Resume Advice Thread - March 19, 2019 CS Career Questions |
- Resume Advice Thread - March 19, 2019
- Daily Chat Thread - March 19, 2019
- I quit my job without another one lined up, here is my experience.
- How to graciously accuse
- my experience with triplebyte
- How difficult is the work at top companies? Looking for some specific experiences.
- Internship stats for 2019
- Advice for a new grad who got a job offer for an experienced role
- Sole Developer at first job - concerned about my career prospects
- Anyone have experience with IBM Full-stack Developer hacker rank challenge?
- Well-known, nontech company vs small tech company
- disability and extended time for hackerrank and other timed challenges
- I have exhausted my job opportunities as a programmer in my area. What next?
- Is it appropriate to tell a potential employer that the reason you're leaving is because the startup doesn't have a foreseeable future?
- alternative jobs/careers for unemployed developers
- Graduating August 2020, when should I start applying for full time jobs?
- Does anyone else just get beat bloody by dynamic programming questions?
- Transitioning from college to a full time internship
- Do you enjoy your life as a software engineer?
- Pathrise - A review from the perspective of a Pathrise Alumni
- I'm wasting away doing the bare minimum at university. What are the top 5-10 things I should study in my free-time to be an attractive graduate employee?
- Looking to pivot to a remote Linux/AWS/hosting. What skills should I focus on, and how should I leverage experience ?
- Seek developer jobs now or work in non-tech, continue to prep and apply later?
- Getting a CS degree with expunged misdemeanors.
- What's the most important aspect for students to focus on to getting internships/jobs?
- CS - New Job and Not sure what to do next?
| Resume Advice Thread - March 19, 2019 Posted: 19 Mar 2019 12:06 AM PDT 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. Note on anonomyizing your resume: If you'd like your resume to remain anonymous, make sure you blank out or change all personally identifying information. Also be careful of using your own Google Docs account or DropBox account which can lead back to your personally identifying information. To make absolutely sure you're anonymous, we suggest posting on sites/accounts with no ties to you after thoroughly checking the contents of your resume. 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 19, 2019 Posted: 19 Mar 2019 12:06 AM PDT Please use this thread to chat, have casual discussions, and ask casual questions. Moderation will be light, but don't be a jerk. This thread is posted every day at midnight PST. Previous Daily Chat Threads can be found here. [link] [comments]  |
| I quit my job without another one lined up, here is my experience. Posted: 19 Mar 2019 01:25 PM PDT First, let me give you a little bit of background. I have been in the industry for ~7 years, graduated from decent school in 2011. I had one internship in college that lead to a full time position in my hometown at a large company. Low pay but low responsibility, I worked at that position for about 3 years where I started doing front end development work. After that, I got a DevOps job in a different city, a big move for me. It was contract and lasted for 10 months until I jumped ship. It was taxing with long hours and a long commute. I went immediately to a new position as a front end developer for a smaller company. Worked with React building a SaaS web application for 2.5 years. My significant other got a dream position back in my home city which has an okay tech scene. At this point I am nearing 30 years old, and am looking to be closer to my family and slow the pace of my life down a bit. Problem is, I don't have a job lined up. Financially at this point, we are fine. My significant other makes enough money for the both of us to live very comfortably, and I have enough money put away to where I could live for a few years without any trouble. This is a very important thing to note, as I didn't feel pressure to find another job quickly to pay bills. I could get also health benefits through her job. What ended up happening is I quit my job around November without anything lined up, enjoyed the holidays, went on a couple of long trips/vacations to other countries, then started to apply to positions near the beginning of February. I was pretty casual about the process. I did no leetcode grind, but I wasn't applying to FANG companies or anything like that. Since then I have received 4 job offers, and as of last week, I landed a dream position doing web development, 100% remote. I am stoked. I guess I wanted to write this to give a different perspective. The common consensus is you should not quit your job unless you have another one lined up. For me it was the exact opposite. The break I took really allowed me to do a complete mental refresh. I was getting burned out, and desperately needed the break. I actually found myself doing side coding projects for fun, something I had not done... ever? Thanks for reading! EDIT: Thank you for the responses, if anyone has any questions feel free to ask/DM me and I will be happy to offer what help I can. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Mar 2019 06:39 AM PDT I've been working as a software engineer at a small company for just about 4 months now. They recently hired my predecessor back as a contractor part time to help transfer his knowledge to me. He was known to make changes in the code and deploy these changes without telling anyone. Last Thursday he deployed some changes that, in turn, crashed a vital piece of software over the weekend. My boss isn't happy because it went against procedure and he had to deal with it over the weekend. My boss is holding a meeting with our team tomorrow to get to the bottom of this. I spoke with my boss today and let him know I saw the contractor deploy things he shouldn't have. Boss-man told me at some point during tomorrows meeting, he is going to ask exactly how untested code was deployed against procedure. At which point I will be able to inform everyone that the contractor is responsible. To make matters worse, the contractor seems to think it was me who deployed the code. I'm certain everyone will believe me over him (since he has a history with this kind of behavior), but how do I point the finger at this guy in a professional way? I'd love to give the guy an out (especially because I'm going to be working closely with him over the next couple of weeks). When I'm asked how this happened, how do I word my response? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Mar 2019 10:22 AM PDT Went through their whole thing recently and figured I would share. I went through their "front-end" track. tl;dr: misleading marketing and confusing/bad site design. still got a couple onsites but with companies I didn't care about. might be worth it for you, but don't let them hype you into imagining they're your best friend. About me, or at least what's relevant: CS degree from a fairly well known US school, late 20s, been doing front end dev work for about 7 years. I usually interview well, which isn't to say I necessarily usually get the job, but whiteboarding problems are usually not hard for me and I usually make it to the onsite round in the majority of my interviews. I enjoy coding immensely but I hate working for companies and I hate coding *all day long,* so my jobs have usually been no longer than a year and I've skipped around a lot. Consequently my resume isn't as impressive as it could be. I round it out with personal projects. So then, about Triplebyte: I heard their name everywhere online, it seemed, probably because they market so heavily. Like various others have commented here and elsewhere, I have to agree that anyone who markets that heavily warrants some distrust, especially when they're claiming to be working for you, doing it for you, taking that friendly "one of us" tone, etc etc. To be honest their "Hey I'm Mike" ads at the top of reddit make me gag. Alright, I'm obviously taking a negative tone here, but they aren't that bad. The *idea* of them is pretty solid. I took their online quiz and passed that without trouble. I thought the quiz was pretty comprehensive and well-made and would actually do a decent job picking people with a solid underpinning of knowledge relevant to the jobs they wanted. So then there was their two hour skype interview. It's divided into 3 parts: a 45 minute coding project, followed by a ton of short answer questions on web security, JS language implementation details, CSS specifics, browser knowledge, algorithms, and data structures, and then finally a portion on system design. The coding project is okay. Just know your flexbox and your react and how to pass data between sibling react components and you'll be okay. Personally I found it a lot to plan and create in a mere 45 minutes so I didn't get that far, but perhaps "better" engineers can code faster. This is where we run into the first problem with Triplebyte. They claim to know good engineers come in all shapes and sizes with all different skillsets, but....in the end they're interviewing the same way as everybody else, really. The same questions. No whiteboard algorithms, but whiteboard react coding with no real time to plan what you're doing pretty much amounts to the same thing. So it's kind of offputting to me that they hype themselves so much as this benevolent, understanding entity, and then.....they're just the same as everyone else. I guess I'm a cynic but my mental response to this was "typical." The short answer questions mostly went well for me, although if you answer the first several data structures questions correctly then they keep asking more details about best and worst cases until they can prove to themselves that you don't *really* understand it and then happily write down as much. The system design went okay. Completely typical. So a couple days later they let me know that I passed. Now we arrive at the second problem with Triplebyte: their marketing is supremely misleading. Take this quote that I just copy-pasted off the reddit homepage banner ad ten minutes ago: > "I think a lot of people still don't realize what a great time investment [Triplebyte] is. I woke up early and did their 2-hour interview before going to work one day. Within a week I'd been offered 30+ on-site interviews at well-funded Bay Area startups, as well as a couple of bigger companies." BULLSHIT. See, they make it sound like you're walking through the gates to paradise. 30+ onsites? LOL. Within a WEEK? LMAO. That is actually outright false marketing. It's such a deceit it's just shameful. What happens when you pass their skype interview is this:
