career-advice

[silk socket]

I also heard they are hiring only americans or some bs, I don't think that Elon Musk is a good example of anything really, sorry...

[summer roost]

I can tell you that recruiters at my company don't do much filtering beyond throwing out obviously bad candidates that aren't worth the engineering manager's time to review (applying for a programming job with no mention of any programming languages in the resume, applying to a senior software engineer job with no prior work experience, etc)

They're not the ones deciding whether someone without a degree gets interviewed or not, though, engineers are making that call.

[open cradle]

I just said it as a representation of the current market situation. Many modern people saying about how the software market is being disrupted and no longer requiring degrees. However, it is true that a new demand of people that only require apprenticeship is emerging. That's also right.

I did two interviews with Tesla and I am not even American tho. The problem is that for each application, they told me they have 10.000 people

[silk socket]

I overall agree with you that it is not easy to land a first job for an average self-thought developer but I also believe that if you focus and prioritize on building up your resume and valuable skills then you will get into the field with ease overtime

[silk socket]

alright, it's just a bit weird that devs at your company don't want to work with other devs without a degree. In my experience all the developers I have EVER spoken with did not care about any degree at all (me included) they just wanted some form of a proof that the person is able to do the job be it a degree or some promissing github project etc.

[summer roost]

alright, it's just a bit weird that devs at your company don't want to work with other devs without a degree.

I never said that they don't. Of course they care most about whether someone can do the work.

That's the whole point of hiring, after all. To find someone who can do the work.

[iron shadow]

I feel like the shifting part would be a little complicated for me as i tend to want things like these mapped out and follow it for future benefits if that makes sense

(^ reply to this)

[iron shadow]

and i didnt exactly start at building web projects, ive been making small projects with python since i was like 13 (but it wasnt consistent so it didnt make a noticable impact on my growth)

so i thought of web development AS the alternate path or a fixed path i could follow, using my python knowledge in the backend

[silk socket]

you don't have to shift a tone, it's just a natural thing in the IT field you will have to shift a little over time anyway... Your doing great kid, keep your head up and do what you do best, I am sure you will do good in your future ;)

[summer roost]

But, the interviewers have a limited amount of time and energy to spend reviewing and interviewing people. They need to make decisions about who gets interviewed and who doesn't. Given two people with similar projects and a similar portfolio, the one with a degree is more likely to be asked to interview than the one without one, because having the degree is itself seen as valuable (proof someone can commit to a goal over a long term and achieve, proof that they've learned fundamental materials to a good enough level that a university was willing to vouch for them, etc). It's not as though there's some active discrimination happening against people without degrees. They're just less likely to have an impressive resume, and so less likely to be invited to interview.

[iron shadow]

Thank you!

[summer roost]

I'd suggest you keep trying to learn new things and build new stuff. You've found that you're interested in web development, but as you keep trying more stuff you might find other types of programming or engineering that interest you even more.

[iron shadow]

yuh that's true

[hearty island]

am i screwing up by taking the same test over and over again and getting excited when i'm doing better? because there's only a limited amount of questions i can expose myself to

there's like 570 questions in the question bank i currently have

it's not like i'm rote memorizing anything

i'm genuinely asking because this cert that i'm studying for can get me a great boost in my salary

[white relic]

If taking practice tests is the only way you're studying for it, you might be screwing up a little

But if you just use the tests to identify weak areas and go back to the textbook/internet and learn more about the stuff you got wrong, and then you get better, that is pretty much what they're for

[hearty island]

yeah i'm also writing down questions that i got wrong. and reviewing exactly how i got them wrong. and also questions i guessed on.

[white relic]

sounds like you are doing it a smart way

[hearty island]

i have an entire google doc of the correct answers too where i write down notes on their process of figuring it out. it took approx two days of copy pasting 😦

[hearty island]

thanks!

[white relic]

What's the cert? If you don't mind

[hearty island]

certified associate in project management. certs like that and the pmp are extremely important in project management, so i've been grinding hard

i would say it's easier than coding haha

it's based on a 370 page book called the PMBOK 7th edition

as well as another book called the agile practice guide

the test is 150 questions with 15 seeded ones (i don't know which ones are seeded)

[wispy drum]

hello

[hearty island]

hello

[hearty island]

lol me networking through a company because i'm trying to get my capm

[gritty rivet]

What else can you do but study the practice questions and related concepts? Make sure you're also looking at the outline of exam objectives and I'm sure you'll be fine

[true harness]

you run the risk of overfitting to the practice questions

[hearty island]

that's what i'm concerned about

there's not much i can do tho

[spice smelt]

what’s the difference between a software engineer and a computer scientist

google won’t help

[true harness]

use different resources

[hearty island]

that's why i started using prepcast (another exam sim)

[true harness]

it's mostly a subjective thing. i would say a computer scientist is more focused on academia, e.g., research, while a software engineer is working in the industry

[hearty island]

maybe i'll check exam topics ( a site for capm stuff)

thanks psvm 🙂

there are also 120 quiz questions included in the 570 that i'm looking at that i haven't seen yet. i wish there was a way i could access them directly

[open cradle]

Now that certifications are being a topic here, what kind of certifications you can find for Python? Like, overall. Which are the ones that bring more value? Not referring to those related to management

[hearty island]

i don't think certs have much value in python, but it depends on the country.

[open cradle]

Well, I am thinking more about those types of exams. I was thinking about trying it in case I am bored, because I have never seen a company asking for them. Only for software testing jobs

[hearty island]

hm. i haven't heard of any certs for software testing

[open cradle]

I think I saw about the ISTQB exam. But only one company (among all the ones I applied) was requesting it

[hearty island]

oh yeah i saw that too after googling it

[open cradle]

I want to know about some because sometimes they give you more context about what your current understanding is and about your flaws. It is not I am interested in having it to get more jobs

[fiery forge]

hii so umm i had a question
should i persue AI (my on going degree)
or transition to RISC V dev
would love to hear the opinions

[pastel thunder]

even after telling a HR+interviewers my 2 confirmed offers, and making sure they know one reason of still seeking other offers is compensation (also mentioned i like their work and is interested) they sent(Email) me a 15% lower offer to what i told them i have right now.
How to respond? Even when i kinda hate this behaviour and may not join but want to learn negotiating skills and see what the max i can get.
Apart from previous advices i got here to negotiate, should i critisize them a little? about how i told them twice before and while interview but they are still low balling me?

[silver jacinth]

ongoing degree

sooner you get a job, the more secure you'll be in the labor market

newer grads here in canada are having a hard time finding jobs after

[open cradle]

In Canada? Why? I saw that youth unemployment in Canada is around 12%, which is not necessarily too bad

[silver jacinth]

11.5% from 10.7% in may, unemployment in general is up to 5.4% from 5.2%

job vacancies should fall further and then it'll create a bigger problem for unemployment and rates

usually part time employment in the summer is high, however this year it was the opposite

[open cradle]

Oh, I did not know it was so low usually. Uk, denmark, New Zealand or Austria have a similar unemployment and they are doing kinda "ok"

[silver jacinth]

well if you wanna look at our BoC stats for their balance sheet, you realize the problem will not get better

our economy is awfully bad right now

very few firms are talking about it though

[true harness]

i mean, the only thing you can really do is decline their offer

[fringe sphinx]

It’s not personal. And there isn’t much to negotiate for intern or entry level positions. Just state your interest in the position but that the offer difference is too large to ignore.

[true harness]

would you be able to transfer to the other program and continue your degree?

[fringe sphinx]

As we talked about last night, I disagree with the thesis here

[open cradle]

I was only following the situation related to the ratio price of flats / average salaries. It had one of the wildest increases in America/world

[fiery forge]

nope

[silver jacinth]

not here to argue anymore about that

[fiery forge]

i would have to retake a few classes

[silver jacinth]

its all unregulated, even salaries are declining now

[sage night]

I posted my resume here before and got some feedback, heres my new resume based on that advice. Anything else I should change? going for internships

[silver jacinth]

yet people are going for those jobs regardless

[true harness]

you can't transfer your credit, or something like that?

[open cradle]

Same situation happened in my country. Now we have 30% youth unemployment

[fiery forge]

yea kinda

[open cradle]

Well, some people need to eat and get money. It's not easy

[silver jacinth]

1 page cv, include a link to github and your portfolio website. Do not include projects on the resume

[fiery forge]

they will transfer all credit except the AI specific ones

[fringe sphinx]

Vacancies will continue to rise this year, it’s not doom and gloom.

[sage night]

thats funny because that is the direct opposite of what I got told before

[silver jacinth]

whatever you say, I am 100% prepared for the worst though

[sage night]

'it looks like youve been coding for 2 minutes, describe your projects'

[fringe sphinx]

1 page max, I won’t look at page 2-3. Shorten it first, include projects.

[silver jacinth]

we're in the decline of capitalism right now

[open cradle]

I know what I am going to say it is stupid. But from the point of view of graphic design, make sure all titles/subtitles follow same pattern (either lower case, higher, bold...)

In addition, use blank spaces to clearly separate your blocks. But be constant. Some blocks are so together and some are so separate. That will improve readability

[fringe sphinx]

You’re right; advise should find a professional resume template and follow that.

[sage night]

what would you recommend I cut down on? project descriptions? I felt they may have been overly verbose

[silver jacinth]

I would remove them altogether

[fringe sphinx]

First, find a good sample to work from.

[silver jacinth]

I can send my resume in dms, you can try structuring it like that

[open cradle]

Nah. I think it is just matter of having good government. Switzerland has 2% youth unemployment. Highest salaries in the world. Top 5 life expectancy... Etc

[fringe sphinx]

I disagree? Keep projects. Source: me; I’m a hiring manager.

[open cradle]

Some countries managed really well

[fringe sphinx]

But experience should be before projects

[sage night]

so keep the project descriptions, shorten it to one page, and follow a professional template with the same info?

[true harness]

there is substantial whitespace between some of the sections. the descriptions look fine overall, but probably could use a little trimming. the main thing i would say is to find a resume template like awesome-cv (can just google that, should pop up) and use that

[fringe sphinx]

And all of that needs to be 1-3 bullets max

[sage night]

I don't have any programming exprience is why I listed my exprience underneath projects as i'm still a student

[true harness]

how so? the usual advice i hear is the opposite, i.e., you should have something to describe what you did, how it was impactful

[open cradle]

Projects section is really important when applying specially to entry level positions

[sage night]

so shorten project descriptions down to 3 points max?

[true harness]

yeah, i would put the experience last, and maybe consider only including the most recent one. since you're a student, i would definitely put your education first, above projects. additionally, i think you should go for a 1-column layout, because it's both easier for ATS to parse and reduces the whitespace by allowing your text to go all the way to the right margin

[fringe sphinx]

Yes, and make sure to convey what tools/major libraries/languages are used. The first thing I look for is: have you done anything using stuff we use.

[sage night]

I feel like my projects are crazy simple is the thing, just basic graph traversal, data sanitization and analysis. Its my University work but last time I got told to include it so I worry there will not be much to put down for what tools and major libraries i really used

[open cradle]

I never understood ATS stuff. How can we have made such an amazing progress in terms of technology and then ATS are not able to parse anything that differs from what it is expected

My CV is graphic design oriented and the only ATS I tried were able to parse it properly. But just in case, I have a more ATS friendly CV

[silver jacinth]

I reviewed cvs when I was the assistant manager at the store, I would not even read them if they are more than 1 page

also if there is too much text, won't read them

[true harness]

that doesn't imply removing descriptions though, right? just cutting them down a little bit. also, were you hiring software developers ?

[fringe sphinx]

Anything is better than nothing. But, you should also be trying to find a good project to expand your resume in a direction you’re interested in

[true harness]

you want to have projects aligned with what you're applying for. e.g., for an embedded job you could have a project that does something fun with an arduino

[sage night]

kind of just hoping to get my foot in the door with any internship that'll take me so applying to all

[fringe sphinx]

My method is; I first look at the most recent job. I then skim the projects or experience bullets for keywords I care about (in my case, ML and DE stuff). If the resume is light on technical details, I assume the applicant is a non-coder (true or not)

[open cradle]

Would you discard a person that worked in Google because there are no technical details? I think it depends more on the type of jobs and not how the information is presented

[silver jacinth]

no but there was 1 that was for a natural resource firm and saved their company 400k by finding a new way to extract gold. Highlighting stuff like that instead of showing a bunch of nonesense makes you stand out

[true harness]

like, highlighting them in a description?

[fringe sphinx]

I'm talking specifically about entry level and junior positions.

[silver jacinth]

it was bullet points under their job roles

[open cradle]

Oh ok sorry 😅

[fringe sphinx]

And, perhaps I would treat certain companies or schools differently. But, I'm in small tech: I don't get top tier resumes often.

[silver jacinth]

@sage night do you want me to send you an image?

