career-advice

[open cradle]

Well,if I do not use Copilot (owned by Microsoft as far as I know) due to privacy reasons but I upload my code to a platform managed by Microsoft, they still have full access to my code

[sleek egret]

so don't do that?

[true harness]

the risk is not that microsoft will steal your code, it's that emitted code may be protected under an incompatible license

[open cradle]

Thanks. I am talking from the point of view of companies. Some do not want to use Copilot due to privacy reasons and then upload all the code to the platform managed by the same company

[open cradle]

That's right

[sleek egret]

then it's not privacy reasons, it's that they don't want to accidently infringe on someone else's copyright. i.e. legal liability reasons

[open cradle]

I did not see that point of view before

[true harness]

that's why tools like outlook, teams, and azure are fine, but tools like copilot are not necessarily

[open cradle]

Thanks for the answer! Now I see it more clear

[sleek egret]

unquantifiable liabilities like that scare the crap out of corporate lawyers

I'm not exaggerating here. it really freaks them out.

[open cradle]

In my company it is totally allowed as long as you use it wisely (i.e not copy-pasting all the project). But I see your point

[sleek egret]

I doubt most companies have an AI code gen policy yet

[open cradle]

Yeah same here. It was an email from the patents-IT department but it did not look as they assessed it properly and with time. It is also hard to see the consequences

[fringe sphinx]

I’ve seen some s*** here. Well intentioned developers make some boneheaded decisions when it comes to ‘using it wisely’

[fringe sphinx]

I think most legal departments have already turned one out, following more or less their policies on GPL

At least from my small sample set

[open cradle]

The thing is that in my group people are not even aware of these type of tools yet. There are just a few developers. Maybe that's why

[sleek egret]

I spoke to my neices this weekend a bit about chatgpt. one just graduated from a top HS, another is going into her 3rd year at a top university. both said that by the end of this past school year the vast majority of students were using chatgpt as either a crutch or to just fully "cheat".

[summer roost]

None of those have a risk of emitting copyrighted code... Copilot does

[open cradle]

Yeah I already commented that I was not aware of this side

[open cradle]

For sure paradigm is changing a lot

[fringe sphinx]

Legal pedantry, but who owns copyright to chatgpt generated code, and would you want (from a legal perspective, not functional) that in your codebase?

[summer roost]

that's yet another risk. As things stand today, the current status quo in the US seems to be that:

1. Code "created" by AI cannot be copyrighted
2. But nothing stops LLMs from emitting code created by someone else, which is subject to copyright

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, the only sane policy is same as it ever was: only commit code that you wrote.

[hearty island]

holy shit apple responded to me

it’s just a standard rejection email but still none of my friends heard back when they applied

[tender frost]

I didn't hear back from any of the big companies I applied to, other than the one I got the job (apprenticeship) with. Amazon, etc. just aired me :(

It seems increasingly rare to actually get a response to applications (when being denied), and even more rare to get feedback on interviews etc.

[sleek egret]

it has been rare for a half century

[hearty island]

so maybe it’s a good sign i got an email back

[sleek egret]

ostensibly, the reason is that if the company gives any reason for rejection they open themselves up legal issues

no reason and no explicit rejection is the best way to short-circuit that

[open cradle]

I remember how I used to think that they key for these responses was having a pretty and impactful CV. And in the end the only person that I know that got into Apple did it with a CV that enumerated all the stuff in a word document same format as in a txt 😭

[sleek egret]

a pretty CV is irrelevant

[tender frost]

And it's less effort. There's almost no plus (for the company) to giving feedback

[true harness]

less relevant than other stuff, at least

[sleek egret]

indeed

[tender frost]

I'd say it needs to be readable, and not waffled, but overall yeah

[sleek egret]

yes. neat and organized is all you really need. IMO, of course

[tender frost]

Yeah, I'd agree with that (& not overly long. 1-2 pages max -- realistically 1)

[open cradle]

In my case recruiters told me they liked the design at first sight

[sleek egret]

if you were hunting for a job in graphic design or fashion industry, different standards may apply 🙂

[open cradle]

But I have heard that in US it is quite different

[sleek egret]

ask your recruiters if they've ever hired people like you at companies similar to the ones you're applying to

i.e. evaluated candidates and made the actual decision

[smoky quest]

It could be you are part of the random sample the manager looked at and moved to the pile of rejection

[sleek egret]

I suspect you know what I'm getting at

[sleek egret]

just as an FYI, the 1-2 page rule for resumes is for people starting out

[tender frost]

Oh yeah, I'm someone starting out (just finished A-levels / "college"), which is my mindset is like that

I do think there's an argument to keeping it short even when you're experience though. You don't want to be boring the person reading it

[open cradle]

I am not sure if I got your point there

[hearty island]

true. also i applied for that position a month ago and i still graduate in may

[sleek egret]

they don't actually know what employers want

what they think they know is all guess work from a low-information channel black box (the people submitted vs people hired)

[summer roost]

I've never heard someone suggest that a >2 page resume is desirable for a software developer in the US. How long is yours?

[sleek egret]

I haven't submitted a resume in over a decade

[summer roost]

ok - how long was the last one you submitted?

[sleek egret]

but if I wrote one up, I would probably try to limit it to 3 pages

[open cradle]

That still feels like a lot to me (imo)

[sleek egret]

I've been working for 30+ years now

if you can fill half a page with 1 or 2 years of experience ... 🙂

[summer roost]

I've been working for 20+ years, and I'm starting to think about whether I should move from a 1 page resume to 2...

[open cradle]

I have 7 years of experience and it is like 2/3 of a page. I would say less. 1/2. And it was mainly because I wanted to pointed out the experience. I will not make it grow much more I think

Of course I can fill 5 pages if I wanted. But I do not see the point

[sleek egret]

that's fine. length is just a suggested guideline. the contents are more important.

[open cradle]

I once applied to a company with a longer resume (junior position) and with a short/graphic resume (same position but non-junior). They left me on seen with the junior position and contacted me for the normal one. Maybe it was just a coincidence

[sleek egret]

a lot depends on the company and manager

100 people apply to 10 companies for the same kind of job... different people will get interviews at different companies. though there will probably be some overlap.

it's not random but from the outside it appears random

[open cradle]

That's right too

[fringe sphinx]

I pruned my LinkedIn a while back. People don’t get to know my whole life story.

[fringe sphinx]

I had to do one not too long ago (FAANG was trying to recruit), I did a one pager with pretty much a single section for everything before my current role; more or less: ‘ I did some s*** before’

[unreal turtle]

if masters degree is online can i just put ms on resume?

[fringe sphinx]

If it’s a degree, it’s a degree. Why wouldn’t you?

[unreal turtle]

so its fine to just say ms without saying the online part?

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, just the degree and name of university

Let them figure it out. Seen plenty of university of phoenix degrees.

[summer roost]

I imagine I'd still only keep my most recent 3 roles (2 of which have been at the same company) - and I ought to easily be able to fit the highlights of that on one page still, I think.

including more than 3 jobs, or more than at absolute most 5 bullets for one job, seems excessive to me...

[unreal turtle]

ok tysm

[fringe sphinx]

It’s also not terribly surprising for masters. A lot of graduate degrees are part time, evening, continuing Ed, or online.

[unreal turtle]

i see

[smoky quest]

I would also make sure you don't just value the piece of paper but also look at the educational value, professional network, etc.
People who go through a masters will also be looking forward to some great career. So establishing your professional network is not to be neglected

[fringe sphinx]

!rule 9 6

[inner wren]

Rules

6. Do not post unapproved advertising.

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

[broken sparrow]

data scientist vs data analyst ?

[silver jacinth]

data analyst is inside the realm of data science

I am assuming you mean ai researcher vs data analyst

if so, then I'll say if you don't want a masters or phd then data analyst is the only realistic role you could get

[broken sparrow]

Thank you very much.

By the way, I don't have a university degree because I didn't go to university, but I have many certificates, but companies still want experience. If I can't work anywhere, where will I gain experience?

[silver jacinth]

Job market is not that good right now

[true harness]

entry level jobs don't require experience. try for those

[silver jacinth]

Meanwhile here in QC, it's around 2 years for entry level

[broken sparrow]

I couldn't find much in upwork, and the ones I applied didn't get me either. Can you suggest more different sites?

[true harness]

upwork for full time employment? isn't that a freelancing site? use linkedin or indeed

[broken sparrow]

i use freelancer because linked in shows jobs in my own country

[true harness]

can't you just set the location?

[broken sparrow]

and indeed many jobs want people in that employer's country i have to work remotely

[broken sparrow]

location only ankara and istanbul sees in my profile

[true harness]

i'm not sure what else to tell you other than try to remove some of the filters

[silver jacinth]

Canonical does contracted work I believe

They don't employ full time per say

[true harness]

according to their website, they definitely do

[smoky quest]

Freelancing could be one way. You may have to work for very cheap to get the chance

[fringe sphinx]

I don’t know if it’s right for your situation, but I always advise contributing to open source projects… particularly projects that are used widely in industry. It’s a great way to build credibility

[silver jacinth]

apparently they tell you in the interview

[fringe sphinx]

(This is for intermediate to expert, not novices)

[smoky quest]

Try also to put yourselves in the shoes of someone hiring:
Why would they hire someone with no education, no skills and no experience who lives in a different country in a different timezone and different laws?

So you have to show something, like projects or freelance or etc.

[broken sparrow]

Let them make hackathon-style software trials or make a challenge between the people they will hire.(

[smoky quest]

they don't need to. They already have thousands of applicants for each job, most of the applicants having degrees, internships, projects and experience

[silver jacinth]

meanwhile the people who worked on close sourced software

[broken sparrow]

you right

[smoky quest]

what about it?

[broken sparrow]

thanks for all the advice

[silver jacinth]

they won't have a portfolio to show

it'll all be private contributions

[smoky quest]

that's normal.
You can however describe that experience in your resume and interviews

[fringe sphinx]

Like hunger games?

[leaden jasper]

Having a strong resume and being able to talk intelligently about your projects can go a long way.

[smoky quest]

you shouldn't show closed and proprietary source code to random people anyway

[fringe sphinx]

Tbh, I’ve rarely looked at peoples portfolios (GitHub repos, I read the project bullets in a resume if they make it to a face to face). But, I almost always ask them to describe the architecture/design decisions of projects in their resume.

[pine sleet]

Can you delete this message and post it again in #discord-bots ?

[celest kite]

This is definitely not the right channel for this

[leaden jasper]

@bitter minnow Please use the correct channel and use codeblocks to format your code.

[soft portal]

should I get a degree in computer scieence? or it is useless?

[peak halo]

it's one of the least useless degrees you can get.

[soft portal]

my friends are trying to get an IT degree and I am starting to doubt my choice

I still have like a month to think about it, I need suggestion

[peak halo]

IT degree holders are generally less competitive for developer positions than CS degree holders, and they make generally less.

[soft portal]

but can a cs degree holder work on a job that requires IT degree?

[peak halo]

you're in the US, right?

[soft portal]

asia

[dreamy spade]

I am reading the HR Manual for my new job. An excerpt of it states that the company expects employees to not abuse their employment benefits. How does one abuse this?

[peak halo]

idk how it works in any part of Asia. but in North America and Europe, CS is the degree you get to be a developer, and IT is the degree that you get to fill tech support roles

[peak halo]

what benefits are they refering to?

[soft portal]

I see, I guess I'll go cs then, btw do you have like a degree on cs?

[dreamy spade]

Time off, insurance, facilities and other

[peak halo]

what about the facilities?

at Starbucks, one of the benefits is that employees can have "unlimited" free drinks while they work. But leaving the store with a drink for themselves and all their friends would be an abuse of that benefit.

[dreamy spade]

I see.

[peak halo]

you can't really "abuse" insurance benefits. the benefit is a discounted rate on an insurance plan with a third party.

[soft portal]

@peak halo are the lessons in cs hard? any example of a topic that I should be preparing right now?

[summer roost]

"don't sleep in the office", for instance.

