Big N Discussion - April 21, 2019 CS Career Questions |
- Big N Discussion - April 21, 2019
- Daily Chat Thread - April 21, 2019
- Junior Dev here. Just got thrown under the bus by a BA. What is the protocol to deal with this?
- [Hiring] What do you senior devs look for in your juniors?
- Is there ever a valid reason to have a dedicated scrum master? My team has one and I don't like it one bit.
- I just saw the LinkedIn of a person who got promoted to Distinguished Engineer (L9) in 13 years, starting as a junior software engineer. How the hell does this happen? What does one need to do to get promoted this fast?
- What should I do this summer to increase my chances of getting a job when I graduate?
- How is compensation like in San Diego these days?
- What's your opinion on "minimum years experience" requirements on job postings?
- Senior dev taking 3 - 6 months to study / refocus
- How can I keep my skill-set relevant without learning on my own time?
- Afraid I Won't Be Prepared for My Internship
- How much does bad gpa and failing a course affect finding internships
- Is there a stigma from Hiring Managers for working on PHP and/or Wordpress?
- Advice for balancing work and hobbies?
- Last year in college. What is the best way to use that time to prepare for job applications?
- Do companies increase RSU / TC to compensate for losing vesting shares?
- Why is there a negativity towards Phd C.S. graduates who dislike coding?
- Job prospects after a PhD?
- Devs who are not from USA/Canada/Europe. What's been your experience finding remote work?
- CS jobs in the entertainment industry??
- Advice on leaving junior developer role after 6 months?
- What is the meaning of stocks in compensation?
- For those who have worked at the Under Armour corporate office, what time does the office typically close?
- What is the reason why you would take a stable federal job over private?
- Feasible to negotiate 100% raise?
| Big N Discussion - April 21, 2019 Posted: 21 Apr 2019 12:06 AM PDT Please use this thread to have discussions about the Big N and questions related to the Big N, such as which one offers the best doggy benefits, or how many companies are in the Big N really? Posts focusing solely on Big N created outside of this thread will probably be removed. There is a top-level comment for each generally recognized Big N company; please post under the appropriate one. There's also an "Other" option for flexibility's sake, if you want to discuss a company here that you feel is sufficiently Big N-like (e.g. Uber, Airbnb, Dropbox, etc.). Abide by the rules, don't be a jerk. This thread is posted each Sunday and Wednesday at midnight PST. Previous Big N Discussion threads can be found here. [link] [comments]  |
| Daily Chat Thread - April 21, 2019 Posted: 21 Apr 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]  |
| Junior Dev here. Just got thrown under the bus by a BA. What is the protocol to deal with this? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 08:37 AM PDT So let me explain what happened. My team often works on applications that we don't own. This one User Story that I was working on was on an application owned by another team (Lets call this team B). During my code review a senior dev from team B had questions based on part of the User Story and my solution for it. I told him that I had similar questions and that the BA had answered my questions and that my solution is apt according to the answers the BA had given me. The senior dev was still not convinced with my justification and said he would like to set up a meeting with this BA. To which I had agreed to with no hesitation since I had the BA's answers and responses in writing (in the form of chat and emails). On the day of the meeting, the Senior Dev explained himself to the BA and listed his concerns with the User Story. To my horror the BA flipped 180 degrees and changed all her answers that she had given me in the past and agreed with the Senior Dev that what this senior dev is saying is what she had meant all along and I looked like a trout sitting there with my mouth open. I couldn't say anything at that point because I was so shook with the ease that she lied with. When we came out of the room she said, and I quote "Hope you won't hold this against me."; THAT MEANS SHE KNEW SHE WAS LYING. Not only did this make me look bad, it made my entire team look bad. I am moving to a new job soon and she (BA), before all this happened, agreed to be one of my references. I was and have been very close with her, liked her and have always found her to be sweet. How should I be addressing this issue, I don't want to be that person who digs everything up just to push blame on somebody. Should I be informing my manager that she lied in the meeting ? What if she continues this behavior with other developers? She is the BA (and a Senior BA if I may add) who works on most of the User stories for my team. After all this happened, she came over to my desk to "remind" me that she will be "more than happy to be my reference" because I am according to her a "hard-worker". At this point I feel like she's bribing me to shut up. END OF RANT. THANK YOU. EDIT - Thankful for all the responses. Just wanted to say that my problem was not that she changed the requirement (humans make mistakes, I do, everyone does). My issue was that she did not acknowledge that I had raised the same questions the senior dev had, way before I started implementing the code, and she also did not acknowledge that she misinformed me about some business logic earlier. Throughout the meeting she maintained that she told me what the Senior Dev was saying. It looked like me and team were a bunch of numb-nuts who didn't bother to cross check and ask questions. I guess my problem was that I worked hard on this user story (there was a LOT of back and forth) and at the end of it, it looked like I slacked. Not to mention, now its taking extra time to fix it, supposedly because I did not understand and bother to clarify the User Story. [link] [comments]  |