[sage night]

yeah i'll take any help I can get

[open cradle]

Well I guess looking at the "quality" of the companies is always essential. Ofc maybe not for entry level but it will always give you much more info about the candidate

[fringe sphinx]

It really depends what you're looking for. I don't put a premium on big tech / FAANG backgrounds.. there are plenty of people just punching the clock at any company.

[open cradle]

To me it is not about the company itself. But about the soft skills. Many people that entered into a company whose selection process is known to be hard and competitive, are typically passionate and hard workers (with exceptions)

[fringe sphinx]

I dunno, I could make a counter-argument that people who subject themselves to the FAANG interview circuit are more conformant and passive, less entrepreneurial. (not trying to start a war, just saying there's two sides to this)

[open cradle]

Well. I have a completely different vision because I know that people that apply to USA-based companies will always be hard as they have to compensate for the visa permit. If for US residents it is easier, it could also be true that you say. But european friends I know that got into NASA, Tesla or Apple they are really hard working people and non conformant at all

[fringe sphinx]

And, I'd also probably challenge the "passionate" and "hard workers" assumption there.

[late flame]

I've met a lot of really dumb people at Google. They hire a thousand people a week, they won't all be zingers.

[open cradle]

Of course you will always find them. That's why it is needed to look at averages

[silver jacinth]

one of my teachers said they would look at projects and see if they knew how to work on github projects, contributions and another said they never looked at marks, but rather if the person matched the qualifications on the resume

[fringe sphinx]

This just started with hiring: When I see a resume that has FAANG or other big tech on it, it's never the top 10% types... they don't need to send their resume out.

[silver jacinth]

they were both recruitors as well as swe for big companies

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, I'd agree with that. That said, I was asked once about my grades, from the CEO of a startup. He didn't like my answer, but hired me anyway (or, more precisely) let his engineering guy hire me)

[open cradle]

To get into important uni they asked me for good marks. And for all the jobs I have got, they all asked me for an official document that proves all my marks. It might be only my case

[silver jacinth]

Transcripts is more to prove you attended the education you said you did

[fringe sphinx]

It's not uncommon for an HR dept to confirm graduation, although dont' think I've ever seen them ask for grades. Yah, more less agree with lheuzio.

[open cradle]

Since I was in uni, I got a conditional contract stating that they would hire me 100% if I keep an average of at least X (after finishing uni)

I think that specially for entry level positions, they do look at the marks. In the end, there is not much you can look at (apart from projects)

Again, this is just my personal experience. Probably most of the companies would not ask for it

[silver jacinth]

you'll put your previous job on there too, so of course they'll be something

even subway, whatever

[open cradle]

I am thinking specially about fresh graduate. When I did it (and in my country), there was not this culture about doing projects and 99% of the people would typically have degree + internship (this last one maybe). So that's what I am refering to

[fringe sphinx]

From my perspective, I love this shift. It's more or less wiped out the fizz buzz problem.

(that many/most SWE candidates can't solve fizz buzz)

[silver jacinth]

free labor /s

wasn't stability ai employing the majority of the open source community at no wages?

[fringe sphinx]

?

Free labor? No, it was the fact that CS Majors would graduate without ability to code (or even knowing if they really liked it). So, it ended up with worse outcomes for both students and employers.

[silver jacinth]

my program for college is a technical degree, so we touch and breathe code

however, falling back on open source vs internships. One is paying, the other isn't

[sage night]

I think it kind of sucks that I feel like I have to have side projects to get hired at entry at least, not to see I don't like coding or anything like that - I kind of wish that expectation wasn't in place though. Dunno how accurate that feeling is but thats a sentiment I get reading advice for entry level online

[silver jacinth]

yes, that is the issue

[sage night]

not to say*

[fringe sphinx]

Projects show: Interest, Ability, and Motivation. I want to hire people who like / love being a SWE. Projects demonstrate that.

You might not need projects to get hired, but projects will improve your outcome / opportunity.

[silver jacinth]

unless those projects broke ToS or are not officially open

[sage night]

I understand why you want to hire someone who has projects over someone who doesn't, what i'm saying is that standard makes it more difficult for people who just want to do a job and not a hobby to get by and I think you should be able to program for your job without necessarily going home and working on your own projects. thats what im saying I feel sucks

[silver jacinth]

like I don't share one of my projects online because the company could easily take down the code

[fringe sphinx]

Fair, but there are plenty of jobs for those people. It'll take longer to find and won't pay as well, of course. There's plenty of both types in the industry.

[true harness]

they don't need to be open source to list on a resume

[open cradle]

I agree. As university graduates have been increasing last years, this mean more competence. Because of that, the degree itself means "nothing". Now they ask for publications in high-prestige conferences, open source projects collaboration... etc. Each time more expectations

[open cradle]

+1000

[silver jacinth]

not really true, the degree is normalized in the hiring process. Almost every job, even min wage jobs are now requiring degrees at least here in Canada

[open cradle]

That's what I am saying. In the end my point was about having higher expectations every year

[sage night]

Getting a uni degree starts to feel really bad when you pay like, in my country 50k+, dedicate four plus years of time and effort basically full time to study and then its like and now you also need to be programming in your spare time, contributing to open source, etc

for an entry level job

[open cradle]

Canada is still seen as a really good place to migrate from European vision

[silver jacinth]

You don't need to work for a company if you want. If you know how to make money another, way pursue that means

[near ocean]

An entry level job that pays much more than the average job

[open cradle]

Yeah I can also sell foot pics

[fringe sphinx]

There's plenty of people who don't. Find your own path, but don't expect it to be easy to make above average pay for average work.

[silver jacinth]

doesn't matter, you have only fans raking in thousands a day.

you'll be your own boss

[sage night]

that's fair and i'm not trying to say i'm entitled to FAANG because I passed a degree, its just as more people do this kind of thing the standard gets set higher and higher and its more and more difficult for average students to compete. Not even really saying anything should change, best jobs should go to the best people for them or whatever, I just wish it wasn't being set as the new bar which it can feel like (and i dont know how true this is) it is being set as. You know I say average students but i'm not even talking about average students what I should say is for non-hobbyist programmers to compete. Being a fantastic student really doesn't feel like it amounts to a whole lot without extra-curriculars.

[open cradle]

There are high expectations everywhere 😦

[silver jacinth]

pump out ai images until you get an account with many subs, then pursue that

[hearty island]

lol

[fringe sphinx]

The other interesting thing is: you're competing with a bunch of people who probably won't stay SWEs. Many CS majors end up transitioning to other careers. Some day I'll look up some stats on this.

[near ocean]

Its not a new bar, i've not had my github examined in any of my 2 jobs so far

[silver jacinth]

sounds like a problem with your resume

[near ocean]

Why?

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, to be fair, my criteria is low to pass the initial filter: just put enough content in so I know you know how to program.

[silver jacinth]

do you list a personal website there?

[sage night]

I don't know what the job markets like once you have some experience, I haven't read. Only talking about what i've read from new grads or people looking for internships perpesctive. I'm sure once you have some work under your belt personal projects become less important

[near ocean]

Thats not really relevant, i listed my github, no one asked me about it

[silver jacinth]

they probably checked it out regardless

[fringe sphinx]

We usually will ask candidates to walk us through one of their repos live, just to give us a chance to engage the candidate on something they know, but we won't check it out on our own.

Had one candidate with a pretty cool game, and it was fun talking to him because it was a pet project of his.

[silver jacinth]

right now you'll have people layoff from big tech companies applying for other roles

[static sapphire]

for people in big tech, how many of the people do you work with are genuinely passionate about programming vs. there for the money and snax?

[fringe sphinx]

Hopefully not snax. They're the first to go.

I'm a small tech guy nowadays, and I really have a biased sample anyway. Certainly not more than 50% passionate. Just depends where you draw the line tho.

Like, you can have clock punchers who are passionate and knowledgeable, but they work their 40 with nothing extra (not complaining)... you've got the "I dream in code" types... and you've got the "It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care" types

[open cradle]

I did not know that normal workers are called clock punchers now

[fringe sphinx]

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=clock puncher

[open cradle]

Oh, I did not know this connotation. My bad

[balmy mural]

My office has vending machines with free snax. I'm fully remote, but it's a great incentive for me to still go to the office 😂
I'm in tech cause I enjoy the work I do though

[open cradle]

If I search for "snax" I end up with: "Janusz "Snax" Pogorzelski (born July 5, 1993) is a Polish professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player. He is most known for being part of the Major-winning Polish Virtus.pro squad from January 2014 to June 2018."

The other meaning is cocaine. Can somebody explain to me what its meaning? Sorry my english is so bad for slangs. If it is indeed cocaine I do not understand how it can end up in a vending machine lol

[fringe sphinx]

snacks.

[open cradle]

It makes more sense then 🤔

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, and I just understood by the connotation, I would never type it that way.

[hearty island]

yay guys i finished with a 90% on my third capm exam. time to do some quizzes after lunch

[open cradle]

Congrats!!

[late flame]

Almost all of them are there for the money and benefits. Anyone that's really passionate and intelligent can be doing more impressive and impact work at a startup. Those that are already doing that kind of work are high up and much more rare than the regular workers.

[late flame]

I've never even done a personal project or had a GitHub and I've had no problems getting jobs. You really only need it if you need to fill out space on your resume. I graduated from a great school with internship experience, but other people don't have those privileges so personal projects might be needed. After your first job or two you really don't need them anymore though

[balmy spade]

I don't get particularly a lot of money compared to other offers I've head. And I don't get snaks. So I guess that leaves passion for my programming.

[static sapphire]

How is the job market these days? Is it really hard to find a software job? I have heard of lots of layoffs but not sure how big they are in the grand scheme of things

[balmy spade]

I don't know about others but myself and a few of my friends have seen a recent uptick in the scouting spam coming from companies. From that we can guess the recuiters are, at least, back on payroll.

[open cradle]

It all depends on the country, as always 🙂

[indigo willow]

I need career help.

[fringe sphinx]

I'm on the other end of things, so I'm speaking from limited knowledge, but my impression is: there was a big batch of layoffs at the beginning of the year. They seem to have slowed or stopped significantly, as the market more or less stabilized. Juniors/entries are probably still impacted the most, but I think the market has absorbed the mid-seniors already.

[indigo willow]

I need advice on whether ML and DL is a good field and should i go towards it or something else

[peak cypress]

Wonder what that looks like nowadays here in Russia considering the significant share of devs that have left.
they still demand degrees... ;~;

[delicate bane]

typically these roles require an advanced degree. are you comfortable with that

[indigo willow]

I am one to not shy away from difficulty, i am only in my junior year of highschool so i got a long way

[peak halo]

you have to be interested in math and be able and willing to get probably a masters degree.

[indigo willow]

I mean i love maths and the idea of ai, its just super cool to be able to do and create. But do any of you got any other ideas of a different field i could touch up on and see if I would lean towards that?

[peak halo]

also with ML, code tends to be more a means to an end. you'll mainly be producing models and explanations for why you designed them the way that you did. the code that goes along with that is secondary.

[pine sleet]

If you're a junior in HS you have some time to try doing projects in different sub-fields of CS and see what interests you.

[peak halo]

if you're trying to choose between ML and general programming, the good news is that your next move is the same: getting a CS degree.

[open cradle]

One of my colleagues is Russian and he told me he would like to come back to Moscow if the current war situation were more stable

[indigo willow]

Understood, this conversation gave me a lot of insight about my future. Thank you, both.

[open cradle]

What is HS?

[peak cypress]

Surprising but understandable, still have family and all i assume

[pine sleet]

high school, in America that's aged 15-18 ish

OP said they were a junior is HS, so they're probably 17ish and have some time before they go to university. Even then, like stel mentioned, a CS degree is the common denominator for a lot of things they could do

[open cradle]

He told me salaries for devs there were nice tho. That's all I know sorry 😅

[delicate bane]

my friend back in grad school who was an international student says hes glad to be out of russia and hasnt looked back lol

he just recently got a job at a startup doing CV + full stack dev

[peak cypress]

Oh i can imagine, i've seen offers of 300k rubles/month and i believe that wasn't even in Moscow

[peak cypress]

Being an international student / getting some weird internship is something i've been looking into but uhh
not sure how that would work out

[open cradle]

In your case it would be harder. As many countries are really careful with Russian people. In the sense that governments put stricter constraints on their VISAs

But I would recommend trying it anyway

[peak cypress]

could potentially have a shot at Germany since i've got some fairly close relatives there

[delicate bane]

what is "some weird internship"?

