career-advice

[median copper]

I will just keep working for free 🙂

[true harness]

well, ok I guess

[wanton birch]

I think they honestly can’t tell candidates apart. So it at least provides some sort of justification for why they pick one over the other.

[true harness]

huh?

[wanton birch]

Why employers might want to test candidates with leetcode

[true harness]

leetcode tests programming skills

[wanton birch]

No shit

[true harness]

so.. it helps them tell candidates apart?

[wanton birch]

Yes. If it tests programming skills, it can be used as some form of a metric to rank the candidates.

[true harness]

what's your point then?

[fringe sphinx]

I don't score people on how correct their leetcode answers are, I score them on the process and how they go about it.

In fact, I prefer when people can't solve a question.

[wanton birch]

What point!?

[ivory sluice]

you guys aren't disagreeing

[wanton birch]

How are you not understanding something so straightforward. I am totally confused.

[ivory sluice]

don't talk like this here

[wanton birch]

Sorry about that. I am still confused. I am not understanding what’s going on. Why the disagreement

Maybe I misspoke or had some typo? I am not sure

[dreamy shadow]

So, I'm in this office politics bs between two teams. One team requires a form, the other team refuses to fill the form (as it needs client sign off). How do I tell the team that refuses "they need to reach out to the other team to ask for an exception, because I got stonewalled when I tried".
Would something like "Please reach out to bob on the ABC team for an exception". come off rude? (Latest reply is: "Again, we will not be approaching client with this request")

[true harness]

you're just saying that employers use leetcode to tell candidates apart?

[wanton birch]

Yeah. Like doing a maths skill test sort of. Like an exam. It can also let them observe and discuss how you approach solutions.

[true harness]

sure. but I don't think it's correct to say it's the only way to do that. for example, take home assignments can exercise the same skills

[wanton birch]

Sure. I don’t think that’s the only way. In fact, a combination of approaches should be used to make your system robust and handle diversity of candidates.

Although I did hear horror stories about companies making people complete projects for them and not hiring them or anything.

[near ocean]

Why do you *have to do anything? 2 teams with 2 team leads supposedly

[dreamy shadow]

I think you meant to type "have". But technically hate works here too. Because I hate both of these teams. And for why do I have to play telephone? No idea, apparently these two clowns can't talk to each other.

Adjusting some wording, but sending as is: "Please reach out to bob on the ABC team to request an exception.".

[fringe sphinx]

I dunno... I don't like that. That implies that ABC team can and might and should provide the exception

And then they'll say: "Skyglow said this is what I need to do"

[dreamy shadow]

Too late, already sent. If they say "Skyglow said this", then it's clown show x2. Because I'm low on the corp ladder.

[fringe sphinx]

🙂

[dreamy shadow]

ABC team CAN and SHOULD provide the exception. There's no reason no to besides "We can't fill out our form". This is revenue generating, good for client, and good for us internally. edit: oxford comma

[pastel thunder]

ok so instead of giving a counter offer or interview, he straight up said that it wont be possible for my skillset and experience(even before taking the interview). and wished my goodluck for future.

[dreamy shadow]

Btw, don't let the company your interviewing know your current TC. Just give your TC + 20%. Sounds like you dodged mega cancer. Just read up on the convo, if their websites says x - 1.33x TC and they offered you 0.65x TC, I would have just walked.

[pastel thunder]

yeah, good to know it was a cancer just a little disappointed about how even the small no. of applications i am getting callbacks from are of this kind.

[dreamy shadow]

Sadly, with the current market, most reputable large companies aren't hiring/slowed hiring (Well, they are always slow at hiring). Whereas smaller shady places tend to call back/move quicker.

[hearty island]

i would look at the low-end of the fortune 500 and apply as you search by past week (that's what i'm doing but for PM roles)

also @pastel thunder have you posted your resume here before?

[pastel thunder]

yeah, i have posted multiple times.

[hearty island]

oh, ok. just asking because the people here are really helpful for feedback

[hearty island]

are you in the US?

[pastel thunder]

no India

[hearty island]

oh yeah it's mad competitive there. i was operating under the assumption that you're from the US

[pastel thunder]

but no specific choice of location of work.

[hearty island]

so open to relocation?

[pastel thunder]

yup.

It might not sound good, but TC is all i care for + related to DS/ML

[hearty island]

you're not open to another domain in CS?

[pastel thunder]

I mean SDE is fine but i know even the domain i am skilled at is giving me a hard time, i have slim chance of higher TC in web dev etc.

[hearty island]

how many years of experience do you have and what do you want your TC to be?

just curious

[pastel thunder]

now i am gonna have a hard time justifying it.
If you include internships+reseach in ML i have about 3 years of exp. but as far as professional exp. is concerned, i have just started out.

[hearty island]

but internships do matter. like i can say i have a year of project management/problem management experience from my internships

[pastel thunder]

And for the TC i dont expect to take an average TC, i have decent TC(way higher than ones looking to just start career)
But i think i am worth more

[hearty island]

ballpark?

[pastel thunder]

looking for TC a decent 2-3 yr professional exp. guy would get.

[hearty island]

ok so like $100K or so

[pastel thunder]

Its india cant say, but based on estimate i think might be around there.

[hearty island]

8,199,150.00 Indian Rupee per year?

[pastel thunder]

i have higher TC "offers" than that currently.

[pastel thunder]

how did you convert that though

[hearty island]

google

[crisp stream]

pretty sure people out of uni get that nowadays

[dark arrow]

wha

[crisp stream]

yeah man

[dark arrow]

thats incredibly rare

[crisp stream]

probably where I live then

[hearty island]

i’m indian i live in the us tho

[dark arrow]

its 81LPA not 8LPA man

[crisp stream]

oh, I can't read

yeah, that's rare

[pastel thunder]

can confirm, tier 1 univ, get upto 4-5x more(and 2-3x more is average), i am in one

[dark arrow]

did you also read that as 8LPA

[pastel thunder]

yupp

[hearty island]

is there a fortune 500 equivalent in india?

[crisp stream]

I'd think Reliance is f500, but I haven't checked (just checked, yeah it is)

[pastel thunder]

people go after the same companies here too

[hearty island]

oh so my idea wasn’t bad then

[pastel thunder]

haha, i think so

[hearty island]

also shoutout to the fortune 500 list for not being free so i have to use another website to see it

[fringe sphinx]

You could also use S&P: https://www.slickcharts.com/sp500

[hearty island]

thanks for the idea

[fringe sphinx]

Or https://www.slickcharts.com/nasdaq100

[hearty island]

why didn’t i think of that 🤡

[vapid jay]

Hi i need help.
does anyone know coding tutorials?

[fringe sphinx]

I spend all day talking to finance people.

[hearty island]

i opened a roth ira a while ago

[pastel thunder]

what are these skills? looks too diverse

[proven crest]

Looks like a marketer with ML knowledge to me.

[dreamy shadow]

A data scientist in marketing, beat me to it

[echo pond]

machine learning marketer

marketing scientist

[pastel thunder]

I am applying to jobs like i am crazy. 🤪

[vapid jay]

does anybody have any clue about networking... especially in IRL. Most people seem to say it's super essential to getting a job, but it feels really overwhelming as a hyper-introvert

[small geode]

I mean, what sort of "clues" are you hoping for? What position are you in currently, high school, college, different career?

[fringe sphinx]

Networking is important. You have to find what works for you. Best advice I've ever heard is: "Never have lunch alone".

(it's a bit extreme, but the point is: go out and do something)

[boreal epoch]

I wasn't a fan of networking, but I started with my teachers at college, it was simple and in the end they helped me to get my first job. And then it gets easier since after your first job you are obligated to talk with people, it comes naturally.

[vapid jay]

i guess advice, but I do recognize I'm being too general... I'm post college, ran into a sales job as my 1st one, really really hated it despite working hard enough to be decent at it. Been out of work for maybe 3 years

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, in my experience, even introverts have their "tribe": people they're comfortable around.

So, for SWE techies, we're often comfortable with each other.,.. and uncomfortable with the sales suits.

[small geode]

It sounds like you aren't really in a position to have a group to network with, then. Like BillyBobby said, you'll kinda have to just go out and hang around I guess.

[vapid jay]

what did you talk about with your professors? Sports? Small talk?

[small geode]

All it takes is a good relationship, you don't have to conversate as if friends. I consider my old professor as part of my "network" I suppose, and I didn't talk to him outside classes whatsoever.

[fringe sphinx]

this is kinda the point of "never have lunch alone". It's not: "go talk about work with people", it's: "get out there and have any conversation.

[small geode]

Though keep in mind that's a metaphor. I'm not sure any given professor would just want to go to lunch with a student.

[vapid jay]

I guess networking events is the only answer once you've graduated. I've moved to a new state and have 0 social life, been a hermit for a while, I really feel frozen in any social situation. I recognize I need to change that but i have a hard time prioritizing this over efforts of getting a job. Maybe making friends comes first before trying to network. Or maybe not

[fringe sphinx]

I feel you man. It ain't easy without some common interest.

[small geode]

If you've sequestered yourself completely, like mentioned just go out to local events or something. I don't feel you have to 'make friends' first before going to such events.

[boreal epoch]

I used to participate in random discussions, went to some programming contests and I remember talking with a teacher from a class that I was getting good grades, and I told him that I was super interested in the software development area but it was hard to get a job, then he asked for my cv and referred me to some companies that he knew. I wasn't trying to have friendly relationship with them, I just was just doing more than the expected and showing that I was really interested.

[fringe sphinx]

A few other ideas: take a graduate class (or certificate program) at a local U. I know that costs $$.

[fringe sphinx]

Also, apply to a shitload of jobs. Interviews can seem daunting, but after a few, I view it as a form of networking (not really but it works)

[vapid jay]

my real crowd is the gamer crowd, since I"ve been pretty much singularly focused on games all my life, but I've had to stay sober away from gaming. So it's a topic I actively shy away from. Kind of ironic that I need to find new interests in order to socialize in order to find work😂 but I guess life has always been work

[small geode]

I wouldn't say you have to find new interests. Plenty of people are out there going to social events and are gamers.

[fringe sphinx]

I've made a lot of friends at my local gym, just by being there every morning. There's a few people at the park where I dog walk. No meaningful relationships, but fun.

I know. Get a dog. Instant conversation starter 🙂

[vapid jay]

I've been thinking about taking a CS course, or applying for a scholarship for a bootcamp (not sure if it is much harder to get a scholarship vs. just pay for it, since the scholarships are contingent upon getting a job)

[boreal epoch]

I moved to a new city and I'm working remotely, I feel you. I don't like to force people to be my friends, but instead, I started to go to the gym, started playing tennis in a club and started running with a coach where I was able to practice with more people. Naturally I made some friends, and even people that wanted to work together with me, start some business or something like that (The good and old "I have a brilliant app idea")

So go outside, things can happen naturally

[vapid jay]

that puts my mind at ease, thank you!

[vapid jay]

i'm noticing that it seems like the relationships you make don't have to be deep or close at all. Just knowing them as an acquaintance seems to be good enough. Thank you!

[fringe sphinx]

Welcome to getting old 🙂

[sleek egret]

that's because as you get older you learn that it takes years, perhaps decades, of shared experiences to truely know a person

[fringe sphinx]

dogs and/or kids help with this process 🙂

[sleek egret]

you can't trust kids

[fringe sphinx]

you ahven't met my dogs 😉

[sleek egret]

I lek dags

dayalekdags?

[mild sentinel]

I hope this is the place for this question but anyone have any ideas on how I can monetize programming skills as a college student before having a full time career? A “side hustle” (hate that buzz word) freelance type of commitment that I could learn and get experience while making some extra income?

Just brainstorming

[sleek egret]

best course for long-term success is to get an internship

otherwise, try to get a part time job while in school. freelancing for anything but bottom barrel rates will be difficult until you have built a professional network and reputation

[solar scroll]

hi

how can i get some $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$? sorry for prel

[frail perch]

I'm looking for a python developer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[near ocean]

No, stay on topic

[frail perch]

I need help

[near ocean]

This isnt the channel for help, try #python-discussion

[vapid jay]

maybe a tutor/teaching role? Since really experienced tutors charge a lot, maybe you could do away with charging less, but it would also help you brush up your skill

[vapid jay]

as a beginner, i don't have the tools/knowledge to do it but if you could write a little bot that can crawl websites in your local community, identify outdated websites based on deprecated tags or something , and offer to re-do them, maybe that's something. A friend of mine does that but without the bot.