| [Hiring] What do you senior devs look for in your juniors? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 10:35 AM PDT Friends of mine are still in school and interested in hearing what the best of you on reddit want in people without the most experience. How can we shine? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2019 07:21 AM PDT This dedicated scrum master does nothing except sit around arranging scrum meetings and organizing swim-lanes on Jira. I do not like this non-technical person, who does nothing of value (as I see it), being involved in our team meetings and drawing significant salary from the team's budget. I just don't get it - they have no understanding of our stories from a technical standpoint anyway. The only qualification is some scrum certification, which I as a developer have too. Any dev from our team could manage to do this, and I would have a greater respect and involvement discussing our team's day-to-day with them. The engineers and PO are all that my team needs. This scrum master was hired some years ago as part of company's transition to agile, so it made sense then. But now, all he is is a meeting-organizer and Jira administrator (something a high school student could do), all while drawing decent six figures. CMV. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2019 06:53 PM PDT According to his LinkedIn, he entered as a Software Engineer II (L4) at Google, become a Senior SWE (L5) the next year, then got promoted pretty much every 3-4 years until he hit Distinguished Engineer (L9), where he's at right now. I also saw another engineer at Google who is currently a Principal Engineer (L8), who made it there in only 7 years. How the hell is this even possible? What does a person need to do to get promoted this fast? Most engineers either stay at senior engineer level (L5) their entire careers, or only get promoted after 5-10 years as a senior. What the hell do these people do? Are they engineering gods? Are they really good at office politicking? Is it just luck? I can even understand becoming a Principal or Distinguished Engineer in, say, 15-20 years if you're good at office politicking. But I can't even see how Frank Underwood could get promoted to what's basically a senior director/low-level executive position in less than 10 years. [link] [comments]  |
| What should I do this summer to increase my chances of getting a job when I graduate? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 06:51 PM PDT Hello! Currently I am a junior at school and my estimated graduation is May of 2020. I know that the best thing I can do for myself is to get an internship for this summer. I had a couple of interviews and I'm waiting to hear back if I will get an offer. Anyways, besides an internship, what is the best thing I can do in my free time to build my resume? I definitely want to go in the backend developer route. I've created a few mediocre C# and Java projects on github. I am pretty good with OOP languages as I have spent a lot of self study on Java & C#, understanding the fundamentals of these type of languages. I've also been studying some CTCI and I plan on doing some leetcode (I live in the midwest, so I don't know if the interviews will be super LC heavy). Anyways, what are some things I should do this summer to make my resume more attractive? [link] [comments]  |
| How is compensation like in San Diego these days? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 07:37 PM PDT I'm currently looking for a full-time position in San Diego. I don't trust sites like Glassdoor anymore because it seems like the salaries listed there are actually lower than what you can get these days (based on talking to friends). The problem with said friends is they won't give actual numbers, just that Glassdoor doesn't seem accurate. I also checked salaries listed on Leetcode and LinkedIn, but Leetcode doesn't have many salaries listed here and LinkedIn seems to show similar numbers to Glassdoor. Same with Indeed actually. I'm not sure what to expect for salary here/total compensation. I have around 10 years of experience and mainly do embedded. I'm particularly wondering about Qualcomm, Viasat, Broadcom, Sony, Cymer, and whatever else someone knows about. [link] [comments]  |
| What's your opinion on "minimum years experience" requirements on job postings? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 06:00 PM PDT A lot of job postings include "x years of experience in y". For some things, this makes perfect sense, for other things, it seems like a pretty terrible measure of ability, mainly because of how much overlap exists in CS. 5 years in C++ and 3 months in Java is probably gonna be on par with only 2 years in Java at least. I'm under the impression that some of these requirements are written by management and HR people who know very little about how to evaluate a potential tech hire. What do you think? Seen any particularly ridiculous ones? How would you sell yourself if you didn't have the "minimum" amount of time on a particular tech? [link] [comments]  |
