career-advice

[spark cobalt]

Tomorrow's Happy Hour at my company and still not legally allowed to drink

Oh wait nvm it's on Thursday

[dreamy spade]

I don't agree with companies using degrees as their only metric to determine whether a candidate is employable or not. At the end of the day, I got to give what the customers wants. If a customer asks for a hamburger with mayonnaise , cucumbers and relish, I got to give it to them even though I think it's a disgusting burger otherwise I won't get paid. So if they want me to have a degree, I got to get it even though I don't agree with it.

[mortal wedge]

There are aspects of the hiring process I disagree with, but I still try to advise people that that is the paradigm they're working with.

[balmy spade]

Same here. Unless you have the experience, and the sheer stubbornness, to overcome the soft requirement of a degree it can be the easier path to work toward one.

Don't stop looking for the job just because you're chasing a degree though.

[plush geode]

Dam everyone smart here

[smoky quest]

There is also the false premise imho that the value of a degree is in the paper.

[summer roost]

it seems like a false premise that there are companies using degrees as their only metric, also.

[balmy spade]

I'd hazard to suggest that the degree doesn't get much attention beyond the initial HR filter but that's personal experience only.

[hot terrace]

Does anyone here regret majoring in computer science?

[mortal wedge]

Can't regret something I didn't do! 🏃🏿‍♂️

[dreamy spade]

In the paper? What do you mean?

[smoky quest]

It's correlation vs causation.
A degree means you have been educated in a certain amount of subjects, including theoretical. They will also include projects and internships

[smoky quest]

Like conflating the fact someone has a degree for the education that came with it

[dreamy spade]

I had a company write back to me and said they denied my application because I didn't have a degree even though I have a project portfolio on GitHub.

[balmy spade]

Most likely. I shouldn't comment on it at all. I'm far from the target audience or norm on the matter.

[peak halo]

everyone has to recognize that getting a degree is a tradeoff (you're spending years of your life doing something that is often difficult, and you're probably going into debt to do it), but I can't think of any classmates for whom it didn't pay off financially.

[summer roost]

the people who started a CS degree and either didn't finish it or finished it but regret finishing it probably don't spend their time hanging out on programming discords, in most cases.

[summer roost]

right. That doesn't mean that it was their only metric. It means that it was one of their metrics.

[lunar ibex]

Hey guys, new here 👋

[mortal wedge]

People debate how useful college is for learning. I tell them that regardless of whether they think it's important to their own learning process employers value it. So if the useful of the learning is X (where people disagree on X) and the useful to employers is 9000, I focus on the constant by saying that however useful or non useful you find the college experience to be, at the very least it is effective in helping you get that job.

I have maybe been spending too much time in numpy

[peak halo]

I wouldn't think that people who started a CS degree and dropped out are in the intended scope of their question. but if it is, that's a worst-of-both-worlds situation--taking on debt, but not having the added earning potential to pay it off.

[mortal wedge]

Yeah. That's a worst case failure mode

[smoky quest]

Are there specific points you believe that you may regret? Do you have some concerns?

[hot terrace]

Well I’ve been thinking about venturing into the world of programming and looking into going to school for it but what if I don’t like it? Is it something I’m going to want to do for the rest of my life? That’s what it comes down to.

[summer roost]

there's ways to not finish besides dropping out, FWIW. Like switching majors.

[balmy spade]

You would not need to do it "for the rest of your life", hopefully. Just like today, you'll have the choice to do something else.

[white relic]

Is there something else you think you might want to do "for the rest of your life" instead?

[smoky quest]

We are lucky that most of the tools are available for free with an abundant set of videos, books and other resources.
So do not hesitate to explore it yourself today!
Make websites, backends, bots, robots, ml, ai or even games!

[lunar ibex]

Start with codeacademy

[peak halo]

it's just as well that you figure out if programming appeals to you before you enroll in a CS program. Because CS is mostly about theoretical math.

[white relic]

I don't regret not majoring in CS.

[hot terrace]

Well this may seem out of place but I’ve been “coding” in Minecraft for nearly a decade, it’s not a real language but recently I got into skripting, which is another way to do it in mc and I’ve really enjoyed that. My buddies have recommended I start python if I want to venture out of the realm of mc and do stuff irl. The syntax looks a bit scary and it seems hard to remember all the special characters in the syntax

[lunar ibex]

It is hard. But thats where persistence comes in

[delicate bane]

stel remember that kiddo i told you about that wanted to be a DS? did i tell him the right thing to major in CS with a specialization rather than looking for a dedicated DS program? i just dont know any reputable ones on the undergrad level.

[smoky quest]

Practice makes perfect. But it also gets fun once you get past the initial steps.
https://automatetheboringstuff.com/ is a popular resource for beginners too

[hot terrace]

You guys that do this for a living, do you have the energy to work on any of your own projects on your days off. ?

[lunar ibex]

I actually recommend codeacademy more IMO then automate the boring stuff if one were to start off. More interactive. Both are good though

[lunar ibex]

Its all about time management, if you want to find the time to do something you will find it

[peak halo]

depends on how difficult the project is, how motivated I feel, and how much coffee I've had.

[smoky quest]

You are going to have some biased replies since you are asking on a programming related discord server. So yes!

[hot terrace]

Nice, okay thanks guys.

[lunar ibex]

@hot terrace

If i can give you a word of advice dont think about it too much. Just jump in and start, you will start gaining momentum if what you are learning interests you and matches your style of taking in information.

[balmy spade]

Yes, many of us do this for a living. Yes, we have energy for our own hobbies after work. Its important to keep that Jenga puzzle as balanced as one can.

[summer roost]

looks a bit scary and it seems hard to remember
Funny, that's how I feel about minecraft

[delicate bane]

ah i have a meme for this

[delicate bane]

i have a couple projects to explore some stuff i find interesting but i usually try to keep them small otherwise im not likely to finish them or get very far. which is also okay imo as long as you enjoy the process.

sometimes i just read or do some writing on my days off too. or i go travel lol.

[lunar ibex]

lol

[balmy spade]

I can't build a linked list but I can create six different types of t-flipflops and several xor gates in red-stone. Hire me.

[summer roost]

I can't imagine you can't create a linked list. There's no simpler data structure.

[balmy spade]

I know what it is, how it works. I've never written one to my knowledge.

[lunar ibex]

i dont even know how to create a list

[red plover]

hey @codeine#1240

[dreamy spade]

Look how long my application status has been in process for. I took this screenshot a minute ago. It's really tough out here man.

[delicate bane]

heres a thought. but it might be more appropriate for #pedagogy. but what if we had more games for kids that lead to a soft intro to the world of programming. that would be neat.

[true harness]

well, they denied you. they just didn't bother. either that or they're waiting for some time to start reviewing

[dreamy spade]

idk why it said in process then

[balmy spade]

Because like everything else there is a human on the other side of that interface and we are amazingly good at not finishing input tasks.

[smoky quest]

There is a huge competition for internships. Companies get hundreds and thousands of applicants. So they may go through some at a time.
Given this is from back april, that may just have been one of the "always open" ad.
If you don't have a degree, it's also very common for companies to just ignore you since internships are meant for students and self taught people should just look for a job

[dreamy spade]

I have "under review" for this job.

[dreamy spade]

it's also very common for companies to just ignore you since internships are meant for students and self taught people should just look for a job

What will it mean if I graduate then if it's meant for students?

[smoky quest]

If you have graduated from school, then internships aren't for you either

[dreamy spade]

wtf

[smoky quest]

How so?
If you have graduated, you are ready for a job and should look for one

[dreamy spade]

I should just fail an exam on purpose then

[smoky quest]

that would be missing the point

[dreamy spade]

It will probably be easier to get an internship than if I graduate and look for a job.

[smoky quest]

Why would you be looking for an internship once you graduate?

[dreamy spade]

I read on Reddit all the time that it took people months to find a job after graduation

[dreamy spade]

To get experience and a little money in my pocket.

[summer roost]

failing classes and spending 5 years in university doesn't look great on a resume.

[dreamy spade]

Well graduating and not being able to land a job isn't great either.

[summer roost]

no, but it's also not very common.

[smoky quest]

There are even more candidates for a lesser amount of internships

[smoky quest]

And you feel you could not get experience and income from a real job once you have graduated?
Graduating means you have successfully completed your education and are ready for a job
Internships are for students to discover the professional world.

[dreamy spade]

And you feel you could not get experience and income from a real job once you have graduated?

Well I thought the point of internships is to get work experience before you are ready to get a full-time position.

[smoky quest]

Exactly! And your readiness changes once you graduate

[dreamy spade]

All of the education I have received was in a classroom , no practical workplace experience.

I'm positive there's more of an outcome of learning when you are given the real-world experience.

[smoky quest]

If your school did not have internships or practical workplace experience, that is not ideal.

[lunar ibex]

@dreamy spade

Do you have selfmade projects, a portfolio?

[dreamy spade]

Yes

[lunar ibex]

You are worried you cant combine that with word of mouth to land a job interview when you get out?

[dreamy spade]

I agree. Unfortunately for me I took the 2 year programming program with no co-op in the program. I took the summer off of school because I needed a break from it and I was trying to get an internship experience and I was not successful

[summer roost]

when do you graduate?

[dreamy spade]

I really think me not being in school nor having a degree was the cause of it.

[dreamy spade]

If I pass my finals , I will graduate next week.

[summer roost]

what degree will you graduate with?

[dreamy spade]

Computer Programming

[smoky quest]

Assuming you graduate with a cs degree, then just aim for a job. It's not awesome you don't have practical experience, but that won't block you from getting a job

[summer roost]

I haven't heard of a Computer Programming degree - what country are you in?

[dreamy spade]

I just have no idea what the work experience will be like. I know academic experience doesn't equate to work experience.

[dreamy spade]

Canada.

[summer roost]

hm. OK, I don't know a ton about Canada's software related degree options.

[summer roost]

you said it was a 2 year program - what courses did that include? Were they more math based and theoretical, or more skills based and practical?

[dreamy spade]

My program also has network and configuration courses as well as a network security course.

[dreamy spade]

I learned C , C# , Web Development , User Interface Design , Network Security , Network and Configuration courses , A Computer Math Funadamentals course , Technical Communication (Waste of time) , IT Project Management (waste) , Software Design Principles and etc.

[smoky quest]

It doesn't. And that's okay!

You won't get rejected on the premises of a lack of internship. As long as you have some interesting projects on your resume, you will be fine

[summer roost]

so that sounds much more skills focused and much less theoretical than a computer science degree. You may find that you already have more practical knowledge about building stuff than a CS graduate would. You also may find that you're lacking in some of their theoretical knowledge. You didn't mention a Data Structures and Algorithms course in there - that's a subject that you might want to read up on on your own, if your program didn't teach it.

[dreamy spade]

You didn't mention a Data Structures and Algorithms course in there - that's a subject that you might want to read up on on your own, if your program didn't teach it.

Ah yes. That is my C course. it is called Data Structures and Algorithms in C.

[dreamy spade]

You may find that you already have more practical knowledge about building stuff than a CS graduate would.

Does a Computer Science program give you any assignments on programming applications?

[smoky quest]

they do

[summer roost]

they do, but they don't get a lot of education that's focused around learning languages. They're mostly expected to learn the languages on the fly, and often only learn it well enough to complete whatever assignment they're working on

[true harness]

at least in the US there are some companies that offer internships to people that have "recently graduated", which could be like "in the last 6 months"

[blazing ivy]

no cause im not gonna risk my job being taken in a few years

[summer roost]

Really, check that link I sent. It should give you an idea of what AI can and can't do as things stand today.

