career-advice

[vapid jay]

maybe, just don't count the days

[pliant hawk]

hello fellow coders!

I am a beginner ( welp not even a beginner cuz I havent even started yet..)

in order for me to get into Data Science or Machine Learning, how should I learn Python? ( I dont wanna see people saying watch some videos on it..i want the link to the actual video which i should watch for it..or which specific books i should read WITH the name pleaseee!!!!...i have had some terrible experience so please dont mind me)

and other than Python, what else should I learn?

anyone got a good roadmap?

[harsh river]

ask the question in #python-discussion , this channel is for carreer discussion

[pliant hawk]

oh..sorry!

[foggy lily]

Actually I need help in finding a job. Based in Europe. Can this channel be of any help?

[buoyant seal]

@pliant hawk @KRR he actually asked career discussion question 🙂 The most popular 😂 that gets repeated in answers like 100 times each time

[harsh river]

sure but the question is more appropiate for #python-discussion

[buoyant seal]

How so? #python-discussion is a general flood channel with very high msg rate and msg disappearance. Not really best fit for this question😕

[sterile vault]

Check the sticky for resources.
While it's offtopic here, i suggest checking reviews for "Python for Data Science" O'Reilly book.

Also, LinkedIn jobs are a mess. No way to filter out companies (outstaff firms tend to spam jobs) and a lot of irrelevant stuff ends up in results.

[weary crag]

There’s some GitHub repositories with roadmaps and resources

Give me a sec to find em

Not a GitHub repo but https://roadmap.sh/ai-data-scientist

https://github.com/academic/awesome-datascience

https://github.com/ossu/data-science

[dull hemlock]

hii

[somber egret]

I am an Experienced developer specializing in AI/ML technologies, chatbot creation, AI agents, and web scraping. With a deep passion for technology and a proven track record, I excel in crafting intelligent solutions that enhance user experiences and automate processes. My skills include:

AI/ML: Proficient in designing and implementing machine learning models for various applications, from predictive analytics to natural language processing.

ChatBot Development: Skilled in building interactive and engaging chatbots that simulate human-like conversations, enhancing customer engagement and support.

AI Agents: Experienced in developing AI agents that make intelligent decisions and automate complex tasks, streamlining workflows and increasing efficiency.

Web Scraping: Adept at extracting and parsing data from websites efficiently, enabling data-driven insights and informed decision-making.

With a focus on innovation and a commitment to delivering exceptional results, I am dedicated to bringing your AI, chatbot, AI agent, and web scraping projects to life. Let's collaborate to create solutions that redefine possibilities.

Looking forward to contributing to your success.

[wanton onyx]

what you think career in prompt engineer is it related with AI/ML engineering or data scientist?

[gritty rivet]

A career that hasn't existed for a year may not be around in a year for all we know. Prompt engineering doesn't require much in the way of technical skills either. If you're interested in those other fields, better study up.

[wary geyser]

I can see that almost every internship/entry job looks for a candidate who's currently enrolled in a CS college program
Can I still apply as a self-taught person? How do I reimburse not having a degree?

[gritty rivet]

At least in the US (we don't know where you are) "Internships" are for students by law, but there are some "apprenticeships" which may be open to others.

If you cannot get a degree you'll just have to hustle harder in every other way... have a strong portfolio, do a lot of networking,, etc.

[vapid jay]

Anyone knows how to add fingerprint on ubuntu. I have inbuilt fingerprint sensor but i am not able to use it.

[wary geyser]

I see. I'm from Egypt actually
My initial plan was to try to be a part of some bootcamp then find a local job here in my country, gain experience, etc
Then seek a remote job in the US or completely relocate

[fringe sphinx]

Perhaps look at job descriptions to see what employes are expecting. A "bootcamp" isn't going to prepare you to be a full-time software engineer, but it might give you some skills to use programming in another technical job, and there are a lot of different jobs in tech.

For example, QA jobs are a good entry point for non-degree holders. Or tech support. Or operations.

[wary geyser]

I was hoping I could create a hell of a portfolio, solve a ton of coding problems
Try to be really good at what I am doing so that I attract recruiters

[wary geyser]

Absolutely, thanks for the info

[somber egret]

I am an Experienced developer specializing in AI/ML technologies, chatbot creation, AI agents, and web scraping. With a deep passion for technology and a proven track record, I excel in crafting intelligent solutions that enhance user experiences and automate processes. My skills include:

AI/ML: Proficient in designing and implementing machine learning models for various applications, from predictive analytics to natural language processing.

ChatBot Development: Skilled in building interactive and engaging chatbots that simulate human-like conversations, enhancing customer engagement and support.

AI Agents: Experienced in developing AI agents that make intelligent decisions and automate complex tasks, streamlining workflows and increasing efficiency.

Web Scraping: Adept at extracting and parsing data from websites efficiently, enabling data-driven insights and informed decision-making.

With a focus on innovation and a commitment to delivering exceptional results, I am dedicated to bringing your AI, chatbot, AI agent, and web scraping projects to life. Let's collaborate to create solutions that redefine possibilities.

Looking forward to contributing to your success.

[analog sun]

Hello, this channel (and server) isn't the place to look for work

[somber egret]

got it

[vapid jay]

Should I still try my hardest to pursue a career in CS or lean more in stuff like art / creativity, because I'm not sure if in like 5-6 years programmers will be that needed like now/before

[fringe sphinx]

because there's lots of jobs in art? /sarcasm

[fringe sphinx]

genuine answer: this gets asked very often. There's two answers: 1. AI right now (GPT) is pretty bad... it looks like magic to non-SWEs, but to SWEs, it's just another flawed tool like google or stackoverflow. 2. Automation (like AI) is a good thing, not a bad thing, for software engineers. Imagine what we'll be able to build with better tools, infrastructure, etc.

[vapid jay]

wich website do you want to see on the web? i need idea for a project i have to dev a website

[misty glacier]

I've joined this server not long ago at all looking to ask the same question. Right now I'm in my senior year of high school at a vocational school and have gone all four years now doing Electrical. My dream has been to go into this industry and just have a career that I feel that I'm constantly learning from and feel that I am making a change in the world. I took this summer specifically to take a deeper dive into Electrical by working for a company that was willing to give me a internship kind of position with them. I just isn't for me and I really want to dive so much more into programing. I started getting into the basics with learning from Code Academy but I really want to make sure I'm doing what I need to be able to be successful in this industry. I am also very fearful that by the time I have the knowledge needed to compete for career level jobs and companies that AI and machine learning will just completely negate everything I've learned and make me not needed. What should I do? And is it possible to be "self taught" or a way that wouldn't require me to go to college? Some of these questions may sound a little stupid but I am very new to this and am just looking for some advice even if it sounds super cliche or common sense

[fringe sphinx]

these are common questions: 1. software engineering jobs aren't going away/wont be replaced by AI. 2. A college degree is needed to make the big bucks (sure there are rare exceptions.. but those are exceptions)... and if you're afraid of AI/ML, then the first jobs to go will be the lower level jobs: education is how you get to the higher level jobs.

If I were in high school: I'd 1. learn programming and practice it regularly... it takes a lot of time and effort to get good. You do need to self-learn, in addition to education. 2. Study math: don't underestimate it - computer science has a lot of math classes, and AI/ML is all math concepts - you need to get to the next level of <mathematical maturity> to be a good programmer. 3. Learn something new every day/week/month - anything new 4. Find a path that involves a college degree... whether it's a traditional 4 year program or a community college or evening classes while working.

[misty glacier]

I do love math and as I've started learning I've noticed how much math goes into programing and computing that I really thought. I think that's why I've grown such a liking for programing is because it keeps me learning and wanting to learn more. As far as the education, I kind of thought that was the case with needing a college degree. I'm not against going to college or anything but I had no idea if there was a way to start working without going down that path. While being in college is it common to have an internship in while also being in school? My high school offers something like this called Co-Op where we go to our regular academic classes one week and the other week where we would have our shop, we can go work for a job related to our majoir.