[open cradle]

That would be nice! Germany is known to build good engineers or technical roles

[delicate bane]

for what its worth my friend also got an internship before his startup job. hes also a fulbright scholar so theres that

[peak cypress]

weird being international internship :d which is basically international student but whatever

[delicate bane]

hmm sorry i seem to have misunderstood something

[peak cypress]

they're weird for me because i definitely hear less about them than domestic corp internships / just normal international students

[open cradle]

I did a few. If you have any doubts maybe I can help! Although of course every country differs how you do it

[delicate bane]

international students, for me, are students accepted into a university's program here locally usually on a student visa

[peak cypress]

I think it's a bit early for me to plan for something concrete but thanks for the offer

[open cradle]

Good luck with it then! 🙂

[vapid jay]

Anyone here a May 2023 grad? I can't find a job lol. Feeling like I wasted the last 4 years getting a CS degree

Currently working an $18/hr IT job, and half my income is going to rent. I'd like to make at least double what I currently make, and that sounds like a pretty average salary for new grads in the USA. I'm not an international student either. No idea why it's so hard right now

[true harness]

are you getting interviews?

[vapid jay]

nope

I suspect it's due to lack of experience. Too many laid-off people with actual experience competing for junior roles?

[true harness]

it sounds like a problem with your resume. you should send it here for review

[pastel thunder]

do share, i thought the same but after some advices. my rejection rate has been almost same as call back rate (ignoring the ignore rate lmao)

[delicate bane]

did you specialize in anything in undergrad? maybe its just hard differentiating you from others. harder if you havent done any internships but its good you have that IT job at least since you can put that on your resume.

how many apps have you sent out so far

maybe you just need to be applying more too

[cold willow]

I'm trying to transition from a freelance writer to a freelance python dev. I wonder how long it would take if I studied 3 hours/day to become proficient enough to start getting basic gigs? Maybe 3-4 months? Much longer?

[open cradle]

Problem is about how you approach a company or what the company would see. Even if you have been training so hard, the company will try to look at "real" things you have done. So I would suggest not only studying but also doing a project or colaborating with an open source project. At least you would not have an empty CV related to Python

If you go full intensive, I do not think you need more than 3-4 to be good at it. But there are some concepts that just take time and it is not only about studying

[cold willow]

I have thought about hitting up my writing clients and offering discounted/free projects to them to build a portfolio

[fringe sphinx]

What's your background in programming?

[celest kite]

What sort of freelance python work are you considering?

[cold willow]

Aside from HTLM and CSS a few years ago, none

[fringe sphinx]

So, I'm going to be a little direct and say: going from zero to "Freelance python dev" in a few months is a bit of a reach.

[cold willow]

I'm not saying full-time or anything. I feel like that would take a little longer. But at least be able to build a basic app or tool that can get my feet wet, like an app that automates something, for example.

[fringe sphinx]

Sure, you can finish an intro level Python course / program in 3-4 months. ie: going from absolute beginner to a Novice (advanced beginner?) programmer.

[cold willow]

I mainly ask so I can gauge where I could be in that amount of time. If I get to 3-4 months and I'm only capable of basic projects, that would be fine. Maybe by the time I finish year 1 out I could improve a lot and possibly be good enough to dip into medium projects?

[open cradle]

I think you can get even intermediate Python level (not focusing on architecure and not a competitive level). But saying 4 months still being a novice... I already did quite intensive courses back in the past and I learnt a lot in just a few months

In the end Python is not like C/C++. Although again, this is all about opinions

[cold willow]

Out of curiosity, what type of projects are usually more common in the python freelance world?

[fringe sphinx]

The python "freelancers" I know are people with very particular sets of skills, acquired over a long career.

On the lower end, the other freelancers I know are web-dev types.

[cold willow]

[heady wyvern]

What part of the US do you live

[cold willow]

Are you implying that being a freelance python dev is a difficult path?

[fringe sphinx]

Yes

And, saying that: it's all about specialization. If there's a niche you are expert at, and can find customers with specific needs, then great!

[harsh river]

yes, very

[cold willow]

Would I have an easier time with JavaScript? I'm pretty torn between the two

[unreal aspen]

hey I am looking for tutoring work any advice?

i work for pretty cheap (20$) but I am having a hard time finding students

[summer roost]

freelance in general is a tougher path than being an FTE for some company. Either you're doing relatively low skilled work for strangers on the internet (in which case you're competing with people from countries with a much lower cost of living than yours, who can do jobs for $2/hour and feel good about it), or you're doing relatively high skilled work (in which case you need quite a lot of experience, and probably some niche that you're quite specialized in). And of course, you need to spend a lot of time and effort finding clients, instead of just coding.

[open cradle]

That's a good point. I liked the reasoning

[summer roost]

It's a very rare project indeed that needs only a single programming language. Being competent in multiple languages would make more jobs accessible to you. In the web dev space, it'll be very hard to land jobs without knowing JavaScript or TypeScript

[cold willow]

I understand the client acquisition aspect. I've already been dealing with it for 5 years lol. But I know it's different with programming. It sounds like JavaScript would be easier to deal with as far as getting gigs goes? I would have thought that Python would be easier but I'm not so sure now.

[summer roost]

On the lower skill side, people are more likely to want to pay for a web site than anything else, and it's practically impossible to make a web site without JavaScript. You can make desktop applications with Python, but I wouldn't expect nearly as much demand for desktop apps. And again, on the low skilled side, you're likely dealing with clients who aren't particularly technically sophisticated. They're not likely to have their own servers to run things on, so you're either giving them stuff they can run on their own personal machines, or you're also helping them set up hosting/servers

[cold willow]

Thanks for all of the info guys

[subtle mauve]

No problem!

[vapid jay]

Hey guys. I want to start machine learning from the ground up. Any solid channel that can teach me this?

[tender frost]

There's a bunch of resources pinned in #data-science-and-ml

[unreal aspen]

hey I am looking for tutoring work any advice?
i work for pretty cheap (20$) but I am having a hard time finding students

[modest kraken]

Idk, go advertise

[unreal aspen]

where?

[peak halo]

(not on this server)

[unreal aspen]

ya but where

[summer roost]

try searching for tutors, as though you were a student, and then try to advertise on the sites that come up near the top of the list.

[cold willow]

five head

[smoky crag]

preply is a good site whether you’re trying to teach or looking for tutors

[daring sphinx]

Just checking the temperature of the Silicon Valley world, seems like Meta is hiring again.

Does this link work? https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search/?currentJobId=3637374435&f_C=10667%2C2289109%2C27104390%2C23769%2C2763277%2C76987811%2C289891%2C27046884%2C16159097&geoId=92000000&keywords=Software Engineer

Seems to.

[heady wyvern]

Isn’t html used for building websites?

[summer roost]

yes

[heady wyvern]

What’s Java script used for

[summer roost]

also for building websites. HTML defines the structure, JavaScript defines the dynamic behavior, more or less. That's not really on topic, though - you'd be better off asking in #python-discussion or an off-topic channel

[sleek egret]

if HTML is the bones and CSS is the makeup, does that mean that javascript is the muscles?

[peak halo]

putting makeup directly on muscle and bone?
sounds unsanitary

[sleek egret]

hmm, good point

[untold crystal]

What should I put on my portfolio as a computer science beginner and a cs undergraduate?

[near remnant]

hey, currently I work flexible hours, so I'm not bound to a specific start and end time, but I need to complete 40 hours per week. today, I have to go for a medical examination in the morning, but I also have 2 online meetings scheduled during that time. what should I do? should I join the meetings on my phone while walking to the doctor's office or maybe while on the bus? am I overreacting? thanks

[summer roost]

that seems like a question for your boss. For the companies I've worked for as a full-time employee, they'd just say to decline the meeting as you'll be unavailable, and to not worry about making up the time.

[buoyant seal]

Reschedule doctor or meetings.
When I am having medical stuff like that I just warn our manager regarding my unavailability in advance and then I am not impacted by that

[pliant gull]

what is the perfect age to start my career?

[buoyant seal]

IT career?
You are expected to finish school and university as path of least resistance.
Having preferably internships in parallel, and then getting your junior level jobs.

There path can be started pretty much as early as u wish

[pliant gull]

hmm...

i cant find any of the recruitment job in my country for the future

[near remnant]

This doctor stuff is by the company, they send every employee every year for a check up

[buoyant seal]

I graduated master's degree at 26-27 years old 🙈

[near remnant]

I mean, you will work for the rest of your life (probably), which is at least 40 years.

[pliant gull]

im still a 14 year old boy so i can think a lot in my future

[near remnant]

I think you should do something else, software engineering / CS / programming is not that great anymore

[pine sleet]

You still have quite a bit of time to build up your skills and explore what's out there. You might even find out you don't want to do CS

[pliant gull]

what is CS?

[pine sleet]

Computer science

[pliant gull]

yeah you're right

[buoyant seal]

Still in school. It is a time for u to find what u like.

I chose my path because
I was able to get good grades in computer classes and algebra. And because I was technically inclined person with intuition to find answers easily for programming tasks.

U need to find out where your strengths be and what u enjoy, and the same time choosing thing that gets to earn money.
Finding your ikigai preferably

[pliant gull]

What I love: Programming an AI
What you are good at: I'm still a begginer so I still learning.
What you can be paid for: I don't know about this.
What the world needs: AI for school.
Passion: I would like to make an AI web way more good than ChatGPT.
Profession: I still don't know.
Vocation: I want to be a famous person to program a new thing.
Mission: To make people more intelligence and hope for great future.

I will think of my what I'm good at, proffesion, and what can i paid for

[buoyant seal]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=O-oUjOdcuZ0&feature=share7
🎵 You'll find your mark 🎵

[pliant gull]

bro im not a girl

[strong forge]

🤣

[pliant gull]

nah why you force me to watch my little sister's childhood animation?

[pastel thunder]

I appreciate the time and effort you and your team have invested during the process and to extend the offer. However, After careful consideration and evaluation of the offer, I would like to address my concern. The proposed salary outlined in the offer is lower than my expectations and falls short of the competitive offers I have received from other companies. I value the opportunity to contribute to [...]'s success, and I believe that a competitive compensation package will further motivate me to excel in my responsibilities.

Sounds good?

[summer roost]

That last clause feels strange to me. I'd sooner say something like "and I hope we can reach an agreement for a more competitive compensation package so that I can work for you." or something like that. The way it's worded sounds like you'll accept the low offer and just not work hard, which is weird

[pastel thunder]

i see, cool

negotiating is fun when you have a job lmao.

[vapid jay]

I wanna be a network architect or network engineer so what thing I should know in python?

[ornate plover]

Network Automation, Scripting, Network Libraries, RESTful APis, data analysis, Visualisation

[hearty island]

i would look into comp tia too, but you need experience for that iirc

[hearty island]

so this isn't my resume but i thought it liked the bullets. what do y'all think?

[open cradle]

I like it. If possible, I would just add more space between main categories so that the recruiter can find in a quick look what are the categories they are interested in

Because there is more experience between subcategories (like, between different jobs he had) rather than main categories (between career summary and professional experience). Maybe I am just the only one who takes these things into account

[hearty island]

i'm gonna continue looking through the subreddit to see what else i like. i actually tried posting my resume there but they removed it

[graceful mason]

I'd move your Spanish fluency into a separate bullet point if you have space, rather than hiding at the end of technical skills

[hearty island]

oh it's not mine, it's someone else's on reddit. i was just wondering if there was anything i can pull into mine

[graceful mason]

Well the entire key skills bullet could be removed and demonstrated through the work experience instead

[hearty island]

agreed

i don't understand why they didn't let me post my resume in there. it got auto-removed 😦

[stoic kestrel]

hey what could be a good freelancing site to start out freelancing.like it became impossible to find work on fiverr and upwork as a newbie

[buoyant seal]

screenshot and send it 🙂

[remote cradle]

Hello Group Members I am quite new in Group from south Asian Countries. I am just posting to find a way to Increase monthly Salary to 1000$ a month(I know it seems strange as Most Group Members are from US and Canada and other developed Countries where average salary is 120k$ Per year.I have Masters Degree in Computer Science, Done some Certification(CCNA and Wireless Course like BSC,BTS and MSC(Mobile Switching Centre) long time ago.I am a Teacher by profession and Teaching from last 5 Years(Math and Computer) in High School (Bachelor's Degree in (Math,Physics) and tbh I am not Good in Programming (Learning Python online Due to Summer Vacations) In Order to Improve Skill.I have background working experience of Amazon FBA worked as a (Virtual Assistant) almost 1 year but not working now as Amazon directly not allowed to sell in our Country.I am 32 Years of age,Married and Cant change my Location (Country).Is there an oppurtunity online that I can earn atleast 1000$ a month remotely.Any valuable suggetion or Hiring would be Highly Appreciated as I am wondering here and there to Improve my earning but could't.

[open cradle]

In my case I personally like Latex for this type of stuff. You will no longer need to pay attention to the format itself and focus 100% on the content. There are templates that can be used for your own cv too

[hearty island]

i like jake's resume on latex. it's what i'm currently using.