[dreamy spade]

If this is true, it's unfortunate. People are just trying to make something out of themselves. It's expensive to make ends meet and minimum wage jobs don't cut it anymore.

This is my final year if I pass my exams

Yeah. I apply for everything. Intern and entry-level jobs.

Yes I am Canadian.

Unfortunately, no.

What is OAs? I don't use Leetcode , I go on CodeWars.

I took LinkedIn Online Assessments

They automatically inform me after I write them. I got a trophy for C , SQL , Linux and a few others. I can't remember them.

Yes

I thought that is an online assessment. I am getting assessed online.

Ohhhh so that's what you mean. Yeah I wrote a Candidate quiz. It was built like an IQ test rather than a coding assessment.

I started in May which was the time I took college off to find an internship.

I am still at war trying to fight off these two remaining exams. I'm not trying to fail. I'm trying to get the hell outta college with that diploma.

Noo not even close lol. But this is a handy link.

Oh is that right? How do you know?

Lol so they just copy and paste?

What happened to that guy's messages?

[summer roost]

Looks like they deleted them.

[pure raft]

Could you hit me with that link you sent? I think I have a pretty good idea of the logical capabilities and boundaries of having ai write all the code, but is there a chance this seriously downsizes the industry due to overproductivity? Or do I just need to learn how much bigger everything is and we’ll just reach the point where we’ll need to have a human pair of eyes on everything as a final barrier

[spark cobalt]

I have no clue what this link is but its piqued my interest. Please send as well.

[vapid jay]

Probably gonna start by finding a data set

Just gonna start with basics and learn the basics of python and panda

[shy rover]

i am a fresher to coding how to learn python program with an easy way and what are the resoures plz give me suggestions any one

[smoky quest]

https://automatetheboringstuff.com/ is a good starting point

[shy rover]

Ok I can try tq

[stray radish]

quick question, could you learn more then one career like could you learn to be a data scientist and a full stack dev

[spark cobalt]

I don't see why not. Just you probably wouldn't do both at the same time.

[stray radish]

lets say you learn both could you put that to your resume

[dense mesa]

You could put anything on your resume

[stray radish]

would you get a position to work for both?

[near ocean]

Probably not

[brave matrix]

ofc, the more you know, the better

[stray radish]

I found it

[brave matrix]

if youre into data but also like coding you should consider data engineering

[stray radish]

It’s called a full stack data scientists

It’s both full stack and data scientists combined

[buoyant seal]

😱

this is madness to do that 😅
able everything and master of none will be

[stray radish]

It’s possible trust search it up

[worldly kernel]

Just work at a older established company and you’ll wear both hats

[brave matrix]

It dosent make much sense to me, as a DA you need analyze data, as a full-stack dev you need to create infrastructure, I cant see how they even relate

[brave matrix]

or go at a startup and you can do it all LoL

[buoyant seal]

better to learn Data Engineering + Data Science, for the sake of better synergized specializations
check this msg: #career-advice message

[stray radish]

So it starts with to learn full stack then you have to learn data science

[worldly kernel]

Lol, I wouldn’t know. But it should be that you can do both but you specialize in one

[stray radish]

Not that fun

[worldly kernel]

I know a lot of data scientists with phd who can barely code

[brave matrix]

only pandas bro

[worldly kernel]

Or R

[stray radish]

I know it’s really hard but it’s still possible and there are ppl who know it

Plus full stack ain’t that hard it takes like 3-6 months

[worldly kernel]

I would say that I can do full stack data science based on your definition. But I don’t because my company wanted me to focus on models not pipelines

[stray radish]

Wait ima show you what it means

A full stack data scientist is someone who can identify the problem, understand it in the context of the business, develop models to analyze the relevant data, and deploy these models to production.

[worldly kernel]

Like they really should be two jobs; if I am fixing opt file issues in S3 I am having a bad day

[stray radish]

This

[worldly kernel]

And you just described a data scientist like just a plain one

[stray radish]

Idk search it up

It’s combined both concepts

[worldly kernel]

The only engineer side of that is the prod implementation on the other side engineering which is machine learning engineering as opposed to data engineering

[stray radish]

Ok?

[worldly kernel]

But that’s even worse, like you would be integrating with software teams to build your model into apps

Like I think you can have these skills but in big orgs people don’t lone wolf it. Just the meetings alone from owning the development of both would suck up your day

[near ocean]

Theres no such thing, its just how they get you to do more for less pay

[worldly kernel]

Yea maybe it’s a start up thing but like this stuff takes hella time to get right.

[stray radish]

I like it and plus it’s not like I am gonna do everything in one day 💀 that’s inhumane

[stray radish]

Practice make perfect

[worldly kernel]

Model builds and implementation are more on the year long timeline

[stray radish]

So? I wanna learn doesn’t matter I already have good courses for it

[worldly kernel]

I would say choose one and focus. You will pick up pieces from both but data science moves so fast that there are always things you don’t know

Idk maybe your an absolute academic weapon or something but from a normal perspective focus on one

[spark cobalt]

This is different from full stack web development, which "full stack dev" generally implies.

[stray radish]

Yea listen I’ll start with full stack and learn everything for that then slowly move to DS and yea

[spark cobalt]

It's generally better if you're able to specialize in one thing, then be okay at multiple things. I think you're kind of underestimating the time it takes to get solid at either full stack or DS to get to the case of being hirable.

[spark cobalt]

And what courses would those be?

[stray radish]

I use Codecademy

[spark cobalt]

CodeAcademy is like, barebones basic. It's a good starter, but what it'll teach you is nowhere near enough to the skills you should have in order to pursue your own projects, and then moving forward to your career.

[balmy mural]

100% underestimating. He said it only takes 3-6 months to learn fullstack

[worldly kernel]

Yea I would say if you like coding do data engineering or ml engineering.if you like math/stats do data science.

[stray radish]

Basicsssss obv there’s more to learn

[worldly kernel]

Tons of people switch mid career

[near ocean]

Basics dont get you anywhere

[spark cobalt]

Full stack implies a lot. Like off the top of my head, databases, cloud, docker/containers, front end frameworks, etc. In total it's like JavaScript/TypeScript, HTML, CSS, some backend language, SQL likely, etc. On top of just the raw conceptual knowledge you need with web development like how HTTP works, APIs, etc.

[stray radish]

k ima go

[balmy mural]

If you just learn the basics of something and then pop onto the next thing, those basics won't be at a usable level for a job and will be forgotten over time

[worldly kernel]

You are at peak mount stupid rn, we all started there. Decide what you want after the despair

[worldly kernel]

But like get after it, no hate. If you want to define that title it’s a whole new field that hasn’t been fully defined. And we need smart people to write it

[night bear]

@whole crystal wen marbels

[lost elm]

me irl

[balmy spade]

The basics of something are rarely forgotten and quickly relearned. "Like riding a bike." is the phrase. That's why it's usually called foundational knowledge. It's not easy to remove a foundation of something and you use that foundation to build upon.

[lost elm]

lads i just stared from ui ux within a week . and after being confident in figma as i transferred my photoshop skills into it.
im planning to jump into the front end with html css and react..
then im planning to jump onto django .. within a month
its all about a project level surface knowledge atm , wherein i could be confident making a website (full stack) at will

is this a red flag or should i just take a leap of faith..
i feel like this would increase my confidence as im not giving any idealistic expectations to myself

for some context
im a freshman doing bsc in CS and i wont be having much time in my 2nd year

tbh i feel like these are something that i should be having within the monologues of my mind and not here

nvm.. its goint to be a leap of faith init

[west tide]

Hi guys, I am totally confused about making one decision?
Can you help me out
I want to be a data scientist and there tons of content and paid courses to choose from. I am overwhelmed by this choices.
Do I need to have a Certificate to be data scientist?
Can I learn Everything on my Own or Should I join a Class?
so confused at this point 😢

[dense mesa]

You don't need a certificate and those won't count for anything.

You will most likely need a degree unless you have business/family connections and/or are very lucky

You should join as many formal classes as you reasonably can

[hot terrace]

The answer is no @west tartan

[spark cobalt]

If your goal is to be a UI/UX developer, it'd be better to pick up frameworks that are more UI oriented, like React instead of Django. For building a full-stack application, Django helps abstracts a lot of the backend complexities, however I'd avoid using Django's front-end system and use something like React instead. Looking into Django's rest_framework library will be extremely super beneficial as well.

[west tartan]

Hello,

I'm in a some kind of career hesitation.

Got my international business master degree in January. But I'm struggling to find a job in this domain, also got a shitty experience (I know it may not the same in other companies but business domain seems pretty bad in France).

I was thinking of learning python and maybe R to get into data science, and test my luck in 4-5years looking for a job.

Should I stick to this plan? Or it is impossible to get into data science without an IT degree?

[spark cobalt]

Certificates are a little outdated. They're entirely founded on the idea that the entry to being a SWE is super available for self taught, but that's simply not the case anymore. Ever since a CS degree got really popularized, that self taught shtick is decreasing by a lot over the years. If you see anything self taught online nowadays, it's likely just clickbait.

There are some certificates that may be worth to have depends on your specific focus. But the issue is just because so many certificates can be cheated on, it's hard for employers to assess your knowledge compared to something like a college degree.

[peak halo]

unless you have prior professional experience, no employer will care about what certificates you have. you'd need to look at getting a degree.

[spark cobalt]

Are you wanting to switch to DS because of the money/career? Or because you are genuinely interested in pursuing DS for DS?

Maybe it would be wiser if you explored your options with what you have now?

Ultimately you're looking at 4 more years of school to get into DS if you're willing to just give up like the 6+ years you did for business. If you're going to study for 4-5 years, it'd be an extreme waste if you didn't study in a CS program and be accredited for your studying.

Not a lot of people are willing to do 10 years of school...

[true harness]

i don't think an undergrad degree would be any use at this point. you could go for a masters in CS or data science or something like that. 🤔 though maybe if you missed all the math requirements

[spark cobalt]

Oh yeah that would be faster huh

[west tartan]

More because I'm interested in, ultimately would be good to get into machine learning/IA.

That what I thought but school, isn't an option I can choose, I'm at my late 20s. In France, we have some kind of state organization for job searching. They have some kind of formations but I'm not sure if it will allow me to work.

And thanks for the advices!

[spark cobalt]

At least in the states, AI/ML people are generally Masters/PhD people. Nearly impossible to get in without it.

[peak halo]

if you want to do AI, you should consider getting a masters in CS.

[west tartan]

About maths, I'm clearly not at the required level, I decided to pick up with basic algebra, stats/probs.

Ok so the best advice is to get a master degree? I will do some research!

[delicate bane]

youll probably also want some internship experience to help stand out as well since most likely at least half of all CS grad students will be looking to go into the field of AI/ML at this point

[west tartan]

Is there a chance that I can get into master degree directly or I will be required to get a CS bachelor degree?

[peak halo]

you'll have to look at the requirements for each program. but they will probably require you to take some of the undergraduate courses before you can starts the masters ones.

[west tartan]

Ok! I will call some schools and state formations, will see what they say.

Do you think as an internship I can make a basic living salary?

[peak halo]

I don't know how internships work in Europe. sorry

[west tartan]

Well thanks a lot, will think about and decide whether or not I will back to school/stick to the business degree

[sleek egret]

yar

[sacred adder]

Hey guys

Does anyone know what is the best way to learn python - for gaming purposes ?

or its just general python all in

[hearty island]

al sweigart has a book for pygame

[lunar ibex]

For someone who is going self taught route, how will this ultimately affect my down the line if I have a strong portfolio of projects and connections but no CS degree?