[vapid jay]

yeah AI is hard man

but as long as you know math and calc and stuff ur probably good

[fringe sphinx]

Lots of people do summer internships. Some people have side jobs while in school, although it's hard... even part time tech support or IT jobs is good experience.

[gilded valley]

I don't see it myself - probably because I don't use it enough - but I do know a few genuinely very smart programmers who say that Chatgpt has been a game changer for them.

I think it's probably easy to underestimate the current potential utility. (still much much easier to overestimate though)

programmer efficiency does reach a point where it starts reducing the number of programmers the world wants - whether that's a feasible point to reach is a different question

(IMO we're likely to reach it within the next 50 years barring apocalypse)

[keen violet]

Hey, ive never done freelancer jobs before, does anybody have any suggestion of freelancer websites?

[glass shoal]

Hello, I have failed in final year of my B.Sc but I am working on a python telegram bot and studying machine learning and Prompting. Can i get a job ??

[stone pebble]

Hey guys, next year I will choose my major to study in IT. Now, I'm interested in data science and AI. Is that okay to choose these majors. I hope to get your guys advice on this issue. Thanks

[delicate bane]

i think the expectation of technical folks picking up more adjacent skills in product, etc. may occur. at least thats what some folks are saying. i think its hard to predict the future.

[gritty rivet]

Upwork and Fiverr. But be aware that entry-level freelancing is extremely competitive, hard to break into and low paid

[storm turret]

What about after you get some customers?

[wanton onyx]

yes you can get a job but it is better to complete your degree for a longer run

because at some point for your personal growth you will be required a graduation degree

[true harness]

when?

[fringe sphinx]

As with all business: start small, and grow your relationships with existing customers... and acquire increasingly larger customers (as your credibility, experience and ability to deliver increase).

[wanton onyx]

when you want to earn more get a good job in a MNC or some good orgs (its for IT or science). they want graduate candidates

they even have cut-offs like minimum overall grades, language proficiency etc etc

Although I have friends and relatives....they are not graduated but yet they are doing jobs in developing field but they are regretting of not having a graduation degree because it is required

[slate ocean]

Is python a worthy high income skill to learn as of now with the rise of AI?

Or is it better to pursue another programming language or even another completely different high income skill?

[smoky quest]

CS is not about the language, it's about what you do with it.
Programming languages are no different than a screw driver. You can use them to fix a bike or build a space ship

[deft herald]

In the same sense, there are and will continue to be advanced robots that know how to drive a screw. But guess what? There are still people that drive the screws on those robots by hand and there are plenty of other jobs out there that involve humans using screwdrivers and there will be for the forseeable future

[slate ocean]

So essentially CS will always be a great skill to learn

Thank you guys 🙏

[smoky quest]

sounds like a question more appropriate for #python-discussion or #software-architecture rather than #career-advice

[somber pawn]

oh sorry, already got the answer in internals-and-peps, not sure why I sent this here.

[wanton onyx]

that is one good answer 👏

[onyx basin]

Hello, I've seen some resumes that has these skills in the skills section 1. Problem Solving. 2. Creative Thinking. 3.Team Work

Do I need to add these to m resume

[near ocean]

No

Its silly, its obvious, youre only making yourself look bad if you think "problem solving" is a notable skill

[deft herald]

Yeah those are all soft skills that should be assessed in the interview process. That's kind of one of the main reasons why the interview process exists, really

[torpid saddle]

I don't think it's possible to be a developer and not have problem solving as a skill.. it's sort of implied in the work

[smoky quest]

it is possible.
You see all sorts of things in interviews

[smoky quest]

Show, don't tell.
Don say you are awesome at problem solving, show it by actually having tough problems solved

[torpid saddle]

I'd argue those people aren't actual developers but oh well

[onyx basin]

You're right, but how am I gonna show'em before they hire me

[pine sleet]

Through your resume (not by just straight telling them) and interviewing skills

[smoky quest]

projects, internships, professional experience, etc.

[onyx basin]

ok, well I don't have a degree in programming, I do have courses, and there's no internships or experience

I'm putting my project showcase in the experience section

[pine sleet]

you will probably need to have some impressive projects that demonstrate your problem solving, creating thinking, and teamwork skills then

[onyx basin]

hm, thanks.. Could you suggest any?

[pine sleet]

Doesn't really matter exactly what the project is, important thing is it demonstrates skills

[smoky quest]

The nature of the project doesn't matter as long as it shows deeper skills.
So that could be on the algorithm and datastructure side, on the database side (complex queries, schemas, use cases, etc.)...
You could look at the list of skills over at https://roadmap.sh/ to get some inspiration.

It also helps to pick something you are passionate about so that you are more likely to dive deeper and not have a copy/paste of the same thing everyone else has

[onyx basin]

thanks a lot @ Robin and @ recursive_error

I just wanna ask if this project enough or is it too poor, it's a project I've done earlier to test my abilities using Flask and HTML and CSS code

[pine sleet]

One option would be using a database to demonstrate you know how to use them
You could also set up DevOps stuff (ci/cd) and put those on your project as well. Effective testing also comes to mind

[onyx basin]

well is SQL ok?

[pine sleet]

Sure, SQL is used widely in the field, it can't hurt to know it

[onyx basin]

thanks for clarifying, I already know SQL

erm, Is there some resume formats that "suits" a programmers need, I mean like a resume made to be used by programmers (ik it sounds crazy a bit).
I'm having a little bit of a struggle using some formats on resume.io

[pine sleet]

Not necessarily but there are many Jake's Resume fans here

[onyx basin]

I gotta check it out then😅
Thanks

[weary crag]

It’s also pinned in this channel

[onyx basin]

well I just checked it out, uhm doesn't it feel a bit raw just like HTML without CSS (idk if that's better)

[oak cloak]

hi

i like the python language

[pine sleet]

we do too c:

[wind swift]

hey guys, im gonig to be studying software engineering, however i was wondering if theres some of you that took aa bootcamp and that i can pick your brain about some questions of mine

[gritty rivet]

Don't ask to ask, just ask. You can also try r/codingbootcamps.on Reddit. They have a semi-official Discord but it's not super active

[ionic pine]

Guys I am good at biology, maths and physics and computer, but I am confused between which stream I choose , medical or non-medical , i am currently in grade 9 ,so i thought of deciding my future , but I am confused what to choose

[buoyant seal]

😅 i had sam problem exactly, except i was good at biology, math, computers and liked psychology.

I gave a thought, that at chemistry i suck, therefore medical path is closed to me. I don't have a combo biology+chemistry.
i thought i will not be able to earn via psychology and liking this life path as main one. it was more hobby to me.
that made me choosing next combo i managed to make: Maths + Computers. Which was enough to pass exams into university

If i had Physics under belt, it would be even easier. Because in my country we can enter CS universities with 3 exam scores (Native language, Math and Computers or Physics) Having physics in addition to math, pretty much opens any tech/engineering related program in my country.

[ionic pine]

Which country?

I also like biology and wana be a cardiologist

[buoyant seal]

russia
chemistry is obligatory entry exam/score for med here. i bet everywhere else too

[ionic pine]

But I like computer also , I good at coding , but I like it as my hobby

[buoyant seal]

check university requirements for this path. Chemistry may be also needed for your choice. get prepared for its exam then.
Final choice i based on available universities in my town and exam/score requirements to enter it (navigated their web sites to check entry requirements)

[ionic pine]

Thanks for conversation

[plain valley]

I really dont understand the code in depth but I would love to code lil projects. But I'm doing a major in biotechnology so I dont really need to learn coding but it's fun. And somtimes breathtaking.

