Resume Advice Thread - March 09, 2019 CS Career Questions |
- Resume Advice Thread - March 09, 2019
- Daily Chat Thread - March 09, 2019
- A word of encouragement
- Criminal record on my background
- My coworker doesn't receive my code reviews well
- Is the "30 month/2.5 year tenure" a myth in tech?
- Experienced Engineers, what transferable skills should every new grad/entry level know after 1-2 years of experience?
- HFT Work Life Balance and Stress
- Should a graduating CS student spend his time freelancing for cheap if he has no experience?
- What's in a Name SJSU
- Techie Fashion Companies?
- Building my future.
- Is it worth it to get a degree while working full time when I have 6 years of programming experience?
- Math MS to CS PhD?
- Auburn/OSU online Bachelor's CS degree vs in-state on campus CS degree(UMD)
- Career impasse/technical vs non-technical
- What exactly is "Years of experience"?
- Guide on the path to upper management
- How would something like GDPR in the United States or new Anti-Trust legislation effect tech salaries?
- How to answer expected salary? (Midwest)
- How much can I leverage the fact that I would be very difficult to replace?
- How do awkward and boring but friendly people do in this field?
- Your thoughts on employers that don't like job hoppers
- Visa Product Management Intern
- What is considered IP
| Resume Advice Thread - March 09, 2019 Posted: 08 Mar 2019 11:06 PM PST Please use this thread to ask for resume advice and critiques. You should read our Resume FAQ and implement any changes from that before you ask for more advice. Abide by the rules, don't be a jerk. This thread is posted each Tuesday and Saturday at midnight PST. Previous Resume Advice Threads can be found here. [link] [comments]  |
| Daily Chat Thread - March 09, 2019 Posted: 08 Mar 2019 11:06 PM PST Please use this thread to chat, have casual discussions, and ask casual questions. Moderation will be light, but don't be a jerk. This thread is posted every day at midnight PST. Previous Daily Chat Threads can be found here. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 09 Mar 2019 10:31 AM PST Hey guys, this is my first post here. I just wanted to share this moment of success for me and hopefully let this be an encouraging post for someone. I know I was reading a lot of posts like this during my job search, when I was feeling down about not hearing back from employers. A little over a year ago, I dropped out of a CS program, that I had barely started. I was really bad at programming, not putting in the time to learn, and my friend is the only reason I passed the 2nd Java course. I was going through my degree at a very slow rate, and it would have taken me 5 - 6 years to complete a 4 year degree assuming I didn't need to retake classes, while working a food service job to pay my way through college. After taking a hard look at my work ethic in formal education, I decided it was best for me to drop out and begin teaching myself programming, at least until I felt I was ready to return to taking CS classes. I took more hours at work and began teaching myself Python with online resources. I started to actually become passionate about programming, and I had so much more drive to learn, and general curiosity about it, versus when I was in college. After 9 months of self teaching, with a couple of projects on my GitHub, I began applying to jobs. I only heard back from one that I thought was a Wordpress job, but turned out to be a job that involved working with an archaic content management system, for a fortune 100 company that refused to upgrade their system. Nonetheless it was technically web development, so I took the job to at least get something better than barista on my resume. I worked this job for 5 months. During my time here I had still been working on projects for my GitHub and learning a lot in my free time. I began applying again and got an interview at a place that does quality assurance for other software companies that want to outsource that. The position was for a QA Automation Engineer, writing tests in Python. The interview was almost purely technical. Not too challenging, and I thought I only did okay. Apparently it went well enough and I received an offer! I haven't started yet but I'm very excited to finally have a job that actually involves programming, 14 months after I began self teaching. I know QA is not the most highly praised in subs like this, but I'm grateful for it and hope it can help me into a development role in the future. I think there's a misconception that you have to jump into a prestige development job, but you can ease your way into it like me, cause I'm no prodigy lol. I hope this is encouraging to some of you guys looking for jobs, or struggling in a CS program. I didn't go much into my learning process or how many jobs I applied to, but feel free to ask me any questions at all :) [link] [comments]  |
| Criminal record on my background Posted: 09 Mar 2019 12:41 PM PST I am currently working at a start-up tech company and when I got hired, number of employees was around 40. I was hired without them checking my criminal background, but now I found out they are checking all incoming employee's criminal background. Is it possible for them to fire me or put me in a bad situation if they find out I have a criminal background? Or is it even possible for them to find out about my record? I am planning on working it expunged in couple of months. [link] [comments]  |
| My coworker doesn't receive my code reviews well Posted: 09 Mar 2019 05:29 PM PST I recently started to work with a teammate and this is my first time actually writing code with him. Before this project, my code reviews with other teammates were rather smooth: I made some suggestions on how I would have written it, point out typos and styling, etc. Of course the authors would push back sometimes, but often with a good reason. And to be fair, their code was in pretty good shape to begin with, so the issues weren't major anyways. Now with this coworker. The code he wrote was usually hard to read because the structure was odd. For example, he wrote a member method even though no member variable nor method was used in that method, which indicated it didn't need to be a part of that object. Another example was that he computed the arguments at a higher level, and then passed those arguments to many levels down to the function that actually needed them, even though the function could have computed the arguments itself. Because of the odd designs, the unit tests were also odd and not very atomic, which led me to comment on the unit tests a lot as well. Because the problems were quite fundamental, I pushed harder in the comments and strongly suggested him to change his code. (I was still being polite though!) This made him very defensive and often refused to budge. I had to write even more thorough explanations on why I suggested my way. Sometimes he would give in eventually and follow my suggestion, but he would reply with a negative comment like "Done. Even though I think this is a waste of effort." I could sense his hospitality so I wouldn't want to talk offline either, afraid it would lead to more heated discussions going nowhere. I've become very frustrated and now I stress out every time I see his code reviews come in. I know I will need to spend a lot of time reading his bad code, make lengthy comments, get a short "no" as response, and make more lengthy comments. It also takes away my time writing my own code. I have never had such experience with other coworkers, so I don't know how to proceed. Also I am guessing he doesn't receive my code reviews well because I am at the same level as him. Our tech lead is a more nitpicky code reviewer but my coworker seems to be fine with being nit picked by a more senior person than me. TL;DR My coworker writes questionable code and doesn't like it when I strongly suggest him to change. I've never had this problem with other people before. How do I proceed? [link] [comments]  |
| Is the "30 month/2.5 year tenure" a myth in tech? Posted: 09 Mar 2019 02:03 PM PST I feel like I'm the only one who is slow to move. I keep hearing people in tech generally, on average, switch jobs every 2.5 years. I've been in the same spot for more than 5 years now, and I'm wondering if anyone else is struggling moving between jobs. I feel like hiring managers/recruiters have this implicit bias against candidates who have been in the same position/job for more than a few years perhaps due to the impression that the candidate has not grown in his/her role/career. TLDR; can stay in the same position too long hurt your future career prospects? I feel like it does. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 09 Mar 2019 05:19 PM PST As a new grad starting work in a week, I'm interested in what skills or knowledge of software engineering tools/resources every new grad or entry level should know about after 1-2 years for good career growth. [link] [comments]  |
| HFT Work Life Balance and Stress Posted: 09 Mar 2019 09:06 AM PST Where has the best WLB for engineering roles that aren't business critical/quant? Citadel, HRT, Tower, DRW, IMC I work at a really laid back, low stress tech company right now. I've made some progress in interviews with firms like listed above for various engineering roles (non quant, not trading, not business critical) but the added stress and expectations of SWE work at these places really concerns me. When a firm says they have 'high expectations' what does that really mean? If I like to take my time to work on things, will I need to stay late to get everything done? I'd really appreciate advice from full timers with experience at similar firms. [link] [comments]  |
| Should a graduating CS student spend his time freelancing for cheap if he has no experience? Posted: 09 Mar 2019 03:25 PM PST Background I'm finally graduating with a B.A. in Computer Science this year and I'm trying to increase my marketability as a mobile developer. Unfortunately, that marketability is extremely low right now. I've never had an internship or any work experience because of: A) Me being an idiot and waiting too long B) My dad's death during the summer that I was finally going to do one Currently, my resume is essentially just some related courses, and two projects ( A Snake/Tron game in Java and a compiler for a subset of MIPS in C). I have more projects but I feel like they are not on par with the quality of my current code. Obviously, I'm not in good shape right now. Knowledge-wise I honestly think I'm more solid than most graduating future developers I meet. Unfortunately, I spent a lot of time in college pouring through documentation and learning rather than actually doing large-scale projects. I'm not gonna try to sell myself right now with all the languages, frameworks, etc. that I know but for related context, I self reportedly have a thorough understanding of Android programming, Java, and Kotlin. What I really need is more experience. For the past month I've been working on an Android app as a side project, and I'm also working on a pretty ambitious cross-platform parental control software with a group of students. Both of these I think would look great on my portfolio, but either way, my experience section of my resume remains blank, which I assume will lead to many companies discarding my resume immediately. So what am I doing about it? I've been applying a lot recently but I don't think I'm gonna get anywhere with my current resume. I need experience as soon as possible. I'm going to make an app for a small family-owned restaurant I go to. I'm going to charge almost no money (like $20 with a money back guarantee) and deliver the best product I possibly can. This way, I can at least add Freelance developer under experience. My question Is this enough? Am I screwed? Does adding that little bit of Freelance experience make enough of a difference to where I should actually spend my time developing an app for that small business? And if not, what would you recommend I spend my time doing instead? Bonus Question: Does anyone know if I need to set up a sole proprietorship to make an app for this company/add Freelance Developer under my experience? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 09 Mar 2019 07:53 PM PST What love to hear your thoughts about a SE degree from SJSU. Would you choose someone from UC Berkeley over San Jose State University for a job? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 09 Mar 2019 01:51 PM PST I want to start targeting companies/areas that I would like to work out for full time when I graduate next Spring. Fashion has always been a hobby and interest of mine and would love to work somewhere where I am surrounded by it or could talk to people who have the similar interest. One of the places that I am looking to apply to is Grailed and then obviously the big brands like Nike and Adidas but I have also heard that Nordstrom is a great place to work too. Do you guys know of any other companies I should look into? I am currently also teaching myself about Mobile Developement (Android) so would this help or hinder in anyway? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 09 Mar 2019 07:17 PM PST I am currently a tech for a big aerospace defense company in San Diego, Ca, I work with all kinds of Engineers (mechanical, electrical, software) after talking with many of them, most of them said they would get into software engineering or comp sci. I am currently in process of transferring to a four year university for Mechanical Engineering however, changing majors has crossed my mind. If you search software engineer on indeed for San Diego, Ca, you will find that there are nearly 7 times more jobs than Mechanical Engineering. While I really like what Mechanical Engineering is about, I know it is also important to find a career in a high demand with a lot of opportunity. Looking for somebody with first hand experience to chime in. Also, open to all opinions. I want to get into engineering because I love math and science. So, what would you do? Pursue the ME major, or the SE major. Or pursue the ME major and learned software on the side? The options are endless, let me hear it from you. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 09 Mar 2019 10:31 AM PST I have over 6 years of work related programming experience, a good GitHub portfolio and I did complete a coding bootcamp online. However, I am nervous about the future that I won't be employed without a college degree. Not sure if it is worth the time and experience. Any advice or recommendation is appreciated. Edit: At this point I'm thinking about just getting an associates degree. I can almost get all the basics done for a cheap price on straighter line. Then, in the future if I ever feel like I am "unemployable" because of no degree I can finish it out within a year through WGU. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 09 Mar 2019 07:06 PM PST Hi, I'm currently a graduate student in a math department, and I'm currently contemplating the possibility to pursue a PhD in Computer Science, as I am a bit interested in quantum information theory, and quite a lot of quantum information theory groups seem to be housed in computer science programs. I'm considering this possibility because I would like to use my mathematical foundation to work on quantum information problems, which, from what I know, can draw very heavily from functional analysis, probability etc. I also have a publication from during my undergrad years in a quantum information related project, which may help. My main question is: Is it reasonable for someone in my position to consider the possibility of moving to a CS program? I haven't really taken any computer science courses. Are there any computer science programs/groups that may be interested in hiring students with a mathematical background? [link] [comments]  |
| Auburn/OSU online Bachelor's CS degree vs in-state on campus CS degree(UMD) Posted: 09 Mar 2019 06:55 PM PST I already hold a bachelor's degree in Biology and wanted to pursue a second bachelor's in computer science. I already have been accepted to the Auburn/OSU online bachelor's degree but I saw that the UMD is ranked higher and is cheaper since I'm in state. I don't mind going on campus to take classes but starting fall 2019, UMD started a limited enrollment program which requires prospective students to take two computer science classes (OO programming I & II) and calc I (which I already fulfilled). I would have apply as a transfer student to UMD and will need to take those two classes in the fall. Then apply to the Limited Enrollment Program as comp sci major for the spring semester. However for the online courses, I would only have to take 60 credits online starting this summer. My main concern is that the online bachelor's in comp sci won't give me any competitive edge when applying for jobs since I would be applying for jobs in MD as MD is ranked higher. Is it worth taking a chance on UMD or should I just go ahead with the online program? What do you guys think? [link] [comments]  |
| Career impasse/technical vs non-technical Posted: 09 Mar 2019 06:53 PM PST Hi everyone, I graduated from my college with a degree in MIS about a year ago and just finished my first year as a JavaScript Developer in a technical rotation program. I am actively interviewing for new rotations and will be able to submit my preferred roles in a few weeks. With that said, I am at an impasse in my career. I have the opportunity to take a very technical rotation (DevOps Engineer) or a less technical one (Scrum Master). I think I would be much happier being a scrum master with my current technical skill set being fairly under-baked + just knowing what I enjoy. I like working with people a lot more than I do staring at a computer screen for 8 hours a day trying to find an issue with 1 line in a tedious, complicated labyrinth of a code base. Being a developer has starting to cripple my social skills, and its ruining my eyes too. I consider myself an ok JavaScript developer as a person with 1 year experience and pretty much no technical expertise outside of that, but it never felt like a natural fit for me. However, I am worried that I will be handicapping my career if I start doing management now without forming a stronger technical skill set. I think its fairly obvious that developers are slowly consuming IT departments, both at my company and across the US. My department is scaling back its hiring of management folks in favor of developers. I get spammed by recruiters because I am a developer, but I'm pretty sure that buzz would die off immediately if I switched to being a scrum master. I am worried that having skills in management will not give me the kind of career mobility/ future job prospects that a developer role would. There's also less risk to taking on the DevOps role now, because I am in a rotational program where I am encouraged to be ambitious and expectations are lower for me than they would be for a normal employee. I'm just worried its gonna be a miserable experience for me, and I'll hate myself for committing to a role for an entire year which I am fairly certain will be too technical for me to handle. What are your thoughts? Should I try something I think I'd be good at, or take a risk with something more technical? Are my concerns about the future of managerial roles valid? What would you do in my situation? Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| What exactly is "Years of experience"? Posted: 09 Mar 2019 06:40 PM PST As a new grad can I count my part time college gigs(research programming) under YOE? Also, as someone who has started working I have noticed that YOE does not necessarily transfer to seniority? I have noticed people who have been around for years but dont know a whole lot. [link] [comments]  |
| Guide on the path to upper management Posted: 09 Mar 2019 06:19 PM PST Hello all, I'll be starting my first software dev job tomorrow. It's in the defense industry in California. I have my clearances and stuff already. I got into CS not because I enjoy programming but for money. Programming isn't anywhere near my passion and I don't really even like doing it. So that means I want to get to upper management as quickly as possible. I mean real upper management, not CTO at a 3 man start-up. I've always naturally fallen into leadership roles be it in group projects, at work, or clubs. I'm not picking management out of a hat, I feel like I'm a good leader and have the temperament for it. I'm fine with most people on this sub complaining an undervaluing what management brings to the table. CSCAREERQUESTIONS, I'd like those who have gone the route of software dev/engineer to director or vp of tech or CTO to share with me some advice if you wouldn't mind. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 09 Mar 2019 06:02 PM PST Politicians from both the left and right wing seem to be on a crusade against big tech, especially with recent privacy scandals like Cambridge Analytica with Facebook and tech giants, especially Google allegedly censoring conservatives. Should new privacy legislation like GDPR be introduced in the United States, how will tech salaries be effected? What about new anti-trust legislation, or if someone like Elizabeth Warren gets elected, what if Google, Amazon, and Facebook are broken up? [link] [comments]  |
| How to answer expected salary? (Midwest) Posted: 09 Mar 2019 02:09 PM PST I've been wanting to find a new job, been out of college for half a year now. TLDR: no structure. Anyone have base salaries for junior web/full stack developer in Midwest specifically Minnesota and Iowa? I don't want to overshoot or undershoot. As of now I've been using 5k more than my current salary. [link] [comments]  |
| How much can I leverage the fact that I would be very difficult to replace? Posted: 09 Mar 2019 05:54 PM PST Past (Context): Junior year of college I had a successful internship with a small tech company (15ish engineers, 8-10 years old). Got an offer out of college but turned it down for a riskier offer with a fresh startup. Fresh startup got into legal issues and offer was revoked less than a month before graduation. Small tech company still liked me and I accepted the offer they gave me (did not consider negotiating, small tech company knew the pickle I was in). Now: I've been with the small tech company for 2.5 years. I've gone from a starting salary of 60k to 80k (last raise about 6 months ago). That isn't a bad number simply because the small tech company is in the midwest, and that's where I'm located at as well. The entire engineering team is made up of remote engineers (myself included), and at least 10 engineers could be considered senior. It was a bit weird to start remote right of college but the company was able to set up my training in a way that has made me an effective remote worker. I work 40-50 hours a week, and am pretty wired in while I work. I've worked on an important company initiative for the last year and a half (almost all my work at this point), in that time I've learned how to work with a popular front end JS framework (Vue, similar to React/Redux), and have become pretty proficient in it. I am pretty close to a full stack developer in job description (as far as what I do every day), but front end work is my strength. About 8 months ago we started looking to hire engineers with similar skills to what I have. We did some expensive job postings on prominent sites. After going through TONS of applications we found very few applicants who seemed to have any substantial experience with Vue (or even similar frameworks, but they are pretty new, so not surprising). The first engineer was really good but left shortly after joining (on good terms). The other 2 engineers we believed had decent experience, but so far their work output has been nearly non-existent. I'm easily doing 2x more work than them combined. The hiring process was extremely expensive and time consuming (and obviously we need to do better at hiring). Because of the locations and assumed experience of the other engineers that were hired, I'm sure they make substantially more than me. I recently found out from a friend that at his company (Fortune 500), people with similar skills (and even less work experience) are making at least 90k + benefits (this is in the midwest as well). My job has essentially no benefits (a good PTO policy though). Just recently when discussing the performance of the new hires with one of the senior engineers on my team (also technically my manager), he said "We'd be f*cked if you left". At this point I've realized I am important to my employer right now. Not just because of my skills but because of my understanding of the company's business logic. I haven't negotiated any of my raises so far, I've just accepted them (I think they've been ok). The company is truly a good company I enjoy working for, and they definitely care about me. I have another review coming up soon, I think I can negotiate my biggest raise yet, but I'm wondering, just how much can I negotiate? I don't want to feel like I'm exploiting my employer, but I also know that I can't fall into that guilt trap. I'm thinking I can negotiate at least 100k, here's a summary of my arguments: - I'm underpaid compared to young engineers in the same region with the same skills. - It is not uncommon for people my age to change jobs much more frequently to accelerate their career path - A key company initiative would come to a grinding halt if I left - Recent hiring has been a catastrophe I'm no 10x engineer, but I believe I am "decent" and hard working. I just think I have a bit more leverage than most people my age. So here are some questions: Are any of my arguments flawed, inaccurate, or exploitative? What salary could I realistically command? Ultimately I just want to maximize my earning potential. I'm new to the salary negotiation thing. I'd like to keep working where I'm at, but I'm open to new jobs. Edit: slight clarification Edit2: Invaluable is not the word I'm looking for, but maybe important is [link] [comments]  |
| How do awkward and boring but friendly people do in this field? Posted: 09 Mar 2019 05:41 PM PST When I look most threads talking about cultural fit, there's a strong consensus that companies try to weed out 'douche-bags' and jerks. In fact, interviewers try to look out for mean people to pass for someone friendlier. However it's not clear how they feel about friendly but boring/annoying people. I mean like people that try to talk to others and go out of their way to help but literally can't say cool things like "OMG!! X is such the GOAT bro!!" I literally can't keep up conversations with frat type people but can talk about weather and can work with my teammates to solve problems. Sometimes I feel that my conversations bore people out but I'm not sure if that's in my mind or if people are actually getting bored out. I also consider myself pretty well behaved and friendly. I go out of my way to help my friends at school prepare for technical interviews(like when I know they have interview coming up, I arrange to do a mock interview with them). I also can't say a mean thing up to someone's face even if I'm being harassed due to my well behaved nature. I've even had people say I am too polite to stand up for myself. In any case, I wanted to ask if people like me are at a severe disadvantage in this field if we can't improve how 'cool' we are. [link] [comments]  |
| Your thoughts on employers that don't like job hoppers Posted: 09 Mar 2019 05:17 PM PST I came across someone saying that employers who are fearful of job hoppers tend to be bad employers. From my experience of working with a employer (only had one that didn't like job hopping) like that, that it was true in that case. I guess the logic is employers who don't care, generally, try to keep their employees with real things like work/life, vacation, good working conditions, and good co workers. On the flip side, the employers that fear job hopping just want 'loyal' workers, won't give meaningful perks (but will advertise that they do) and have a bunch of 'loyal' workers regardless if they are a pain to work with. Just wondering everyone else's experience. [link] [comments]  |
| Visa Product Management Intern Posted: 09 Mar 2019 11:13 AM PST Anyone have experience with the interview process? Sorry if this post seems out of place, a bit hard to filter through search bar when 'visa' returns questions about actual visas haha Thanks! :) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 09 Mar 2019 05:03 PM PST This may be a very stupid question, but im going to ask anyway. Im building this internal web app tool from scratch at my company. Its pretty cool, I like it as an intern project. It'll be over in about 2 months. What it is is a manual data annotator tool, for text. My questions is, if I dont copy any actual code from the company, would I be able to build out my own annotator tool? Itll obviously be similar to my companies since I will have written both. But my thought process is, there's not a patent or anything on data annotation tools right? So why couldnt build my own? [link] [comments]  |
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