I'd imagine you could look up ideas on platforms like Fiverr, but implement the same idea in different distribution channels, outside of the platform..

I also wonder about some contract-based roles in debugging, etc

[small geode]

Your friend does it without a bot because it's 1) generally not allowed to just scrape a website without it explicitly allowing and 2) you wouldn't know what sites to crawl unless you've already visited them yourself.

[vapid jay]

i was under the impression that public websites that don't require some kind of login was safe to scrape? Is that just an oversimplified understanding 😂

[small geode]

I still consider that not allowed. Just because an individual is unaware of the method to officially state you shouldn't scrape doesn't imply you can in my opinion.

[mild sentinel]

I agree I want to get a internship for next summer but in the mean time I wanted a tangible goal to work towards. And yes bottom of the barrel rates are rough until can prove yourself

[fringe sphinx]

My non earning suggestion for new developers is; contribute to an open source project relevant to an industry you care about

[mild sentinel]

Also for tutoring that’s not a bad idea at all. I definitely could teach others what I know and get paid that way. I’m not super experienced with front end things so doing the reworks of websites is a solid idea but just not really what I would aim for. I would prefer to do some sort of backend or anything along those lines with software anything there so I get relevant experience.

[mild sentinel]

That’s a great idea. Where do I look for projects to contribute to and what to contribute?

[fringe sphinx]

https://goodfirstissue.dev

Most projects tag issues as ‘good first issues’, start there. It won’t be easy tho

[mild sentinel]

That’s awesome! I’m totally okay with something not easy and challenging me a bit

[fringe sphinx]

But I’m impressed whenever I see someone contributed to a major project. You learn a lot of important skills, including PR etiquette

[mild sentinel]

I most definitely will be considering joining on contributing to a open source project. I’m really happy you suggested this because that flew over my head and could be fantastic experience

[fringe sphinx]

Good luck!

[subtle mauve]

Yes good luck!

[robust island]

How valuable are internships to employers generally?

[vital wyvern]

As in-- how valuable are internships to have on your resume?
Or how valuable is it for employers to seek out interns?

[robust island]

More the former

[fringe sphinx]

Very valuable. As in, it'll help you find a job faster (and better). It's not a showstopper, but makes a big difference.

[vital wyvern]

They're a good way to qualify that you have relevant work experience, especially while you're still studying or working on your degree. It's essentially qualified work experience, without the requirements of a full time employee or a degree. You work in an entry level position for some period of time, and if you're well recommended, not only can the internship itself be valuable, but the networking and references you obtain can be pivotal to getting your foot in the door.

As Billy said, I don't think it's mandatory-- you're not just dead in the water if you don't get an internship, but I think it offers good experience, and it's very easy to qualify on a resume. The alternative in that situation would be contributions towards open source projects/larger personal projects to help qualify your skills.

[robust island]

Does all that still apply even if the internship isn't precisely the same field as the job I'll eventually go after?

[vital wyvern]

It depends. I'd say an internship is better than no internship, but it's a bit about how you sell the context in relation to the field you're going into.

[true harness]

yes

[robust island]

lol good answer

[fringe sphinx]

Any work experience >> no work experience.

[robust island]

So all these are essentially ways to show a potential employer you can actually do the stuff you learn?

[vital wyvern]

Yes. But also think more basic than that-- that you can... show up to work, on time, for a sustained period of time, and avoid pissing anyone off enough to terminate your internship. Shockingly, that can be a good credential.

[true harness]

👏 demonstrated 👏 skills 👏

[robust island]

Ah gotcha

Thanks!

[fringe sphinx]

And, most importantly (from personal experience): won't fall asleep at your desk 5 min after arriving.

[vital wyvern]

I worked from home during my internship. I'm neither confirming nor denying that I fell asleep at my desk occasionally. Got all my projects done though.

[dim bay]

if I study data analysis stuff 8 hours a day except weekends, can I become data analyst (employed) in 3 months?

[lilac quail]

@dim bay Sure why not if you already have some math basics

You can at least start getting interviews, can't say if you will get a job that fast

[tired inlet]

hello i need some advice regarding machine learning career that i am perusing so please let me know if anyone can help

[near ocean]

Data analyst (employed) speedrun any%
Not how the world works outside of vidya

[spark saffron]

Hi can I DM u

[frail perch]

ofc why not?

[crisp jewel]

Hello everyone hru? I'm currently going into my first year of university at a Big 10 and am unsure as to what path to take. Here are my options I'm considering: I'm considering staying at that Big 10 and doing a dual Data science and computer science degree in 3 years and doing a masters in some field of computer science once I'm finished right after or taking 4 years to graduate and only 1 degree and attempt to transfer out to a ivy league after the first year then do my masters. Which path do you think would be best? Thank you for your help

[near ocean]

What is a big 10 and isnt a dual degree like an accelerated masters?

[untold crystal]

Hey guys, I was applying for remote internshipsAnd now I got an emailThat I have to attend a video interviewThis is my first timeI need tipsAnythingEverything

[hearty island]

use the STAR method when you answer questions, smile and have positive body language

[hearty island]

if it’s a coding question, make sure you walk them through your thought process

[fringe sphinx]

Learn something about the company: google the company and browse LinkedIn for people at the company. Have two questions you’d like to ask the recruiter: something about the job.

[hearty island]

yes questions you ask are very important

https://www.reddit.com/r/FinancialCareers/comments/14hck8d/goldman_sachs_begins_cutting_about_125_managing/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1

call it goldman saching 💀

[fringe sphinx]

Meh, all the big firms are cutting high level positions. A bank MD is pretty high level

[near ocean]

Kek, "come back to the office" they said
"It builds culture" they said
"Youre fired" they then said

[hearty island]

ooh i found some project manager role at Comerica and it requires a year of experience 👀

i'm seeing a lot of overlap between business analyst and project management roles. don't think it's a coincidence.

i go to school for business analytics tho, not analysis

is there a way i can find what a company's turnover rate is?

[near ocean]

Glassdoor has a stat like this i think

Or was it linkedin, they should have average tenure

[hearty island]

oh, ok. thanks!

[near ocean]

🫣

[hearty island]

dw i barely saw it lol i was looking at the tenure piece

[near ocean]

It should have a gold outline/accents cause its mostly a premium thing

[hearty island]

ah yeah i don't have linkedin prem

maybe when i have more experience. rn since i'm an undergrad i feel like it's kinda useless

[near ocean]

What kind of tenure do the companies youre looking at have

[hearty island]

4-5

[near ocean]

I think on average, tech companies have a tenure of ~3 years

[true harness]

the average tenure in my team is like...3x my age

[hearty island]

my old internship company is smol and probably has a much larger tenure as a result

[near ocean]

Tenure in the company?

[true harness]

yeah. most of them joined right out of college

[near ocean]

Wew thats wild

My current place has an average tenure of 4 years

[hearty island]

GS is 4.8 years, but idk about a specific position

[true harness]

i would assume it varies wildly between like, devs, or other positions

[near ocean]

Is there a correlation between tenure and the state of the workplace? GS is a trash heap from what i understand

[hearty island]

i saw some insta reel of some woman working from 8:30 in the morning to 11 PM for GS every day

[near ocean]

Anyway doesnt really matter, the plan is 2 years max at any one place until we find somewhere comfy to chill-tire at

[true harness]

work in a hedge fund for 2 years then retire

[hearty island]

work for GS and then move to a private equity firm

[near ocean]

Hedge funds dont even look at my apps
And neither do big banks

[hearty island]

i was so shocked when i got a response from RenTech

i also haven't heard back from DE shaw ever since i applied with my writing sample. prob never will

[near ocean]

I'm very curious as to what these quants/swes do day to day that companies can afford to ask for specific university degrees and experience

Surely its all a massive gatekeep and nothing else

[hearty island]

i'm not applying for dev roles tho, so fat chance it's easier for me to hear back than you

i think i'm the only project management person in the entire server

https://tenor.com/view/desert-tumble-weed-ghost-town-gif-11132442

^basically me^

[fringe sphinx]

It is. I end up writing most of the code these guys use. But, to be fair, they think about stuff I don't want to think about either.

[buoyant wadi]

can anybody share there resume for a backend dev fresher. i have no idea how to fill my resume since it looks so empty

django

[hearty island]

well a typical resume looks like your education, experience, projects, any academic certs or honors, and technical skills. sometimes the education goes along with the academic certs

i would recommend you just post it here and let people offer advice

[median copper]

How I should track for changes in database?

[hearty island]

idk if that's career relevant

[median copper]

oops selected wrong topic
didn't seen

[rough patrol]

What is the best routine to pass an interview by selecting a company?

[near ocean]

What does that mean? You pass interviews by solving their tech questions and being likeable and sociable

[lilac quail]

I don't understand

[hearty island]

do you mean like what you should practice?

[rough patrol]

yeah

[hearty island]

leetcode and answering behavioral questions

[arctic pecan]

Hello community, I have an interview in couple of days for getting admitted for MSC Data Science program in a renowned university.

The interview will mostly revolve around basics of **Python Math , Statistics Machine Learning and Big Data **

It would be a great help if you all can provide me with some good resources which could help me wrap up the above topics in lesser amount of time

[hearty island]

there are resources in the #data-science-and-ml channel

[pastel thunder]

"We wanted to let you know that we received your application for the Machine Learning Engineer role. We look forward to learning more about you and we’ll be in touch if your skills and experiences are a match for this role."
This statement made me feel like they shortlisted me lmao, and then at last " if your skills and experiences are a match for this role." lol

[hearty island]

sounds pretty standard to me

[lilac quail]

automated than you mail

[pastel thunder]

i am delusional. i didnt expected them to say ...look forward to....if....

[lilac quail]

"thank you for having your data with us. We'll make sure to keep it for years"

[hearty island]

"and never reach out until you apply again"

[pastel thunder]

its Adobe they indeed ignore even referrals

[near ocean]

Its an acknowledgement of your application, dont read too much into it and move on to other apps

[hearty island]

^

[pastel thunder]

just for meme

what would you have thought lmao. Mirage

[near ocean]

Hold on let me grab my industrial strength microscope

[spark cobalt]

Try to fill your resume that accentuates complexity, depth, deliberate programming and planning and thought, etc. rather than just having technology names on your resume. (Not to say technology names aren't important)

Then when trying to express the complexity of your portfolio or whatever there is, typically your problem ends up being how to shorten things

[hearty island]

demonstrated skills 🙂

[hearty island]

haven't seen you for a while, how's it going?

[spark cobalt]

Founder of the product I work on left, so now I'm the lead. A lot of work, my PMs trying to get me more into the business side of things because I'm the only one communicating with customers. Too much stuff

Coding isn't really an issue at this point. Everything's deliberated over, broken down to pieces that anyone can do. But everything beyond that is a lot

(I build the testing infra at my company)

(DevOps-ish work, but almost every work I do is SWE)

[hearty island]

i see. well at least you're busy! i've been doing my capm course and my internship. also been working on my resume

[spark cobalt]

My intern got COVID too

[hearty island]

damn

[spark cobalt]

Though he's back and kicking. A week lost but he's trying to work on weekends to catch up.

[hearty island]

i can't wait till september for apps season

[spark cobalt]

What's apps season? (Applications for what)

[hearty island]

job apps

[spark cobalt]

Oh

[hearty island]

yeah, i've been getting rejected bc i'm too far away from my graduation date

[spark cobalt]

Shocker

[spark cobalt]

You graduating this coming school year then I'm assuming?

[hearty island]

yep, may of 2024

[spark cobalt]

Nicenice

[hearty island]

i already have a job offer, i'm just looking for more offers

[spark cobalt]

That's great. Good stuff

[hearty island]

thanks! trying my best

[hearty island]

"As of Jun 12, 2023, the average annual pay for a Capm in New York City is $102,484 a year. Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $49.27 an hour. This is the equivalent of $1,970/week or $8,540/month." bruh

[pastel thunder]

tell me some not so famous but good job portal,
I am running out of posting to apply to

[hearty island]

you really applied to all the fortune 500 company jobs looking for ds/ml people?