[plain valley]

Yess if I had a option to choose biology+computer scince it would be awesome!. But the world didnt need the combination of biology and cs lol

[buoyant seal]

learn python then 😄 good enough for lil scripting, and doing data science magic (in jupyter or small files included)
more programmatic flexible option than just using Excel

In fact, Microsoft added Python support to Excel recently

[buoyant seal]

Head First 3d edition recently got released. I can bet it is perfect for non tech people to learn python 🙂 Make sure to do all practical exercises!
U need a lot of practice to get used to programming though, so feel free to add smth like Automating the boring stuff in addition

[plain valley]

Yeah. I know little bit of python and html css. I would love to do projects in that.

[plain valley]

Nice thanks!!

[elder forge]

Medical tilts slightly more towards memorization, while math/physics/CS tilts more towards logic.
You can think about what skills you have that makes you good at these subjects.

[wanton onyx]

@ionic pine you can go with bio physics

[vapid jay]

Hi guys I normally code Python projects, C++ and JS what platforms beside Upwork and Fiver are good to use to make money from doing projects for clients

[buoyant seal]

It is cool to open your own entrepreneurship and making B2B contacts directly with clients 😉 without intermediate links

That is assuming u a responsible enough to pay your taxes on your own, and resolving corresponding beraucracy
And able to write contacts and invoices

Exact rules(and taxes) heavily depend on country location. Some countries may be not having it at all, others could be offering specific freelancer beraucracy case and etc
My knowledge is limited only to availability of this process in two countries

[shadow hornet]

Topcoder

[onyx basin]

do we all agree that no one is good at chem

[lone geode]

Hello people, I am new to programming I have learned basic Python up to intermediate level and now I am learning Selenium for scraping and small bots and stuff. I will be going to University for BS in Computer Science and I want to use the scraping skills to earn and support myself and my education. Can this be possible with the skills I have now? How can I improve and if there is any type of advice I could get like to learn a certain thing or aspect that can help me or to focus on certain part, please guide me. I am eagerly waiting for your input and guidance. I think I am right in assuming that most of you might have freelancing experience so please do guide me on how I can get started there as I will be on a student visa and won't get employment due to it's restrictions and don't want to break the rules. Thanking each and everyone of again..

[vapid jay]

Sure! I would be happy to clarify why @gilded valley 's advice is bad advice! In some European countries it is customary to request certificates of service from previous work experiences during the interview stage and a mismatch of job title could be interpreted as a negative signal. In some other contexts, a lie on a CV (including a bent job title) could be seen as an attempt at fraud, which might have legal implications.

[buoyant seal]

i have no freelancing experience, yet having good career. Just working for companies in full time jobs. Including remotely in international way.
each time when i tried doing freelancing, i encountered limitations of freelancing platforms and how to receive money from it, and did not bother to pursue it.

[gilded valley]

In no country that I'm aware of - which includes NL, DE, EE, LT, GB, the US, and CA - is it typical to ask for proof of work until after an offer has been made

[lone geode]

Right I may pursue that but I think that I will face problems as most countries restrict student visa holders to only work 20 hours a week and I don't know if a company is willing to work with someone like me and even if they do then the pay will be way less and not be able to afford tuition and living expenses. What do you think?

[gilded valley]

so in what countries does this happen @vapid jay?

please enlighten us with your broad experience

[buoyant seal]

the least issues beginning people have in working locally, where they have already working permits.
Also internships/students are usually accepted to work onsite only in a very highly preferable way.
Considering that internships often having scarse enough hours, 20 hours can be more than enough for it

TLDR: finding work-internship internationally without work permit as beginner? no way in my opinion
at best finding some platform that grabs percentage out of income, but you will be cometing with billion of people from India/Iran/Malaysia.уес there
TLDR2: The least competion u have working locally where u have working permit. Competing with people online is kind of horrible for beginners

[vapid jay]

Wrong. Germany: Zeugnis, often asked before first telephone screen. Your confidence is unmatched by the accuracy of your statements. Recommendation: keep them in sync by being very confident only about things which are very correct.

[vapid jay]

Feel free to check with somebody from Germany to curb your sarcasm and learn about this common European practice. After that, fix your confidence levels.

[vapid jay]

And refrain from giving advice which could be seen as fraudulent.

[lone geode]

Thank you for pointing this out, so how would you suggest I should handle this?

[buoyant seal]

i personally worked in low requirements jobs during university. university offered vacancy of system administrator to me which i worked in
if u will be able to find real internship and attend during university time, u will make a heavy boon to boost your career 😄

[gilded valley]

it is still not standard practice in software engineering jobs, because most jobs are being applied for whilst still employed at the previous company.

it is very common in Germany not to provide it til at or after the offer stage

[pale rain]

hey guys

[lone geode]

If you don't mind can I ask you where you are from? I will be going to UK for study btw.

[buoyant seal]

that should be irrelevant for current context

[onyx basin]

Hello, I've seen some jobs on upwork that wants people to use BeautfulSoup or Selenium to get some data from certain websites...
But there are many websites that doeesn't allow bots (BeautifulSoup or Selenium) to scrape data on them
so what do I do now, do I look into jobs and projects like this or do I stay away from them, someone told me that he won't do the job
but I'm the programmer and their the one who will use the code and scrape the data so there's nothing on me?? What's your advice to me, do I do jobs with selenium and bs or not?

[gilded valley]

how do I know this? multiple friends employed in Germany. the one I just asked said no one really cares, a lot of job apps have a field for it but you just ignore it

[vapid jay]

Still incorrect re: Germany. But you are on a roll so I'll let this slide. I hope they won't listen to you.

[gilded valley]

ah, you've hired people in Germany? or at least been hired there?

[vapid jay]

Never been hired before. Still studying.

Also: being a Zoomer is not a bad thing. "OK, Zoomer" is not a nice thing to say. Be nice.

[gilded valley]

OK zoomer

[vapid jay]

So you are being purposefully provocative because you resent that I called you out on giving just.. bad advice? And now you want to make about the person and their unchangeable characteristics rather than the thing being disputed? Sad... 😦

[gilded valley]

OK zoomer

[vapid jay]

I am proud to be of the generation I am

[vapid jay]

Doesn't make me wrong.. as they say in the movie The Big Short

Down with the Ageism!

[gilded valley]

OK zoomer

[vapid jay]

Fair enough, I'll report it. You made this personal, I contradicted your views, not attacked you. I also substantiated my contradiction. They won't let it fly here.

[gilded valley]

OK zoomer

[kind marsh]

@gilded valley quit with the off-topic and spammy remarks, this channel's for career discussion, not going "OK zoomer" over and over

[outer granite]

You still have options, maybe choose BioTechnology, that is the combination of all areas that you have stated.

[ionic pine]

hmm weird

[outer granite]

What do you mean "weird"?

[ionic pine]

isnt biology and computer together weird?

[outer granite]

No?

[outer granite]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotechnology

There are now many universities that offer undergraduate degrees in Biotech.

[gilded valley]

it's perfectly on topic, it's just acknowledging something said at me, but OK

[onyx basin]

hello, can anyone help me out on this

[true harness]

how do you know a mismatched job title could be interpreted as a negative signal? are you speaking in general or in the software development context?

[gritty rivet]

If you're concerned about the legal risk, get a lawyer. If you're concerned about the reputational risk, you don't need to tell anyone or put it on your resume.

[lone geode]

I understand, can you please guide me what skills I should focus on learning and improving, right now I only know Python and I am focusing on getting better at that but if there is something else I should look into let me know.