So then, about the false marketing. "30+ onsites" is a straight out lie because they specifically say they only allow you to have around 5 onsites, give or take a few. Certainly not thirty. And even if you were allowed to have 30, *good luck*. Like I said, I don't have the most impressive resume, and this is only one person's experience, but only a handful of companies reached out to me. I don't resent that-- that's fine, but I do resent that Triplebyte makes it sound **inevitable** that every FAANG company and every hot startup will be banging on your door if you just sign up with them. I'm probably not the best candidate on their platform, but I don't think I'm the worst either, and I wouldn't be surprised if my experience represents the median. Of the handful that reached out to me, only one was a company I was actually interested in and had favorited. So, that's great. Then, you're supposed to have "pitch calls," where the companies pitch themselves to you and then bring you straight to an onsite if you're interested in. This is deceitful marketing part 2. The companies don't *pitch* themselves to you. They *phone interview* you. No coding questions, perhaps, but they probe your experience in the most ordinary ways and then decide based off of that whether it's worth their time to interview you in-person. This is at odds with how Triplebyte presents things: they interview you themselves, the companies trust that you're a good candidate if you passed the Triplebyte interview, and then the companies interview you in person. In reality, nearly every company I talked to did *not* trust Triplebyte and wanted to know if exactly *what* I had done with Python or JS or Redux that made me worth their time. The interviewers were in multiple cases just ordinary non-technical HR recruiters who were running through a checklist of questions they had been given. In more than one case they decided not to move forward based on my answers. Of the two companies I had a chance to do an onsite with, one I had no interest in and the other I had limited interest in and after an onsite (which I thought went quite well, actually) they decided they were not interested in moving forward (fair enough). So, two onsites. Now let me be clear: *I recommend Triplebyte.* For free and minimal effort I got two onsites. That's worth it, unless you're the type of candidate who can get any job they want anyway. It just bothers me that the company is so misleading about what they offer. And let me tell you, they don't exactly give you much reason to love them during the process, either. The "Talent Manager" is all but useless and the site is quite badly designed. There were long delays in communications which in multiple cases turned out to be due to the companies not knowing they were supposed to be doing something. Each of them complained of problems and confusion with the site. It's really not well designed. At any rate, after that last company decided not to move forward, that was just ... it. There was no closure. I never heard from the Talent Manager again. This left a resounding sense of having been used, to be honest. Like now that they've seen that they can't get any money out of me they've moved on. I'm a cynical person and I'm realistic, and I know this is a business and I know I shouldn't expect anything else. But a company that can't make its customers feel like it values them is not doing much of a job. [link] [comments]  |
| How difficult is the work at top companies? Looking for some specific experiences. Posted: 19 Mar 2019 03:22 PM PDT For those of you at Big N / unicorns etc, what's your team environment like, what kind of projects do you work on, how difficult is the work? Has the nature of the work ever lead to burnout or considerably high stress? I know every team is different in every company but I guess just looking for some specific individual experiences/stories of some people. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Mar 2019 11:50 AM PDT Sophomore in CS here. Sharing my application details for others who may be curious and in the same position I have no previous internships and 1 year of research in embedded systems (Arduino,etc.). I have several projects on my resume that aren't large or impressive (some of them are also class projects). I did have a github with one personal project that used Python and Selenium for some simple web automation. Applications: 130-200 Callbacks/Interviews: 5 Offers (so far): 3 One company rejected me due to logistics in their intern program. The other I flat out failed the technical coding question (an easy BFS question, but unfortunately I haven't taken a Data Structures course yet and forgot to review the implementation of a BFS). Tips: If you're a frosh/sophomore or haven't taken a Data Structures course, be sure to review them. Tree traversal (and their code implementation,binary search trees,queues/stacks/hashmaps/linked lists,etc. They're not too difficult to learn on your own, but can take some time to learn since there's so much to review) Good luck and keep applying! All these interviews were in 2019 so companies are still looking for interns (maybe not the most prestigious ones that offer housing stipends, but still looking nonetheless) EDIT: seems like some people are thinking I'm interviewing with Big Ns or household company names. Let me get this clear that I'm not. I got offers from Mayo clinic, Dassault Systemes (Solidworks creators) and anther unknown name. [link] [comments]  |