[soft portal]

I am also currently on cs50 course (week 3 runoff rn)

[peak halo]

some parts are harder than others. I don't know how it works in your region, but in the US, Canada, and Europe, your math grades are most important for getting into a CS program.

[soft portal]

what are the maths that requires for me to study? also I don't have math subject in my senior

[peak halo]

whatever the highest-level math courses are that you can take during compulsory education.

[soft portal]

okay, I kinda messed up during my junior highschool when it comes to math

[peak halo]

I don't really feel comfortable giving advice to people who aren't from a region I'm familiar with, unfortunately

[soft portal]

It's okay, I just need suggestion, I just need to get a good gasp of it

[wispy coral]

I'm trying to get a job as an IP network engineer and would like to use python for network management /OAM&P

specifically API for Nokia SR, 1830PSS, and Cisco IXR.

[smoky quest]

the rule of thumb is that if the university/college has accepted you, they think you have a fair shot at it.
So don't overthink it but be ready to work to catch up

[soft portal]

I see

[fringe sphinx]

Math is important, but mathematical maturity is even more important: http://sigmaa.maa.org/rume/crume2019/Papers/106.pdf. You can develop mathematical maturity through purposeful study, which will make many aspects of computer science more understandable. There are excellent resources on Calculus and Linear Algebra available to you. Threebrownoneblue’s YouTube channel is a great starter, followed by MIT OCWs calc and linear series. And, any videos by Gilbert strang, in particular. Many students struggle with math through college: and many freshman fail Calculus, so whatever happened in Junior High is (imo not knowing you) very irrelevant to your career trajectory.

[soft portal]

okay noted

[fringe sphinx]

Better link, easier description: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_maturity

[pearl veldt]

hey guys, where is a good place to find startups?

[pearl veldt]

3brown1blue is such an amazing channel

[modest kraken]

I like 3blue1brown better

[pearl veldt]

🗿

[smoky quest]

ycombinator or whatever is now angellist

[unreal turtle]

If I get masters degree, am I eligible for internships?

[smoky quest]

yes

[true harness]

get means finished?

[unreal turtle]

Like during it

[harsh river]

the answer for that is it depends but probably not during classes

[unreal turtle]

I’m confused

[harsh river]

you can probably get internships during your breaks

i don't think you can get an internship at the same time as you're going thru your masters, at least not in my college

[unreal turtle]

I’m saying am I eligible to do internships while I pursue my masters?

[unreal turtle]

This guy had it right, idk what you guys are talking about

[harsh river]

they probably understood "getting" a masters as "sucessfully completing and attaining a masters degree"

[unreal turtle]

No during it

[smoky quest]

masters students routinely get internships during summer

[pearl veldt]

my gf was offered a couple of internships while still going to school

[harsh river]

right, during their break

[wise sinew]

here people work and do internships all the time while in school

[summer roost]

I had internships that began before a break, or continued after one

[unreal turtle]

Ye

Any recruiters here?

[harsh river]

Sure, but before or after breaks is what I mean

[graceful lark]

Hey guys

I am doing a python intro course for 3 months right now and with that aswell I am doing a data science course so I was wondering it would be possible for me to get a remote job solely by doing python for two years I would be doing python courses in that two years

[pastel thunder]

My interview went great, but i got rejected. How does this happen? From what I can remember, he mostly asked me about my project which I am very aware of. Also, he asked me about transformer about which it seemed my understanding was more clear than his.
Generally my interviews are shit but this one went great(in fact, I have never had a better interview)

should i ask for feedback by replying to the email? for example saying "your feedback will help me improve"

[fringe sphinx]

Usually it’s nothing you did, but the candidate pool: someone else might have more experience or more relevant experience or whatever. I usually end up having to decide between 2-3 good candidates.

Re: feedback, it doesn’t hurt to ask. You’ll likely not get anything useful back, but no harm

[pastel thunder]

should i rub my achievements on their face? even when they didnt ask for it? i dont think i can do anything about having less experience

[fringe sphinx]

What you can do is express an interest in the company: say something positive about the interview and the company, and maybe ask for feedback. Don’t overdo it, but a little persistence can’t hurt (again: not too muchg

[steep zodiac]

but still the one with more experience is given more priority doe

what should a person do to get the experience ? if they don't get hired cuz of lack of experience in working

[fringe sphinx]

I don’t have a great answer but it comes down to: projects (including contributing to open source), education, or domain knowledge (want to work in fintech? Learn the field)

[pastel thunder]

and i came to know my current job opportunity i have has little to do with AI, they are asking me to learn java and do backend? Now i am more motivated to look for new job!!

[steep zodiac]

oh i see

[steep zodiac]

huh that's weird aren't they supposed to give u the job to work with stuff that u have experience with

[pastel thunder]

manager literally asked me to read specific books, multi threading etc to start backend.

[steep zodiac]

oeh

[fringe sphinx]

Tbh, that hints at an experience gap. Threading, async, etc are all things you really must master. If it’s something you want to focus on, consider applying the Feynman method

Sorry, not experience, but just readiness. College graduates come with all sorts of different levels of mastery with programming.

[steep zodiac]

@pastel thunder what all skills did u apply for the job with

[graceful lark]

I am doing a python intro course for 3 months right now and with that aswell I am doing a data science course so I was wondering it would be possible for me to get a remote job solely by doing python for two years I would be doing python courses in that two years

Can anyone give a advice?

[white relic]

It's not impossible, but it's not likely you'll find a job writing python with a 3 month course as your only experience

[graceful lark]

No i am talking about 2 years worth of experience

I am thinking that would it be possible or not
I have many courses lined up for now

[white relic]

what is your current level of education?

[graceful lark]

I am doing college

But not in computer science I have taken non medical : physics chem and math so no degree

I was thinking if I study python everyday for two remaining years of my college I would get remote job or not

[white relic]

you're going to be taking college courses for two more years and not get a degree at the end?

[fringe sphinx]

What’s your major?

[white relic]

That doesn't seem optimal

[graceful lark]

Physics is major I would not get computer science degree I would get bachelor in science

[fringe sphinx]

I’ve worked with many swe’s who were physics undergrads

[graceful lark]

Yeah but I was wondering if remote job is possible after only two years of python learning experience

[fringe sphinx]

Try to leverage both, rather than ignore the physics part. Yes, two years of focused study, plus leveraging your physics experience, gives you a shot. But even better if you can declare a minor

[graceful lark]

What you mean by " if you can declare a minor"?

[fringe sphinx]

But use the physics to your advantage: pick projects that reinforce your domain

[graceful lark]

Thanks for the advice mate I started doubting myself that these late night python studies are worth it or not

[white relic]

Lots of things are possible, including getting a programming job without a related degree on the strength of self study. But you'll be competing for those jobs against people who do have related degrees

Do you have a long term plan? A BS in physics is kind of not very useful, usually it means you're planning to go on to get a PhD

I work with physicists daily. I only know one person with (only) a BS in physics and he dual majored with EE

[celest kite]

That's because physics is BS

xD

[graceful lark]

No long term plan I have and yes I realised my degree is note very useful the problem is my college only provide these courses only but I am studying python

My short term plan for two years is like 3 months introductory course then data science with python then algorithms with python

[unkempt iron]

Any1 up for a competition as a team

💸

[fringe sphinx]

Include cs50 and a dsa course, I suggest

[graceful lark]

Ok I will, thanks

[cyan valley]

Good evening everybody, I'm trying to be a artificial intelligence/ machine learning engineer. What pathway would you guys recommend I do?

[elder forge]

As someone who does X-ray physics in academia, in my field programming (python) is an absolute requirement, and finding PhD candidates with programming experience is a challenge. Also, the job prospects for someone with an advanced physics degree in combination with programming skills are very good. Not sure if you want to go down this path, but I think learning python in addition to your formal degree will pay dividends regardless of your career choices later.

[hearty island]

a phd lol or a master's degree would significantly increase your chances

[graceful lark]

Thanks for sharing this it will help me a lot in maintaining consistency I was thinking of giving up

[cyan valley]

I'm currently getting my B.S

[hearty island]

nice! i would highly recommend shooting for internships if you haven't already been

[cyan valley]

Half way done, however no portfolio projects

[hearty island]

halfway done with the degree? i would recommend you look at datasets and focus on trying to make projects of your own to get internships

[cyan valley]

Any projects in mind?

[hearty island]

try downloading a couple datasets off kaggle and see what your thought process is in cleaning the data and visualizing it

a lot of coming up with your own projects is the brainstorming part of it

[cyan valley]

Isn't R specializes in cleaning up data?

[hearty island]

so is python

iirc a lot of companies use R too. i did an interview with CUNA Mutual group two maybe three years ago and they used R

[cyan valley]

By chance you have any example I could see? ( I'm away from my computer at the moment)

[hearty island]

example of what?

[cyan valley]

Dataset that's were cleaned with visualizations

[hearty island]

https://youtu.be/I3FBJdiExcg one of my fav youtubers back when i wanted to be a data sci person

[cyan valley]

I'll check this out, much appreciated

[hearty island]

i would also look into pulling data from APIs

[cyan valley]

Like data fetching?

[hearty island]

yep! and i would look into web crawling stuff too. i remember car max liked a project i did on that

[cyan valley]

Web scraping?

[hearty island]

yep

[hearty island]

just make sure to review the site's policies

[cyan valley]

Gotcha, much appreciated

[hearty island]

no problem! also if you want resume help you can post an anonymized version of your resume here. people are very helpful.

[jaunty field]

I have started my blog tech career here:
Https://NerdTalksTech.blogspot.com

[celest kite]

!rule ad

[inner wren]

Rules

6. Do not post unapproved advertising.

[gray ravine]

is it true you can make 72K a year being a software engineer?

[leaden jasper]

It depends a lot on location, but yes. Many software engineers make more than 72K a year.

[gray ravine]

ok thank you

[buoyant seal]

that sum is possible regardless of a country even. +/- everywhere in the world should be possible to earn that much

[buoyant seal]

it can require a certain level of skills, and certain years of experience though.
don't expect to earn this amount if you just finished online courses in third world country

[hearty island]

is july a good time to start applying to full time jobs if i graduate may 2024?

[peak halo]

I would probably wait until the fall. but in either case, I would make sure it's clear from your resume that you're not available (at least, not full-time) until you graduate.

[hearty island]

thank you 🙂

[open cradle]

It depends. In some countries 72k is common for entry level positions or even internships. In some others I would say it is almost impossible even with 10 years of experience (half of Europe, almost all South America and probably most of Asia but Singapore).

North America (Canada, US), Oceania (Australia + NZ) and some countries in Europe might be much easier (Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland...)

[nimble herald]

Is gettin a computer science degree a bad idea? Since by the time I finish the degree 3-4 year ai may have replaced most CS jobs. And even if that isn’t the case it won’t be long after that until it is replaced

Plus I can see the pay dropping down a lot as well

[near ocean]

Its not a bad idea, its actually a good idea
We have this question pop up every other day, theres plenty of discussion around it you could read

[fringe sphinx]

Like Mar, I’m exhausted by the ‘sky is falling’ ai debates. So I’ll just say: I’m excited by AI and think it might take software engineering to the next level of productivity.

[nimble herald]

Idk I have a feeling they I’m gonna make a mistake

Hope it not as bad as people make it out to be. I love CS I don’t wanna do something else

[open cradle]

According to latest stack overflow survey it is only going up

[fringe sphinx]

Regarding pay: I think there was a bit of a bubble. Salaries were getting ridiculous as FAANG over hired. Secondly, end of last year to now was quite a bump with many companies laying off large numbers of engineers. This was a bit of an anomaly that takes a little time for things to correct.

[fringe sphinx]

I think there’ll be some correction at the top end of the pay scales… FAANG was throwing some seriously ridiculous numbers

[open cradle]

Yeah. In any case I think same as you. I do not even think there has been time for companies to pay less due to AI. If the salaries went down, I bet it must have been bc of other stuff, as you said

[nimble herald]

I thought the pay was only high since there wasn’t a lot of people that can do the job. Which doesn’t seem to be the case anymore

[near ocean]

The pay is high regardless, compared to other professions

[nimble herald]

True. Plus technically wouldn’t a lot of jobs pay decrease because of ai not just CS related job?

[open cradle]

Some companies in the US were facing serious issues. I remember one that was meant for helping students with maths

But in Europe I do not know any famous case

[sleek egret]

of white collar "knowledge" jobs, software dev is the one least threatened by AI

unless you suck at programming, I guess. then you should worry

[open cradle]

I think it depends a lot on the type of job. Web development seems to be doing huge progress due to AI

[sleek egret]

does it? I see none at all

could you provide an example or two?

[open cradle]

I cant hahahah. This is based on my vision. I do not even work in that field. I just saw many examples in some websites about people creating such good websites using AIs. But I cannot prove anything

[sleek egret]

don't take this the wrong way, but writing the code is the easy part of software development

it's like thinking that because you can ask an AI to string together a few semi-coherent sentences that novelists and writers will soon be out of a job.

because you can and they won't

[fringe sphinx]

The pay was high to begin with. Then the pay got ridiculous (selectively) with some over hiring. Now, the pay (I expect) will return to being high.

(I consider 6 figure starting TC as ridiculous, but I’m old, so who knows)

[sleek egret]

that's not the norm in most places

maybe a 10k out of the 100k or so entry level jobs have starting salaries > $100k in recent years.

and I think I'm being quite generous there

people just like to toss out exceptions and prop them up as typical when they're far from

[random acorn]

Hello to the group! Have you guys been in many technical interviews?

[gilded valley]

https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm

you need be to be in the bottom 25% of software developers to be making 96.7k base or less. Starting out in the 25-50th percentile of software devs is totally reasonable

[open cradle]

I know and I agree. But there are specific fields in software development that do not involve deep or complex tasks

Are most of the people here from the US?

[sleek egret]

yes, it's likely that over the coming decade the # of jobs doing boring "make the input field bigger' and "change the color to red" type programming jobs will decline

good riddance, IMO.

[smoky quest]

imho, there will be more of them

[fringe sphinx]

I said selectively, not as the norm. I (small tech) had to compete against some really unrealistic FAANG packages.

[sleek egret]

we tried recruiting at 2nd tier but good schools

sure the average isn't as good as the best schools, but you can still find a few diamonds in the rough

it's also a good way to get some lol's at some of the screening test submissions

[fringe sphinx]

I ended up recruiting based on alternative factors: I’d go for .. yah, the diamonds in the rough. Often alternative degrees (some great EE hires), or geographic (people who lived nearby were great hires for quality of life/retention)

[sleek egret]

we were able to get interns from top schools... but they would all leave the next year for greener pastures

we've had interns go work for all the FAANG's, plus spacex, nsa, goldman, etc, etc

It was sorta aggravating that after training them in the practical aspects, they'd jump ship so easy. understandable, but irritating.

[gilded valley]

the norm is 125k for average devs - plus some amount of equity/annual bonus - 100k for a junior dev is perfectly reasonable, and possibly the norm

[sleek egret]

it's not the norm for entry level

IIRC, avg entry level compensation in the US is about $80k or so

[fringe sphinx]

Reasonable is relative. But yes, nowadays the ramp to 120ish is pretty quick

[sleek egret]

remember, the average dev has 10 to 20 years of experience

[gilded valley]

do you have any source? 80k sounds a little low to be an a average, but not unreasonable

[sleek egret]

most of the US is not silicon valley or NYC

and even in those places, there are lots of people that will take $80k to work in the center of things hoping for a brighter future

[smoky quest]

We target 75 %-tile and are above 100k across the whole US at entry level (and much higher in hcol)
So I wouldn't make it as rare as portrayed here

[gilded valley]

there aren't many devs at all in those places earning 80k TC or less

[sleek egret]

as for evidence => https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Entry-Level-Computer-Programmer-Salary (says $75k), and https://www.indeed.com/career/entry-level-software-engineer/salaries (says $60k)

[gilded valley]

is that just doing a job title match?

[sleek egret]

https://www.zippia.com/junior-programmer-jobs/salary/ says $61k, https://www.talent.com/salary?job=entry+level+programmer says $52k

it's not like I'm gonna do a full data search and analysis, man

[fringe sphinx]

It’s hard to talk averages. I think you’re both right, but it’d take a longer explanation about the types of engineers we’re talking about.

100k packages were getting thrown around by big tech for strong pedigree CS majors. That’s just one segment of the market, but I couldn’t even try to compete with them

[sleek egret]

for entry level "software engineer" => https://www.salary.com/research/salary/listing/entry-level-software-engineer-salary $71k to $86k

[gilded valley]

bad data is worse than no data. but if you think the average entry level software engineer is in the bottom 10% of devs, the numbers line up

[sleek egret]

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/entry-level-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_KO0,29.htm says $85k

[gilded valley]

85k sounds reasonable

[sleek egret]

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Entry-Level-Software-Engineer-Salary says $92k

in the end, compensation depends highly on your education, skills, background, company, location, etc, etc

I suspect the typical +/- 1 sigma range has a ratio as high as 3:1

i.e. $45k to $135k or so

facts are, if you're coming out of a bootcamp and that's pretty much the sum total of your training and your skills are sorta <meh> then you're gonna be lucky to get $60k in most places for your first job

[smoky quest]

you can also register for a free account on some websites with market data to get a sense of your area

[fringe sphinx]

I think your low end is probably off, my guess is probably 65-120 as the 1 sigma range, but who knows

[gilded valley]

Anecdotally, the lowest entry level salary I've heard in the US was someone on 70k in the middle of bumfuck-nowhere Alabama
and the highest was 245k at Amazon

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, I was hiring entries at 75k 5 years ago

(Then 85, maybe 3 years?)

[pine sleet]

Does the degree you have impact your starting salary? Asking because my parents have offered to pay for grad school so I figured I may as well

[open cradle]

Lowest I have seen in my case is probably around 12k (not USA)

[gilded valley]

Not USA is entirely irrelevant to this discussion. The US is in a class of its own when it comes to salaries - maybe joined by Switzerland

[fringe sphinx]

Yes. Personally speaking, I’d assume I’d be offering an entry masters minimum 10-20k higher than a BS.

[open cradle]

I live in Switzerland actually

[sleek egret]

I'm sure you can get even better than that in alabama if you're hot shit

[fringe sphinx]

(My comments are all USA northeast, small tech)

[sleek egret]

or get offered a LOT less too

[smoky quest]

it does in terms of correlation vs causation

[gilded valley]

yes - the guy got the job just by turning up to his university careers fare - it wasn't like he was aiming for the best of the best

[sleek egret]

think of the guy who didn't know what to do after HS then just took a few classes at a local community college

he's a "programmer" too even if he barely knows what he's doing. if he applies enough times, someone will hire him during economic booms

[smoky quest]

Like, a mechanics who works on space shuttles will be paid more than a mechanics working at your local garage because he can work on space shuttles that are more complex and expensive beasts. He can do so because he studied more and towards that. But having such degree would not make it rain by itself

[sleek egret]

yes, but you start to hit diminishing returns with grad school for most (not all) specializations

grad school can be worth it. but you have to be much more careful than undergrad. it's not a no-brainer like an undergrad degree is

[sleek egret]

yeah, there are welders who can make $300k easy

[fringe sphinx]

Also, I finished my masters part-time (evening). It’s good to have, but I don’t think it’s more valuable than experience.

[sleek egret]

crane operators that clear $200k. and others who barely make min wage. it all depends.

[smoky quest]

There are google non tech people who made millions too

[pastel thunder]

i wanted an data science role, how am i supposed to know Java and do backend, lol

[open cradle]

These type of differences are quite uncommon in the US. It always draws my attention such inequalities

[sleek egret]

indeed. most people who work at "tech" companies are in non-tech roles

[smoky quest]

yeah, like masseuses, cleaners, etc.

[sleek egret]

people are inherently unequal

[sleek egret]

lol, I was thinking more marketing, sales, accounting, legal, etc 🙂

[smoky quest]

they also made millions

[sleek egret]

hell google probably has a staff of 100+ just setting up events. and whoever is in charge of that probably makes a phat salary

[open cradle]

I know. But I do not usually see such big differences for similar roles

[sleek egret]

they only seem similar

[gilded valley]

infamously recruiters who do nothing but TikTok all day...

[open cradle]

That's also right

[sleek egret]

trust me on this, no company likes paying people a shit ton of money. they only do it because it's the best way to make even more money

[pastel thunder]

ML python opencv and related libraries, i was asked about dsa, OS, dbms, also but minimal

[fringe sphinx]

As a small tech guy, I wholeheartedly agree: I’ll gladly pay big $$ to people who can ‘deliver’… the problem is all the people who can’t I have to hire to find them

[stark glen]

https://tunki1201.github.io This is my portfolio. Plz visit and if you need any help from me, DM me. Thank you

[fringe sphinx]

DS and DE are weird fields; the roles mean very different things to different people. Maybe the company wanted a DE in reality, and hired someone with those skill sets

[smoky quest]

Web site created using create-react-app

May want to update that

[smoky quest]

And do you have a specific request or topic?

[stark glen]

I am looking for my client.

[sleek egret]

so learn java

[open cradle]

So cool! In my case it is a little bit buggy tho

[sleek egret]

I fail to see the problem

[smoky quest]

We don't do ads here

[pastel thunder]

yeah, but not going to stay for long.

[stark glen]

where?

[smoky quest]

In this server

[smoky quest]

It's a fun language and platform.
i wouldn't worry too much about that

[sleek egret]

I learned VB just so I could translate it to python for a contract

[pastel thunder]

its all about interest, i am a mechanical engineer by specialisation, i did ML because i was interested, i dont see myself as web dev in future

[sleek egret]

then I learned and translated it to julia just for kicks. I'm no uber-genius. if I can, you can.

[open cradle]

Check also your contact. The linkedin link is broken. At least to me

[fringe sphinx]

You’ll find Java is widely used in commercial DE pipelines/backends. It’s just another tool to learn, also not a web dev thing.

[sleek egret]

you can do web dev with java though!

not that I'd recommend it for a greenfield project 🙂

[fringe sphinx]

I shudder at the memory of Jsp

[sleek egret]

I got an offer recently to manage a team doing C#. I've never used C# for anything. it would be funny if I forced them to move to java or rust or something

[pastel thunder]

they did tell me i wont just do DS all the time, i will also do some soft dev(last round hiring, 8 months ago) . But now manager says most of the stuff is DE, and DS is overrated and it might not be very good to do DS(cuz he did and didnt like it). and expect almost 0 DS.

[smoky quest]

they are just trying to corral you

[sleek egret]

like a cow?

[smoky quest]

or a horse

[pastel thunder]

like changing my cult? what that means?

[sleek egret]

lol, "to corral" means to direct a herd of animals in a certain direction or to a certain place

[smoky quest]

Like if I tell you that only a great engineer could do X. I would understand if you aren't up to it though.
It's just mind tricks to make you do something

[sage crystal]

I'm getting started in python. Any advice as to what employers are looking for in a good programmer? for instance: specialized field, type of framework, good portfolio, strong fundamentals...

[sleek egret]

derived from the noun "corral" which is a place you keep herd animals

[sleek egret]

yes

[pastel thunder]

plus i want to do masters in ML. wow

[sleek egret]

general advice is go to university and major in a CS related field to learn the math and theory. while doing that write a lot of code on your own to learn the practical aspects of programming. also do some internships.

[sage crystal]

This helps a lot. Thank you. I'm switching my major from biology to software engineering BS. hopefully a lot of core classes will switch over.

[open cradle]

Oh, that's a big change. Good luck! (Wanted to ping last message)

[sleek egret]

the math will, the bio stuff, not so much 🙂

of course, you could go into bioinformatics or protein folding research or something like that

[sage crystal]

Yeah, I'm not interested in the medical field anymore. Too much time and money. Also got a taste of it working as a surgical technician...

[fringe sphinx]

After learning Python, look up CS50 (your U will have an equivalent) and DSA. Those are the main freshman courses in Cs.

[fringe sphinx]

Specialization is helpful: perhaps leverage your medical knowledge while pursuing CS?

[sage crystal]

CS50 taught by Harvard? I've watched a bit of this. What is DSA?

[fringe sphinx]

Data structures and algorithms. Your school may call it something different, but look at your curriculum map : degree requirements

[sage crystal]

Looking at it now. yes, Design and Analysis of Data Structures and Algorithms.

[sleek egret]

bah, that's all old shit. most of was invented a century ago

AI will obsolete DSA, amirite?

[dark arrow]

dsa more like data science and ai /s

[peak halo]

"to obsolete [something]" is a transitive verb now?
fascinating

[radiant moon]

has been for a while, I'm afraid

[peak halo]

afraid? there's no need to fear language change

people don't think language be like it is, but it do.

[radiant moon]

sometimes it do be's that way

[peak halo]

do be do be do.

[pine sleet]

wiser words have never been spoken

[celest kite]

You... Would not be afraid if Guido announced he was merging PHP and python?

[zealous fiber]

I know python at least to a decent level. Have been programming with it for some years now and drooped it several times and I’m going to pick python again one of these days and it should take me some weeks to get back on track.
Just wondering, what are some good side hustles with python? I wanna make money even if not a lot of it

[smoky quest]

freelancing is a popular avenue
But if you are learning, I would suggest to focus on that first

[sleek egret]

what an odd way to think about a programming language

could you imagine an architect saying "is there any good side hustles with arches?"

[true harness]

hmm. an arch could be like a design pattern, like singleton or something

[lucid vapor]

the rust crate "triomphe" has an "arc" type, amusingly

[sour tartan]

it doesn't seem that odd to me: if someone's programming skill is Python, then "how can I earn money with Python" is the same as "how can I earn money with programming?"

[fringe sphinx]

Obsolete as a verb seems commonplace. The word I can’t accept is ideate (and ideation)

[summer roost]

"ideation" is hardly a new word... It's been a medical/psychology word for a long time

Even "ideate" seems to be around 400 years old

[fringe sphinx]

Damn. It still bugs me.

Most recently, heard it used in something like ‘Our product accelerates ideation 100x’

[civic gale]

Career discussion

[smoky quest]

Hi and welcome!
Do you have a question or topic you would like to discuss?

[civic gale]

you ever heard of Sales Engineering job ?

[sleek egret]

yes, it's quite common

[smoky quest]

I have

[civic gale]

Do you need codding experience in order to get hired as a SE ?

[smoky quest]

You won't write code for the product, but some products may be more technical than others and require more technical skills than others

[civic gale]

I believe it's a nice IT job to do.Very well paid

But it's very competitive to get an SE job.

They make around 120k a year

[smoky quest]

I would recommend to optimize for what you enjoy and see yourself doing every day. There are tons of jobs that pay as well, if not more

[civic gale]

I'm currently in logistics. Would love to learn python to build my own logistics project

[fringe sphinx]

Sales engineers make some very good $$, I’ve worked closely with many. It’s a great role and you learn a lot and talk to a lot of people.

[civic gale]

I enjoy what I am doing right now ... I also went thru a sales engineering bootcamp

After that bootcamp I send like 200+ apliucations and all came back as rejected

That's why I was asking if anyone was familiar with this position or if anyone know someone who is doing it becasue it's so competitive that is close to imposible to get it if you don't have coding background.

[sleek egret]

do you understand what a sales engineer does? he's meant to act as support for the sales people by doing thigns like preparing demos, answering highly technical questions, etc

at some firms, sales engineers also help to evaluate customer/client requirements and structure products/services specifically for a client in order to help close the deal

[grim stirrup]

yo i have a question

can you really get a software engeneering job while being self-taught and not having a CS degree?

[summer roost]

it's possible, but many more people try and fail at that path for getting into software engineering than try and fail at the BS degree path.

[oak plinth]

your saying that a lot fo BS degree students in computer sciece fail?

[summer roost]

no, I'm saying that a smaller proportion of BS degree students fail than self-taught students

[oak plinth]

well, its tough managing other classes. which is why Im here. I did not really grasp any concepts from my computer algorithm class.

I hear a lot of talk about people teaching themselves to code and landing a job. But wouldnt employers look for a valid certification or diploma?

[summer roost]

yes, employers would generally choose someone with a degree over someone without one, all things being equal. And if you're struggling to learn the materials from your algorithms class in a classroom setting, you likely would find it even harder to motivate yourself to learn on your own time

[modest kraken]

Whats a BS degree?

I hope its not actual BS

[summer roost]

Bachelor of Science

[oak plinth]

its complicated. I had a rocky semester. I actually pass the class with an "A-"

but we had open notes for midterm and final

most of the concepts just became forgeteable cause of other classes I took. and did not apply my self in my free time after school

[proven crest]

Yes its absolutely possible, however its hard work.
A degree is a full time job for 4 years. Thats your responsibility during that time. A lot of people would struggle to put that same time into self study.
A degree is also structured, you will have to create your own structure when self learning.
Degrees are also somewhat standardised, if you have a degree an employer can know to expect a certain level of competency from you.

Its absolutely true that more people fail without a degree than with, but thats like saying more people fail to learn a language by self study than by moving countries. It doesn't mean that you can't, it just means that it will be more work. Not all those people study to equal levels. I can guarantee that if you look at the GitHubs of some people who self study and believe they're job ready, they haven't even made regular commits, they're code is messy, projects are basic or tutorial projects. They're just not skilled enough. Regardless of how long they've studied.
Thats another thing, there is no metric to how long it will take. Maybe some people can do it in a year, for others it may take 2 or 3 or 4. There's also no defined metric for being 'job ready'.

I believe after passing the junior level things will become more equal*.

*Source: idk made it up. Maybe I'm wrong but i sure hope not lol

[summer roost]

I agree with pretty much all of that.

I believe after passing the junior level things will become more equal*.
More equal, yes, but still not equal. The lack of a degree will permanently close off certain jobs, and make it harder to advance in some roles (possibly because people with a degree will be preferred for promotions over people without, possibly just because people with degrees will be more likely to have the necessary background to take on certain types of work).

On average, even in software engineering, people without degrees earn less than people with degrees, and I believe that's true at all experience levels

[proven crest]

Yeah, sounds about right. What about a masters? Would that be an eqeualiser?

[summer roost]

you may want to revisit those materials on your own. Data structures and algorithms are a common topic in entry-level job interviews, so they're something that you want to be comfortable with. If you got an A- in the class it sounds like you probably understood most of the material, and just might need some reinforcement.

[summer roost]

you mean getting a masters without getting a BS? Or getting one after having a BS in an unrelated field?

I'd expect that to be a big help towards evening things out, yeah.

[proven crest]

Sorry I mean a degree in an unrelated field, an arts degree lol

[oak plinth]

eh. mostly used other sources in class, stack overflow and others. Im actually going through an online interactive course. starting from 0 mostly.

[summer roost]

data structures and algorithms is arguably the most important class that you take in an undegrad CS degree, so yeah - it's worth revisiting that material.

"important" in terms of it being one of the ones that you'll use most heavily in the job, and in terms of it being one of the ones that employers will use to evaluate you against other candidates

[proven crest]

DSA is also super important in general, you really won't go far without it as a programmer.

[oak plinth]

are you guys familiar with dataquest? that is what im using at the moment

[proven crest]

@summer roost Opinions on this? Arts degree > CS master. Would that put me above or in line with CS degree?

[summer roost]

above, I'd say - but at the very least in line.

some people might weigh that differently, but I'd consider it a strong signal for your computer science knowledge, despite the lack of undergrad CS degree

[proven crest]

wew im glad to hear that.

[little raft]

Hey all, I recently started learning Python, hoping to become a data scientist or ML or AI engineer. However, from what I've seen so far (I could be wrong), it doesn't feel like I'd be able to add much value to the company as opposed to say, a MERN stack developer, who can actually give a functioning application.

now it's bugging me if I should continue learning python or I should switch to JS as it's dominating web dev

can y'all suggest me something please

[buoyant seal]

requoting Nth time some experienced person

hubt — 09/22/2022
i warn everyone that wants to be in AI/ML: you spend a huge amount of time on data validation, cleanup, and analysis. and generally a lot less time than you'd think on the actual AI/ML part. unless your company has very mature data management and data pipelines(very few companies do), expect to spend a lot more time on data engineering than AI/ML

[keen kelp]

start with being an application developer (code monkey) and then slowly make your way over to the ML side of things. Thats what I would do since I don't have a formal education, but I have no interest in becoming an ML engineer.

[wanton birch]

Came here to share a funny horror thing I just heard. My brother’s batch mate got a job interview for a web dev role and they asked him what HTML stands for. He couldn’t tell them and they were pretty disappointed. It’s not that he forgot in the pressure and anxiety of the situation. He literally didn’t know the answer.

Super awkward. 🤣🔫

[sage kettle]

how to deal with the fear of not coming up with a solution for an interview question. and forgoting basic algorithms

[vapid jay]

hey

can anyone help me and tell me if i can land job with my github :/ Thank you !

[lapis wind]

Well firstly, have you got and prior professional experience or a degree?

[vapid jay]

No ,but have some Data Analysis Courses . I have Studie in high school some C++ but nothing serious. I have not go to college ..

[delicate flax]

I quit and my career hasn't even started yet

[vapid jay]

what do you mean 😦

[delicate flax]

me?

[lapis wind]

Overall I would say it's hard. Not impossible though.

The best way GitHub wise would probably be contributing to some larger(ish) open source project and getting a more substantial profile built up, assuming you haven't already...
I'd also say you need to find a specific area or niche you're really interested in and start contributing to that specifically, also probably getting involved with others from that area within the open source community, discussing things, helping others etc... This lets you start building connections within the area, assuming you don't have any already.

Not going to lie though, I think a lot of the time initially companies wont look at the GitHub until the following interviews or maybe never at all, so it's hard to be convincing on a blank CV.
If you build up enough knowledge and understanding of areas and have made some significant open source contributions it's not a bad idea to do some tech talks at various events if you can and actually have an interest in it, at least that's what i've done and it's seemed to work ok at padding the CV 😅

Also to clarify, by specific area I mean a specific topic or subset of tooling around that topic, if you contribute a bunch to a company or sets of tooling a company uses and then they're hiring, they might be more inclined to offer you something. I'd somewhat advise opting for something as broad as ML/AI, web scraping, etc... Just because they're too broad and it's hard to build a reputation / be noticed within it I guess?

The other thing you probably want to do is build some solutions to problems you see within the area you're interested in, or some implementation of something around it.

I.e. If I was really interested in say Semantic search, I could implement some new index type and bring something new to the ecosystem, this kind of has to be done well though, since IMO the only way it's going to be actually noticed is it needs to actually be somewhat best in class.

This is assuming you don't want to get a degree or can't go down something like an apprenticeship route.

[delicate flax]

I mean that half a month ago I started coding and there are some coding exercises that I don't understand and I struggle to remember things

there is no point on keep on trying

[vapid jay]

Thank you !

[vapid jay]

Thank you for the full answer!
Can you give me advice where I can be of some use for some projects or just somewhere where I can help or be useful, keep in mind that I want to gain knowledge and practice my cooperation skills?
Thank you once again!
Can i add you as friend ?

[lapis wind]

Once you get past a certain point, things do get easier, also after your first programming language the other languages you do after will be significantly easier.

If you're trying to balance learning multiple languages at once, I'd say pick one for now... The hardest thing when you first start out is learning the fundamentals and how to reason about stuff, you care less about the syntax of the language really because it's easy to pick up once you have the fundamentals down.

I wouldn't worry about not remembering things though, I don't think any good programmer remembers everything they've learnt, you just need to know how to search and look things up. Although it's annoying to think about, the only real way to learn the first language is to keep at it really, even if it seems like nothing makes sense and it's all just magic, at some point it will click; If it doesn't then you may be taking an approach that doesn't work for you -> In which case i'd look towards some other approach, whether that be some introduction books, tutorial videos, leetcode / small programming challenges, etc...

[delicate flax]

if I don't understand stuff then what is the point?

[lapis wind]

It's hard to say, since you're looking to effectively make a career out of it I can't really say "Oh just look at X project" etc... It needs to be something you're actually interested in and invested it, if you don't know what you find interesting then work that out first, try lots of random things, not specifically contributing but just making pet projects and see what you find the most fun.

As a general thing I'd say AI/ML related projects are going to be hard to contribute to significantly where as web projects are probably going to be easier and provide an idea entry point into the industry.

Can i add you as friend ?
Normally I avoid adding people I don't know

[lapis wind]

With that logic why do anything? You don't understand anything when you first start, so how did you learn anything in the first place?

[delicate flax]

I had to and I always understood them at the end. Also I don't try anything that I don't understand or that I suck at

[vapid jay]

Okay , i understand just its hard for me to find people to talk for this topic and tough i can gain some exp from you ❤️
for example, right now I'm working on a project that is constantly growing and as a beginner I get confused and it's difficult for me because I'm alone.
My point is that if i have someone to relate i can probably become better.

[lapis wind]

If that's your attitude towards learning then then maybe programming isn't for you?

There is always going to be somethings you dont know in programming, or anything really... If you only learn things if you absolutely have to, that's fine; but if you give up or dont try to learn something you don't understand then in general you're going to have a hard time in any sort of career really. You are always, at some point going to be asked to do something you don't know.

I guess probably ask yourself why you wanted to learn programming to begin with? If you're doing it to get a job, then you need to learn the fundamentals, and realistically you need to be willing to to try things you don't understand, make mistakes and learn from those mistakes.

If you're going into learning new things as expecting to just understanding it though, then I think you're mindset might be your downfall.

[delicate flax]

I learn programming because I think it's fun and I wan't it to be my future job but I can't proceed if I don't understand something and it drives me crazy

[lapis wind]

Ngl I think everyone has that really, even if you're not alone... The best way you'll learn is really by going with the flow and learning from issues you run into as things expand.

The amount of times I've rewritten projects because they get so far then it becomes apparent that it needs to be redesigned to meet new goals or targets. 😅
The only thing that is maybe harder to learn is refactoring ugly code bases into nicer ones, since the temptation to rewrite everything from scratch is high, but for now I'd probably say you'll learn the core of refactoring just trying to apply some quality of life updates to an ugly code base, and then once you've rewritten some projects before you'll have a better overview of how to structure newer projects and how you might go about refactoring and ugly code base into the nicer one...

It's largely trial and error though ngl, especially if you're learning a new area or field along side it.

It's worth also adding that open source code bases aren't always the best they can be, they can very often be just as ugly as close source projects or sometimes worse.

[verbal python]

lol. same here I just know thas S on HTTPS stands for Secure. I don't know what HTTP is

[celest kite]

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol

[little raft]

are you referring to web application or android/ios app dev ? also, which one has more demand

[small geode]

They probably mean neither, just a developer as in anything under the sun

[little raft]

alright then let me focus on python for now, cos ultimately i'd need it to crack DSA interviews

[dim bay]

I earlier mentioned here that I am learning web development and data science side by side, and some guys here told me it is good to first generalize and then specialize, but if I mention both of them on my LinkedIn profile, would employer think that I am not focused one craft and can this be my disadvantage while applying to job?

[near ocean]

No, isnt this your first job?

[dim bay]

non technical role earlier, currently I am game dev, now I am learning data science and web dev

[near ocean]

So what kind of role are you looking for now

[dim bay]

Either back-end dev or data analyst, currently I am learning both later if I get internship or job in one I will specialize more on that

[quasi kite]

@vapid jay wbu? what area do u work?

[vapid jay]

30 sec i gotta wait

this ong sad

[quasi kite]

do u work with cybersecurity too?

[vapid jay]

i need to wait 20 sec after sending a message

[quasi kite]

yes yes I know

[vapid jay]

man i do python for ib

[quasi kite]

ooh so cool

[vapid jay]

International Baccalaureate full form

how old are u @quasi kite

[quasi kite]

I'm 18 wbu?

[vapid jay]

16

this time limit ong sad

@quasi kite do yk how to use python?

yeahh u need to teach me if u do

[quasi kite]

Yes, I do and I'm working on Flask framework

[quasi kite]

ooh ok I will

[vapid jay]

when we do start sir

if i have any prob help me tho

[quasi kite]

I personally started learning Python on the open couse from Microsoft on YouTube

Python for begginers the name

do u have experience with another languages?

[vapid jay]

python firstt wby

[near ocean]

Chit chat can be done in offtopic channels please

[vapid jay]

who jannies tho

[vapid jay]

sorry

[lone wigeon]

Hello! I apologize if I am out of line since I was unsure of the rules since it did specify to not ask for paid work, but I was going to request for some tips on how to get a job. I know Python, HTML, some CSS, some Javascript, and some SQL. I have applied to many jobs, I have a website resume, and a GIThub hosting my projects. I have applied to many jobs in the last month, but have not managed to land an interview. Any tips? I am a beginner, and I have been Applying to entry level positions and internships. Please offer me some advice. I dont even care if I get significantly less then the standard. I just want hands on experience and to be able to communicate with others that have experience.

[sleek egret]

do you have a university degree?

if not, it's gonna be an uphill battle. that said, people here review your resume and give advice (I suggest asking a few times at different times of the day). where you are also matters.

just as an FYI, "internships" are for university students.

[lone wigeon]

No. I know this does not help my case, but I have had my hands full with just my family to be able to even afford to go. I didnt know about the internships, so that helps.. Thank you.

[sleek egret]

if you're not currently attending a university, there's a 99.9% chance you will be auto-rejected for any internship

[lone wigeon]

That makes me feel better lol. Thank you

I just dont know what to do to stand out. I just want to be given a chance at the very least.

[sleek egret]

If I was you, I'd contribute to some open source projects. while doing that, take on some IT support contracts.

[lone wigeon]

IT support contracts?

[sleek egret]

the latter won't pay well, but it'll pay something. and something is better than nothing 🙂

you know, helping businesses manage their IT. pretty much every company uses computers now. most are too small to afford a full time IT guy. so they outsource that shit.

setup computers, ensure backups are done, help with problems, advise on upgrades, etc, etc

[lone wigeon]

Ahh okay, I can do that.

Ill also look into contributing to open sources.

[true harness]

you should get your resume reviewed

[lone wigeon]

How do I do that?

[true harness]

say "can i get a review on my resume?" then send your resume

[hearty island]

i do it all the time (lol)

[lone wigeon]

I feel like I know too little about how to set all of this up. I bet this is how our grandparents feel about technology.

[true harness]

set what up?

[sleek egret]

your grandparents have used tech longer than you've been alive

[lone wigeon]

I mean like where I should even begin

[sleek egret]

at the beginning?

[lone wigeon]

I don't do well with speaking to people online, I apologize, and having my resume reviewed is kind of embarrassing, but I will accept the help if offered. Should I start with like my indeed resume? or maybe my GIThub page?

I also have a LinkedIn account, but I don't know too much about how to use it.

[true harness]

what country are you in? standards for job applicants differ between countries

[lone wigeon]

USA

[true harness]

you should send your resume. also, for linkedin, you don't really need to use it, just out your personal info and put the link on your resume

[lone wigeon]

DM or just in this chat?

[true harness]

this chat

use a screenshot

[hearty island]

block out all personal info too

[lone wigeon]

I think I blocked out all personal info

[hearty island]

2 pages?

[lone wigeon]

4 altogether

[obtuse ivy]

i would reduce your resume to 1 page

2 is gonna furrow some eyebrows, and 4 is overkill

[hearty island]

agreed

[lone wigeon]

Okay, thank you. I will definitely fix that issue. Please keep it coming

[obtuse ivy]

@lone wigeon u need to understand they will look at ur resume for less than 30 seconds, and more often than not these days they wont even look, just run it through a system to pick up relevant key words for their company

[true harness]

the biggest thing you can cut down is the work experience. you should keep at most 2 of your most recent jobs, the rest just take up space. furthermore, where are your projects? i would recommend looking at a popular template to see what things you should include. typically, tech resumes have education, skills, projects, work experience, not necessarily in that order

[obtuse ivy]

ex. "Java" or "full stack" or "C++" or "embedded"

[lone wigeon]

Okay, so major improvements are needed.

[obtuse ivy]

More like major restructuring

[lone wigeon]

Thank you all so much, please give me more if you can

[obtuse ivy]

You mentioned not having a degree- in that case, interpersonal skills and the strength of your projects will be crucial in securing an internship or entry level role of some kind. From there it all depends on how good you do in that role. It's an uphill battle, but possible.

[lone wigeon]

Okay, Ill keep that in mind. And when you all look for jobs, what platform do you use?

[true harness]

for me, primarily indeed. but linkedin also

[gritty rivet]

I agree with the others that you want this down to 1 page. While it's good to show you have work history, you don't need to list every previous job. Keep the non-relevant content to a minimum and put as much emphasis as possible on the skills relevant to what you're applying for. Elaborate more on the bootcamp stuff. Most importantly, you need a "Projects" section. For someone with no formal experience in tech, that's what's going to do the most to prove that you know what you're doing.

[lone wigeon]

Thank you, I will try and get this updated today. I appreciate everyone's tips.

[sleek egret]

your resume has zero mention of any programming skills

aren't you looking for a programming job? if so, you need to emphasize your skills and any projects/achievements you have

oh sorry, that's on your last pages

[lone wigeon]

But you are right, at first glance there is nothing indicating I have any experience.

[sleek egret]

the fact that I didn't even notice that is an issue, lol

divide your "skills" section into technical and non-technical. add a section that lists projects you've worked on. expand out the python3 and sql education to list what you learned.

to be bluntly honest, the tech stuff as it stands is quite thin. you need to portray what you have in the best light possible. entry level programming jobs at most firms strongly emphasize the technical, they don't care much about communications (except some minimum bar) until later

[lone wigeon]

How would you recommend I do that? Should I attach more projects?

[sleek egret]

definately

your resume should be mostly about the tech stuff. not sure how to say this nicely... for an entry level programming job, no one will care much about work experience you have listed except in so far as it proves you can show up for work.

you should still list a few to show that, obviously. but you seriously need to beef up and flesh out the tech stuff. since you don't have a lot of breadth, dig into the details instead.

for example, you list "SQL" and say you have a SQL Bootcamp cert. Dig deeper. List the topics covered, "schema design with normal forms", "inner and outer joins", "aggregate functions with subqueries", whatever

[lone wigeon]

Okay, thank you, I will do that, try and really make them stand out

[sleek egret]

this will likely take a few iterations before it's in good shape 🙂

[lone wigeon]

Of course and If its okay, Ill send the new one here for feedback

[sleek egret]

also, don't lose heart, the programming job market is in a slump right now. but it'll get better within a year (most likely). further, even in good times, there are usually 100's of applicants for every slot and only a handful get called for interviews. so the "hit rate" for getting an interview is rather low. but nearly everyone gets at least a few interviews if they just plug away long enough 🙂

[true harness]

yeah it's fine

[sleek egret]

it seems random from the outside but it's not. it's just that different employers/managers are looking for different things.

[fringe sphinx]

I always say you can have as many pages as you want: I’m only going to look at the first page, and of that, only 3-4 bullets of your most recent job (more or less)

(Maybe then I’ll check education, and perhaps look at projects)

[sleek egret]

finally, if I may, given that you don't have a degree and are a bit older than most entry level candidates, I suggest spinning a "I discovered programming a bit late but now that I have, I just LOVE it!" kind of excitement level. some managers feel that drive and passion are very important (but some don't, <shrug>).

[true harness]

cover letter may be advisable to explain your situation better

[lone wigeon]

Okay, noted, working on all of it now

[lone wigeon]

What is the usual age for entry level candidates?

[true harness]

just graduated college age, so early 20s

[lone wigeon]

I'm 24.. lol

[fringe sphinx]

You’re fine. Won’t even raise an eyebrow. I do like more mature candidates anyway. Just make sure to get some projects, and maybe take CS50 and study a DSA course (equivalent to freshman year CS)

[lone wigeon]

Will definitely take those courses. Thank you for the confidence and recommendations

[sleek egret]

oh, I assumed you were a few years older

[peak halo]

I didn't start taking CS courses until I was 23, and I think being older than my classmates gave me more social capital with the instructors. (to say nothing of the income I missed out on by starting my career at 26.)

[lone wigeon]

Ahhhh so much valuable information its amazing. I hope I can at least get an interview soon. I have a few projects I am working on now that are, I think, on the bigger scale then what I usually work on, but does anyone have any recommendations for projects that will stand out? Just a simple description will do.

[true harness]

it's not really about the specific project, but what skills you can demonstrate through the project. for example, if you have a project using SQL, you might demonstrate your skill with some more advanced queries, migration scripts, etc

[gritty rivet]

Along the lines of what Public said, a good project is one that helps prove you can do the job you're applying for. Look at the jobs you are applying for and make sure you're checking as many boxes as possible, both in terms of technologies (Django, Postgres, or whatever it may be) but also stuff like good documentation, familiarity with CI/CD, etc.

[crimson nacelle]

Hello everyone, I'm currently a comp sci student doing his bachelors' from a private university and I'm in a grim spot. The duration of my degree is of 4 years and I'm halfway in year 3 sem 1 which means I have 1.5 years left on my hand. Due to circumstances and my own personal lack of dedication and commitment, I managed to fail 7 subjects (have to re-do them within the leftover 1.5 years) all while trying to build myself up from the ground as a programmer. Can anyone guide me anyhow, any advice or any tips on how I can manage things? I wish to work as a python developer and have experience with making Discord bots in Py. But how do I expand this skillset to work with other projects that count in terms of work-experience for my CV

[sleek egret]

not sure what you are expecting beyond the obvious: study hard, learn the theory, pass your classes, get your degree all while practicing the practical aspects of programming.

[limber forum]

Hello

[crimson nacelle]

I've embraced the obvious and I've already started working on things the way they're meant to be. I just find it tough to manage learning the practical aspects of programming while trying to get good grades. Like, managing the time is proving to be a particularly tedious task because I've never done it before primarily because my university has exams almost every month so most of the time goes to getting the grades, leaving little to no time to focus on what matters in the long run

[hearty island]

any internships?

[sleek egret]

what matters is getting your degree

[crimson nacelle]

None so far

[sleek egret]

because 1) you're paying money for it and 2) you have a limited time window to do it

[fringe sphinx]

The statistics on undergrads who finish in 4 years are pretty grim: you’re in good company with many college students and don’t be discouraged.

[hearty island]

lol i'm finishing my business analytics degree in 5 years b/c i transferred to another school during freshman year (also switched out of cs)

[crimson nacelle]

To simplify the situation, I can clear my backlogs within the next 6 months (I have to re-take the courses and then give their respective exams) which leaves me with ~1 year to learn actual programming and do internships within that time window. So should I try to work on both the events at the same time or should I do them one by one?

I do agree with ruff though, that getting my degree on time is crucial and I've learned it the hard way after trying to quit earlier. I've stood strong so far and I'm definitely completing this degree within the 4 year window.

[fringe sphinx]

If you’re serious about being a great programmer: hang out in this discord and try to contribute. I continually learn new things (and I’m an old guy). Second: keep coding new things. If you get stuck, ask for help or suggestions. You only get good by challenging yourself. For maximum efficiency, I suggest the Feynman method (google it): learning well vs just passing are two diff things

[sleek egret]

most internships are duirng the summer. if you happen to get into a good one, you'll learn a LOT of practicals

[fringe sphinx]

Finishing in 4 isn’t as important as finishing mentally healthy and with strong skills, imo. Finishing in 5 is not a ‘failure’.

[sleek egret]

what @fringe sphinx said. by "limited time window" I didn't mean "in 4 years", I meant in your early 20's while you're in school. if you drop out, chances of going back are rather low.

[fringe sphinx]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna2776

[sleek egret]

I don't see how more money can help

[fringe sphinx]

Sorry, I linked because of the statistics, not the money

[sleek egret]

being more selective in admissions could help but I doubt liberals want that

[crimson nacelle]

Duly noted, I'd try my best to contribute and learning new things as I progress. I do agree that learning for the sake of passing and for the sake of learning itself are two very different things. So I'd try to map things out this way, I'd complete the backlogs within the next 6 months with good grades while paying moderate amounts of time to programming. Once those are done, I'd focus on learning for the sake of learning and try to grab a good intern by the summers so I can learn more.

[fringe sphinx]

“While 90 percent of entering students in a nationwide UCLA survey say they’ll graduate within four years — — only 45 percent of them will.”

[crimson nacelle]

Also, quitting will not be an option for me now (I believe). I've tried quitting before but due to one reason or the other, I couldn't, so I'd get this done, whether it takes me 4 years or 5. It's just that, I fear that I might not succeed with what I plan / what I wish to do (which solely depends on the efforts I put in)

[sleek egret]

while learning your coursework is important, the simple fact is that getting your degree is for the sake of passing. it's mostly a hurdle to prove you can work at things you don't want to work at.

[fringe sphinx]

I agree with Ruff here: except, some classes are for learning and some classes are for passing. The programming stuff tho: that’s for learning

[crimson nacelle]

that does make sense, one of my faculties did tell me once that the degree is not only a proof of your education, it is a proof of your commitment to a cause that you believe in. It defines that you were dedicated enough to show up for classes for the sake of learning

[sleek egret]

along the way, you happen to gain an education to civilize you and learn some theory that might be helpful in your career.

[crimson nacelle]

i see, so I'd focus still on the courses related to comp sci, that way I'd end up learning things that will be useful in the future while passing my courses at the same time

[fringe sphinx]

Yah I agree: it’s a sieve to filter students of certain types. There’s correlation.

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, I learned this lesson myself the hard way. It takes more time than you expect to be well, and learn. College students are (often) immature and not ready to put the time in.

[crimson nacelle]

This perspective and take on learning makes things more do-able, maybe this is actually what I expected out of this conversation, a take on learning that makes things seem like they are actually do-able since it helps with having the belief that the whole thing is actually doable

[sleek egret]

they also tend to be surprised when they discover that their class in X topic barely scratched the surface

[lapis wind]

Yeah that one is always interesting tbh

To some extent you would think they would expect the jump since they've done it a few times already at least in the UK the education jump tends to go High school -> A levels -> Uni -> Work with each being a huge jump between detail and knowledge around the topic

[crimson nacelle]

i have experienced that first-hand during Data Structures and Algos, while the course gave us a brief insight of how data structures work, they never deep-dived in the actual implications of those data structures and how vast their use cases can be

[peak halo]

I was a linguistics student before that.

[lapis wind]

tbh, most of the time you don't really often need to implement them, just knowing when and where they're useful for some of the most common ones like Heaps, Binary Trees, etc...

[sleek egret]

that is true, but you are not hired big $$ for the "most of the time". you can hire a guy in XYZ poor nation for 1/3 of your salary for the "most of the time" stuff. you're hired so you can step up in the rare but challenging situations .

to give you an example, early on in my career I worked for a company that delivered data on disks (yeah, I'm that old). then we had a problem, the data no longer fit when compressed. adding a disk would mean huge additional costs. so ... we designed a custom compression algo (a derivative of LZH) that increased the compression by a few %.

[lapis wind]

Sure... But how often are you seeing new grads being asked to implement some binary tree map implementation or what ever which is better than what ever pre-existing implementation is around in the ecosystem.

Not saying it doesn't happen, but most of the time especially with the ones they teach in most courses.... There are already a ton of implementations, and often do more than what you get taught about

[sleek egret]

how often does something like that come up? well, in my career, exactly once. lol. so pretty rare.

[lapis wind]

to give you an example, early on in my career I worked for a company that delivered data on disks (yeah, I'm that old).
Shhh it's not old, it's just increased scale 😎 Easier to move those PB of data in a container than stream it

[sleek egret]

see, you can say that about any particular topic. but there are thousands of topics

[somber fox]

do you guys recommend Harvard CS50’s Introduction to Programming with Python – Full University Course?

[sleek egret]

note, I'm not disagreeing with @lapis wind . his earlier note that knowing which data structure to use is what is actually important is true.

[somber fox]

am just beginning

[sleek egret]

sure, why not

[lapis wind]

thats... the same course no? CS50 vs CS50 ???

[somber fox]

am talking bout what I wrote 🤷‍♂️

[sleek egret]

the PLL CS50 or the undergrad CS50?

[somber fox]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLRL_NcnK-4&ab_channel=freeCodeCamp.org thing thing

[sleek egret]

yeah, that's the PLL CS50

the undergrad one covers much more. from C and assembly, algos, data structures, SQL, Python, HTML, Javascript, etc

either way, either is probably a reasonable course to take

[lapis wind]

On that side of things, you do out of uni want to be knowing SQL

[sleek egret]

it's not like harvard is a fly by night operation, lol

though I have seen "is harvard a scam?" posts before 🙂

[somber fox]

hm, should I watch corey schafers playlist or harvards vid

[lapis wind]

I mean you can watch both it's not illegal

[somber fox]

what do I start with thats the thing 🤷‍♂️

or it doesn't even matter

[fringe sphinx]

I recommend it all the time, my usual advice is: learn some Python first, then take cs50, then dsa.

[lapis wind]

I learnt most of my Django knowledge from corey's videos, they're certainly a good source of learning

[sleek egret]

the undergrad CS50 course looks good actually. probably a bit too fast paced for most people but it covers a lot of ground. the firehose approach 🙂

[fringe sphinx]

There’s a few people in general who are/took cs50

[worldly lily]

I have a question, If most software developer jobs require CS or similar degrees anyways, is learning programming before college helpful in any way

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, to me it’s the gold standard for intro, but I think some programming foundations are needed first otherwise it might be overwhelming

[sleek egret]

they say that 2/3 of students have never programmed before

it's harvard though. 90% of the students are overachievers who are selected for their ability to learn lots of crap very quickly.

I don't think there would be any shame in taking 2x or 3x as long to go through that course

[fringe sphinx]

Cs50’is designed as a self paced online program, and is very student friendly. It’s not a fast paced.

[sleek egret]

I'm talking about the undergrad CS50

[lapis wind]

yes, mostly because of:

A) Out of college you're still going to be competing with a load of other people, having something to show might make you more convincing.
B) It'll make your life easier knowing at least the fundamentals first before college.
C) Programming outside of college might give you a better idea what what topic or area you want to peruse or start in, it also might teach you some things you dont get taught in uni

[sleek egret]

it's not self-paced. https://cs50.harvard.edu/college/2023/spring/

[fringe sphinx]

Wrong link then, search cs50x

[sleek egret]

University CS is not about programming (mostly)

[worldly lily]

Also, is it possible to get a job without degrees, if you have the skill and knowledge

[lapis wind]

Also this

[true harness]

you won't learn it in class, but a lot of your homework/labs will be done with programming

[lapis wind]

Yes, that is what I did, although it's definitely not for everyone

[sleek egret]

University CS is about the underlying theoretical foundations of programming. the why's and how's. you are expected to learn how to code as a side effect.

[worldly lily]

but that doesn't stop software companies asking for CS degree for their jobs

[sleek egret]

that's because code monkeys are cheap and you can hire them from cheaper places for far less money

[fringe sphinx]

I think universities have become a bit more project oriented over the past few years, at least from my perspective mentoring some high schoolers

[sleek egret]

actually writing the code is the easy part of software development

[true harness]

because software jobs are not about writing code (mostly)

[fringe sphinx]

(A lot more coding)

I’m agreeing, programming is necessary but not sufficient

[worldly lily]

you do need at least some theoretical knowledge when programming

[worldly lily]

yes.. 20 seconds of cooldown come on

[sleek egret]

when developing software, you happen to write code because that's how you express the concepts you need to bring into reality.

[lapis wind]

ngl the amount required, may seem super high to begin with. But realistically it's actually quite small

[sleek egret]

all that said, if you can't code, it's next to impossible to develop software. which is why entry level and junior level software dev jobs tend to emphasize ... coding.

use music as an example. would you really trust composers (the people who write songs and symphonies) who cannot play a musical instrument?

it's sort of like that... we want to create music. creating music is not mostly about the ability to play music. but you sort of need to know how to play to write it. weird, but it is what it is.

and perhaps not so strangly, great composers tend to be pretty damn good at playing some instrument (or multiple)

hopefully it's clear here that "creating/composing music" is "software development" and "playing an instrument" is "coding"

[near ocean]

Didn't* you do an apprenticeship? Thats not what theyre asking about

[worldly lily]

Another question.. which to I personally think the answer is probably yes: Approximately 10-15 years from now, would enough demand for software jobs even exist

[worldly lily]

It is. Don't get offended if you aren't, do or did you professionally program

[sleek egret]

why wouldn't it?

[sleek egret]

I have spent 30+ years in software development

[fringe sphinx]

I’m nearly there.

[sleek egret]

it's almost certain that the demand for software devs will be higher than today in a decade or two

but note, there will also be a larger supply

[lapis wind]

So yes and no... It's a bit complicated but short story:

• Joined as apprentice
• Got shifted into a different team because I was quite a bit ahead of everyone
• Stopped as apprentice because didn't actually gain anything from the course and I spent most of the time twiddling my thumbs doing tasks.
• ^ At the same time this was going on, I accidentally became a project lead for a client and that ended up derailing the rest of the course.
• Became full time open source
• ~ Some tech talks and presentations
• Burnt out

And yeah thats basically the TL;DR of how that went lol.

[worldly lily]

maybe there would be so many tools to program and the tools would get so much powerful that much less real people would actually be.. programming.

[sleek egret]

lol

[sleek egret]

people were literally saying the exact same thing 40 years ago. and 30 years ago. and 20 years ago...

[fringe sphinx]

The fallacy here is conflating SWEing with programming

[sleek egret]

probably 50 and 60 years ago too 🙂

[lapis wind]

ChatGPT is going to replace our jobs! /s

[sleek egret]

the damn bots stole our jerbs!

[true harness]

thanks Obama

[sleek egret]

lol

I should do a series of tweets blaming the coming AI apocolypse on obama. and hillary too while we're at it.

[lapis wind]

The only thing I do want AI to replace asap is manually generating infrastructure setups

and tests for that matter, although co pilot can already do that fairly well ish

[worldly lily]

Thanks for your help @sleek egret

30+ years of experience is crazy

[sleek egret]

yeah, I think we're gonna have to make our hiring tests tougher by emphasizing design more... but that's so much harder to test for ... sigh

[sleek egret]

is it? seems perfectly normal to me... most of the people I know have about that much experience

[lapis wind]

I mean... It just makes online leetcode style questions more irrelevant.

I don't think the rest really changes that much does?

[sleek egret]

what I'm afraid of is not filtering out posers who can't code simple loops

[lapis wind]

ngl I dont think what exists currently is very affective at that to begin with...

[sleek egret]

I don't care what the broader industry does. it has no effect on me.

[worldly lily]

do you not see degrees are a proof of basic knowledge

[sleek egret]

proof? no. a weak indicator of probable knowledge, yes.

[true harness]

nah, some of my classmates have... less than stellar coding ability. degree would not indicate anything in their case

[lapis wind]

I have a friend atm who's doing a group project for their degree, and they have single handidly done over 50% of the work in a group of I think 10 people?

[near ocean]

A degree shows you can show up to class consistently enough and possibly learn a couple things so you pass exams

[worldly lily]

so will they not have that ability even when graduating

[sleek egret]

see? that's the kid I would probably wanna hire 🙂

[fringe sphinx]

I ascribe to ‘hire fast fire fast’

[deft herald]

Sounds about right

[lapis wind]

it's literally just the difference between someone who actually codes in their free time has an understand VS chatgpt

[true harness]

¯_(ツ)_/¯ the outlook is grim

[true harness]

the sad thing is everyone else in that group is also going to apply 😔

[worldly lily]

and get equal credit

[sleek egret]

in the past most would have been weeded out by our screener tests

I worry that the amount of cheating with ai tools will be substantial if what my nieces and nephews are saying is any indication

[fringe sphinx]

I’ve had some terrible candidates get through screeners, assumed cheating but it’s frustrating when cs grads can’t code anything

[sleek egret]

sure, no screener is 100%

[lapis wind]

I mean it was a problem before AI tools, its not like the screening tests are hugely creative and varied,
I think even if you didnt have really much if any understanding people just google parts if not the whole thing

[fringe sphinx]

I still fizz buzz (or equiv) nearly every candidate. Failing that is more or less the only case where I’ll cut a f2f short

[sleek egret]

oh, I've definately seen cheating. it's sometimes so obvious. like when 4 candidates from the same university all submit identical answers. I mean, come on, at least be a little creative with the cheating!

copy/paste just seems almost insulting, lol

[lapis wind]

Do you manually review them, or are your screens more of the automated kind like some of these random hackerrank-lite websites

[fringe sphinx]

I had a recruiter who apparently learned my standard questions and prepped his candidates. Made one bad hire as a result before I figured it out

[sleek egret]

they are scored using a script first and then the top say 10% are screened manually and we interview maybe 1/3 of those

[near ocean]

I've sat in on so many failed fizzbuzzes that kept crawling to next questions

[sleek egret]

better scores are not the sole determinate when selecting to interview

[lapis wind]

fair enough, I think a lot of people when they get those kinds of questions assume it's just purely automated and to talk to an actual person you just need to pass the first thing as quick as possible

[sleek egret]

resume, school reputation, coursework, and creativity/elegance in test solutions all matter

[near ocean]

I guess people thought it was rude to cut it off early

[fringe sphinx]

Do you have a retention model? I have certain measures for which people I think I can retain (driving distance being one)

[sleek egret]

I have found that the scores on the screener exams tend to bifurcate. and the ones who score better tend to finish earlier.

[sleek egret]

we probably should have but no

we have a hard enough time getting good candidates to make offers to. we're a bit outside the norm because good math skills are quite important for the job.

[lapis wind]

What stuff do you do (if thats alright to ask?)

[sleek egret]

finance

[lapis wind]

Ah yeah that makes a reasonable amount of sense, is it like financial modelling or HFT?

[fringe sphinx]

(Same, fwiw)

[sleek egret]

quant trading but not HFT

[fringe sphinx]

Oh. Ditto too.

[true harness]

actually coworkers

[fringe sphinx]

You don’t work with godlygeek, do you?

[sleek egret]

I suspect HFT folks need to care more about CS fundamentals than we do

[sleek egret]

nope, we're all in competition

[lapis wind]

[gilded valley]

no one is in competition with bloomberg

they're just handing the money over and saying thank you

[sleek egret]

I almost joined them. gotta say their NYC offices are swanky

[little turtle]

i work in hft too and mostly writing guis for the traders using PyQt5. Haven't written a single line of C++ code for them so thats good

[fringe sphinx]

The snack floor is something else

[gilded valley]

so are their London offices

[lapis wind]

You would expect so considering where the building is located and how much it costs lol

[sleek egret]

never seen their london office

what's crazy is that they can still demand $2k/seat. and get it.

[gilded valley]

it's far nicer than any of the nearby offices

[fringe sphinx]

Interesting, haven’t seen pyqt5 in the wild myself

[little turtle]

its a very young company and i am only maintaining a codebase written by the founder himself, so yea, its a bit out of the ordinary i think
its my first foray into finance (only formal education in software) but its been quite fun so far
i am planning on doing my own thing with polygon.io or something, i have always wanted to do algo trading or the like but never got the resources (market data) to do it

[fringe sphinx]

Over a beer, we’ll cry over this together 🙂

[sleek egret]

did they ever consider a web-ui using websockets for streaming? if so, why didn't they go that way? if you can share your thoughts, that is

[sleek egret]

lol. I once met a guy who had a company that had to get like a dozen BB terminals just so his staff could provide support over BB chat. BB would not cut them any sort of deal, they had to pay full freight. smh.

that's gotta hurt, lol

[little turtle]

yea, there's 2 GUIs: live and historical. The former does use some websocket to talk to a server and the latter simply parses our own archives

[gilded valley]

Why Bloomberg lives on and on and on and on and on and on - https://on.ft.com/3wYG3A9 via @FT

this is a solid article covering why they can still get away with it

[fringe sphinx]

Career wise: finance is a great space for all types of devs. The smaller funds have more ideas than engineers

[sleek egret]

so you guys use websockets inside a pyqt app?

[lapis wind]

This is getting off topic, but doesn't that just absolutely slow to a crawl if an archive goes past a certain point?

[little turtle]

the exchanges that we play in isn't particularly busy (not NYSE or FX) so it takes around 20 second to load the data for a busy ticker (2.8 million orders and trades in a day)
its completely ass imo, i am using basic book building (sorted dictionaries of lists for both sides)

[lapis wind]

Fair enough

[sleek egret]

are you guys in the derivatives space?

[fringe sphinx]

Oh man, this is my jam. Love this stuff. It’s fun engineering.

[little turtle]

basically yea?

[little turtle]

no idea what that means, but we trade in options, etf and cb if that is what your asking
edit: oh i remember what derivatives are now: futures, options, things with underlying value

[sleek egret]

yeah, options are derivatives

when you say "cb", do you mean "convertible bonds"?

[little turtle]

yea

[sleek egret]

huh... haven't touched converts in more than a decade... it seemed to be sorta dying last I looked way back when. has that market picked back up again?

[little turtle]

yea but im wondering if that is actually the best you can do to build a book? I can't find any algorithms to build books faster online, i assume its all heavily guarded secret
90% of the computation is spent on inserting on a sorted dictionary and then linear lookup (amortized constant because its usually at the front) of the list

[little turtle]

no idea im not part of strategy xD i have no gauge in the financial side

[sleek egret]

heh, ok

sorted dicts is fine for all but the busiest of markets

I've seen a few papers with some neat optimizations but honestly, I think they're overkill 95% of the time

[fringe sphinx]

I mean, for time sensitive, it’s gotta be in memory. I do a lot more with historical quant stuff, so have luck of using databases and preprocessing

[fringe sphinx]

If arrival rate/hashing into the dict is enough of a factor, I guess you could deal with that (ie a list of tuples)?

[lapis wind]

Now as someone who has no real idea of the data in the book, but surely a tree is better here than a regular hashmap no?

[fringe sphinx]

That said, Yah, I guess I’d just append to the tail and not dict it, if we’re talking in memory python primitives/etc

[little turtle]

exactly my thoughts too, i think since a lot of activity (and honestly what we care) only happens near the bid-ask spread, what a book can do is to build the book lazily, i.e. anything far from the book never get "solved", if orders come in at a very faraway places, it simply appends to a list of "events". Only do dict insertions/cancellations/uncrossing near the bid-ask spread and then if the market shifts, slowly solve the events near the new bid-ask spread

[fringe sphinx]

In parquet, we have the notion of row groups, similarly, partition the data into 10 min or hourlong windows?

I’d also be considering pyarrow, doing a lot more with it

[sleek egret]

prices are at fixed increments, so a tree isn't really needed. and the further away from the best bid/ask the sparcer the entries become

and since the best bid/ask shifts over time, a tree would become imbalanced.

[lapis wind]

But that doesnt get any better with a hashmap though? Also since this is an archive I'm assuming this can be somewhat immutable

[sleek egret]

there's probably some smart way to do with a tree but I suspect the preformance benefits wouldn't be huge

[lapis wind]

That being said, I'm not sure of what the data actually is in terms of keys and values really, so take what im saying as a pinch of salt

[sleek egret]

oh, we're talking about the order book, not the ticker feed

[little turtle]

i don't understand, so you would have a list of [(price, order list), ...]? wouldn't this kill the performance in the case where one wnt to cancel arbitrary prices? or when you want to remove an order after it has uncrossed because it has to do linear lookup?

[fringe sphinx]

I dunno? Maybe invalidate rather than delete?

(Ie more of a garbage collection strat)

[little turtle]

well, what they want to do is to do analysis so they go through the archive to see how the strategy is doing by walking through the events of the day step by step, what triggers us, hows the latency, was it a maker/taker, stuff like that

[lapis wind]

I think for your case just tombstone marking is probaby better than paying the cost upfront

[little turtle]

😮 thats true, i can just not delete the entry so it doesn't have to rebalance, is that it?

[lapis wind]

Most of the time yes, I'm assuming you can probably just do like most databases, which is just not remove it

[little turtle]

i mean ideally, you can preallocate this stuff if you expect the ticker to be of a certain range, since the price ticker is 3-4 digits
so you need like 10000 entries at most

[lapis wind]

My naive view (Since I am definitely missing context and also knowledge of a lot of how this all works) I would think a BtreeMap is possible the best of both worlds ig? Unless your data is very strictly sorted by time as timeseries in which case yeah a list is miles better.
logarithmic insertion time, easy to read from disk, maintains sorted order

[little turtle]

okay we're going REALLY off topic now xD
but yea, its been fun, challenging and tiring
this is probably the first time i actually use my brain at work (previous job was webdevs)
its a bit of a shame that its all proprietary cuz used to contribute to a bunch of open source projects
but im probably just gonna use a pseudonym and still do whatever in my free time xd
not sure where my career goes from here, i don't think im going to work in finance forever, once i have good money, i will just bail and go neet to do my own stuff

[lapis wind]

and yeah we are indeed very off topic 😅

[fringe sphinx]

Feel free to dm, happy to chat anything non proprietary of course

[hardy blade]

Anyone else envious of those who are professional Scrum Masters? Seems like their salary to workload ratio is a lot better than devs

[white relic]

I was a scrumlord once, it just meant I had more and less interesting work on top of my regular work

[hardy blade]

Im talking about a dedicated Scrum Master position, not an individual contributor with scrum master responsibilities on top

[white relic]

That isn't really how scrum is meant to work

[hardy blade]

I'm not telling you how it works, I'm telling you how it is. there are companies out there that hire full time dedicated Scrum Masters

[hearty island]

there is a cert for it too. csm, scrum alliance offers it. i'm actually doing it after my capm

[white relic]

so I'm envious of people who are scrum masters at companies that don't know how to do scrum?

Which is basically everywhere but still

[hearty island]

the test for that is open book, so i'm actually going to do it during the school year

[white relic]

Anyway, no, I don't really care for the scrum lifestyle

[hardy blade]

That's not my point... my point is that these positions exist and these people have a high salary to hours worked ratio.

I see scrum masters as the team counselor

[white relic]

I mean, sure. So do lots of jobs I wouldn't want

[open cradle]

Well, in my case it is not only about the salary to hours worked ratio. In my case I do not see my job as a job and I enjoy it. That's something that I know it will not work in other jobs such as scrum master

So I cannot be envious of a job I do not enjoy or I do not like just because of money

[hardy blade]

That's a privilege that many others do not have. Most of us work to put food on the table and to spend time with the family

[open cradle]

My food does not fall from the sky. I think we all work to continue living in a place and with some food. I emigrated 3 times to different countries until I found my so called "privilege"

[hearty island]

just for my own understanding, what's tek systems?

[hardy blade]

recruiting agency

[hearty island]

oh hell no

shoutout to ADP for the amount of project/program managers they recruit

[near ocean]

Do they not work the required full time hours? Around 37 per week?

[hearty island]

?

[near ocean]

Dedicated scrum masters

[sleek egret]

slackers!

[near ocean]

Why would i be envious of someone else working 40h a week

[white relic]

"Middle management, but, like, Agile™️"

[hearty island]

predictive v agile v hybrid 😤😤😤

[hardy blade]

Thats the thing, they probably don't utilize all 40 hours

[near ocean]

Does anyone?

[hardy blade]

Hmm fair point

[near ocean]

Dont tell me you think people sit and work 8 straight hours

[hardy blade]

People make it seem like they work 8 straight hours. For me personally, I can't do it. Im not sure how anyone sits there for 8 hours straight and gets 8 hours of focused work done

[white relic]

I'm working right now

Although I'm glancing over some salary statistics and I'm not really seeing a huge difference between scrum masters and the kinds of people they "counsel"

[hearty island]

my internship is giving me nothing to do as usual so i'm just living life

[white relic]

some individual contributors, like architects, are probably paid better on average

some are paid worse

[hardy blade]

ive always been intrigued by the Scrum Master job. I would enjoy being the team counslor tbh, asking how the team feels, how we can work together to remove impediments

[near ocean]

I'd rather pump out code and not talk about my feelings to some dude with "master" in their title

[hardy blade]

Coding takes more of my mental energy unfortunately, its a lot more stressful imo

[true harness]

"working"

though to be fair, i am also "working"

[white relic]

You should have seen me working earlier 🏓

[true harness]

team building?

[white relic]

Doubles games = twice as much team

[true harness]

if you think about it, the amount of team building grows quadratically

[white relic]

that's a great point
maybe I can use that to argue for getting a second table

[pine sleet]

Hello this is the career discussion channel

[true harness]

this might be more suited for a help channel, see #❓｜how-to-get-help

[vapid jay]

oh. srry!

i am just new and idk what and where is for here.

[pine sleet]

The channel's description at the top is usually indicative

[open cradle]

I personally find coding the easy part as it is quite linear (maybe some head banging while designing architecture). But it is the math that stresses me

[fringe sphinx]

Software would be easy, if not for the customers.

[buoyant seal]

One of reasons i love being DevOps engineer. my customers are essentially developers of a company. and one dev finds easily language with another one.

[open cradle]

Same as the above comment. I do not typically work for average customers luckily

[vapid jay]

Hi i am a newbie 22 years old, i got my marketing degree but i want to go do something with data science. Which language would you guys recommend (future proof) i was reading that Python is not that future proof cause of AI. I heard also about Mojo. If you were starting which languague would you now choose?

[radiant moon]

python
never heard of mojo

[open cradle]

I do not think languages can be future proof or not. I think that they depend more on the field they are applied to

[vapid jay]

Can you explain this a bit more please 🙂

[sleek egret]

the programming languages are not what's important. more important is the math. you'll need an understanding of statistics and probability at a bare minimum.

for tech skills you'll want excel and python + numpy/pandas at a minimum. facility with a visualization library would also be a quite helpful.

[open cradle]

About what you said first, mojo is a Python superset. I have read the syntaxis and it is quite similar. It just adds more features on top. So it is not a completely different programming language let's say. So if you want to learn that, you will probably have to understand how python works anyway

[open cradle]

About what I said, I was refering that there might be some jobs that are more "future proof" than others. Especially for Python, this language is quite broad and it can be used for many fields, ranging from simple to complex jobs. If it combines maths, for example, it will always be harder. If the job is related to doing boring stuff that any beginner can do, this one would be less "future proof" imo

[vapid jay]

Would you guys recommend Datacamp as a newbie? I have zero experience

[sleek egret]

if you learn better in a structured environment, sure it can't hurt

[potent cipher]

Is this right so far?

I am coding a game.

[pine sleet]

Hello, this is the career discussions channel. You should ask in #1035199133436354600 if you need Python help

[modest kraken]

This is kind of a no brainer. Theres no language that is “future proof”, and the main thing is to learn the underlying concepts of programming, that being said, python itself is much more developed, and mojo is a hype language that hasn’t seem much adoption.

[gritty rivet]

Yes, DataCamp and DataQuest are both a nice way to pick up some basics of Python, SQL, etc. for data analysis. But move on as quickly as you can to building actual projects and applying those basics to anything you find useful or interesting

[tacit epoch]

Are there also good free courses out there?

[smoky quest]

yes

[tacit epoch]

Like

[smoky quest]

https://automatetheboringstuff.com/

[tacit epoch]

Doesn't work

[smoky quest]

works on my machine

[tacit epoch]

Ah now it does. VPN 😒

Would you recommend udemy course? @smoky quest

[smoky quest]

In terms of careers, a CS degree will be the path of least resistance and with the most opportunities and compensation

[sullen fern]

Hi!

Do you usually organize your big projects using setup.py?

[harsh river]

this channel is meant to be related to career questions, maybe ask in #python-discussion

[sullen fern]

Oh thanks! I was looking for a general channel but could not find it

Sorry for bothering

[vapid jay]

Hey KRRT,
early today you helped me with advice about one of my projects in github for which im very grateful.
But I'm going to need your advice again. Do you think I can apply for a job with this project that you helped me with?

Thank you!

[gritty rivet]

Are you seeing jobs in your area that require skills demonstrated by this project? You'll likely need more than project unless it's a very good one.

Do you have a degree of any kind? Professional experience? Those things will help substantially

Beyond that, the best way to find out is to get feedback on your resume, polish it up, and start applying for jobs

[outer thorn]

I have a quick question.

I have read python is widely used in many software engineer jobs.

Is this true? And how well does is pay?

[buoyant seal]

machine learning, data scientists, python backend developer job roles, devops engineering, sys admin, it depends on a role and a country location
easy to google like: Job role name, country, salaries

[wanton birch]

Assuming you are asking how much Python developers make, I’d suggest that you go to a job site and filter it based on your location and other relevant things first. Search with the keyword “Python” and then see what roles are available. Then look at their salaries on a site like glassdor @outer thorn

[outer thorn]

Alr

[drowsy drum]

So I want to go into data science, but I don't have any real projects under my belt.

Are there any suggested training wheels projects/templates?

[hearty island]

Kaggle 100%

[buoyant seal]

💯 hehe, u wrote it faster than i was able to write it.

[hearty island]

hahaha

[drowsy drum]

Thank you magic 8 ball

[buoyant seal]

this web sites contains real world projects, public competions, tutorials to each project, data set examples, training projects. it has everything
(related to data science and machine learning)

[drowsy drum]

Sounds good, I can do them all within my jupiterlab notebook right?

[buoyant seal]

they use jupyter like environment as main mean to present projects and tutorials, yes

[hearty island]

i know some ppl here really don't like jupyter

[buoyant seal]

that's too. jypiter promotes worst coding practices and results (because of keeping state)
nice to use anyway in terms of quick debugging experiments
glorified console it is after all in a more visual rich way

[drowsy drum]

Makes sense for presentation

[icy magnet]

How long do you think it takes to get hood at kaggle? At least from a prospective of having commercial data science skills?

Good*

[buoyant seal]

with having or not having university education in data science/computer science degree? with which degree level? (bachelor's reached, master's, PHD?)

[drowsy drum]

I'd guess you'd need enough projects done that demonstrate your mastery

[icy magnet]

That’s right. Economics/finance background but took some statistics and statical methods classes. Beginner in Python

[buoyant seal]

nice. aleady looks way more promising start. but completely missed dev side though.
perhaps you should think of some kind of bootcamp to python first, getting used to programming
before diving into kaggle

[drowsy drum]

does kaggle require sql for anything? Or can I stick to python for a whole project?

[fringe sphinx]

There's a lot of opportunity for finance-background folks in data science. My general recommendation is: learn some python, then look at CS50X (or some other intro to programming University level class), then study DSA (the second half of most freshman CS programs)

[icy magnet]

Ok good to know. Currently half way through “Learn Python the hard way” you think that’s sufficient or is there anything else that could speed up the process for me?

[icy magnet]

Sweet thanks pal

[drowsy drum]

Is linkedin a good website for a data science job search?

particularly for those starting out?

[hearty island]

i'd say yes

[vapid jay]

No, I don't have a degree, and that is why I'm seeking something to gain any kind of professional experience

[hearty island]

gonna be substantially harder without a degree

[balmy mural]

I like using notebooks for EDA, but anything after that doesn't belong in a notebook imo

[gritty rivet]

Personally I did IT support (starting with the ConpTIA A+ certification) before I transitioned to being a developer. Entry level help desk doesn't pay nearly as well, but it was relevant experience and a lot easier to break into