[buoyant seal]

i follow a path of backend developer and DevOps engineer.
also having heavy emphasis onto software engineering path in general (learning its core skills reusable across any job role related to it)
i can recommend stuff from it if desired

[buoyant seal]

https://roadmap.sh/ otherwise, choose your own path 😄 or smth else not covered by roadmap.sh

[gritty rivet]

It partly depends on what you want to do with Python, but basic Python+SQL and familiarity with Linux/cloud stuff is sometimes enough to get your foot in the door with backend/data stuff. Check out the curriculum of the Nucamp Backend bootcamp. That's kind of the bare minimum skillset for code-heavy jobs but a good start

[buoyant seal]

• it always does not hurt to read those books in any chosen path:

• Code Complete by McConnel, generic book that teaches all stuff regarding software development of a junior to middle level. Quite encompassing comprehensive book. it will teach you basic minimum of a sane variable/function names and code structure in general, how often to write comments and everything else.
• Unit testing best principles and practices by Khorikov, book to weaponize your code to minimum industry level
• TDD by kent beck, teaches feeling how often tests should be written and having more practical approach in general
  😄
  That is assuming u already learnt Data structures and algorithms and basic OOP stuff

[fringe sphinx]

Great stuff from Darkwind, to add other ideas: https://missing.csail.mit.edu contains some great topics where many new programmers are lacking. Watch conference videos to be more ‘current’ in what’s happening in tech: for example https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8uoeex94UhEGxPOetT3bpg8ibcxflh44

[onyx basin]

well, i'i'm concerned about the legal risk... but getting a lawyer isn't possible (for me)

I'I've just checked upwork projects section where programmers offer projects to make it for people...

i'i've searched python and everybody was offering seleniuselenium work and data scraping and mining and internet crawlers

do they need to be concerned about the legal risk???

[fringe sphinx]

There’s not much people can really tell you. This discord (and discord has a whole) has a ‘we don’t help with breaking TOS’s’ rule for good reason: even a negligible risk isn’t worth it. You’d have to make your own judgement call, but I don’t think anyone else can help you make that decision.

[vapid jay]

If you are bending your real job title (e.g. Software Engineer) to make it look more like a job you are applying for (e.g. ... Site Reliability Engineer? other?) even if you had some SRE-like experience.. this could be seen negatively once one finds out about the "poetic licence". @gilded valley seemed to suggest that it be OK with no reservation to do so but I wanted to suggest being more careful about adherence to the truth.

[gilded valley]

OK zoomer

[graceful mason]

I think both of you have gone off topic, since this was a question of an internship title rather than a "real" job title
I was a Technology Intern but put it as Software Intern on my CV since I primarily wrote software. Companies make grad/intern titles vague because they are a general position and can put the person inside any team

[gilded valley]

the same is often true for permanent positions. my current job title is "associate". tech here has pretty much2 roles, engineer and quantitative engineer.

it's just a non issue, but nothing particularly productive can come out of discussing it

[fringe sphinx]

fwiw, whether the job title must be exact or not is a well discussed topic. not to say "google it", but do you have to put exact job title on resume has a lot of hits and interesting takes. There is ample disagreement out there, some folks say: "it must be exact: match your offer letter or official title", others say you can change it to reflect your actual job, or others say you can change it to more industry standard terms if the official title was non-standard.

Me personally, I've always put my exact title on, but my titles have always made sense/matched my job. And I wouldn't have an issue if someone changed it to match their actual role... as long as they didn't puff up their seniority ("Oh, I was like the boss because my boss didn't do anything, so I changed my title to Director of Engineering"), but if I were advising someone, I'd say: stick to the exact title and perhaps add a parenthetical after it... like "Technology Intern (Software)" for the original question.

[fringe sphinx]

So, just to be clear, if I were you, I'd write: "Technology Intern (Software)".

[near ocean]

If you dont like your title ask for a title change, sometimes they give you silly goofy titles to make it harder for you to leave 🤷

my first title was "Technical Graduate Trainee" and lord knows im not putting that shit on my CV, I had them change it 3months in

[gilded valley]

titles just don't matter at all in the UK or US.

90% of HRs will give proof of employment as an email saying "yes, XYZ was employed between date A and date B" with the small chance of them tacking "as a <job title>" on the end.

unless it's a overt lie "I'm a lead" when you were a junior, then there's no real way it can come back to bite you

[buoyant seal]

Wow. the missing semester course... That's rich. I tried to persuade my university we should be having Git/version controlling too 😄
Going to check for all topics just in case

[buoyant seal]

for linux shell, could be fun to go through this interactive tutorial in addition
https://cmdchallenge.com/

[buoyant seal]

to hell with Vim, i am fine with Nano for TUI

[lunar comet]

:w - save file
:wq - save and quit
:q! - quit without saving
<Escape> - normal mode (required to execute commands)
<i> - insert mode (type normally as you would)
hjkl - move cursor like arrow keys
<number value><w> - move forward n words
<number value><b> - move backward n words

<line_number>gg - jump to line number
G - jump to end of file
gg - jump to top of file

<v> - select mode
<y> - yank (copy) selection
<p> - paste selection
/<search term> - search forward in file via regex
?<search term> - search backward in file via regex
<n> | <N> - shift through search results forward / backwards

vim has now improved your terminal text editing workflow

check out the VSCode learn vim extension, combined with the NeoVim extension for more epic tutorials.

Make sure to hit that bell icon

[near ocean]

Is this careers related?

[lunar comet]

it will help with your career by easing strain on your wrists

[near ocean]

It'd be great if you moved your post to an offtopic channel

[wicked yew]

is phyton good to get data analytics jobs?

[pallid smelt]

Yes even more now that excel will incorporate python, it's the end of VBA I believe

[summer roost]

Can you provide any data to support this claim?

In some other contexts, a lie on a CV (including a bent job title) could be seen as an attempt at fraud, which might have legal implications.

What are the contexts where the job titles listed on a CV must match the job title in the employer's database, rather than be a best effort to sum up the job duties?

[summer roost]

I'd have said that it's just fine for someone who performs the role of a Site Reliability Engineer at a company where no one has the job title of "Site Reliability Engineer" to call themselves a Site Reliability Engineer on a CV, even if their official job title is "Software Engineer". I'd have said that it's more important for the heading on the CV to match the job duties than the official job title in the employer's database. If there's some contexts where that advice would be wrong, I'd love to get more details.

[gritty rivet]

Search for job openings in your area and I suspect you'll find it is one of the relevant skills that may be required or at least desirable in many cases

[gritty rivet]

In cases where a thorough background check is required, the discrepancy may be noted. But if you're accurate otherwise it shouldn't be a big deal, and if it is, then that's probably not a company you want to work for

I'm saying that based on my experience in the US, I know some countries have legal regulations around job titles especially the word "engineer"

[summer roost]

yeah, I'm aware of the countries with legal regulations around "engineer", though that seems relatively distinct from the claim that @vapid jay is making - they're making a broader claim that your CV must exactly match your assigned job title.

I'm not sure that I could tell you what my officially assigned job title was at most of the jobs I've held, honestly.

I can tell you what I did, but I'm not sure that'd match what HR's database says my role was.

[shy willow]

In the USA, insofar regulations around the title "Engineer" are concerned, it will vary. But there is a hard limit on who can use the designation "Professional Engineer" (P.E.) as a title. Other than that, it is a rather lax thing

[summer roost]

yep. There's other countries that won't allow people to claim to be an engineer at all unless they've gained certain credentials.

[shy willow]

indeed - the P.E. designation implies that you have the degree, but that you also passed certification tests, as well as having worked under a sort of tutelage. It gives you the ability to sign off on important projects, etc. Very valued.

But no such equivalent exists for software "engineers".

[buoyant seal]

My official job role is pretty much missleading actually.

Official job role: Python backend developer
Real duties: DevOps engineer :/

[summer roost]

right, not in the US. But that's not true in all countries.

(though in those countries, the outcome is just that everyone uses the job title "software developer" instead and no one claims to be a "software engineer", as I understand it)

[shy willow]

it is very hard to quantify the skills in the software space. This is related to the difficulties surrounding the hiring process. In reality, what happens is you end up with networks of developers that are held together by a common trust based on recognized skillsets. But additional certifications, beyond university degrees, mainly serve as an official barrier to entry.

software engineering is too reliant on raw talent, which is why auto-didacts rule the space.