[pastel thunder]

for fortune 500 i use referral

[hearty island]

ah, i don't really know other job portals besides the usual

[pastel thunder]

for startups and other i apply through portals

currently, i use

instahyre
well found
shine
indeed
cutshort
found.it
linkedin

let me know about others

[hearty island]

zip recruiter?

glassdoor? i like linkedin more than anything

[pastel thunder]

glassdoor i know, zip is new to me
ok keep going,

[hearty island]

angellist?

[pastel thunder]

i know about that, any other?

[hearty island]

nah

maybe someone else can chip in. i unfortunately don't use referrals for fortune 500s, i don't have those kinds of connections yet

[pastel thunder]

approach random people, for each company send message to 15 on linkedin, then ask, one will definitely give you

[hearty island]

but like what template do you use normally? to talk to them?

[pastel thunder]

i will dm you

[hearty island]

thanks

[pliant hawk]

Hello people!

Imma get straight to the point (sorry if I offended ya in any way)

I am a guy studying for something equivalent to a levels or as people say 11th and 12th

And my ideal (trying to achieve) profession (which I would LOVE to get into) would be something related to ai/ml

Soo any tips at all would be appreciated

I also would like to enquire about what I should do with my free time.
Some of the people who are close to me suggested doing online courses (the free ones like Harvard's cs50 python) but I basically have no idea whatsoever about those stuff

Any help from current data scientists would be appreciated!

And which coding language should I learn first

Python? Cuz i heard its a go-to for beginners (I am a beginner)

And how many hours should I dedicate for online courses or learning new coding languages

And which major should I apply for later on if I am trying to pursue a career related to ai/ml or data science

[pastel thunder]

yeah python should be good for beginner plus, in ML it is mostly used.

[summer roost]

computer science

[vapid jay]

Hi

[foggy birch]

I think 2 hours a day is great. Or even every other day depending on your time.

[fringe sphinx]

My suggestion for a absolute beginner is to go through a basic Python program before tackling cs50. Cs50 is great, but you should start with learning the basics first. Cs50 is similar to AP CS or Intro to Programming (college freshman class).

[peak halo]

probably computer science. if a university with a computer science program also has a program that's specifically about data science or AI, you might consider that as well. but I think those are uncommon

so you'll probably be looking at a computer science degree. and you'll want to look for computer science programs that have undergraduate courses in DS/AI, and which make it easy to transition into a graduate program.

[foggy birch]

You can also check out the OSSU free CS curriculum on GitHub.

[summer roost]

It would be very difficult to get a job in AI without some sort of college degree. Much moreso than most types of coding.

[outer granite]

What country are you from?

[sleek egret]

math or CS

[wind bough]

For the juniors here, do you apply strictly to junior ads or you apply to those that have lets say 1-3 years experience req aswell?

[smoky quest]

if the job ad says 1-3 year, they would explicitly exclude first time job. That would be different from saying up to 3 years

[peak halo]

unless you're very pressed for time, I would just apply anyway, with the understanding that you're less likely to get a response than for a job listing that only requires a degree.

[unreal turtle]

should i add classes i took in high school to my linkedin profile, if its relevent to the career im trying to pursue?

[smoky quest]

Assuming you have a bs, the classes you took like 5 years ago wouldn't matter

[unreal turtle]

what if its related to my career i wanna pursue?

[smoky quest]

we are talking about high school classes...
Unless that's super exceptional, it's not like that would move the needle

[unreal turtle]

ok wont add it

even if its college level classes?

[smoky quest]

show, don't tell

If you have to brag about stuff you did years ago, it means you haven't progressed much since then

[unreal turtle]

i just wanna dd any relevent experiences i did, even if its a while ago

[smoky quest]

Saying things like the high school class was college level is akin to having a random parent saying their kid is smarter than the average. That's cute but no one believes it

[smoky quest]

if you have nothing else to show since then and have plenty of space, then sure.
But I would also flag it as something you would need to work on

[unreal turtle]

i have stuff to show since then

when i say college level classes i mean AP classes and stuff

[wind bough]

Well the thing is out of hundreds of job ads I only see maybe 1 that says actual junior,
for some reason companies in my country write "entry level" and ask for 3-5 years while online I see people say 3 years is a senior already, I cant tell anymore.

[wind bough]

I mean I understand im less likely to get a response but is there really a harm applying? perhaps someone will take a loot at the CV and say "meh lets give it a try"?

[peak halo]

that's what I'm saying

[smoky quest]

the rule of thumb is: in doubt, apply.

But stating 1-3 years of xp, would imply they don't want to be someone's first job and to teach them the very basic.
So you should expect a lower response rate, but you could offset that by projects demonstrating you already have some craftmanship and would require less hand holding

[pastel thunder]

just see the role, TC, even if you match 50% skills, apply, who knows what they like about you

[wind bough]

Okay so I do have a "decent" project I made.
But I asked two people who are managers in kinda big companies(very known here) and both said they never bother looking at project, they only look for maybe degree and what your current knowledge if it fits what they look for (eg they need C programmer? they look for it in the CV)

[smoky quest]

What they told you does not fit with current industry practices.
It's all about demonstrated skills. A degree goes a long way, but would be a very incomplete picture of a person

[wind bough]

Yeh thats what im doing, but most ask for things I have no real experience with but its 100% things I'd learn just by starting to work, so idk.
My strength is that I learn concept real quick and new tech isnt something I fear, but I cant really showcase that without having a job first to prove that

[pastel thunder]

not true for everyone.

[smoky quest]

oh, what they may have meant is that they may not go to your github projects to look at it.
But the projects and skills describes on your resume would be looked at

[wind bough]

Maybe, I guess I should not take what they said as 100% for everyone

[wind bough]

Perhaps yes, I did put a description of what I made and what it does and what tech I used 🤷‍♀️

[pastel thunder]

just think as if the more the better

[wind bough]

I dont think I made something good enough but compared to my whole class its a lot more "complicated" so idk 🤷‍♀️

[pastel thunder]

make new /improve current project, keep iterating

[wind bough]

Yeh for sure, I have one month of last tests I need to take and from there its personal topics I'd like to study + projects\improve current project

[smoky quest]

Feel free to post your anonymized resume for feedback.

In terms of reviews, you should assume the first decision will be made in 30-45s.
And to that end, the description of your projects do matter very much to demonstrate your skillset and give some color to your story. But yeah, people would only click on the github links if they are on the fence, if they have time (ex: little amount of candidates) or later on down the process

[wind bough]

Yeh understandable, and they said the same that its a very brief look,
I'd just expect them to atleast look at that one project people showcase to see what it does and think "is it complicated\impressive" to maybe consider that person

[smoky quest]

your description should be able to articulate the complexity and depth

[wind bough]

Oh yes thats what I did, I just hope someone bothers checking it, but I dont know if its at all impressive :\ can I share what it is?

[smoky quest]

that's why your descriptions shouldn't be "wrote a website" but articulate what is cool about it, what is the impact, etc.

[smoky quest]

Feel free to post your anonymized resume for feedback.

[true harness]

like, csa? it's not really college level

[wind bough]

I'd prefer not posting whole resume, but I'd like to get feedback if my project is at all interesting or worthy showcasing

I made a website for delivery companies that will calculate the shortest route between points of interest and output a map with the route and some information about it,
I made a users system, database use, logs and so on...
Also specified how the algorhitm works in the description on the CV
Its made using Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy.

[true harness]

you can redact personal information

[wind bough]

Basically Traveling Salesman problem on a small scale, visual and its on a website for wider access

[unreal turtle]

csp, econ, astrophysics, stats

[true harness]

which of those are relevant? you're doing CS, right?

[unreal turtle]

csp is a ap cs class

[true harness]

what about classes in college, though? r_e is right. there's pretty much no reason to include them when you have other much better things to show off

[unreal turtle]

im tryna break into quant finance and all of those are quantitative subjects which are relevent

[unreal turtle]

yeah i have classes i took in college ofc, but im just wondering if i could go the extra mile and add classes i took in high school as well

[true harness]

no one really does it, but if you really want to then you can

[unreal turtle]

it wont have an effect at all?

[unreal turtle]

i know some who add ap classes they took on linkedin profile. so saying no one is false

[unreal turtle]

@true harness ?

[smoky quest]

sounds fair. Some details about the algo would be interesting indeed

[wind bough]

Using Djikstra to calculate best route between each point of interest and bruteforce to find the best combination, is it something recruiters will care about or its too simple? idk

[smoky quest]

the main folks who review your resume will be the hiring managers, who would know about these things

[wind bough]

The question is, is it complex enough to even showcase? I sometimes feel like anyone could do that but then im told its decent by some and I have no idea if its worthy

[smoky quest]

It's definitely interesting in the sense it's used in a real context and not just as a class exercise

[wind bough]

It was a solo project btw while my whole class was doing theirs(different projects) in groups, and in the end it seem like my project is the most complex out of them all too 🤷‍♀️

Oh well, I just cant find any actual junior ads, its all "entry level" and then they slap 3 years req

[true harness]

🤷‍♂️

[pastel thunder]

just apply who cares

all they can do is reject you, they are bs anyways😀

[peak halo]

employers are always going to prefer people with experience, so that's what they're going to say on the job listing, even for junior positions.

[wanton birch]

Sometimes it is even worse. One job for example asked me to have equivalent skills of 3 departments of 12 engineers along with n-years experience.

I applied anyway. Guess what? After about 6 months or so, they got back to me. They eventually ghosted me but the point is that don't let those things stop you. Same for another amazing job that ghosted me. They called me knowing well I don't have the years they were looking for. They said they are happy with what I listed in the resume. Too bad these people seem to go missing for long spans of time but my point again is that I am glad that I at least applied and made my case. I even included cover letters to explain why I can do the job and all that.

[pastel thunder]

6 months, omg

[fringe sphinx]

I've told this story before, I once applied to a job where they wanted an expert at a particular product. A product that I was previously the director of engineering for. Never got a call back. (admittedly, perhaps I was too senior for the role, but still)

[wind bough]

Thank you, will apply to everything that is a bit above then aswell

[wanton birch]

An IT recruiter guy told me that the way they work is to skim through their pile and once they find a few they like, they present those and if they are selected, the rest is kinda discarded from consideration. So not to interpret not getting a hit as necessarily due to who you are or what is on your resume. That fits so well with your experience you mentioned.

[fringe sphinx]

Oh, that's precisely how I do it. I get a pile, I skim and filter down to a handful for the next round.

I usually tell the recruiter to not filter at all, because I think they're bad at it. But they aren't all bad... they usually know something about the candidates and what I'm looking for.

[wanton birch]

THANK YOU for saying that. I've always found most recruiters to be not the right fit for that filter. They seem to act like worse versions of those key word detecting software stuff.

[fringe sphinx]

In my case, I'm in small tech. So, I don't have the luxury of picking off the "top candidates". I need to find the good candidate with an alternative background.

[wanton birch]

Like you saying you want someone who is familiar with calculus. Candidate lists they wrote some C++ software to simulate fluid dynamics in 3d based on their thesis on numerical methods and validated that against whatever. The recruiter looks and goes "no mention of calculus...NEXT".

[wanton birch]

So you kinda have to actually know what you are doing for the most part.

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, although, the market was tight for a long time... you didn't get a lot of great resumes.

But, 2023 is weird.

[wind bough]

I talked to a recruiter I know and he told me its a shitshow, companies hired so many people and many are bad but now you give them a good candidate and they will say no for some weird reason 🤷‍♀️

[fringe sphinx]

So, for me in "small tech", I love it. I can actually hire good candidates again.

[wind bough]

Because you know what you're looking for and will spot it, yeah

[fringe sphinx]

2015-2020 sucked.

[wind bough]

I am personally scared to join a small company because I fear as junior I wont be able to contribute enough but then again I bet the growth there is much bigger than big companies

[fringe sphinx]

I've worked in both sides. There are good opportunities everywhere, it's really company/individual specific, so I wouldn't generalize.

Like, even in big companies, you work in small teams. So, the right team is great.