Is it just worth it to go the degree route?

Do employers care about bootcamp experience?

[dense mesa]

Without specifics, it's probably better to get a degree

[lunar ibex]

I’m going to be doing financial software engineering

[dense mesa]

Good stuff, that's one the best 😉

[hearty island]

a degree would be helpful

[lunar ibex]

Yeah and a lot of it that brings meaning is brought by actual hands on work with the financial markets which I currently have two years full time of doing. However when I go deeper into the software engineering side of things not sure how many employers will care about degree if I have actual proof of work and concepts bringing value and meaning

Just wondering if anyone here has any input on getting jobs with no degree

[dense mesa]

There's people who go from analyst roles into software, what kind of experience did you get in those 2 years? Like what were you working on, and what kind of firm

[steel kindle]

I haven’t done it, but from the people I’ve heard talk about it, it’s a lot harder

People with degrees are also going to have projects and portfolios from studying stuff on their own

[lunar ibex]

Systems building and market quantification through statistics. Ton of hands on learning and real world application scenarios.

[vapid jay]

can someone help me plz

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    async def create_ticket(self, button: discord.ButtonStyle, interaction: discord.Interaction):
        await interaction.response.send_message("Ticket Open", ephemeral=True)

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    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.persistent_view_added = False

    async def on_ready(self):
        if not self.persistent_view_added:
            self.addd_view(CreateTicket())
            self.persistent_view_added = True
            print("persistent view added")

[balmy spade]

You're looking for #❓｜how-to-get-help and a help room I think.

[vapid jay]

ho ty

[hearty island]

my work has me setting up computers… since when did i become tech support 😭

[balmy spade]

since you started setting up computers

[near ocean]

Think of it as devops 💀

[mortal wedge]

Getting a job without a degree is possible, but extremely difficult. The market is competitive, especially for your first major role. It’s not unheard of for there to be thousands of applicants for these roles and it’s really easy for a company to bin all the resumes without a degree. Let’s leave aside the benefits of college for a moment outside of the diploma. That diploma is incredibly useful in proving your skills to an employer. Otherwise they’re taking a bigger risk on you. It’s true that a project portfolio will help, but you need to get to the hiring manager for them to care about those, and that means passing the ATS (applicant tracking system) and HR (Human Resources). If by some miracle you get past the ATS, it’s unlikely the person in HR has the technical background to understand or appreciate your projects to pass on your resume to the hiring manager.
Your only shot at that point is to get your resume directly to the hiring manager. Which means you need to hustle and make connections at various companies, because you’ll need someone to vouch for you. Even then, you’ll probably get the lower range of pay for the position because you’ll be viewed as a less qualified candidate and they’re inherently taking on more risk. As for boot camps, it’s possible but most employers will place far more stock on degrees as they’re backed by educational institutions instead of just any random boot camp. (This at least holds true for the U.S. job market)

[lunar ibex]

Thank you for the in depth answer! That makes much more sense to me now.

Im thinking the only way it will really work without a degree is through leveraging connections

The point about HR not having a technical background to understand the portfolio is a really big one I did not think about as well.

[mortal wedge]

Yup. Or leveraging your current success at a company to move into a developer role at that same company. Companies save a lot of money on internal hires and if you’re a rock star your manager will likely vouch for you

[lunar ibex]

Thank you, a degree seems valuable then

[dense mesa]

This should be pinned

[lunar ibex]

yeah that was a perfect answer to my question lol

[tranquil badge]

Hey, I just completed school. I had IT as a subject and feel comfortable with the basics of most programming languages. What would be the next big step? Which libraries in python or java etc. are valuable to learn? I know all the buzzwords, data science AI, etc. If someone can pinpoint me to a good, free, online course or book it would be great. Because I've come across mostly rubbish courses that felt like a waste of time to me.

[lunar ibex]

Code Academy

[hearty island]

it’s just dumb busy work i hate it

[marble sand]

man, rejected from the "we'll train you to program and use you as cheap labor for 2 years" company, rad

[near ocean]

Is that not a good thing?

[mortal wedge]

Python is a generalist language, it has many applications. Therefore, recommendations need to be highly tailored to what you’re intending to do with it, what career you’re trying to pursue. Doing data Science? You need to know Pandas. Game development? Study pygame. AI stuff? Look into scikit learn. Etc

[tranquil badge]

I'm doing a degree in bcom mathematical sciences

[marble sand]

well sense I can't even get interviews anywhere else it was a bit of a last ditch effort i was /hoping/ would be a shoe in since I've got loads of programming experience

I don't know if being told /why/ would make me feel better or not

[near ocean]

If you have loads of experience how come youre not getting interviews

[marble sand]

6 year gap on my resume attending a clown college to get my phd in physics

[mortal wedge]

Education isn’t a resume gap, your time is accounted for in the interim

[tranquil badge]

It has data science and computer science as subjects. The primary goal is to create algorithms to analyze markets.

[near ocean]

A phd which you dont want to use? Lots of positions open for phds, pretty much anything computational

[mortal wedge]

Got it. Then make sure you know Pandas and Numpy. Those will likely be your bread and butter. Scipy will also be good as well

[marble sand]

again, clown college, but also i have no idea what i'm doing job hunt wise

[tranquil badge]

Thank you!!

[mortal wedge]

The good news is that the skills it takes to get and succeed in interviews are skills that can be learned and practiced. I suggest using this channel as a resource. A resume review is what I recommend as a first step if you’re not getting interviews. There may be a red flag on it that is excluding you.

[marble sand]

/getting/ an interview isn't a skill question, it's a reputation question.

but yeah, something is pathological with my CV evidently

[near ocean]

Knowing how to sell yourself on a piece of paper is a skill

[marble sand]

and I hate marketing, blech 😐

this is my emotional state at the moment https://i.imgur.com/AjM7fSk.png

[true harness]

send your resume/cv maybe?

[marble sand]

to you?

[true harness]

to the chat, for review

[marble sand]

ok, I was thinking, I've sent it to enough with people a reponse of None...

hrmmm, there's kind of a lot of identifying data...

[true harness]

just remove it

[dense mesa]

People remove/anonymise before posting

[marble sand]

I think i'll need to go to into the .tex and do it there, covering it up in the pdf and print to pdf is not really doing it

[delicate bane]

[gritty rivet]

people usually take a screenshot and redact that in Paint or whatever

[true harness]

i just have a macro for my PII then switch a variable on or off

[marble sand]

I was thinking I might do that if I do a more generative approach to my cv

[true harness]

screenshot?

[marble sand]

nevermind i'll find someone else

[dense mesa]

You can take a screenshot and strike out areas in Paint, takes a minute

[proud remnant]

Hey so im looking into software engineering / gamedev and was wondering if anybody had some starting advice , coding is something i find joy in and its quite nice to work on for example a tkinter project or making a big calculator for school ect but seeing if this can take me anywhere

[gilded valley]

If you're still in school, the main things are to enjoy programming -build games or web apps or anything - and to get good grades so that you can go to whatever college you'd like when the time comes

[proud remnant]

thats fair , but like should i try get ahead or try learning syntax to other languages the most ive done is like Python , Html+Css but languages like C++ for game dev looks daunting

[spark cobalt]

I'd focus on exploring the field if you're in like high school or early college. There's a lot of things that beginning programmers don't realize that other people are programming day to day for. Try new things, try make a realization to the many technologies that are around you (how does your wifi router work? how does Tesla car make decisions based on the image input? Etc.) and move on from there, backwards engineer to a field you're super interested in to see what kind of projects and technologies you should know.

[proud remnant]

That makes a ton of sense never looked at it that way

[mortal wedge]

This is just a generic tip, but Tesla seems to be fairly desperate for coders for their self-driving cars right now.

[spark cobalt]

If you're solid in game development, and willing to do it even with the general stigma behind being a game developer, then picking something up like C++ will be extremely beneficial.

[sleek egret]

game engine dev requires a good understanding of how computers actually work. from CPU cache lines to how GPU memory works

[proud remnant]

Ye ive been wanting to get into making a small projects game but C++ seems quite the hurdle

[dreamy shadow]

tmw: Your coworker shows a table, and one of the int values shows up as 23.0.

[mortal wedge]

Python... is great for rapid development. The tradeoff is generally that it's less performant wrt memory/speed (there are ways to mitigate), but this generally isn't a bottleneck. C++ is better in terms of memory/speed, which DOES often matter in game development. But honestly depending on what you're doing python may be fine, especially for getting started/hobby/exploring/etc

[obsidian pewter]

any entry level games peeps should be making to learn more about python? ive already done pong and made my own poorly made sidescroller lol. so far covered movements and collision checks. think next move is local and global variables

[mortal wedge]

For a very basic level, I'd recommend two things to also help you get a grasp on the language. Hangman and Tic Tac Toe. Hangman should be able to either pull random words from a pre-selected list at random or just from the english language (there are modules to support this). Tic Tac Toe would ideally also be playable against an intelligent AI.

[obsidian pewter]

yooo thats exactly what im after. thanks for that! am i supposed to be making this without packages?

[mortal wedge]

After that, I would move on to pygame and make follow some tutorials or get inspiration from other projects. MAybe ask in #game-development for ideas, I'm not in game dev

[vapid jay]

what topics would be most important to prioritise whilst working towards a career in data science?

[gritty rivet]

generally I would say use whatever packages you want... there's no point in re-inventing the wheel if you don't have a specific reason

[spark cobalt]

^ There's no reason to do things the way other people has done it. Be creative, go a little crazy.

[drowsy drum]

udemy, sololearn machine learning + data science in python, textbook on statistical learning, self given project

which one sounds better for studying data science, if I already know how to use numpy, pandas, and pyplot?

[mortal wedge]

Familiar with scipy? There's some nifty functions in there that apply. Scikit learn for ML stuff from a high level.

[smoky quest]

That probably depends more on your style. For me, the textbooks approach yields better results

[spark cobalt]

Agreed. Books OP

[sleek egret]

there is too much agreeing going on here

[mortal wedge]

Oh, I think I misunderstood your question. I thought you meant which topics to study next.

For learning, meta learning is important. What I mean by that is, knowing how you best operate and how best you learn. For me? I like academic courses or hands on experience. Other people learn best with videos. Some book, some guided projects, etc.

[drowsy drum]

yeah haven't gotten to that point yet, I haven't done machine learning, I have done visualization and database construction

[spark cobalt]

Especially for something so closely tied with mathematical concepts, textbooks are probably the best way to pick it up.

Yes. They're useless and the courses are very beginner.

[sleek egret]

experimental evidence shows that, actually, no one learns best from videos/lectures. it just helps boost their confidence they learned something.

[spark cobalt]

The entry one is easy since it's purely online. But the medium one you actually have to go to a test center to take it. The test is easy but it's not worth the trouble. At most it's just CV fluff but it doesn't add much to your CV.

[drowsy drum]

so whatever yields the best results? I think hitting the textbook does work the best for me, but its hard to get in the zone.

[mortal wedge]

A good college (imo) takes a multifaceted approach. You get lectures, you get videos, you get textbooks, hands on projects, homework problems, etc. Hoping that one of those methods sticks with you well enough. Also, maybe you work best when you're introduced to the concept in X manner but then you use Y method to cement the knowledge. It's very person specific.

[true harness]

source?

[sleek egret]

Indeed so

[mortal wedge]

I would strike a balance between yielding good results and not burning out. Sometimes when I'm tired but sitll want to learn/practice, I go to simple practice problems of already known concepts instead of trying to learn something new.

Or I try explaining topics to other people, which helps reinforce your own learning as you think about it in a different way.

[drowsy drum]

the book I'll be reading more "intro to statistical learning" will be using r for examples. would it matter if I stick with python?

[mortal wedge]

Python is great for statistical learning, but it also wouldn't hurt to use R if that's what their examples are in.

You could practice converting that R to Python though, so you'll be fluent in both.

[sleek egret]

repetition allows you to preform actions without involving higher level cognitive faculties. this means you can use said faculties for other things while performing the task.

[drowsy drum]

if I can write it in another language I can in python, it's usually harder to do the reverse for me

[sleek egret]

this is an important step to becoming a good programmer. if the primary problem you face is coding then you can't think about the design and system architecture while coding. you need to practice until the coding itself is easy and second nature.

[sleek egret]

God, I hate R. do you like R?

[mortal wedge]

No. But I have to interact with coworkers who prefer R, so I try to learn enough to get my Python code to interact with it

[sleek egret]

If I was in charge, I'd hook them up to electrodes and give them a painful but harmless shock every time they used R. That would train them out of it.

[drowsy drum]

can you describe R in one sentence? for example: java is focused on objects and screams if you don't declare your types

[sleek egret]

painful and cumbersome

[fringe pine]

Erm, R is focused on manipulating rectangular data, and doing statistics with that data.

Everything in R revolves around dataframes (which are exactly like the kind in pandas).

R actually has no scalar data type, which is weird 😄

A scalar is just a length-1 vector.

[drowsy drum]

I guess I'll learn the basics, sololearn has a course for it

[fringe pine]

It's not that hard to pick up if you've programmed before. I'm currently using it for the first time in a statistics course.

[drowsy drum]

it has the same print statement as python 3, not bad for starters

[vapid jay]

Guys I wonder what is information technology and computing? And what's the difference between that and computer science

[sleek egret]

essentially, IT is the degree that people who can't handle the (rather minimal) math and formalisms of a CS degree. IT tends to be more practical focused rather than theoretical.

[sleek egret]

If you're asking about the terms "information tech" vs "computing" in a non-educational context, they are equivalent.

[vapid jay]

Yeah but many other unis call it information technology but ours calls it information technology and computing

[sleek egret]

That's not my fault

[vapid jay]

I know

When I asked my professor he told me that information technology and computing = computer science

[sleek egret]

Do you think that a CS professor would say that?

That was a rhetorical question. They would not.

[vapid jay]

I dunno

Ah ok well I wanna ask what kind of money I can make by learning this degree

[sleek egret]

That would depend on the jobs you get after school

[sleek egret]

Real life doesn't follow strict rules like school does. It's not, Do X and you get Y. It's a bunch of maybe's, it depends, sometimes and who the hell knows?

[vapid jay]

I'm in uni though

[sleek egret]

so?

[vapid jay]

Ah bummer I assumed life would be like school

[sleek egret]

No need to be snarky and sarcastic. I'm sarcastic enough for the both of us :-). But seriously, I know that you know that intellectually. but I've seen far too many kids being surprised that it's not X => Y. typically they then say it's "unfair". Well yeah, it is. Life is unfair. Be glad you don't have to experience it yet.

[balmy spade]

On the note of not being snarky and sarcastic, talking downward to others with this "be glad you don't have to experience it yet" tone that is rather pervasive in all of your comments isn't really productive. We get it, you feel you are older than the average. This neither trivializes others nor makes their experiences any less valid.

[sleek egret]

I don't even know what it means that to say "makes their experiences any less valid"

how can an experience be valid or invalid? from my perspective, it just is.

[peak halo]

Do you have coworkers who use R?

[sleek egret]

Used to. but I've pretty much weaned them off it.

[peak halo]

What kind of work is this?

[sleek egret]

quant finance

[steel kindle]

R is surprisingly common in industry and academia it seems

[peak halo]

I've seen it in non-CS academia but not industry

But I've never worked in finance

[steel kindle]

I’ve known a few data scientists at large tech companies that used R

Although the guy I’m mainly thinking of said that python was pretty popular with the younger employees

I also think some people prefer the R versions of packages over their python equivalents

Like ggplot

[peak halo]

Idk what that is. But I don't like matplotlib

[steel kindle]

R’s matplotlib equivalent

Tbh in that case it’s less so an equivalent, they’re pretty different libraries as far as I can tell

Python and R can also be used together pretty well in RStudio, so I bet that helps people transition to py

[pure raft]

I forgot If I Asked you this before but I saw a vid of a quant dev saying the ages of people to get started in the sector, you think 35 is too old to get started as a quant?

[sleek egret]

it's not too old

it's just that most people don't just decide to dive into statistics and programming in their 30's

[brave bridge]

that means your brain is working as intended

[sleek egret]

does anyone actually like matplotlib?

[brave bridge]

its a necessary evil

[sleek egret]

or is that just what they want you to think?

[brave bridge]

matplotlib is the only thing that keeps my memory of matlab alive

because matlabs plotting is so much better

[pure raft]

Oh awesome! Goood to know much appreciated

[delicate bane]

same. plotly >>>

[dreamy shadow]

ggplot is great, I don't think it ever got ported to python though.

[delicate bane]

ah skyglow you are here. came across another post about DS woes

[dreamy shadow]

R programming as a whole, is a dumpster fire.

[delicate bane]

yknow, the usual

[steel kindle]

There's some similar lib, plotnine maybe? I have never used it though. ggplot is so much better than matplotlib

[dreamy shadow]

For python? It's basically matplotlib and seaborn. Where, matplotlib provide you the generic orange/blue plots, and seaborn (I think is built on matplotlib) provides much nicer visuals.

[steel kindle]

Nah I mean one that replicates ggplot's paradigm

[dreamy shadow]

There's probably others that exist, though uncommon to me.

[delicate bane]

plot 👏 ly 👏

anyway we should probably stay on-topic for this channel about #career-advice

[dreamy shadow]

Yea, forgot about that one. I actually don't generate visualizations that often.

Also, earlier when I talked about tables having int being float. There's no repo tied with the code either. They literally emailed the notebook.

HOW ARE THESE PEOPLE PAID MORE THAN ME?

[delicate bane]

who are these people. senior DS?

[dreamy shadow]

Part of the DS team, don't recall the exact title.

I think they have more MLE side of things, provided a docker file.

[delicate bane]

today two of our teammates lowkey fought in the team meeting when our manager wasnt here. it was hella awkward for me and the other guy.

[sleek egret]

who won?

[delicate bane]

hmm thats a good question

[dreamy shadow]

Like fought over what gets put in the next quarter's list of things to do? Or like

[delicate bane]

broooo you nailed it in one go omg im dead 💀

excuse me i have to go die now

[dreamy shadow]

Every quarter, there's like a full day of meetings. Where it's basically trying to get the offshore (dev) team to do things that they technically have the capacity to do. And the offshore team goes like, "Naw, we don't have enough story points"

Small implementation? Insert 3x story points necessary.

Pip install packages? Sounds like a week's work to me.

[sleek egret]

sounds like you have the utmost respect for the offshore team, lol

[dreamy shadow]

It's funny, because it's not me who said that lmao. I only heard it from other people when I joined.

[pseudo spade]

Who is from the USA here

[delicate bane]

bruh. what ends up happening in the end

[dreamy shadow]

My models checks that need to be implemented gets kicked 2 quarters later lmao

[delicate bane]

oof

[dreamy shadow]

Well, technically it's not my problem anymore.

[sleek egret]

Are you trying to start a fight?

[pseudo spade]

No

[summer roost]

Quite a few people here are. Is there something you'd like to ask?

[pseudo spade]

What is a 1098 e and what is it use for @summer roost

[sleek egret]

IRS student loan interest tax form

[pseudo spade]

Yeah

So like when do I need it and what is the use

@sleek egret u there

[sleek egret]

I am not a tax attorney, nor do I play one on TV

[pseudo spade]

Bruh lol

[delicate bane]

do you make student loan payments

[sleek egret]

This may help you => https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/slid.asp But really, you should consult a qualified tax accountant or attorney

[pseudo spade]

Not yet

[delicate bane]

well then. its not even relevant lmao

[pseudo spade]

@delicate bane do we get 1098 e in college or after college I will pay student loan after college

[delicate bane]

check out rmah's link

[pseudo spade]

That thing do not tell me

[white relic]

Anyone who pays more than $600 in interest for the year should receive a Form 1098-E from the lending institution.
if you need advice on filing your taxes, this really isn't the place (or the time of year) for it.

[sleek egret]

lol yeah, a bit late

[vapid jay]

is there a way i can hire someone in here to write 2 programs for me or is this server not good for that?

[spark cobalt]

!rule 9 not a good place

[inner wren]

Rules

9. Do not offer or ask for paid work of any kind.

[pseudo spade]

Hehe

[fluid fern]

rather controversial question (or dumb), should I put where I work right now on my resume if I'm job searching?

[summer roost]

Yes - I can't really think of any reason not to

And I can' think of a lot of reasons why you should.

[fluid fern]

[smoky quest]

that's the norm

[fluid fern]

huh, thats nice to know, shows how new I am to the industry

[cunning condor]

What do u guys think about 4/6/8 month-1 year data science bootcamp? Especially for undergraduate IT student

[vapid jay]

Will they teach Encryption

[rugged adder]

Hello guys, i have question for ya) What should python junior know in 2022?

[vapid jay]

For starters Python

[rugged adder]

😐

[vapid jay]

Also math and how to read

[rugged adder]

👍

[vapid jay]

And any common language

[vapid jay]

And how to speak and hear

[vapid jay]

And also how to eat so that they don't die of starvation

And also how to drink so they don't die of thirst

[rugged adder]

Recently you said I was trolling you, but I'm really wondering if there are good sites on OOP and Django practices, and if you don't know, why are you mocking me?

[vapid jay]

me?

[rugged adder]

me?

[mortal wedge]

Python is a generalist language, typically people only learn the parts that are related to their industry/interests.
But a top level overview I’d make sure you were familiar with lists, dicts, for loops, while loops

[rugged adder]

oka ty

[brave hull]

👀

[hallow patio]

👀

[blazing ivy]

dicts 👀

[onyx tree]

Hello, is it possible to import a python program into an html page?

[kind hatch]

Hello

[kind hatch]

U could use python in server-side to render html

[onyx tree]

write html in python you mean?

[gilded valley]

Anyone here who's directly interviewed for coding interviews for data analyst/scientist roles, what sorts of things are you looking for?

[kind hatch]

somehow

[white relic]

What level of experience? I am not a data scientist, but have interviewed people for related roles, all entry level

[gilded valley]

Lower end, 2-4 years experience sort of range

[white relic]

• Entry level applicants who claim to know Python often have trouble answering simple questions like "What's a tuple?"
• For candidates with multiple programming languages on the resume, I ask what their favorite language is. Then I ask them to name something they dislike about it. Someone who actually uses a tool always has gripes with it. Someone with only a passing familiarity will give a vague or superficial answer.
• Familiarity with common libraries like numpy or matplotlib (depends on what they say they've done)
• and any subject matter knowledge that is relevant to the job (in my case, electronics & physics)

[gilded valley]

Thanks

[white relic]

I don't work for a company with super competitive hiring. We don't do leetcode style questions. I don't find them useful. (But you may certainly encounter them other places)

[ornate kayak]

what's up?

[pseudo spade]

Kal what is protery taxes

[ornate kayak]

25%

[spare zinc]

What's the tuple?) Why I didn't hear it other? I remembered the first question related to Python was what are the major data types in python?

[boreal orchid]

guys i wanna get a simple good paying job i know python as of now i like new problems and solving them but i dont want too hard maths what should i go for?

[near ocean]

I was asked trivia questions like the tuple one at my interview
Not sure how useful this is even for junior/entry level devs, seems like anyone that's touched python would know something like that

[gritty rivet]

Any job that requires Python and isn't data science might apply. I recommend you look at the job listings in your area that mention Python and don't require many years of experience to get an idea of what's out there

[boreal orchid]

i m fine with remote jobs too i just need a job for now

[balmy mural]

What exactly is your education level?

Just knowing python won't normally be enough to land you a job

[boreal orchid]

no i just know python for now i m asking what should i learn for a job thats good paying and not too hard on math

[sleek egret]

Lol, I also always ask the "what are some downsides in your favorite language?" question

[dreamy prism]

Databases, APIs, clouds, git, and some other languages are always useful

Also depends on what you want to do

[balmy mural]

https://roadmap.sh/
You can look at the front end/back end paths. You don't have to know every single thing on there to get a job, but you should have a good grasp on most of the tools/concepts. But the conventional way to a job is getting a degree

[boreal orchid]

currently i know git , docker , sqlite , sql my basics are clear in these

about cloud i just know how to deploy a flask app on azure vms

[boreal orchid]

yes i have had a look on this i was thinking of going the backend dev path with django and stuff

[white relic]

You'd be surprised, apparently

[near ocean]

Im not 💀 i've seen people claim 5+ years exp and fail this question

[vapid jay]

ay

[smoky quest]

Hi!
If you are in college age or high school, you should aim for a CS degree. That's the path of least resistance with the most opportunity and best compensation

[true harness]

good paying and not hard on math are kinda opposites

[spark cobalt]

Relative to other CS roles sure. But overall stuff like frontend still pays well.

[potent stratus]

I'd say that depends - it'll likely be hard on math in college (I had to take through calculus 3 + matrix algebra) - but in my day to day jobs I haven't had to do hard math at all. the hardest math I've had to do is some pandas manipulation, and that's more googling for the right commands than it is knowing how to find the rate of change for a growing sphere or other calculus intensive things

[sleek egret]

you could get a different job

[potent stratus]

sure - but I'd say less than 10% of the people I know with CS degrees regularly use calculus level math (obviously a biased sample)

[sleek egret]

most people with CS degrees don't really understand calc even if they took a few classes

[potent stratus]

oh totally agree. that's why I think the good paying and not hard on math being opposites pretty strongly depends. if you can get through the college courses, your day to day as a CS person likely won't be hard on math

[sleek egret]

thank god my call is finally over. two hours of blah blah. what a waste of my time

sure, but you don't get hired for big money to do the day to day. you get the big money for the just in cases and once in a blue moon situations

[potent stratus]

I guess at that point we're also getting into the semantics of "good paying / big money" - it seems to me there's a bit of a sliding scale of pay and stress / blue moon situations. for example a former colleague is making a bit over 2x what I am, but he has to be on call one week out of every month, and this past week he was working until at least 10pm every night because of an incident. I make plenty for where I live and the life I want, and I shut my laptop at 5pm everyday at the latest

[sleek egret]

indeed. more money does always equal better

[loud hamlet]

Does DevOps entail skills from Swe, Project management and Quality Assurance? I applied to a DevOps job thinking I have no chance but now i got an interview

[sleek egret]

devops is just the new name for system administration so they feel better about themselves

no?

[gritty rivet]

You have to look at the details of the role because DevOps is more of a design philosophy then a role. But generally speaking these are the standard skills: https://roadmap.sh/devops

[balmy spade]

That is so curious to me that DevOps has devolved into roles. Language is super weird that way. I look at this roadmap and just see full-stack.

What's really interesting to me is that it doesn't include any business analyst skills here. That's the secret sauce to devops! Operations and Tech moving as one machine.

[gritty rivet]

Yeah, I cringe so hard when people say things like "we need to hire a devops". But full stack generally implies front and back of the application, not infrastructure

[balmy spade]

With IaC today the infrastructure is so closely tied to the backend that it's hard not to weld the two together, but I agree.

[gritty rivet]

right, I kind of feel like the whole point of DevOps is that most developers and most operations people are engaged to some degree. But some people who deal with IaC way more then others. At my company most devs deal with docker but there's mostly one devops specialist who deals with Ansible, Terraform, etc. and he never touches application code

he's also not the sysadmin who deals more directly with the cloud servers and network infrastructure itself

[balmy spade]

For sure. We have a team we lovingly call "yaml debuggers". They build and maintain the terraform/terragrunt templates that power 70% of our cloud structures. They also build and maintain the rancher/kuber patterns that powers the rest of our cloud and most of our on-prem structures.

When I need to touch infrastructure I'm just plugging variables into a terragrunt config and pushing the deploy button. I need to know how the pieces work to build a cloud deployment but I don't know a lick of terraform itself.

Con: I don't know terraform so this isn't a skill that is transferable
Pro: I can focus on my software skills and don't need to complicate my day with "is this lambda actually secure?"

I suppose in my head that pattern is a part more DevOps to me than a role or a title. We have a factory that creates our deployment patterns. Dev teams don't need to do that work, they build the structures needed to meet Operation requests.

Orders come in from Operations, reviewed and bike-shed to death by Ops, BAs, InfoSec, OpSec, etc. Tasks flow to the dev teams. Dev teams build the needed structure quickly. Product is delivered. Repeat as needed.

[sleek egret]

do all the non-contributors who just yak a lot ever piss you off?

[steel kindle]

Tbf I feel like calc is less relevant than other types of math for CS

Although stuff like asymptotes is pretty relevant

[sleek egret]

it depends on what you're writing the code for

[steel kindle]

For sure, but as a generalization stuff like linear algebra, ToC, and combinatorics seems a lot more relevant. Granted for most roles that involve writing algorithms, asymptotes come into play

[sleek egret]

that's the thing, I don't think you can generalize

[steel kindle]

Well I mean you can say that some of the math is just inherent to programming, while some of it is used in certain domains

[sleek egret]

protein folding searches are quite different from simulating large networks

[steel kindle]

Yeah, I’d consider those specific domains.

[sleek egret]

even in finance, it very much depends on the problem at hand

[steel kindle]

Right but stuff like asymptotes and ToC are just kind of part of programming

[sleek egret]

and I'd say that 90% of the time, it's a specific domain

[steel kindle]

Yeah the extra math will depend on what you’re doing

[sleek egret]

like, a lot of my work recently involved reading academic papers, deciphering the math, and then implementing it in code. didn't help that, quite often, there were problems in the math.

damn academics never seem to test their stuff rigorously. <sigh>

[steel kindle]

Well yes, like I said depending on what you're doing there is a ton of different kinds of math that come into play. But there are certain areas of math that are kind of unavoidable in CS.

[sleek egret]

I'd like to avoid it. I'm too old for this shit ;-P

[near ocean]

<@&831776746206265384>

[steel kindle]

lol fair, but most people will benefit from studying some ToC, asymptotic analysis, and maybe combinatorics. But I mean you also don't really need to formally study them, you will kind of pick up on a lot of it just by coding I imagine.

[sleek egret]

heh, you have a much more positive view of people than I do

[steel kindle]

wym

[obsidian pewter]

hell yeah thats hopeful as someone thats too lazy to go back to studying. whats ToC?

[steel kindle]

Theory of Computation

[mighty pilot]

I am in this picture and I don't like it XD

[sleek egret]

winner winner chicken dinner

[fallow tusk]

do i need to create a portfolio website or my github is enough? like if there was a job that says requirement is portfolio

[elfin marsh]

if i'm slow in learning python in school is it a bad sign i can't be hired as programmer ?

or even average grades

[smoky quest]

It depends on how sellable is your current profile

[smoky quest]

There are a gazillion different factors at play. So that is not a predictor of future success

[vapid jay]

Yes

[vague dagger]

In my opninion Most of the time Schools teach stuff you wont Need so i'd say you could also learn it normally without shool

[vapid jay]

I paid code academeny 250 for a premium account I and I want to get my money back What should I learn after completing the learn python 3 course

I am about 30 percent done with the course and I don't really lean into one direction or the other

[smoky quest]

!rule 5

[inner wren]

Rules

5. Do not provide or request help on projects that may break laws, breach terms of services, or are malicious or inappropriate.

[vapid jay]

but

[elfin marsh]

did they teach u data structures and algos ?

[smoky quest]

Not sure if you are unhappy with the product or trying to scam them for a free course

[vapid jay]

No I am okay

I meant I want to get vaule out of it cause it gym membership I need to use more

[smoky quest]

So then that would be trying to scam them and that's not something we endorse or would help with

[elfin marsh]

a tool is as valuable as how u use it

[smoky quest]

Your best bet is to contact them

[vapid jay]

No I dont actully want my money back lol. what I wanted was Someone to tell me there some linear progression and my next bet was to go learn this language or that

but there is none

[elfin marsh]

what are you hoping for in progression ?

[smoky quest]

so what's your goal? What are you learning python for?

[elfin marsh]

my qn would be how would u start the journey to backend web development on python ?

[teal swallow]

can some one helpwith this i tried turing off windows defender too

[smoky quest]

What's your current situation? Like education level?

[elfin marsh]

i know sql is database but where does python come into that .

[smoky quest]

Hi! This is the wrong place to ask that. See #❓｜how-to-get-help to get help

[elfin marsh]

still in bachelors

[vapid jay]

I'm not even sure anymore I just rememeber seeing few months ago

[smoky quest]

https://roadmap.sh/ has a backend part with a list of skills

[vapid jay]

That there was Job offering on job boards and it seemed like something I could learn in year

[smoky quest]

People go to school for 3-5 years full time to learn these things. If you are in HS or college age, a cs degree is the path of least resistance and most opportunities.

[elfin marsh]

i agree with recursive lol

[smoky quest]

If you are self taught, then you will need to study yourself as well and have strong projects to make up for the lack of education

[vapid jay]

well that makes me feel alot better for not being able to get alot done in about 6months

[smoky quest]

It's called high tech for a reason 😉

[elfin marsh]

there's way too much things to cover and interviews do test things that i think only universities cover .

[vapid jay]

okay

Now I have priorities but walk me through this

[smoky quest]

which part?

[vapid jay]

sorry I am not very smart on topics like this what the first degree you can get?

[smoky quest]

Most countries will have a degree for computer science or engineering

Note also that while you may not get into the google brain team without a degree, there are still many peripheral jobs that would benefit from someone knowing about python

[spare dawn]

hey uh, can I, a cs major, balance being an animator, web developer, software engineer, robotics engineer+mechanical and entrepreneurship/business?….

[smoky quest]

that would not be realistic

[somber turtle]

Hi I’m new to this place so I’m sorry if I’m not allowed to ask this question here..
I completed a short programming course on September and I built few desktop apps (which are not great though), now looking for my first job as a web developer hopefully back end developer with Python.
But when I looked job descriptions, most of them said that candidates need to have at least 1 or 2 years of experience in front or back end development.
My question is what should I do in order to get my first job as a web developer.
Should I apply to internship or volunteer web development jobs instead of applying to entry level web development jobs?
Or something else, like get involved in open source project and gain experiences?
I’m living in Australia so things might be different but if possible could you please give me some advice..?

[lunar root]

Even with internships I'd suspect theres some kind of barrier to entry

for now I'd advise to focus on building your portfolio, then you can probably bullshit your way into a job

What I mean is this:

Create web apps, one after the other and try to diversify
When you apply for a job present your portfolio, even if you don't actually meet the time requirement you can still bullshit your way in as your portfolio can speak for itself, thats what my friend did

They don't have to be the greatest but the quality of code has to be up to industry standard, he never went to Uni btw self taught and now he's driving a Dodge Challenger.. good luck my friend

[somber turtle]

Thank you so much!!
I see…
How long should I spend for my portfolio?

[white relic]

Until you get a job

Start building your portfolio but don't stop applying to jobs.

What are you doing now, in school? Unemployed? Employed in a different industry?

[smoky quest]

As much time and effort you need to stand out and demonstrate your skills. Projects will be even more important if you don't have a degree

[fallow tusk]

How can i say my profile is sellable?

[smoky quest]

• You get it reviewed
• Companies will start to call you back when you apply
• You could look at the resumes/profiles of your competition

[somber turtle]

Thank you for your advice!!
Ok so I will start applying jobs and building my portfolio (ง •̀_•́)ง
I was working in a different industry but I quit...

[somber turtle]

Thank you so much!!
I will focus on building my portofolio (๑و•̀ω•́)و

[near remnant]

Should I be fixing production bugs as a junior dev, on my own? I feel like sh*t because it makes me stressed like hell.

[near ocean]

Bugs that were reported in production or pushing changes directly to production
One shouldnt be possible

[near remnant]

Our senior is on vacation and I have to fix.

[near remnant]

Bugs that were reported in production and also, pushing changes, because I need to fix it asap but I know i can't alone.

[near ocean]

You shouldnt be pushing changes to production branches especially as a junior
Is this a startup

[near remnant]

Idk bro but im done. Ive been here only 4 months and my first job. They expect me to solve, fix and push to production right now because something went wrong in production.

[left socket]

Are there much automatic testing in place?

[near remnant]

No testing at all, legacy old code

Idk what to do..any advice?

[left socket]

Oh. Well, you changes will be one of many that goes untested then...!

[near remnant]

I feel like we should wait for the senior but hes on vacation. If I cant solve this on my own, then what? Will I get fired?

[left socket]

What were you told to do? By your immediate manager.

[near remnant]

To try to fix it. But I cant, without the help of the senior. Also, dont want to push to production.

[left socket]

Did they have much feedback on your previous changes?

Time spent in the job or the field is not necessarily indicative of the quality of your work. Do you feel like they trust you?

[near remnant]

Sure, they told me they really pleased by my work and my probation period is almost over, dont worry about it.

[white relic]

I feel like there's not enough context to know whether this is an unrealistic request.
"Production" has different implications for a mobile game, a calendar app, or a web frontend

none of them are really good to be fixed by a junior without testing, but if you're in a tight spot and nobody else can do it, sometimes that's how the cookie crumbles

[near remnant]

Sure, but the problem is: i can't do it

[white relic]

well, then you can't do it, no point worrying about it

have you told your manager that you can't do it?

[near remnant]

Yeah but im super stressed out and the company is going insane because they cant use the app properly.

[left socket]

I think, if you have tried to contact those who you know can check and push changes, then you have done your due diligent.... Diligence(?)

[white relic]

It's not your responsibility to make sure the whole company is running smoothly.

[near remnant]

Senior colleague will come back next year, first workday. Yeah, i think I let it go guys.. I Implemented and fixed many bugs during these 4 months, on my own, but fixing production alone, without testing, hell nah man.

[digital fjord]

if it's beyond your ability, your best is probably just telling your manager that it is in fact beyond your ability.

if you have been around for just a couple months, that's expected

[white relic]

your management needs to know the extent of your capabilities. If they need to hire a second senior dev to handle this kind of thing when the main guy goes on vacation, that's their job.

[near remnant]

Also, if the senior colleague went through everything and did code reviews on me, then I feel like I'm clear. I never pushed anything to production directly. Also, production was working properly until now and we didn't change anything in the code.

[digital fjord]

yeah, pushing unreviewed code to prod is ... bold. If this is an actual emergency, it may be something the manager wants you to do regardless, but at that point you should make it clear and get in writing that you are likely to just break things more, rather than fix anything.

[near remnant]

That is the case, unfortunately. I only pushed code to github, and also to test environment, never to actual, prod. So yeah.

[near ocean]

First step is letting your manager know that you need help with the issue and also let them know that youre not going to push to production because thats just fucking dumb

[fallow tusk]

help i am creating my linked in summary i think i have no other thing to put is this ok?

[vapid jay]

any recommendation of book for python specific to data analysis ?

[fallow tusk]

@modern ore is it so bad?

wow that is really bad

yep i already have my degree

[true harness]

at the very least i would expect good grammar

[fallow tusk]

but i did not study on popular uni or something

holy molly this makes it really easy i think ill go with this style hahaha

[balmy mural]

That would depend on your university, but generally no. You could maybe sit in on the classes though without officially taking it as a module. That's something you should ask your university and the relevant professors

[true harness]

some universities offer it as a special program

taking graduate cs classes as an undergrad

wait, so you're saying you're in an undergrad CS program and you don't have any algorithms classes?

are you sure there isn't another level, like "advanced DSA" or something. having only one level seems suspect

are you sure your cs program is accredited lol

[fallow tusk]

Oh you can choose your majors on your school? Thats nice

[white relic]

what junior/senior level courses are there?
honestly curious

[fallow tusk]

Our is a fixed path 😅

[true harness]

in...uni?

[white relic]

ok but like

at my university (I did not major in CS, but) DSA was a sophomore level course and you had to take it as a prereq for a bunch of higher level stuff that was required for the CS major

so what higher level classes are you taking instead?

what's your university's idea of a senior level class that doesn't require DSA?

[true harness]

there's stuff like compiler stuff, cybersec stuff, etc. mostly just more specialized compared to the prereqs

[near ocean]

You go into uni for a specific course, you can choose some classes in the course but whatever compo you pick your degree is the course you picked, theres no get into uni and then pick what course to study

[white relic]

that uh
wow. ok, I guess the state of CS education is worse than I even realized

[true harness]

well yeah but it's not fixed fixed

[near ocean]

No but changing your course is significantly more involved, its basically dropping out and reapplying to the uni

[true harness]

huh. it's much easier here. especially within the same college

[white relic]

granted, but that's often due to lack of intentional effort on the student's part.
It sounds like your university has just... no actual CS program tbh

[near ocean]

Unis in the uk for example are more "collections of schools", getting into CS school in a uni doesnt mean you'd get into another school in the same uni

[white relic]

I've heard of universities in the US where you have to drop out and reapply to switch majors. I didn't go to one but it's not unheard of

[near ocean]

Usually it doesnt matter cause CS and other eng stuff are in the same school

[true harness]

so here, usually you have unis which are collections of colleges. you'll have like, college of engineering, college of arts, whatever. so if you want to switch from say, meche to EE, it's usually pretty easy

[vapid jay]

My uni doesn't enforce remembering code for some reason

though in interview I get asked about specific questions in programming

[true harness]

as it turns out, your client is not going to ask you to find strongly connected components or other CS theory. you need to be able to code

somewhat, but that's generally what it is

source?

[fallow tusk]

i guess i cant flex my CS degree on linkedin😅
when i enrolled CS i dont get to choose which courses i can take or have options

[white relic]

idk what CS would have to do with how admissions are organized between different schools within a university but

[true harness]

it's not true

it's lower than that

some schools have begun disallowing transfers into CS, though. no i don't

[lapis wind]

Please write me a website with MSSQL and hook it up to my episerver

[true harness]

uhhh, symmetric relation uhh reflexive closure uhh projection

[fallow tusk]

meanwhile me on google: what is episerver?

[white relic]

no, but I can see why schools do it (improves placement rate)

[lapis wind]

Ngl I think most CS grads would be like that lol

[fallow tusk]

i am a cs grad and im like that 🥲

[vapid jay]

Wdym

Does leetcode help you remember stuff?

[lapis wind]

The only issue with that is while it's use in Interviews and things, real systems tend to be very very different to leetcode questions

[true harness]

why not both

[vapid jay]

I dont know how to get good with memorising code

I was asked questions like what does left join mean in sql in an interview

[white relic]

I mean... it's relevant basic knowledge for a lot of jobs 🤷‍♂️

Maybe not the kind of job you want, but that makes it a good question

[crystal umbra]

''WElcome to online welcome training Welcome Online welcome To weLcome.
Sample Output 0

(('WElcome', 5), ('to', 2), ('online', 2), ('training', 1))
Sample Input 1

Python Programming, Java programming.
Sample Output 1

(('Python', 1), ('Programming', 2), ('Java', 1))'''

[true harness]

they do teach complexity theory, yes

[crystal umbra]

Help me vth this question

[gritty rivet]

Seems like you're in the wrong channel, maybe check #❓｜how-to-get-help or #python-discussion

[true harness]

if the job needs SQL there's a good chance you'll need a left join ¯_(ツ)_/¯

no, it's barely top-100. any accredited CS program should teach that

[vapid jay]

And this was for a junior position as data engineering and i had prior data science exp

[true harness]

it's fun

no

[true harness]

SQL is pretty much required for data roles. asking what a left join is is not unreasonable

[gritty rivet]

If it's not a degree, nobody cares

[vapid jay]

I have a friend who does not have a degree and is already doing software dev job full time

[gritty rivet]

That's nice, it happens. But I highly doubt some SWE certificate mattered much in him getting hired, which is all I was saying there

if you're not going to get a degree, it's more about building a strong portfolio and getting to know the right people... certs can help but they're pretty insignificant in the developer world (for IT operations, they can count more)

pretty much any degree is a significant advantage over no degree

[void salmon]

hi all\

[true harness]

what country are you talking about?

[void salmon]

this is my frist msg on discord

[true harness]

that's not very doable

[void salmon]

anyone reply me

[vapid jay]

it’s just a mix of all different OOP and machine level programming

[gritty rivet]

This channel is for career discussion... try a channel like #ot0-psvm’s-eternal-disapproval for general chat

[vapid jay]

yea where I live at not so bad colleges

[true harness]

what experience are you speaking from? or qualifications?

[vapid jay]

I think it’s called a minor? idk terminology yet much

[true harness]

so none?

[near ocean]

Please qualify your advice with your experience/education, otherwise just dont (offer it)

[true harness]

you've made claims with no actual evidence before, just verifying

it's "doable". maybe like 1% chance

[gilded valley]

I hear anecdotes all the time of people being failing to find an entry-level job after months or years, and almost always the reason is because they scraped through their degree doing the bare minimum and are now applying with no skills, no confidence in themselves, a bad CV, and no willingness to put in the work to fix those things

[near ocean]

This isnt a channel or topic to joke around, and no its not doable

Doable means you have a significant probability of doing x task, just cause technically someone has made it from self taught doesnt mean its doable for the vast majority of people

[vapid jay]

But do they get the job from the degree

[gilded valley]

These people don't get the job at all

[vapid jay]

If they’re in an environment bug testing and failing they got it, average guy cannot get there

[gilded valley]

mediocre CS grads who are willing to put in a little effort do get the job from their degree

[near ocean]

What does this mean

[true harness]

the channel is for giving serious advice

[vapid jay]

Do u think someone with information tech Bach science is eq qualified as comp science

That shit just sounds so weird to me

[true harness]

probably, though it's not just having a degree that matters. you need to be qualified for the job

[gilded valley]

to be clear - this is also about the US and the UK, I don't know if it maps to Asia for example

[vapid jay]

Damn son I might need to get Bach of tech then

Ez degrees

[near ocean]

stem degrees are not easy and if you go into one thinking you can act laid back like you did in high school youre shooting yourself in the feet, both of them

[true harness]

i mean...i'm kinda doing that. though i think it will get harder soon

[gilded valley]

for me, my first year was like 90% pointless

[digital fjord]

I mean, you can probably be laid back and still get the degree. The problem is that you learn nothing that way and mostly waste your time/money.

[near ocean]

A degree is not just the first year tho lol

[gilded valley]

agree - just iirc PSVM is still in his first year, I'm not saying that's true throughout

[near ocean]

Besides, you'll probably have group projects and if everyone acted like that we'd all fail those modules

The majority of staffers and regulars here are a cut above the rest of us

[true harness]

this is true 😔. all the group projects i was part of, i was doing everything 😔

[digital fjord]

yeah, for group projects you do generally want to put a bit extra effort just to make up for your peers potential incompetence, especially in the first half of the degree

[near ocean]

psvm and lakmatiol might breeze through their degrees but i doubt the average chat reader here could do the same, i dont think its good to possibly influence others this way

[digital fjord]

according to my UNI, ~90%

czechia

the actual number is probably a bit higher, since a lot of people start working during their studies and don't even bother finishing the degree

[digital fjord]

hmmm, fair. I mean more relatively to other STEM degrees, like medicine or just plain old engineering.

[near ocean]

I wanna say 70% of my graduating class got a software job, others went into banking, finance, etc

[fallow tusk]

yo this is me any advice to recover my losses?

[true harness]

if you have a degree you just need to pick up the relevant skills

[gilded valley]

• Get better at interviews, i.e having confidence in yourself
• Make sure you're comfortable doing basic OOP and very basic leetcode (i'm talking reverse a string, or strip whitespace from a string kinda stuff)
• Make sure your CV is decent, your university careers will probably help you if you graduated in the last few years

[fallow tusk]

right now that i graduated im studying im focused as back end dev specifically django created 2 personal projects

[gilded valley]

I could name specific big name companies that have asked both of those questions as a key part of their technical interview

[digital fjord]

ah, I was wrong, it's actually 99% within 3 months. That is of course not counting the people who drop out, but I expect our uni is especially good at this with the prevalence of people working parallel to their studies.

[delicate bane]

does your uni have a co-op program? interesting

[gilded valley]

not RNG - these are just companies that are not competing for top tier devs. They want people who will come in, work a full day, and complete their Java Jira tickets on time

[fallow tusk]

i just graduated around like 5 months ago and the part where having no confidence really hit me hard i havent tried even a single job interview yet

[gilded valley]

TripAdvisor

[digital fjord]

not quite, they just let various local companies advertise internships, and it all kind of works out by itself

[near ocean]

Pretty much every junior interview is going to start with a leetcode easy, its just to warm up, get comfortable with the coding environment, break ice etc

[delicate bane]

ah interesting. i recommend uni students to take internships whenever possible since it makes them much more competitive as applicants. big difference between those who have this experience vs. those that dont

[void salmon]

Ok boss

[digital fjord]

here it's more common people get hired by the company their interned at after they decide to finish their studies. No need to train them or ensure they are a team fit

[gilded valley]

it wasn't my interview, it was someone who I trust 100%. The interview just focused more on architecture and theoretical stuff

[delicate bane]

yeah makes sense. i mean there are still many places here that ask interns for return offers if they do a good job/are coachable

[gilded valley]

everything in life has an element of randomness to it. That doesn't make it RNG.

People with good skills are going to get questions that they can answer far more frequently than people who don't know what a hashmap is

[delicate bane]

well there is always an element of luck to these things. such as the company finding a great candidate early on and closing the job posting early, etc.

[gilded valley]

RNG implies the only factor is chance - this is poker, it's not roulette

[digital fjord]

I do kind of agree that algo question are somewhat a matter of luck. Very few candidates are good enough at algos to invent the solution on the spot (nor should they be that good at algos, go into CS research at that point), so they have to just remember the solution. Of course, you still have to adapt the solution, but it's more about remembering the algorithms than actually being "clever". I would be shocked if someone could "invent" even something as basic as dijkstra in a technical interview.

[near ocean]

If leetcode hards are hard then just practice more 🤷 its pretty much just pattern recognition and pulling out one of prewritten x algorithms

Wdym you cant prep for it

Yes? Why wouldnt i? Do i lose something from doing easies?

[near ocean]

Thats literally what i said

Where have you interviewed where you had different questions based on the interviewer

For the same positions/comp?

[gilded valley]

I'm saying that's the floor, not the goal

If you're 5mo in to trying to get a job and failing, there's likely some key place you're going wrong, so you should make sure you've reached the floor in all key places

[graceful mason]

If you think an entire interview depends on your ability to answer 1 or 2 leetcode questions you (or the company) are approaching it the wrong way

[near ocean]

I find it very strange that a company like amazon would not have a standard interview process and would just pick based on the whims of whoever is interviewing that day

[graceful mason]

I mean... Isn't that what you're suggesting when you say interviews are heavily RNG just because you might not know the answer to a couple of leetcode questions?

[near ocean]

I have a lot of friends that work as quants and they seem to have more structure to their interview process, which im inclined to believe more than the claim they dont

The entire philosophy of risk management runs counter to whatever youre claiming companies like Citadel, Jane Street do, so im just going to suggest we agree to disagree

[dense mesa]

Can I get a conviction rate on that by EOD, thx. /s

[dense mesa]

<@&831776746206265384> this user has spammed the exact same message in many channels

[regal venture]

i am confused

[fleet reef]

Why?

[regal venture]

if i knew it i wouldnt be confused

[sudden yacht]

?

[dense mesa]

The message was since deleted, the user had spammed a question mark in many channels

[sudden yacht]

You have since removed your messages, which is good. But in future please do not spam. If you are confused about anything on this server, you can ask in #community-meta

[sleek egret]

yar

[mortal wedge]

I think they started rolling back some of these as they got more desperate, but as a screening Amazon would send out an automated test consisting of two leetcode mediums. You have to solve the test cases as well as answer some basic questions about your algorithm like time complexity and strategy.

[sleek egret]

what do you think of that recruiting filter strategy?

why does ringringring think any firm is paying $400k for "entry level swe"?

[delicate bane]

bruh i have no idea.

[steel kindle]

There’s a handful around 300 or a bit over, but that’s including equity

[delicate bane]

not for entry level. also netflix is known for its high compensation.

anyway came here to post this even though im sure many have already seen this: https://www.swyx.io/career-ladders

includes the dropbox one many are familiar with. got the link from mikiko bazely's newest article.

also this one was interesting too: https://staffeng.com/guides/staff-archetypes

[smoky quest]

netflix is also cash only, requires to be in a hcol area and is also known for not hiring entry levels (unless things have changed there). They are also famous for paying enough for the employees to not leave, including increases but also decreases (albeit more rare)

(they do have some plans for buying some options though, but that's outside of it)

[steel kindle]

Yeah, you’re right. Looking at levels the highest paying entry level roles were ~270k

So 300 is out of question since a good bit of that is equity, but to say they pay 300 seems a bit wrong

[delicate bane]

@smoky quest recursive, does this seem to fit with your experience - with the caveat ofc being that at the staff level, it becomes difficult to place individuals into boxes

[smoky quest]

Somewhat.
I guess I could add the "innovation" persona where they would spearhead a whole new thing

However it's a blend between roles, attributes and needs. It's also very much company specific

[delicate bane]

oh interesting. very fascinating

[smoky quest]

note also there is a pull vs push. People will have a natural tendency to gravitate towards certain things

[delicate bane]

someone to lead greenfield projects, especially those that would be high value to the business sounds important

[smoky quest]

Sometimes, it's a plus, but it can also be a hinderance

[smoky quest]

yeah. The less well defined the problem, the more senior the person will be

[delicate bane]

right thats true

im thinking about your push vs. pull comment. and theres def a whole people management aspect to it. sounds like its difficult to truly know how someone will do in a role/which responsibilities they focus on until they are placed in such a position.

[fluid fern]

Funny enough, in house competition seems to create a shit load of greenfield projects, all for them to be abandond after the project has met user specifications

[delicate bane]

everyone wants to build. no one wants to maintain. amirite?

[fluid fern]

Yup

It's funny cause a manager brought it up in a large company meeting, stating "u fuck r abandoning these projects faster than a crack addicted father abandons his family"

[sleek egret]

if you say so

they key is "entry level"

ok

[spark cobalt]

Well, this company has some very ambitious plans for me...

First company I worked at, been here for 2 months, this company has a pretty heavy Masters/PhD requirement with only 2 people with BS in engineering team. I never did college and just graduated high school.

Now they want me to spearhead one of the larger projects in the upcoming months. This is just scary

[delicate bane]

you got this. dont be intimidated.

[spark cobalt]

One of customers want to switch from Mongo to Cassandra and the current guy that leads the project is like "shit you gonna do that"

Software development.

[lunar ibex]

how did you get into a job like that just out of highschool?

[delicate bane]

so youre going to be managing the shift from document to wide column store for this customer? i believe in you.

[spark cobalt]

It's not like I have imposter syndrome or anything, I genuinely just do not know a lot of things and it's like, what kind of things are they planning for me to do in the upcoming months.

At least the person training me is pretty impressed with the speed I'm picking up things.

[spark cobalt]

I applied to 4000 jobs, 10 interviews, 2 offers.

[lunar ibex]

lmao, 4000?

[spark cobalt]

Essentially a huge number game cuz 99.99% of entry level people have a degree and I get fuck you'd by ATS and other AI instantly.

[sleek egret]

I respect that sort of persistence and gumption

keep that up and you will go far in life

[spark cobalt]

I got lucky and landed a company that didn't just wanna shove me into UI and never let me explore other things. They're letting me touch a lot of technologies and really trying to get me to growm

[lunar ibex]

so you had no experience in programming and applied to 4k jobs?

[spark cobalt]

So a lot of it is also this company as well. They gave me the opportunity and I'll do my damned best to abuse it

[sleek egret]

one assumes he had experience programming just no programming jobs

[lunar ibex]

id hope so lol

[spark cobalt]

I've been self learning programming during junior and senior year of HS. That for me was COVID year so was able to spend like literal day and night investment programming every waking hour for every day.

So have been programming for a while, just yeah not in a professional environment.

[lunar ibex]

did you do 12 hr days?

[sleek egret]

um, that's great in a way... but you gotta get out a bit more kiddo 🙂

[spark cobalt]

12? That's weak. I've spent 18 hours per day for a solid 2 weeks to get a project out.

[lunar ibex]

yeah i used to do that, then you realize its actually detrimental lol

eventually you fall out of balance and cant focus/experience burn out, its important to remain balanced

[spark cobalt]

I have no social life. I just moved to San Jose and like trying to find anyone my age that's not in college is not happening. I'm 18 and all my friends right now have kids, and some of them have kids older than me.

[sleek egret]

Sleep is for the weak, amirite?

[vagrant cradle]

is there any things/jobs that are only python and you won't be able to do it with another language?

[sleek egret]

not even working on python is only in python

[delicate bane]

whats wrong with making friends who are in college?

[spark cobalt]

Yes. Hence, the 4000 jobs. I haven't applied to jobs in 3 months and I still get denial emails. Like I got one today from Paypal. That's how much I applied.

@lunar ibex Burnout is for the weak. Jk, I am maintaining regular exercise at the gym everyday and a healthy diet. But that's about it.

[lunar ibex]

Hahahaha #ironman

[spark cobalt]

Nothing wrong with the people, it's just we live such different lives and I'm generally indifferent about what students are learning in college, or their crazy parties etc.

[sleek egret]

Paypal sucks anyway

[lunar ibex]

i love it, im guessing you feel the fire to work? the burning passion @spark cobalt

[sleek egret]

Just remember, everyone that rejected you sucks!

[spark cobalt]

Also a lot of college students in the Bay Area are just fucking elitists.

[delicate bane]

ah i get that.

[sleek egret]

Well, they are the elite. so who else would they be having sex with?

[spark cobalt]

Work is work. As long as I'm learning while working, then that's all that matters. If I'm not learning while I'm working, sounds like it's a time to move to a different project.

[lunar ibex]

so you view programming as work?

[spark cobalt]

Bay Area kids are sweaty as shit. I only just moved here recently but everyone gets on their high horse for everything.

[sleek egret]

Where did you come from?

[spark cobalt]

I love programming, or to be more accurate I just love building things that people use and need. I do 50+ hours of work a week for company, and invest like 3+ additional hours a day working on a programming project.

[lunar ibex]

nice, can i add u? id like to talk some more

[spark cobalt]

Born and raised in Arcadia, CA. Northern LA.

[sleek egret]

is that in "the valley"?

[spark cobalt]

We can discuss here 🙂 I'm sure lots of people can also offer their 2 cents on things.

[spark cobalt]

Nope. Hollywood.

[lunar ibex]

sure if you dont mind sharing your person life here lol, i was gonna ask if i could see the resume you sent to 4k companies as im in a similar situation to you

[sleek egret]

Hollywood? On the map it's just east of Pasadena...

[spark cobalt]

Like LA is Hollywood not Silicon Valley

[sleek egret]

oh, that's what you meant. anyway, I've never met anyone from that area of LA... is it a rough neighborhood?

what with the race track and all

[sleek egret]

by "the valley", I meant the san fernando valley 🙂

[spark cobalt]

I was born in one of the better areas. At least the place I lived in was sweaty as shit with like 80% of my school being Asians. I deadass thought a school couldn't get more sweaty than that, but lo and behold, Bay Area schools are something else.

[lunar ibex]

what do you mean by "sweaty"

[sleek egret]

So... I'm old. what do you mean when you say "sweaty"?

[spark cobalt]

Like, trying aggressively hard. Super competitive kind of thing.

[lunar ibex]

whats wrong with competition

[sleek egret]

lol, don't take this the wrong way, but YOU sound very "sweaty" too 🙂

[spark cobalt]

Nothing intrinsically wrong with it. Just it creates pretty toxic parenting and those toxic traits extend to the kids.

[spark cobalt]

[lunar ibex]

i personally enjoy competition, as long as each side remains humble and understanding it provides growth in the correct situations

[sleek egret]

lol, there's a sweat emoji. who knew?

[lunar ibex]

can you explain toxic traits a little more?

[sleek egret]

Remember, 2nd place just means you're the 1st loser!

[spark cobalt]

Everytime I talked to a Bay Area kid and I explain my background I get instantly railed with 1000 technical questions trying to kind of one-up me type of thing. If I had to guess, I think this comes from how parents try to one-up other parents by flexing their kids WeChat moment

It's like, people don't respect other backgrounds unless those other backgrounds are below them type of thing.

[lunar ibex]

oh yeah i see what youre saying now, but i usually do this to people too because a lot of the time people say they have experience in something when they really dont, or i want to gauge their experience levels. its not meant to offend though, more inquisitive

[sleek egret]

Partially that but partly also disbelief. You have to admit that not many kids in your situation have strong programming skills. You are a rarity, an exception. Which is great. But you can't expect people to accept your word for it. Perhaps unfair, but it is the way it is.

[lunar ibex]

maybe the way they say it is whats causing it to be perceived as an attack?

[spark cobalt]

Probably true. Definitely feels unfair on my end cuz I never ask these type of questions

[sleek egret]

You will learn as the years go by that most of life is unfair.

[spark cobalt]

It's possible but not necessarily plausible.

[sleek egret]

If you're lucky, once in a while though, it'll be unfair to your benefit.

[lunar ibex]

if you make friends with the right people and have connections your chances go way up @modern ore

[spark cobalt]

Bootcamp is connections with premium. While the job I have now is from a cold apply, I've been going to Dev meetups and managed to curate constant flow of referrals to roles.

[lunar ibex]

#career-advice message

Read this @modern ore

[spark cobalt]

Frankly, if you're self taught, the chance that someone's gonna even read your resume out of hundreds of college students that applied is like, probably close to 0.

[sleek egret]

After you've got a few gigs under your belt, it won't matter nearly as much

[spark cobalt]

The job hunting part ends up being an art of it's own, and in my opinion harder than the whole learning process. You have to learn how to sell yourself and convince someone to take a risk on a fucking high school kid.

[steel kindle]

^

[sleek egret]

Maybe you should instagram your life. then you can be internet famous too!

[lunar ibex]

🤮

[sleek egret]

lol

[spark cobalt]

Demo'd my projects, easy/medium LC questions which shouldn't be an issue for anyone tbh.

[sleek egret]

This may surprise you but most professional programmers have a very hard time with even the easiest of LC questions

[spark cobalt]

I hate influencers. They all spread fake hype and fake drama to get clicks. Most recently this whole GPT3 GONNA REPLACE YOUR JOBS. It's like selling your soul to th devil

[lunar ibex]

@sleek egret

How long have you been in the industry?

[sleek egret]

but then, IMO, a good 1/3 of so-called "programmers" are plain incompetent. 1/3 only sorta know what they're doing. and the last 1/3 are the ones who create pretty much everything

[sleek egret]

30+ years. at both huge companies and tiny startups and companies in between.

[spark cobalt]

Oh yeah, I've met someone on Pramp (mock interview site) with 7 years of experience struggling to do absolute value sort (literally like, sort(x, key=lambda whatever: math.abs(whatever)), dunno the correct syntax but something like this for the whole solution) and couldn't get it after an hour and gave up.

[steel kindle]

If college is an option, that's probably the best route. It opens up many more opportunities

[lunar ibex]

Nice, can you describe what makes an excellent programmer from the average? Is it just a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of whats going on?

[sleek egret]

I haven't really interviewed in the traditional sense for something like 15 years now.

[spark cobalt]

I didn't go to college for a reason completely irrelevant to software engineering

[steel kindle]

travelling, right?

[spark cobalt]

If you wanna be a software engineer and make the most out of the next 30 years of your career, would say you should go to college.

[sleek egret]

For the vast majority of people, yes

[spark cobalt]

Travelling + music yep. Those 4 years of college gonna be reinvested in my 20s to actually live life, not starting my career.

[true harness]

aren't you starting your career right now?

[spark cobalt]

Yes. I'm not in my 20s though, 18 rn.

[steel kindle]

Fair enough. I just finished college today, planning to spend the next 9-10 months travelling.

[true harness]

so in like 4 years you're going to take a hiatus or something

[spark cobalt]

Learned the theory before I even touched LC problems.

[spark cobalt]

More like when I'm 25. I'd just work remotely.

[steel kindle]

Not to say you shouldn't know DSA fundamentals in and out (you should), but there are lots of jobs that do not ask LC problems.

[spark cobalt]

I'm not travelling to just fuck around and have fun, I'm travelling to immerse myself in people's culture. I don't see why I can't work in a different place and live the life of another pair of shoes.

[true harness]

taxes

[balmy mural]

I also plan on travelling in my 20's (am currently in my 20's, have started travelling this year), and I finished uni this year. Going to uni hasn't impacted my ability to travel in my 20s

[sleek egret]

The biggest problem you're gonna face without a degree is that it's going to be very difficult to gain promotions into management ranks. It's also going to be difficult to raise VC investment as a founder of a startup. Not impossible, but harder. That said, you seem to have the drive to crush the obstacles in front of you. So who knows.

[spark cobalt]

OAs have been generally filtering out those who absolutely cannot program whatsoever. If you're not passing OAs, probably should go back to studying DSA first

[steel kindle]

I mean it certainly makes an impact. Hard to take 10 months to travel when you're in school still.

[sleek egret]

what are OA's?

[steel kindle]

Online Assessments

[spark cobalt]

4 years of college + a few years to pay it off. That's time.

[balmy mural]

Hard to take 10 months to travel when you're working as well

[steel kindle]

A bit easier since one makes you money, the other costs money

[spark cobalt]

Just online coding tests they give to people before they even read the resume. Acts as another filter before an actual interview is being held.

[balmy mural]

Ah, I guess that's a benifit I have of living in a third world country. I can literally pay off my college debt in less than a year if I pinch my pennies

[spark cobalt]

Living in America also costs money.

[sleek egret]

If you're an social media influencer like bg, you can get paid to travel!

[steel kindle]

I mean tbf you should be able to do that in the US, CS pays pretty well

[lunar ibex]

lmao

[steel kindle]

I should have all of my debt repaid within a year of working, but I also only went for 2 years @balmy mural

[delicate bane]

im patiently waiting.

[balmy mural]

I don't think it pays well enough to get rid of debt in one year though, or does it?

[spark cobalt]

My thing isn't that suddenly I can't travel, it's just I just did this path for the 4+ years of extra time.

[steel kindle]

tbf college doesn't need to take four years

[balmy mural]

Had to take 4 years for me

[spark cobalt]

At least one of my philosophies is to avoid making 30 fucking years of your life all invested in a career then be 50 and have a mid life crisis.

[sleek egret]

Most people need longer

[true harness]

source?

[sleek egret]

The 50% dropout rate

[true harness]

source?

[steel kindle]

Most people take longer yeah. If you make it a priority to finish earlier it's certainly possible, especially if planned during high school.

[balmy mural]

Actually 5 since my first year wasn't in CS then I changed my major and due to prerequisits I ended up having a year with just two modules

[sleek egret]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/college-students-dont-graduate-4-years-government-counts-6-years-succe-rcna2776

[spark cobalt]

Exploring the world and understanding people of different cultures is ultimately a life project. Not some year of travelling.

[steel kindle]

But if you take extra credits, summer classes, and make a plan, it's not too hard to do it in 2-3 years

[spark cobalt]

Anyways, imma go back to work. Discord is addicting I need to stop. Talked for way too long. Cya guys

[balmy mural]

I guess this depends on your location. Doing it faster isn't possible here

[steel kindle]

Ig, I'd rather get paid and get better experience tbh

[balmy mural]

You don't get experience by studying the same content for longer at uni

[sleek egret]

you can't buy friends with money

[steel kindle]

Nope

I mean I did that anyways. You can do that without spending 4 years in school.

[true harness]

interesting. but this is across all majors, right?

[sleek egret]

all of our interns go to places like spacex, amazon, google, apple, etc. the next year. we train them up and they bail on us. it was very annoying.

[sleek egret]

I guess so

Yes most. We're their stepping stone.

[steel kindle]

idk how that's relevant tbh. You're still spending 8-9 months of the year in school, and that costs money. If you enjoy school, then sure, I personally hated college.

[balmy mural]

I enjoyed most of uni. Some aspects I didn't enjoy

[sleek egret]

I just hated the classes and homework part of university. everything else was awesome.

[balmy mural]

I really think uni is what you make of it