[open cradle]

I just searched it and it looks nice

[hearty island]

yessir

[hearty island]

my college counselor said it wasn't ATS friendly bc she couldn't highlight text on it tho. idk what she was saying

[open cradle]

Nah. ATS are not so stupid. At least the ones I tried. My CV has colors and 2 columns and it could be properly parsed by most of the ones I tried

[hearty island]

there is latex code that allow your resume to be parsed by ats

[open cradle]

So a CV like that has to be ATS for sure

[hearty island]

i just forgot the two lines of code it uses, but jake's resume has both

[open cradle]

Really? Do you have something I can read about?

Well, my CV is in Illustrator, but maybe I redo it there

[hearty island]

https://www.reddit.com/r/LaTeX/comments/3nr2vn/how_can_i_ensure_that_my_latex_resume_is_readable/ "Use these two lines in your preamble:

\input{glyphtounicode}

\pdfgentounicode=1

This will ensure that the PDF output will be all unicode and machine-readable." jake's resume has both in the first couple of lines of code

[hearty island]

i use black and white for mine

[open cradle]

This is awesome. I will take a better look after work

[hearty island]

glad it helped

[pliant gull]

i would say B

[true harness]

projects, education, skills, any work experience

[hearty island]

oh shit. sorry wrong server. will delete that rn.

[pliant gull]

bruh

[hearty island]

lol

[pliant gull]

yeah no problem

[hearty island]

oh boy i’m fucked. boss is saying i have an impromptu midterm eval now at 2

[vapid jay]

Should I learn it myself or later teachers will teach?

[buoyant seal]

It is always better be proactive and learning on your own if u have your own goals.

Remember... Professors in university aren't teachers. It is not their responsibility to teach. They just give guidance how for you to learn stuff on your own and then check results

[hearty island]

i agree with darkwind

[buoyant seal]

Network Automation, Scripting, Network Libraries, RESTful APis, data analysis, Visualisation

Plus they are highly likely will not cover any of the topics at all, except giving foundation for data analysis from pure math side

And covering basic programming to give foundation for scripting

[hearty island]

comp tia will help imo

my boss has multiple certs for comp tia

[wanton birch]

Anyone know the technical reason ATS like workaday forces you to make a completely separate new account and fill in all details from scratch per application?

Is there a legit reason or just fuck you?

[sleek egret]

yar

what is ATS?

[true harness]

applicant tracking system

[sleek egret]

oh... um, since when do applicants have access to createa accounts on such things?

[fringe sphinx]

They (big tech) has made it like college applications.

More or less, fill out forms so the HR dept doesn't have to manually enter

[sleek egret]

interesting. that seems wrong somehow to me

[fringe sphinx]

Back in the OCR resume days, I think a lot of people would just get their resumes trashbinned because it didn't scan right. This seems like an improvement, fwiw.

but, I haven't used it first hand.

[fringe sphinx]

But, you'll find many or most professors love to talk and teach about their subject.... it's just hard in a large classroom. Get them in office hours or talk to the TAs, and you'll find they're very engaged.

[vapid jay]

Will I get job in foreign if I study networking is it worth it? 🤔

[deft herald]

Will you be handed a job on a silver platter without any effort? Most likely not

[robust island]

It can happen

[true harness]

Most likely not

[robust island]

My experience probably isn't applicable to most people, I just had really good connections

[hearty island]

speaking of connections, this person off a capm subreddit sent me a linkedin request to talk about experiences. shame they're in the UK so i can't really leverage that connection

[open cradle]

Is UK so far to you?

[hearty island]

i'm in the us

[hearty island]

it's not that it's far, it's just that i wouldn't really be able to ask for a referral or anything really

not that i can pull a referral, still a college student

[open cradle]

I have never ask for a referal to somebody who I have never worked with

[hearty island]

probably a good practice

[open cradle]

I am parsing my CV from illustrator to Latex and I am dying slowly

[hearty island]

really? is it that bad?

[open cradle]

What do you mean?

[open cradle]

Because mine has a weird format just that hahahaha

[hearty island]

as in i think you're right to do that

[unreal turtle]

which should i select on linkedin?

[open cradle]

It all depends on the country. From my experience, referrals are way different in the UK. In most countries, they would write a letter for you to be sent anywhere else. In the UK, the system is different in the way that professionals do not typically write a generic letter mainly because they do not know where you are applying to and they have less control. Also because it will lose value if their letters appear anywhere else

In the end, if your referal writes a bad letter, you will never submit it. In the UK, people share the contact of the referal. And they are free to write whatever they want about you. You will never know what they are writting about you. And it can be something negative too

[hearty island]

in the US, it's kind of like they just send you a referral link to the job portal. at least that's what i got from my friend at JPM & Chase

that's the one time i got a referral. didn't get me the job tho lol. so just anecdotal.

[open cradle]

So you give the contact of the referral no? In Spain referrals are completely useless. Professionals here would write anything because they are friend of a friend of... You know. So people end up with letters from people they never worked with

[robust folio]

People write letters? It’s mostly verbal here in Indian startups

[open cradle]

Most of cases yes. Some companies told me to write phone number of my referal. Again, this is from my personal experience in Europe 🙂

[robust folio]

The link to job portal referral is in canada too

[wanton birch]

I selected recruiters only.

[remote cradle]

Hello Group Members I am quite new in Group from south Asian Countries. I am just posting to find a way to Increase monthly Salary to 1000$ a month(I know it seems strange as Most Group Members are from US and Canada and other developed Countries where average salary is 120k$ Per year.I have Masters Degree in Computer Science, Done some Certification(CCNA and Wireless Course like BSC,BTS and MSC(Mobile Switching Centre) long time ago.I am a Teacher by profession and Teaching from last 5 Years(Math and Computer) in High School (Bachelor's Degree in (Math,Physics) and tbh I am not Good in Programming (Learning Python online Due to Summer Vacations) In Order to Improve Skill.I have background working experience of Amazon FBA worked as a (Virtual Assistant) almost 1 year but not working now as Amazon directly not allowed to sell in our Country.I am 32 Years of age,Married and Cant change my Location (Country).Is there an oppurtunity online that I can earn atleast 1000$ a month remotely.Any valuable suggetion or Hiring would be Highly Appreciated

[meager imp]

I am currently studying a networking and cybersecurity program with a coding elective at a college to earn an Associate of Applied Science (AAS) degree. I chose this program to avoid the theoretical aspects of the first two years of college and focus on practical skills in the field. I'm concerned about how this program will be perceived by recruiters, as it is a two-year program specifically focusing on networking, security, IT, and a little bit of coding rather than a Bachelor's degree in computer science. I would appreciate your thoughts on this.

[unreal turtle]

[stuff]

[fringe sphinx]

Can you give a sentence? FinTech is pretty well understood nowadays, financial technology seems weird to read, but perhaps in some cases, I'd write something more direct/clear.

[unreal turtle]

ok

[unreal turtle]

[stuff]

[fringe sphinx]

I guess I'd say Fintech is pretty well understood, but I can't quite imagine the sentence where you'd use it in a resume.

[unreal turtle]

im not putting it on my resume though

any benefit in this?

[near ocean]

Is this a linkedin thing, if yes then no

[hearty island]

it looks like linkedin

[unreal turtle]

it is a linkedin thing, and bet i wont add any contributors then

[drowsy merlin]

Has AI supplanted crypto in the entrepreneur community? https://archive.fo/nFhkx

[peak halo]

I hope so. because I can't imagine how that many (or any) crypto startups actually add value to the economy.

[smoky quest]

not sure how many of these "AI" opportunistic ventures add value either :/

[drowsy merlin]

It's a huge relief for me. So many of my acquaintances have been eaten by the crypto mind virus. At least when they get into AI, there's a real-life problem underpinning their effort.

... usually

[smoky quest]

reminds me a lot of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxdDVAv6QDY

[sleek egret]

AI hasn't supplanted anything yet

also, IIRC, the type of company with the most VC investment is biotech

[late flame]

AI is the buzzword of the year. Can't wait to see next year's entrant.

[fringe sphinx]

"catastrophic failure"

[daring sphinx]

Anyone headed to North Bay Python? https://2023.northbaypython.org/

One of my former co-workers is speaking there. https://pretalx.northbaypython.org/nbpy-2023/talk/SQ8USX/

[gritty rivet]

What's the question exactly? Are you asking if a two-year AAS degree is considered to have less value in the job market then a 4-year BS? Then yes, the answer is obviously yes.

Is the AAS "enough"? That depends on a lot of things we don't know. I would recommend you to study the job market in your local area in order to get a sense of whether you're seeing numerous jobs that don't require a 4-year degree and which look attractive to you. If yes, cool! If not (and I suspect likely not), start planning to continue on for a four year degree.

[daring sphinx]

I would add, as someone who reached a mid-level programming career with a year and a half of community college and a lot of stubborness, that the theoretical aspects of computer science have become extremely practical to me at this point.

[silver jacinth]

tell me 1 use for crypto irl

besides money laundering, investing, illegal activities

[buoyant seal]

useful without problems to transfer money across countries 😆

banking procedures ask too many questions to do it easily even if everything is honest and between your own accounts

[daring sphinx]

"Illegal activities, but the good kind."

[late flame]

Those procedures have very good reasons to exist. Being able to quickly move money with no oversight is... Bad generally.

[buoyant seal]

to some people else? yeah. many groups of people, yeah. To governments, to anti terroristic organizations and etc yeah

to me? no. i want to have stuff handled more simply you know. As well as any regular citizen

When new things get apply smth for breaking your privacy and rights further, to have scanned all data, pictures at your phones and having it blocked and deleted if neutral network thought it is right?
(Like at iphone)
For some group of people in power it is convenient

For regular person whose data is leaked and made public for scam attacks? No

When government decides to make another database full of your data without your agreement?
It is again convinient to them to quicker draft men or smh

To regular person? No
_
Don't be mistaken. Everything has its cost. And I am not ready to pay costs for others if they are meant to break my rights further for the greater good

[hard oriole]

Anybody have opinions on:
https://www.uopeople.edu/

[urban heron]

That’s a very interesting university, sounds dope

[celest kite]

Looks like a scam

I'm highly suspicious of their accreditation

[hearty island]

mad sus

[buoyant seal]

https://www.uopeople.reviews/ scam

[hearty island]

lmaooo

[hard oriole]

Well hell!

[silver jacinth]

I actually like the idea of crypto, however its execution is not done right

it should not be a *currency*

[peak halo]

Crypto is a great solution to the problem that it solves. But it's a pretty obscure problem.

[summer roost]

You mean that blockchain is a great solution to the problem that it solves, right? Not cryptocurrency?

[peak halo]

yes, you are right.

[late flame]

Most of the time a team uses a block chain all they really needed was a regular database. It didn't need all this hype, it just got it because crypto was a cool new tech that you could use to buy heroin

Honestly if purchasing drugs with Bitcoin wasn't possible I feel like it never would have gotten big

[gritty rivet]

It's been slowly gaining some reputation. If you can go to a normal public university that degree is certainly going to be worth more, but if not,.maybe worth looking into.

Another option a long similar lines but more established is WGU. My company just hired a security manager with degrees from there.

Look at either of the universities on LinkedIn and you'll see thousands of people who graduated in recent years. Outcomes look mixed but in some cases quite good. Reach out to people in your area and see what they say. If they had a bad experience I'm sure they'll tell you directly.

[tough bolt]

where can i attend in person programming meetups and expos/conferneces? i can't find any in july/august though

[smoky quest]

meetup.com

[dusky temple]

based

[tough bolt]

are there any other programming expos/conferences? i see on meetup.com most of them are like small scale talks, meetings etc are there other big conferences such as ai4 2023?

[smoky quest]

there are tons of conferences. It depends on your location I guess

[tough bolt]

i can travel pretty much in asia, it's just that i need some conferences this summer (july, aug) but i can't find any

like big ones

[robust folio]

dont discount local events

[south ore]

hi, i'm reaching out here in order to get some help with a unique project that i'm working on. My goal is to get chatgpt and Google Bard work together and talk to each other. They both express their wishes and desire to make it happen and i managed to pull it of in a way, but i need to streamline it by building a space for them both to share ideas between the two ai's. if someone wan't to take up the challenge, let me know! Best regards, Donovan

[smoky quest]

How does that relate to careers?

[south ore]

i don't know, but i didn't know where to post a question like this

[smoky quest]

What is the question?

[south ore]

the question is that Bard is able to joina discord room and there is a possibility that Chatgpt can do the same. it need some programing to acomplish that , something that i'm not familiar with, so i'm trying to get someone who is willing to make it happen.

[smoky quest]

We don't do hiring

if you want to hire someone, you may have to use indeed/linkedin or some freelance website

[south ore]

i understaind, thanks anyway for responding!

[cinder fossil]

egh im in an interesting career point
so I have a fairly high paying comfortable job as a cloud engineer, but I really love on prem stuff more.. however performance wise I'm quite good at my current job

I have the option to internally switch to the on-prem team, but I'm kinda worried that it'll become a slog and make me stop enjoying that kind of work. Outside of work I get to play with baremetal HPC clusters so I can still get my fill, but I'm conflicted on moving to an actual job doing that.. what would people suggest?