[wind bough]

Very true

[fringe sphinx]

But, yah, small companies also have a lot of room for personal growth. I ended up learning a lot about all aspects of the company and business (outside engineering)

[wind bough]

Yeh I just think that if ill be slower or screw up somehow in a smaller company its a bigger problem than in a big company, in terms of backup of someone who could fix it right there and then

[near ocean]

Management in small startups is pretty hit or miss
My startup experience was fine, i had basically free reign to do things however I wanted
My gf in biotech however was micromanaged to near death

[summer roost]

I'm not sure that has much to do with the size of the company. There are plenty of stories of micromanagement in large companies too

[near ocean]

With startups youre much closer to founders and they may or may not be utterly insane
At my startup i was right under a founder whereas in my current company im like 8 levels away

(and the startup people turned out to be batshit sales people)

[wicked python]

i think im gonna just try to not actually think about how its all gonna work out and just focus on going day by day with all this. if i go on r/cscareerquestions and see all the people doomposting about not being able to get jobs i think ill go insane

[fringe sphinx]

Just remember sample bias: the people posting on cscareerq’s are, expectedly, the ones who haven’t landed a job.

[wicked python]

like i need to just be a little delusional that ill get a okay job out of college and that whatever ill do ill probably end up alright with myself

[wicked python]

thats true. people are also more likely to post about negative experiences than positive ones

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, why restaurants hate yelp reviews

[wicked python]

im the kinda person whos good at and enjoys a lot of different things. im sure where ever i end up or whatever i work as ill find a way to make it work.

[graceful mason]

In an ideal world the person reading your CV would be at the technical level of the team you'd be joining, but that isn't always reality so you should always try to make sure your CV clearly addresses all the requirements/wishlists listed in the ad if possible

[wanton birch]

Yeah. That is what we should be doing.
I think recruiters should use LLM-assist for this. They are pretty good at this part of the job.

[fringe sphinx]

Well said. I’d add: make sure your ‘most recent experience’ bullets address the requirements, in particular.

[smoky quest]

I think recruiters should use LLM-assist for this. They are pretty good at this part of the job.

Not really. There won't be any judgement and it is biased to the dataset.
So for instance, I would expect a bias to people with a bs in CS since that's what most people in the field would have

[wanton birch]

You don’t need to make a system where llm is the sole factor. I was talking about it to help recruiters get more hits. The ones they can’t interpret as relevant will be flagged relevant by the LLM. Then the manager like Billy here can make further calls.

Also, you can ask an LLM to address the type of degree bias you spoke about. It can argue well for why someone from a different field might actually possess a lot of transferable skills. Test ChatGPT for that. It’s good at that even in the free current form.

[elder beacon]

hey I am having a hard time finding my first job i studied data science in university any suggestions or tips

[smoky quest]

I did play with chatgpt like everyone else, I would not trust it for something as important as that

[smoky quest]

It depends on where you get stuck in the pipeline

[elder beacon]

meaning I am applying to jobs but they do not respond at all

I have no experience as of yet I am going to get my final result from university as of 5th july 2023

[smoky quest]

then it sounds like the problem is about your resume.
What does it look like? feel free to post an anonymized version

[smoky quest]

It doesn't show any degree?

[elder beacon]

it at the top

I didn't put it i the image for anaoymity reasons

[smoky quest]

is it a bs?

[elder beacon]

yup

yeah my major in is computatuinal data science and minor in information systems

[smoky quest]

overall, it's alright. There are some nitpicks, like your skills should be in descending order of proficiency, but it shouldn't yield no call back

[half ice]

Hi I just joined this server, I am UK based, very almost a chartered accountant however about halfway through studying for this I realised I would probably much rather a career in coding, I unfortunately dont have a degree, only recently started learning Python and wondered whether this may be a lost cause as there are so many great coders with computer science degrees and such

[elder beacon]

anything you feel i should do to improve this resume

I am trying to look for a job i data science my only problem during university was that due to covid and the place that i lived in i couldn't find any internships

[smoky quest]

a bit more context would help. In terms of libraries, size of the data, etc.

[elder beacon]

okay

[gilded valley]

get your accounting certs, lean basic data science, then apply for data roles adjacent to accounting

[smoky quest]

your flight scheduling would need more details but it's less relevant to a DS job.
Because stating you used "algorithms" a no brainer. It would be a lot more interesting to read which approach you used or which algos you used

[elder beacon]

alright yeah thanks for that , secondly i wanted to ask wether me not finding internships would be a barrier to finding my first job, should i still look for an internship

[fringe sphinx]

And, in most recent Project, put the tools and languages you used.

[smoky quest]

Internships do help. But the absence of one won't block you

But note also that the market is not favorable to hiring, and on top of that, summer is coming...

[fringe sphinx]

There's also some minor formatting errors and grammatical. The commas here:

And this is poorly worded/very informal:

[elder beacon]

fixing that , is there any other projects you guys feel i should do or add in my resume

[fringe sphinx]

And capitalized here:

[smoky quest]

even that project could need some spruce up.
Like, what's your claim to fame? As a reader, without more details, I just read it as a glorified timer and would not be impressed

[elder beacon]

any other projects you guys feel help get roles in data science

[smoky quest]

I would like to see different skills and techniques of a DS person. So ex: cleaning, PCA, deep learning, trees, etc.

[fringe sphinx]

Agree with RE: and: I’d love to see some Pandas on there. Like, pandas, sklearn, maybe tensorflow or PyTorch or opencv.

[smoky quest]

You could pick some job ads, look at the requirements and what you would do in the job as the set of skills you would want to demonstrate

[elder beacon]

i have these how do I showcase them like in my honoues project I had to extensively use regex for cleaning of text messages , similalry other libraries as well

[smoky quest]

I don't see where you clean, normalize or select features

[elder beacon]

yeah I am confused as regards with how to showcase that in my resume that is why I didn't add that

[smoky quest]

you basically just describe that. You got some dataset, you described what you did to clean it up, normalize it and figure out which features were the most important for your goal, etc.

show, don't tell

[elder beacon]

cool thanks a lot for you feedback guys

[dreamy spade]

3rd interview and it will be with the co-founder of the company. It’s supposed to be a 20 minute video interview. You guys have any idea what questions he may ask me? Or will I have to email the company on what should I be expecting?

[fringe sphinx]

Nah, it depends on his role. If he’s active, then this might just be the hiring managers boss. Or, it’s not unusual for small companies for the founder or ceo to interview everyone.

I’d expect some technical questions but probably more focused on personality and fit. What are you interested in? What is your career goal? Why did you get into ‘whatever major’? Etc

It doesn’t hurt to ask your recruiter for input, any information is helpful.

Oh and: be prepared for a conversation. Research the company, have some good questions like: ‘why’d you start -this- company? Are you concerned about -xyz technology or company-? What do you think will make or break the company?-

[dreamy spade]

Thank you very much for your insight. This helps a lot.

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, it being third round, it may be a formality.

[smoky quest]

few more questions that could be worth a conversation:

• What do you see as the next challenge for the team/org/company in the next 3-6 months?
• What would make you say in 6-12months that I was a good hire?
• How do you see the company evolving in the coming months?

[dreamy spade]

Jheez. Those are hard questions.

Oh I misread. Those are questions for me to ask the co-founder.

[fringe sphinx]

RE's questions are better than mine 🙂

Oh, be ready for the "where do you see yourself in 5 years" type question.

[unreal turtle]

Which is more important to employers prior work experience or involvement in a club?

[radiant moon]

prior work experience

[unreal turtle]

Over competition and prizes a club offers?

[radiant moon]

yep

now, if it's the John Bates Clark medal in economics, sure, mention that 🙂

[cobalt plank]

yo does gpt plus allow you to use gpt 4 and plugins?

[fringe sphinx]

or james beard. I'll hire a mediocre junior who can cook 🙂

[pliant hawk]

India!

[pliant hawk]

thanks to all the people who replied to my messages here!

[quartz marlin]

Hi where can I get free certification of python ?

Course

[vapid jay]

how difficult is it to find a intern as a high school student?

[true harness]

very

[pine sleet]

Free certificates are usually not worth much to employers

[wanton birch]

1. Relevant Work Experience
2. Relevant Educational Background

[wanton birch]

I'm not sure even if most paid ones are worth anything.

[pine sleet]

Yeah maybe not for Python but stuff like OSCP or CCNA probably are

[sage night]

i'm trying to apply for internships as a student so not too much exprience or projects yet, any pointers?

[spark cobalt]

You haven't expressed that you know how to code, much less, software engineer/DS stuff

You say a lot of stuff but you can't prove it.

Note that you're competing with dozens to hundreds of other candidates that do show their projects up front. Why should they make a special case for you and ask you for your projects? You haven't shown anything that urges someone to do so, especially in comparison to competition

Other things like lack of education clarity (is this an associates/bachelor's?), and other things will make some people tentative to continue with you and invest time into interviewing you

Also you completely doxxed one of your ex-colleagues

[wanton birch]

Speaking of that, should I link my GitHub profile in the projects section? Maybe even in the header as:
Projects (Github)

[spark cobalt]

When you say you're interested in something, but don't show that in some kind of measurable/quantitative fashion, people will jump to bullshit.

[wanton birch]

or Projects(GitHub for more)

[spark cobalt]

I typically put my GitHub where I put my other socials/info, and also include a hyperlink in the project section, though it could be argued that one of the two is enough.

[spark cobalt]

You can almost certainly assume that they'll be downloading your resume and seeing it through some portal or something. Hyperlinks are sufficient for like 99% of applications.

[wanton birch]

I feel like I ran out of space on my resume. Wanted it beside the LinkedIn link but it looks like there is no space unless I alter the structure

[spark cobalt]

Can just do: PROJECT (link)

[spark cobalt]

I think it's important to have it in the header. As it's quite expected to be there if you're applying to any SWE role. But that's imo.

[wanton birch]

And you mean the section header, right?

[spark cobalt]

Like header of your resume, where you put your phone number, LinkedIn, etc.

[wanton birch]

Like:
Projects (link)

• Project 1
• Project 2
  ...

[wanton birch]

Ah! Thanks for the clarification.

[lyric bough]

hello im learning python and want to ask for advice on what to build/how much should i know to have a chance in landing an internship. is this the right channel?

[pastel thunder]

how many applications have you peaked per day? in your job searching days

[elder beacon]

hey guys so i am in australia and they call something here as local experience which i have none of , so can i change projects to project experience so that i don't get filtered out by the bot

[peak halo]

internships are usually only offered to university students. are you a student?

[sleek egret]

talk about lag, heh 🙂

[lyric bough]

yep 🙂

1st year in comp eng

[peak halo]

your grades/marks are probably the most important thing in getting one.

[thorn lotus]

I work as a SysAdmin right now but I enjoy development within infrastructure the most, things like automation, developing internal tooling, scripting, etc. I am looking to get into a SWE or SRE role that's about that, but with my current experience it is being quite tough. My questions are:

1. Is it easy to go from SRE to this kind of SWE down the line? Or should I go into whatever junior python position I can find and go from there?
2. Is there any kind of project I could add to my CV that would give me experience in this kind of role and will look attractive to recruiters?

[buoyant seal]

https://www.dsicommunity.org/ feel free to repeat your question over there. That server is full of SRE and sys admin people with a mix of SWE

[thorn lotus]

Thank you very much!

[hardy blade]

So our company switched from accrued PTO to an unlimited PTO model.

I remember working at a company with the unlimited PTO model and I found that I took less PTO than the companies in which i had accrued PTO.

At my current job, ive been taking every holiday off (including banking holidays), otherwise I end up not taking any time off.

My manager made a comment that took me by surprise... He asked if anyones taking time off this sprint and I said "Yeah, i'll be taking July 3rd and July 4th off" and he said "Again?? Didn't you just take time off? Alright then...". The last holidays I took off were Memorial Day and Juneteenth.

I notice some of my coworkers actually work through some of these holidays and after I heard that comment from my manager, it made me feel as if I'm doing something wrong.

Should I scale back or skip the next holiday?

[near ocean]

No and that comment is fucking disgusting
Its no one's business how you take advantage of a benefit you earn, your manager can go kick rocks

[gilded valley]

the question is impossible to answer without more context.

will reducing your PTO lead to greatest remuneration for you, will it increase your chance of a promotion, what will the tangible impacts be?

if the only impact is reduced whingeing from your line manager, then why should you care?