Further, I would also say that unit testing makes the need for certifications almost nonexistent. Deploying a properly tested codebase is not the same as inaugurating a bridge over which heavy trucks must travel

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, I remember reading an article about some guy in Canada... ... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/tech-companies-alberta-premier-software-engineer-title-1.6617742 iirc

[summer roost]

Hah, I was just about to link to https://engineerscanada.ca/become-an-engineer/use-of-professional-title-and-designations

[shy willow]

just call them developers.

[summer roost]

"APEGA is actively targeting companies in Alberta with legal action to restrict us from using globally competitive job titles and descriptions," reads the letter orchestrated by the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI), a national tech advocacy organization.
Honestly, that's probably a good point. "We can't call the people who write software the same thing as everyone else calls them" is a bit of an embarrassment that only serves to make hiring harder

[shy willow]

these professional organizations can be worse that actual governments at stifling innovation

[summer roost]

In any event, it's not this particular quirk (around the legal requirements of using the word "engineer" in your job title) that I find interesting about the previous discussion, it's the claim that the job title listed on your CV must match the one that the employer will say you held if contacted, and particularly the claim that a mismatch could be construed as fraud

[fringe sphinx]

Also, fwiw, education is the one that has tripped people up. Every years there’s yet another story of someone inflating or lying their education.

[gilded valley]

this implies that a CV has a rigid legally binding structure - it doesn't - it's not misleading if you view the job title as a summary of the job which is a perfectly legitimate view.

for my current role, I had a very thorough bg check - and I don't think the discrepancy in titles was ever mentioned

[frank socket]

[gilded valley]

I put my title down as "analytics engineer" when that's not a concept most people have even heard of (including anyone on my previous team)

[summer roost]

This is my take as well: that the heading for each job on a resume isn't necessarily an official job title, it's a description of the job duties.

[fringe sphinx]

for us, background checks are usually just legal/etc stuff. HR might call to verify dates of employment, but my bg checks are usually to verify you exist & are not in legal trouble

[gilded valley]

it's similar in a lot of roles, there was a thorough check because they just want to prove to the regulator that they're not hiring unfit people

[fringe sphinx]

yah, most of my clients (both big tech and finance) have boilerplate contractual requirements requiring us to perform certain background checks.

[smoky quest]

that's part of compliance too

[smoky quest]

tbh, this is a trade off I wouldn't do. Risk/Reward seem not so great
I find it simpler and more rewarding to state the original title and then expand on it, which typically happens because you took on more responsibilities and stepped up

[gilded valley]

I don't think there's any risk at all though.

if an impartial observer would agree that the title fits the work you do, it's just fine.

maybe if you have the world's most anal hiring manager, they'd rescind the offer? but it seems very unlikely

[gilded valley]

to be clear, I don't think adding "senior" into your title makes sense - even if you personally think it would be fair

[smoky quest]

it's not about being anal.
It's about faithfully representing yourself. It's simpler to pass on someone who smells funny than take a chance and have to deal with someone problematic

[smoky quest]

Yeah, and you have to account for title inflation as well.
So it's common to assess skills anyway.

[fringe sphinx]

it gets a little more complicated in management roles. I had a position where I replaced a Director (and my replacement was a Director)... but I wasn't given the title, I had some sort of engineer title (funny story: HR said they wouldn't give me the title because I was too young, no lie).

but, with all that, I never put Director on my resume.

[gilded valley]

but if they smell funny based on the job title, then it wasn't a fair change in the first place.

this is mostly relevant for focusing broad titles down "engineer" ->"software/site-reliability/devops" or for jobs which exist on a spectrum where yours has drifted "software -> site reliability engineer"

if you're saying you're an SRE because you deployed a lambda once, then it's a terrible choice

[gilded valley]

this is quite common in data.

data jobs often end up being a mush of a bunch of different things, so there's not one title that captures it

[smoky quest]

It is not about being fair, it's about hiring people.
If someone liberally tweak their titles, then what else did they take liberty with. And as a candidate, you want to avoid these types of conversation as you want your application to be a no-brainer

[gilded valley]

by fair, I mean a sensible choice from the resume maker.

the resume reviewer should never even think that the title might have been fudged

there should be no conversation till after the offer stage when it should be made irrelevant by the skills and experience demonstrated in interviews

[summer roost]

I'm pretty sure that the job title I was given at my first company after uni was "Financial Software Developer". I list that as "Software Engineer" instead.

[smoky quest]

Yet, the resume makers do cheat all the time.
Trust but verify.

There is literally no reason for the resume viewer to assume that nothing has been fudged

[summer roost]

the official job title is much more likely to mislead people than the more standard role name, I think. Especially given that I have no particularly deep finance knowledge.

[smoky quest]

to be fair, it sounds like a problem mostly outside of tech where people don't know how to call these people

[gilded valley]

I'm not sure I really understand your point.

if I change my title in one of the ways mentioned, what risk is posed? an offer being rescinded, or the resume not making it to the interview stage?

if the latter, then that's only possible if the change was invalid (I get that that's a bit no true Scotsmanny)

[summer roost]

If your point is that someone filling a manager's shoes without the title shouldn't claim to be a manager on their resume, I'd strongly agree. If your point is that someone doing the work that an SRE would do at another company shouldn't claim to be an SRE on their resume, I'd disagree. If my job title isn't SRE but that's just an "implementation detail" of the company (no one is called an SRE, even though there are roles that are de facto SREs), then exposing future employers to that implementation detail only hurts me.

[smoky quest]

anything is possible from there.
It could go from rejection at any stage or even more interviews and more background/backdoor checks. Nothing can also happen if you have the opportunity to explain and do so well

[smoky quest]

my point is these discussions are a distraction for the candidate and an additional risk.
Just not worth for the candidate

[gilded valley]

I think there's no reason for it to ever come up in interviews that you've fudged your title. "what is your job title" is just a weird line of questioning.

this goes back to the point about there being no formalised structure for resumes

[gilded valley]

(and even if it was asked, just explaining is probably fine. lying about it would be stupid)

[smoky quest]

It does come up randomly sometimes. You don't ask such question directly, but some things get blurt out

[summer roost]

well, I can understand why someone might think that, but I'm not sure that I agree. Listing a job title that accurately reflects your responsibilities seems like it will make it much more likely to make it past the resume screening stage, and any additional risk that happens later in the pipeline seems like a fair price to pay

especially given that the likelihood of a candidate being dropped from consideration becomes lower the further along in the process they are

[sleek egret]

that's the thing, in the US your job title never matches your responsibilities

because any given title can mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people

[smoky quest]

Yes. The very same way I have had people claiming to be a lead on their title because they had a lunch once time with a director.
The same way I had people claiming they are going to intern at nasa because they checked out the nasa museum.
The same way that, etc.

Candidates are messy.

[sleek egret]

"QA engineer" in one company requires a degree in process control and a strong statistical background. in another company, they won't care if you graduated HS as long as you can click a button

"senior software developer" in one company means someone with 20+ years experience who can architect and lead projects. in another, it's an guy who pounds together HTML pages

[summer roost]

sure, but that's a strawman. Everyone agrees with you that deliberately misleading your interviewers about the work that you did is bad.

[smoky quest]

Right now, I am mostly using the senior part to figure out how much hand holding they need

[sleek egret]

"junior programmer" in one company is a kid fresh out of school, in another it requires a PhD in AI

[sleek egret]

you can't tell. some companies give people with 6 months experience the "senior" moniker to make them feel better

titles are essentially meaningless. I mostly completely ignore them

or perhaps completely mostly ignore them 🙂

[smoky quest]

My problem is not that you specifically or @gilded valley adjust their titles.
My problem is I cannot make that distinction with the other candidates that do not do so in such a faithful way. And that creates situations and flags that just create more work and risk for you.

So in the end, that's why I suggest to keep it simple and stupid:

• Keep your title as given by the company so it checks out
• Explain somewhere how your duties were different/bigger

[sleek egret]

I agree with you that that is the best course of action

[smoky quest]

yeah and title inflation is real.
But still, it can help paint a story

[summer roost]

well, like I said - I can see why you might give that advice, but I don't think I agree with it. Listing a job title that isn't the one the employer assigned but does accurately describe the work you did makes you more likely to make it past resume screening. If it doubles your odds of getting an interview and also doubles your odds of being rejected at the background step stage, that's still a good tradeoff

[sleek egret]

it's like the title "something manager". it can be anything from not managing anything to running a $100mil division

[smoky quest]

Would it really double the odds of interviews?
In tech, you only have "software engineer" which can be used for anything and everything. So you can't really rely precisely on the title

[smoky quest]

general manager != software engineering manager != project manager != product manager

[sleek egret]

customer service manager vs manager of customer service

[gilded valley]

you seem to be conflating how you want the world to be and the optimal choice for candidates is.

it's (near-)zero-cost perfectly ethical thing to do

[sleek egret]

IMO, when hiring, it's best to just ignore the candidate's titles

[summer roost]

no, but it wouldn't really double the odds of rejections at the background check phase, either. But that's not the point I'm making. The point I'm making is that, because the hiring funnel gets narrower as you get closer to getting hired, and because people's first impressions of a candidate are the hardest ones to overturn, something that might benefit you early in the process but might hurt you later in the process is still a net win, even if it hurts and helps by apparently equal amounts.

[smoky quest]

I think you got it reversed.
In an ideal world, I want the titles to reflect their actual responsibilities

[sleek egret]

background checks are pretty common. and the thing that most companies will tell background checkers are: when you worked there and what your title was

[smoky quest]

teams' names are also interesting when specified

[sleek egret]

IMO, it's not worth being flagged as a fibber

[gilded valley]

you yourself have highlighted that you get 30s before people have decided to phone or pass on a resume.

it's perfectly possible to get your resume binned because they're looking for XYZ experience, but your job title is ABC

[sleek egret]

that doesn't really happen as long as your title even vaguely conforms what they're looking for

[gilded valley]

but I'm still very unclear on what the path to getting punished for the change is?

accidentally blurting something out in an interview?

[fringe sphinx]

to be fair, I don't really care so much about titles when hiring swe's (sometimes they can hurt, but if it just says "Software Engineer", that's fine). I look for the first bullet: what they actually did.

[sleek egret]

every company knows that titles are nearly random

[summer roost]

that's totally true, but I've never heard of a candidate being rejected when the job title didn't match, provided they were reasonably close (i.e. not claiming you were a people manager when you weren't, or whatever)

[gilded valley]

it 100% happens

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, any "good" title I assume is puffery.

[sleek egret]

remember, what YOU think some title means will NOT match what the various compnaies you're applying to thinks it means

[summer roost]

I don't think that's true. I think that if the position they're hiring for is SRE and the job duties you performed at your last job were SRE duties, you're more likely to pass the resume screen, even if it's only slightly more likely, if you say that your job title was "Site Reliability Engineer" than if you say it was "Software Developer".

[gilded valley]

I've been part of meetings where is happened, and I've only ever gone through 30 CVs in a professional capacity

[smoky quest]

I actually think it's an interesting debate as I wouldn't think it reduces the success rate as much.
The same way, in tech, people don't necessarily get discarded because of missing some buzzwords, so are the titles.
In the end, the responsibilities aren't so rigid as sometimes, the person responsible for X left and that falls on your lap, or sometimes you work on growing towards the next title but haven't reached the stage where you actually get it (and I would assert claiming it in your resume would be unethical).
Plus in the world of startups, there are no titles.

So I would say optimizing your title won't necessarily translate in an increase of your success rate

[gilded valley]

(someone put Machine Learning in the title, where they should have put data-X)

[sleek egret]

I've hired dozens of people over decades for both big and small companies. I've never seen anyone bin a resume because someone didn't have a matching title

only times I've even seen any sort of discussion related to titles was for higher level jobs and that revolved around if the person might have led/managed teams

[smoky quest]

Yeah and I won't hesitate to zoom in things that stand out. And then rejecting if it gives funny vibes.
That's why my second point talks about specifying the details.
I will always read at least the first two lines of each job/experience

[summer roost]

I think there's a very clear distinction between trying to mislead your interviewers to think you did stuff that you didn't, vs helping your interviewers realize that you did stuff that you did. And I think that's where most of the interesting conversation here is coming from.

[smoky quest]

I wholeheartedly agree.
And as a reviewer, my problem is it is very difficult to make the distinction between the two when looking at the population of the candidates for a job

[summer roost]

if discrepancies won't be noticed until they've made it past the initial several stages, I think that's still a win for the candidate.

[gilded valley]

details do not come to the fore in 30 seconds

[sleek egret]

I would be highly suspicious of a candidate if the background check came back with mismatched job titles unless the mismatch was very minor

[sleek egret]

in fairness, most orgs do the background check after an offer is made. but offers can be withdrawn.

[smoky quest]

that an argument applicable to people lying on resumes.
We should also note that ATSes have a long memory about all the candidates, including notes left by the reviewers/managers about why someone was rejected

[gilded valley]

resume title, skills, most recent 2/3 companies, most recent 2/3 job titles, first few bullets from most recent experience.

that's what you go through in 30s

[summer roost]

sure, but they're not likely to be withdrawn at that stage, thanks to all sort of psychological biases. Every stage of the process you pass makes it more expensive (both in terms of capital and in terms of mental effort) for the company to reject you

[smoky quest]

There isn't a timer nor people aren't that rigid.
If a reviewer reads something funny like a strange title, they will pay more attention to the description

[sleek egret]

if your title was "junior programmer" and you put "senior software engineer", 9 out of 10 companies will withdraw the offer and blackball you

[summer roost]

well, do you agree that "software engineer" vs "site reliability engineer" is minor? How about "software engineer" vs "software developer"? How about the example I gave above: "financial software developer" vs "software engineer"? How about "programmer" vs "software engineer"?

[summer roost]

sure, but that's not what we're talking about. Or at least, that's not what @gilded valleyand I are talking about.

[sleek egret]

if it was "junior programmer" and you put "junior software engineer", I suspect most will let it pass

[summer roost]

right.

[smoky quest]

I have seen people being fired on the spot for checking linkedin.
I have seen people fired for way less than having a weird background check

[sleek egret]

but at that point, why bother changing it?

[summer roost]

because it makes it at least slightly more likely to catch the eye of whoever is doing the resume screening

[gilded valley]

for that example, the tiny improvement you get for having a more modern sounding title

[sleek egret]

I disagree that it confers any noticable advantage. thus I wouldn't risk it. but I can see why some would disagree with me.

[summer roost]

I might agree with you that it's not a large effect, but I definitely don't think it's no effect at all. Especially with an example like software engineer vs SRE, or vs DevOps

[gilded valley]

I just don't see any risk at all. both the likelihood of being "caught" and the impact of being "caught" are close to zero

[sleek egret]

the risk of getting caught is high

[smoky quest]

it's very common to see:

Software engineer -2020 - present
Part of the SRE team, etc.

I find it interesting we have two hiring people in the room telling folks that's a micro optimiziation 😉

[sleek egret]

most firms do a background check. and it will pickup the title discrepencies. the question is "will the hiring company care?" and that is... iffy

[gilded valley]

I don't think so. plenty of HRs just give references that are just "yes they worked here"

[summer roost]

sure, I don't disagree that it's a micro optimization. But I've done hiring as well, even if I don't in my current role, and I definitely am aware that candidates are more likely to pass the resume screening if they more closely match my pre-conceived notions of what the ideal candidate looks like (even though that's a bias I try to consciously suppress while reviewing resumes, heh)

[gilded valley]

but many companies don't give any details whatsoever

[sleek egret]

yes, but the next things are when and the job title. rarely anything beyond that/

[summer roost]

I dunno. Like I said above: for most of the jobs I've had in my life, I couldn't tell you what job title HR would tell you I held if you asked them.

[sleek egret]

I don't recall either, but it's on my resume and has been for decades

[gilded valley]

dates always, job title I'm not actually sure how frequent. but even so, it's often an outsourced company doing the checks, who might not even flag it

[smoky quest]

It's always on my offer letters and bonus, comp. updates

[sleek egret]

I assume I didn't lie to myself 🙂

[gritty rivet]

I mentioned this earlier.... To me if the company cares and it's not an intentional misrepresention, you don't want to work for that kind of company anyway

[summer roost]

I just checked my initial offer letter for my first company out of uni, it wasn't listed there. I do have something on my bonus/comp updates, but I think that's the role description as assigned by the engineering department, which I don't believe necessarily matches the job title that HR/payroll would report.

[smoky quest]

It's also common to ask the candidates to provide some people to call for reference check. If you don't coordinate with them ahead of time, things may pop up there as well

[gilded valley]

any human I'm giving as a reference will get a text from me first explaining the deal. What was his job title isn't a likely question, but it's possible.

although again, no action is likely to be taken even if there is a discrepancy

[smoky quest]

There are always exceptions. We can also cite startups where titles don't really mean anything

[gritty rivet]

"I'm calling about so-and-so, he was a SRE at your company."

"Oh, no, definitely not, he was an SWE."

"Ok then, we won't hire the liar. Thanks."

Seems unlikely

[gilded valley]

"hey I'm applying for an SRE role at XYZ, can I use you as a reference for my time at ABC company? "

[smoky quest]

I think we can just disagree on the part about no action being taken. Because I have always seen actions being taken for any discrepancy

[sleek egret]

"oh he didn't work at X, what's the big deal"

"oh he didn't major in A, big woop"

[fringe sphinx]

What, you mean my "vp of architecture" title doesn't count from my 2 person startup?

[smoky quest]

I don't think making up specific conversations is relevant nor useful.
Anyone could very well make up another fictitious that goes the other way

[sleek egret]

if you guys think it's unlikely, then you are fooling yourself. so many people lie about stuff that can't be verified that most companies look very very poorly on lieing about things that can be verified.

[smoky quest]

I was only the Global Head of Engineering

[gritty rivet]

My point is that in most contexts nobody cares or has time for these formal details which often aren't documented clearly in the first place. It's the substance that all parties are concerned about.

[gilded valley]

the whole point is that it's not a lie.

if they say what was your official job title, you tell them. But putting it as the title for that section on your resume isn't lying

[sleek egret]

it's true that few care what your title is. hiring managers however, do care if you lied or not.

[smoky quest]

In practice, tons of things pop up. People don't think ahead about their lies and how they mesh together.
It's naive to think this hasn't happened in the past because interviewers aren't doing their first interview today. They will deliberately phrase questions in an open ended way to fish around

[weak cape]

do i really need to speak to people and make myself known?

[wanton birch]

I once had to ask the university for all records of my work there for this visa application thing where I had to provide that info. They wanted exact dates and all. I was surprised that they didn’t have all the info or at least couldn’t find it easily. And that’s me myself asking directly about my record lol

[gritty rivet]

And I think most would agree that using a more accurate version of your title isn't inherently lying, it depends on the details and context

[summer roost]

er - to succeed in the workplace, you mean? Yes, probably

[sleek egret]

it's not "more accurate" though

[sleek egret]

yes

[smoky quest]

so many stories about how someone believe how the company would fall apart without them and thus deserve a bigger title/etc. Yet the companies survive

[sleek egret]

lol

[gilded valley]

fish around for what? this isn't trying to hide anything, it's literally just the most accurate and succinct description of a job being used as a title on a document without a predefined format

[smoky quest]

this is based on the representation the candidate want to make of themselves at the company. Their manager or coworker may strongly disagree on how accurate that representation would be

[gilded valley]

if so, that should come through in interviews.

there's plenty of ways to lie or exaggerate on a resume, what you're talking about is just one of them

[gritty rivet]

What's not more accurate? My current title is listed in three different ways depending on the document. I've had other situations where HR always uses one title while all the people who know what's actually going on use another. So again, it depends on details and context.

[gilded valley]

"improved performance on XYZ app by 90% reducing cloud costs by 75%" but in reality I just did what my manager told me etc

[smoky quest]

yep and every single details of how you represent yourself will go on the record and be weighted

[gilded valley]

but, used appropriately, this is practically no worse than any other positive claim you could make on your resume

if my coworkers disagree that it would be an accurate title then I probably shouldn't put it.

i don't really see that that changes the discussion

[smoky quest]

yep. Again, my claim is not about the intent.
My claim is more about the real world and how it creates more problems than it solves. It's like if doing it would get you a +1 on your score but you also risk a -1000 at the same time. The pros/cons are not favorable to its use imho

[sleek egret]

I agree with @smoky quest

[summer roost]

I think this might just be one of those times where reasonable people might have to agree to disagree, since the conclusion relies on data that we don't and can't have - how much more likely you are to pass a resume screen by listing a different title, and how much more likely you are to fail a background check because of it.

[gilded valley]

I don't really see any problem that it could create for the candidate.

if you and Ruff are saying that you would rescind an offer based on this, then the risk is exactly what I said earlier with the only risk being anal hiring managers.

for my current job, I changed my job title, and my internship title, went through a very thorough background check and never had it mentioned. the only way it could be more thorough is security vetting

[summer roost]

I don't think "anal hiring managers" is a fair way to dismiss their concerns. Seems more like an ad hominem attack.

[smoky quest]

Calling people anal managers for that seems to include a lot of biases and viewpoints about managements that you have. That may or may not be true.
I do think though that it does not reflect real management practices and I do see myself as way too easy going than I ought to be.

[gilded valley]

I think it's just an accurate description? if you're rescinding an offer because of a detail like this, then it is being very fussy

[gritty rivet]

I'm not even sure I see a substantive disagreement between anyone about anything here, just abstract arguments about something that is highly contextual

[summer roost]

I think the data that we do have is that some resume screeners are more likely to pass a candidate onto the next phase if they see a more attractive job title, and that some hiring managers are more likely to rescind an offer if the job titles on the resume doesn't exactly match the job title reported by a previous company. And I think that, without knowing how large the population of either of those groups is, and without knowing how much more likely members of each group are, we can't really make informed decisions about the costs vs benefits.

[gilded valley]

but I don't even think either is saying that they would. just that they'd check into it a little further

[smoky quest]

Maybe it's not accurate because you don't have an accurate representation of management practices?

[summer roost]

I think it's overly dismissive to say that concerns about candidates trying to deceive interviewers are due to "fussiness"

[smoky quest]

I would suggest to stop that line there. I don't see anything fruitful coming out of that.
I am happy to educate on what is being anal management or not, but it looks like your mind is already set

[gilded valley]

to be clear - we're now getting into the details of what anal means in this context.

excessively orderly and fussy

if you're rescinding an offer based purely on the change of a job title, then this is accurate

[gritty rivet]

But that "data" would be impossible to measure unless we're talking about specific substitutions of one unambiguous title with another. There are almost infinite possibile instances, many of which we would all agree are totally dishonest

[smoky quest]

And again, that does show a misunderstanding of what is excessively orderly and fussy

[gilded valley]

I would say rescinding an offer over a disagreement about what a heading on a CV should be is fussy

[summer roost]

Yep, exactly. I think we all basically agree on the principles here: painting yourself in a flattering light on a resume is good, lying or claiming to have experience that you don't is bad, some resume screeners will be more likely to advance a candidate if their job title closely matches preconceived notions of what job titles a successful candidate will have held, some hiring managers will be more likely to rescind an offer if the title on the resume doesn't match the title on reported by HR. I think what we're disagreeing on is odds and effect sizes, and I don't think we're likely to reach any concensus on those.

[gilded valley]

this is what I think is excessive fussiness @smoky quest

[summer roost]

people don't like being lied to, and what the candidate sees as a good faith effort to better inform the interviewer could be perceived by the hiring manager as an attempt to deceive them. That's not fussiness, it's a difference in perception of the same events.

[smoky quest]

yep and that proves my point

Misrepresenting yourself creates some question marks about yourself and on what else you have misrepresenting yourself. Not worth the risk

[summer roost]

whether or not it's worth the risk depends on odds and effect sizes that we don't and can't know. 🙂

[smoky quest]

One thing engineers tend to forget is that managers don't reason at the scale of just yourself.
They reason at the scale of a team or more. They have to think about growth path of the entier team, the bus factor, the shape of the team, etc.

[gilded valley]

OK. I think it is fussy to read deceit as the intent behind the action on question.

given that other senior people think it's a legitimate choice to do, rescinding an offer over it is very fussy

[summer roost]

and other senior people think it's not a legitimate choice.

[gilded valley]

question marks fine - check them

if it turns out they have made a pattern of lying, rescind the offer

[gritty rivet]

But the ambiguity of titles and lack of documentation around them mean that a person who is trying to represent themselves honestly can easily be misperceived as dishonest if you're overly concerned about the wrong details without regard to context

[smoky quest]

too much risk.
There are tons of unknown unknowns. If they misrepresented once, no reason to think they won't do it again.

There was breach of trust and that's the end. In addition there will be a note in the ATS in case they ever apply again

[smoky quest]

yep. hence why I don't see it as a worthy trade off

[gilded valley]

if my official title is Software Developer, but I was a sysadmin for 10y and acted as an SRE in my current role - then the official title is more deceptive

[summer roost]

I think what we're seeing here is that some reasonable people will agree with you that the official title is more deceptive, and some won't.

[gilded valley]

to read it as a breach of trust, when there is no consensus on expectations, is fussy

[smoky quest]

it may also be worth talking to your manager about updating your title.
from a cynical perspective, that's also how the org will see you and how people will see you on linkedin or conferences

[gilded valley]

"can hr make a new job title up for me" is the kind of thing that can lead to a ton of tedious bureaucracy

but yes, may as well ask

[smoky quest]

From the receiving end, it is a breach of trust since you hear different things from different places.

[summer roost]

though I still maintain that, due to anchoring, confirmation bias, and the bandwagon effect, it's rational to make choices that benefit you as a candidate early in the hiring process, even if they would hurt you later in the process, because the amount of pain it causes a hiring manager to throw your resume out after 4 hours of interviews is much higher than the amount to throw it out during the initial resume screening.

[smoky quest]

tbh, there should be career ladders and titles that help project yourself into and be proud of. But that's a different topic altogether

[summer roost]

from a cynical perspective, that's also how the org will see you and how people will see you on linkedin or conferences
I guarantee you that how people see me at conferences has no relation to what's in some HR database. 🙂

[gilded valley]

you are taking your worldview as the only valid one, then treating people who don't adhere as being deceptive.

[smoky quest]

I would expect no less for you

[summer roost]

you're taking your worldview as the only valid one, then treating people who don't adhere as being fussy.

[smoky quest]

that's not really fair nor useful in a discussion

[gritty rivet]

If we're talking about Latte using SRE in place of SWE on a CV without any intentional misrepresention and you're calling that a breach of trust, I don't want to speak for Latte but they probably don't want to work for you either so it all works out 🤣

[true harness]

my official HR title is "Intern", so I think not changing it to be related to software would hurt my chances

[gilded valley]

correct.

my worldview is largely dictionary derived in this case.

we can go down a rabbithole of defining fussy and so on, but I'm fairly sure I'm using the words correctly

[smoky quest]

Yep and that's fair!
I get 70 applicants per day on a job ad. So my mindset is very different. And it would be very different from if it had 70 applications per month

[graceful mason]

I think the main issue for me is a potential unconscious bias. I'm aware that I personally have a bias against people calling themselves programmer Vs software developer/engineer. If my official title was programmer I wouldn't put that on my CV

[smoky quest]

titles are a common negotiation argument from candidates when hiring

[summer roost]

I think you're missing my point, but I don't think it's worth arguing about. Like I said, I think this may just be a topic where we won't reach any concensus.

[gilded valley]

it seems to be an accurate description of the facts? fussy or not, anal or not, sensible or not - this is what you're doing

no you're right that isn't quite accurate

[smoky quest]

I understand it can be frustrating from the engineering pov, but that's not considered fussy from the management side of things. That's just normal.

Different groups of people have different contexts and optimization criteria. They will not always completely overlap

[gritty rivet]

But in reality then, are you ever going to notice the discrepancy between one line on a CV and one line on a background check? If that's ever happened, my guess is that it was because a lot of other things raised questions and led you to that level of scrutiny to that particular detail of one candidate

[gilded valley]

normal? I don't know, but it is not consensus practice

[smoky quest]

that could pop up at any stage. It could be blurt out during an experience interview, during a technical interview, during a reference check, during a backdoor check, during a background check, or even on their first day.
Or even while preparing for the interview and checking out their linkedin

[gilded valley]

you are reading a breach of trust on the basis of your own worldview which doesn't line up with consensus

[smoky quest]

Not sure where you got that consensus from.
You can obviously see here experienced people who disagree

[gilded valley]

I'm saying that there is no consensus

[smoky quest]

In my circles, it is ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[summer roost]

ok, then - as I said, all we disagree about is odds.

[gritty rivet]

Or, you might ask about the title and they might immediately explain the ambiguity around it, and then you would hopefully see that there is no problem. You seem to be assuming both dishonest intent and objective falsity where I don't think anyone here is supporting that

[summer roost]

that some hiring managers will consider this an intentional deceit is clearly true - we've got at least one involved in this conversation. So the only question is how large a proportion of all hiring managers that is. And, we dunno. Seems to be higher than I'd have guessed, just based on the participants of this conversation, but 🤷‍♂️

[gilded valley]

given that it relies on holding a non-consensus view of what a resume even is, it seems like you're probably shooting yourself in the foot.

refusing to hire a godlygeek, an obviously great engineer based on his Foss work, over what he views as an implementation detail seems a little silly

[smoky quest]

That's not my argument.
What you are describing with the explanation is the best case scenario, and it might happen.
But my point is that you are creating troubles for yourself and the benefits do not outweigh the potential issues of questions arising. And questions may arise but not even get to you.
As a candidate, you want the least amount of questions marks about yourself. That could even happen that they hesitate between two candidates but go with the other because you had question marks.

[summer roost]

and the benefits do not outweigh the potential issues
I don't think there's any way for us to measure this, and I'm inclined to disagree

[smoky quest]

I would contend that my network of managers, directors, vps, executives is large enough to assert my opinions.
But I am more than happy to have people continue what they think is right.

[smoky quest]

yep. One thing someone can do is also to experiment with their resume and do some sort of A/B test.
That could be fun too

[gritty rivet]

When you make the point that it is therefore in our interest to demand less ambiguity and inaccuracy in the titles we are given, I agree with that part for sure

The problems that's often a losing battle because most people don't actually care that much

[smoky quest]

Maybe, maybe not.
I had many people who cared about the title so much that it was a discussion point in the offer or that they changed job just for the title

[gilded valley]

Do you agree that what I said is a cost of the opinion though?

[smoky quest]

I am not clear on what that implies

[gritty rivet]

Right now my manager is actively in the process of pushing for what is in my opinion a less accurate title for the same role. I will express my opinion and make my case that it's a bad change. Now when I apply for me next job, am I dishonest if I use the old version of the title? I have absolutely no idea which version may show up on a future background check.

My point is, we'd like this stuff to be neat and tidy but it's usually messy

[gritty rivet]

I have no problem believing that... