose how inexperienced I am? For example maybe I should buy a bunch of books on some of these topics so I can at least say I'm trying my best to "catch up?" What can i do to get myself out of this horrible hole?

    Edit: I'm also struggling to decide whether to quit without a job lined up but I think I'm going to ask that in a separate post, because some more context is needed to properly ask that..

    submitted by /u/imhereagainwow
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    2 YEAR UPDATE: My journey & tips: 2.9 GPA at a small liberal arts college w 1 mediocre internship –> 4 FTE offers incl FB

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 02:08 PM PDT

    Previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/6278bi/my_journey_and_tips_29_gpa_at_a_noname_liberal/

    My last post here had an amazing response from all of you and now that it's coming up on 2 years—and with my recently going through another interview cycle—it seems like it's a good time for an update. I stand by my prior advice but do have some thoughts to add from a slightly more experienced perspective.

    I also remember getting some questions about whether I'd actually be 'successful' at Facebook, i.e., whether studying so hard just meant I gamed the system and wouldn't do so well at the actual job, so I wanted to address that and general on-the-job tips as well. Finally, I haven't been able to answer the vast majority of PMs I get, so hopefully this will scale better / be valuable to those people in sub-O(n) time :).

    TL;DR:

    ended up doing relatively well at FB—two 'Greatly Exceeds' [expectations] / top ~15% performance ratings in a row—but felt like I was starting to learn less and wanted to switch from DE to SWE; studied 100+ hours in 1 month while working (focusing more on system design and ML this time); landed 5 offers out of 6 onsites, including Google and 2 unicorns; multiple offers were over $300k in total compensation (+50% from prev comp and at <4 YoE); negotiation matters a lot; and this whole process is nonlinear and often frustrating but it's 100% a winnable game and having tracking metrics helps (#trusttheprocess).

    Disclaimer:

    I'm sharing concrete numbers not to brag, but because I believe in pay transparency and think the information asymmetry in the tech industry between employers and employees hurts us. I don't want to rehash a debate over Big N / FAANG 'prestige' and am tabooing it here for reputation or brand value, which does have tangible benefits. Last and importantly, luck always plays a role in these things; I'm not suggesting this is a fully general solution but there are ideas here that will probably be helpful for you too.

    On my experience at FB (skip if you only want interview advice):

    I came into FB with definite imposter syndrome, especially when I was surrounded by people who had gone to Stanford or came here from Google or had PhDs etc. I wasn't sure if I could hold my own and wondered if I had just gotten lucky interviewing. Everybody at FB always says that the first few months is like drinking from a firehose of information—they're right. But eventually I found my bearings. To keep a long story short, I was in the right place at the right time when an impactful opportunity came along and I seized it. I received a rare 'Greatly Exceeds' rating my first half due to this—and more importantly, learned a ton in a short amount of time, both technical and soft skills.

    Some job tips (keeping in mind that I'm not that experienced):

    • Prioritization is critical and is a skill that can be improved: there are more things to be done than you can do
    • Proactive communication: always communicate sooner and more than you think you have to
    • Optimize for learning: if you don't feel like you're learning anything, speak up in your manager 1:1 (own your own career! and manage up), or explore other opportunities, internal or external
    • Seize opportunities: see also https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_career_planning_part1.html
    • Focus on impact: this is clichéd for a reason—you should always be asking yourself if what you're working on is the most important (not necessarily the most urgent) thing you could be working on

    Re: prioritization, I really had it drilled into me how critical it was to say no effectively. You need to strike a balance. It's important both that you can say no to senior important stressed out people and that you say it in such a way that they're not disincentivized to come to you again in the future with more impactful opportunities. Practice helps here.

    Re: optimizing for learning, I took advantage of the resources around me. I was a voracious reader of internal technical posts, data analyses, and architecture / system design write-ups, read any documentation I could find that interested me, studied the core abstractions written by the best engineers (h/t to Edmond Lau's The Effective Engineer), and generally tried to learn as much as I could whenever I could. Learning compounds over time and even small increases in your 'learning rate' make a big difference later.

    When I first jumped on the above project, I was out of my comfort zone. But I was pretty confident I could learn what I needed to and tried to adopt a growth mindset to the things I didn't know. And I knew that being slightly uncomfortable (read: lost) was a good place to be in for growth. This mindset also helped when the inevitable missteps happened, which is where communication comes in too.

    On the interview grind part II:

    My process was broadly the same as last time, but more principled. At a high level, the most important thing is to trust the process. When you first start out, it's easy to feel completely stuck, like you're not making any progress at all. The learning curve is steep and nonlinear; some days you'll feel like you know less than yesterday. That's why I think it's important to have external metrics you can use to track your progress, because (especially initially) you can't trust your brain to have an accurate picture of how you're improving. I personally used time spent studying and number of Leetcode problems solved as my goalposts: I decided I would be ready when I hit 100 hours of overall studying and 100 LC problems solved.

    So when you're struggling on a graph traversal problem for the 5th time or stuck on a weirdly difficult easy problem, you can at least see that you're, say, 4 total hours of studying closer to finding a new job and focus on that. This isn't to say that you should spend your time frivolously. It's important that your practice is deliberate and that you don't willfully neglect blind spots. (I knew I was weak at backtracking and at permutation-type counting problems, but I didn't want to face the struggle. Of course, one of my Google onsite rounds featured both.)

    Here are the resources I used:

    The system design portion was a bit overkill, but I actually enjoy reading about distributed systems. I believe it also contributed to getting max L4 offers at Uber and Snap (more on that below).

    Here's my study guide: https://workflowy.com/s/study-guide/RD5kZ682pWX5oxiE. Some parts are rough so take it with a grain of salt. The checklist of heuristics to try is particularly valuable imo; here's a condensed version:

    1. Always consider hash tables (dictionaries) with their O(1)-ness.
    2. If at all array-related, try sorting first.
    3. If search-related, consider binary search.
    4. Start with a brute force solution, look for repeat work in that solution, and modify it to only do that work once.
    5. Space-time trade-off! That is, for better time complexity, try using auxiliary data structures. E.g., do something in a single pass over an array—O(N) time—by using a hash table—O(N) space—vs. doing something in nested passes—O(N2)—without using any extra space—O(1).
    6. Remember that I can use two pointers.
    7. Try a greedy solution.
    8. Does solving the problem for size (N – 1) make solving it for size N any easier? If so, try to solve recursively and/or with dynamic programming.
    9. A lot of problems can be treated as graph problems and/or use breadth-first or depth-first traversal. And if the problem involves parsing or reversal in some way, consider using a stack.
    10. Any time you repeatedly have to take the min or max of a dynamic collection, think heaps. (If you don't need to insert random elements, prefer a sorted array.)
    11. If you have a lot of strings, try putting them in a prefix tree / trie.
    12. To improve time complexity, also consider how various complexities match to solution structures and try working backwards from a target runtime.
    13. Not quite the same as N-1, but sometimes a divide-and-conquer approach is what is necessary. If I know the answer for exclusive parts of the problem, can I somehow combine to get the final answer?
    14. For puzzle problems or anything where we can enumerate all possible solutions and there's a notion of a partial candidate solution, consider backtracking.

    On the interview grind (cont.):

    I've (obviously) thought a lot about the Leetcode grind and one takeaway is that the entire process can be reduced to two overlapping recursive parts: 1) internalizing the comp sci building blocks and 2) knowing when to apply them. If you don't know how binary search works, you're going to struggle on a lot of problems. Conversely, if you can handwrite binary search in 60 seconds but can't recognize when a problem would be much easier with it, you're also going to struggle. The recursive part comes in when those building blocks themselves form more complex DS&A building blocks, like union-find/disjoint-set or Dijkstra's.

    Leetcode is an exercise in both. As you do problems, you'll start to recognize common patterns and where a certain data structure or algorithm should be used. As you get stuck on problems, you may find that you have a gap in fundamentals—and that you need to go back and learn one of those algorithms more thoroughly. It's an iterative and even satisfying process.

    Relatedly, there's a tradeoff here between improving pattern recognition and learning how to struggle. The naive and fast way to optimize for the former is to do as many problems as possible; when you get stuck, just look at the solution and move on. The problem is that you'll lose out on hard-earned insights that would therefore be more memorable. You'll also flounder when no answers are available, like in an actual interview environment. But you also shouldn't spend days on just 1 annoying problem. It can be tempting, but it's a big opportunity cost.

    The balance I found was to set a timer for around 10 minutes: if I still had no idea where to begin by then, I would read the discussion but avoid looking at code; then I'd reset the timer and try to implement those ideas; if I still couldn't get a solution, I'd finally look at people's code and try to understand it. For particularly thorny problems, I'd put it on a list to do again later.

    In total, I studied for ~120 hours and solved 130 Leetcode problems—66 easy, 54 medium, 10 hard. I found hards weren't generally worth it except for the "famous" ones like LRU cache and skyline. I did about 10% of the problems on a whiteboard while verbalizing my thought process in a timed environment, but I was already pretty comfortable with that element.

    On the numbers and negotiating:

    I applied or replied to around 20 companies. After some weeding out, I went on to 11 phone screens: Google, Uber, Pinterest, Airbnb, Dropbox, Snap, Stripe, Twitter, Opendoor, Lyft, and Stitch Fix. Note that this rate is very very different from before I started at FB. Back then, I felt lucky if I received 1 rejection out of 25 blind applications—mostly I was ignored. It's obvious but getting your foot in the door is so perversely important.

    For anonymity, I'm not going to mention all the specific companies' outcomes; also note that this was sometime in the last 6 months. Out of those 11 interviews, I passed 8. I received mostly LC mediums during these screens, but did get a few hards. I decided not to continue with one company and another happened too late for me to be able to do an onsite, which highlights the importance of timing. A company I really wanted an onsite with was my first interview and I bombed. Ideally, the interviews you care more about happen later in the process, but not too late. You want the practice but you don't want to burn out. You also want the offers to come in pretty close together for negotiation purposes.

    Out of 6 onsites, I received 5 offers: Google, Uber, Snap, and two others (companies D and E). Google is notorious for downleveling, so their offer was pretty low. The initial offers (total compensation using FMV and without signing bonus) were:

    • Snap: $300k
    • Uber: $290k
    • D: $230k
    • Google: $225k
    • E: $220k

    I was surprised by Snap and Uber but I knew I had done very well on those onsites. During Google's I had bombed a round (that backtracking + permutation LC hard combo). So overall numbers were according to expectations and my main negotiating goal was to get as much of a signing bonus as possible, knowing that base and equity were already at the top of the range. I didn't really try with Google since their offer came almost a month later and the difference was too big.

    During this timeline, one thing I made sure to do was let the various recruiters know of other onsites or offer deadlines. It's usually in your best interest to do this, particularly if the other company is a "peer" or has a good reputation. You can even use an upcoming impressive-seeming onsite as implicit leverage to improve an offer, even if you don't end up passing the former. I think this contributed to the high initial offers.

    For negotiation, I relied on Haseeb's amazing posts and Kalzumeus' seminal piece and followup. I don't think giving the first number matters much, but what does really matter is knowing your market value inside and out and standing your ground. Levels.fyi is tremendously useful for this (click the level to see the numbers and backing spreadsheet), as is Blind (e.g., this Google post), toxic though it sometimes is.

    Haseeb's advice on using "I will sign right now if you can make $X happen" at the end is another great tip. I ended up getting multiple $50k signing bonuses and improving the other offers by ~$20k each.

    On concluding:

    Thanks for reading this far—I swear I tried to keep it short. I feel guilty that I haven't been able to reply to so many PMs, but promise I'll be active in the comments here.

    It's only been a few years since I read this subreddit obsessively and thought I'd never be able to "make it" in tech. But it really is doable. Trust the process.

    AMA!

    submitted by /u/elliotbot
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    To the College students with no passion...

    Posted: 20 Mar 2019 08:48 PM PDT

    I made this post in another thread because I get where this guy is coming from. And /r/cscareerquestions is fucking depressing most of the time. So, here's some positivity.

    Funny story, I thought I didn't really have a passion for CS and that I just wanted to use it to get bread and live comfortably. I got hired by a big government contractor, heard how the works slow and not very fun, but steady and easy at these contractors with about 85% salaries compared to the industry (good enough to someone who grew up in the lower working class).

    Plot twist; I got hired to a brand new team who's internal role is literally to test out new products and decide what the company should look into. DevOps, CiCD, Frameworks, whatever. I'm talking stuff that's like in Beta, even contributing to OpenSource projects if we need to for tools we think are beneficial. I FUCKING LOVE MY JOB. I might be brainwashed after a year, idk. But I seem to literally love my job. There are headaches sometimes with other devs, and our agile team is kinda big (almost 20 devs now!) so the code base gets messy between Sprints. But I've seriously come around and legitimately have never been happier in my entire life. I think it was by luck, but you might end up doing the same thing.

    Alright, point is, I did not care much in college and definitely could have been a better student. My only motivation in college was thinking about the $75k+ salaries when I graduated (specifically East Coast/MidWest, was never really Silicon Valley bound). I graduated, make way more than I expected to (turns out government contractors actually are paying the industry rate because people leave once they get experience otherwise), and legit hope others stick it out and find the same. College was worth it. I would try to find a company you want to work for, but honestly I didn't, I applied everywhere and just took the highest paying job that came my way. I couldn't ask for a better start to my career, and I'm legitimately excited for my career now.

    There's a huge variety of work in this field also. We have these Systems Engineers who don't write much code outside of test coverage, but their job is to handle deployments and ensuring the code base actually does what it's supposed to. Of course you have software devs who write software. But then theres project architects as well, which aren't actually super experienced like I thought, but seem to only have around 5 years before that's an option. So, you don't have to be a coder forever, but even if you aren't the best coder you will have options in this field. I think the only field in CS I've seen that's truly a nightmare is healthcare, not shitting on it but I have a few friends in healthcare systems who are actually miserable or just bored. But manufacturing programming, tech, finance, government, all seem to be pretty great and stay competitive pay wise with one another. So you have tons of options. There's a big light on the other side.

    submitted by /u/PandasOxys
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    How popular is FIRE (Financial Independence + Early Retirement) among a Software Engineers?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 07:06 PM PDT

    Today in 2019, Software engineering compensation is nuts. The numbers are absurdly high. I think that this may not last forever. Software engineers are only paid so much because demand outstrips supply and I think that in a decade or two, compensation may come down.

    As someone in the San Francisco bay area who is 2 years into his career I'm starting to think that it may be wasteful to not use this opportunity to aggressively increase my income and save money. I've been looking at /r/fatfire and starting to become interested in FIRE overall.

    Does anyone feel the same way? I'm wondering how popular FIRE is among software engineers especially those in the valley where compensation is highest. Is anyone actively pursuing FIRE?

    submitted by /u/FireHail
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    Okta vs AWS for new grad SDE. Which one to pick?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 06:08 PM PDT

    I recently got new grad SDE offers from both these companies. The pay is very similar. I'd really appreciate some input on which one to pick.

    submitted by /u/throwaway_4751
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    Normal for entry level jobs now to have thousands of applicants?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 01:26 PM PDT

    I live in the Seattle area and graduated 6 months ago with my BS from University of Washington. Applying for entry level software engineer jobs has been a nightmare. Each posting will have hundreds, sometimes thousands of applications within a few days. I had three referrals to local companies from internal employees, and all came back and said "we need someone with experience." My resume and gitlab seem to be solid, I had a friend who works for msft review them and plug some holes. I've even had some contract work also but it wasn't much. I've had no calls.

    Is it like this everywhere now? What are people even doing in lieu of this?

    submitted by /u/token_internet_girl
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    Moving to Lausanne Switzerland from the US as a software engineer

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 05:57 PM PDT

    I'm graduating in 1-2 semesters with a CS degree, and would like to move to lausanne switzerland after I graduate and get a software engineering job. I'm a US citizen who's fluent in french and english, however I heard that it's harder for non-EU citizens to find tech jobs over there? What options would I have (I am open to becoming a Swiss citizen) and how easy/hard would you say this is?

    submitted by /u/jen_peux_plus
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    Should I be afraid of being pigeonholed into full-stack development?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 06:53 PM PDT

    I'm a full stack developer a year into my current role. I initially applied to my current company for a back end position but was told I would be more qualified for full stack given my prior experience (which was true). I accepted under the pretense that there would be ample opportunities for backend work. For the most part, this has proven to be true, but I feel like I've had to maneuver myself out of a fair share of front end work through actively claiming backend tech debt and trading front-end tickets with other developers. Plus, although I've had opportunities to move around the codebase, I've never been able to stray too far from our web application. Recently, I expressed my dissatisfaction to my manager and suggested that I work on other areas of the codebase, trying to highlight the ways in which it would add business value. Ultimately, my appeal wasn't convincing enough; he said that the benefits I mentioned are outweighed by the ramp-up cost that would be incurred by me switching focuses. Which, while true and probably the best decision from a managerial standpoint, doesn't make me feel any better about it.

    So, I've concluded that the fact that I came on as a full stack developer and that my work has primarily been on our web application has and will continue to pigeonhole me to a specific area. I don't think this is a particularly unique experience, and I also think I know the possible solutions: waiting it out while gradually transitioning towards backend, putting in extra effort on my own time to gain more proficiency more quickly, or switching jobs.

    It's not all negative; I have a lot of influence over what I do get to work on, and I get to work on new things fairly frequently. I enjoy the culture and don't feel pressured to work more than I have to. I'd be reluctant to give all that up. So my question is: Should I really care that much about being pigeonholed into full-stack/web development? Here are my reasons for being bothered:

    1. Our web application is the least valuable part of our business, so it's become encumbered by tech debt and suffers from a lack of developer/QA resources and managerial oversight. While demoralizing, I'm mostly concerned that I'm stagnating as an engineer; I'm not learning anything from the code I work with, and my PRs aren't being given much feedback, partially because developers have no incentive to spend much time on reviews when faced with a deluge of business needs. Also, while this means I have a lot of autonomy, I don't feel like I have the time to do things like attempt to make large-scale architectural changes, such as attempting to bring the app up to modern web standards. So even if I did fully embrace specialization, I still feel like I'm hamstringing myself by not being able to work with more current and relevant technologies.

    2. The market for full stack developers is currently saturated, and full-stack in general is seen as less prestigious. Our job descriptions, which haven't changed since I was hired, reflect this: backend asks for a couple years of experience, problem solving, aptitude for designing algorithms; full-stack requires familiarity with skills more indicative of web design. I'll admit that this is partially just ego-soreness, but I'm also concerned the industry's general impression of web development might hurt my future career prospects.

    3. My starting salary (which has been raised to be more competitive since then) was based on "web development" salaries. Again, don't want to be pigeonholed into a field that pays less on average if I can avoid it.

    I don't feel owed anything; I understand that business comes first, and I am responsible for my own development. That being said, I currently have the time and freedom to explore other options, and I don't want to waste that while I still can.

    submitted by /u/FullCauliflower3
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    Very unhappy at job but hesitant to quit for a weird reason

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 03:04 PM PDT

    So, my situation isn't great right now and I am having trouble deciding what to do.

    Basically at my job I am usually doing one of three things: Sitting doing nothing because there is nothing to do (majority of the time) , "management/administration" of one of our internal systems (basically an IT-type role, 100% useless to me in terms of experience), or some occasional development task that actually includes writing some code (but it is not very valuable experience, they feel pretty analogous to university projects, if you want to know more go here.

    The time I actually spend coding or doing software development work is pretty limited. Every day I spend at this job I can feel my career just rotting away more and more, and furthermore I'm miserable there in general. As far as I'm concerned, the position can't really be redeemed in my eyes, even if things did get somewhat better through me being more proactive or whatever. I wasted so much time here and I'm kind of permanently bitter about the whole situation and would need to move on (ideally very soon) to feel sane again. For the record I know that the standard advice is to only quit when you have something lined up. I have been looking, but it's been a struggle for multiple reasons which I won't get into here because this is already going to be long as hell. I will say though, that addressing some of these issues would probably be easier if I didn't have to be at a job I dislike for 8 hours a day. Anyway.

    I need to decide whether to quit, or wait until I either succeed in getting a new job or get fired. I have concerns with both options. They are not the standard concerns about financial situation, leverage, etc. They might be totally unreasonable concerns, or not, that is why I'm asking…

    Here is the main problem I see with quitting without a job lined up:

    I believe the main reason they are even keeping me around is because I'm doing the "IT-type" role which requires knowledge of that internal system. If I quit, that may put them in an undesirable situation because then nobody at the company is in expert in that system, and in order for things to go smoothly they kind of need that. We are phasing this system out, and I would not be surprised at all if they fired me once that transition is done (no clue on the timeline of that, could be one month, could be several months to a year). I say this because the development work I do isn't particularly important to the company. For example I worked on a "prototype project" for like a year and it literally hasn't been used at all, practically the only other person who even knows anything about it is my boss. I honestly have a theory that they've given me these development tasks to lessen the chance of me quitting, so that I can keep providing the IT-type role while still allowing me to sort of feel like a software developer. No clue if it's true, but it's definitely plausible to me.

    So then what if they do have a problem with me quitting with the standard notice? Well, then that would possibly be burning a bridge and I would be jeopardizing my boss being willing to give me a reference in the future. Or they would say "no, I would not hire him again" when asked that question. I think they would understand if I had a new job lined up, but if I don't, they might feel I'm abandoning them for no good reason. In this regard I feel like they have this "leverage" over me to not quit. Of course there's a possibility that this is totally imagined and that they won't care too much, but at this point I don't feel like I have a way of knowing which it is.

    Here's the flip side, problem I see with waiting:

    If I'm right that they will let me go once they eliminate the need for this "IT-type" role I have, then I have to tell interviewers that I got let go, which looks bad, right? I would much rather be able to say that I made the decision to quit, than having to say I got let go. I'm not really into lying because of the possibility that I would get caught, so I'm not a huge fan of the whole "lie and say you quit" advice but if you want to challenge me on that go ahead. Otherwise, I don't even know how I would spin that. Because it essentially would be: they didn't value me as a developer and they didn't need me anymore for the real reason I was there, which wasn't even software development. That sounds like the worst look ever, no?

    What I would love to do is quit, but make no mistake, my mind isn't already made up or anything.

    What do you think of these concerns? Are they valid? Any advice on whether I should quit or wait?

    Also I apologize for my extremely rambly writing style…

    submitted by /u/imhereagainwow
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    Does data engineer get more interesting at more senior levels?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 07:06 AM PDT

    I was a data engineer for 2 years, and felt like it ended up being more or less the same thing over and over. I get hit up by recruiters all the time for data engineer positions, but unless it gets more interesting at a senior level I don't think I'd enjoy it.

    For context, currently a software engineer developing a distributed alstirage solution

    submitted by /u/flybonzai0725
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    Am I crazy for thinking that Seattle and Portland are too cloudy?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 06:19 PM PDT

    I've been living the past few years in upstate New York, and it is probably one of the cloudiest places in the country. I think I could count on my hands how many times I saw the sun each month this winter. I'm not sure if was SAD or something, but my Vitamin D became very low, and frankly it's kind of depressing.

    I'm on the job market and looking for something in data analytics/science pretty much anywhere outside of NY. I'd love to work in San Fran or the west coast because of the amazing weather (temperature-wise, never too cold or too hot), wine, and outdoor activities. Upstate NY gets A LOT of lake effect snow every winter. But I can't help shake that if I found excessive cloudy weather depressing, Portland and Seattle will be as well regardless of what opportunities and potential there is for meeting new friends or networking...

    For what it's worth, I looked up the most cloudy cities and they're up there: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/07/13/map-where-americas-sunniest-and-least-sunny-places-are/?utm_term=.01e10e5fb936

    submitted by /u/Ctown_struggles00
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    Anyone here started out as a contractor and continued that way? How do you manage your career when you are less "visible" to the agencies you work with?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 05:55 PM PDT

    I have worked as a independent contractor since the beginning of my career, mostly towards five different companies (four marketing agencies and one tiny startup) but I don't feel like I'm progressing much in my career. And when I go apply and interview for full-time jobs I never get an offer. It usually comes back with a reason that my technical skills are too "entry level". So somewhere along the line I must have been missing out on the developer career trends to make me more competent.

    Maybe it's just because of contractor jobs that I feel so closed in. So is jumping off contract jobs like climbing a brand new career ladder? How have you managed your career as a contractor so that you can mature?

    Since I have almost always worked on behalf of agencies, I hardly had to think about finding clients, they do that part for me. But now I have to find another job and I have no idea how to find clients on my own. And they never result in referrals to new clients so I must be doing this contractor thing very wrong.

    submitted by /u/WasteInvestigator
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    Quit my job, self-taught, finally got a job! (Q: Best to be an Employee or Contractor?)

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 05:42 PM PDT

    9 months ago I toyed with quitting my job (previous thread) - I ended up doing it after realising I would never have enough time to learn meaningfully alongside my very demanding role, that I wasn't interested in, in a time-frame I wanted to. I quit 6 months ago now and this month have got my first job in a Ruby-on-Rails software development role - from being self-taught, on a fairly relaxed schedule.

    I'm just finally pleased to be out of a rut of constant recruiter calls, and hitting 'role requires commercial experience' walls with a place I really like :-D

    ​

    I do have a question though, preferably from a UK perspective - is it more beneficial to be a self-employed contractor, or an employee? (leaving aside pay). I'd been offered both options, and I'll be remote working largely anyway - whilst contracting is more flexible, it seems like a hell of a lot of faff with tax/invoicing/setup/etc...

    ​

    submitted by /u/mazzy-b
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    How to get a career in Compilers

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 05:22 PM PDT

    I'd like to know what the entry level requirements are to get into the compiler industry and what it's like. I'm sure its not just 100% exciting and writing new features so anyone with experience please let me know!

    submitted by /u/Sellerofrice
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    Internships - What am I doing wrong?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 09:29 AM PDT

    Hi, I'm looking for some advice on internships.

    ​

    I'm a 3rd year CS student at a pretty highly-regarded public university in the US. My GPA is about 3.85, I've had 2 internships with a small local company (acquired through connections of friends) and I've had a part-time programming job for the past 2 years at my university. I have a couple of small side projects related to programming. I also participate in campus activities outside of classes.

    ​

    This Fall I was applying for summer internships at larger companies like Google, Microsoft, etc., and various banking and financial institutions. My application got rejected or ghosted by most of them but I got the typical "coding challenge" from about 5. I passed all of them and got rejected from every company except for one.

    ​

    It's pretty typical of my CS classmates at my university to be getting offers from companies I was rejected from (Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Intel, etc.) despite the fact that I have a higher GPA (average is around 3.2) and more on-the-job experience than most other 3rd-year students.

    ​

    I guess I'm just wondering - is there something I'm missing? Is there something I'm not doing that I should be?

    ​

    Any advice is appreciated.

    submitted by /u/csnerdthrowaway
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    Are grades important to land a job?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 04:46 AM PDT

    Hello guys I am in my last year of bachelors this year. I am good at programming, development and IT but I don't really have good grades at school. Also, I good accepted in a web development job .What do you guys think will I be able to have a good career? I mean if I change my job in the following years, will I ever be able to have great positions? Is there anyone out there be checking for grades? I live in Europe too... thanks guys

    submitted by /u/keke1997
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    How to segway from process engineering into software?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 04:09 PM PDT

    InB4 title. I have a BS in Chemical Engineering and 4 years experience with process engineering in chemical plants/manufacturing. I really have a passion/interest for software. How does one transition from one to the other? I've seen a few stories of people who leetcoded like a mf and landed a software job but what are the actual skills (both hard skills and soft skills) that I'm missing? I know some java and a little bit of C but I feel like my software knowledge base is very small compared to my process knowledge base.

    submitted by /u/tedayates
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    For those who get education benefits with your job, what do you use it on?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 03:29 PM PDT

    I get a decent amount of money for educational use every year. I want to go back to get my Master's degree, but learning about tech on the side is already pretty time consuming. Plus, a lot of the resources I find are already free.

    But I would love to get a Master's just to have one, the downside is that I would give up on technical interview study and project time. So what else can I spend this "free" money on?

    submitted by /u/ml-the-one
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    Adobe vs. eBay offer

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 03:26 PM PDT

    In terms of compensation, they are pretty similar. The main difference is that the Adobe offer is in a lower CoL area, while the eBay offer is in a high CoL area. Which company should I choose and why?

    submitted by /u/csthr0waway321
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    Do I need a degree?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 07:07 PM PDT

    I would like to work in the programming industry, but I really don't want to go through more school and lots of debt. How hard is it to get a job as a game/website designer without going to university? Thanks!

    submitted by /u/AceCats614
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    How to ask recruiter how to prep for technical test?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 06:44 PM PDT

    I moved onto second round interviews with a startup in NYC.

    All I know is that its on codeinterview.io and 45 minutes

    Is it considered unprofessional to ask how to prep for the interview? I want to get a sense if its data structures or "debug this app" (fingers crossed its the latter....)

    submitted by /u/ramonaP
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    Did anyone intern at Intuit Nevada office?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 06:40 PM PDT

    Did anyone intern at Intuit Nevada office? If so, can you tell me about the work there? Is it as good as working at Mountain View or San Diego offices?

    submitted by /u/TheIntelligentGymmer
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    What should companies use for metrics, lines of code or man hours?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 06:33 PM PDT

    What is your experience with companies that do lines of code for metrics?

    submitted by /u/PurplePeopleEatur
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    Linkedin: Is it okay to reach out to strangers with a role senior to you on Linkedin?

    Posted: 21 Mar 2019 03:50 AM PDT

    I want to apply for a role that's senior to mine, it would be a managing role, instead of a technician role

    ​

    I'm not sure if i'm qualified, so I can take two paths

    1. Apply the for the jobs anyway
    2. Write/chat to someone senior to me on linked in, and ask them i've they would be open to providing me advice and assessment on that role

    ​

    I think i'm qualified, but it would be awesome to check with someone that already does the work I want to do

    ​

    Is this how Linked In works? Can I just write a DM to anyone and tell them that i'm interested in a similar role?

    submitted by /u/doormass
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