[hardy blade]

I get my work done, but I dont want to sacrifice my time off just to get a promotion. I value my time off, just like i value all of my other benefits (salary, health insurance etc).

[near ocean]

If a manager said that to me i'd open linkedin jobs instantly, managers shouldnt try to shame you for taking time off

[hardy blade]

Plus, taking 1 day off, which is supposed to be a holiday anyways... how does that affect anything? It's following the policy. its not like i'm requesting to take a whole month off every other month

i also make sure that on-call is good to go and transfer any pending work before i leave

[gilded valley]

OK, will maintaining current levels PTO pose any risks, will it lead to you getting fired, being given shit tickets, being shunted off to a worse team?

it's a fundamentally very idiosyncratic question, only you can answer it

what is the dollar value of a day of PTO, what is the expected cost of taking that day of PTO - including things like risk of getting fired, or decreased job satisfaction - if the former is greater than the latter, take the PTO.

the cost is very dependant on your manager and team

my guess is most managers wouldn't really give a shit, but the fact he bothered to say anything implies he might

[hardy blade]

Hmm i see i see

[north laurel]

Hey guys! I need a advice to start with AI. I am Fullstack developer but bad with maths. And I really want to get into AI. I know python and I can learn more advance python if its required. How should I start! I know internet have full of free resources but grabbing what is required is challenging. It would be very helpful if you guys show some way to get into it.

[hearty island]

math is definitely necessary for ai

[north laurel]

🥲

[fringe sphinx]

There’s ‘bad at math’ and there’s ‘bad at math class’.

[sleek egret]

take an extra day

[sleek egret]

AI is mostly math. well that and cleaning data.

[north laurel]

??

[north laurel]

Can learn the fundamentals

[kindred stump]

When you say “start with AI” do you mean you are interested in learning about Machine Learning? There is a great free PyTorch tutorial on YouTube for Deep Learning and Machine Learning (freeCodeCamp). Has some great resources to get you going. Math concepts can be important in Machine Learning, but it boils down to what you are looking to work on. Some people are making models while other people are implementing what others have done and expanding.

[sleek egret]

of course. almost everyone can learn the fundamentals of math

[north laurel]

I mean the math which AI required.

[hearty island]

a lot of stats

[north laurel]

I don’t want to create models but I should be capable of using that models and create something out of that.

[sleek egret]

mostly it's calc, linear algebra (matrices) and probability/statistics

i.e. 1st/2nd year university level maths

[sleek egret]

oh, you don't need the maths to use existing models if you don't care about how they work under the hood

sorry, when you said "get into AI" I thought you meant you wanted to build your own models

[north laurel]

Yes mate thats what I mean. Building things what already build doesn’t make sense for me and I am not even expert on that.

[kindred stump]

You can definitely mess around with ML and Deep Learning without understanding exactly what is going on by building using pre-made tools. Check out Huggingface and OpenAI. If you have Python experience in many cases with just a few lines of code you can get going with projects. Again, it all depends though on what you want to actually do. The world of ML is pretty massive.

[north laurel]

No sir, dont be sorry

[sleek egret]

well then, it's just using a (rather complex) library

just read the docs, tweak som knobs and feed it inputs

the model will do its magic and spit something out. you'll be blindly turning knobs to tweak it, but plenty of folks do that without really understanding what's going on under the hood, so <shrug>

[north laurel]

Nice and easy explanation. I tried with langchain but I found that some of the terms and concept was going from overhead. So I thought learning the fundamentals first and than getting to framework and stuff.

[sleek egret]

a lot of the terminology is related to the underlying maths

[north laurel]

So maths is somehow required

[sleek egret]

I wouldn't say required. you can treat many existing models it as a black box

[north laurel]

Right. Thats why learning fundamentals is important for me. Thank you sir

[sleek egret]

just because you don't know what "feature dimensionality reduction" means doesn't mean you can't change the number(s) associated with it

change it, see what happens. change it again, see what happens. rinse and repeat. lots of people do that.

[north laurel]

Agree sir in that way also I can learn what that is and how its working

[sleek egret]

perhaps? probably? many of the params are non-linear and can interact in strange ways... but some are pretty straitforward. it depends.

[kindred stump]

From what I understand, LangChain is a library that helps interface with language models themselves. I don’t think it has anything to do with creating models (I could be totally wrong as I haven’t gone deep). If you are looking to interface with something like ChatGPT, a course on LangChain is helpful. Just a heads up the NLP (natural language processing) is not beginner Deep Learning stuff. A course like the one I mentioned can help you get a foundation of what you’ll encounter with NLPs.

[sleek egret]

yeah, it's a pretty deep rabbit hole. you can literally get multiple PhD's in this field 🙂

[north laurel]

I can learn this concept while doing sir, but when someone say maths is required and stuff i get scared and think that this field is not for me. But after talking with you guys makes understand a lot

[kindred stump]

Totally! You’ve got language, visual, audio, data science, robotics... sooo much.

[north laurel]

Yes sir its library, after watching some video I started using but later I found it difficult as maths started hitting 😂

[sleek egret]

the real money is in creating new ways of structuring models and learning techniques. and then proving they work

[spice latch]

Recently i participated in mindsdb hackathon. The aim was to create ml powered application. I planned to make mood based music recommendation application. I set up everything perfectly from frontend to backend but I have no clue how to do ml. And i'm failed to complete application🥲

Really AI is totally different field.

[pastel thunder]

i am fed up filling my details again and again in forms

[fringe sphinx]

That last part is a doozy

[sleek egret]

indeed

[elder beacon]

hey where can i get some good project experience

[sleek egret]

most young folks get it via internships

or working on open source projects

[elder beacon]

i have graduated recently only mistake i made was to not blood get an internship

[wanton birch]

How do you interpret it when you periodically apply for a role and get rejected and the role keeps being reposted. The automated emails say how they found some other candidate whose skills and experiences are a better match. Is it likely they are hiring a new employee every month or so for that role?

[smoky quest]

it means you don't have the right profile for the job

[wanton birch]

And if you know and show that you have more than they are asking, what is the interpretation?

[elder beacon]

@smoky quest what do you work as if you don't mind me asking

[smoky quest]

I would interpret it as you are probably missing something

[smoky quest]

I do a lot of things but I like to keep an air of mystery

[wanton birch]

Same here. Trying to hunt that missing thing down.

[elder beacon]

lol

[pine sleet]

too real

[smoky quest]

I woudn't overthink it and move on so you can focus on other and better opportunities

[wanton birch]

He writes Matlab stuff to generate machine code for CPUs

[elder beacon]

fancy

[smoky quest]

matlab is old and clunky but it's fun

[wanton birch]

It’s one of those annoying companies that make you fill in charts and graphs and tables on their website for applying. So kinda hard to forget them.

[wanton birch]

Matlab is the posh Python

[true harness]

make projects

[true harness]

interesting name there.. <@&831776746206265384>

[vapid jay]

Hello

[lofty solar]

hi

[raw ibex]

I have a question. Currently I searched python django positions in indeed in my city, but just found 6 postions, instead there were 60 .net postions. I am wondering what you guys use python for ? What can python help a frontend react developer or assist a frontend developer to boost his career ?
Can I say most of the python developers work on data related fields like ML or Ai ? Thanks

[boreal lodge]

hmm ...

[dense fiber]

in my area, python is pretty sought out for. The most popular language here is javascript, and front-end devs familiar with ReactJS. I'm learning python for backend since there's not much competition yet. AI and ML being a popular topic (which I'm not sure where it's going to go here locally), it's just a good choice for me to learn python in general.

[proven crest]

I'm trying to understand your question correctly and there are a few:
What do you guys use Python for?

• In my job Python is used for implementing bossiness solutions. A lot of those are data related, many aren't.
  Can python help a frontend developer?
• I'm sure it can, it certainly can't hurt, but if you are strictly front end there might be better technologies to learn. I don't think .net would be one of them.
  Do most Python Developers work in data related fields?
• Python is a general purpose language, its incredibly versatile. It's used for many things outside of Data Science. For example its a fantastic language for creating automation scripts. These can be as simple as download this months xxx zip from xxx, extract files to xxx folder to complex tasks that manage whole workflows.

I genuinely think if every (well most, maybe not bars or cafes) business had at least one python developer on staff their productivity would skyrocket.

I've never worked with .net, but from my understanding comparing .net to Djano is like apples and oranges (I might be totally wrong here, as I've said I've never worked with .net)

AFAIK Python is generally the most used language for AI and ML. However I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of production level AI's are written with C++ as they would be able to preform much faster. Again that's not my field, so take that as a logical inference.

[pastel thunder]

HR message me saying they have intern role for me, and i applied for full time, lmao, why only me🥹.

why would someone with 5 internship want another internship, that to after graduating

[hearty island]

that sucks, i’m sorry. keep applying!!

[dire herald]

Hey guys! Hope you're all doing well. Well, since school year is over, I want to learn something in this 2 months holiday. I've learned python and SQL in school and I made a project on traffic flow prediction which I implemented on python. In your opinion, what can I do in this holiday?

[hearty island]

more projects. traffic flow prediction sounds cool!

[proven crest]

I'd take the two months to build something you're passionate about. I'm sure over the school year you've had ideas of things you could do or want to do, now is the time to work on them!

[wind bough]

Thats my personal hell, finding that something to do. I wasted around 3 months just deciding what kind of project to do for my diploma....

[proven crest]

I guess some people struggle with that, I think I’m quite critical so always find things that I think can be improved (even if just for my workflow) which leads to me thinking about the process of implementing that improvement. Or at times I’m doing something routine and thinking this could be optimised by creating a program to automate the majority of this task. For example when I was job hunting I was tracking everything in xl, I started thinking about a CRM specifically for jobs which AFAIK doesn’t exist. That was a bit of a big task to do along side full time applications however, but it’s still in the back of my mind.

I guess to me it comes down to see a need, fill a need

[gritty rivet]

1 in 10 jobs is still a lot of jobs. But based on what you say about your situation, Python/Django might be a "nice to have" at best, not a priority.

I only use Python, barely know JS, but I'm not sure this is very common, even for backend devs

[small geode]

To clarify the .NET part, that is simply the framework. PowerShell, C# and others rely on the .NET runtime and ecosystem. For web though, it's most commonly inferred that they mean ASP.NET or one of the many other web architectures Microsoft has created and abandoned. It's extremely popular in enterprise-ish areas.

[wind bough]

Yeh I guess I lack that thinking, which im not happy about but I cant think of much I could automate 🤷‍♀️

[proven crest]

Have you been developing for long?

[wind bough]

No, no real job yet, just personal projects
Taking last tests now and job hunting past last month

[proven crest]

Then maybe it’s down to experience and exposure, it’s hard to come up with things that can be done if you don’t understand what can be done and how they could be done (not to say you need to know exactly how to implement them, but enough to break it down into manageable sections that have direction)

[wind bough]

Yeh for sure, I just wonder if there are things in my life I do repeatedly and could automate and I dont notice it, but even without automation I should find more ideas and things to create I just dont know what and how to think of that

[fringe sphinx]

!kindling is a good source for ideas

[inner wren]

Kindling Projects

The Kindling projects page on Ned Batchelder's website contains a list of projects and ideas programmers can tackle to build their skills and knowledge.

[fringe sphinx]

And, if that's not your taste, and if you're a strong developer, look for "good first issues" to contrbiute to: https://github.blog/2020-01-22-browse-good-first-issues-to-start-contributing-to-open-source/

[wind bough]

Tyvm, the good first issues sounds interesting, something to showcase aswell

[honest cairn]

Any good protfolio ideas for a full stack dev with experience in Graphic Design, Video Production, C#, PY, html, css, xamarin

[raw ibex]

Thanks, I think I won't learn django or flask which is duplicate from my nextjs stack. I'm wondering what python can do to add credit to my travel attractions project built in next.js( react ).
PS it may sound weird I learn a language and try to apply it to my side project. I just want to add something to my resume or increase my competitiveness

[wind bough]

Im not a fan of web dev and I found Flask very decent and easy to use, good luck!

[vapid jay]

is python better for backend or js?

[true harness]

define "better"

[vapid jay]

https://tenor.com/view/better-call-saul-bob-odenkirk-saul-goodman-lawyer-criminal-lawyer-gif-18588098

like suitable?

[true harness]

from a career perspective?

[vapid jay]

yes

[fringe sphinx]

Do you know any other languages? Or are you a complete novice?

[vapid jay]

i know html , css , js , python and java

[near ocean]

If you're familiar with both js and py then why are you asking

[wind bough]

because he wants to know from people who understand better what he should pursue more? atleast thats what id assume

[vapid jay]

yes

[near ocean]

You would look at what kind of jobs you have in your area

[fringe sphinx]

Backend can also mean a lot of different things... so it's a difficult question to answer in the generic.

[gritty rivet]

Depends on everything. What problem are you trying to solve? Which language do you and your team know better? Etc. Etc.

[alpine sorrel]

python has good scope?

[fringe sphinx]

Python is used widely for lots of things, yes.

[pastel thunder]

the scope doesn't get any bigger than python's

[true harness]

does python run on 3 billion machines?

[dim bay]

in India some programmers (freshers to upto 2-3 years experience) get paid less than the manual labor like construction labour, is that case in USA?

[deft herald]

It depends. I think some manual labor jobs have the potential to make a lot of money

[vapid jay]

Is it my confirmation bias or do a lot of machine learning engineering postings seem to want less years of experience (usually 2ish) than a lot of the data engineering ones (usually 3-5)?

[true harness]

yep. many trades pay nicely

[fringe sphinx]

I know some plumbers making good $$.

[true harness]

yeah. I'm not sure exactly the ranges and whatnot, but it can be comparable to a junior dev I think

[deft herald]

Yeah i've heard of good plumbers making around $300k. When you own your own business and work yourself to the bone i guess there's lots of potential there

[radiant oriole]

Just curious why doesn't the server have a jobs channel? The Django server has one, and I really thought a channel like that would be usefull

[gritty rivet]

That's a question for #community-meta but as I see it, it's an invitation for scammers unless there is strict moderation. With so many alternatives including the two linked in the description of this channel, not worth the hassle.

[radiant oriole]

OK. Understood.

[hearty island]

aw she was nice enough to respond with some recommendations

[fringe sphinx]

I definitely agree with the bolding. Great suggestion.

[cosmic rose]

Heyo Im looking to develop my own portfolio any ideas of things I can make in Python to show off? and test my skills?

[fringe sphinx]

!kindling

[inner wren]

Kindling Projects

The Kindling projects page on Ned Batchelder's website contains a list of projects and ideas programmers can tackle to build their skills and knowledge.

[fringe sphinx]

And, https://github.blog/2020-01-22-browse-good-first-issues-to-start-contributing-to-open-source/

[smoky quest]

also don't go too crazy on the bolding. You don't want to make your reasume unreadable because every other word is in bold

[hearty island]

yes

[torpid birch]

Trying to implement kind of "devops" on the IT department i work for is fucking hard... they never had someone trying to develop, after i showed some scripts and results they liked it, now i am dedicated to it... issue is that they have every damn thing blocked...

Can't even use venv. To install libraries I need to disable VPN, can't install stuff like docker, don't have a place to deploy apps... right now i just exe it 🙂 how lovely

[buoyant seal]

infrastructure as a code is like unit testing in this regard
if you did not develop with having automation in mind from the start... it becomes magnitudes harder to introduce later (at least because u are missing instructions how the stuff is testing and building automatically in any way) (and because applications can be overstateful and not following https://12factor.net/ )

[vapid jay]

stealing the bold tip

[torpid birch]

The automation atm is more to automate the procedures that my coworkers would do that take a lot of time, simple network scripts.
Nothing fancy, but i want to scale, so thanks for the link

[cloud nova]

I would like to convince my workplace to implement and use python, so many processes that can be nearly sped up, not automated but just faster with proper python inputs/outputs our team could use.

[smoky quest]

nice! Congrats!

[tender frost]

Sadly I have no hope of such success in my team. They're way too set on Python being a just generally bad language (predominantly because it's "slow").

[keen path]

I misread Tizzy

[tender frost]

But if you've got a team with members that are open minded enough, then go for it!

From my experience it helps to have an actual piece of evidence to support your point, so maybe even rewrite something small in Python and should how much easier/quicker/etc. it is

[sleek egret]

in fairness, python is slow. it's just that it doesn't matter 95% of the time

bet they use shells, and they're even slower

[smoky quest]

it's all relative.
It's fast comparing to some things and slower than others.

It also depends on the metric being observed as fast or slow

[tender frost]

Plus Python's speed has improved considerably recently, thanks to the MS "funding" (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/python/python-311-faster-cpython-team/)

[sleek egret]

I once had a client ask me if it wouldn't make sense to rewrite some python utility I had written for him in C++ or something. I asked him, "you ask one of your staff run this once every few weeks. and then he/she sends you the results via email. would it really matter if it takes 5 seconds to run vs 30 seconds to run?

then he asked me how much it would cost, and I quoted him a rather large figure. so he said "never mind" 🙂

[sleek egret]

I'm very much looking forward to a speedier python

[fringe sphinx]

I only switched to python out of necessity. Java dev for over a decade. There's many things I don't like, but still, I don't want to go back.

I remember my first Java job... and the architect forced us to use it, and we all thought he was crazy for the same reason.

[ebon onyx]

I used java 1996. Gave up 1998 after what Sun did to the application development APIs (i.e. Swing).

[fringe sphinx]

I shudder at the phrase: J2EE

[sleek egret]

Oh god, I used to have nightmares about maven configs

EJB FWT, baby! because everyone needs 2 phase commit distributed transactions!

[tender frost]

I really dislike Java, but then never fully learnt it so can't be too harsh on it

[ebon onyx]

There's a lot of backend servers running Java in all kinds of instances.

[tender frost]

I think anyone that forces a language on people can be construed as crazy. Especially without reasoning and/or listening to counterpoints

[sleek egret]

you can't have different team members working on a project be using any old language they feel like

[fringe sphinx]

Java is/was great, there's just some bad architectures that evolved on the side (j2ee being an example). My only gripe right now is the stupid GIL. If I could multiprocess, I could do everything I want.

[sleek egret]

you can multiprocess

[fringe sphinx]

(yes I know, you know what I mean 🙂

[tender frost]

Completely agree, but that doesn't mean you have one person dictating what everyone has to use and what they say is final. You should discuss the options and come to a conclusion as a team

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, it was a startup. Architect said: "We're doing this in Java". Mind you, this was ~99, iirc

[sleek egret]

new team formations are very rare

and as I'm the one paying for it, what I say goes

in the end the choice rarely matters all that much

[smoky quest]

not sure we should be constructing a whole scenario out of one sentence though

[sleek egret]

the only thing worse than a bad decision is no decision

[cosmic rose]

Hey, im currently an apprentice sde, and im not sure the next steps and what to do to become a good sde agter this.

Worried due to all these highering freezes and i feel like im not qualified to be an sde if I was to leave today. Ant advice?

[harsh river]

you should've quoted him a lower one /s

[sleek egret]

lol, I did not want to do it.

[harsh river]

the "i dont wanna" tax

i also have an "you're annoying and will slow me down tax"

[fringe sphinx]

Why would you leave without a job offer? Not sure I get teh question.

But, tell us a bit about your background, happy to give you my 2 cents

[cosmic rose]

so im an apprentice on a fixed term contract after that im on the street.
Passed Alevels went straight into this job where ive been for 2 years and still feel like im the deep end, i have just under 2 years left

[fringe sphinx]

That's very foreign to me (as a US person). Apprentice what?

[cosmic rose]

So its like an internship but paid and a bit higher level.

Apprentice SDE (Software developer)

[fringe sphinx]

Are you learning / growing on the job?

[cosmic rose]

Im trying to but theres so much i feel like I hardly know anything but I have definitely progressed since my first week

[fringe sphinx]

Maybe post a (redacted) resume, and maybe ask what you should do to be most hirable in two years?

Generally, I'd say: do some side projects/education to build a wider foundation

Like, if you've never done ML/AI, go do a project in OpenCV/Tensorflow/PyTorch

[cosmic rose]

Ive wanted to experiment with side projects but I have no clue what to do thats advanced enough.

And I can post a resume tomorrow morning :)

[cosmic rose]

mhm okay worth taking a look
Is there good topics e.g machine learning that are cruicial to show I have experience in?

[fringe sphinx]

There's many topics, kinda depends on what you're interested in. I'm in data engineering, so that's what I go to first.

My rule though is: learn about things you know nothing about... especially early in your career

Like, don't know anything about encryption? Go spend a month learning and experimenting. ML/AI? PyPI packaging? Git pull requests? SQL? etc

[cosmic rose]

thank you! I definitely should start keep track of what I do

[fringe sphinx]

If you think you're really good, then consider contributing to an open source project, especially one in your industry. https://github.blog/2020-01-22-browse-good-first-issues-to-start-contributing-to-open-source/

[cosmic rose]

okie if I ever get to that level Ill think about it :)

I think I want to start with encryption but no idea what project so research time :)

[fringe sphinx]

!kindling is a good starting place

[inner wren]

Kindling Projects

The Kindling projects page on Ned Batchelder's website contains a list of projects and ideas programmers can tackle to build their skills and knowledge.

[cosmic rose]

okay thank you!!

[unreal turtle]

i participated in a math competition in middle school but didnt get any awards, is it worth highlighting on my linkedin profile?

[drifting pawn]

no

[peak halo]

unless you're in high school right now, no.

[noble ocean]

yes

[brisk junco]

Sup players

[undone lantern]

hi

[proven crest]

Hi, how’s it going 🙂

[undone lantern]

pepe in ur pfp look so cool

uh didnt know that was a gif

[unreal turtle]

I’m in college

[unreal turtle]

I’m in college

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, bluntly, nobody (no hiring manager) cares about your middle school. Ever.

And, probably doesn't care about your high school (there are exceptions, but rare)

[true harness]

a freshman might not have done anything in college yet, so at that point hs stuff may be the best they have

[fringe sphinx]

Fair, maybe less extreme about HS... but definitely not middle school.

[true harness]

oh I didn't notice they said middle school

[unreal turtle]

does scholarship count as honors and award?

[hearty island]

i’d say maybe? but dean’s list and provost list makes more sense to me

unless your college doesn’t do that 🤔

[fringe sphinx]

You're welcome to share a redacted resume, if you're looking for pointers. It's hard to really give advice like "should I put this on my resume" without some context

[hearty island]

^

[unreal turtle]

on linkedin i mean

[hearty island]

do you guys think it’s worth it signing up for a Linkedin profile optimization session at my college?

[cosmic rose]

I shared you mine if you have chance to comment etc. its very basic tbh

[hearty island]

normally my college is useless when it comes to career stuff tho so 🤔

[vapid violet]

Hello, I am getting close to applying for college (CompSci). I'm wondering if python certifications (PCEP?) are worth anything for college. Are they even worth anything once I am in a career?

[fringe sphinx]

I took a quick look, Generally: SDE Apprentice: Expand the skills here. Mention more skills and experience. This is the most important part of your resume: the most recent work experience, ie: "Developed an XYZ using ABC and DEF"

Too much detail on GCSE and A-Levels. I'm in US, but generally I don't care about grades or levels... but you may want to ask the colleges career office for advice here.

Usually we don't write a lot of first person language in resumes, "I did this" "I did that" is not normal resume grammar.

Altho, I don't mind the summary part... it's more or less a short coverletter, which is fine

The restaurant experience is fine/good to list, it's nice to know you've worked for several years and werea able to manage the stress!

But in short: expand your most recent experience.

Oh, and if you're in college, you should probably definitely list it

[cosmic rose]

Okay ill expand on that section maybe, reduce the length of other experiences. Thank you, may alter some of the summary aswell tho.

[cosmic rose]

OH YEA lol my bad i completely forgot im doing that

[fringe sphinx]

🙂

[fringe sphinx]

The #1 thing I look at is the most recent experience section. I want to see: what languages they used and did they actually write software, and what type of software was it.

[fringe sphinx]

Personally, I don't care about those things from a college (cs) major. Probably useful for career changers / non-CS.

[tight briar]

whats the best way to get good at python?

[unreal turtle]

i got AP scholar in high school, but I dont wanna add it since there are better scholars and itll make me look bad

[fringe sphinx]

You can list it, I don't think people will really think or ask. But: your goal is should be to gain more experience so all that stuff falls off your resume.

[unreal turtle]

im a senior in college

[gritty rivet]

Practice is pretty much everything. Contribute to open source projects (there are lists of projects with beginner-friendly work needed) or make your own.

[true harness]

there's always cooler achievements, though, so that shouldn't be the reason you don't list it. the reason should be that it's just not relevant

[unreal turtle]

ye

[unreal turtle]

is it fine to ask recruiter for recommendation?

[sleek egret]

what's the downside?

[unreal turtle]

where should i add deans list on my linkedin profile?

[unreal turtle]

will they even do it?

[sleek egret]

what's the downside if the don't?

[unreal turtle]

you didnt even answer my question

[sleek egret]

I answered your question by hinting at a framework for you to answer such questions in the future on your own.

[unreal turtle]

what?

[hearty island]

y’all my internship is fucking awesome actually. slowly beginning to understand it problem management

[unreal turtle]

a lot, i wanna make my profile look as good as possible

[sleek egret]

so the downside of asking someone for advice and them not answering is a lot? really?

how is that different vs not asking them?

[unreal turtle]

do you know what linkedin recommendation is?

this is going to be added to my linkedin profile, i dont want actual advice on anything

[sleek egret]

ok, sorry for misunderstanding

still, my original responses seem reasonable

[unreal turtle]

i answered it

[sleek egret]

you weight the upsides and downsides of possible outcomes and make a decision based on that

[unreal turtle]

i will add it

[near ocean]

By linkedin recommendations do you mean people saying you are competent at X skill you have on your profile?

[unreal turtle]

wb intern mates?

[near ocean]

What does that mean

[unreal turtle]

yes

[near ocean]

Nobody cares or even looks at those

[unreal turtle]

lies

[near ocean]

🤷 i dont even look at applicants' linkedins

[unreal turtle]

youre a recruiter or something?

[near ocean]

No but our recruiters dont look at linkedin either

Linkedin skill certifications and recommendations are cringe facebook tier shitposting

There's better things to spend your time on

[unreal turtle]

they just look at resume?

[near ocean]

Yes

[unreal turtle]

thats it?

[near ocean]

Yes? Why would anything else matter

[unreal turtle]

well i have recruiters viewing my linkedin profile, so youre wrong i see it all the time

[near ocean]

You have *bots looking at your linkedin

[hearty island]

it’s all bullshit linkedin makes

[near ocean]

I also have recruiters looking at my linkedin and the result is ads for 3x the experience I have and usually completely different tech than on my profile

[unreal turtle]

no it isnt, ive gotten contacted by google recruiter cause of linkedin

[near ocean]

🤷 whatever floats your boat

[unreal turtle]

i wanna succeed

[near ocean]

Are you employed currently? As a software dev

If you dont even have a job already skill endorsements are worth less than nothing

[wanton birch]

References and skills endorsements there will only ever matter if they are provided by someone huge. Like John Carmack saying on your profile that your debugging skills are one of the best he’s ever seen.

[near ocean]

John carmack definitely wouldnt bother endorsing someone on linkedin

[wanton birch]

Maybe he would in between his efforts at obtaining LinkedIn badges and skill assessments

[fringe sphinx]

‘BillyBobby on discord gave me a thumbs up’

How’s that for an endorsement?

[near ocean]

It goes on the CV, thank

[robust cobalt]

Hi everyone
i just completed my high school education
and i want to know what course in a university should i apply for getting into cyber security?

[deft herald]

Depends on the university, but i believe some actually offer a degree in Cybersecurity

If not, then you can most likely choose a degree in computer science and have a focus or minor on security things. Your advisor will be able to help with that

[robust cobalt]

oh alright

[robust cobalt]

There isn't a specific degree on this course in my country
rather its on extensive topics around it
should i opt for courses on coursera or udemy ?
or as of now just stick to the core extensiveness of the university syllabus

[deft herald]

Well in general the first 2 years of any computer science related degree will look pretty similar

do you have an advisor with the university you'll attend?

[robust cobalt]

ohh i seee
didn't know that

[robust cobalt]

i did speak and had conversations with few professors on the topic of interest of mine
they were like look for as many interships as possible
but for that , i have no clue or guidance as of now

[hardy blade]

Why is it looked down upon to enjoy programming in 1 language, but not enjoy programming in another? Anytime i mention i enjoy python over java, people say "You have to use the right tool for the job, you are a programmer, you should be able to pick up anything".

Which doesn't make too much sense to me... shouldn't i pursue things that interest me in this field?

[robust cobalt]

its toooo puzzling for me to decode theyr words and figure things out

[deft herald]

Well, that's when you can ask for clarification 🙂 "What do you mean by ....?"

[robust cobalt]

they were like as of now just focus on core programming languages and start attending workshops on such topics , and build as many connections as possible and start availing your skills to others
but how should i start?

[deft herald]

Seems like good advice to me. If you're not able to take any classes on the topic this year or next, then it wouldn't hurt to do some self learning if that's really what you want to do

start attending workshops on such topics
Yeah definitely do this if you can

[robust cobalt]

yes i want to do self -learning and i will obviously attend all classes of universities ( i'm not gonna ignore that at all or take it casually)
but i want to really start self -learning but how is the question ?

[robust cobalt]

oh alright i'll keep that in mind

[deft herald]

You can always look at onlines courses like you mentioned. But just keep in mind that the later elective courses at school have prerequisites for a reason; cybersecurity is an "advanced" topic that builds off of a good core understanding of many fundamentals. It might be like trying to learn differential equations at the same time that you're first learning algebra.

[true harness]

why can't both be true? you can like one language over another, but if your manager is telling you to use a specific language, you're going to use that language. or you can quit and get a job where you can use the language you want

[robust cobalt]

oh alright sir got it
thank you

[hardy blade]

I'll use whatever language my manager tells me to use. also, i think its a very poor decision to quit my job and then apply to the jobs that I want, it is incredibly foolish imo. I'd rather get a job offer first then quit

[true harness]

best thing to do is to actually like programming. make fun projects

[true harness]

sure, but that's not the point I was trying to make.

[hearty island]

yoooo, i just cold-called a recruiter at Capital Group and asked for some resume feedback

he wants to set an appointment with me on Friday to see if he can offer any help

nice recruiters are such a W

[dreamy spade]

I had a phone interview with the co-founder of a company. The company currently has no software developers. The staff team are basically not tech savvy which is why they are hiring a software developer. If I were to get the job offer, I would be the only software developer and it would be my very first sd job. Do you guys have any advice for me if I was given the job offer?

[hearty island]

i'd say go for it, it's good to build experience. and i know you've been fighting hard for a job for a while now

[smoky quest]

I would actually suggest to bail out.
That sounds like you would not be set up for success

[hearty island]

i take back what i said 💀, working alone sounds bad

[smoky quest]

That said, given how desperate you are for a tech job, that may still be worth it

the devil is in the details

[dreamy spade]

Damn eh? It’s that bad being the only software developer?

[smoky quest]

yeah.
You would have to be accountable for things that you don't even know exist. You will have to do things you don't even know exist.
You won't have any mentor or help

Also being the sole developer means you will most likely be IT and all sorts of other things that aren't just dev

For these reasons, it's better to hire someone more experienced for these situations as they would be able to handle them

[deft herald]

Yeah sounds like a recipe for disaster if that's your first ever job

[summer roost]

It sounds like you'd have very little support, and would be totally on your own for solving any technical problems that arise. If all they want is a WordPress site, maybe that's fine, but if you take this job you should invest up front effort figuring out exactly what it is that they think they want you to build. All of your requirements will be coming from non-technical people, so they won't necessarily know what is and isn't feasible or possible, and part of your job will be explaining to them why something that they want is much harder than they think. It will be a hard environment to grow in, because there's no one for you to learn from.

[deft herald]

If all they want is a WordPress site
That's the "hey my nephew knows a lot about computers" go-to

[summer roost]

It's not totally without its advantages: it does mean that you have a lot of flexibility to drive the direction of the implementation, and it could look quite good on a resume in the future if you are able to succeed at the role. But it will be a very tough role to succeed at, I think

[smoky quest]

And the problems to face won't necessarily be technical. Go figure out outsourcing, dealing with contractors, people in general. Getting the next hire to delegate some other stuff to (ex: networking/it). Prepare the budget for the year

[summer roost]

Ooh, that's a good point, too.

[hearty island]

could be forced into project management work

[summer roost]

What sort of work did they say they want you to do (so far 😅)?

[summer roost]

With only one developer, project management is pretty trivial, heh

[smoky quest]

there will be some

[summer roost]

I think it says something really troubling about the company that they'd choose someone with no prior tech experience as their first technical hire. That, more than anything else, strongly suggests to me that you're not going to get much support from that company. They're looking for someone cheap, not someone skilled.

[sleek egret]

that is most likely true

that said, if you are skilled enough and arrogant, I mean confident, it could turn out very well

[smoky quest]

With a slightly less cynical take, it could also be them not being technical at all and not knowing how to hire someone technical and not having access to someone able to guide them.
Which still ends up with the candidate not being set up for success

[sleek egret]

or if you play it right, you can shape their expectations

I'll admit it's unlikely that a fresh grad can do that

[near ocean]

its a job 🤷‍♂️ you could leave earlier if you dont like it or find something better but at least it gets your feet through the door

in my first job i didnt have much support but it was okayish, the issues i solved werent completely novel or particularly hard and i did fine with no guidance really

[amber crane]

man it really sucks doing great at university but then not even being given interviews for trainee positions... I need to get started with making my own projects but it's so much stuff that you need to know if you want to make a halfway decent one

[fringe sphinx]

Are they only hiring 1 dev, or they’re hiring a team from scratch? Either way, the first hire should be a sw manager. I would not recommend this as a first job (but make your own decision obv). I’m a very senior engineer and work with these types of companies all the time (‘how hard can software be?’), and it’s very hard to navigate.

[fringe sphinx]

I say it multiple times a day: if you’re a strong dev, need a portfolio, and have no ideas, consider contributing to an open source project.

[amber crane]

any python os projects you'd reccomend?

[fringe sphinx]

Just depends what you’re interested in. Find something you’ve used, and check git for a ‘good first issue’

Preferably not a top tier project (ie: pandas or numpy), those are hard to start in.

[lime bay]

Hi guys

I have an interview coming up. TDD pair programming. Want to know how would you prepare?

[radiant moon]

wow, I have no idea. I've never done TDD at a job, despite pushing for it. I envy you

[fringe sphinx]

I would practice TDD solo. Practice writing pytest tests, such as by taking a leetcode (or whatever), writing your TCs first, then implementing.

[sleek egret]

but then you have 2x to 10x as much code to debug!

[dreamy spade]

There’s a project management software that the company uses and the director of technology told me that the API is messed up. He showed me snippets of the JSON data and the front-end. The co-founder told me that it’s affecting their business and it has for a long time. They had another developer but they no longer work there because they couldn’t fix it.

You guys bring up a great point. It’s best to work with a dev team.

[fringe sphinx]

Oh man, that’s even worse. That’s the kind of project I’d bid (contract) 2x on because of the red flags.

But, they’d likely pay the 2x because it’s important

Im actually working on a project now where my team is the third dev team to come in to a customer with no engineering. We’re crushing it, but we have a ton of experience

[dreamy spade]

Oh man, that’s even worse.

Uh oh. It’s that bad? I do have knowledge of how json data gets fetched because I worked a on few projects like that.

I’m concerned on how big the json file is

I’m trying to remain positive though. If there’s way to finally get into tech. This will be it.

I should probably outsource a mentor that’s a senior developer.

[fringe sphinx]

I mean; they had someone who didn’t work out. On one hand, it might be a fun project and totally solvable, on the other hand, might be a quagmire of problems

Yah, beggars can’t be choosers. There’s no opportunity cost if you don’t have another offer

[sleek egret]

prefect is the enemy of good

[sleek egret]

given that 1) you've been looking for a job for a while and 2) the job market is not awesome, 3) you should take the offer and 4) continue to hunt for a better gig

you may find that the place is fine and you actually enjoy tackling new challenges yourself. but worst case, even if you hate it, you get paid and you can quit at any time.

[small geode]

Well you said it's an API, so there shouldn't be a "file" being used?

[lime bay]

Thanks

[cerulean gyro]

Ay yo any advice for someone who joined a company? I legit am getting assigned no work and when I reach out to people for work they basically blow me off.

[golden acorn]

Should i get a cert for data analytics , or just learn sql and python and make github projects

[smoky quest]

you need to reach out to your manager/lead

[cerulean gyro]

That’s who I am reaching out to

[radiant oriole]

Any job boards that list out remote jobs along with the region that they are looking to hire from?

[smoky quest]

to get which roles? And with which background?

[smoky quest]

linkedin and indeed do that?

[deft herald]

What do they say exactly? You can always go to their boss too if you're not getting anything helpful

[golden acorn]

Im just tryna break into it . Ive almost completed the code academy course but found out the had no certs

[smoky quest]

A CS degree will be the path of least resistance and with the most opportunities and compensation

[golden acorn]

And if i dont have the money to get a degree from a school ?

[cerulean gyro]

Well for example I ask my lead for any work that is needed or any resources to look at and he either says none for right now or shows me legacy code from software applications already made that I won’t be working on

[smoky quest]

There are other options like community college, grants or student loans.

Otherwise you are looking at a path with more resistance, less opportunities and less compensation

[cerulean gyro]

I mean I don’t mind doing any work but Idk if that reflects bad on me

Also to give context I am a new hire

[smoky quest]

have you talked to our manager?

[deft herald]

What will reflect bad on you is when you go to your performance review and you have no work to show for yourself. It's your lead's job to make you be as productive as possible. Definitely go to their boss if you're getting nothing

[deft herald]

Also, are you manager and your team lead 2 different people?

[smoky quest]

do you have a 30-60-90 days plan?

[golden acorn]

So there isnt any possibility without college is what you are saying? I dont mind the path less travelled, I dont mind a little bit of push back

[summer roost]

No one is saying that it isn't possible without college. They're saying that you're much less likely to succeed if you try to follow the without-college than the with-college path.

A greater percentage of self-taught developers fail to break into industry than college-educated developers, by far

[golden acorn]

Good, the question i asked was if certs were worth it or if a built portfolio was better. College classes being excluded

[smoky quest]

It's a lot more difficult and that will be like doing your career in extreme hardcore mode

[golden acorn]

Good

[harsh river]

a built portfolio will be much better since python certs don't really hold any weight

[fringe sphinx]

Read everything. Learn as much of the code base. Take whatever you can home. It’s hard, but the more you know the better you’ll be

[golden acorn]

Thank you

[summer roost]

Hiring managers place very little value in certs, with the exception of the AWS/GCP/Azure certs (and even those are more useful for SREs than software engineers)

[fringe sphinx]

If you go without college, then be aware of the curriculum college students take and try to fill you gap

[smoky quest]

for context, job ads easily get thousandS of applicants, each with education where they studied for 3-5 years full time CS, portfolio and internship.
You are going to have a plan to stand out

[cerulean gyro]

Yeah

[cerulean gyro]

Yes manager manages two teams and team lead manages my team

[golden acorn]

Bet, ive met people who have college degrees. Doctors even. They passed tests, doesnt mean they have actual knowledge. They just bought the degree and coasted. Found some job dumb enough to hire em.

[fleet reef]

Then where do certs get their values?

[summer roost]

You seem to be presupposing that they have value

[deft herald]

Ok, then talk to both of them about your situation. Then if that results in nothing, speak with your lead's manager

[smoky quest]

I wouldn't speak ill of people like that. It sounds like jealousy

[harsh river]

it depends on the certs, cisco networking certs for example....

[summer roost]

Most certs are not worth the paper they're printed on

[summer roost]

I've got one. It has never been useful to me in my career as a software engineer (though CCNA etc are some of the more well regarded certs)

[fleet reef]

I am

[fleet reef]

I see

[harsh river]

do you work in networking?

[golden acorn]

If your chief complaint is that I sound jealous then you are incompetent for over looking my many other flaws

[summer roost]

No

[harsh river]

then you can surely see why it has never been useful to you in your carreer.

[summer roost]

Yes... Because I'm a software engineer

they're useful for network engineers, but that's not what we're talking about here, right?

[summer roost]

An unwillingness to listen to and try to understand advice doesn't speak well to your employability

[smoky quest]

I mean, I can look at your other flaws in interviews. That's the point of interviews

[smoky quest]

For the purpose of this discussion, such cert would not help anyway.
It's typically part of a larger career growth and plans

[summer roost]

My claim wasn't "no one values certs for anything ever", it was "people hiring software developers don't value certs".

[harsh river]

ah okay, that's clearer

[summer roost]

I was assuming the context was software engineering, since they asked about a portfolio. Portfolios wouldn't tend to apply to the jobs where certs are likely to be valuable

[fringe sphinx]

Agree, and: there’s a few adjacent places where certs might be useful, like qa and devops.

[hearty island]

or project management 🙂. certs are extremely desired there

as in it’s hard to find a PM job in the US without a capm or a PMP

[vapid jay]

Something Ive been thinking about, what percentage of people actually click on the link to a github repo for a project you made. I’m thinking it’s probably zero and they just read the description in the resume right? Or is that way off Ive never been on the other side

[pine sleet]

If you're in the early stages where an employer is simply flipping through resumes, chances are they're probably not going to take the time to look at your GitHub

[smoky quest]

It's more likely to be looked at if they are on the fence, at later stage, or if you don't have a degree.
But otherwise, it's very unlikely to be looked at, especially at the initial stages

[fringe sphinx]

It somewhat depends; projects on GitHub is one of the things that I do look for, for various reasons. After reading the most recent experience, I would look at GitHub repos next… but I probably won’t actually click: but I will ask and open during an interview. (Im agreeing with Robin and recursive)

[dreamy spade]

The 2nd interview, the hiring manager showed me what looked to be json code. It had Id, costs and etc in it so the json is involved in some way in the software right?

I’m just guessing one of the issues could be a fetching issue.

[smoky quest]

this looks like something overly pedantic.
The original statement stands about json data, be it transmitted through APIs, reading a file or otherwise

[wanton birch]

The server vanished for me for a while. It just came back .

[summer roost]

That happens from time to time. Discord issues tend to affect large servers first

[gritty rivet]

Getting paid for not working... Enjoy it while it lasts.

[dreamy spade]

I read an article describing this exact situation

[true harness]

what did it say?

[small geode]

Certainly wasn't pedantic at all, just getting clarification. The way they explained it now seems like "JSON file" meant the source file that handled the JSON, which changes the scenario wildly. The point originally was to reassure them that it's unlikely an API response in size directly equates to complexity

[dreamy spade]

I can’t remember exactly.

[harsh river]

It can be actually

[small geode]

Notice I said unlikely, not impossible

It will entirely depend on what the response is but if it's a 1-deep object and only that big because one of the elements is a large array, that's very basic

[harsh river]

100 deep objects

[small geode]

That's not the point here

[summer roost]

whether the source is a file or not seems pretty irrelevant. It can be large enough to require streaming techniques regardless of where it comes from

[fringe sphinx]

For me, the problem isn’t the file but the business logic. Expecting a junior dev to navigate a quagmire of business processes, use cases, inter-system dependencies, etc is a tall order.

[true harness]

sounds fun but terrifying at the same time

[small geode]

I don't think you see what I meant

The reason I asked is because of his response: he was talking about source code, not actual JSON

[small geode]

Definitely agreed. Sounds like your average "we only ever hire one dev and the next one in line is always cursed" sort of run.

[summer roost]

I don't think you're reading that right. But either way: whether the JSON comes from a file or over a socket doesn't affect how to process it.

and none of this has anything to do with #career-advice anyway

[small geode]

I was not at all talking about how the JSON itself is processed. I literally just said I was trying to reassure them that if they did truly mean a file full of JSON, that it doesn't directly mean the source code is complex, and I needed that clarified first

[small geode]

Ignoring others coming into the conversation, if you mean you saw a file with a lot of JSON in it, I wouldn't worry too much immediately. If this is you saying that it was a source code file that dealt with the JSON and it looked complex, I would still say don't doubt your capabilities

[dreamy spade]

Sorry for the confusion I may have caused you guys

[dreamy spade]

if you mean you saw a file with a lot of JSON in it, I wouldn't worry too much immediately

Yes. It was this part.

[small geode]

Right, that won't mean complexity right off the bat thankfully. Obviously we won't know the layout of the data, but don't worry yourself with their comments on previous devs

[smoky quest]

Hi!
this is not a channel for memes or shitposts

[glossy prism]

hi every1
i will begin my college from this yr and I'm interested in coding
I already know JAVA(intermediate; i've made two projects) and Python (beginner)
what should i do now , i want crack gsoc
and want to start earning till 3rd yr (even if it is small amount )
pls guide me

[vital wyvern]

!rule ad

[inner wren]

Rules

6. Do not post unapproved advertising.

[smoky quest]

• expand your knowledge by reading books, watching conference talks, etc,
• practice by doing projects

[proven crest]

I really hate to be negative, but that does sound like a terrible experience. Furthermore (if this is connected to what youve been posting elsewhere) they expect you to have knowledge of hardware encoding which it seems you don't. If you had a team to support you, that might not be such a bad thing, but you don't.
If the staff aren't tech savvy you'll have to be a developer, devops and PM at the same time. It's not a good time for an experienced developer, much less one who has none.

You also mentioned "They had another developer but they no longer work there because they couldn’t fix it." regarding the API. That doesn’t bode well. It seems they haven't learnt from their mistake. They're hiring inexperienced junior developers expecting them to be able to independently work of what sounds like a complex project that they should outsource to a contractor. Potentially a red flag as this is the second time they're hiring an inexperienced developer instead of a contractor (if thats the main issue) or an experienced developer who can handle independently managing that side of the company.

If you do decide to take this job, which I imagine you're probably leaning towards doing as you've been looking for a long time keep in mind that it won't represent what working as a junior developer should be like. Also keep in mind the company seems to have scummy practices and may let you go either for being inexperienced (who'd have thought?) or as soon as you fix their main issue. Also remember you'll have no support so you're most likely going to have to bring work home with you or spend hours figuring out something thats a 10 second fix because you dont know what you don't know.

All in all, don't be disheartened if it doesn't turn out the way you want it to. Be personable and keep applying whilst working there. Perhaps at the least you'll have a small amount of experience to add to your CV and a reference if they're nice.

P.S
I actually had a vaguely similar experience years ago, before I even considered a career in development. I was in university and looking for a summer job. A small company took me on, originally to do product photography, graphic design and marketing material. A couple weeks after it stemmed into redoing their website. I had very little web dev experience pretty much limited to basic HTML/CSS (I made and edited tumblr themes years before that).

They were using WordPress so it wasn't too bad and I managed to muddle along blindly somehow, but it wasn't a good experience. It certainly didn't make me think I'd ever want to have a career in any type of development. They weren't tech savvy either so they had expectations and unaware of the prerequisites to achieve them. For them it was as simple as "just do this" or "just make that do that", as if it could be spoken into existence.

Almost 7 years later I actually am a developer and my junior position is very different, I have support, I have 2 weekly 121's that are there for me to ask code questions, i have code reviews, I'm learning from others code, i'm working with a very clean code base so its easy to see and learn how things work. Its a world of difference.

[dreamy spade]

This was very interesting informative and insightful. Thank you for this helpful advice.

[hearty island]

hey guys. would you recommend i have microsoft teams on my phone? so i can respond to any messages?

[true harness]

no. unless you're on call or something

[hearty island]

yeah but usually these guys message me when i'm away from my computer eating lunch or something

[true harness]

are you on break then?

[hearty island]

i just normally say "lunch" but then they message me anyways

[proven crest]

It’s totally up to you, if you want to be cut off from communication whilst away from your work laptop then no, if you wan to stay connected then yes. Same for emails.

Just because you have it on your phone doesn’t mean you have to reply if you’re on lunch or out of hours

[ivory sluice]

you say "lunch" after they message you? if you're unavailable you should stay true to that and not message them anything until you're back to work

[proven crest]

I think they mean they change their status

[fringe sphinx]

Auto-reply with a picture of a sandwich?

[hearty island]

i unfortunately missed my mentor's meeting yesterday bc of lunch. he was pissed to put it lightly