| Senior dev taking 3 - 6 months to study / refocus Posted: 21 Apr 2019 09:28 AM PDT Hey all, I've been a dev for 15-ish years. I have a standard CS degree (algorithms, compilers, operating systems, etc) from a good school. I've never had a problem finding work as an engineer/dev, and I still don't feel I'd have any issues. Right now, I do lots of K8s automation work, moving old monoliths into K8s / breaking them up unto smaller components and modernizing their tech stacks. The fact is though, while the work is significant, I'm bored. I'd like to do something new/interesting, break into ML for example. I was thinking of taking a 3-6 month break (quit) and focus intensely on open source work / online courses and dedicate myself for large chunks of the day to deep, focused work. I don't feel I'd be able to do this given my current job roles / responsibilities. Fortunately for me, finances for this sort of "break" would not be an issue. My question is, has anyone else done this? How did it go? Were you able to find something more interesting? [link] [comments]  |
| How can I keep my skill-set relevant without learning on my own time? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 06:08 PM PDT I'm a front end dev, and most of my proejcts are CMS websites. I'll do the front end (html, css, js), and then hand that off to the back end dev to implement into the CMS. However, we've hired 5 front end devs that are skilled in either React, Angular or Vue. And they only work on that type of stuff. Currently I don't do this type of work at work. And I know that as a front end dev, learning and using a js framework is basically mandatory. To keep up, I've built some small stuff on the side with React and a couple React and Vue-based static site generators. And I plan on talking to my boss this week and mentioning that I want to start working on React stuff. Thing is, I don't want to have to keep working 8 hours a day, come home, and then continue to work on side stuff. I have a wife, a house and a baby on the way. With the little time I'll have, the last thing I'll want to do is more work after work, or on the weekends. I want to have a life and do things I enjoy. I like hunting, playing hockey, spending time with my wife and soon daughter, and many other things that aren't code. I don't want to be that father that neglects his kids because I'm spending all my free time in front of a computer after work and on weekends. For the guys and girls that have been at this for years, how can I expand my skill set on the job and not do so the limited free time I have? TL:DR - want to know how to stay relevant without having to sacrifice my free time. So that if and when I either get let go or want to work elsewhere, I'm prepared. [link] [comments]  |
| Afraid I Won't Be Prepared for My Internship Posted: 21 Apr 2019 04:27 PM PDT Hey guys, I will be starting an internship in a month at one of the largest software companies as an implementation business analyst. I wasn't sure how to best prepare as the interviewer told me I would need advanced Excel skills. I have experience with Pivot Tables, Index/Match, but I much more prefer using SQL and Python. How do I prepare for this job? Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| How much does bad gpa and failing a course affect finding internships Posted: 21 Apr 2019 08:02 PM PDT I'm currently a 2nd year ECE student. I want to do software but I have to take mandatory electricity courses for my program. My GPA actually isn't super terrible since I did pretty well in first year, but it has been consistently dropping as I've been forced to take more electricity courses in second year. I expect it to end up around 3.0 after this term. Problem is I might be failing 1 or 2 electricity courses this term and I'm worried if this will look extra bad on my transcript since failing results in a 0 GPA. I've gotten mostly A's in my computer courses. Luckily I already have a software dev internship for this summer but I'm worried it will affect my chances next year. I want to aim high for my next internship so I plan on doing lots of LeetCode and side projects this summer. I'm just worried my bad academic transcript will be a big red flag and make it difficult to get interviews. [link] [comments]  |
| Is there a stigma from Hiring Managers for working on PHP and/or Wordpress? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 01:57 PM PDT Let's say we currently already have a Full-Time job working at a large Tech Company doing Full-Stack Web Development in React/Node. However, we decide to make some side income doing Wordpress and PHP, jQuery, Bootstrap. Should we leave this work off our resume if we're already doing React/Node? Or should we still leave it on? Is there some kind of stigma against this kind of work by Hiring Managers at SF Bay Area Big N tech companies, startups, or reputable tech companies in general? [link] [comments]  |