| Advice for a new grad who got a job offer for an experienced role Posted: 19 Mar 2019 12:45 PM PDT Got offered a job in a finance company as a software developer. The role includes maintaining existing tools, and developing new tools as required. I do not have much (any really) commercial experience (4 month internship), and will primarily be working alone in this job. There are other developers but they are in a different continent/timezone developing tools for different areas of the company. I am confident in my ability to design elegant solutions to problems and write clean maintainable code that focuses on maintainability, readability, testability and performance. It was on the back of personal projects I have developed that I was contacted for interview. (That being said, I am still learning and improving in this area too so general advice here is also appreciated) What I am most concerned about is providing accurate time estimations for projects. Understanding that there is often a need to be pragmatic when delivering a solution. And improving the speed I work at (i think this could be a significant issue that I'd like to work on addressing). For personal projects I know I spend too much time on certain elements researching and learning then trying to apply the knowledge I gain to design and create the best solution I am aware of. (I find a workable solution and keep researching to see if there is a more elegant way to solve a problem). Code performance was the primary thing stressed throughout the various interviews. Just looking for general advice and suggested reading, and tips, everything is appreciated. I don't start the job for over a month, and I will be mentored by a developer to get up to speed on things initially, but I'd like learn as much as I can about commercial software development before I start and try address the main problems I see with me being in the role before I start. Thanks in advance and if there is general information that you feel might help please share Edit: the role is not working on a large core product, it will be creating small tools individually and separately. an example being an app that consumes and represents finance data from an inhouse API (that I will not be maintaining). This is why I'm confident about clean maintainable code, it will be my code and not part of a monolithic project. I appreciate the concern about the clean maintainable part though, my internship was at a company whose monolithic project existed since the late 1990s, containing numerous classes where the most expressive variable was "a", and fix methods were often the most common part of a class, and I still have nightmares at the mention of the utilities class. [link] [comments]  |
| Sole Developer at first job - concerned about my career prospects Posted: 19 Mar 2019 09:59 AM PDT 6 months ago I landed a job at a non-programming company, making the market rate for a junior dev. When I originally interviewed, it was not made clear that I would be the sole dev at my company(i was told i would work on teams of two to three people: I found out later that these other people were not devs). I (stupidly) never asked for a tour of the room where development would happen, due to my inexperience in interviews. I only learned that I would be the sole dev after starting my first day. I decided to stay because i felt like quitting on the first day (after having accepted the offer) would have been cowardly. Anyway, i've been here for six months. I don't have anyone else to bounce ideas off of, and I have a huge list of responsiblities (software architect, software dev, database architect, gui design), most of which i had to learn on the job. The project structure here is really weird, I was told that the project I was working on would be put on hold and i would get switched to another one for five months (meaning I have no completed projects to show off). I will only be able to go back to that first project in five months. I feel like I am really falling behind due to the lack of traditional experience (being the sole dev): I don't know if my coding speed is adequate when compared to others in the industry. I am worried about what would happen if I ever claimed one year of experience in an interview for a different job. Due to having worked alone (and all of the weird responsibilities i have had and lack of specialty in one programming field), I feel like if i claimed one year of experience, i may not get taken seriously anywhere. I often feel stressed from all of the responsibilites that i have to take care of. I also don't know if my coding practices are acceptable, though I do try to use the internet to check up on my practices. I don't think this is as good as comparing my coding style with other developers, though. Also, I don't think i can ever move up much (salary wise) at this company. Did I shoot myself in the foot? [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone have experience with IBM Full-stack Developer hacker rank challenge? Posted: 19 Mar 2019 05:38 PM PDT I'm a freshman at UC Irvine. Didn't expect to get it; do they send it to everyone? [link] [comments]  |
| Well-known, nontech company vs small tech company Posted: 19 Mar 2019 03:53 PM PDT I have two internship offers for the summer. Company 1: Large finance company, Software engineering internship, Not known for tech, varying reviews depending on team, Well regarded company outside of tech, About 1 hour commute, Slightly better pay Company 2: Local network security company, Focused on ddos protection, Told it would not be a "typical internship" ie not much coding, but I would still be doing related work,20 minute commute, Slightly lower pay My main goal is to learn skills that will help me become a better software engineer and improve my resume for a future internship and job, hopefully at a large tech company. Which offer would I be better off taking? [link] [comments]  |