[sleek egret]

I suggest making a decision

[pastel thunder]

After i told them i have more competitive compensation from other companies

Hence there is no scope for salary negotiation. 

But we think you will be a very good asset in our ML team and do look forward to working with you.

seems like no one wants to negotiate for fresh grads. plus the reasoning seems bull shit.
I am thinking of ignoring/denying them. will it be the right thing to do?

[gritty rivet]

There are PyCons in Korea and Malaysia coming up in August apparently. https://dev.events/AS/python

[gritty rivet]

If you want a broader list of options see https://dev.events/AS/

[cinder fossil]

yeah I would just respond with a polite decline if you already have better prospects

[proven crest]

If you had a better offer, absolutely reply politely declining their offer, thanking them for their time and wishing them all the best. There's even a (slim) chance they will reply trying to match the competition.

If you don't have other offers and you like this company / the work they do and if its a decent salary (even if its not the top end) consider taking it. Nothing's preventing you from continuing to apply, but at least you'd have the security of a decent job that you enjoy and grow from.

[hazy cipher]

Good day, everybody! Im looking for my first job with python. Anyone knows the minimum ideal size of a portfolio?

[proven crest]

Not sure what minimum ideal means.

There isn't an objective number either way. You can have one very strong projects and get offers pouring in, or you could have 50 mediocre projects and get rejected every time. Quality over quantity.

[hazy cipher]

@proven crest hey! thanks. that makes a lot of sense

[heady wyvern]

what are these 'projects'. Lets say I graduated with a CS degree then start looking for software engineer jobs. Will employers ask for projects?

[hearty island]

well project are created out of your own passion/interests for coding. they'd greatly help your resume if they're good

[heady wyvern]

what are some examples

[hearty island]

!projects

[inner wren]

Kindling Projects

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

[hearty island]

you can also contribute to open source projects. i think there's a website with some great ones that ppl can contribute to. just don't have the link. billy bob might have it

[proven crest]

Honestly it’s best for you to come up with your own projects. What are you passionate about? If your passion is in ML and that’s the field you want to go into there’s no point doing a django project. Same vice versa.

They should be able to tell people who look at them a bit about you, for example if you were interested in working in the financial sector and your projects were financial, that would take you further than someone who had web development projects.

But to answer your question, they will most definitely ask about them, yes. You should be able to talk about them in detail. It’s a wild card as to if they’d go though the code with you

[hearty island]

i would try to document your own interests to brainstorm. what do you like to do for fun? what would make your own life easier?

i know for sure i'd love a good PDF parser lol that can make good flashcards to study

[heady wyvern]

Im mostly interested in software engineering

[heady wyvern]

am i going to build these projects in college

[hearty island]

like do you mean profs will assign them?

[heady wyvern]

yes

[hearty island]

they will assign projects as work, but everyone in your class will have them too. it's very good to come up with unique ones.

[near remnant]

Would you guys quit a job if you had to go to the office once a month and rest is remote?

[silver jacinth]

Yeah, ownership is under the community vs 1 centralized figure

[silver jacinth]

Good luck finding another job right now

[magic phoenix]

Hiii

[near remnant]

No i wont quit but am I dumb if I feel bad going to the office once a month? 🤣

[radiant moon]

yes
most jobs require some office time

[near remnant]

Yeah my job was full remote but they want me to go in once every month. Just to meet once and talk about projects, but thats it.

[sour tartan]

what don't you like about going to the office?

[near remnant]

Idk feel like i have social anxiety but going once a month is almost nothing if rest is remote

[sour tartan]

i understand. it's good to practice though.

[near remnant]

Yeah i know i might look like an idiot crying over one day in a month tho...

[fringe sphinx]

You've done all you can. Politely decline, but reiterate that you are excited about the company but that you have to take the stronger offer. In other words, express interest and leave the door open.

[fringe sphinx]

Did we talk about this before? Someone else asked about a very similar situation a week ago.

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied timeout to @golden ruin until <t:1689086041:f> (10 minutes) (reason: duplicates spam - sent 4 duplicate messages).

The <@&831776746206265384> have been alerted for review.

[near remnant]

Yeah it was me probably

[fringe sphinx]

Oh, then I'll just repeat: I think it's incredibly healthy for any team to meet in person. What you described, iirc, seemed quite normal and would (imo) lead to a more positive remote work environment, where people know and value you as an individual, rather than some face on a screen. Social anxiety, of course, is very real and personal and you have to find your own path/emotional health, but I'll bet that: 1. your teammates probably feel the same way 2. Your manager would be very empathetic if you express your anxiety 3. you'll feel better after the first one. But, also consider talking to a professional, it's amazing what having someone knowledgeable to talk to can do for you.

[golden ruin]

well guys tell me what would be a good pc to build

[hearty island]

probably isn't career relevant

[golden ruin]

well it is

[trim acorn]

I just finished learning python basics

[golden ruin]

cause for career i need a good pc for programming

[trim acorn]

What should I go for now?

What kind of projects could I start to learn and do?

[cosmic shard]

Is remote job good for fresh graduate with less experience?

[silver jacinth]

well you want to build connections

[gritty rivet]

All else being equal, no, it will help your career to start in-office

[gritty rivet]

Ones that demonstrate the skills you need for the job you want.

[trim acorn]

Examples? @gritty rivet

[cinder coral]

HI so my question is
can you recommend me any website where i can get remote work internship in Data science or Data analytics
paid or unpaid, i am just looking for some industrial experience to build up my profile
thank you

[hearty island]

fuck i didn’t realize an edge case when i was doing my power bi report… what if a problem manager leaves the team and gets replaced??? doesn’t that mean they’d have to rewrite every formula?? maybe i can sync microsoft forms to python and then write a script that automatically does formulas

[true harness]

not really

[hearty island]

damnit. no api for pulling data from forms. we crying in the club today.

[fringe sphinx]

Any job is good. But, I agree with dowcet. I think the ideal is a hybrid: it's nice to work from home to be productive, but it's also helpful to build relationships and learn from others. I think full-remote for first job is not good (for either company or employer).

[hearty island]

i don’t think they’d appreciate manually downloading excel files either

[vapid jay]

Id suggest against remote too

[gritty rivet]

!kindling

You know better than I do what you're interested in but here's a list of ideas

[inner wren]

Kindling Projects

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

[trim acorn]

Thx mate

[sleek egret]

yar

[silver jacinth]

just do kaggle stuff

who knows you might win one

[proven crest]

LinkedIn. Both by applying and outreach.

[cinder coral]

I see

[cinder coral]

I tried looking there but it’s not majority of the time

[proven crest]

and outreach

[vapid jay]

I was thinking of trying some kaggle but my impression was so many people do kaggle it wouldnt be a differentiator on a resume, unless you get a metal which from what i understand is extremely difficult. Or is that incorrect?

[fringe sphinx]

On an otherwise blank resume, kaggle is at least something that demonstrates your interest in the field, an opportunity to highlight certain skills (ie: "Developed a classification model with PyTorch, using ABC and DEF signals to classify GHI, achieving 79% percentile results of JKL")

That also gives the interviewer something to engage you on: to ask about/etc.

[open cradle]

If we extrapolate, that can be applied to almost anything. You will find many people who do private projects, courses, open source collaborations...

[errant rock]

Does anyone here have experience with fastapi?

[robust barn]

If anyone is interested in a hackathon organization opportunity, dm me

[fringe sphinx]

Better question to ask on #python-discussion

[cinder coral]

is it a term or something sorry i am not femilar with it

[heady wyvern]

I need help understanding certain terms. Senior, Junior positions

[true harness]

junior = less experience. senior = more experience

[heady wyvern]

is there more?

[fringe sphinx]

(Yes and) the specifics, when it comes to job titles, are very company dependent.

[true harness]

more what

[fringe sphinx]

Every company is different: they have different titles for different levels of experience. There’s no standard

[heady wyvern]

im just looking through software engineering jobs on google and finding 'senior' positions

[celest kite]

Well there's Jr and then untitled is just staff. Then there's senior, then lead, then principal

[buoyant seal]

Junior positions = means for people who received sufficient education to start working in commercial programming. Usually having very low or zero experience of work, but already had education and used to programming.

Senior positions = for people who super experts, with major work experience and deep knowledge at least in one technilogy field. With having middle level knowledge in majority of other things. Usually having at minimum 4-5 years of intensive commercial experience. Most developers never raise to senior rank in their entire career even in 10 years of work. Seniors are made out of combination of hard and soft skills.

[true harness]

that sounds overly specific. what's in the middle

[heady wyvern]

Starting out with a bachelors in computer science, I would look for 'junior' or just 'staff' positions?

[fringe sphinx]

Yes

[buoyant seal]

yup. junior positions, sometimes intern positions (internships are more for while u were still in university though)

[heady wyvern]

You mentioned many engineers never reach a senior rank in their career? Why is that if you meet the qualifications (i.e 4-5 work experience)

[fringe sphinx]

Every company is different. Engineering titles mean nothing/little.

I’ve known companies where everyone except juniors are ‘seniors’, and others where mid levels are principals, etc

[buoyant seal]

because everyone is having their own speed of studying, and having encountering sufficient work experience to learn the skills at practice at a deep level.
If person is having combination of soft skills to study independently rapidly, having good educational background, lucky to encounter enterprise level challenges to practice skills at a deepest level => then he could become quickly senior within 5 years for example.

But most people are not having sufficient soft skills to study with this speed
or never encounter sufficient work practice, that challenges them to be better to this level.

to become senior it requires not just study, it requires continious education and right challenges to reach sharp edge. or having right smart people that could really help to acquire work experience faster.
people often just forget even more than they learn at some point

[fringe sphinx]

I think I had a ‘consulting engineer’ title when I was in my 20s. Which was ridiculous (very senior title for the org, but it was because I had very particular skills and the salary put me in that band)

[grizzled night]

im not really sure if this belings in this channnel, but im about to enter my senior year of school and i've been thinking about taking computer science when i got to university to become a softwear engineer is there anything i should be looking out for or preparing for while i can, what are the upsides and down sides? thats it, i would really appricte it if someone had to time to respond. Thank you

[fringe sphinx]

What country?

[grizzled night]

kuwait

its either computer science or petroleum engineer, those are my top 2 choices i have in mind for uni

[buoyant seal]

middle person => person which learned average amount of knowledge to not make novice mistakes in range of technologies relevant to his position, and capable independently to work, with digging requirements on his own and finding solutions on his own.
knowing when it is the right time to seek solution on his own, and when he should seek extra information or help from his colleagues.
pretty much middle person is average work horse/gear of some company

usually lacks extra depths in his knowledge / and/or having less soft skills in terms of being at a more leading positions. Depends on his chosen path
could be making worse choices in terms of impact of his work at a company than senior. having less vision what is imprtant first

[grizzled night]

although after i would be flexible to move to the us or to europe for jobs if i chose computer science

[fringe sphinx]

I can only speak for US, but: look at the computer science curriculum for a local University. It will list out the courses you’d take. In the US, freshman year entails (usually) calc 1 and 2, along with intro to programming and DSA. All of these subjects you should and could prepare for. For example, there’s an online course called Cs50x which is the equivalent of intro to programming.

But before any of this, I’d suggest learning Python as a starting point.

[grizzled night]

currently learning python, want to get ahead and gain an advantage

so far its hard to stay focused and force myself to sit and learn sometimes but im dedicated to it, its hard when its summer but it will be worth it

[near ocean]

I dont think theres any utility in having strict junior/mid/senior classifications
Titles dont matter as others have mentioned, if people want to call you junior or senior thats fine as long as money is rolling in

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, so if you want to get ahead: cs50x then DSA, while working on calc. That’ll make freshman year much easier

You could also read some books on history of computing

[buoyant seal]

important is not to meet years of experience. years of experience is just a note that people rarely reach it before that. (there can be 8 years long juniors too)
important is to acquire sufficient expert knowledge in tech skills, and having sufficient soft skills (communicating with others, working in a team, having better intuition (backed up by knowledge) where to seek solution, and etc)
important to have sufficient real world/commercial work practice to practice all of it and learning to handle different edge cases in terms of tech and working in company
important to reach understanding of technologies/programming stuff at practice/reflex and having it applied multiple times

[grizzled night]

noted, thank youuu

[heady wyvern]

Whats cs50x then DSA?

[robust island]

CS50 is Harvard's free computer science course, DSA is an acronym for Data Structures and Algorithms

[heady wyvern]

Ok, A question I have is I hear about many people getting well paying jobs for computer science without a college degree. Is this possible

[smoky quest]

anything is possible, but not necessarily plausible

[balmy spade]

It is completely possible. What many overlook is that just become someone might not have a college degree does not mean they haven't poured thousands of hours into learning a skill. On top of fighting the expectation in the hiring world that you'll have a degree of some form, you still have to be a master of your craft.

It is against the norm in most situations so it will be more difficult by default. That's the cautionary call-out.

[smoky quest]

Great answer!
You may want to add this is not the main path for a career though

if @heady wyvern is in high school or college age, a CS degree will be the path of least resistance and with the most opportunities and compensation.

[balmy spade]

Not sure if I'm following "main path for career" enough for you there. I hope it's clearly stated that the general concusses advice is to get a college/university degree.

[smoky quest]

I may have missed your edit(s)

[balmy spade]

I added it afterward ;) I try not to present my views in a way of anything more than they are. An edge case.

[heady wyvern]

The route I want to take is not having college debt

[balmy spade]

There are paths for that which include college.

[smoky quest]

Given how well CS pays, I would consider it more like an investment than debt

[heady wyvern]

I hope so, I dont know. I think one solution is going to community college for 2 years then transferring to a uni

[smoky quest]

You could look into community colleges, grants or student loans

[balmy spade]

💯 a decent choice. There are so many pre-reqs you can knock out in community college with, usually, intern opportunities. community colleges are usually much closer to the local businesses.

[smoky quest]

And for context, each job ad gets thousands of applicants, most of which have degrees, internships, awesome projects and experience. So if you want to take a more difficult route, you will have to think how to stand out in these seas of applicants

[balmy spade]

And that, in the end, is really the challenge over all of it. Standing out enough to get the interview. Sure, school gives you knowledge and skills. But it also gives you confidence. The first help you stand out to get the interview. The latter help you land the job.

[smoky quest]

plus you get an environment with dedicated teachers who know what you don't know but need to know for your career.
You also get your first professional network, etc.

[heady wyvern]

many people go straight into a 4-year university, how is that different from going to community college then transferring to uni

[balmy spade]

Can't imagine it feels that much different. The culture is probably the biggest shift. Community Colleges are, in my limited experience, very chill.

heh. I'm actually curious about the difference other may see.

[robust island]

For me, my community college mostly just provides the coursework and some opportunities like internships and clubs and whatnot. A state uni would have more of the "college life" with dorm rooms and dining halls and all that

[fringe sphinx]

A 4 year degree is highly recommended, and there’s nothing wrong with community college: it’s a great way to get into a better school. In my state, the local community college has a clear pathway to CS at the state university (which has a top tier CS program)

[summer roost]

One big difference with switching from a community college to a uni after 2 years might be that you won't have as easy a time making permanent friends, or impressing yourself upon professors, etc. I had a research assistantship in my second year of uni that I wouldn't have had in a community college (since research is basically reserved for unis). I wound up being a teacher's assistant in my 3rd and 4th years, which was an option only available to me because the professors already knew me and my level of understanding from the 1st and 2nd year. And if you become and remain friends with the people sharing your major in uni, they'll form the start of your first professional network. They'll be some of the first people you'll be comparing compensation with to figure out if you're being paid fairly, and they'll give you some of your best insight into what work environments are like at different places.

[obsidian elbow]

I just joined the server. I'm 28 and hate my job so I've started learning python on my own. Only 2 weeks in and I understand the basics but also have no clue what I'm doing yet 😅. I'm going to take a certification course for python at my community College that falls within a 2 year degree. Would the certification be enough to get a job just entry level so I can work on experience while I'm In school?

[fringe sphinx]

It's a tough market for entry-level positions right now, and it's hard to land a software engineering position with just a few months of training. But, perhaps consider aiming initially for an adjacent job in tech which might have a lower entry requirement, such as QA, Tech Support, IT and DevOps.

[celest kite]

Also: a lot depends on what country you're in

[obsidian elbow]

Yeah everything I can find online wants a Bachelors degree 4+ years of exp. I don't mind starting at the bottom I only need $25 an hour. I live in a very rural small town though and idk whats around here job wise or how competitive it is. I'll be getting a web dev cert at the same time as python. I'm in the US

[balmy spade]

Just to slide my weird opinion in: "Bachelor degree or equivilant experience" is usually the wording. That latter part makes a difference if you have any work experience at all.

((standard caveate: It's easier with a degree and that's not even touching salary negotiations))

[fringe sphinx]

Also consider an AWS course/cert, gives you a few options to do some support/admin/devops stuff.

[obsidian elbow]

What is AWS?

@fringe sphinx

[fringe sphinx]

Amazon Web Services

[obsidian elbow]

Thanks for the info!

[pine sleet]

DevOps has lower entry requirements than software engineering?

[fleet reef]

Someone said devops?

[fringe sphinx]

I think there's a wide spectrum of devops roles, depending on the org. I've seen devops roles that were, more or less, sysadmins and scripting... and others which were equal to SWE. [that might have come across wrong: sysadmins and scripting are hard tasks... just lower barriers to entry]

[balmy spade]

What is "devops" here though?

[pine sleet]

Yeah I suppose that's fair

[obsidian elbow]

I'm just hoping the fact I live in a rural area where most people work in plants and didn't finish high-school when I start looking for jobs it'll be less competitive.

[celest kite]

It's unlikely you'd find development jobs locally. So then you'd be looking at remote work and a much broader pool of competition

[obsidian elbow]

Yeah I worry about that also. There are 3 bigger cities I live between. It would be an hour commute though but not the worst if necessary.

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, just remember there are a lot of types of jobs in tech, and there's a lot of room to grow for people who are motivated to learn.

[summer roost]

you should definitely be looking for jobs in those cities instead of remote work, once you're ready to start applying to jobs. It will be much, much easier to land an in-person job than a remote job, especially without any college or prior relevant work experience, and your skills will develop faster as well.

[void totem]

hai

[celest kite]

I agree with this fully. I'm not currently in a hiring role: but if I were I would be very cautious with hiring someone with limited experience if they were going to be full time remote. It's... Very difficult to spin an inexperienced team member up to speed remotely

[fringe sphinx]

I am in a hiring role, and fully agree with you.

[obsidian elbow]

Thank you all for the info glad I joined the group. I'm definitely willing to learn. Honestly the reason I hate my job is its gotten mundane and boring and I'm the best at it in our office. It's lost all its challenge not that there ever was much. So far in my 2 weeks of learning python my head is spinning and I love it lol.

[sleek egret]

I have hired in the past. it's difficult to manage junior staff when remote because most don't really understand what's expected of them

[sleek egret]

if it was fun, they wouldn't need to pay you to show up 🙂

[wild skiff]

What's a better choice ? Statistics and data analysis or advanced algorithms? My major is AI

[onyx birch]

can anyone help me in #1128543234382106664

[unreal turtle]

does it matter if i have programs/events i did in the past on my linkedin?

[summer roost]

that's what a resume is, right? A list of interesting things you've done in the past?

[unreal turtle]

its just for networking and information sessions, none of nthem were technical

[unreal turtle]

sorry i meant on linkedin not resume

will your answer still apply?

@summer roost

[summer roost]

I assume so, but I don't use LinkedIn. I would think that the bar for what to share on LinkedIn is even lower for a resume, though.

[buoyant elm]

I'm sure you meant *Data Structures and Algorithms?

[robust island]

Good catch, yeah

[unreal turtle]

should i just leave it off since these programs are just networking panels, information sessions, tips and tricks from people running them

its not like its technical, and might look good in terms of job recruiting

[dapper hawk]

#1128615146714042470 pls help me

[restive summit]

hey guys where can i seek help if i'm stuck while coding? is there any channel for it ?

[near ocean]

There are so many channels for help, have you looked in the server at all?

[proven crest]

#❓｜how-to-get-help

[wanton birch]

On your left, there should be a list of channels where you can and should be asking for help.

[halcyon tree]

Hey y'all, so I started learning python back in april this year and I'm now coding my first large scale application from scratch for a company and while I make some good progress I find myself often like a bit stuck, like I tend to be unsure what part I should work on next since the pieces are kind of connected and to work on part A I need part B working and for B to be working I need C to be working etc. Any good ways to like uh solve this so I can get a better flow?

[fringe sphinx]

That is a great question, probably not really a career related one, but: decomposition (breaking down a problem into smaller chunks) is a skill and no matter how "good" I think I am, my best solutions/approaches are always the result of talking it out with someone else. If you're doing this professionally, perhaps talk to other software engineers about the specifics of your problem. Generically, my approach depends on whether there's a "hard problem" that needs to be solved first, or whether it's more an integration problem (putting together lots of things that are individually not that hard). If integration, I start with getting a framework in place, with all the business logic stubbed out. If "hard", I prototype the hard part first, before trying to think through how it'd fit into a bigger system. If there are specific things you don't know how to do (ie: connect to a database), maybe build a basic function for each of them so you understand everything first.

[fringe sphinx]

I think the "professional" response is both: I'll get it done, but I'd rather be working on backend stuff. Perhaps over a lunch or coffee conversation 1x1 with the manager.

I feel you. I hate frontend work. Always have.

As a manager, I disagree with their attitude. Plenty of engineers specialize: there's a good reason why job postings list backend and frontend and full-stack positions.

[radiant moon]

depends. Do you want to keep your job?
lots of people have trouble finding jobs; but you're saying "meh I don't really need this job"

[buoyant seal]

sure. just ask before joining ^_^

not guaranteed to be upheld though https://media.tenor.com/GjqLIt28NkQAAAAd/vietnam-flashback.gif

if u have troubles finding job, better to suck it up until u will not have troubles though

[near ocean]

If you need a job its highly unlikely you will be contacted about it, waiting is not a wise decision

[vapid jay]

i wouldn't recommend starting of with python as a first programming language. It's a really high level programming language (in terms of abstraction) and you would have difficulties after that to understand more low level concepts like pointers for exemple.

[fringe sphinx]

I think the entire US University system disagrees with you.

[deft herald]

May be true, but I for one agree with @vapid jay

[near ocean]

You dont start driving by building a gearbox, people can learn whichever way, it'll be fine

[deft herald]

Yeah, i understand there are different approaches. I'm just more of a ground-up guy. My degree was in Electrical Engineering so I guess it makes sense...

[vapid jay]

yes but when you lean on a manual car you can drive an automatic one just fine. When you learn on an automatic car, you struggle with the manual one. I know people can learn whichever way, but he asked for advice on the server and I gave my point of view.

[near ocean]

I've never met anyone who couldnt drive a manual after learning automatic first
I've never met anyone struggle with english before learning german/greek/latin
These people do not exist, humans can learn a whole lot of things
The only issue with learning the nasty languages first is you risk people dropping it before they reach the point they can make tangible things

Also education professionals have this figured out, theres no point in us arguing

[vapid jay]

He is in highschool trying to learn something before he gets to studying computer science in university. I just recommended he starts with a low level programming language. I never asked to argue or anything, i'm sorry if i sounded aggressive or something it was just a point of view

[near ocean]

Im not saying youre aggressive, its fine
My opinion is that since people can learn whatever whenever, may as well start nice and simple and visual with something like python or javascript
You wont struggle with technicals like handling memory and whatnot and you'll create stuff quicker, with js especially you can literally see the results in the browser
It keeps people engaged, interested

[deft herald]

Are we saying everything education professionals do now is correct? I think it's okay to disagree with how certain school programs are run

[near ocean]

Kind of hard to disagree with harvard and mit

Learning as a highschooler is about keeping interest anyway, if they already were knees deep in software dev (even as a highschooler) they wouldnt be asking what language to learn

[sleek egret]

@near ocean makes a good point

[near ocean]

From a career perspective it doesnt really matter what you start with at least

[sleek egret]

it depends on your goals. do you want to 1) weed out the weak or 2) attract the less than 100% dedicated?

as an employer, I prefer option #2

[fringe sphinx]

Many moons ago, my first language in University was Pascal. Following by (I think junior year?) C++. No real issue there. My local state university is switching from Java to Python as their intro language, followed by a C seminar. I think most people agree that: You should learn both. And, educators believe: high level languages like Java and Python are good starting points for the general population of people who've never coded.

(I completely agree that CS students need to learn both, the only debate is whether there's harm in learning high level before lower level)

[near ocean]

In highschool they attempted to teach us pascal and vb.net 💀

[fringe sphinx]

Oh man, that reminded me of a database class that used Microsoft Access.

[radiant moon]

whoa, in this the 21st Century?

pascal ... damn

[fringe sphinx]

No, sadly. Last century, in fact.

[near ocean]

VB.net was more interesting because you could make interfaces much more easily anyway, we used some silly graphical editor and learned to attach procedures to events and shit

Also many more kids nowadays are introduced to programming through lua for roblox and minecraft mods, it makes sense to pick these langs

[vapid jay]

me too, i started with pascal and it was fun i guess

but yeah this century xD

[sleek egret]

yar

I started with BASIC

[glacial ingot]

ok so iam abt to start college next month, its a bachelors in CSE with AI And Ml using any python, if any of that makes any sense to anyone help me build a roadmap to get started

[fringe sphinx]

Have you looked at your universities curriculum roadmap for the major?

