Career advice thread

Career advice thread, ask questions about starting in a new field, advancing in your career or anything career related.

TL;DR: i'm a hikikomori, i need to find work. I enjoy studying and have been doing so for the past few years. Tried finding remote work for the past 2 months, no luck. Companies accept my resume, compliment the work i've done, i do their challenges successfully but i never get hired. I tried to look at freelancing projects, but they don't really seem to pay a reasonable amount for the work asked. I don't really feel confident as a freelancer, working for a company seems easier to deal with. Any advice is welcome.

>>2460 ps. one thing i could think of is improve my webdev skills, but i have no motivation for that anymore. I enjoy computer science but webdev is something i picked up only for the money, and i'm not getting any money so..

>>2460 >Companies accept my resume, compliment the work i've done, i do their challenges successfully but i never get hired. Clearly something is wrong. You need to find out what. One thing to consider is joining an open source project. Spend time in their IRC channel and fix bugs from their bug tracker. It would be valuable experience for leveling up your communication and soft skills. It's not all about the code.

Okay here goes... I'm mostly interested in sysadmin/netadmin stuff. But I don't have any degree or any of that. And my only experience is with my system. I can say I know my share, but I still have a lot to learn. I don't even know where to start looking for a job in the field, and what's worse, I'm sure every other applicant would be a much better candidate due to my virtual lack of education and professional experience.

>>2467 Well your answer is clear as day in your post. Try working with different systems. Doing so may improve your confidence in your skills.

>>2470 I should have laid down my question explicitly: >Where do I look for jobs to apply? Sites like upwork are oversaturated, and I'm not sure there are many IT offerings in the newspaper >How do I make myself appealing to potential employers? My CV is nearly empty because I have zero professional experience, no formal education, and I don't really have a portfolio since all I've done is ad-hoc scripts and config files.

>>2471 No one gives you an education. You have to work for it yourself. Read books. Keep up with tech news (lobste.rs, news.ycombinator.com, reddit). Listen to conference talks and podcasts. Go to local tech meetups (meetup.com). Setup a home lab and actually experiment with the things you read and hear about. Create a blog and talk about those ad-hoc scripts and config files. Actually explaining things so that other people can understand will solidify your own understanding. You will be helping people and getting your name known. And it shows potential employers that you know some stuff.

>>2476 I always read this "create a blog" advice, but how realistic is it? Who will find your blog at all?

>>2483 You can mention it on a resume or during an interview and HR will possibly take a look at it. Your co-workers will probably discover it at some point, as well. A related story, one of my computer security professors once mentioned that one of his employees wrote a blog where he'd write tutorials about whatever tech thing he'd done that week. My professor was reading it and found a screenshot of an SSH session into one of the company's machines with some info scrubbed out, but some important info left in the screenshot. He reprimanded the guy and when he recounted this story to our class, said something similar to, "Leaking information like that, at [company name] is generally something we take very seriously, but it was a tough spot reprimanding him for it, because one on hand, he was a good employee, he worked hard, liked and understood what he was doing - I mean, he's even blogging about it, you don't often find people that motivated. We didn't want to fire him, but it's still an issue." An implication I got from that story was that blogging makes your higher ups think you're more motivated than you actually may be.

>>2486 Interesting. Considering i have no money to host a blog (i can create and host stuff on surge.sh for example, but none of them allow dynamic content), do you recommend anything in particular? There's always wordpress and medium, for example. But i'd like to make one for myself.

>>2483 >Who will find your blog at all? Not exactly the point. When you apply for a job and they Google your name, your blog should be the first hit and it will make them think, hell yeah this guy is knowledgeable and passionate. Include your full name and online handle in your blog then people will find it as long as you interact with communities (github, irc, twitter, irl meetups, linkedin etc.). >>2487 >platform Ask yourself if you really need dynamic content. If you don't then you can use something like Jekyll or Pelican to generate a static site and host it for free on Github. >>2486 Someone with a blog can also do a lot of PR damage to a company. I don't know if that was a consideration or not in your story but it's worth noting. >blogging makes your higher ups think you're more motivated than you actually may be. I want to say it takes effort to maintain a blog but I also agree with you. It is also easy to convince hiring managers that you know a lot more about a thing that they know little or nothing about.

>>2461 Web dev is definitely a lower barrier to entry for going from hikki->job.

>>2487 Like >>2491 said, I don't think you really need dynamic content for a blog. There are some free webhosts that give a typical LAMP stack. Google "Free [your language of choice] website host" and go from there. Web hosting is also cheap. If you can toss $10 a year to a domain and $5-10 a month to a hosting provider, it might be a good investment. Just go donate plasma or sell something to foot the bill. >>2491 >I want to say it takes effort to maintain a blog but I also agree with you. It is also easy to convince hiring managers that you know a lot more about a thing that they know little or nothing about. I see what you mean. It can take a lot of effort maintaining a blog depending on the topic of choice, level of detail, and originality you put into it, especially if you're putting in the effort to get a reasonable amount of readers.

I've been working at my current company for about a year now but have been really disappointed at their quality of work and software engineering practices. I want to find a new job but probably somewhere on the west coast of the US, so I would need to relocate. Last time I was applying for jobs, barely any of my applications got responses. What can I do to improve my response rate?

>>2494 >I don't think you really need dynamic content for a blog When i think of a blog i think of accounts (at the very minimum, one administrator able to post new entries), that alone makes a database necessary. Also comments and the post themselves need to be hosted somewhere. I wouldn't be able to use Surge.sh for something like that, but i'll take a look at jekyll, i've never used it.

>>2483 >I always read this "create a blog" advice, but how realistic is it? Who will find your blog at all? I created my own website for my amusement, rather than employment. I proselytize it a bit, but that's not the point. I don't want to proselytize here, as that's not the point of this thread, but I'll point you to it if you'd want to look. Regardless, you'll be able to point anyone to that blog and let them know that you're responsible for all of that. In the context of job-hunting, that's important to be able to do and it looks impressive with everyone else just using Twitter or other social media garbage. >>2501 >When i think of a blog i think of accounts (at the very minimum, one administrator able to post new entries), that alone makes a database necessary. My website is entirely static and that's more than enough for articles. I just log in to dump files into /var/www/ when I want to publish a new one. >Also comments and the post themselves need to be hosted somewhere. I wouldn't be able to use Surge.sh for something like that, but i'll take a look at jekyll, i've never used it. Comments can be a hassle. Let someone else deal with that. >>2498 >I've been working at my current company for about a year now but have been really disappointed at their quality of work and software engineering practices. I want to find a new job but probably somewhere on the west coast of the US, so I would need to relocate. Last time I was applying for jobs, barely any of my applications got responses. What can I do to improve my response rate? Well, making a name for yourself with a website as mentioned is certainly one way. If I were you, I'd avoid relocating and attempt remote work instead. With this written, the best way to get a job like this seems to be to have specialized knowledge and so attack job listings that inherently have less competent applicants.

>>2498 >I've been working at my current company for about a year now but have been really disappointed at their quality of work and software engineering practices. That's an artifact of our capitalist society rewarding and never punishing insecure, badly written software. I think it is good to get around a bit and experience how different companies do things, especially early on in your career. Don't expect other companies to be better though. What you described is a problem with the industry at large, not your particular company.

>>2502 >Comments can be a hassle. Let someone else deal with that. More specifically, if you don't have comments, visitors are more likely to submit your blog post to a site like Hacker News just so they can talk about it and you'll get more exposure. If you really want comments on the same page then Disqus works with static sites.

>>2502 >Well, making a name for yourself with a website as mentioned is certainly one way. I do currently have a website with a blog. There is only a couple of posts, but I've actually gotten emails from people thanking me for the blog post and asking more questions about the topic. So it is quite nice people seem to be benefiting from it. I definitely need to post more. >If I were you, I'd avoid relocating and attempt remote work instead. With this written, the best way to get a job like this seems to be to have specialized knowledge and so attack job listings that inherently have less competent applicants. Not sure if I want to do remote work. >>2508 >That's an artifact of our capitalist society rewarding and never punishing insecure, badly written software. If they continue on the current path, I believe it won't take long for them to get punished for the software they are writing by losing some big customers. >Don't expect other companies to be better though. What you described is a problem with the industry at large, not your particular company. I am sure there is plenty of companies that are slightly better at the software engineering practices. All I want from my current job to make me satisfied enough is some proper automated testing and maybe a better development process for releases.

I'm trying to figure out if a 3 month bootcamp would be the right approach to break into the industry. My background is medicine, but I've decided that a clinical career would not make me happy, and that I should stick to what I'm most passionate about. I've been a script kiddie for a while, but I recently started learning programming and want to make the best out of it. I've been meeting up on a weekly basis with an experienced developer who is helping me with projects and reviewing my code. I have done a bunch of online courses on Python, Javascript and R, but now that I have much more free time, I want to try a different approach. I've thought about enrolling in Hack Reactor due to their reputation, but I'm a bit concerned about their lack of back-end material. Would it be wise to do the bootcamp, find a front end job and eventually learn back end through side projects?

fuarrrk it. I'm going into my 3rd year for my bachelors. I do research for my uni (currently helping write some rdma kernel modules for another student to use for his research project). This semester i finally get to take architecture (which i have a pretty good head start on and i'm super excited for). The lower level computer science things like architecture, drivers, and os dev are super interesting, but i'm still very new to those areas. I'm probably going to read through some networking books and then the sugar glider book to fill in gaps, since being full stack is hella useful for jobs. I DO want to go straight into a masters program at my uni and then phd, although i have no clue what i would be doing for them (probably within the 3 things i mentioned earlier, as i learn more i'll figure it out). I'm completely lost as far as career options go and when to start looking. I was thinking about starting to look for jobs as soon as i finish my masters, since phd is mostly out of class research, but i wasn't sure if i should maybe start looking while working on my masters? And i wasn't sure what kind of jobs i can get if i pursue my interests and what companies to shoot for. I'm setting a goal for trying to work for intel/amd/nvidia one day, because i think they would have some teams that i would fit perfectly into. Either way i know i'm not getting a job with them, so i have no clue what kind of jobs i should be looking for and what kind of companies to look for those jobs in.

>>2508 > That's an artifact of our capitalist society rewarding and never punishing insecure, badly written software. Admittedly this is not something I have direct experience with but a friend who works as a programmer told me that companies he worked for valued deadlines over quality of product. It didn't matter how riddled with bugs the thing was, all that mattered was meeting deadlines. He quit several jobs over this and now works freelance for the most part.

>>2546 this is definitely 100% true in closed source software. MVP is all that matters, security and stability and grokkability and sanity can come after.

Is studying scrapping and things related worth it? In my current internship, Im working with scrappers for most part of time. Is it a too specific skill for a programmer ?

>>2590 No not at all. I would get started early in the morning, by the end of the day it will all be down the drain.

>>2590 >Is studying scrapping and things related worth it? What's there to really study with this? I've written scraping software and it's really just a matter of downloading and understanding resources to download other resources until finished; it's not at all complicated. You should elaborate on what you mean. >In my current internship, Im working with scrappers for most part of time. Is it a too specific skill for a programmer ? I don't believe so, but I wouldn't go around telling people that you specialize in that, as that doesn't seem to particularly qualify as a specific skill so much as something else would.

I'm doing comp sci on a free ride to a decent but not amazing school. I don't love it but I'm just looking to do it for a few years as a quick cash boost until I turn 27 Am I wasting my time? I kinda hate this stuff but I have no idea what else I'd do that I enjoy and this makes money

>>2593 Consider that by that point you will be making so much money you will probably be reluctant to leave and start again at the bottom in a non-dev job.

>>2590 As aforementioned, there isn't a lot to scraping. Imagine that you're asking if it's worth it to study "calculations to give change at the supermaket". Scrapers are just simple programs to do one simple operation, there isn't a lot to understand about it. You might need to understand the DOM and how network operations are performed in your particular language, but that isn't related to scraping itself as much as computer science.

>>2467 try to get a cert.?

Hello fellow lainons: I'm a compsci student but I am now in my 4th year already, with only 1 semester worth of classes finished, mainly due to crippling depression over the last few years, which even kept me from simply taking exams I would have passed for sure. I am able to scrape by with occasional holiday jobs and support from my family. I'm not proud of my situation. I do spend most, if not all of my freetime programming and doing unix stuff (CTFs as well) though, even got a few actual real world projects. I'm not sure what to do at this point, I'm 26, soon 27 years old and feel like finishing my Bachelors that late would really dampen my job chances ("Why did it take you x years to finish a bachelors degree?"). Can somebody offer some advice on how to make the most of my situation? I often look for part time job opportunities in programming or sysadmin/security to compensate the fact that I took so freaking long, but there isn't much in this area.

>>2638 >there isn't a lot to scraping You can get a lot of mileage out of even the simplest problems. Try adding parallelization. And some way to detect and handle 403 messages (add Tor support or implement something like proxycannon. Add a Database to avoid requesting the same data twice. Write your code to use sockets and send/receive raw html instead of using a high level library like Curl. Write your own HTML/JSON/XML parser. There is a lot you can do to maximize your learning. >>2656 >I do spend most, if not all of my freetime programming and doing unix stuff I recommend showing that stuff off through Github and/or a technical blog. >feel like finishing my Bachelors that late would really dampen my job chances Developers are being hired like crazy at the moment. With all the stuff you do in your free time I wouldn't worry about it. The only thing to keep in mind is that obviously no one will pay you the same rate as other people your age who have been working for the past 5 years. As long as you can handle being paid like a 21 year old (at least at the very beginning), then I think you'll be fine.

>>2593 It is hard to believe I didn't write this post and black out because I am in the word-for-word exact same situation.

Is freelancing worthwhile for anything other than front end web design? I am a very poor designer, but proficient at solving programming programs such as the ones on project euler. I ask because on freelancing sites I see many postings for web design projects and few for back-end, algorithmic stuff.

>>2684 Freelancing is monopolized by few pakistanis that lower their prices so much that nobody else can get on market and a lot of bots that do digital marketing type services (ie spam) Back-end stuff that you are searching for is usually done through same paths as usual jobs, you just have to ask for "work from home" type of ordeal which they will be more than willing to give you if they are smaller or middle sized company (big companies usually don't allow that)

>>2546 This is happening at the company I work at There's a process that if followed, would solve all the problems with the backlog of high priority bugs. But they never follow the process, they always have to declare code complete even when it isn't and use the time they should use fixing bugs to actually write the software. In the next product iteration they're building they say that it's going to be 'next generatoin' and 'no legacy code'. Everything's a lie, the code is terrible, nobody cares.

>>2703 The game they're playing is called "let's make money" not "let's write good code".

>>2712 >good code I'm starting if that's even a thing /at all/

I'm about to enter college and I can't decide wherever I'll like computer science or computer engineering better. Any lainons with experience in both careers? I'm leaning more to computer science but I like the electronic aspect of engineering too.

>>2714 "Good code" is typically a thing in industries where there are big and irreversible consequences for fuarrrkng things up. Things like Aerospace, transport, military, algorithmic trading. If all you're doing is coding web applications then there is basically no way you are going to kill anyone or lose significant amounts of money so writing quality code is not worth it from a financial point of view.

>>2735 Adding to this the security teams are often in the same if not worse situation then the devs. I often get a project a few weeks before release using frameworks I don't know having to switch languages every week and I have only one week to test the damn thing. I want to do better but really I just need to work on a subject matter for a while to get a depth and get time to actually learn what the hell an application is doing. Also if a bug gets missed and is caught in production later I then get in trouble for not doing my job so every job is stressful. I don't even get time to code my own stuff because all my free time is trying to figure out the nuances of the latest meme framework so I can figure how to break someone's code the next week.

>>2714 "good code" implies in code that can be easily read by others and is engineered in such a way that new features can be added without breaking previous work. Same for removal, non critical features can be removed with no risk and/or an implicit risk that is obvious to whoever is writing it. It's not that unusual, new programmers usually name their variables as "X", "Y", and they're just following a stream of thought, whenever that stream ends, their work is over and it's very hard to get back into it. That's bad code, and basically what most companies will do. Good code is structured in such a way that work doesn't get lost, you can easily get back into this "stream of thought".

A younger sibling of mine who is currently 16 was wondering about the possibility of getting a programming out of high school. He feels he is decent enough at the subject but knows he still needs a lot of practice. He currently mostly uses haskell but also knows python, but is not very practiced in it. He largely prefers haskell. What would he need to do to get even the possibility of a job out of high school if this is even possible at all? College is extremely expensive and getting a 4 year jump ahead would likely be beneficial in the long run. I know open source projects is one of the answers but to what degree? Also are there any more specific details on to how to go about doing these projects as in what kinds of projects, or any other details like that? Would it be be better to simply be a contributer to some large well known projects or to have a few small projects of his own? Thank you for any advice in advance.

>>2977 Being a contributor in large projects is difficult. Being a contributor with the explicit intention of getting a job asap is even more difficult. These things are characteristics that add to your value as a potential hire, but they're not what will get your foot on the door. Being so young is certainly to his advantage, in his place i would make projects. Make a project a week and increase in scope, get used to the act of programming and commit everything to github. That will allow people to know the quality of his work beforehand and will make him more sure of his skill. This is what i consider the most important when trying to find work, besides that, there are other areas that can give you advantages, like having a technical blog, contributing to open source, helping others in forums (specially if you can demonstrate that, like on stack overflow). And even then, you should keep in mind that all of this just works towards increasing his chances, not guaranteeing opportunities. Whoever is responsible for the interview must first and foremost like him, if they don't like him, his ability is irrelevant.

>>2656 I'm in the same spot except I'm studying math. I lately have found the motivation to be more open about my interests and I have found some projects that are worth to put up in my github. I would also like to get a dev job, but I have come to the conclusion that finishing my degree is a priority so I can find the self-confidence I have lost. About the lost years it's ok I think. Sometimes I'm happy that this happened now and not in a time I would have serious problems if I was this way.

>>2977 No need to roleplay as a sibling, no one cares about your age so don't worry. Unless you're actually asking for him, if so I apologize.

Better safe than sorry

>>2977 Hacking on open source projects is not a substitute for a computer science education. You don't need to go to college but you need to learn the same things, one way or another, if you want to compete. It won't be a "4 year jump ahead" if at the end you don't know the difference between a quick sort and a heap sort or a linked list and a hash map. You will just be trapped in a local maxima and won't be able to move upwards from the engineering equivalent of flipping burgers at McDonalds.

>>2985 This is not true. Any competent programmer can learn and write a quick sort, heap sort, linked list, or a hash map in an afternoon. A bachelors in Computer Science is as much a joke as any other four year undergraduate program. You'll learn a lot, but the benefit is being 'forced' to learn, not the content. I was writing sorting algorithms in high school. It isn't hard stuff.

>>2461 Learn google maps, it's in high demand and afaik there isn't any javascript framework that automatically tiles an image overlay for you. Right now you have to cut it up yourself in photoshop and it's extremely time consuming.

>>3017 >Any competent programmer can learn and write a quick sort, heap sort, linked list, or a hash map in an afternoon. That's not the point. Nobody said it is difficult to learn. >A bachelors in Computer Science is as much a joke as any other four year undergraduate program College degrees has nothing to do with it either. The point is that if you only rely on picking up knowledge as you go about your day to day you will be miles behind anyone who has actually read a CS book.

>>2498 The most important thing, do not include your current residence or mention will to relocate. First get a call, then mention that when they ask. If your applications do not get responses, try to change the form and content of your resume. Avoid walls of text. Don't use bullet points, instead put skills in one line, separated by commas, bold the ones most relevant to the position you are applying for. Adjust your resume for every position you apply for, you can have generic one, if you put it in generic place, like on your webpage, not when you apply for specific job. Last but not least, keep it short. Start with assumption that you want to fit only one A4 page (or whatever the standard size is in your part of the world). Two pages is too much, unless you are so awesome and have published dozens of research papers, but in this case people would be asking you to work for them, not you asking them to hire you. And don't make a fuarrrking 17 page resume, true story. >>2501 Personal blog/webpage is about content, not features. http://prog21.dadgum.com/130.html >>2545 You might have most luck with embedded programming.

>>2720 A comp eng. graduate can enter the computer science workforce (e.g. web dev, general software engineering) but a computer scientist cannot without having taken some serious physics courses. This is something I'd consider.

>>3573 YMMV a lot on that. Engineering in some countries (like in EU) is a title requiring certain things including a certified Physics background, while Computer Science requires none.

>>3272 >The point is that if you only rely on picking up knowledge as you go about your day to day you will be miles behind anyone who has actually read a CS book. this is very true. also where personal interest in the subject comes into play. a four year degree is good if programming is just a job to you. you can keep up with the people that do it for fun as long as you take your studies seriously. basically, you're paying to have someone who actually does enjoy the subject walk you through the process of learning it. that being said, i think you could probably skip university if you like programming enough to read (and more importantly, seek out) textbooks on your own. >>2720 i don't have personal experience, but they're pretty different, no? at my university, computer engineering was basically a specialized electrical engineering degree. >>3573 >>3575 at least in the US, the difference between "software engineering" and CS mainly comes down to if you want an engineering degree or a more academic degree. it's kind of hard to explain the distinction. Project work vs lectures, linear algebra vs discrete, OOP vs functional. you'll do both, but the emphasis is different.

I liked coding since I tried it this summer. Exploring various languages, to then further it by creating bigger things. tldr; I can consider coding my hobby. If I become good enough at it, will it work to put on my resume? Should I search a school with the subject at first instead?

>>3573 >>3575 >>3576 In the UK Computer Science and Software Engineering are different degrees. Most modules are shared between the two. The main differences are that Computer Science requires more preliminary maths and has more abstract modules like Theory of Computation. Software Engineering has more practical modules like Software Architecture and Project Management. From what I can tell, Computer Engineering is an American thing and doesn't really mean anything to the rest of the world. (I mean when you say you studied "Computer Engineering" I have no idea what that means as a non-American, the things you learn are obviously still valid though).

Just started the first semester in bioinformatics. Any advice? Bachelors or Masters?

Getting hired is difficult desu. Had a really good job for many years and it was shear luck. I haven't been hired that easily in years. Weeks of an interview process, tests, and no luck. It really breaks you down mentally. "Why don't I just be a neet? Its easier." Also, I can understand what makes people bitter about "normal person" SDLCs and meme programming languages. You learn this one buzzword way of doing things because that's what everyone is hiring for then six months later its useless.

>>3711 >You learn this one buzzword way of doing things because that's what everyone is hiring for then six months later its useless. This is really on you, isn't it? You could just go into Java desktop application development for some company and your environment would be much more stable. There are plenty of jobs that don't involve all of this fast-moving web stuff.

>>3711 >Weeks of an interview process, tests, and no luck. Companies that make you jump through hoops to get hired are not necessarily what you want anyway. Have you tried talking to a recruiter? You give them your CV and they will set you up with interviews at as many companies as they can. They only get paid if you get hired so they're pretty motivated.

>>3711 I agree with >>3713 that targeting a corporate stack is a good idea if you're applying for "hot" web development positions. There's also a growing .NET presence within corporate environments. Really sane stack and SLDC approaches from almost every company I've interviewed with that isn't only maintaining a winforms application. I've noticed that in contrast to pursuing a Java stack, you'll get a lot more people with English as their native language and have fewer truly stupid hoops to jump through. Make sure that if the company advertises winforms that you put them under a microscope and grill them about their process every step of the way; they'll either be a good company who admits they have a legacy product that needs to be babied alongside their main .NET stack or they'll be like the second-to-last company I interviewed that had sketchy credentials all the way up to the VP (guy was white and American, and somehow went from a certification to having a Master's in math. Couldn't discuss programming at all during the phone interview, said their stack was "winforms," and gave me a bunch of math questions that he wanted turned into methods as his code screen). Con is obviously you're going to be on a windows stack, and this is probably the last place on the internet that wants to be near that, even though I have no issue with it personally. If you go the path of a recruiter, you have to be just as discerning and critical of them as you would be a company. Some work wonders and others have no idea what they're trying to do for you and just throw positions at you and hope something sticks.

OK, so I have been working in a small (about 25 programmers) company as a software developer making POS terminal software (C/C++) for over 5 years now (this is my first job). The project I'm working on is almost 7 year old, and was based on a older project (so by now this project has a lot of spaghetti code in it). For those 5 year it been on the same project, just adding new features the client wants. Basically the application just formatted card data in a different way, there is no cool algorithms involved (I mean there are some checksums MD5, CRC, some TLS (based on open SSL) but those things were implemented before I started to work in the company). The team for this project is only two people, me and the other guy who is close to retirement and just don't give a furrak about anything. There is no quality assurance of the project, no unit tests, no dedicated team of testers, no one to learn from... It's just going from one deadline to another making bloatware. So I am considering changing this job,but I fear that other companies will be the same, especially if the job position will be somehow similar. So I was thinking to switch to something else. I'm reading job offers from the Big Data sector and its sounds interesting. I already know a little python and databases and so maybe this is a field in which I will be more happy. Anyone working as a data scientist? Do you like it? What skills are important in this work?

>>2977 you don't really need to go to college, but you should learn CS fundamentals (time complexity, algorithms/data structures, etc) anyway. depending on how smart you are you may find college to be a waste of time; since it progresses at the pace of the average student that "four years" of material can be compressed into one year or less if you learn that fast. I took one programming course in college and hated it because 80% of the time was wasted on waiting for other students to catch up, never took another one (didn't graduate either, and only picked up programming for real a couple years later) it's probably good to have a mix of personal projects (teaches designing things from scratch, forces you to learn how to structure things well, your first few projects will be absolute nightmares of organization once they reach nontrivial size) and large projects you contribute to (teaches interacting with others in a technical context, how to read code that is an amalgamation of many different people) nothing in particular is like, strictly necessary as a prerequisite for work though, you should just be reasonably competent and good at learning--being able to learn arbitrary topics quickly is infinitely more valuable than learning any particular thing. for instance in my case I'd never worked on projects that were too large to keep in my head. I started doing webdev freelancing with one other person, then first real/current job got tossed into a million and a half line fifteen year old codebase. I'd also never really contributed to open source projects before, but do so regularly now (usually fixing bugs I find in the course of working on something else, submitting changes upstream more so that I don't have to maintain internal patchsets) college is good if you are highly risk-averse/drawn to conventionality though, there are hiring pipelines set up for people to go straight from high school through college to a career without ever having to operate outside of the safe middle-class bubble. whether that's you is a matter of taste more than anything. fwiw I consistently find the people who stuck to that path their whole lives are decent enough workers but uninteresting, unimaginative, and weak-willed, whereas the people who finessed their way into the industry from parts unknown are much more flexible and daring. I bring this up because I think given the ridiculous costs these days, encouraging young people to go to college is immoral unless they know exactly what they are planning to get for their money. this is probably the most valuable thing you can get from a CS program, but whether it's valuable to you is again personal preference. in retrospect I am thankful I never did it also learn C, it forces you to deal with how the computer actually manages memory, and the intuitions it teaches will benefit you for the rest of your life. a lot of high-level "magic" becomes utterly mundane and tractable once you can think for a second and know how it is probably implemented under the hood best of luck with everything anon

>>3869 >fwiw I consistently find the people who stuck to that path their whole lives are decent enough workers but uninteresting, unimaginative, and weak-willed, whereas the people who finessed their way into the industry from parts unknown are much more flexible and daring Not the person you responded to, but I've had the exact opposite experience where everyone I've worked with who went the traditional route were particularly well-rounded individuals where all of the autodidacts who either "didn't like college" or called it a scam have been bores who have rewired their personalities to only think about programming and generally can't hold decent conversations about any other subject without resorting to pulling out snippets they partially remember from an article on HackerNews. Are you on the west coast of the US, West/East Europe, etc.? Maybe it's different outside of where I am. Polite sage because not related to lainon you replied to.

>>3894 it could just be a quirk of social circles. I've experienced this in NY, SF, and online. a lot of the people I've encountered who went through CS programs seem very career-oriented and positively reek of "startup culture". whereas my actual friend groups in both cities tended to be largely more disreputable "hacker" types, or weird politics people with very eclectic interests who also happen to be programmers because it's where the money is

>>3898 I'm in NY. I haven't met a lot of startup weirdos, but my friends (almost all alums) and I don't work anywhere near startup culture. I constantly experience it more online myself, where those who went through degree programs end up being better people to talk to, but those who didn't can only either talk about programming or politics from their own little political e-circle. I experienced the one-dimensional autodidact first hand at my last job: he was someone who totally immersed himself in "nerd" and hacker culture and resources, could recite lots of canned words about lots of topics, obviously had overbearingly strong political opinions to where talking to him was a minefield, but never actually held a passion or like for anything. I definitely agree it's probably a quirk of social circles, especially since NY has its own SF-clone startup hellscape, wouldn't be surprised if I found more of the degree types who want to be in startup culture if I had fewer mental reflexes that said "don't be near these people" or spent more time around CUNY colleges/universities.

>>2985 >You don't need to go to college but you need to learn the same things, one way or another, if you want to compete. I had written a really long post and accidentally deleted, anyway, tl;dr: lainanon I'm quoting is right, there's people out there that have done it, but you have to compensate your lack of degree by going the extra mile and being better than others at: people skills, proof of skill, and most importantly motivation. College is a clutch for motivation, replacing the hard to achieve self-driven desire to work with a very measurable point system (your grades), college also makes you get soykaf done way faster than at your normal pace. So yeah watchout. These are interesting resources I have saved, but there's many more for you (ppl looking into this path) to look into: https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview-university https://trailofbits.github.io/ctf/intro/careers.html reddit programming subs seem to have a knack for this sort of thing so yeah. Peace!

>>3905 (me) I totally forgot a very relevant part: a lot of people go to college because of the social side to it. YMMV but in the US colleges are advertised as the place where you make friends your age to throw crazy parties with and live away from your parents. Auto didactic route, most often than not, means being trapped inside your concrete walls.

>>3905 Is this all the stuff they go through in college? can`t you learn this stuff in like a year ? 3-4years seems really horrible (Im thinking about college) I would just rather get down the foundation fast and then already start focusing on a certain area. >pls no front-end job that drives me to suicide

>>3982 Other advantages to college to consider are team projects and having an experienced professor advising you through a significant real world project.

>>3905 You make fair points about having to go the extra mile if you don't have a degree I would disagree through, with the points you made about college motivating you and helping you work faster I work full time as a dev on breaks, and part time during the semester while studying comp sci in college In my experience, I'm less energetic, less motivated, and much lazier during the semester This is largely because of the constant context switching cause by having several classes and work When you are working just on one thing, its easy to lose yourself in it and focus very very well When you have to switch between labs for multiple classes, and english essays, and work, you can't really get into it With college I tend to feel stressed out even when I have very little actual work to do because there are so many small things to do With work its easier to just push myself and get a lot done because I usually just have 1 big project and a few small fixups to old stuff Also, during school I am usually only able to stay sober 1 day a week or so, whereas when I'm working full time I can easily go clean for a week

>>3907 Its worth noting that the average guy usually doesn't have a particularly great time at college, despite what it looks like on tv

I am a high school student who knows a moderate amount of C++ and read some books/ did some research on CS also has some knowledge on Linux. (Enough to easily pass LPIC-101) Now I am thinking about learning HTML then dive deep into PHP/Perl and maybe Ruby in case I don't land a C++ job in the future. What should I do in this case? I think I should learn an interpreted language for small projects or when I just want to do something quickly on the other hand I have no library knowledge other than Linux system calls.

>>3993 >I think I should learn an interpreted language for small projects This is a good plan. Even in a C++ job you will probably encounter some Python or Perl at some point. >Now I am thinking about learning HTML then dive deep into PHP/Perl and maybe Ruby in case I don't land a C++ job That's like saying I'm going to learn to ride a motorcycle in case I don't manage to get a car. Pick one and go for it. If you are going the C++ route I recommend you read The C++ Programming Language (do the exercises too if you really want to learn). Later on read Effective and More Effective C++. When you're feeling leet, read Modern C++ Design as well but that is a level of wizardry you will probably not encounter at work.

I'm seriously considering continuing with unversity studies after I will be done with the bachelor ones. Do you guys think that a masters degree, or postgrad however you want to call it, is worth it in computer science? I believe it might pay off in terms of changing my habitat since I would look for opportunities outside of my home country. You know, being exposed to new companies that might be my future employers is easier when done in a face to face manner instead of emailing and skyping people all the time. The benefits might be enormous since I would probably be moving to a better developed country with more IT related jobs. As of right now, I have the codemonkey qualifications with decent knowledge of Java and C# technologies and I could probably get employed based on that, so how might my sights expand after another year or two of school? And would it result in more money, more freedom of choice of workplace etc. or should I be considering something else altogether.

>>3988 This. Having to constantly multi-task is like kicking dead whales down the beach.

>>2460 If you want career-only advice with no regard to anything else- then yeah, it's increasingly hard to get a good, steady software job at anything but a fuarrrking revolving door body shop without a degree, and you are more likely to land a cool job with a masters degree. If you want life advice then I'd say live it your way. Make choices based on what you want out of life. Sources: professional software engineer with a batchelor's in unrelated engineering. To elaborate, I build engineering tools for <cough*> aerospace company <cough*>. I am pretty hard-headed/old-school. I do not consider webdev programming, do not want anything to to do with any "apps." I prefer FORTRAN to garbage like that and I use FORTRAN or perl most days. For better or worse, I've found myself a niche doing what I like. If you can find your niche, you've got an ok job.

I have a quick question for those who've been working in the industry for a while. I've began working part-time for a local company (non-tech focus, think manufacturing, small IT dept), with the IT Director planning on my working there full-time following my graduation (about a year out). Sweet opportunity, considering the local tech market is small. What I've noticed, while working here, is that they spend a ton of money on Windows products. SQL Server, VS ide licenses, IIS etc. It seems like they'r spending upwards of $30k a year just for development-related costs due to these dependencies. Is this normal for most non-tech businesses? The application I'm working on is purely in C# and Winforms. I see no reason for them to use SQL Server over any free options (no fancy procedures or anything). Thoughts?

>>4116 This may answer part of your question. http://wiki.c2.com/?NobodyEverGotFiredForBuyingMicrosoft

>>4116 People who don't know better are wary of open source and would much rather pay astronomical license costs than using anything like that. And it kind of makes sense, too, in their ow twisted corporate logic. Microsoft is a name they've heard and trust. They can trust Microsoft to tell them that the product they're buying is a quality product, without having a consultant review it for them. They can trust Microsoft's legal team to have included a ten pageful of license in plain legalese that corporate lawyers can easily understand. They can trust Microsoft's support in case something goes wrong, because when soykaf goes wrong you need somebody to be held accountable, and the contributor list for any given open source project is too long for that.

>>4119 >They can trust Microsoft's support in case something goes wrong, because when soykaf goes wrong you need somebody to be held accountable, and the contributor list for any given open source project is too long for that. Mainly this.

>>4113 From what I've been told, the Master's degree will always help but you choose a technology focus much sooner than anyone else. Going straight into the workforce with a BA helps because not only does it expose you to the real world in terms of programming as a profession, but it's also time spent programming outside of an academic environment (unless you directly work for your university during the semester/after graduation like my friends did). If you do decide to go for your Master's after being out in the market, employers and especially HR will have a lot more confidence that you didn't just go for your Master's because it was just more school/extending the school safety net period and you're able to come back into a work environment after it (or during it). Going straight in with a BA also gives you the benefit of seeing what role in the industry you enjoy the most because you have a lot of freedom to switch around; you're a blank slate for several years with your only goal being to be a programmer of some kind. On the Master's side of things, you're immediately locking yourself into an intellectual specialty without any idea of whether or not you like it.

>>4134 How hard would it be then to go back to university from a working environment? I know companies sometimes give incentives to improve yourself and your qualifications, but is it possible to manage it all, even more if part time work at the company is also involved. Other than that, thanks for the reply, it gave me a new perspective.

>>4171 It's difficult in some places, easy in others. I personally can't give you perspective from taking a Master's, but I'm currently going back to college (2nd Bachelors, BS CS since my first was BA lib arts, long story) and I only take two courses a semester myself because I know that if I don't have SOME flex time between work and school, I'll burn out. A coworker from my last job went back for his BA in accounting and took night classes 4 days a week; he was definitely running on fumes, but it was ALSO for accounting. Some companies, like the one I'm working at now, don't provide tuition compensation but they'll be much more flexible with your schedule so long as you put in your 40 hours somehow. Other companies do provide tuition compensation, but I haven't met anyone who's actually had to use it. Then there are also "little things" that you don't think impact your stress levels but honestly do, from my experience: for instance, my new gig has a new standard dress code of collared shirt (button down or polo), jeans, and sneakers, so I don't have to jump between outfits: my last job was dress pants/chinos, button-down, dress shoes at minimum. I personally cannot work well in those clothes and I'm definitely not staying in dress clothes for 16 hours, so it was a really minute layer of annoyance I had to deal with. It's not that hard to go back to school after being in the work environment, but for me doing undergrad stuff, there's a bit of mental social divide between me and the rest of the CS majors. I'm cool with a bunch of the guys I took Programming 1 and 2 with because they were on the level for being undergrads, but I'm taking Computer Architecture this semester and I can't really jive with the guys there, but luckily one of my friends is in the class with me and the professor is really cool. Professors for CS are much more willing to play ball with you about assignments/due dates if you work 40 hours/week than any other major. I'm not sure how many classes you plan on taking, but it's hard if you're taking more than two classes alongside working 40 hours. Much easier to manage, in my opinion, if you're working part time. For me, I have my weekends free and clear, and every tues/thurs I'm home by ~8, maybe ~9 if I decide to go to the gym. Increase your water intake. Seriously. Go buy a 1 liter Camelbak and keep it full. If you don't drink coffee (I don't), I highly suggest carrying like a 6-pack of those tiny 7.5 ounce cans of soda in your car or on your person somehow to supplement daily water. Stay away from garbage like 5 Hour Energy, Red Bull, Monster, etc.; the soda will give you the same effect with a better taste and you won't crash. This is all stuff to take into consideration if you DO actually consider going for the Master's degree, which you might not if you feel like you're learning enough and getting enough out of a job if you have one. I'm going to say it again, I highly suggest going for a job first before going straight into a Master's from college. Different situation for libarts/business people, though, where going for your Master's straight from your Bachelor's solidifies your prowess in those fields if you swerve hard from advertising/sales ragewageslave jobs. That's part of why libarts majors who aren't fuarrrkups end up working as barristas too for a short time before they get scooped by a newspaper or a publisher, definitely not as easy to get into those areas without a Master's proving you have the brainpower and fortitude to hunch over books/paper all day long.

(Note: obviously don't quaff the entire 6 pack in a day)

Ok, so I will ask you for career advice too. I would like it to be two questions: first about my holiday plan and another about further career. 19 y.o. lainon from eastern Europe here. I've learned programming myself, I've been doing it roughly everyday since I was 13. Since about two years I am freelancery working as a programmer (I am mostly doing projects from some universities in my country for lazy/rich students). I've tried c++/java/python/js/nasm/php/c#/... it's like I can learn any imperative language within a weekend or so (thanks to Stackoverflow ;D). Currently I am studying Math && CS at one of our elite* universities (I am a freshman). During the holidays I've been working as c++ developer for huuuuge corporation (bugfixing, unittests and some other boring stuff, my boss said I did my job well and he could hire me if I weren't going to university). I've earned around 900 euros per month. My friend who went to some Western European country to work as house renovator (despite he had never done it before) earned more than 2.5 as much. It's not like I am complaining (my friends who worked as blue collars in my country earned about 500 euro per month), but I would like to work as software developer in Western Europe/USA next holiday. Why? There are many reasons: higher salary, opportunity to improve English and to visit interesting places. Also fact that average wage in Germany is more than 3 times higher than in my country and if you work for company X here you earn less for same job than if you work in Germany is quite depressing. What would you recommend me? Are there any companies which would recruit me for holidays? Where should I search for them? Maybe some internship programs? Another question: Is Google Summer of Code worth it? In longer perspective I would like to work in low-level security or in gamedev (but only as engine developer), I am exploring both branches on my own. I've written my own simple 3d engine and some games (using other engines, my own is still under development), I am also participating in CTF competitions with my team (fun fact: I play with people I met online, no one in my uni is interested in such things, because only competitive programming and old-fashioned math are sexy for them, literally they need half year uni course to learn basics of python, there is one exception, one of my uni buddies is into cryptography so I invited him to my team). I do re, pwns and sometimes web or miscs. I am usually able to do simple re and pwns, but I have no idea how are people able to finish complex ones within 2 days. It seems impossible to me. It probably comes with experience I guess (any tips on learning it?). So, what would you recommend, in longer term, for someone who would like to work as game engine developer or low-level security specialist? * Our top universities are elite in producing developers for huge corporations like Google or Microsoft while real science and business is currently being developed mostly in USA. For example our CS universities have no low-level security departments, instead we have tones of old-fashioned math and our start-up scene has just started. So why haven't I tried to 0xford or Stanford or ...? I simply can't afford it ;( and any scholarships are not for me, because I haven't won any Olympiad in maths or CS and I never studied hard in highschool**. **In Easter Europe highschools and schools in general are awful. In my opinion one should be exposed to as many different subjects as it is possible during adolescence (playing instruments, playing in theatre, "normal" stuff like maths, programming, physics, poetry...) so he could have a chance to know what he wants to do. Our schools are completely different. Uh, so much text... ...thank you very much If you have read this. And sorry if I've sounded a bit big headed but English isn't my mother tongue, I still have problems with expressing myself properly using English. I've meet some geniuses during my life and believe me I am not one of them. My skills can be described as ability to find anything in the web and then try hard enough to understand it and implement it, that's how I've learnt coding.

>>4188 Hello there lainon. From the way you're writing, I'm guessing you're from Romania. If so, that makes two of us. If not, I'm still from Eastern Europe. Moving out is a good choice. In Eastern Europe, any real money is made by landing subcontracted work from overseas. This is usually boring and rarely intellectually rewarding. Note that I said "moving out". I'm not saying there are no seasonal programming jobs, I'm just saying I never saw any. I did psych in university and econ in my masters. I programmed as a hobby since high-school. I did R and Python in university; mostly for statistics, data analysis and other miscellania. After that, the job market made it clear that finding a "classic" economist job would be much harder that finding a programming + econ knowledge job. I got some good job offers through Honeypot.io, but at the time I was already in the UK. Your mileage may vary. I found that having some "heavy hitter" projects on github did wonders. I made something to catch the eye of HR: my resume website mimicked a Win95 environment with draggable windows and the like; and something to catch the eye of the techies: a small programming language, nothing too interesting, but a good conversation started after landing that skype interview.

I'm having trouble searching for a job. I didn't go to uni after high school and I've mostly been a NEET for two years since. I had a really bad experience with an unpaid internship about one year ago; I was the only person in charge of the website for a small startup and I knew it would probably be terrible from the get-go, but I did it anyway because I thought it would at least make for something to put in my resume for experience (I've only started 4 years ago with the idea of doing it for fun, so until one and a half year ago I didn't really think I'd want to do it for a job), and it was just as awful as I thought it'd be. They also let me work from home, and a combination of a terrible boss and my own laziness led me to screw up a few times. Then they started calling me to do work even when the internship was over, and I played along for a month, but when I brought the topic up and said that I would've liked for the internship to be over they complained that I didn't come there very often (I had little reason to not work from home, unless I needed the designer to explain something to me), and I stopped coming and after a while stopped responding to their calls too. I sent them an email with the work I'd done so far, the instructions on how to run it and maintain it and what skills to search for in a replacement, and they didn't reply. I never got the certification. Right now I'm having trouble even trying to reply to job offers. I want to work on a few personal projects and blog posts that would probably look good on my resume, but I keep getting sidetracked. I only have some small and unfinished things to show for myself, very little experience doing job interviews (the only one I did was for the internship, and it was barely an interview) and I live in a country and area where junior IT work is mostly taken up by the universities' CS departments producing code monkeys; most job offers require years of experience or a CS degree/vocational high school diploma. On top of that, I have no money, and will be thrown out of my house in a few months if I don't find a job. I know the solution is probably just to suck it up and start sending CVs everywhere, but I wanted to get this off my chest.

>>4240 I want to add to this that I obviously don't put that internship in my CV, and I wouldn't mention it if I landed an interview. I'm scared they'll try to call them up and ask about me, and I know they'll only have bad things to say about me.

Im currently trying to sort my Github so it looks appealing, does this actually increase my chances for the job? >what is most important when it comes to the code that is on your github >should I add everything(even simple plotting/function use) or only larger pieces?

>>4242 Most places I have applied to are just happy I have a Github account with some stuff in it. That alone sets you apart from >50% working developers.

>>4240 >letting an intern work from home Big mistake >working from home anyway Bigger mistake >Then they started calling me to do work even when the internship was over, and I played along for a month Stop. >and after a while stopped responding to their calls too STOP. You don't get to call others code monkeys when you can't even demonstrate proper social skills. That internship was immediately stupid the instant they let you work from home, but your response to it certainly did not do you any favors. No one will actually find out what happened in that internship because I don't know a single mid-size company who will actually go to the trouble of calling another job let alone an internship, but I'd still leave it off because I honestly don't trust you to not make a mess out of explaining it. The most you can do now is actually get a part-time job (no CS or IT), start whippin' out projects in your spare time, and read/do questions in CTCI/Programming Interviews Exposed. Sorry, but you 100% need that part-time job. You need not only soft skills, but SOME form of guarantee that you: - don't need to be trained in said soft skills - can actually show up to work on a consistent schedule - can own some kind of responsibility (or project) and see it through to the end I generally say this to anyone who skipped out on or spouts the canned drivel of "muh yooniversity skam," but you don't just book it to a 4 year, pay out the ass, and coast along in your coursework. Those 4 years (or 2 + 2 if you're in the US and go to a community college with a good transfer program) aren't about BRUH LETS PARTAYYYY or being chained to your desk and forced to listen to a vile ESS JAY DOUBLE YOU, but doing things that cover all three of those previous points. You develop soft skills in interacting with faculty and peers, maintain a consistent schedule just by showing up to classes, and own a project/uphold a responsibility. The latter can be just your GPA, but you can also be a club member or a club president (also boosts the soft skills, schedule, responsibility), a TA (doubles with the schedule), or you can get a not-dogsoykaf internship (schedule). It's not even a campus's career center that's worth the money: that place is useless for CS majors unless people from industry are giving the career advice and helping with resumes. You need some way to mimic that. A good portfolio alone isn't going to get you in the market. I also recommend having your resume reviewed anonymously so that it's guaranteed to appeal to developers/HR people looking it over. I believe reddit's comp sci board has weekly resume review threads and users will volunteer their services for any requests made via new threads.

>>4262 >get a part-time job (no CS or IT) I've had a part-time job for a month after that, I can show up to work on a consistent schedule. I just made a lot of mistakes with that internship and got really depressed for both that and how they treated me. I'm certainly not gonna do any remote work in the future, at least not until I've been working for a few years. >I generally say this to anyone who skipped out on or spouts the canned drivel of "muh yooniversity skam," but you don't just book it to a 4 year, pay out the ass, and coast along in your coursework. I'm not claiming going to uni would be a scam. I might've thought so two years ago after I failed to get into an unrelated faculty, but I'm fully aware that it would be very useful for all the reasons you listed there. It's just a bit late right now for me to start. >I also recommend having your resume reviewed anonymously so that it's guaranteed to appeal to developers/HR people looking it over. I've had a friend and an acquaintance help me with that. They both have worked in the industry for many years.

With the influx of programmers from India and China will programming become a low paying job? Up to this point I never considered this and I am pretty sure at least starting positions and webFag soykaf will pay less but what about languages like C/C++ (enterprise grade) if I learn one or two API (OpenXX) will I be able to distinguish myself from the hordes of programmers out there?

>>4452 You're asking for someone to predict the future. Considering how every single year since 1990 people say programming will become a low paying job, i see no reason to think otherwise. If you're a soykaf programmer, you'll receive soykaf money, regardless of the market.

>>4452 This has become the most common question on all the "popular" outlets that people have grown tired of answering. The answer will always be, "if you know your soykaf and stay recent, you will always have a good job and options." There is no one way to slice this. Desktop application development still thrives in the financial sector in various ways as well as pure tech companies who produce software for a specific industry, not to mention internal software. Web development is still strong. There will always be jobs for embedded/systems programming. Whether or not you can do any of that in your favorite Imageboard Approved Meme Language™ is another story. You absolutely cannot get away with being someone who knows one and only one thing anymore*, and people will beat you over the head with that line if you ask it anywhere else on the internet, even if someone before them said the same thing in response to your question. Importing bad help from anywhere, not just India or China, is just as bad as hiring bad help locally. Financial companies who do websoykaf sometimes get away with it, but it'll usually come to bite them in the back. It's much more common for pure tech companies to get bitten by this. * Unless you're really, REALLY good at that one thing. Usually at that point, you're someone who's working on a language with significant adoption and usage or an important or popular piece of software that needs to scale and whatnot.

>>4498 Being a good engineer is orthogonal to being successful in a corporate environment.

>>4502 This all depends on what you define being a good engineer and what you define as ways to be successful in a corporate environment. Are you going to conveniently leave out things such as interpersonal communication skills from being a a good engineer because "programmers don't need those because they only need to program?" Being a good engineer is the whole package of a person, not a slice. Are you going to attach the caveat of "oh but you can be fired at any time randomly!!!!" to both sides? What about "corporate spaghetti code because REASONS/GROUP OF PEOPLE"? I know for sure anyone would slap on "corporate ass-kissing" without a second thought to the latter. There are all sorts of little hypothetical "gotchas" that people like to apply to statements such as these for REASONS, whether it be purely opinion based or based off of some singular person's medium article about how they got fired from their latest startup websoykaf job, or how they went to some huge stagnant company like Oracle and were laid off. Nice places to work will filter out those who aren't well-rounded, and job seekers are supposed to filter out poor places to work/wolf-in-sheep's-clothing places that promise but don't deliver during their application process (initial research, application, phone screen, interview). Obviously both of these things cannot happen with 100% consistency. Being a good engineer allows you to stay intellectually fluid and mobile if you do find yourself in a poor company. Also, a engineer can only advance so high up the ladder until they make a decision whether to gun for a higher-paying management position in which they take responsibility for a stake in the company, stay at the highest programming rung in their current company, or jump to another company that will pay more if they want more money or responsibility without the managerial titles weighing down upon them.

>>4505 >Being a good engineer allows you to stay intellectually fluid and mobile if you do find yourself in a poor company. An example of a poor company is one where you are the only person on your team who writes unit tests and documentation and generally follows best practice while everyone else hacks out sloppy code that barely works. At your interview and at various points during the year your line manage says great, we need people like you to set an example and advance the maturity of the company's development processes. But then when appraisals come round everyone gets pay raises and bonuses and promotions except you. Your performance vis-a-vis everyone else is terrible. Everyone writes 1000 loc a day and you waste too much time on pointless stuff like testing. And no body likes working with you because you have this annoying habit of pointing out bugs when you see them instead ignoring them like a good team player would do. I think that in a company like this being a "good engineer" and being "successful" are mutually exclusive. >job seekers are supposed to filter out poor places to work/wolf-in-sheep's-clothing places that promise but don't deliver during their application process "Don't work for soykaf companies" is ignoring the issue.

I'm just starting out and applied to a startup. They were advertising a 3 month training program with quite a bad salary but better than nothing. Turns out there's only 2 people in the company. They called me after my interview and said they liked me but it was a risk due to my inexperience, so they want me to do the training but for less money - like 80% of what was advertised, cos they can get that funded from somewhere or other. Is that a big red flag? Otherwise they seem like a good, gentle way in for a lain who is scared of working at big businesses

>>4525 They already had the money ready to spend when they offered the position, so they're lying. Tell them you can't work for anything less or just decline. That is a big red flag. I have a suspicion the 'training' is just work.

>>4525 Also, if they try and say something about not being able to justify funding you to investors or some soykaf remember that that's their problem and not yours. Of all the applicants, why was the one 'they liked' the one with so little experience that they're trying to pay him less?

>>4521 >An example of a poor company is one where you are the only person on your team who writes unit tests and documentation and generally follows best practice while everyone else hacks out sloppy code that barely works. Then you leave. >At your interview and at various points during the year your line manage says great, we need people like you to set an example and advance the maturity of the company's development processes. Then you leave. >And no body likes working with you because you have this annoying habit of pointing out bugs when you see them instead ignoring them like a good team player would do. THEN YOU LEAVE. LIKE ACTUALLY LEAVE YOUR CURRENT JOB. The entire IDEA of being a GOOD ENGINEER is that you stay intellectually fluid and mobile if you DO find yourself in a poor company, which OBVIOUSLY YOU ARE PART OF based on how blatantly you're dropping passive-aggressive hints that you don't like your job. If you're as good as you think you are, you should be able to polish up that resume and get switching. >"Don't work for soykaf companies" is ignoring the issue. In fact, it is addressing the issue. No, sorry, you are not going to fix every soykafty company with a bunch of blog posts on medium/reddit/whatever news dissemination platform you choose. You are also not going to change it by being pedantic on an imageboard because your company is dildos. You are in charge of yourself and your own well-being. You pick up and leave, especially if the company you're working for is leading you along and not rewarding you for keeping them afloat (if this is the case; I have no actual idea if you're as competent as you believe you are). If you're such a pivotal player in the company and they don't really see it, they'll flounder without you and you'll feel 10x better just by not being part of it anymore. I've been through that and I've known plenty of people who have gone through that. If you aren't, you can take this opportunity where you have a job and look for a new one while having the security of a paycheck. The only exception I might make to one being able to pick up and leave is if you're in a not-as-prominent Eastern European region or similar elsewhere where the outlook is far less bright.

Might seem a dumb question but I haven't worked in the tech field at all so forgive my ignorance. What is expected from a junior developer to know and to do? Let's say I wanted to apply for a junior dev. position that has something do to with python, would I be assigned with a team to "babysit" me until I get a grasp of how to get around solving problems or would I be assigned to write minor programs?

Hey lainons: I'm a 21 year old that is getting out of college in a year or so. I originally was going to go for a Chinese and Computer Science double major, but got frustrated with the CS department and homework and mathmatics so I turned that into a minor. It's infeasible to mmake that a major both financially and in terms of my mathematical ability. I still know how to code and write golang webapps, do some crypto challenges in python3, and know how to use common tools like github and CI and puppet and kafka among others. I'll start learning IoT stuff soon when a shipment of arduinos and raspis comes into our school in a bit. I'd personally say I'm an independent learner and have good soft skills for a programmer as I run a student organization. On top of that I'm working really hard to learn chinese and am talking to 3 native speakers a week and plan to go to a Chinese university for a semester or two. After my education which should wrap up in a year-and-a-half, I'd love to get a job writing Go code, IoT, system configuration, or whatever I find is my strength or is feasible when I'm finished with education. I currently live in a smallish US city (~500k people) and want to move somewhere comparable in population or a bit bigger on the west coast with more ｃｈｉｎｅｓｅ influence so I can utilize that language. Anyone know a good place to live that's also not too expensive (aka not the bay area) and might have some tech companies to work for? I understand not having the compsci degree is a negative, but I'm working hard to make up for it in personal projects. Any other advice or experience is appreciated!

>>4502 >Being a good engineer is orthogonal to being successful in a corporate environment. It doesn't matter how good you are, if the humans who control your salary and promotions do not like you on a personal level then you will never get anywhere. On the other hand, the world is full of people who suck at their high paying jobs and only got there because they knew the right people.

>>4534 Sounds challenging. I'm almost done with my CS degree too, therefore no useful advices here, trying to find a local job, but it seems pretty hard for me as well. Nevertheless, best of luck man. Keep it up.

>>4534 most really multicultural cities are too expensive to live in one exception is montreal I guess, but you want west coast Surrey is probably the only one that comes to mind, it's also practically adjoined to Vancouver. if you want to stick to the US Seattle is still prohibitively expensive, every major west coast city is, but their satellites aren't so bad. finding a job in them is a bit ehh though. Maybe try living out of a van until you land a google job at six figures on entry.

>>4531 >If you're such a pivotal player in the company and they don't really see it, they'll flounder without you and you'll feel 10x better just by not being part of it anymore. Don't fool yourself into thinking that your leaving will ever be anything more than a speedbump. Even the most badly managed companies will stumble forwards. https://medium.freecodecamp.org/we-fired-our-top-talent-best-decision-we-ever-made-4c0a99728fde?gi=51b94176f969

>>4573 >Don't fool yourself into thinking that your leaving will ever be anything more than a speedbump. I can certify this. Companies have started to get wise to people that: - are the only ones that have operational knowledge of a business-critical application - have exclusive login rights to certain parts of said system - engage in "job security" programming Even a barely competent manager can tell you that if you tick at all of those boxes, you're essentially a one man union. One that can hold business-critical parts of the system to ransom when you fell they're pissing in your soykaf. We do have a culture of herodom in computer science; genius individuals that - more or less - single-handedly propel our understanding of the field further. And much of what we interact with in our day to day lives is made by some nameless basher just doing their job or just hacking around. Here's 2 cents to the fund for building "The monument of the unknown programmer".

Currently freshman and studying CS, I know I want to do something with computers in my life thats for sure but what? I have started to read about data science in my free time and maybe its the right field idk. >Any sources where I can skim through the fields with some depth?

soykaf, I posted this in the /sec/ simple question thread cause I didn't know this was a thing. Oh well, post from there below: I'm not in netsec, but would like to be. I currently work as a developer doing C#, and my company has recently introduced a personal training budget. What are the best things to spend it on to move more into netsec and become a penetration tester or something similar. Sorry if this isn't an appropriate question or if I've missed something obvious.

>>4587 >Even a barely competent manager can tell you that if you tick at all of those boxes, you're essentially a one man union. One that can hold business-critical parts of the system to ransom when you fell they're pissing in your soykaf. I've been at a company which was in this position. The dev in question quit and everyone shat themselves for a few weeks but then they just moved some people around and life went on. 1 person quitting will never take down a whole company.

>>4598 Read some forums like greysec,bugcrowd, etc.. get an overview of what infosec is, read a few books, then try to do something with that knowledge. The courses i pirated weren't really worth the money at all, so i can't recommend paying for anything.

>>4598 The value of courses is having someone to ask questions to and maybe getting some paper qualification at the end. Courses are not a substitute for being genuinely interested and learning for yourself though. If you don't care enough to learn things now then doing a course will probably not help.

>>4633 Thanks lain, I've already got "grey hat python" and "black hat python" books from the budget so far on someone's recommendation, and finished the first. But honestly it's money that I lose unless I spend each year, so would a conference or something be a good idea? >>4636 I never claimed they were, but was just asking what to spend a training budget on really.

>>4631 You're right lain. But that's not the point. Notice that I didn't say "threaten with quitting". The point is companies were really nervous about just firing "that guy". I concede this is just empty hypothesizing on my part. Where I worked, when barmy server-dweller guy started huffing, he usually got some kind of compromise, precisely because they though it would be really hard/expensive to kick him out. It actually wasn't, but they had no way of knowing until they did. All it took was calling his bluff.

>>4656 >The point is companies were really nervous about just firing "that guy". Yeah, they don't get fired but they don't get promoted either. In my company they introduced a secret bonus scheme to get new people to join and specifically excluded super-dev who tried to control everything in the office. Him finding out was one of the reasons he left. Anyway, quitting to spite the company is dumb because it will never have the impact you want.

>>2460 > Companies accept my resume, compliment the work i've done, i do their challenges successfully but i never get hired. This seems to me like a personality problem. You are doing on-site interviews right?

Sup goys Next fall I'll have to choose what area I want to specialize in at uni (BSc). The two areas I've been interested in for a while are formal verification/fault tolerant systems and bioinformatics. I'd like to do research in the future, but I'm not sure if I'm good enough for it, so it's a very real possibility that academia won't be my future. With the formal verification stuff finding a job is pretty, banks and investment companies fish them out from uni usually. Also with autonomous driving spreading those companies will need experts in the area as well. Bioinformatics has lot less demand currently (especially here in eastern eu), though I believe it has a bright future. On the other hand, it has the sense of doing something good, and that wouldn't be meaningless for me. I still have loads of time to think, but I've been pondering for a while, and would gladly hear your opinions on what should I go with. tl;dr: should I go with formal verification or bioinformatics

Hello lainions, I'm facing some dilemna for choosing the next job I will apply to. One the one hand, I am rather oriented toward research (Computer science and mathematics). On the other hand, I think that the type of career that I dream of would be some kind of independant consulting, where I can choose to take a break if I feel like so, and work from any place in the world. So clearly working in academia is not compatible with this career type. ------- Now I think a good choice would be to do a PhD with links with industry, which is a thing in France (These Cifre, where you work both with an academic lab and a company). I have found Phd proposals on the following topics : - theorical models of parallel computing ( http://www.anrt.asso.fr/sites/default/files/1469535620209.pdf ) - IOT, knowledge and learning - train (like real trains) management - digital finance BUT I also am working on a model of artificial life that I think would give quite good results, and there are Phd proposals on this topic, but I fear this would take me far away from my dream career. ----- So what do you think lainions ? What should I consider, how feasible is my career goal, what should I know, ... ???

I'm doing a web-dev unpaid internship and have to write a CRM by myself. Will this experience pay off? Do you think I could get a 60k salary here once I'm hired for real? I hope the next project they get me allows me to use common lisp or a real fun language instead of C#.

>>4961 If you put the CRM on your resume and can tell potential employers about what you did, what you used, what problems it solved at the company, etc..., then yes it will be extremely helpful.

Would an online 2-year degree in CS do anything for me? I've realized that, with some budgeting, I could afford to pay out-of-pocket for the program semester-by-semester. I've been independently studying languages and programming concepts for the last 2 years. I'd like to undertake a project I can post on GitHub, but I still don't yet know enough. I think a structured curriculum would really help my progress. It would also give me access to internships that only students can apply for. I already have a 4-year degree in liberal arts. The college website states I could transfer up to 30 credit hours (both institutions are part of my State's College system, so that should be no problem). My end-goal is to change careers from construction to software development. Getting a 4-year degree is not out of the question, but I would like to work in the field before then. My main concerns and preconceptions are: 1) An online degree wouldn't give me the same quality of education and project-work that in-class lectures would. 2) No employer would take an online 2-year degree seriously and I'd have no job prospects until I obtained a 4 year degree. Even worse, no 4-year program would take an online degree seriously and I wouldn't be able to transfer anything. 3) The quality of internships, references (letters of recommendation), and education (projects and knowledge I could display) from a community college wouldn't be worth the time and cost. Could anyone confirm, refute, or address the points above?

>>5264 Maybe not related but I'd recommend you look around for hacker/maker/comp-sci communities in your area and joining them. They often have smaller community projects that are easy to start learning and building a GitHub portfolio.