Programming Employment

This is the Programming Employment thread, which exists for all general discussion regarding the topic. All discussion of employment not superseded by any more specific thread topic which isn't concerned with employment belongs in this thread. Do not create any threads for discussing employment, or they will be locked. It would be appropriate to discuss employment concerning a single language here, or in a thread dedicated to that language, as an example. Prefer to use this thread instead of the Beginner's General for employment questions regarding beginners, inexperience, and like topics.

>>23831 are side projects a waste of time for getting into the Big 5 (at least for internships)? seems like every corner of the internet recommends building side projects, while a lot of actual FAANG employees on TeamBlind say that they're pretty much useless for anything other than personal enrichment. They swear leetcode is all that matters. But it's not like I can put "good at leetcode" in my resumé, how else will I compete with Ivy League kids with FOSS contributions? do hiring managers interview the first few who apply without looking at the resumé? that doesn't make much sense to me

>>23847 It completely depends on the industry. I have no idea what FAANG is like, but all of the SV headquartered companies I've ever applied to (which isn't a lot) have all done those stupid "answer the trick question you have to have already looked up the answer to" style questions. I work at a small startup and our interview policy is to explicitly not ask these type of questions, as that is not our fit, and not the type of engineer we're trying to hire. Our interviews are extremely inoffensive (basically the opposite of any interview I Have ever had) focusing on making sure the person we're hiring has the proper fit. And yes, if you're out of university (or in university) and we're hiring a an intern/entry level position and you have an interesting project to talk about you're basically guaranteed to be hired. Actually, I'm almost guaranteed to say "yes" (each person that interviews has a yes/no which weighs in to the final decision) if you can somewhat coherently hold a conversation for 30 minutes.

How bad is the programming job market right now? Worse than usual due to the covid recession, or unaffected?

>>23854 Yes.

>>23847 >FAANG employees on TeamBlind say that they're pretty much useless for anything other than personal enrichment. People rarely understand why they were picked for something. Successful graduate school applicants are a great example of this. Despite multiple books filled with research on admissions success criteria that surveys dozens of departments, people continue to believe whatever the internet or insiders tell them. >They swear leetcode is all that matters. Now for some non-representative insider advice: I have never seen 'leetcode', 'advent of code', or any other online coding problem site on a resume. I usually see a mixture of personal projects, school projects, and work projects. >>23849 >And yes, if you're out of university (or in university) and we're hiring a an intern/entry level position and you have an interesting project to talk about you're basically guaranteed to be hired. Actually, I'm almost guaranteed to say "yes" (each person that interviews has a yes/no which weighs in to the final decision) if you can somewhat coherently hold a conversation for 30 minutes. This is much closer to my experience. As an intern, your job will be to do a small self contained project for a few month. It's basically a paid hands-on interview. If you're already capable of doing projects on your own, then there's a very high chance your boss can just leave you alone with some goals and expect things to work out. This is desirable.

>be me >graduate december 2020 >bachelors in comp sci, bachelors in math >decent GPA >staying at grandparents until i find a job >scrolling for WEEKS on all job application sites >only got one response, from IBM, they sent me 3 problems to code >coded it, passed all test cases in the time allowed >thank you we will get back to you >nothing >that was the furthest I've gotten to even getting an interview >all other emails are just rejections Maybe I'm just better off by taking out a final loan and buying a van and a fishing pole and taking off to live down by the creek and simply ignore all my debts

>>23915 Not sure if this is a bad idea but you could post redacted versions of your CV and some code and we could check if there's anything wrong. The job market is quite fuarrrked right now anyway and it sounds like you are good enough for the job so it's maybe just a rough CV or oversaturation of applicants meaning they get their pick of the best right now. Worst case is probably that you just don't get a job for the next 3-6 months until things have fixed themselves a bit.

>>23915 >>23916 <this might be something with your CV and definitely do your diligence to make sure all your soykaf looks good but also adjust your expectations expect at least 3 months of sending out 10 resumes a day Usually doesn't take that long but expect it to or you will discourage yourself Also make sure you are putting the effort in, if you don't have a job your job is to find a job. put in the same amount of effort that you would at your expected job to find that job and you usually won't have a problem

I was going to try getting a programming job to save up money until I eventually go off to grad school but after months of searching it became clear that the search was fruitless. I deleted my linkedin and stopped applying last month. There's not even really a point in looking now. I'll know in a few months whether I got into grad schools and no corpo wants to hire someone fresh out of college who is guaranteed to quit in less than a year. If I don't get into grad school... I guess I might as well start looking for programming jobs. I do not see it as a career though. My career is research, and it will always be what I spend the bulk of my effort on.

>>23915 But what projects did you do in college?

There are essentially 3 steps to getting an internship at one of the big boys (I assume it's the same for an actual job, but I don't have personal experience there). 1. Get your resume seen -- It's very important that you know someone who knows someone, or you're able to build a relationship by by spamming recruiters on linkedin. If you don't get a personal referral you're just another name on a list and chances of getting noticed are infinitesimal. This is probably the hardest part and why universities are still worth-while even if you could've taught yourself everything in half the time. 2. Get an interview -- Basically make sure you have a nice resume. Nice, not long; 1 page, single-sided. No one wants to read about every school project you've ever done, but they do want to see that you're passionate and self-motivated. This is where personal projects come in. 3. Pass the interview -- Grind leetcode until you can do 2 medium problems in 45 minutes. That's a bit harder than the questions you'll get in the real thing unless the interviewer is having a bad day, but you also need to explain your algorithms including their big O time and any space/time tradeoffs in that time. This is where you spend the bulk of your time if you're serious, there are probably less than 100 unique kinds of solutions on leetcode, but you need to be able to recognise and apply each one when it comes up.

I got my Bachelors in 2019 and then I pretty much forgot most of what I learned in college because of army service and soykaf. Last job I applied to I pretty much talked to the main guy of the startup and he didn't even interview me properly (check my coding skills, provide problems), he just showcased me what the company does and it all seemed really fishy. Anyways, job market seems pretty alive in the EU from what I see around me. Spent the last 3 weeks enjoying the holidays. Is leetcode grind really that important? It bores me so much, but on the other end stuff like Advent of Code really gets me going and I find it interesting. Ugh... what should I focus on grinding to feel confident about my skills again?

>>23919 I worked with someone who's barely 19 and still in college and just got a SWE job. I don't get how you can't get a job honestly. Some fuarrrking stone cold kid did it without even a degree holy soykaf.

>>23926 you should unironically get good you scrub.

>>23919 >If I don't get into grad school... I guess I might as well start looking for programming jobs. I do not see it as a career though. My career is research, and it will always be what I spend the bulk of my effort on. There are workplaces that will pay you to build applied research prototypes. They'll also reimburse your tuition if you enroll in a graduate program during your employment. Please don't think the only way to do research is through academia. That's just not true.

>>23934 Academia isn't just a goal because I vaguely want to "do research". I want to research specific topics that aren't applied at all, and I also want to teach. For me, any programming job is just going to be a day job. >>23927 >I don't get how you can't get a job honestly. Dunno. I got an internship in college and they said I could come back for full time work but then the department I used to work for got reorganized out of existence. I guess you could say it's an attitude problem. I'll be the first to admit that I'm very lazy when it comes to these things. >>23926 check out project euler, it's like a good version of leetcode.

>>23915 I know that IBM had some hiring freeze recently due to Covid (I'm not sure was it in all of the countries or just a selected few) so this could explain the lack of response from them (they just can't hire you, but won't tell you). Also if they found someone else for the position but your candidacy was solid then maybe they don't want to formally reject you jet because if they would gain more budget for there team then thay could open a second position and take you. I knew someone who got a job proposal from IBM after 5-6 months from the interview. You could check if the job is still available to apply on the website where you found it after a few weeks. If it's not then they probably found someone else. Also big corporation's work in strange and mysterious ways.

>>23937 Did they not take you back just because they reorganized? Did you talk to whoever you worked under/with? I know I'm pestering you, but since you mentioned motivation

>>23919 > no corpo wants to hire someone fresh out of college who is guaranteed to quit lol, You've got it exactly backwards, that is most of the hiring done. They are cash rich and hiring is hard, so they just hire tons of NCGs and see who sticks around. Like, starting straight out of college I think after 18 months about half of the people in my cohort had left. If you literally say, I am guaranteed to quit in a year, well, that could hurt you, but why would you tell them that? They're used to it, but you don't need to say it out loud.

>>23937 The kid I mentioned is a very hard worker 12 credits + 40 hours of SWE a week. HE also knows how to game the system obviously and also actually be good to back it up.

>>23950 >Did you talk to whoever you worked under/with? yes, he retired and they don't even do what I was doing any more. I would have to work "DevOps" which I am totally unqualified for. >>23956 Maybe. At this point, I've got a tolerable min wage job and I'll know about whether academia is in my future within a couple months. So I wait.

Corpos are absolutely ludicrous places to work as programmer. I know stories of guys who were spending whole workday watching gamplays on youtube and committing single lines of code few minutes before leaving office. Avoiding meetings as much as possible. Masking lack of work by pretending they encountered super complicated issue and are actively working on them etc. If you want to earn some semi serious money and do almost nothing in regard of programming corpo may be ideal place for you. Corpo programmers in some companies could spend majority of the week on meetings and other bullshit than actually doing design or writing code.

>>23926 >Is leetcode grind really that important? It bores me so much, but on the other end stuff like Advent of Code really gets me going and I find it interesting. Just download any programming challenge books, then.

>>23926 >Is leetcode grind really that important? It bores me so much, but on the other end stuff like Advent of Code really gets me going and I find it interesting. >Ugh... what should I focus on grinding to feel confident about my skills again? leetcode, advent of code, hackerrank etc give you skills in solving leetcode, advent of code, hackerrank problems. If you aim to work as leetcode, advent of code, hackerrank problems solver just solve these stuff. For pretty much every other application they serve mostly purpose of entertaining yourself for a while. They may help you if you are alghorithmics n00b and have problems connecting problems with proper algos and data structs to solve them. They give you illustrations. by examples. Other than that their usefulness is limited.

>>23926 Ask yourself what you want. Do you want to pass code interviews or play with technology? If you want to pass the code interview, you have to play the gtame like everyone does. If you want to be e genuinely good programmer you'll probably have a harder time in life. I'd recommend to just grind leetcode, get the corporate job, learn how enterprise SWE works and then leave to play with technology. This was my plan. I plan to sit in corporate SWE for 3 more years, max.

>>23969 Surprisingly work at corpos falls unevenly on different shoulders. I pulled 10 hour days and worked weekends to get certain stuff done, then I eventually transferred to a more prestigeous department and am bored out of my mind, barely writing 50 lines of code a day. I actually miss the more productive days, but here I get paid much more. Corpo life is outright ridiculous. Especially the coding interviews, as said above. Just because HR doesn't have the necessary resources to evaluate personal projects.

>>23919 Look for a summer internship. Companies are hiring for those now. That way if you don't get into grad school you can probably turn it into a real job in the fall. Until then just get a job doing whatever for a couple months. Work for UPS or be a waiter or something. I've been in almost the exact same situation and I later regretted not trying to get a job, even though I didn't strictly need one.

>>23988 >If you want to pass the code interview, you have to play the gtame like everyone does. If you want to be e genuinely good programmer you'll probably have a harder time in life. I'd recommend to just grind leetcode, get the corporate job, learn how enterprise SWE works and then leave to play with technology. This was my plan. I plan to sit in corporate SWE for 3 more years, max. Who are these employers who care about leetcode?

>>24009 >Who are these employers who care about leetcode? Quiet a lot of job interviews in semi "not small" companies consist of algo related soykaf on interviews. Even when these problems are the only one you would ever see in that company and not have to deal with them during real job there. Retarded? Yes. Common? Yes.

>>24009 >Who are these employers who care about leetcode? FAGMAN and everyone who switches to that model of hiring process because it's what they do at FAGMAN. Right now you can get into a small firm without leetcode, but in 10 years the big players may move onto some other fad, but all the little guys will still be leetcoding. I wouldn't be surprised to see hiring managers not understand the purpose, filtering out incapable programmers, and introducing it at senior level. Maybe it will have even more staying power than I guess just because everyone has a computer now so it's easier than ever to pump out some toy projects and claim you're a programmer on a job application.