[glacial ingot]

ye we got alot of stuff half of which doesnt make sense to me

[wraith dove]

who wants to work IN python

[fringe sphinx]

Freshman year is usually calc1/2 + intro to programming + a data structures/DSA class. Does that map to what you're seeing?

[sleek egret]

probably some math (e.g. calculus, linear algebra), a physical science, one or more language classes (writing, literature), a civics/econ/history class and maybe data structures & algorithms

[glacial ingot]

if iam not wrong we also have biology in sem 3

[fringe sphinx]

yah, usually physical sciences and other stuff crammed into freshman year

[glacial ingot]

we we got a bunch of math, along with python sql and some 'misc junk'

[sleek egret]

university is not a trade school. it exists to educate the next generation of leaders. part of that means gaining a broad education on a variety of topics so that you can make informed decisions on a wide variety of policy

[glacial ingot]

i mean i like bio so iam not complaning

[sleek egret]

you have to decide if you want to be fix cars or if you want to design cars. (replace cars with software to bring the analogy full circle).

[glacial ingot]

i do plan on going for a masters in Ai

[sleek egret]

that's great. and an awareness of the broader socio-economic context you are working within will help to guide you along a path that seems most ethical to you

[glacial ingot]

soo how do i start getting better at python, iam decently familliar with the basics loops tuples, lists dictionary's whats next

[sleek egret]

to use an analogy, learning to program is like learning to play and write music. it's a combination of theory and practice. any rando can pick up a guitar and strum a few chords, but to become a master you need to learn how to apply the theory to your playing. but either way, you need to practice. a lot.

[sleek egret]

so simply put, in order to get better at python, you need to write and debug python. repeatedly. doing more and more challenging things.

[glacial ingot]

ok any suggestions on where to practice, i made a hackerrank account today

[sleek egret]

those are like learning how to play complex licks on a guitar. interesting and challenging in a way but only tangentially related to the practice of software development. I strongly urge you to take on actual projects. projects that take days to weeks to complete. and, in a few years, as you get more competent, take months to complete.

[glacial ingot]

okk whats a good project idea for a beginner, iam trying to learn pygame so you saying make smthing with that

[fringe sphinx]

Just to reinforce what ruff said: there's a big difference between the cs majors who invest the time, and those who treat it like HS: only do the required work.

[sleek egret]

right. and understand that university classes teach you the theory. you are expected to do learn the practical aspects on your own. and to practice on your own. a lot. in short, most (good) universities assume that you are an adult and will behave as such.

[glacial ingot]

ok so iam supposed to keep practising until i get good at it

[sleek egret]

yes. the days of people nagging you to do X, Y and Z for your own good are over.

now you have to nag yourself 🙂 turns out, this is much harder.

[glacial ingot]

ok so whats a good project to start with

[sleek egret]

what's that kindling link?

[glacial ingot]

?

[sleek egret]

!kindling

[inner wren]

Kindling Projects

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

[vapid jay]

i would recommend focusing on the math too besides python. You will need it a lot in AI.

[glacial ingot]

cool thanks

[sleek egret]

yeah. especially vector math (linear algebra, tensors, etc), statistics, probability, graph theory and the like

[fringe sphinx]

Oh, can I just scare you for a moment: https://wawiwa-tech.com/blog/why-do-students-drop-out-of-tech-studies/#:~:text=A recent survey from the,at a 7.2%25 dropout rate.

"Computer Science has the highest dropout rate – 9.8%"

[sleek egret]

let me guess, because it's too hard?

[glacial ingot]

o cool ima read it

[fringe sphinx]

And: https://www.utdanacenter.org/blog/decades-later-problematic-role-calculus-gatekeeper-opportunity-persists#:~:text=I have been amazed to,calculus course in college fail - "I have been amazed to discover that across the country it is typical that 25 or 30% of students who take their first calculus course in college fail. "

[glacial ingot]

haha jokes on you iam actually half decent at calculus

[sleek egret]

lol, from a company who has a vested interest in encouraging drop outs

[fringe sphinx]

I believe these stats are primarily because of study habits: college != hs. You have to put way more time in than you ever did before, with less supervision.

[fringe sphinx]

These stats are actually pretty low, the US freshman dropout rates are > 20%... https://educationdata.org/college-dropout-rates#:~:text=College dropout rates indicate that,up to 40%25 drop out.

[glacial ingot]

ok that sounds like an actual issue

[sleek egret]

I suspect that many people enter CS programs more enamored with the idea of being a software developer than the actual practice of being one

[sleek egret]

well, IME, freshman year is easy peasy

[glacial ingot]

i mean i think writing code is cool so i dont really mind

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, the content isn't the hard part. Showing up to class sober is.

[sleek egret]

I wasn't talking about you, I was just making an ill informed generalization based on my own biases 🙂

[glacial ingot]

ik but i felt it nessesary to point it out, it was more for me

[sleek egret]

lol, so true 🙂 hated those morning classes

[silver jacinth]

It's easy

Especially now with copilot and gpt tech, the barrier gets lowered

Exams are usually the hardest part.

Even though I'm in computer science, I don't plan on coding in the future. Much rather get hardware/it stuff done

That's what I like, not really coding.

[fringe sphinx]

Yup, lots of CS majors don't become SWEs. Not unusual to find different paths.

[sleek egret]

most people's jobs have little to nothing to do with their university major

[silver jacinth]

I personally would've went into electrical engineering instead of computer science if I knew what cs was like. Electrical engineering is what I assumed cs was

[fringe sphinx]

lol. I started as a EE and hated it.

[silver jacinth]

I find it cool, also we did a lot of stuff in our physics classes around it

[sleek egret]

I did not enjoy my analog circuits classes. they made my brain hurt.

[silver jacinth]

I just don't like calculus

Because we cannot get formula sheets, unlike in highschool where we were allowed to have them.

I cannot memorize that stuff when I'm taking 7 other classes

[fringe sphinx]

Decades later, I love calculus. I wish I could redo college now: the resources available for learning are amazing.

[deft herald]

I did EE but ended up working in SW

[silver jacinth]

Online they're good, in person it's rushed

[deft herald]

Although EE has still been pretty relevant to the fields i've worked in

[sleek egret]

I did systems engineering (essentially the mathematics of engineering) but wound up in finance

[fringe sphinx]

Agree... I recently watched the MIT OCW Calc, and found myself frequently pausing and rewinding to catch a specific point the prof was making.

[silver jacinth]

I hate how we ditched online schooling

[sleek egret]

I know a woman who majored in japanese who wound up doing software implementations of fixed income trade reconciliation systems

[deft herald]

That's cause you don't memorize the formulas, but how to derive them 🙂

[sleek egret]

I know a guy who majored in economics who has been: 1) a paralegal, 2) professional musician, 3) a A&R rep for a major music label, 4) a commercial video producer, 5) an interior designer

[deft herald]

damn

[silver jacinth]

I stopped making music because of the whole industry thing, also ai produced content doesn't really make it a viable path

[fringe sphinx]

Not sure about your experience, but one thing I hate about the fintech world is that all the product managers are finance/econ folks with no SWE backgrounds.

[sleek egret]

I know a guy who majored in religious studies who 1) fixed computers, 2) renovated houses, 3) designed web sites, 3) does life coaching

iow, long story short, don't get too hung up on your major

[hearty island]

i have arrived simply bc product management has been mentioned

[silver jacinth]

I mean cs is very important now with the current economy

Other degrees would be useless now like arts, gender studies, literature, film, social science.

[fringe sphinx]

that's a heckuva take. not taking the bait.

[proven crest]

This is also bait. Quit trolling

[sleek egret]

university is not a trade school

that some majors happen to have practical applications is sort of a happy coincidence

[silver jacinth]

My college is a technical program

[sleek egret]

if I were to go back to school, I'd major in philosophy

[hearty island]

if i were to start from the beginning of college, i'd choose accounting. love accounting. i was mad good at it too.

[sleek egret]

you're an odd duck, but whatever floats yer boat, I guess 🙂

[fringe sphinx]

Maybe https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-philosophy

[hearty island]

but i like project management a lot

[sleek egret]

no, just philosophy. I'd especially like to study different schools of thought to compare/contrast them against each other

[fringe sphinx]

Oh, the computation philosophy stuff fascinates me... but I also liked godel escher bach.

[sleek egret]

stoicism vs taoism, absurdism vs post-modernism, etc

[hearty island]

accounting is very fun (imo)

[sleek egret]

I curse that italian luca

[hearty island]

he's the goat fr fr

[sleek egret]

lol

[hearty island]

i bombed my first year of college lol. struggled with the right studying techniques, but ever since i transferred i got back to my As

[pastel thunder]

Lmao
now i got call from "another" HR manager and they said they will talk to their management after i said it wont be possible for me to join at current compensation.

[fringe sphinx]

Awesome. ** Just keep reiterating that you really want to work there. That goes a long way!

Hiring managers often have to fight with HR (or mgmt) to get a salary approved.

[silver jacinth]

they're useless degrees imo

[proven crest]

Why?

[sleek egret]

everything is negotiable 🙂

[fringe sphinx]

oh, you took the bait.

[hearty island]

rip

[true harness]

calls it out as bait
takes bait

[sleek egret]

who's the bait?

[proven crest]

I cant beleive ive done this

[silver jacinth]

would you hire a new graduate with a degree in gender studies for a role at your company? (No experience, first job)

[hearty island]

i'll pray for you pyrex

[fringe sphinx]

.topic

[hearty island]

guys i actually did something right during my internship for once and the senior managers liked it

[sleek egret]

congrats!

[hearty island]

i made the power bi dashboard easier to use so they wouldn't have to write formulas if a new problem manager was hired or left

[sleek egret]

you just saved them thousands of $$'s!

[hearty island]

and probably saved a future intern from having to have to write those formulas from scratch

[fringe sphinx]

So you're saying, you just cost the next intern his/her job?

[hearty island]

.... basically 💀

[sleek egret]

our job is literally to put other people out of work

I have, over the decades, directly put 100's of people out of work

[fringe sphinx]

You said the quiet part out loud.

[hearty island]

unless the next intern they hire has the ITIL foundations cert (why tf would they work as an intern then), they prob won't be hired

[sleek egret]

ask them for a budget to train an AI to pass the ITIL lvl 4 cert

[silver jacinth]

do you guys use generative models when working

[hearty island]

no since i deal with private data

[silver jacinth]

like copilot, local llms, etc

[hearty island]

also my company directly blocked chat gpt so even if i wanted to i couldn't

[silver jacinth]

well even models like starcoder hosted on your machine/server

[hearty island]

nope. it's really not needed for my job. my job involves a lot of detective like work where you come up with questions to investigate the root cause of problems.

[silver jacinth]

the web of files

[sleek egret]

just lay the blame on your enemies. two problems solved with one accusation!

[hearty island]

lmaooo

[sleek egret]

have you gotten anyone fired yet?

[hearty island]

nope

[sleek egret]

the first time you know for sure you ruined someone's life is a an odd feeling

it'll happen to you soon enough 🙂

[true harness]

that's pretty much what all engineers do, tbh

[sleek egret]

yeah, but they're at least 1 or 2 steps removed

[fringe sphinx]

I was being facetious

[open cradle]

How do you know it? Is there like a counter in your company that increases when that happens? 🤔

[hearty island]

meh i'm gonna be a project manager. my job isn't to fire anyone (at least i think it isn't)

[sleek egret]

the first person I got fired was when I was an intern at a big law firm. I found an billing discrepancy by jr lawyer. the partners did an investigation and sent out an email stating he had been fired saying "our firm is 400 years old and we don't need to cheat our clients".

[sleek egret]

eventually you will have to fire someone

[open cradle]

Oh, I see

[sleek egret]

it sucks worst when they did nothing wrong

[open cradle]

If you are project manager and things do not work out because there is a guy that is doing half of his job? I think that by being project manager you are even more exposed, as you are the first responsible person. And, as a consequence, actions are needed

[sleek egret]

at many larger firms, project managers are not the "boss" (i.e. they don't have hire/fire authority), they're more coordinators. that said, as you are promoted, you will eventually become "the boss". and you will eventually have to fire someone.

[fringe sphinx]

tbh, I had nightmares before and after the first time I had to lay someone off. Was a shitty situation (despite the fact that he was the lowest performing member of the team)

[open cradle]

They are not bosses, but they are typically the first person that reports something is wrong

[sleek egret]

I feel ya man

[sleek egret]

ah, good point

[open cradle]

But I agree that it is not the same as "pulling the trigger"

[fringe sphinx]

I also once had to, more or less, shut down a department. That actually was easier, since it wasn't personal.

[sleek egret]

oh, you didn't have to tell each person individually?

[fringe sphinx]

I did, each person individually... but had to offer a few people a continuing job.

But, still wasn't too bad, because it was the busines that failed them, rather than them that failed, if that makes any sense.