| disability and extended time for hackerrank and other timed challenges Posted: 19 Mar 2019 05:21 PM PDT Trying to get my first job following a CS degree and SWE bootcamp (break in the middle). I have had some neurological/cognitive problems through my life, think long-term head injury type symptoms, but with a lot of work I can cope with everything except for some delayed reaction times and reduced processing speed. I've qualified for extended time on exams through college and into some classes I took theoretically towards a Master's. For any sort of untimed work (academic or not) it's just a fact of life that it'll take me a little longer. If anything, I feel this has made me more perseverant and dedicated. But I've been running into a problem with HackerRank and running out of time (with the most recent one being almost a comedic flop because I got caught in an anxiety spiral about not being able to finish). I'm still figuring out how and if to address my health problems, I hesitate every time I feel out a "voluntary self-disclosure" section of applications, and veer towards "decline to self-identify" for disability. I'm already struggling with getting to early stages, and I'm not helped by my resume gap (again, health problems), so flubbing up on HR challenges feels like a big blow. I don't even know if asking for extra time is a thing, but I'm also afraid to even ask because I feel like, legal or not, it'll hurt my chances further. I was annoyed the first time I got a take-home/homework type challenge, but now I'm starting to think they're the better option for me. Have any of you dealt with something like this? Any sage wisdom? [link] [comments]  |
| I have exhausted my job opportunities as a programmer in my area. What next? Posted: 19 Mar 2019 07:18 AM PDT Hello all. I live in an area of the country that does not have many technology jobs in general. Over the last few years I have worked as a developer at a Fortune 500 (2 years - contractor), the state government(3 years), a collection agency(8 months), and am currently at a marketing firm(6 months). The problem is that the Fortune 500 and government positions were so slow that there were times where I wasn't writing any code or really doing anything at all for months at a time. The F500 company had their internet and computer use strictly monitored so I couldn't even try learning on the clock. While getting paid decent money for doing nothing might sound good to some people, for me it was excruciating. These were also very old-school,enterprise-y jobs. I don't have a problem with that, I'm just mentioning it to say that there was almost nothing done that wasn't a straight ahead .net MVC project. I eventually tried the marketing firm and collection agency, but they are both incredibly poorly ran. I ignored their dismal glassdoor reviews and took a chance on them to get more hands-on work. But neither company really worked out. So I've always tried to keep my skills modern at home. Doing what I can to learn new frameworks, stay on top of trends etc.. but there are just zero jobs in my area that do anything like that. And eventually the things that may have made me stand out years ago that I had worked with in my personal time(javascript frameworks,.net core, nodejs etc) are now the industry standard. And all I have is my personal experience with them, and no professional experience. So I'm feeling kind of stuck now. I have the "years experience" I can verify on my resume, but I feel like my actual skillset is lagging. And I've jumped jobs looking for a challenging and decent workplace, so my job history is starting to look questionable. I've thought about trying to find remote work, but I don't know that my skills match my resume. I'm very enthusiastic about getting in a good dev environment but it's hard for me to really gauge where I am. I have the "years" to be mid-senior but I really feel like I would be better suited for a junior dev role in a company that actually knows what they are doing and can challenge me. But something tells me it would send major red flags to employers for someone showing 6+ years experience to be applying for junior roles. Another thing about remote work, based on the location, most of the junior dev roles pay equal or more than what I've made up to this point, so I'm definitely open to them. Sorry for this long rant, I'm just not sure where to go next. I am not exaggerating when I say that in a year there are on average less than 5 job openings for developers in this area. This makes changing jobs really difficulty, obviously, but also creates a specific crappy situation. When I'm looking for a new job and actually get an offer, I feel so much pressure to take it and hope that the grass is greener just because I know it could be 6 months before there's even another job i can apply to. I guess what I'm asking is what should I do next if I still want to be a programmer? I am sandwiched between 2 much larger metro areas that have decent job markets. But the commute is 1.5 hours each way. I am willing to go on-site once or twice a week but I can't do that commute daily. Furthermore, very very few of the jobs in these cities offers telecommuting. Lastly, moving is not an option unless I find myself suddenly divorced. note: I'm not a "i need to work with the latest and greatest" guy. I'm content working with older tech as long as the environment is good and I am actually working daily and not sitting on my hands. Thanks all. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Mar 2019 08:00 AM PDT If you don't see a future with the company, and for the company - is it appropriate to tell companies that you're interviewing with or is it seen as spreading a negative word about it. [link] [comments]  |
| alternative jobs/careers for unemployed developers Posted: 19 Mar 2019 12:11 PM PDT I am trying to find a tech job but in the event I cannot what else can I think of doing? that does not involve too much personal interaction. I have been a developer for nearly 30 years and constantly hear about the shortage of IT professionals :( [link] [comments]  |
| Graduating August 2020, when should I start applying for full time jobs? Posted: 19 Mar 2019 03:27 PM PDT I'll be completing my undergrad August 2020. I go to a target school and will have completed 4 internships by then. I'll be interning at Uber Sept-Dec this year and will be aiming for a good return offer, but I want to maximize my leverage when it comes to salary. When do most other companies start hiring for full time roles? I want to prepare for the hiring timeline early so I'm not caught off guard. [link] [comments]  |
| Does anyone else just get beat bloody by dynamic programming questions? Posted: 19 Mar 2019 09:48 AM PDT I've been studying these as best I can, and I understand the explanations of the examples i've studied and i've programmed the solutions myself. but give me another one that goes even a bit outside some of the main archetypes like 0/1 knapsack/longest subsequence/palindrome and I get completely lost trying to come up with bottom up solutions. top down is usually straight forward enough though, its bottom up that gets me confused take the interwoven string question. i "get" the bottom up solution, but I don't think i'd ever be able to come up with it on the fly if i had to. i just get confused by what the table should consist of and how to use it. granted, this one is considered leetcode hard for a reason, but still I have been asked this question in an interview before. and the dude was very particular about the bottom up approach [link] [comments]  |
| Transitioning from college to a full time internship Posted: 19 Mar 2019 07:47 PM PDT Before I get started, I am fully aware working 40 hours a week 9-5, for the most part, is "the real world", I just have a few questions I've worked 35-38 hour weeks during summers before but never consistent M-F schedules. I just want to know what the transition from college to full time internship was like during your first summer? Following that question, how'd you feel starting the semester again in the fall. Were you mentally drained or energized after an eventful summer? [link] [comments]  |
| Do you enjoy your life as a software engineer? Posted: 19 Mar 2019 07:30 PM PDT Currently a senior in high school and will soon be off to college majoring in computer science. I wanted to hear some feedback from people who are currently working in the field. Do you enjoy your job? If you could go back in time would you pursue the same field? Are you making a substantial amount of money to live comfortably? Would appreciate any wisdom, thank you. [link] [comments]  |
| Pathrise - A review from the perspective of a Pathrise Alumni Posted: 19 Mar 2019 07:29 PM PDT Hello r/cscareerquestions, Disclaimer I am not an official advocate nor am I affiliated with Pathrise in any way, shape, or form business-related. I joined Pathrise as a fellow and left as an alumni (I received a job offer). Motivation of this Post I have seen some pushback against Pathrise from folks on Reddit, and I wanted to give Reddit my friendly two cents about what I experienced in Pathrise in the past year without any bias for/against Pathrise. I will write my anecdotal story here for you, the reader, to pick at and interpret. This is not a brag post about my job offer or my hard work, as I know many of you online have scored excellent jobs on your own. This is only a post to show my results from Pathrise and review my personal experience with the program accordingly. My Background I am a 3rd-year college student who landed several interviews for an extended internship in the past two months and recently accepted a job offer from a Fortune 200 company in the Bay Area to join this summer! My own hard work and Pathrise were both responsible for this. My Story at Pathrise Warning, lengthy story. I began Pathrise in their early stages back in Summer of 2018, so I was an early fellow. Before I joined, I felt as if I had strong technical and soft skills since I was doing well in school and the projects I built were also functioning well. I was confident and ready to go. After joining Pathrise's technical interview training, I quickly realized I was not even close to prepared for interviews. Interviews were much different from my daily work at school and projects, as many of you who have stood in front of a whiteboard and sat in front of a Hackerpair session know about. I didn't even know how to reverse a string, which is pretty darn bad for someone who was about to interview in several months. I got my butt kicked and my advisor (and CTO), u/Derrickmar, and CEO u/mavenform both kept a close watch on me. After my first technical session with Pathrise, Derrick immediately reached out and set up a 1-on-1 meeting with me. He talked me through how interviews work and how they are different in the industry compared to what's learned in school. Derrick then formed an entire 2-month game plan for me of what to learn and which interview questions to practice, week-by-week, and I followed through with his game plan. Fast forward 2 months - it's now December. I felt much more prepared and could now answer technical questions similar to Leetcode Easy/Medium. I still didn't feel confident, however. I needed more practice. My Pathrise advisors told me to keep going. I kept attending Pathrise programming sessions and reading their unique solutions and studying them. I attended pair programming sessions and learned to work with other Pathrise fellows and programmers which taught me a lot. I continued to keep in touch with Derrick and updated him along the way. His response rates were very timely and he continued to send me questions and topics to study. I'm deep in interviewing month - it is now February. I can now confidently complete Hackerrank and Leetcode easy questions given by my Pathrise Advisor in under 15-20 minutes, which felt like a HUGE breath of fresh air at the time. I'm sure many of you know the feeling of breaking past that barrier and feeling that click! go off in your head. Felt awesome! I begin interviewing with several companies and time flies quickly. By the end of February, I had my onsite with a Fortune 200 company and they were very satisfied with my results. I swiftly completed their interview questions and everything compiled, the code ran, all test cases passed. My interviewer gave me a sheathed smile and I felt amazing in that very moment. All of my countless hours of Pathrise & personal work paid off. 2 weeks later - I get the email with the headline: "Join us at our company." I was so happy! I worked for months to break past the interview question barrier with Pathrise's help. Attending their technical and behavioral interview sessions week by week, following my advisor's interviewing game plan, performing daily practice of this all paid off even though it was a stressful time. Takeaways Pathrise helped me with something essential that preparing on my own most likely would not have done. They helped me realize where I was at in terms of interviews. I would have not known to practice these interview questions on my own nor would I have known most of the soft skills, behavioral skills, and the small tips given to me by my Pathrise fellows alongside. One of the reasonable arguments against this is, "well, anyone can just study this on their own. Pathrise is therefore deemed useless." This argument is very similar to, "getting a college degree is useless, all of the skills taught in school can be learned on your own. So, therefore, there's no need to pay for a degree." Yes, a college degree does not guarantee you a job, but it is a highly supplemental thing which is strongly advised in the modern day to achieve job security. We pay for it for the security of learning in hopes that our own hard work will get us to where we want to be. Pathrise has this same long-term effect. Initially, people will take it for its lower-level training and respond in a matter of "it does not have 100% guaranteed hiring rate." Pathrise is a choice you can decide for, and it's one of those things you don't know how much it can help you until you join it. It may be difficult to initially see the benefit of Pathrise for the cost of it, but the skills taught within the program are invaluable, and I see this having a long-term effect on all of my future job searches. Not only this, but you can form a network within Pathrise and use them to your advantage, as I did the same. As a reminder, I want to be as unbiased as possible here. I joined Pathrise and I ended up achieving quality results out of them, so therefore I had a positive experience. I am not advocating for every Computer Science student/graduate join Pathrise either. It is not for everyone. This is a review of the program and the benefit I got out of it, and if you are looking into joining Pathrise, hopefully, my review will help you make a decision. It did not feel like a rigid boot camp to me as it may be painted out to look. The staff at Pathrise was very helpful and they were always flexible with assisting for help. I thank Pathrise for the dozens of hours of personal help they gave me. Feel free to discuss in the comments and ask me any questions! I wish you all the best of luck in your job search. Edit: corrected grammar Best, [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Mar 2019 07:08 PM PDT I really wanna step up the game, make a portfolio and start hustling for some work. Thing is, I've wasted my way through uni doing the bare minimum as I just don't like it. I want to start getting disciplined and picking up the skills I need (especially which the uni doesn't teach because they're behind the times). If you asked what stuff I know, I'd tell you that I have bare minimum programming skills, no expertise or knowledge of popular libraries. I can write a mean essay but that's about it. What do I need to learn? I'm willing to go all the way hard into this as I don't see myself learning this stuff at uni via lectures. It's just not for me. Thanks a lot for your help, this is a tough time for me but hopefully I can grind it out into something brilliant. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Mar 2019 10:24 AM PDT My end goal here is a WFH position focusing on the linux / aws / hosting world. Experience wise I have about 23 years in IT. Most of that time has been as a tech dealing with small to medium corporate networks, servers, etc. I spent a few years doing network security for a medium sized company. I now do voip for a company that deals exclusively with dental/medial offices. I don't know how much detail to go into here experience wise. I'm pretty well versed with linux, virtualization, etc. I'm strong with anything network related. I can code in a few languages. ( As in I can do what I need to do, not get a Sr. developer job. ) Generally I have the breadth of knowledge. l'm in my 40's now and have found that I've narrowed down what I enjoy doing technology wise. I'd like to move to a fully linux based position. Either something remote admin like or something in the "aws" space. I absolutely want to find something either 100% remote or close to it, that is NOT helpdesk, or if it is helpdesk not level 1. End goal would be non customer facing 100% remote server work. I've used linux for probably 10 years now exclusively. I've decided to do my rhca/rhce just as a learning experience. I've always used debian distros so it seemed like a good way learn rhel/centos. I've been referencing this post as sort of my overall guide. So you want to be a cloud engineer I'm curious if anyone has/is doing anything like this, I'd love to know what areas would be smart to focus on. Also any thoughts/tips for finding that remote position would be helpful. I have a job, and I'm not in a hurry to switch, but I'd like to start moving towards it now. [link] [comments]  |