I'm european, and have found myself become a neet because of rona and all the lockdowns imposed in my country (bonus points if you guess where I guess). I've always had the idea of studying offsec in my own time, but I've always held back since I had a career planned before it all went to soykaf. Guess I was too complacent. Now I find myself in a somewhat dire situation, being 23 and without much purpose. What I mean to ask is, what is the security industry like in europe, is the OSCP a cert that is appreciated here, and if not, how willing are US companies to hire foreigners with only the OSCP? Also in regards to pay, if some insight can be provided.

People working as programmers right now, do you find it worth to grind getting into a junior position? For context I'm 30 years old, have a math bachelor and some hobby knowledge of programming. I consider myself to be at junior level at least (have knowledge of basic programming structures, paced my way from many books including sicp, have quite a lot of side projects). However I don't have any "corporate" programming experience, aside from some work I did in the military (I was a reserve officer). Right now I make money by tutoring college kids and building websites for close people. I don't work many hours and have time to myself, though I'm always financially insecure. Would you suggest to go the "professional programmer" route? Is ti worth it? Honestly I'm not great at the whole CV/interview situation, but I could try it if you find your work meaningful.

>>24064 Hiring foreigners in the USA probably costs like $2,000-$4,000 to sponsor them realistically with a lawyer. Then companies like FB got in trouble for setting aside jobs for H1B workers.. Not sure.

>>24078 Maybe you should get a masters degree in programming and work the military angle to get security clearance so you can program missiles in C++ or something. I am not even graduated so take it with a grain of salt.

Should I mention in my CV that I contributed to the Linux kernel if it were just some simple style fixes?

>>24094 I'm thinking about this to be honest, maybe I'll go to some other country to do it, to establish remote working relations since my country and town are soykaf for working but has lot's of other advantages (life is in general more based and less business religious). I don't think it would be easy to work on the military aspect of this, since I'm not a tactical member of the army. I could become one, but I would lose my rank (lieutenant) and become a corporal instead.

How can I contribute to FOSS for money? How many years would I need to be a core contributor before anyone considers paying me from donations? What are the required skills, other than "be good at programming and know the project you are working for"?

>>24104 Join a FOSS company like Canonical or donation supported projects like Linux Mint. Cryptocurrency projects like Bitcoin are universally FOSS, and have by far the largest opportunities for making money. You can also contribute to FOSS projects for money on Bountysource.

Lains. Had a great interview with a school last year. I was gonna teach code to 17 classes' worth kids. Now, after leading me on for months they say they went with someone else. I do look for coding jobs as well, but it's always webdev and SQL nonsense. Always the same soykaf. No one has use for an honest C programmer anymore it seems. I don't know lains. Is it too late to switch to carpentry or sweet potato farming or something

>>24095 Depends on the position. Do you want to become a stylefixer? But seriously, contributing to the linux kernel probably sounds great for HR and they wouldn't get what you did anyways, so I'd say yes

I work as an intern in a small company that makes various websoykaf for our government. Our customers are tech illiterate ministers who can't provide more or less distinct requirements. We are always chasing their stupid whims, we are always out of time because the requirements change every week. Code quality and security of our products are extremely low. Sometimes we can't deliver another feature in time and just fake and hope that we'll finish it later. Everyone in the company understands how stupid is this situation. I'm so tired of playing this stupid game. I'm not learning anything in this job. They are treat me and a couple of other interns as cheap code monkeys. Nevetheless, I often perform critically important tasks. I've been maintaining our backend for two weeks while the senior engineer who usually does it was on vacation. But I guess bad job is better than unemployment.

>>24158 >intern >anything but cheap code monkey Water is wet lain. It is like kicking dead whales down the beach, but hopefully if you keep looking you'll find something better.

>>24100 ...In the USA you're not a member of the army doing this I mean. You get a top security clearance and work for a contractor, and this means job security usually. I'm saying it would be easy for you to get a top security clearance, and your military background might look good.

I have a paid internship open up for vulnerability research. They are asking for c /python / x86 or x86_64 assembly skills and linux / windows skills, also Systems programming skills and networking and TCP/IP concepts . I have experience developing Java applications and some theoretical knowledge on network security and I learned Python in a month last year. TCP/IP stuff is easy enough. Assembly seems really intimidating tho. I feel that they are asking for a lot of stuff I dont know much about. At the same time this internship looks like an amazing oportunity. Can I grind hard for two weeks and grasp a lot of the stuff they are asking in such short notice? Right now I'm following this blog and doing whatever I find there: http://www.myne-us.com/2010/08/from-0x90-to-0x4c454554-journey-into.html

>Can I grind hard for two weeks and grasp a lot of the stuff they are asking in such short notice? How are we supposed to know? Depends on your intellectual capabilities and your current knowledge plus what is really expected from you at that internship plus materials you have access to. 12h/day x 14 days = 168 hours. It's around 2,75 univ classes combined that are typically 60h each. You can learn quiet a lot in that time. It is more the question of your biological ability tho, as such intense compression in time is not for everyone.

>>24261 Duh, you're right. TIME TO WORK THEN!

>>24104 >How can I contribute to FOSS for money? Get a job in FOSS developing company. There are plenty.

I got a degree from a second rate school and have been working at a level 1 tech support position for the last 2 years or so. I've been working on personal projects (full stack) and have learned more about development than in my time at uni. I haven't really sent out a lot of resumes before(maybe 50 total) and got my current job through an employment place that gave them some discount on hiring me. Looking at the requirements people ask for in the jobs it literally seems easier to me to make a start up and go find some VC millionaire to fund your experiment. I have a few different ideas that could really be good if I get enough users. I'm going to keep sending out resumes and pick up Rust by refreshing and learning more algorithms and data structures but I honestly don't even need a job since I have almost 0 expenses. And I can probably find a better paying one by becoming a personal trainer/security. Should I go all in on my ideas? One is a mobile game that is proven to be really fun and popular and I can find easy ways to monitor it but its multiplayer so I just need to get enough people playing first(but that should be relatively simple since it's a well known game in some communities). I would need to learn mobile game development on Android + iOS so I'm probably going to need to get a MacBook. I have another idea that's something like sending people out on adventures to explore the world and learn new things but I haven't thought of a way to monetize something like that other than a flat rate. Which should be fine.

What's with the lack of interest for low-level soykaf these days? Stuff like kernel development and such. Seems like a great way to get to know both hardware and software. These days people only seem to care about UWP electron bullshit. Why is this?

>>24286 Two decades of brainwashing of how "OOP is superior" plus in case of good portion of central and east Europe work in outsourcing of projects in Java and C# can make you a literal millionere in around a decade in local currencies (imagine living in the USA and earning 4 times you do as a programmer - that's how profitable is working in that field there even considering many of them work for USA minimal typical wage on given position). Also web related/ai related/whatever high level related startup cult. Media don't write about arcane low level stuff too much. Media time for people like Woz is over.

>>24286 Who the fuarrrk is gonna pay me to write low level code? If I want to make money for myself I'm making cross platform apps for consumers. When people start paying good money for good software we will get good software again. Until then all good software will either be done by hardcore nerds who have rich parents or don't want money and by giant enterprise/consumer corporations like MS and Google

>>23915 >bachelors in comp sci, bachelors in math Dude, you made best decision in your life by getting bachelor in math aside comp sci. Now all you have to do is concentrate on programming. If you didn't sleep whole time during classes there is probably no field that you cannot apply to. You are so freaking versatile you not fully realize yet. Prepare some programs that do stuff like filtering of images/sound/whatever you want using Fast Fourier Transform and or wavelets. Find new papers with interesting stuff like new algorithms for numeric methods etc. Write some chess/checkers program with AI. 3D engine. You should be more than qualified to do so at that point. Yes, it may involve some prior research but so does many projects senior programmers do in real life programming jobs. If I had time machine I would go few years back and beat my younger self unconscious to force myself to concentrate more on math. >>scrolling for WEEKS on all job application sites How picky were you? Did you send CVs to companies that don't list job offers but have profile of projects you are interested in? If not - do so! Remember it may require you to add some sort of legal note to papers you send. Just consult law of your country. >>only got one response, from IBM, they sent me 3 problems to code >>all other emails are just rejections Maybe you send CV to wrong type of companies? I hope you are not yet another example of person who finished univ/collage/whatever is that called just to get some webdeveloper position? I have seen that o many times it makes me cringe. You are going to waste your time doing webpages. Aim for algorithmics related positions, data analysis, codecs, raytracing renderers, creating computational models for weather forecasting, Finite element analysis, filtering images and other signals for deep space research etc.

>>24322 >Who the fuarrrk is gonna pay me to write low level code? Intel, Nordic Semiconductor, General Electrics, YAMAHA, CASIO, (...), SONY, Nikon, (...), General Motors, Volkswagen, Citroen, (...), Tesla etc, SpaceX, NASA, ESA, commercial space satellite producers etc, Motorolla, Marvell, Apple, ARM, NVidia, (...), AMD and other chip designers/makers, Linux Foundation, FeeBSD foundation, even Netflix and literally over 9000 other companies that need popular kernels and low level TCP/IP stuff adapted to their needs or ported to new/custom platforms. Some of these jobs would even be under FLOSS licenses and even RMS would bless them. Other not so much. >Until then all good software will either be done by hardcore nerds who have rich parents or don't want money and by giant enterprise/consumer corporations like MS and Google >and by giant enterprise/consumer corporations like MS and Google >Microsoft >good software from Microsoft Literally what?

>>24328 >FeeBSD foundation You already mentioned apple

>>24335 If anything Sony has contributed more to the main FreeBSD project than Apple ever has. That being said, you can still download Darwin for OSXI right now. Not sure what it's useful for though.

>>24328 So I can write software and sell it to those large companies? Oh wait no. They will only hire me to write software for them. There is no room for entrepreneurs in low level/system programming. Working for others is slave work, even if they pay you 200k/year

>>24337 >So I can write software and sell it to those large companies? Yes. People do that. >Oh wait no. Wait for what and why no? What makes you different from other people/groups who do so? >They will only hire me to write software for them. Why would anyone hire you to write software not for these who hire you? I never seen such case. The whole point of hiring someone is to get work done for the one hiring. >There is no room for entrepreneurs in low level/system programming. No idea what are you talking about. >Working for others is slave work, even if they pay you 200k/year Literally what?

>>24338 bro

>>24337 If nobody wants to buy what you want to produce, then why should you get paid for it? :/ >There is no room for entrepreneurs in low level/system programming That's not true. If you aren't aware of them, it's because they sell their products to other companies rather than consumes. They don't need to market like Apple or Microsoft. >Working for others is slave work, even if they pay you 200k/year Having an employment contract with an employer is very similar to having a work contract with a client. You could sell finished products, but you'll probably need to "enslave" others to get something out the door.

>>24338 money is paper trash. fiat backed by debt and marketting is the currency of slaves.

>>23915 I learned recently that I'm just really, really, really awful at business writing. My cover letters were garbage for months and I never really cared enough to get help writing them. This may be your issue.

>>24348 >money is paper trash. fiat backed by debt and marketting is the currency of slaves. Then buy gold/silver for what you earn.

>>24349 Could be or he just sends CVs to wrong types of companies. I barely believe that double bachelor in math and comp sci is not interesting to anyone. Even if he is only basic level at programming. I myself live in outsourcing paradise for western companies known as Poland so my perspective may differ - but guys with such profile would not wait long to get employed by smaller companies as well as big corpos. But as I said as outsourcing hub we have companies from all over the world seeking for people of quiet various backgrounds for their IT projects. I can see numerous offers from banking sector - where IMHO his background would fit nicely as well as job offers about working for some old COBOL systems for insurance companies, even seen some FORTRAN related offer from some oil company from the USA.

>>24348 please don't be a crypto glitterboy

>>24531 crypto is imaginary trash, just wasted bytes. completly controlled opposition. although with the finacial system being mostly digital anyway the official monetary system is mostly the same. the controllers can edit bank databases just like mmo devs can edit player inventories. and the feds disclosed they own a large amount of crypto too so they have virtually the same control over that market too.

>>24356 already do big man

This is going to sound insane, but I have been desperately looking for a decent retail job to get better hardware for the past 2 years as a minor without success. I got invited to countless interviews, one-day employment jobs, etc. but never managed to get something that would provide me with a stable income. Next week I'll be 18, meaning that I can go work wherever I want without restrictions. In those past 2 years of boredom I have thought myself Linux and programming but I'm really not sure if that will ever get me a job. Just did a quick search on Indeed which yielded 3 pages of search results for the term "Linux" but 99% of them require a Bachelor or Master's degree in Computer Science which is absolutely ridiculous. Should I just bite the bullet and send e-mails to all these employers asking if they can possibly hire me for a part-time entry level job? I never did a project myself since I never knew where to start, only binged Leetcode and Coderwars challenges but I'm open to learning how to build real-world software.

>>24693 send CVs everywhere u see e-mail address but don't get overly optimistic if you don't ever coded even a simple game of snake so far and don't know how SQL base works.

>>24693 I'd focus on smaller companies, blast out resumes and keep building cool projects. Eventually you'll gain some traction. I started at a small company that specifically sought to hire less experienced people with potential. I'm self-taught and have no CS degree, it can be done. As far as working for the huge top-tier companies, I don't have any advice for you; I've never worked at them and I'm not interested anyway.

Best place to find quick jobs eg bugfixing, writing automation/scraping scripts or building small websites?

>>24693 Honestly anon, if you live in a not so large town and you make a real attempt, I'm sure they'd be happy to hire you. Especially if can somehow show that you know what you are doing. They would love to hire someone for an ultra low wage.

Hey lains, I'm still an undergraduate student in my second year (my uni is 3 years tho) so I should be looking for internships and the such right now. Thing is, soykaf is scuffed af and I'm not sure if my resume is good lol. I legit just have school-related projects on it. I am currently working on side-projects but I fear that I won't be able to finish in time and that I'll miss the opportunity to apply to all summer internships. What do lains?

>>24735 Quantity over quality, anon. Shoot your resume to 1001 places. Make sure that you have good skills. By far, the easiest skill to use to get your foot in the door is front end work, because most decently skilled software developers feel that it is beneath them, so there is a lack of people willing to do that work. If you can, launch a react app. Host it on S3, use some API to populate data on the application. If you do that, and have a link on your resume to it, it will greatly increase your chances. You can make a react app, right?

>>24736 Appreciate the advice anon. To be honest, I don't know react, but I do know HTML, CSS, and JS, so I don't think it'd be too hard for me to pick it up.

>>24738 I'll check here in a week, I expect to see a react app up. now go

I'm going to be completing my bachelors in mathematics within the year, and I've been looking for employment opportunities. From what I can tell the only way to avoid babysitting children, filling out government forms, or using excel for a living is to get a masters, and even to do the former would require further training such as passing the actuary exams, gaining teaching certification, etc. Anyway from what I've seen job opportunities which involve actually doing math seem to play on a theme: quantitative finance (researcher, trader, etc.), (bio)statistician, and data scientist. Am I missing any job opportunities which involve doing mathematics for money, especially those outside of statistics, and can be had with a masters? Which of these occupations involves the least drudgery, e.g. filling out forms, giving presentations, slight modification of existing analysis for new use, etc.?

>>24765 If you know programming and some physics, you can definitely leverage math ability to getting an engineering job. Many engineers have a sort of reverent attitude towards mathematics because they weren't good enough at it to become physicists. The hard part will be getting your resume past corporate screens by people/machines that don't share this impression.

>>24765 >>24766 as for actually doing math on the job... even as a data scientist, math will be a small part of what you do. You need to become a professional research scientist if you want a job that involves actually doing science/math.

>>24766 >If you know programming and some physics, you can definitely leverage math ability to getting an engineering job. I don't have fluids or dynamics or anything of the sort under my belt, my degree has mostly been in pure math, e.g. abstract algebra, number theory, real analysis, mathematical statistics, probability, etc. (only mathematics of finance, and numerical analysis being on the more applied side) I'm not sure how hard it would be to self study, to get a second bachelors, or a masters for this sort of thing with my background. I'm not very eager to self study generally since I lack work experience, which would make it very difficult to get a job, especially if the markets don't recover quickly. Historically I've cared more about wisdom then credentials, but wisdom doesn't always put food on the table. >>24767 >You need to become a professional research scientist if you want a job that involves actually doing science/math. This is the basic impression I got as well, I suppose a quantitative finance research is this, but usually these fellows don't come from lowly MFE programs if I understand correctly. The issue is that I'm not really willing to invest the time to become a PhD, but I've already invested four years of my life learning mathematics, which I really enjoy. >as for actually doing math on the job... even as a data scientist, math will be a small part of what you do. Data Science seems to be especially about making presentations to appease management, and validating data from what I've seen. In some sense I'm looking for the least bad option I can get, since my preferences have put me in a bit of a corner.

>>24768 >I don't have fluids or dynamics or anything of the sort under my belt, my degree has mostly been in pure math You can learn physics very rapidly if you know pure math. Pick up Arnold's Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics. Programming is a little harder to learn but teaching yourself is certainly possible. An easy first project would be to make a mandelbrot renderer or something. Another option would be to learn some basic electronics (like how to use an oscilloscope, solder, design basic circuits) and apply for electrical technician jobs. They pay okay, don't have super stringent requirements if you start at the bottom, usually have options for advancement, and the math can be surprisingly challenging even for simple circuits. >Historically I've cared more about wisdom then credentials, but wisdom doesn't always put food on the table. Correct.

>>24769 >You can learn physics very rapidly if you know pure math. Pick up Arnold's Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics. In that case I really appreciate the suggestion, I'll try to do some more research on this. >Programming is a little harder to learn but teaching yourself is certainly possible. An easy first project would be to make a mandelbrot renderer or something. I've read through SICP and done three fourths of the exercises, I've also taken a numerical analysis course which is relevant. I wouldn't consider myself a poor programmer, but I lack formal education (so I lack compiler, operating system, CPU design, etc. knowledge), and practical knowledge about existing algorithms, libraries, etc. which is most of being a programmer realistically. >Another option would be to learn some basic electronics (like how to use an oscilloscope, solder, design basic circuits) and apply for electrical technician jobs. They pay okay, don't have super stringent requirements if you start at the bottom, usually have options for advancement, and the math can be surprisingly challenging even for simple circuits. I did some of this when I was kid with my dad, I've unfortunately forgotten almost all of it, and I was a kid so I never got too far into it. Anyway I'm not too worried about pay so long as I can consistently keep a roof over my head and food on my table. I appreciate this suggestion as well. It sort of seems from preliminary research that for these I'd be looking at a second bachelors, where I would meet the math prerequisites, and not have to complete electives. Apparently for the EE I'd need 86 credit hours, and for engineering I'd need at least 60 credit hours, but probably more. So it'd probably be a bit more than a masters, but not dramatically more.

>>24770 >So it'd probably be a bit more than a masters, but not dramatically more. Well, you know it would be two to three times as many credits actually. Maybe the credits of a masters are two to three times harder though, I don't know (I sort of doubt this).

>>24765 I graduated a few years ago with a math research degree from a small university. had a couple research projects and an REU on my resume. one of the people in my research group became a programmer, 3 (including myself) became sysadmins. another went into further academia. so yes, in my experience, math majors dont end up usually with math jobs. i cant think of any jobs (outside academia) where you would create proofs and thats the most interesting part of mathmatics to me. the NSA is the largest employer of mathmaticians in the country, though of course many people on this website would rather not work for the NSA. im personally thinking about returning to school for crytography, which seems like it would involve a lot of mathmatics, however this would also probably end up with academia as a career path or some other security/sysadmin type role

>>24780 >I cant think of any jobs (outside academia) where you would create proofs and thats the most interesting part of mathematics to me. [...] I'm personally thinking about returning to school for crytography, which seems like it would involve a lot of mathematics, however this would also probably end up with academia as a career path or some other security/sysadmin type role Yah, I already pretty much accepted that I wouldn't be able to do proofs without a PhD (other than maybe as a quant). Unfortunately I think for me system administration is a nightmare situation (seems very stressful and parochial), and I likely could not get past background checks for an NSA job, I'm an anti-idpol communist in the style of Marx's "On the Jewish Question". It's a shame I really would have no issue working for the NSA, and I would love to do proofs for money. Anyway this sounds like it would be great for you though, it'd either be a promotion or the ability to use mathematics more than any of your peers. Would you get a math masters with an emphasis on number theory or theory of computation for this, or are there specialized cryptography masters where you live?

>>24740 hello anon, I would like to report that although I haven't finished anything, I am currently working on it. I realized my JS is like kicking dead whales down the beach ass so I'm working on that

Is it true that being a webdev monkey is the most profitable kind of code monkey? I know C and some Python, but most job offerings are for Java, C++ and web frontend/backend. So I don't know whether to go for C++ or javascript and related things after I learn Java and refresh my knowledge of SQL and such.

>>24973 >Is it true that being a webdev monkey is the most profitable kind of code monkey? Salary depends on how valuable the company thinks you are and how difficult you are to replace. So there is a balance between not doing something everyone can do but also not doing something so obscure no companies need it.

Should I showcase my pull requests on github? If yes, what is the best way to go about it? There doesn't seem to be anything of the sort built into github (except for showcasing forks, but forks don't mean you have contributed). I was thinking of using the user README.md to list the most notable contributions.

>>25046 A brief description and a link to the project should be enough. You could link directly to a commit if you wanted.

I fuarrrked up. Small company, with good pay and other bonuses offered me code interview, with a 2,5 hour time frame. Go to Codility, start doing the exercises. Feeling light stress because they appear to be hard exercises, but I can manage them. Then, I get a power outage in my area (hasn't happened in 2 years) and I feel relief. Instead of being more panicked about not being able to complete the interview I feel relief. I lose about 15 minutes without internet access/ no power. Power comes back on, but I can't think about anything else then just closing the web browser and going outside for a walk. And then, despite the fact I have 1,5 hours left, I just give up and go outside to calm down. How can I become confident enough to choose, to battle things out instead of just choosing escapism when things get rough? I feel confident about my problem solving skills, but when it comes to interviews, I just get overwhelmed about the fact that this is not what I want to be doing right now.

fuarrrked up a technical interview with one of the best. I completely froze up and got stuck on a problem that should have been trivial. I literally want to kill myself right now, everything else went well including previous technical interviews.

>>25250 fuarrrk man that's rough. I feel you on that, messing up on things you know is the worst feeling.

>>24973 C and Python are used in finance and ML, which are some of the actual sources of the best paying programming jobs. Not web dev, which pays decently but no better than anything else.

>>25345 I don't know any finance companies using C, core stuff is mostly modern C++ (incl. C++20) which is almost unrecognisable from oldschool C. At trading companies which is I guess what you're talking about the really speed critical components are all in FPGA. Almost everyone is expected to know some Python, including traders, for automation, testing, mockups, etc, but I don't think they hire specifically for it.

>>23913 >If you're already capable of doing projects on your own, then there's a very high chance your boss can just leave you alone with some goals and expect things to work out. Currently experiencing this. Still in Uni

>>23926 I seriously don't understand this perspective sometimes. There are soooo many employers who need people who can code, who they themselves do not know how to code. They will only care about results. So as long as you can deliver results, and explain to them (not in terms of space and big O time, but an articulate explanation of what your program does for them), you will keep them more than happy

>>23926 > job market seems pretty alive in the EU only if you ahve 3YOE+ I finally got in (even a better position than I ever hoped to get), but the road to that job was filled with close to a hundred rejections. A friend of mine sent over 300 applies (showed me an excel file as proof where he tracked "no response", "interview", "rejected") and basically only got a hand full of interviews which apparently all went pretty weird. I feel like companies are mostly testing the market with their job offers or are just fishing for the best of the best or are out for malleable new grads or just to it to get government gibs of some sort (I heard this exists). Speaking for Germany. I was looking for a dev job, he for a normal office drone job.

>>23913 >I have never seen 'leetcode', 'advent of code', or any other online coding problem site on a resume it would be full retard to list this. You do leetcode to pass the algo interview and pretend you never practiced, you just have a great understanding of data structures and a high IQ. Nobody hires someone for his leetcode scores, that's true. Leetcode knowledge is a secret trick to not get filtered.

>>25131 >this is not what I want to be doing right now. HAve you yet realized that after you are successful at an interview, you will have to work? Work isn't very fun. You are not ready yet. Modern parenting skips the gratification delay part quite often. I had to train it myself and I relapse most weekends, when i actually plan to be productive on my side-projects. However, this is an essential skill to be a functioning member of society and even a coding-God will not and should not find employment, if he cannot even control his reptile brain.

>be me >senior dev at megacorp >try and combat complete lack of motivation to work on meaningless component xyz of megacorp ecosystem, while watching my cohorts struggle with the same >if I switch jobs i have to pass another soykafty coding interview, drug, and background check. Everything will probably be the same anyway. >have gotten so used to being able to take off time whenever and every dollar of my upper-middle class income that I would be nervous taking anything lower in order to pivot -- and where would that even leave me since i'm turning 30 soon and this job is pretty much the only good thing about me. anyone else gone / going through this point in their employment? now i understand why everything is made so soykafty.

>>25531 Yeah, its soykaf but what can you do. You ultimately reach a point where you have to make the choice to either chase the dream programming job and hope you stumble upon a unicorn startup that has a culture that isn't soykaf, found your own company in something interesting and hope you don't become the statistic about failures or you just stay with the corporate jobs and accept that you are getting paid well to do meaningless work as a drone and that your life will be secure if boring. If you pick the last one then maybe try to find some other way to inject meaning into your life like the myriad of other men who realise this is what their life is as part of their mid life crisis.

>>25514 I know man, I have been reading on this soykaf for years and I have a good understanding of delayed gratification and just doing jack soykaf rather than working. The problem isn't about work. Hell, I have worked a lot in hard labor jobs in my teens and it feels nice. I don't know about you, but working feels nice. I have gone way past the point of doing something and finding fun. The best example is me cleaning bird soykaf in the army and finding some sick enjoyment out of it. It is the same with programming. Work is fun if you have full control of your monkay brain. But lately I find myself realising that I have missed on so many things staring at a screen and playing videogames or watching whatever online. I don't play games anymore (its been years I have been through this). And then, there are days where my CPU is fried one day before the delivery of a project, there are days when the power goes out for absolutely no reason and I just flip. It is impossible to control yourself in these situations.

Can you still get an entry level job with no college degree and no proper work experience in the field? I've heard people say it's pretty easy to get a soykafty webdev job or similar if you have a decent portfolio and know how to pass the interview, even when the job requires 3+ years of experience for no reason but is this actually true? I don't wanna go to college for three years just to get a dev job but I also don't want to stay in my current field of employment.

>>25697 Sounds like an X/Y problem [0]. But I'll bite anyway. During the pandemic, it's harder to get an entry level job (as far as I heard). OTOH, there is a massive need for experienced devs. If you know and understand a programming language and related basic tools, you're probably going to find a job. As always, skills > portfolio > formal education. If you want a piece of advice, tell us your experience, what you know, what you want to learn, what are your goals etc. [0]: https://xyproblem.info/

Hi I'm new here from other imageboard, I'm almost halfway through my computer science degree (almost two years undergrad at community college, only classes I need to transfer at Assembly and a few physics and math courses), how do I best start training to get a fuarrrking JOB? My school is not that great and I don't feel like I know enough to even apply for internships, but I've been working retail 40 hours a week since Corona started since online classes are not my thing at all and holy soykaf I literally cannot take it anymore, I want to get a "real job" before the last of the labor aristocracy is stripped away. I'm not a great student, and I'm honestly not really a good programmer but every answer I've gotten as to how to actually get skills has been so vague I can't even commit to it. I really need something structured, but every time I've tried to do every single programming exercise for every single chapter I just wind up feeling bored because it's not that engaging. I'm not even sure I like programming that much (only times I've liked it is when we were doing DS implementations because I like doing stuff that makes me feel like a fool) but like goddamn fuarrrk the service industry

>>25761 What country are you in? What {technologies, programming languages, tools} do you know?

>>25762 Barely know C++, from Soilicon Valley (born and raised bruther) that's about it I'm fairly autistic and used to be into the whole Android custom rom thing but I never got into the dev side of that, have always had a general interest in technology and I enjoy tinkering with soykaf in all forms but I just find the whole world of programming super overwhelming because of how much soykaf there is

>>25763 > I'm fairly autistic Diagnosed?

What jobs can you get if you want to get into networking. How good is the job market? Networking sounds really interesting, but that's just from an outsider's perspective, i dont know a lot about it. Also what knowledge is required to get a job in networking?

>>25818 >What jobs can you get if you want to get into networking. How good is the job market? Depends where do you live. There are areas where network admins are sparse resource. >Networking sounds really interesting, but that's just from an outsider's perspective, i dont know a lot about it. Also what knowledge is required to get a job in networking? Basic protocols, basic networking devices, basics of network security. If you already have C skills and know into UNIX you would be attractive on market.

>>25825 How would C be of benefit to a cable wrangler? What are you going to do, debug an IP stack?

I'm working building microservices in golang. This work is fine but I constantly think I'm going to get fired. I've made some little contributions but most of the time I just stick around and pretend to be doing something. The senior engineers are designing the bulk of the infrastructure and I can't contribute until they complete that. I feel like deadweight. The next week I have a meeting to review my performance and I'm scared as fuarrrk.

Is working with security worth it? I've heard many people thrashing it and saying it's especially bad in my country, plus I'm a few years behind so I might not make it to be exceptional and thus overcome the realities of the market. With that said, it's the only thing I can really get excited about, I used to study other stuff like networks to understand security stuff in particular and, since I dropped that goal, I just don't feel like doing things anymore, it feels pointless, I don't want to be some random codemonkey or contribute to stuff that's being used in dystopic soykaf, like AI. I know very well this probably sounds like a way too idealistic kid, but it's what I think and I thought it would be necessary to put it out there to get proper advice.

>>25697 I got a python job and I'm still technically in high school (just waiting for them to give me the certificate). Listed a few projects on my resume, but I don't have a big portfolio. Probably depends on your location, but yeah, it's possible.

Would you guys recommend me either getting my CCNA or my Network+ certification for an eventual route in a Networking Engineering role? Somone told me that Cisco Certs are more important than anything CompTia has to offer, so I was planning on skipping the network+ all together.

Ive heard unfinished personal projects look bad. Should I still list these in my portfolio? I dont have a degree and ive only worked on failed game projects for the past few years.

>>25928 List what you have. Prefer finished over unfinished. Also, what do you mean by "failed"? If you made a game which works but - for example - has no audio or networking, don't consider it to be a failure.

Ok, got offered a possition as a solution engineer at big corpo (really big). This is my first ever job, what do I expect? What is even a solution engineer? What the hell is going on.

>>25968 Mazel tov, What did they tell you during the interview about what you'd be doing?

>>25972 Did a bootcamp focusing on REST and I mainly did the backend part of hibernate queries / setting up the db / anything up to the api modules, nothing on the front-end. We had to do a project that they gave us the specifications with 3 more people. Ended up doing all the project with one more guy the other 2 team members were too inexperienced to do anything. In the interview they asked me about previous projects, and what I did during this project. But to be honest, I think the main thing I did was being super confident, talkative and engaging. So I think I sold them more my charisma skills than my programming abilities (?). I don't know what to expect and there is not much I can study alone before I go there. I mean, wtf is a solution engineer?

>>25979 What company? I heard that at GOOG, Cloud Solutions Architect is basically a technical support position.

>>25980 Pfizer. The IT sector on this company makes software for different sections of the company. Like for example, a system to monitor vacine conditions when they are in a fridge or something so that the doctor (microbiologist? Vacine-maker?) is informed of other stuff. That's what I've been told in short.

How do i get a job as a C programmer?

>>26028 1. Go through "The C Programming Language" by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. 2. Do a side project or two which you can include in your resume. 3. Apply for a job. 4. Repeat step (3) until you get a good offer. 5. ??? 6. PROFIT

>>26028 electrical/computer engineering degree and/or really good connections. c programmers are low demand and a dime a dozen.

>>26031 >3. Apply for a job. >4. Repeat step (3) until you get a good offer. I have been in this loop for so many years it hurts.

>>26031 But how do i find exclusively C jobs? Every position i saw so far were of the "C/C++" kind. Lol, perhaps there is an idea for a project. A C only job catalogue.

>>26039 typically if you are looking for C work expect it to be bundled with assembly language or embedded systems work.

>>24766 >Many engineers have a sort of reverent attitude towards mathematics because they weren't good enough at it to become physicists Most stupid soykaf thing I have ever read. People who wants to be engineer and people who wants to be physicists hardly have anything in common.

>>26041 i'm fine with that, what bothers me is the mix with python, java, C++ and the like.

>>26044 Python may mean that tests are made in Python. C++ means one of two things: 1. If they ask for "C/C++" - they mean C++ 2. If they ask for "C or C++" - they may have part of the code base in C and part in C++. Java would be strange on the embedded programming job.

Hey guys, CS+Data science junior here. I've been hating software engineering, and I've been enticed by electrical engineering field: I'm learning about circuits, and the math and engineering behind this got me enticed. I'm wondering if any anons here can give insight on whether this is a good plan or not: > Learn about crap like circuit theory, computer architecture, micro-controller, maybe check out university to see what you learn (and VHDI) > Make a side project or two: I'm making a game inspired by circuits, than a card shuffler, electronic point tracker, retropi, than a autolocking door knob > Apply to electrical engineering internships, get in, than repeat till I graduate than apply to full times. I know some EEs so they can give me the referral as well Is there anything I should do that I haven't covered here?

>>26128 Is there any chance you could switch to an EE degree? It would make the process a lot easier of course.

>>26163 I could, but man, that means more school, and I fuarrrking hate school.

>>26164 Why not just learn C during your studies and focus on microcontroller development and try to get a job in that if need be. They'll accept your CS degree.

Is there a decent roadmap as to what to study/do in your free time as a CS student so that you can get a job? Or, put another way, is there a loose plan to develop your programming chops enough to where you can snag an intership easily/easier? My school teaches C++, so make of that what you will.

>>26181 I abhor that comic. It seems to imply that what the savage spaniards brought was somehow better than what was there.

>>26182 I think it's more to make light of the fact that in every stage of human development someone says something like that, no matter how glaring the flaws

>>26181 >internship Read a book on datastructures and algorithms. CLRS is probably too dense, even though it's the standard reference. I was recommended Skeina. Read Cracking the Coding Interview. Grind Leetcode. Aim for 80ish made up of 20% Easy, 60% Medium, 20% Hard. If you can do 2 in 45 minutes you're probably good enough to pass a bigtech interview. LC hards are harder than almost any interview question you can expect, but they're excellent practice. This is more or less the formula for getting a good internship. It's a very particular skill set you have to train and has little to do with actual professional programming. Ignore >>26184 for now, that's stuff you'll learn on the job if you actually need to work with those languages and frameworks. For what it's worth my school also also exclusively taught C++ (lots of deals with defence contractors), I had internships at one of the big boys and a trading company, have never written a line of Java in my life and only a smattering of JS.

>>26182 This: >>26183 It's just that whenever someone complain about the system, there will be someone else to say "it's still the best one there is".

>>26180 Shit, thanks man. I'm proficient in C (did a lot of data structures projects with it) > microcontroller development Nice, I'm learning some Ardunio as we speak. Hope there's jobs for it in my local area anon >>26181 Get internships, and also try to get a wide base. Make a soykafty CRUD application for whatever language is popular in your area, and than apply for that. >>26185 I agree with leetcode, but some of it is not needed. Just look up what questions is on glassdoor.

People that have made it into the IT field without a degree, what's the best advice you can give? I don't like web development but stuff like PHP and JS including all its frameworks are in high demand here, especially in combination with Linux. Most of them don't mention the requirement of a degree and some are even cool with people that just program as a hobby.

>>23831 I need to find an end of studies internship that must start around February 2022 and last few months. Am I applying too early? Do recruiters just look to hire interns/employees as soon as possible in general? When is a good time to apply? All I'm getting is rejections (without providing reasons).

Big corpo new hire here. Basically for the past 3 weeks my manager hasn't assigned me to anything, I've spent half the time of each day browsing imageboards (working from home rules), watching udemy training videos that are useless (agile, waterfall principles? Really?) and reading corporate rulebooks. Now, that I have been assigned some work, it involves no coding, just some computer and windows knowledge, probably mulesoft integration and other soykaf. Should I be worried? I'm getting paid good money, I just have less energy than what I am used to, to pursue a vuln researcher role and read books, solve htb challenges. I don't write code, and this bothers me, is this what corpo work is? I'm just gonna drain them of money and leave whenever, this is. Farm some certificates, ask for a possition change... its not so bad, but if I was paid less for this it would be hell.

>>26285 Use your free time to learn. Practice skills needed for a better job.

>>23831 Has anyone had luck using employment Agencies to help get them a job? I have a soykafty web dev BA degree, but don't trust my school to help get me a job. I'm trying to put a portfolio together to showcase decent backend knowledge, but excel in front end interactions and page design; I originally was going for graphic design so my frontend skills are naturally stronger. I know most places use frameworks, but I don't know which ones are most used. It would be nice to talk with someone who knows the area and can give usable advice. Is Career adviser better?

hi lainons, I'm a 21 year old guy with no college degree, pretty stupid and has no expectation on becoming really big and successful, but atleast I want to achieve my goals. currently I have like 2 years of web development experience, PHP and NodeJS. Now I'm starting to realize that I need to create a portfolio so I can land a better job. Right now I'm creating a small school information system written on ReactJS + NodeJS, I know that its not that great but do you think it will be enough for me to land a fair job? (I'm in a country where a fuaarrking college degree is highly required in most companies, so I'm expecting to have a remote job from overseas). any suggestions? I dont want to be a freelancer forever, and even landing on a $10k/year job will make me a middle class dude here in my country (its a soykaffy country somewhere in southeast asia) so I will accept it

>>23831 program your own reality

>>23831 nice you eat frosted flakes for breakfast

>>26285 It's fine what you don't want to happen if them to turn round in 9 months time at your next perf review and fire you because you didn't do enough work. It would be very unfair but I've seen it happen. Alternatively it might just be v. bureaucratic?

>>23831 I got a return offer from the IB I was interning at. Feels very strange, woke up this morning and was expecting to go to work.

*ahem mic check 1 2* i want to work in HPC/parallel computing/supercomputers but i have a very hard time figuring out wtf i should know to get in. the specialized knowledge is way over my head, too dense and refers to terms that i cant even google and the foundational knowledge feels so broad i dont know where to start altho i've been chipping away at it. any tips? atm i think i have a >generally good feel on programming with algos and data structures, time/space complexity etc >the common industry practices with them >moderate level in discrete math and functional programming >basic understanding in cryptography >background in math up to real analysis, abstract algebra and topology >noob gains in architecture >decent in kernel and OS related knowledge due to being a hackermans when i was 12 >noob gains in data science anything else i didnt mention, assume i know nothing at all and dont even know about it.

>>26549 Damn, didn't think about this. Obv I dont want to be laid off because of low productivity, but so far, I've been bored to death just doing bureocratic training for at least 30 days, it took me about a week to create accounts on every different platform this corpo has. And I mean there was a lot of requesting, asking 20 people where to find X thing and so far I am just waiting for anyone to give me work and just meetings after meetings after meetings of just introducing myself and people talking about corporate stuff and high level abstractions I have no idea where to start. Job pays really well, to the point where it is unfathomable for someone my age and country to get paid so well. I am anxious because I am used to get a lot of work and this is just laying on my ass and getting paid. People that I asked tell me that this is basically how megacorpos work. Everything is slow, pointless meetings all day long, deprecated systems (most of the webshit apps are built to work on IE only , [I mean ???]) and just e-mailing all day long. Also, they told me I will be mostly on technical support for their legacy systems, this sounds really bad, especially when the dude working on them tells me there is no documentation whatsoever. Oh well, I've entered the wageslave arc of my life, let's get it.

Not sure if this is on topic but does anyone have experience with any coding bootcamps? Can they connect me with potential employers? Are there any that I should be avoiding?

I'm happy to report that I got a programming job right out of college. I had a B average GPA, no internships, some job experience. I started applying for jobs a couple months before graduation. I applied to local jobs that paid well for regional cost of living and my experience level, and didn't apply to FANG jobs. The job has excellent work-life-balance, the managers and coworkers are all really level-headed and respectful. There's a good onboarding process for junior programmers, with reasonable expectations. If you're in a similar situation as I was and worried you won't find a job or will be pressured into taking a job with poor pay or high stress, don't despair. I think jobs in low cost of living areas have much more reasonable expectations, interview processes, and WLB than FANG. In the end, you could not only be saving money on rent vs. a FANG job, but should also consider that even if you make more money at those jobs (after COL deduction), it could just be because you also work more hours.

>>26655 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

>>26664 >survivorship bias Not applicable.

Ok, ok, this is fuarrrked up but I've asked this question like five times but I really do need a "real job" soon I'm like halfway through my CS degree but kind of became disillusioned due to soykafty professors at my community college and general just feeling really stupid in relation to my other classmates and I've been feeling like I won't be able to get a job when I graduate since I live in the Bay Area and everything here is on hard mode and there's like 900000000 child prodigies coding from age 12 with multiple private tutors living here so I've been wondering... should I get into a trade instead? I genuinely feel like I'm too dumb to work in tech. I'm not even sure I want to be a software engineer either, I like the classes I've taken to some degree but I get the feeling that the frustration I feel when I can't figure something out, even if I WANT to figure it out is going to seriously kill me (out of stress) when I combine it with the fact that if I fuarrrk up I get fired and die of starvation. This is currently my only real chance of finishing college since I still have financial aid and my dad is still able to support me. I may have undiagnosed ADHD because I seem to really struggle with school despite studying (find it hard to focus very long). I'm rapidly approaching thirty after a few years of floundering around with the music program at my school and I genuinely am considering suicide sometimes because I don't really look forward to getting older and lonelier and being stuck at a job that I only got because I was born poor and needed money while doing a bad job at it. I mean, I somehow managed to blitzkrieg my way through every remedial math class in college all the way to Calculus 2 despite being told I'd never do that after dropping out of highschool and the only SE related class I have to take before transferring is Assembly (just math and science pre reqs after) so... what the fuarrrk do i do

>>26742 You're by far not the only one feeling frustration in college, I'd say that's normal. Maybe find a study group if you're having a hard time learning by yourself? And halfway through is not bad. I'd just finish the degree if it's only like a year left. Alternatively, don't community colleges offer programmes in the trades? Maybe switch degrees if you don't want to become a SWE. As someone from a german speaking country where trades are very well respected I find it unfortunate that the US etc look down upon the trades even though they're good jobs you don't have to feel bad about.

Not particularly about employment, but I am struggling in figuring out a final year project to work on. What's a good one that'll help land me a job? I was thinking something AI related

>>26744 Yeah, my older brother (who works in IT) makes fun of me for wanting to go into one because he thinks its the "easy way out" but I've seen how much they make and I'd rather spare my mind and sacrifice my body

>>26742 You should start searching for work in more rural areas / countries. A poster above mentioned the low wages and low cot of life in such areas and how they don't require really high standards of knowledge. I was at the exact same predicament after finishing college and I had to waste a year of my life going to the army (mandatory service time). Granted, I am still young, but honestly don't off yourself. If you are miserable where you are, you should really really look into changing environment. If I was in the US (I assume you are in the US) I would honestly go to some remote state and try to get some easy, niche job in IT and live with the low rent or whatever they have there.

So I'm an employed developer doing mostly webshit but I still write C++ at work on occasion. I recently got interested in computer graphics with C++ and OpenGl. Are there any jobs besides game development where I can do computer graphics or at least use my C++ skills? Don't bother saying some language you think is better than C++ blah blah, I don't care. I'm just trying to get a job I can moderately enjoy to get by and hopefully get paid above average

>>26796 Yeah but the only ones I can think of are in engineering fields. Do you have a CE, EE, CS, maths or physics degree? If you don't have one it'll be difficult to find an employer that won't just toss your application in the trash. Some things you'll need to know are digital signal processing (often called "signals and systems" as a college course, which means you need to also know several college-level maths prerequisites, go look them up), image processing, computer vision, OpenCV and Python (numpy, scipy, matplotlib, pylab). Tons of companies swear by MATLAB/Simulink, so probably should learn that too.

>>26797 I have a math degree mostly focused on stats. CS degree too. Both undergraduate. Don't know anything about signal processing though.

i just want to get my foot in the door to get a job. what's the quickest path? webdev? it seems hard to strike the balance between being a jack of all trades and being too specialized. i know basic ML and AI too to work off of if needed

>>26948 >get a job. what's the quickest path? Look at job ads and see what they are asking for first of all. Once you have a list of stuff you can figure out which one is quickest to learn.

>>26745 Do something you will have fun putting a lot of time and effort into. Employers are barely likely to pay attention to your project at all, but if they do, they'd rather see something that was complex and had a lot of thought and effort put into it. Don't pick a project just because it seems """employable""".

>>26948 Webdev yes. I got a webdev job and bootstrapped my way into interesting crypto work. I still use the webdev skillset a lot.

did PLC code at a factory for an internship, they like me enough so that they want me to come back to lead a group of electricians. seems like leadership experience will look good on a resume, but i feel like it is also in the opposite direction of actual programming/computer engineering

>>26983 every single posting will mention a different stack, especially in webdev. it makes it really hard to generalize other than a few things like databases and javascript >>27048 did you have a webdev project before you went into webdev? im about 3 years out from finishing my CS degree so i have time for it and can write websites but i dont really have any interesting ideas. the best thing ive written was a machine learned betting script. i've just been on leetcode to grind my skill in the meantime. everyone says like pick an interest and do a project but im not really interested in much other than security which ill probably bootstrap myself into once i get my foot in the door

>>23831 the majority of my programming experience is from game hacking, AC evasion, and some shadier stuff during my teenage years. I'm assuming it would be a bad idea to mention any of that on applications. Am I wrong?

>>27122 >did you have a webdev project before you went into webdev? I went to a coding bootcamp so I learned webdev intensively >everyone says like pick an interest and do a project but im not really interested in much other than security Security doesn't have much in common with other tech disciplines, so I would just go for that directly. If you have three years you might as well do some projects and plan to get a job in security on graduation--that is definitely doable. Maybe get an OSCP or something and you should be good for an entry level job, it will not be much harder than getting a webdev gig.

>>25761 >>25763 I don't know how good of an advice this is and you will most likely not see this, but i'll try my luck. You might wanna look into sys admin and related jobs in the IT field, as far as I know, those jobs requires you to know how the computer and how certain programs work from the inside without actually programming. The learning process may involve tinkering, but I'm not sure about this. The down sides may be that entry level jobs are usually help desk, so you'd have to deal with mostly tech illiterate people and when you do get to a higher position, I've heard people get called at extremely late hours in the night to come in the office and fix the issue. If I said anything that is not true, feel free to correct me as all the stuff i've said here either i've read it online or heard it second hand.

What do I do if I have a programming education but I am so autistic that having to interact with other human beings is unbearable? Like, I don't even want to do freelance because I would have to interact with clients. I'm pretty sure making apps and indie games is a way to waste your time and make no money but I don't see any alternatives.

>>27262 >I am so autistic that having to interact with other human beings is unbearable What do you think you're doing right now? How is it much different to type than to use your speech organs to transmit and receive sound waves between auditory systems?

>>27262 A job doesn't have to involve too much communication. There is 1 other person on my team and he's in a different city, all communication is through text. Once a week I sum up what I did on a call in about a minute. There's no way to compare since I don't know you, but I also have some amount of autism and social anxiety.

What are math intense programmer jobs? >inb4 data analysis in Spread Sheets software using Visual Basic

>>27371 Quantitative finance

>>27371 data science, AI, quant finance, cryptography, national lab work etc

Is there a real market for writing custom kernel modules? I mean jobs others than writing drivers for yet another graphic card, network card, etc. producer like for example Intel. Maybe writing some security or monitoring related modules for hosting services providers? Dunno. Anyone here doing something related as their job?

>>27446 >Is there a real market? Yes, but it isn't at the front face of the industry. Blackberry, HPC labs, any heavy space/nuclear simulation labs and automotives

>>24349 Any advice on writing *good* cover letters? I have this problem as well.

>>27501 >any heavy space/nuclear simulation if you mind - what more or less kind of kernel modules is needed there? Real TIme type of stuff?

The job search grind is soul crushing. Any tips to avoid offing myself in a month?

>>27516 Actually, addendum to that. How do you keep motivated to continue improving your programming and soft skills?

>>27516 Takes a lot longer than a month to find a job for most people these days.

>>27517 >How do you keep motivated to continue improving your programming and soft skills? Having bills to pay

Are you hiring? I hate with a passion Java, Bydlon, Shit++, Rust, Csharp(so bloody stupid i can't find the symbol on this keyboard). I write good stuff in plain C or assembler (any processor/DSP/microwhatever). I wave high the flag of * just make it work* and consider SICP a red flag indicating pretentious incompetents. Thank you for considering this job application, hope to hear from you soon.

>>27648 >I wave high the flag of * just make it work* >I hate with a passion Java, Bydlon, Shit++, Rust, Csharp(so bloody stupid i can't find the symbol on this keyboard) Pick one and only one.

Was in IT Ops but looking to become a dev or at least DevOps, is Go the right choice?

Recommendations on tech (languages, tools, systems, services etc) to focus on if remote is the most important aspect of dev work environment for me?

Can you help me with this language?

>>27801 a bigger screenshot would help

>>27803 I'm assuming that it's Java, but it would help if we could actually have a few more pixels

>>27446 >Is there a real market for writing custom kernel modules? Sure of course. The Linux team at any big company for example, like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, etc... Just look at the list of committers to non-driver directories of Linux, and apply to those companies.

>>27926 You missed that "not a driver" part

>>27949 All of those companies have kernel teams that work primarily on non-driver stuff.

Is there a market for cryptography, particularly for someone who is not an expert? Say one has a good understanding of all the concepts but is not really in the position to implement crypto protocols for critical scenarios.

>>27881 It is literally named "java code.jpeg".

>>27801 getProperty should be String, not File, i think

>>23831 How hard is it to into site reliability engineering? I'm a (reluctant) programmer who feels more comfortable administering Unix stuff, and I don't want to work my ass of like those Jr Devs who spin their wheels for $80k a year. Is SRE really as comfy as I've heard? What are the employers looking for?

Hey, might be a weird post, but how do you find out what you would like to do in tech? I've been mostly doing webshit for studies and game-dev as a hobby. But it just feels lacking to me. Game-dev is fun, but it feels like making very complicated toys, while I want to do something "serious". Webdev is alright I guess. I would like to maybe work in cybersec since it's where I feel like I would always find something interesting to study and in-depth, while webdev frequently is sticking libraries to make a Frankenstein. I also thought about full-stack, since I don't like jobs that are extremely focused on just one thing and I would be exposed to lot of other jobs. I am just worried about how employable that would be in the long term though.

>>28012 If you are asking how hard is it to work as a webmaster/VPS admin - as easy as finding a client. You can also get employed by shared hosting/VPS providers if you do not want to get bothered by finding clients on your own. I would not call the entry point for juniors in that sector to be too high. There are shortages of workers in that sector in many countries.

Lately I've lost all motivation. I no longer care about what I'm studying (ECE). I'm kind of fed up at owning nothing at 22, no money, no job, stuck at my parent's and feeling like I'm moving nowhere, i still got 3 more years of college left. My idea of dream job is just whatever so long as it's decent and abroad. I've been looking and there's many openings for webdev, but they requiere experience of course, and competence above all. Don't seem to list a degree requirement. So is it correct i can get a job abroad by just being an excellent developer? Or do I need a degree? It seems as if even if I were to finish the degree i would still need to get more experience by working a few years. Might as well start now, right? What i don't want to do is waste any more time.

>>28087 >Or do I need a degree? Generally, yes. Most companies don't want to take the risk to hire someone without a degree. (a degree serves as a proof that you have at least minimal amount of skills and knowledge)

>>28087 Get the degree even if it it means barely passing all courses. Not having a degree or previous tech-related work experience is like having a criminal record, it doesn't matter how amazing your projects on your resume/CV are, your resume will be chucked in the trash by virtually all companies. >So is it correct i can get a job abroad by just being an excellent developer? No, that is bullshit. Please learn what participation and optimism biases are. The few success stories you see on the internet like on Reddit that get upvoted crowd out the reality of the vast majority of people who tried and failed and are ashamed to admit being relegated to soykafty McJobs or worse for the rest of their lives. And the few that do admit their failures will not get upvoted anywhere to the same extent and will instead be shat on with insulting, condescending replies like they didn't "try hard enough" or "just be yourself at the interviews bro." >I'm kind of fed up at owning nothing at 22 You're still a brat as far as I'm concerned.

>>28088 I'd argue this is partially incorrect. If you have a 4 year degree, it shows that you are "responsible" enough to spend 3-4 years with something. This means potentially lower turnaround rate. They can teach you anything else.

>>28090 >>28089 >>28088 Thanks for the input. I wouldn't like to quit, but the situation at home is dire, and it's really taking a toll on me, so I'm looking for a quick way out. I was thinking I could work on a degree on the weekends, plenty of schools offer those over here. I'm speaking of web development specifically, nothing too specific like embedded or anything like that.

I want to learn graphics programming mostly as a hobby (I don't believe I'd ever be able to get a job with it and my experience.) The sole reason I want to do this is because I've gotten an interest in the demoscene and making my own seems really fun. My problem is I don't know how to program but I don't mind learning, but I'm not sure how to go about it. I've read that you learn a language and make small programs to automate stuff or help you with things like that but I don't really have tasks like that. So should I just jump right into C and OpenGL? Should I make a bunch of stuff in C or C++ before getting into graphics? This is the part where I'm really lost on.

>>25583 >there are days when the power goes out for absolutely no reason and I just flip. Maybe you should consider switching for a laptop or getting yourself an UPS for the office. What country are you in just out of curiosity?

>>28113 Not to discourage you, but if you have to ask, then you most likely don't have what it takes to get in any demoscene. You have to be an extremely curious uber-nerd who has fun pouring countless hours trying to figure out how to draw a pixel on a Commodore 64, then how to draw a line, then a triangle, then a triangle colored in with a color, then a triangle colored in with a gradient, then a triangle filled in with striped rainbow colors, then a triangle filled in with animated stripes of colors, then a triangle that rotates around the screen while retaining the animated stripes of colors, then writing collision detection for the sides of your screens and having your triangle move around the screen with a velocity and bumping around the screen, then collision detection between two triangles moving around the screen, etc. etc. If you don't have this free time and endless curiosity, and a good understanding of at least algebra, trigonometry, geometry, linear algebra, etc. to figure out even fancier visualizations to compute on the screen, which most people don't have (myself included), then you're not going to go far. Demoscenes are where autistic savants thrive.

>>28144 >Demoscenes are where autistic savants thrive. Or get bored quickly.

>>23831 How many of you here have a career in IT without an IT degree? How much do you earn a year? Do you work freelance or at a company? Do you work remotely

>>28186 My experience is a bit unconventional, but people will take you and pay fairly nice money even without a degree. My anecdote is based on Europe. I was in compulsory military service and there I met someone who was working before that. He breached the topic of work and thought I would be a good addition to the team, so I got invited. There was no real application process, because it's a small company and when you get invited like that things work differently. I started out with what is minimum wage here for people in my profession, which is already somewhat good pay. As I got more useful, I got several promotions, because I was now in charge of important systems and processes that my boss doesn't want to fail. Fast forward a bit, I settled into a rhythm where I study and work part-time and change into full-time during holidays. My base pay (for full- and part-time work) is 46.2k euros a year before taxes. Taxes are less significant for part-time work, which gets me to around 750 euros a month for ten hours a week. It wasn't remote work, at least until the pandemic hit. Now I'm regularly working from home, except when the work I'm doing can't be done from home. It's not really a career but more of a crutch while I finish my studies. It's tough work to do both, but rewarding. Can recommend going for a smaller company, because you will have more freedom in choosing how to solve problems, more flexibility and it will overall be easier to cement your position in the company. Keep in mind I already had specialized in IT during secondary school. Hope this my sample size 1 statistic will help you, lain.

>>28113 you can learn C and OpenGL at the same time. Google around and you will find great tuts. For C just go through K&R, do the exercises you can do. What's difficult about C is that it's a very small language and you have to write out a lot of things that other langs babby you with.

>>28186 You need degree only when you get to work for others. Nothing stops you from starting own IT business and working for yourself even when you didn't finish primary school. LOL Webdev or sysadmin administriting VPNs for others or webmastering pages on several hostings for many clients are probably easiest niches to start in. In case you expect to work in more ambitious areas of programming where some math knowledge on univ level is required - here having at least a bachelor might be a key to prove some level of knowledge in case you cannot prove it otherwise.

>apply for software dev position >after the interview with a random dev at the company I have a skill test >no sweat >it's proctored on some piece of soykaf software called examity >literal spyware browser plugin >if I was trying to write some malware to spy on college kids I'd check it for vulnerabilities >spin up a windows VM with nothing but chrome >not enough RAM to stream video >increase RAM, talk to literal Indian tech support to reset exam >this time the popup won't open >finally it gets manually proctored over zoom by another Indian guy >start two hours late >half of the test is SAT soykaf, not hard just mindnumbing in the way obscurantist word problems are >by the time I get to the programming problems I'm braindead because didn't drink my soycaf >just phone it in on the last programming problem >admit to the fact in the comments It probably would have cost the company less to just have some bored HR chick proctor these things or even just accept the occasional cheating by letting us take it on our honor. Whatever I just checked my email and got an offer letter from a much better place to work anyway, so wasted about 4 hours of my time. I'd hate to be in a university that uses this online proctor soykaf right now though LOL!

>>23831 is there a specific job title or common keyword for a dev who >writes the libraries and tools that other devs use, less focus on the consumer facing parts >writes utility CLI apps (using Go, Python, etc. not just small Bash scripts) >optimizes and monitors software performance >knows and deals with low level stuff when needed I wanna be that guy. Basically, I want to do the stimulating stuff that requires some thought or CS background beyond choosing the framework or library or how to name this and that CRUD endpoint, but not necessarily super hard C++ wizard tier stuff (I'm not ready for that yet). I've read up a bit on DevOps, SRE, and "IT infrastructure engineering" and it kinda sounds like what I'm looking for, but I fear that I'll look for this and end up doing just boring sysadmin. How hard is it to find a job like this as a junior? Is this type of job too niche?

>>28520 You'll work on tooling in most jobs, but for webshit it's called backend (giggity) developer, and It's not so glamorous. If you've never done professional software development before your goal should just be to get any job you can. Once you're experienced then you can be pickier.

How hard could it be for someone with two master's degrees in math and compsci to get into finance? Say, companies like Jane Street? Considering I'm not from the US.

>>28520 I do "devops" / "cloud engineering" (I hate these buzzwords) and I end up building lots of tools and automation for other teams and developers. Not much "low level" programming though. I mainly use Python and Go.

>>23831 Hey guys, I have a job interview soon for being IT/a system administrator for a solar company startup. Any tips for ace-ing my interview? I have no formal education but they said that wasn't a huge factor. Supposedly mostly i'll be working with iPads and setting up computers for people. My skills mostly lie in linux/unix sysadmin soykaf and some high level scripting languages like perl and ruby.

>>28659 Be prepared to talk about everything on your resume, and ask questions about the duties. If it's a small company, then my experience is that anything above and beyond what's posted will wow them. I took an IT post while I search for programming jobs, didn't even change up my resume, so there was a ton of irrelevant programming items. >>28624 Fintech will eat that sort of thing up. Just apply and find out. Personal finance related projects will probably help. Make sure they're willing to sponsor visas so they don't waste your time.

>>28624 >two master's degrees how old are you and how much time did that take? did you literally spend 10+ years in uni or am i missing something?

>>28699 I spent 6 years. I'm 27, education is free where I live, and our degrees count as the equivalent of Master's in the US and Europe. Both of the degrees shared a lot of math so I didn't have to take the same course twice, just took the one that had more contents than the other and asked for credits. It's not that uncommon here, to study math and compsci, or physics and compsci/math.

>>28701 What country do you live where a undergrad degree counts as a master in Europe and US? Also, 6 years seems to little. 5 years for Engineering bachelor's degree + 3 year for master's in my country.

>>28702 Argentina, you? It's different for engineering here. But in Exact Sciences you can apply directly for a PhD program in the US or Europe. Check out Juan Maldacena's case.

>>28703 Brazil. Also, I got it wrong, it's 2 years for master's here.

Hello lain, I'm sort of in an emergency situation right now. Already made a thread about this but got locked and pointed to this one. I'm in some sort of an emergency situation where I have to find a job within 60 days. Problem is that I totally wasn't prepared for it and even though I have 2 years of experience with programming I don't have a single finished project to put on my resume. Went through some job advertisement websites and some employers seem to value a burning desire to learn instead of a CS degree too. Since I have limited time I mainly want to apply to as many jobs as possible but what should I put on my resume when I don't have any previous experience? Getting a minimum wage job is out of question since I don\t speak the language in this country yet so I'll have to opt for something in the IT industry. Aside from some programming experience in C(++). Python, Haskell, Go and Bash my only real skill is knowing how to use GNU/Linux. What is the best recommendation that you can give me lainon?

>>28801 It's not realistic. You have no bargaining power. Even CS grads have to send hundreds of targeted, well-written, succint resumes for junior/entry-level positions until a few busineses are even willing to entertain giving them an interview only to get rejected by the majority of these in the end. I think you're lying about your minimum wage job situation. Just bite the bullet and get a real job.

Anyone here work in testing/QA? I've got an interview coming up for a software engineer in testing position, and I have no idea what I'm doing. Is the position hard? Can I get by while only writing a few assertions and leaving it at that? What kind of things should I be preparing for before the interview? Thank you all in advance!

>>28843 https://www.tutorialspoint.com/software_testing/ https://www.guru99.com/software-testing.html https://ayshahrah.github.io/seg/swq.html https://www.globalapptesting.com/blog/software-testing https://github.com/cybergeekgyan/Software-Tester-QA- http://thetestingmap.org https://abhivaikar.github.io/howtheytest/

Any of pivoted from web dev to another field? Any tip? I'm self taught, no CS degree, currently working as web developer but the overall repetitiveness along with having to deal with stuff related to design and keeping up to date with front end frameworks is not only making my day to day really frustrating but also killing the love I felt for programming when I started a couple of years ago.

>>23915 hello my guy, how are you doin?

It varies. One my colleagues who were hired into a QA position straight out of college was essentially tricked into a manual testing role. I know one guy who took a tester position and his entire job was writing unit tests for legacy code. Another who wrote unit tests for new code by other developers (bad practice if you ask me, but I guess some developers don't consider testing to be part of their jobs). Unfortunately, companies have diverse definitions of "quality assurance" and "testing" so can't make any predictions from that information alone. Generally, it's not going to be a hard position. Knowing what an assertion is probably puts you ahead of most of the other applicants. I partially work on developing our framework for writing and running integration tests and some of the developers I deal with come into it with no idea of what an assertion is. If you know what languages the company uses, familiarizing yourself with the most common test frameworks for them is a good idea.

>>28801 Old post but since then I've changed my mind. I managed to buy myself some more time and I think at this point I'm just gonna start focusing on what can get me hired instead of what I'm passionate about. What does lain think about learning Typescript? I'll probably have to learn Javascript first but I guess that's fine as long as I don't fall for soydev memes. Any other skills I can learn that are in high demand these days?

>>29226 >Any other skills I can learn that are in high demand these days? Only way you can know is by checking the job descriptions/requirements for what you'd apply to. >I think at this point I'm just gonna start focusing on what can get me hired instead of what I'm passionate about. Cashiers/clerks, waiters, warehouse workers, call center reps and cleaners are in far higher demand than web developers and programmers. So if your goal is truly to get hired no matter what, the IT industry is one of the last places to check, especially given your lack of relevant work experience or university credentials.

>>29235 Honestly I agree with this guy I wrote this: https://learnaifromscratch.github.io/ which is specifically trying to get anons money, esp this: https://learnaifromscratch.github.io/algorithms.html which is designed for passing interviews but if you need to make money, you do what is needed by any means necessary. I worked landscaping for min wage and taught myself theoretical compsci in the mornings and evenings, just take whatever is intersting for YOU and don't chase money, and you'll be fine in the end.

>>29260 There are many faster ways to money than computer science related carieer paths. In my country it would be wielding stuff as industrial worker, you can also earn good cash working for brokerage firms by selling high what you bought low. Starting own business in whatever branch of industry or services is also much faster path to being rich as fast as very early twenties. You don't even need to be too clever, just earn more than you spent on production long enough.

Here you go https://youtu.be/lS9X19BAoJQ

http://www.gwan.com/blog/20160405.html

I want to study computer science but my body disagrees with sitting down all day watching a screen. I am scared of investing a lot of time into something that I will ultimately reject and render my degree completely useless. I always just assumed that I would work as a programmer but now I am doubtful. I realize that most people have desk jobs anyway. As it is I have trouble sitting for the large amounts of time needed to work on my projects, right now I am typing on my phone and walking. So I ask, can the problems that come with living sedentarily on a computer be overcome by lifestyle changes? And can a computer science degree be applied to other fields? Are there any fields like comouter science in spirit?

>>29290 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYUZAF3ePFE

>>29290 You'll be swimming against the current in many ways, but I don't think it's a fundamental problem and if you're very good at what you do people will cater to whatever weird work environment you demand. I work from home and if you counted it up, most of my day is probably spent outside in the garden or sitting down with pen and paper because that's where I can actually think.

>>29292 >>29291 Thanks.

I have a good job: small team, interesting field, nice language (Clojure), good pay. Even with all of these upsides, I can't help but feel dreadful every time I wake up and have to work. 8 hours for 5 days a week for the rest of my life just feels so wrong that I can't make terms with it. Just the sound of the Slack notification gets me on my nerves, like PTSD. Anyone experiencing something similar? How do you deal with it? Maybe part-time jobs or freelancing are an alternative?

>>29315 does your job have insurance for psychotherapy or psychiatry?

>>29316 Not really. But I do have health insurance. Are you suggesting that I should get help from a psychologist?

>>29317 Why do you have to work for the rest of your life? Focus on cutting expenses, and building your savings/ revenu streams, and the light at the end of the tunnel will move much closer.

>>29266 I don't want to get into the field for money, I want to get in there so that I can have a job that I actually like which pays me money to get better at it. The problem with other min wage jobs is that they will take up time that could be spent learning CS.

>>29290 >I want to study computer science but my body disagrees with sitting down all day watching a screen. Uh, use a standing desk? Any decent company will have standing desks available.

>>24286 I LOVE low-level programming, but have a hard time finding companies using it. Where do you look for these jobs?

>>29381 There are also inexpensive stands you can place on a normal desk to turn it into a standing desk and under-the-desk treadmills for turning it into a walking desk setup.

>>29286 They say it takes one to know one, and boy, that Google guy is a moron.

>>29385 Linux Foundation, FreeBSD Foundation, etc. can pay you if you present them with project that can interest them - meaning developing low level stuff for their code or participating in TODO lists. Also zillion of robotics companies. Hardware manufacturers, etc. There is trucktone of work to do for low level programmers.

>>29286 I like how it spawned 4 pages long debate on Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701272

>>29524 >There is trucktone of work to do for low level programmers. But few willing to pay them.

>>29545 Hello Anon, I was wondering if it would be possible for you to provide us with a source to support that claim for those of us who are interested in verifying it's validity? Thanks in advance, Anon

Hello, Lain. I have been working in a corporate environment for about 12 years now, i make a lot more money than i need and at this point all i want is to get out, but how? I don't have nearly enough to retire, i can barely stay afloat for a year with my savings, so i was thinking, how can i fix that? I don't mind working long hours as long as i'm alone in a project and have a chance to rest on bad days, but i'm not sure what i can do to monetize my skills outside of a corporate settings. I thought about making a mobile app with a subscription model and i'm sure it would be good but i have no marketing skills so it seems pointless. Making $2k a month would be enough for me to leave my job, but it seems nearly impossible to make a little bit of money online, either you make a ton of money and create a new company or you make 0. For context, the skills i'm trying to monetize are: - managing and creating agile practices and tools (specially kanban-centric) - modern web dev (react, elixir, django, ruby on rails, fastAPI, devops in general with pretty much all cloud environments except for heroku, graphql and sql) - modern cellphone app dev (flutter, pretty much) The reason i have xp in so many techs is because the companies i've worked for weren't specialists, we do whatever the client needs and they rarely have the same stack. TL;DR: how to monetize software development skills so i can stay at home and masturbate for far more hours than a doctor would think is healthy

>i make a lot more money than i need >i can barely stay afloat for a year with my savings These two points seem mutually-exclusive to me. It's a sorry state of the world that (((they))) have convinced you that that's "a lot more money than [you] need". People used to be able to support entire families, often with grandparents included, on a single wageslave-tier job. By the way, /λ/ has an employment-related sticky >>23831. Sage for killing a thread.

>>29547 Source?? Come on! This is just the default state of capitalism: Almost all work is underpaid, even the "high paying" jobs.

>>29551 Have you thought about becoming an independent contractor?

>>29553 You made a claim that sounded like the low-level programming job market is especially bad. So obviously basing this claim on the argument that ALMOST ALL job markets are bad is not a satisfying answer to >>29547's demand for sources. Here's an analogy: "Eating bananas is dangerous." "What? Why?" "Stupid question. It's a fact that you can choke to death on almost anything." However I think might be right because the companies who need low-level devs make less money than companies needing web-/application-level devs on average. But this is just a vague speculative guess and doesn't take into account that there's less devs who specialize in low-level programming.

Hi, what are some popular IT jobs other than web development? For info, I'm studying cs and I'm in the sixth semester now. I'll probably get a job as a web dev at some point, but I'd like to do something else at least for a while, doesn't matter how well paid it is. Thanks.

>>29577 Embedded systems programming, mobile development, penetration testing, automated testing, data mining/scraping. Backend development for web services may also scratch your itch.

>>29578 Thanks for the tips :)

I'm getting kinda desperate for money and thought about becoming a wagey soon. The issue is that I have experience with programming, web and stuff, but it never was under my real name. It's just lot of hobby things I've made under a nickname. Should I put them on some portfolio or something? I feel like it's a lose/lose since I most likely just dox myself, while at the same time turn away employers off by not having everything be a sterile crud app with flat web design. On the other hand, I have nothing under my real name besides school projects, from which no one would hire me right now because they are kinda basic. It just doesn't pop out. Any ideas?

>>29603 it's ok to dox yourself, because no one cares who you are, so long as you don't associate yourself with negative things

>>29603 >while at the same time turn away employers off by not having everything be a sterile crud app with flat web design I think many employers won't care.

Is there a comprehensive list of good remote jobs website?

>>23831 After two months of sending out as many applications as possible and talking to recruiters non-stop, and interviewing constantly, I've actually landed a job. It's not programming though, mostly just writing regex expression filters for network security. The pay is nearly the same for developer jobs in the area and all employees gush about the work/life balance. Despite this, I'm a bit disappointed it's not a development position somewhere, especially because only now that I've started my job I am getting interview requests from many of those applications. For those reading this: do you have much experience with the cybersecurity side of the industry, and if so, do you prefer a more development focused role or more on the cybersecurity side of things? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

I'm planning the road ahead to start building a portfolio but I'm still a noob, so should I study things like design patterns before building said portfolio or just do it as I go? I'd like to have the kind of organized code someone with enough coding experience and knowledge of design patterns would have, but at the same time I wonder if I'm not using that as an excuse to not "get practical" for too long.

>>30121 Most companies hire remotely in North America and Canada. The best remote jobs are the best office jobs of yesterday. Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, Goog, Stripe, Robinhood, etc etc

Is being a wage slave for a big corp the only way to make decent money for backend developers? Like, almost all of the freelancing or digital products are better fitted for frontend devs. Any tips on generating side income for a backend developer other than starting a SaaS?

Does the project you put on your resume have to have anything to do with the language(s) requested of the technical interview? I learned a bit of Solidity and smart contract fuarrrkery over the last two years playing around with memecoin production, but I'm novice at best in Python and C. I'm still currently in school, but I'm a bit long in the tooth for a student.

>>30221 My guess is a corporation would care more about your past relevant work experience (who you worked for and your role) and how prestigious your alma mater was, whereas a small company would want all that plus expect some proof you're already skilled with the relevant languages and tools as they're less willing to train new hires.

>>30165 Lots of big companies are going back to office. Most seem to be starting with a hybrid style arrangement, but I think long term they want people back. Anyone looking for work right now should ask their recruiter if the company will be remote forever.

>>30157 Build your project learn about a design pattern at the same time. A simple one is SOLID, read a few articles and apply those principles.

>>30220 yes, it's mostly well established companies that split frontend/backend because they have engineers and products. you will get experience with startups/freelance work but they're mostly looking for full stack due to limited resources.

>>30150 Way i see it, you're getting paid for less work. If you think/know that your pay is adequate, stick to what you do, even if it means that your job gives you no mental stimulation. I'm a dev who happens to sit next to two cybersec guys, their job is a lot more research-focused, and therefore, they have a lot more leeway when it comes to actually getting soykaf done. To you, this hopefully means that you get more free time to focus on things that either make you happy, or earn you more money. I got into a proper dev job after about 9 months of interning and interviewing. All I got out of it was a slightly above-average wage (when compared to general job market) and a strong dose of depression. All I've learned is that wage-caging is no way to live, too much of what you like will simply make you hate it and that i'm incompatible with the idea of a 9-5 job.

how the fuarrrk can you guys stand to stare at a computer screen from 9–6 for 5 days a week for the rest of your life?

>>30346 >how the fuarrrk can you guys stand to stare at a computer screen from 9–6 for 5 days a week for the rest of your life? Easy, have a short life. Jokes aside though, I decided to go on walks every time I can. It helps somewhat. Obviously if this can be done depends on where you live. But it's worth a try. You feel a bit refreshed after it. But no, I honestly don't think I would be able to handle just programming for decades without going crazy

>>30346 Implying thats what they do all day, they have meetings, they have study time, they have nap rooms and game rooms, etc.

>>30346 Working remote means I can step away when I want. I exercise mid-day or even take a nap if I feel like it. Plus I get paid well, I no longer have to push carts in the hot summer heat like I did in my early 20's. There are so many people who work harder and for less pay than devs do. We have it made, if your mindset allows you to recognize it.

>>30346 i couldn't. i quit and got a gardening job.

Should I learn excel? I thought I wouldn't need to unless I didn't do anything related to programming, like a generic support position or something.

I've always been interested in security and related lower level things (such as ASM and reverse engineering) but I never got around actually doing any of it because it requires a background I do not yet have (although I'm working on it). With that in mind, is it possible to know if a security job would be a good fit for me? I've looked a bit into it in the past and it seems that around where I live most gigs like that would be basically watching over a dev team to keep them from doing stupid soykaf, and the pay is awful for all the studying required to get there. If I managed to get a remote job paying in dollars or euros, however, I would live like a king, but there are some caveats: these jobs aren't as common as dev positions; they might be only partially remote; they might require a security clearance (in some cases I've even seen the requirement of being an US citizen); I'm kinda late to the game since I'm in my 20s. I would really like to dive deeper into security but time is limited and I'd like to ensure I can earn a nice living first, so I'm trying to figure out if it's worth investing the time into that endeavor.

>>30448 > I'm kinda late to the game since I'm in my 20s. Jeezaz, you are such an elderly person. Your brain probably dried up already and became a rotten prune at this point? No one gives a fuarrrk about your age unless you are in late 40s and switching to IT after 30 years of being a potato farmer in rural Ireland without any experience in IT. Heck, there are many branches of IT when typical entry age is late 20s/early 30s because younger people in most cases have too little experience to enter these fields and have to actually study a lot on their own or at university. This is not modeling where age matters. This is experience and skills based industry where logical thinking and wish to learn new thing is a key factor in separation of boys who entered industry for buk$ and think that they can spend 30 years just writing webpages in a single framework from men who actually represent something with their skills, interests and above of all the brainpower. Age also does not matter as this is not a type of industry where you can gain a position by sleeping with your supervisor. Gosh. It's also unlikely that your supervisor would be interested in visiting the same nightclubs, fuarrrking the same type of people in toilets there or attending the same concerts as you. Which is another reason why age barely matters here. Especially when you are a relative toddler to most of humanity - and this is how literally everyone older than people in their 20s see people in their 20s. Less offers? Of fuarrrking course. This is not segment of industry where there is a truckload of people. Specialists in niches are in deficit. Therefore there is less competition but also much higher entry level. By much higher I mean you have to not be a half illiterate code monkey webdeveloper who don't even really have to finish high school to be educated enough to write some service for local pawnshop or illegal dildo dealer using tutorials from youtube. Learn that world and even IT is not consisting purely from lainchan dwellers with 4 digit IQ who started writing own shellcode exploits at the age of three years old and hacked Pentagon at the age of nine. 90 percent is much dumber than you and have much lesser knowledge at the end of their IT career than many people here have before their 1st job. But be warned that security is mostly analytic job and it gets old really fast. Even if you are typical anlytics oriented programmer (meaning you prefer to read code of others rather than write your own - yes this is still a legit skill and desired in many fields even more than writing the code). So do not expect grass to be a lot greener than in other fields. And there are fields where security measures are so dumb that even more intelligent 13 years old can became an expert in breaking them pretty fast. Auto fuarrrking motive is a good example of such field. I remember reading articles back in late 90s about dangers that mixing cars and computing + radio devices can bring. And what? And fuarrrking literally every fuarrrking mistake possible described over 20 years ago was happily implemented by automotive retards. fuarrrk these morons. Stop overthinking your age and skills and just take your ass out of the basement and visit several interviews for jobs in area of IT you are interested in. Even if you won't pass any single one you would have much better orientation in what employers are looking for in candidates. I hope this helps in you having a reality check. If yes - you are welcome. If you get triggered instead - fuarrrk you for wasting my time.

>>30510 >This is not modeling where age matters. If only you knew how bad things really are. You're always judged by your looks, and unfortunately youth is desired in programming. I have an older friend who has worked at a lot of major companies over his career and his experience is that you are heavily judged for staying in technical roles as you age and are expected to "retire" to management or become a "specialist" (use one technology until you die) after a certain point. He yes his hair to hide the gray and has an American Psycho tier skincare routine just to keep being a code monkey. That said, the poster you replied to is just being neurotic. It's fine to get in during your 20s.

>>30512 If he always been a code monkey - it's not strange. Code monkeys are expected to be cheap, exploitable and do not demand rises as long as possible. The longer experience the less fitting for such position you become. People working outside the code monkey crowd barely get affected by such nonsense as they tend to work on their own and often do not even see their clients in person or via video when they get older. If after years you did not became a specialist - well, you literally wasted years of life. If you became one and have problems keeping job because you have gray hair you are failing at finding a proper employer or wasting your time by working for someone else instead of on your own. If you have no idea how to find a client after so many years - you either choose too generic branch of industry where you have huge copettition or you for some strange reason never understood what environment are you working for.

>>30512 >You're always judged by your looks, and unfortunately youth is desired in programming. I Nope. They are not. They are desired only in places when naivity is a plus. Stop working for a code monkey farms. >or become a "specialist" (use one technology until you die) Specialist is someone who understands a specific branch or branches of IT and see interconnections between them. Not someone who writes web pages in django for 30 years. Using single technology is an antithesis of being a specialist.

>>30515 Or in other words that description is description of a laborer not a specialist. That lainon has a very strange idea what "specialist" is. As nope, using one technology is not a specialist. It's an epithome of code monkey. Writing code only and doing nothing beyond that is also strange choice of career path. Code is a tool used to achieve a goal of creation of bigger tool. Specialist must know stuff about a goal and methods of reaching that goal, preferably in as short and efficient way as possible and poses elasticity in learning new stuff and/or adopting existing solutions to solve problems.

>>30515 >Nope. They are not. Whatever you want to believe. The looks halo is real in any career, and engineering is no exception. I'm not talking about some newgrad contracting sweatshop. This guy is a high level SE at a company that's definitely in any of those cutesy acronyms for "top" N firms.

>>30519 The more you post the more you prove me right wit that story. Nowdays "Top N Firms" are code monkey jobs in 99 percent of positions. Code monkeys are IT analog of cannon fodder in the army. So point stands still. No matter how deep in denial you are. I worked in a company that was a contractor to one of these "top FAGMAN" and we been doing code monkey grade project. The code that was created for them was probably one of the soykaftiest code our company ever created because of time constraints and clients desire to get code fast and for cheap. They get exactly what they paid for. And they were happy. Code monkey herd is what is wanted by most corpos nowadays. It's no longer times of Xerox PARC or Bell Labs research and development being top names in Industry that every highschooler knows as a place to be cool to work at. In our non "big names" projects (yet still important for international IT) we had multiple people aged closer to 40 something than early 20s and they did mostly programming and been hired because of their experience. No one have been screening them for their balding patterns or hair shade. If you are thinking we would hire a 23 years old twink fresh out of univ who barely learaned how to code over 40 years old specialist who worked in multiple programing languages and on many platforms you are deeply mistaken.

I'm afraid you're basically all bullshitters, my dear colleagues, no one of you is right !!! It's true that tech jobs point more to fast careers of young people. It's not about looks, however; it's all about neuroplasticity that translates tangibly to time necessary for brain to understand a new system, code, programming language or technology. This is something no one can change - ageing changes cognitive capabilities, which peak at about ~20-25 for most people and then slowly decrease. The higher you are in the ladder the higher is demand for fast, creative solutions. Before you ask - no, it isn't just 'late diagnosed blah blah blah something', amphetamine will not fix that. It works like this as well in art, science and military. Basically in every area of human activity that demands intellectual activity. On the other hand, age is not a disadvantage in management and politics, because intellectual freshness and sharp mind is not essential there; this explains process of progressive pushing older people into management (outside burnout and other causes). This doesn't mean that you should be discouraged and assume that you have no chance in this profession because you are 35 years old (like me, and I'm still a mid). Not every sector of technology is rapidly changing and requiring extreme plasticity. Actually more prestigious occupations always provide better employment conditions - higher wages and better job security; so I doubt someone who is really good at this will suffer precarisation. No one says however code monkeys are not needed. A pair of hands to tap on the keyboard will always come in handy. You always earn well without overload in such way, and what's to want more from career? But really: so called "top" employers need first at all competent people, and this can be measured by several factors in which experience is only one element of the formula. Most of people overestimate their competence and it's normal, common cognitive bias. Realistic notion of own's competence actually decreases one's chance to get optimal job, this is known as impostor syndrome and lot of people in programming experience this; and this is getting stronger especially when our whole culture is very much about looking smart, diligent and flawless. If anyone says that he or she didn't succeed because of irrational discrimination, like appearance or unconscious bias, you should think doble time does this person really have grounds for such an assumption? Most often when we fail we rationalise, and it's good for our mental health, that we did well but ~lot of reasons~. The truth is - you never know. The truth is that if someone really discriminated you, because of some stupid unimportant soykaf that doesn't create value, you really didn't want to work for this person or company, because their management is probably hellish as well, and they didn't pay well. There's statistically observed bias in many factors that can be denied. But in individual situation many more factors are impacting the final result; we just can't apply general theory for our specific case. What I mean is that it's important to stress that we shouldn't be evaluated by bullshit factors, but that should never impact our plans and expectations - because such attitude is only limiting and works like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Many women in IT actually suffer mostly because they're actually prepared to be evaluated on gender stereotypes or looks, and that unconsciously lowers their expectations; of course this doesn't affect only women (that's I'm against such progressive programs that focus on problems rather than opportunities or leftist activism involving constant masochism) but lot of men as well, which is clearly visible here (as we know how chanboard demographics mostly looks)

Nice larp >>30540 >peaks at 25, that explains why scientists are slowly moving toward age of 40 with their most important publications/discoveries compared to age of 20-23 100 years ago. Yes, I'm sarcastic toward you.

Hello lains! Is it at all possible to land a linux job by getting a LPIC-1,2 or some red hat/comptia certs? Any possibilities for remote work? I don't have a CS degree, that'll probably make the situation a lot worse. Are there any lains who managed to get linux/sysadmin jobs without a formal CS education?

>>30577 the industry standard for getting into sysadmin work is supposedly a combination of COMPTIA a+ and a Linux foundation cert

>>30577 Look for shared hosting support jobs offers. But remember that is just a starter position.