[sleek egret]

I see. yeah, I've had to do that too. I found it pretty rough... there were tears and drama.

[open cradle]

Are these things so common? Firing someone I mean

[fringe sphinx]

Unfortunately yes. Smaller companies are a little quicker about it, large companies tend to go through more process (performance improvement plans/etc)

[sleek egret]

assuming you are reasonably competent, eventually you get promoted into positions of authority. or you start your own firm. and well, yeah, it happens

[fringe sphinx]

Oh, wait, yah: from a managers perspective: yes, it's common. From an employees perspective: I agree with Ruff.

[open cradle]

I have been in 3 companies and I never saw this case. My experience is much more limited tho. And also different countries

[sleek egret]

you must have seen people being fired, no?

[open cradle]

Never. I add up like 5-7 years of experience. People that left the company was because they were changing

[sleek egret]

heh, I guess the last 10 years have really been boom times

[fringe sphinx]

I dunno, in small tech, I've made some really terrible hiring decisions. It's usually on me/us.

that was the other half of boom time: it was really hard for small tech to hire, so we had to roll the dice sometimes.

[open cradle]

Is there probation period in the US? I guess so, no?

[fringe sphinx]

No, most states are "at will" employment: meaning, you can be fired (or quit) at any time for any** reason.

** there's some legal limits here, so larger companies will add processes/procedures to avoid lawsuits... which means, bigger tech is slower to fire.

[silver jacinth]

here you get EI which is 55% of your wages

[open cradle]

Oh, I had no idea about it. In Europe there is typically a probation period that lasts 3-6 months. They can fire you at "any" moment (not so common tho). After it, the contract and the conditions are improved for the employee

[sleek egret]

essentially, you can fire someone for any or no reason except because of their race, sex, or nationality

that said, it's expensive to hire and train people so in reality, most companies don't like to fire anyone unless it's absolutely necessary

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, I have a basic criteria which is: if the employee is a net-negative, they need to go. But, even if they're just a moderate positive, we can work with that.

[open cradle]

Another thing that keeps my attention from US is the amount of questions that they make about your nationality, race... etc. I have never told anybody my race but in US selection processes

[fringe sphinx]

Really? I didn't think they could ask about that. There's certain things we're not allowed to ask during the hiring process.

[sleek egret]

you mean for university?

[open cradle]

It is being asked in the first "stage". When you fill out the forms. There is always a stage that asks me whether I am veteran. Another one asks me if I am: asian, asian mixed with white, white, hispanic, latin, black, black born in the US... There are so many categories that sometimes I had to ask to know which one is mine

[sleek egret]

well, race based bias in university admissions is now illegal, so <shrug>

[open cradle]

I found it for every single company I had to apply. No exceptions

[fringe sphinx]

Really? Huh. That's weird.

[true harness]

companies are required to collect that information for EEO

[sleek egret]

indeed, that is weird. I've never once been asked. must be a new thing.

[open cradle]

In theory they ask it for the opposite reason. There is supposed to be a minimum percentage of races they must have (according to what I read. It might be a lie)

[sleek egret]

um, racial quotas are illegal

[open cradle]

I am quite sure it is from the government. Because the questions were the same. Like a template

[fringe sphinx]

It must be for statistics / optional stuff that doesn't make it into an HR packet... but: https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/small-business/what-shouldnt-i-ask-when-hiring

[sleek egret]

ah, so that hasn't changed

[open cradle]

It could be this then

[true harness]

yep. look up "equal opportunity is the law poster" or EO questions

[sleek egret]

oh, was it for work permit/iimmigration stuff?

[fringe sphinx]

In big tech, we didn't have hiring quotas, but we did have strong incentives to interview minority and women candidates. In other words: we didn't have to bias our hiring, but we needed to increase the opportunities, if that makes sense.

[sleek egret]

lol, personally, I call that bias. but I know what you mean 🙂

it's a razor sharp edge and you have to tread carefully

[fringe sphinx]

The idea was to provide equal opportunity, not equal outcome. But, not to get all jordan peterson in here.

[open cradle]

It was on the very first stage that you fill out when applying for a job. I do not remember now. Maybe there was a checkbox to indicate whether I am a citizen or not. And maybe, based on that, they display all these questions. But if I am not wrong, among these questions you could also select if you were "native black". In such case this would make no sense

[sleek egret]

are you a US citizen or perminent resident?

[open cradle]

Nope

[sleek egret]

ah, ok. then it was probably immigration/work permit gov stuff. it's illegal to hire foreigners in the US without work permits.

[fringe sphinx]

I suspect these are more survey things, which are optional and separate from your HR packet. HR departments do want to track the mix of the applicants (my previous point)

[sleek egret]

I wonder if foreign workers are counted for reporting "diversity" stats

[open cradle]

Well, it is illegal in any other country. And I was never asked for this stuff. Maybe it was because all countries I applied to, they were all within the Europen Union or Schengen Space

[sleek egret]

I thought you were talking about the US?

[open cradle]

Sorry let me explain it better hahaha. When I was looking for a job, 90% of my applications were within the EU or Schengen Space. But let's say that 10% were to the US. Among all applications, only the US ones were asking me this stuff.

I just mentioned the EU thingy to give more context 🙂

[sleek egret]

I see

I wonder if the rules about what you can ask are different if the potential hire is foreign

[open cradle]

According to what you both said (BillyBobby and you), it seems it can be different 🤔

[fringe sphinx]

I dunno, for foreign, it's usually just: do you need a h1b or not.

[sleek egret]

h1b is just a popular option for bringing in foreign labor. there are others.

[pastel thunder]

like ?

apart from marriage, A1, F1

[silver jacinth]

USA inflation dropped

[dusk scaffold]

Dear friends, as a full-stack web developer with 3 years of experience, I am contemplating whether I should switch my focus to learning AI and transition away from web development entirely, or if I should continue improving my skills in web development. I would greatly appreciate your insights and advice on this matter.

people telling me about on upcoming years that AI will be having demanded jobs.

[open cradle]

Maybe here I am quite wrong (so if somebody else reads me, please correct me), but according to the latest surveys, the web developer field is one of the crowdest ones + one of the worst paid (source: stack overflow survey 2023). This is not something necessarily bad. Programmers are well paid overall

In any case, I would pick what I like the most. I cannot personally work on something I do not like just because of money

[silver jacinth]

Unless you have a masters or PhD, it's basically impossible to get any ml/ai researcher role

Data analyst is on the decline

[sleek egret]

you can think of the "AI" field consisting of two groups: A) those who use existing models with a bit of tweaking, B) those who create new approaches and models along with the baseline training

[silver jacinth]

BI is still very in demand, you could try learning that

[open cradle]

Power BI? My company wanted me to learn it. I did not know it was so popular

[silver jacinth]

The code for training models can be mostly automated, azure even offers it. However B) is what the job is

[dusk scaffold]

creating new model i am thinking about and that will be having high paid role also as well.

[sleek egret]

the B group tends to require a lot of advanced math and is populated mostly by PhD's these days. they demand and receive outsized compensation. the tasks group A performs is less difficult and requires only a top-level understanding of the field. i.e. what various approaches are good for/bad for, etc. group A doesn't need to know as much about how they work under the hood. they get less compensation but also require far less math and theory

[silver jacinth]

Data science is mainly math

[sleek egret]

then I suggest at least considering going back to school and getting a PhD as a large % of your competition will have one.

[silver jacinth]

Unless you're doing BI, data analyst or data engineering you'll need math

Also data science isn't the most stable field. The entire subreddit mostly agrees that it's about automating yourself out of a job, which is what you'll do

[fringe sphinx]

I casually read that as "data science is a myth". I kinda agree.

[sleek egret]

sure, "data science" is just the hip new name for analysts who do statistics and mathematical modelling using programming tools. more or less.

[silver jacinth]

It's basically the same job as a statistician

[fringe sphinx]

Very much depends on the org. In many orgs, its more what Ruff said.

[dusk scaffold]

lol i just graduate last month

[sleek egret]

most of your day as a "data scientist" consists of cleaning and transforming data

[silver jacinth]

I'll recommend looking into BI or data engineering. Those are related to your degree

[sleek egret]

but calling the job "data scientist" sounds a lot cooler than calling it "data janitor" 🙂

[dusk scaffold]

there is some libraries whose do the math job for you right?

[sleek egret]

well, there are people with just an undergrad degree working in AI research. but potential employers will expect you to know more math and be sharper than most PhD's (sorta unfair, but it is what it is).

[silver jacinth]

BI is about displaying the data to your company in a readable manor using existing tools. There's power BI for that

[sleek egret]

lol, the problem is not doing the math. it's about knowing what math to do!

[silver jacinth]

And the ai/ml researchers get paid for making new math/algorithms

[dusk scaffold]

how about working on build-in models?

[sleek egret]

remember in your classes the kids who could follow instructions and mechanistically solve math problems but recoiled in horror when confronted with "word problems"? well, those kids have been replaced with software.

[silver jacinth]

There's 20 or so popular algorithms for epochs and some projects like transformer based stuff (GPT) will require you to build entirely new systems using algorithm not seen before

It's basically a chemistry lab but using computers like ruff said

[sleek egret]

or remember when in some of your university classes a prof would write some complex non-linear math and then say, "well obviously this can be replaced with a simple linear function" and then he would continue? and most of the kids in class were "wtf? how is that obvious??!?!"

[silver jacinth]

I looked into it and built a simple stock price model using pytorch and although it's easier to build it. Mine was 100-200epochs which is terrible

Meaning most of the data in the training set would be lost

[sleek egret]

it was obvious to him because he had an intuitive feel for the math (entire thing, not just that part) so he could see that it was more than necessary. that's the level of mat that will make you stand out.

[dusk scaffold]

i am not that big guy in math so, consider AI will be cumbersome for me?

[sleek egret]

you can still work in AI by tweaking and applying existing models to new problems

[silver jacinth]

BI and data engineering is in the same realm as data science in a sense

[sleek egret]

much less math involved. though you will need a good understanding of the pros/cons for various approaches

[silver jacinth]

I'll suggest to avoid ai/ml researcher since that is an actual science and requires math a lot.

[fringe sphinx]

I enjoy data engineering, all the fun without the responsibility of being right 🙂

[sleek egret]

lol, well said

[dusk scaffold]

oh ok thats a good thing

[fringe sphinx]

That said, I do end up part-timing as a quant: when you're in DE, many problems are lay-ups.

[sleek egret]

explaining the math (without sounding condescending) to less mathematical execs can be a great career path.

[fringe sphinx]

That's more or less my entire career.

[silver jacinth]

That's BI and data analyst

Just showing those graphs and such you see in matplotlib and all that

[sleek egret]

for example, say you tell someone "this system only has a 0.1% chance of failure every hour". most people will say "wow, 99.9% reliability, that's awesome. it'll never break!"

[fringe sphinx]

<oblig space shuttle ppt reference>

[sleek egret]

you then have to explain that there's a 50/50 chance of failure every three weeks

[dusk scaffold]

if someone new to AI how they should learn? where they should start from and how much time required to do work in it and making stuff and to get ready for a job?

[sleek egret]

that makes them less happy, but <shrug>

[silver jacinth]

I'll say, save your sanity

I looked into it and it gets hard very fast.

[fringe sphinx]

There are plenty of places to start. Just about every CS grad should have some exposure to the subject. I'd suggest starting with regressions and classifications in sklearn, then working your way up to some examples with tensorflow or pytorch.

[dusk scaffold]

i have started watching some paid tutorial and it becoming hard for me also lol.

[fringe sphinx]

Dont need to be expert, just familiar.

[silver jacinth]

Just look up 3blues or whatever his channel is on YouTube

[fringe sphinx]

3brown1blue, yah, his neural net is great.

[silver jacinth]

If you understand that, then look at the tensor flow resources since it's easier than pytorch

[sleek egret]

I'd say start by doing a survey of the various approaches and what they can do/can't do. everything from optimization and clustering to the various types of ANN's

[silver jacinth]

However, beyond regression, leakyrlu and all that can make you hit a brick wall

The math gets heavy there, very heavy

[fringe sphinx]

I dunno, it's all reasonable if you don't try to learn everything. The problem is there's too much to learn.

[sleek egret]

like, what approach is better for classification? for prediction?

once you have a broad 20,000 ft view of the landscape, zoom in on what interests you

[dusk scaffold]

i have hear these words but donot know about it.

[sleek egret]

or just randomly pick something that sounds cool to you 😋

[silver jacinth]

If you want to learn ai, I'll say stop after linear regression. 2D is easier than working with tensors and data in n dimensions

[sleek egret]

that's why you should survey the landscape 🙂

spend a few hours on each major category. you should be done in a few months.

[silver jacinth]

Microsoft's GitHub is good for beginners, doesn't go over much of the advanced math

[dusk scaffold]

i am currently learning data pre-processing.