| Advice for balancing work and hobbies? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 07:53 PM PDT My dream is to push the boundaries of algorithmic musical composition. In a perfect world, this would be my full-time job. However, I don't think this is realistic, at least for the time being. I'm terrified of having all of my time and energy sucked into an unfulfilling job. My brother-in-law is a professional in the field, and laments this very problem. Does anyone have any advice for minimizing conflict between money and passions? [link] [comments]  |
| Last year in college. What is the best way to use that time to prepare for job applications? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 03:53 PM PDT I'll be graduated in software engineering by the end of this year. I'm 23, studying in Brazil, but I would be okay working on another country. I assume you would need more info to answer such a vague question, here it is: Professional experience (by professional I mean I get paid)
Side projects:
I have no idea of what area I want to focus on. I'm more interested in working on a good place with interesting people, challenging problems and producing a decent product. How can I prepare to get such opportunities? Reading posts like this it makes me think that I should focus on algorithmic and system design problems. But is it the best way? Should I focus on open source projects instead? Should I focus on online competitions like Kaggle.com? There are no interesting companies close to my university (where I must be physically present), so I have to learn/produce alone at home. [link] [comments]  |
| Do companies increase RSU / TC to compensate for losing vesting shares? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 04:57 PM PDT RSUs here seem to stack up over time, to where vesting RSUs eventually plateau at 4x what they were in year one. Combined with appreciation, that could be 1/3rd to 1/2 of TC. Just wondering then, as a hypothetical, how companies and recruiters poach people away. Does anyone offer to match the RSUs you're losing, or are you just expected to take a hit to TC when switching firms? [link] [comments]  |
| Why is there a negativity towards Phd C.S. graduates who dislike coding? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 07:05 PM PDT What is wrong with being more research oriented? It is novel ideas after all that are more difficult to formulate than the execution and that is what they are after. If anyone really wants to learn to code great highly maintainable, readable, etc. code they can surely learn if they are able to obtain advanced degrees from reputable schools. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2019 09:04 AM PDT I get the sense that many people on this sub are anti-PhD but I'll shoot anyways. I'm thinking of getting a PhD in theory either in DS/Algos, Graph Theory, PL Theory, or some other related field. I love CS and research and really desire to make an impact in pushing the boundaries of current knowledge no matter how cliché that sounds. Let's say I get this PhD and I graduate and big surprise: turns out that the jobs in these fields are rare. In this scenario, how difficult would it be to pivot to other CS-related areas, preferably in govt research labs or in industry R&D? Would I be considered too specialized? [link] [comments]  |
| Devs who are not from USA/Canada/Europe. What's been your experience finding remote work? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 03:53 PM PDT So, basically this. I've been checking a lot of pages looking for remote work and I've seen a lot of US/Canada/Europe only posts. I wonder, what's your experience with this? Any tips on finding remote work if you are not from the countries/continent I mentioned before? [link] [comments]  |
| CS jobs in the entertainment industry?? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 05:59 PM PDT I've got about a year left in my CS degree and enjoy everything about it. I've got a decent part time job with opportunity to go full time and lots of growth after graduation. (Plus I'm sure I could find other similar "office" jobs around doing CS things) I am also a very creative person, I love performing and music. I did tons of musical things growing up and like seeing broadway plays and any performance. I was recently in Disneyland and was fascinated watching the shows and rides and seeing how effects and things were done and put together. If there were not downsides my dream job would be to work somewhere like that creating experiences for people. So I guess my questions is, is there anywhere to really go in the entertainment industry as a computer scientist? I love what I do now and would be happy working a daily job and making money to experience these things myself. But I am curious if there is anything to even consider in the other areas, or if I should just not even worry about it. Sorry for the wall of rambling text. TLDR: Are there any jobs for a computer scientist the entertainment industry? [link] [comments]  |
| Advice on leaving junior developer role after 6 months? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 05:51 PM PDT Last week, I made the decision to turn in my two weeks notice at my job, a small start-up company. I've been working there for six months, not the 1 year that most people recommend grads stay at their job for. I'm trying to figure out whether that will affect my job hunt much, as there's a ton of conflicting information out there. Will I be screwed if I leave my job after six months? I'm a developer very close to NYC and I know the competition there can be fierce, especially in web development which I currently am doing (full-stack). [link] [comments]  |
| What is the meaning of stocks in compensation? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 01:42 AM PDT I am a noob so please pardon me for asking this dumb question. When people here post their compensation, they post their salary along with RSU or stocks or something? What are those? How does stock trading work? Does the value of stock depend on how company is doing? How often do people loose money from these given stocks? Also can you sell stocks immediately right after taking job offer when their value is high and then leave the company? Also why are stocks compensation more than base salary in most of the posts here? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2019 07:32 PM PDT Got an offer from Under Armour for an internship but I want to make sure that my hours match with the hours of the office since I'm also taking classes over the summer. I'd really only be able to work from 1 until closing time. Anyone who has worked at the corporate office know what time it usually closes? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| What is the reason why you would take a stable federal job over private? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 02:58 PM PDT I need some serious career mentorship with this question and I would appreciate any help. I am young who has started out his career not too long ago. I've been working as a federal contractor and have landed an opportunity with the feds. The problem is that they're way to technologically behind and it will make me unemployable after some time. The work that I am doing is not even adding too much value or making me marketable for my next job. However, my family is under the assumption that I should go to feds and leave the private world altogether. I have taken the time to discuss this with several other employees and managers and they all have warned me not to go to feds for the sake of my career. My family is standing strong in the decision and wanting me to choose the federal world over private. This entire issue results in heated arguments and nothing gets accomplished. One of the reasons is that they believe I am not fast enough for private world and I could end up losing my job at any time. As a high-functioning autism, I may not be able to hold down a job or be a team player and these are the big fears. I am not really that confident in my programming abilities either as I don't have a good computer science foundation. In the fed world, its job security with good benefits (I think). In my current job, I have been performing well and I know I'll continue to do so. My fed manager already likes me so they believe I should choose them over my private company and leave. Ultimately, the decision is mine to make. I am still not too sure why it makes sense to go to feds over staying in private? At this point, I am young and completely confused. I know I am an adult and this is a very immature question to ask but I don't have a good support group to seek advice with. If you were in my shoes, can anyone please help me what and how would you have made this decision? Would you have gone to the fed world or stayed in private? Thank you for your time! [link] [comments]  |
| Feasible to negotiate 100% raise? Posted: 21 Apr 2019 06:00 PM PDT I work at a large(ish) tech firm in SV and have 2.5 YOE. I naively only knew about Glassdoor as a source of compensation data, but knew word on the street was that it was very unreliable. Today I learned about h1bdata.info, teamblind.com, and levels.fyi, and I am really kicking myself. Despite having both more paper qualifications and concrete skills, I am being paid drastically less than many of my peers from college who work at FAANG-type places. Realistically my TC is about 1/2 of what theirs is, and based on the aforementioned data sources, that fraction is only set to get smaller as time goes on. The obvious solution is to switch employers. However, my current job is fantastic (work is fun, projects are really interesting, I have visible impact on many well-known products, there are lots of opportunities to learn, my coworkers are very smart and friendly, my boss is great, etc.) and my ideal outcome would be to stay but get paid a competitive salary. However, staying means I'll need to negotiate an extremely large raise, both in terms of salary and equity. I'm curious about how feasible this really is. On one hand, the company has its own level-based pay band system, and I'd be asking them to basically exempt me from it. Furthermore, asking for a 100% raise seems childishly greedy, even though with proper context the final salary is simply at a competitive median. On the other hand, the company has been doing extremely well for the past few years, and its future looks promising, so I'm wondering if that may force them to become more competitive. I've also been getting top reviews from my boss and his boss. Is negotiating for this kind of raise an even remotely worthwhile endeavor? Or should I just focus on polishing my resume and practicing those infernal interview questions? [link] [comments]  |
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