| Seek developer jobs now or work in non-tech, continue to prep and apply later? Posted: 19 Mar 2019 07:05 PM PDT I recently decided (last year, during a gap year after undergrad) to switch from pursuing med school to (hopefully) being a developer. So my experience is mainly bioengineering research (cancer tests and assays) I landed into and community service rather than tech internships. I am currently finishing a master's in bioengineering (should have done CS, but lesson learned) after a biochemistry undergrad. I know MATLAB and R from undergrad courses, and I know my way around Linux and HTML/CSS from my own goofing around since middle school, and picked up basic JavaScript and Python skills along the way. But I don't have much of a portfolio (couple of school projects and JS demo websites) and still have some topics to cover. On my resume, I just have a bullet point list of languages I know and links to my very small portfolio. And then a bunch of undergrad research and odd jobs. A startup CEO I had a phone call for a job with stumped me with a question about asynchronous JavaScript that I think I should have known. I would eventually like to work at a good developer job that pays well ($85k+) with a dream job being $110k+. Any company would be fine, although if I had the choice, I would prefer unicorn startups or FAANG. I am getting more responses for analyst/non-tech job apps than developer job apps, relatively speaking; I've sent literally hundreds of apps out, focusing heavily on jobs that fit my background more and applying to dev jobs here and there. I don't want to apply to a dev job, get rejected, and then be precluded from working there because I was rejected there before (although this belief may be incorrect?). Or progress to a phone interview and show how sucky I am (how I felt with that startup CEO). Or just plain feel ill-suited for when looking at a job description. Should I: A) just shotgun apply to dev jobs and hope I land one despite my meager background and use that job to learn (on and off the job) or B) take up a non-tech job (that pay $60-70k, nothing to sneeze at) and study on my free time (learning languages/frameworks and DS&A stuff I didn't learn in school)? Obviously, it's probably not a black and white issue, but I would appreciate any insight into this. Probably another good way to phrase this is "how crappy is too crappy to apply for dev jobs?" [link] [comments]  |
| Getting a CS degree with expunged misdemeanors. Posted: 19 Mar 2019 07:02 PM PDT I know a lot of startups don't do background checks and most only care about felonies. Would two previous Expunged DV misdemeanors disqualify me from getting into a bigger tech company? One was back in 2007 and the recent was a couple of years ago . They are not sealed so they might show up on a background check but no longer convictions. [link] [comments]  |
| What's the most important aspect for students to focus on to getting internships/jobs? Posted: 19 Mar 2019 06:49 PM PDT I'm a CS student right now (Junior) and I haven't really had much success in the interview process. I think part of it may be due to some nervousness (botching simple technical questions like what is mutable/immutable in Python). Aside from that, I was curious in what other areas I might be possibly messing up. I don't really have projects, but I do have a great GPA to show for my time at university. I would like to get an internship before I graduate so that the job search Senior year might be a bit smoother. So, I was wondering, what aspects of the job search process do employers focus the most on? Is it projects, previous experience, technical interview results, or other aspects? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| CS - New Job and Not sure what to do next? Posted: 19 Mar 2019 06:46 PM PDT Hello All! I am 19 year old and I recently got a return offer from a big 4 company as a software engineer in Los Angeles. I spent the last few months(January - March) in an internship and they gave me a return offer(10K a month) to start in August( I was gonna start in the summer but I will be traveling this summer.) I loved the internship and the company is great with awesome perks(Health Insurance. corporate housing, signing bonus : $50,000 , free gym, restaurants, etc) But when I interviewed and matched with the team I'm on , I let them know that I am a self-taught developer who chose not to go to college and work on personal coding projects. I guess my recruiter didn't mind because in the end I got hired. But now that I will be moving to LA permanently , I'm not sure if I should go to college as a part time student (and get a degree in CS or maybe study something else I'm interested like Animation or Art) or if I should just work. I'm originally from Houston but wanted to move to Los Angeles and I loved it there and made some cool friends but most went back to college after the internship and a few of us got return offers. My roommate and I are really good friends and I've met her friends in LA and we're pretty close. If you have any advice please let me know. TLDR: I'm a self-taught 19 year old who just got a return offer at a large tech company to make 6 figures and I'm unsure if I should go to college while working a 9-5 or not. I've never gone to college and I'm unsure if I want to. [link] [comments]  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from CS Career Questions. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment