Interview Discussion - April 18, 2019 CS Career Questions |
- Interview Discussion - April 18, 2019
- Daily Chat Thread - April 18, 2019
- Companies are now prohibited by law (in some states) to ask compensation history. I feel that this is window-dressing, and that in practice these laws are useless.
- How likely are big tech companies to hire a college dropout who worked as a software engineer at an unknown company for a year?
- What level of programmingpractice outside of work do you find sustainable?
- 25 Years Old, no girlfriend, nothing tying me down... any reason to NOT spend the next year working remotely and traveling?
- Phone call during current work?
- The no professional experiences market
- Tips on staying focused while WFH?
- Want to get to Director level. I'm currently 30 and almost have my Associate Degree. I have my plan inside, can you give me your advice?
- How do I encourage team member to debug before asking for help?
- Unknowingly added what would end up being my boss's boss on Linkedin. I want out now, what to do about my job search (which I use LinkedIn for)?
- do full-timers live with roommates?
- Having issues finding a job, should I be looking at a company like Revature?
- How much will an employer match?
- For those who live in Silicon Valley, is it really the place to be for SWE and technology in general?
- After years of writing crud apps, I'd like to move on and need ideas
- Need help choosing between two summer internship offer.
- Which entry level job to pick to set up a front-office buy-side quant career (x-post from r/quant)
- Alternative to CS major good enough?
- What degree would look best to employers if I can't do a CS degree?
- Java resources for an experienced developer
- Does being specialized in a certain field like mobile, ML/AI, or distributed systems give you an advantage for promotions? Or can you be a full-stack developer forever and get promoted at the same rate?
- Background check?
| Interview Discussion - April 18, 2019 Posted: 18 Apr 2019 12:06 AM PDT Please use this thread to have discussions about interviews, interviewing, and interview prep. Posts focusing solely on interviews created outside of this thread will probably be removed. Abide by the rules, don't be a jerk. This thread is posted each Monday and Thursday at midnight PST. Previous Interview Discussion threads can be found here. [link] [comments]  |
| Daily Chat Thread - April 18, 2019 Posted: 18 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]  |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2019 09:40 AM PDT My thoughts are: - companies are not prevented from taking notes of someone volunteering their history. As a result of this, someone who's paid a lot is more likely to spontaneously divulge the information than someone who feels underpaid. As such, not volunteering will be considered a red flag. - in other kind of negotiations, it is perfectly legal to lie or mislead about alternative offers. For instance, if you are selling a house, there is nothing that prevents you from bluffing, inflating the price you bought the house for, or the refurbishing costs you made. It is the buyers right to believe you or not. In salary negotiations, if you make up numbers, you can be liable if they can prove that you lied. - other non-discrimination laws were usually more effective. For instance: you can not use someone's age or looks as a criterion for a job (say, a white collar job, not a Hooters kind of job, obviously). For that reason, it is not just illegal to ask about these things, but it is also highly frowned upon if a recruiter starts taking notes like 'candidate is xxx years old', or 'candidate is smoking hot'. - for that reason, the comp history laws should also prevent employers from using people's comp history as a criterion. Of course, nothing can prevent people from taking some criteria into account, but the law would be respected much better if the law explicitly said that there can be no written trace of these criteria. TLDR: the vagueness of the law, which states that employers can not ask for the information, but at the same time allows employers to take into account volunteered information (and hold it against employees if they lied), makes the law close to useless. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2019 07:10 PM PDT I was a sophomore at UT Austin until the end of the Spring of 2017, when I was forced to withdraw from college because I came out as gay to my conservative parents and they withdrew my financial aid and kicked me out of the house - I actually had a decent GPA (3.5) in Math at the time. Luckily, I had an internship at a small startup in Austin, so I wasn't homeless after they kicked me out. I performed well at the startup, and explained to a friend that I met there about my situation. He was sympathetic and referred me to interviews at multiple other startups for an entry-level software engineering position. Long story short, after about 2 months of being homeless, I got hired as a Software Engineer at a local startup in Austin, where I've been working at since November 2017. I'm now looking to move up a bit in the world. I'd like to work at a big tech company, but am wondering if I have anywhere near enough experience. I've worked for about a year and a half at an unknown tech startup, and I'm wondering if it's feasible that I get into a Big N company like Google, Facebook, or Microsoft. Does anyone have any thoughts? How likely is it that I can get an interview at these tech companies with a years worth of experience as a software engineer, but with no college degree? I read articles by self-taught programmers who eventually winded up at Google, but they seemed to have taken years if not decades. Is it a waste of my efforts to apply? Thanks. Edit: Just to add some things to my resume - I have 2 notable side projects, regularly contribute to open source projects (and by regularly, I mean almost daily), and I am in the top 200 of HackerRank. The downside is, again, I work at an unknown startup and have no college degree. Since I did ask about my chance of being hired, I thought it would be important to add these things. [link] [comments]  |
| What level of programmingpractice outside of work do you find sustainable? Posted: 18 Apr 2019 07:52 AM PDT tldr; how do you organize your learning sessions outside of work? As a little background - I have been programming professionally for almost 5 years - I'm 33 and joined the field a little later than most. When I got my first programming job, I got passed up for promotions and raises in favor of some of my younger colleagues - I'm unsure if it was political or skill based, but I decided that my skill level was within the spectrum of my control. For a year, I poured 2-4 hours a day outside of work into reading, practice projects, and even took vacations to work on a side project, which helped me interview for a new job and get a very large raise in the process. The problem is, I ended up utterly fried. I took about 6 months off of working outside of work. I couldn't find the throttle to put in extra time. For driven developers, what level of practice outside of work do you do? Do you apply any strategies to mitigate that burn out? Should I limit my practice to a certain number of hours, or accept natural boom and bust cycles of motivation? I realize the answer will be personal, but I'm looking for different strategies to try out. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2019 02:30 PM PDT Hi, I am currently approaching my 3rd year a large tech company in SF as a software engineer. It recently hit me that I have absolutely nothing preventing me from staying in SF. I love traveling and one of my dreams is to travel around SE Asia for an extended period of time. I was wondering if there is any reason I SHOULDN'T spend the next year working remotely (assuming I can find a decently-paying job) and traveling SE Asia? I feel like I won't get an opportunity like this again. I'm also very bored of my current lifestyle. I assume I will be spending most of my time in Thailand and Malaysia. But I plan on spending time in Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan as well. Anyone have anything they think I should consider? What pay do you think should be minimally "acceptable" to travel comfortably without having to worry about cash? Anyone ever face a similar situation? I'm open to any ideas, questions, or concerns. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Phone call during current work? Posted: 18 Apr 2019 05:29 PM PDT Hey, so I'm working a 4 month summer internship at a local startup in Toronto. I just got selected to go to big4 phone interview round for their Fall 2019 internships. Problem is big4 wants me to give 8 dates and 3 time slots on each date to schedule a phone interview. The phone interview would be one of those 8 dates for 45 minutes and consist of a online technical phone interview + coding. How would I tell my current boss this? The big4 job starts after my current one so it shouldn't be an issue but still [link] [comments]  |
| The no professional experiences market Posted: 18 Apr 2019 07:13 PM PDT Background: I graduated in Dec. 2018 with a 2.75 gpa, no internships unfortunately, with a focus on java/sql/javascript, and was f***** over by not researching Revature before hand and lost my only offer to date from a good company (no luck getting in contact again). I luckily had parents and friends to stop me from going with them. So, in that time I have filled hundreds of applications to companies across the US from LinkedIn, indeed, dice, and Glassdoor. The most I've gotten were hackerrank questions in which I passed the questions 100% but didn't get a call back. In this time of 4 months, I found out that "entry level" is a BS term that has no requirements on ANY site and Revature is polluting the pool with 100's of outright spam opening with the same body and filled in for all major cities in the US making jr. or entry level impossible to sort out recently. I avoid the monolithic names w/ 1000's of applications and focus on the small companies. So, is there any hope for me to find a job since regular graduation is coming up and there is usually more jobs to apply for, or is the market in a downward spire and the only hope is to go to Revature or equivalent, get experience or a job, then get to the wide open mid-level market that can't fill positions fast enough? Should i also look into big tech-adjacent companies like banks, insurers, etc., or the sub 500 employee businesses? [link] [comments]  |
| Tips on staying focused while WFH? Posted: 18 Apr 2019 09:23 AM PDT I just got hired a month and a half ago and I did my first WFH yesterday. I noticed I got significantly less work done due to distractions at home (doggo, chores, impulses, etc.). Any advice on maintaining concentration? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2019 07:09 AM PDT Yes I'm 30 and in college for the first time ever. My family grew up in poverty so I've been working since I was 15, thank God I didn't drop out of high school. I have a family now and full time job so I'm taking college part time and will have my Associate Degree in Software Development in two years. I started in sales at a company years ago and now work in their corporate office. My current position is in the Sales department doing training and data analysis. I've realized I really enjoy logic and programming so decided to pursue that. I realize an Associate Degree isn't going to get me very far as a Software Developer, especially when I'm going to be 32 trying to compete with 20 year olds. But it is what it is. Longer term, I would love to get into leadership especially a Director level position. WGU offers an IT Management Bachelors degree. My plan: Use my Associate Degree to get into IT in some fashion, hopefully software development. Get IT Management Bachelors. Leverage my background in both Sales and IT to get into leadership and hopefully a Director. What do you think? [link] [comments]  |
| How do I encourage team member to debug before asking for help? Posted: 18 Apr 2019 07:45 AM PDT I've mentored a few (~10) people in the last couple years and they've all been of varying skills from people who perform amazingly well to others who need ridiculous handholding. Most of these people are interns or brand new college hires. They haven't quite gotten the grasp of debugging and trying to figure things out themselves before asking for help. One thing I started to try to do was ask what they've already done to figure out their problems but I feel it always comes across snarky when I ask that, no matter the tone I use. For the most severe case, I implemented a "try for 2 hours before asking for help" policy so I wasn't interrupted every 10 minutes with questions and so they'd actually get practice trying to self-debug. I truly want them to succeed and want to help but they also need to understand how to debug themselves. Seeing a stack trace and immediately asking why they're seeing it isn't acceptable to me, even if I can provide any immediate answer. Are there any good methods to encourage these folks to really dog in before asking questions without sounding like an asshole and without making it appear that I don't want to help? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2019 06:37 AM PDT I added this person way back because they were a new hire to the company and I had a chat with them about their background, we were in separate engineering teams then, they seemed cool, knowledgeable, and we'd likely work together every now and then so when I found their request I gladly accepted. Turns out this person was from upper management's prior employment history, and now are reporting directly to upper management and placed in charge of my boss (who I'd follow to the ends of the Earth because of how amazing they are). This restructure has brought a new idea to management of out with our old processes and in with the new which I have 0 problems with, but a lot of our things keeping the business running and functional is legacy/old/decrepid/badly designed processing that needs to be enhanced/re-factored before making the jump to the present. This is completely lost on them and I'm tired of explaining time and time again why we cannot just kill our legacy processes that send reports directly to our CEO in favor of building a completely new cloud-based thing that's going to take time and testing, it has to be incrementally done with the bandwidth our team has. I guess my tl;dr question is, if I set myself to "open to jobs" on LinkedIn, will this person see that I am job hunting? [link] [comments]  |
| do full-timers live with roommates? Posted: 18 Apr 2019 09:57 AM PDT Hi, I recently got placed in a small AMZN office and can't seem to find enough new grad ft to room together. Do full-timers typically have roommates at all? How should I go about finding ft roommates? [link] [comments]  |
| Having issues finding a job, should I be looking at a company like Revature? Posted: 18 Apr 2019 02:45 PM PDT I graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in CS last December. My GPA is a profoundly mediocre 2.5 and due to some mental health problems, I never went to any of the wonderful career fairs offered at Tech to find a job. Turns out its hard to get up and try and sell yourself when you barely want to get out of bed in the morning. This also had the negative side effect of my last two semesters looking a lot like train wrecks on my transcript because they frankly were. I passed my classes by the skin of my teeth. I'm happy to say I've since received help for that and I'm doing a lot better. As such, I'm now looking for a job. However, the only calls and emails I'm getting are from companies like Revature, that will hire you as a junior but then require a minimum two year contract with them and require you to relocate to where ever they place me. I'm in the MD/DC area and would really like to stay there for a number of reasons but I'm worried that I'm not going to find success doing that and should just deal with a company like Revature. Thoughts? [link] [comments]  |
| How much will an employer match? Posted: 18 Apr 2019 04:54 PM PDT I really love my current job, but I'm not being paid the most competitive salary. I went on just one interview and got offered 25k more, or 30%. Is it unrealistic to expect an employer to match that big of a difference? I'd really prefer not to walk. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2019 08:02 PM PDT I have been dreaming of moving to the valley for a long time. However, I'd like input from people who actually live there whether it's truly worth it. I am a currently a CS Major in college who would love to create/join a tech startup preferably in AI. My question is; is it better to move to growing hubs such as Seattle, LA, or even London or move as intended to the valley?(cost of living is not a factor imho) Also, what is the general attitude towards technology in the SF/Bay Area? [link] [comments]  |
| After years of writing crud apps, I'd like to move on and need ideas Posted: 18 Apr 2019 08:23 AM PDT I've been writing crud apps and various restful web services for a few years now and I'm getting bored. There are two ideas that I have off the top of my head (I'm open to others) 1)I think I'm a natural leader, and I do know a good bit about sdlc and technical debt so management might be a good fit but I don't really know what the path to accomplish that is. Would I need to get a business degree? 2)in college I really enjoyed working with assembly, operating systems and AI. So if there are career potentials for those I'd like to be told about reasonable methods of transitioning into those types of roles. [link] [comments]  |
| Need help choosing between two summer internship offer. Posted: 18 Apr 2019 06:55 PM PDT IBM or Wepay? Any opinion would be appreciated. Am also trying to push IBM internship back so I can do both if possible. [link] [comments]  |
| Which entry level job to pick to set up a front-office buy-side quant career (x-post from r/quant) Posted: 18 Apr 2019 02:36 PM PDT Hi all, Recently, I've gotten some pretty good news in terms of job offers. For background, I am a math undergrad at a semi-target. Here is the job situation: Assuming I get every one of these offers the optiver role would be ideal, but I do not estimate a high probability of making it through all the rounds. The situation now is I have 2 weeks to accept the offer from the major i-bank, and I will ask the startup prop firm to schedule a final interview with the head trader soon, I do like the people here though and am partial to this position Basically: My ultimate career goal is quantitative researcher/analyst (QR/QA) front office role at a hedge fund (doesnt matter if its one of the big ones like Twosig, DEShaw, etc. or a small one that's doing well). What do y'all think? Update: Just got another QA first round interview with a hedge fund that I applied to via college career portal, so throw that into the mix as well. [link] [comments]  |
| Alternative to CS major good enough? Posted: 18 Apr 2019 08:36 AM PDT I'll be majoring in Cognitive Science at my school (I'm not a freshman, and it's too late to switch to CS), but I want to get into software engineering. CS courses I'll be able to take before graduating: -Intro to Programming (C++) -Data Structures & OOD (C & C++) -Discrete Methods for CS -Algorithm Analysis -Principles of Software Engineering (Java) -Software Engineering (Java I think) -2 more electives (OS, DB, Systems, etc) Ultimately, I want to get into tech and do SWE after grad for a little while, but I do think I'll end up getting an MBA at some point to make the transition to the business side of things. With that said, could you answer the following questions for me?
Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| What degree would look best to employers if I can't do a CS degree? Posted: 18 Apr 2019 06:08 PM PDT Hey folks, I'm sorry if this is the wrong subreddit, but it pertains more to my future career than CSMajors. I've finished all of my lower division CS classes (Intro CS, Object Oriented Programming, Computer Architecture, Data Structures) with A's, but my university has this bullshit weeder entrance exam for the upper division classes that you can only take twice. You have an hour to answer a medium leetcode style problem in a mock interview setting, and I unfortunately choked up and failed both attempts. I have to switch major if I want to graduate, and the closest majors that would let me graduate on time are Math or Physics. I really enjoy both (I've taken group theory and modern physics), so I wouldn't necessarily mind finishing the degree with either one. My college doesn't have any other related degrees except Comp Eng which would be a whole extra year. Alternatively I could transfer to a different university, but it would also likely delay things a year. Any advice? [link] [comments]  |
| Java resources for an experienced developer Posted: 18 Apr 2019 05:49 PM PDT Hi, I'm a CS grad student and am experienced in in C++, Golang and python (in industry + academia). I'll be starting an internship next month where I'll be working in Java. I haven't written much Java before and would like to be well versed before I start. Most resources out there are for absolute beginners. I'm ideally looking for a crash course or short book covering major concepts. I would really appreciate if anyone could link me with with Java resources (apart from the oracle docs) for experienced devs. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2019 02:07 AM PDT I've noticed full stack developers aren't as plentiful in the upper echelons of engineering management (L6/Staff Level+). [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2019 05:03 PM PDT Anyone know background check procedures for companies these days. I'm a bit worried since I have two internships on my resume that were required for my undergraduate and graduate studies. However they were unpaid internships. I'm worried that they won't show up on background check if they do check employment. Should I be worried?? [link] [comments]  |
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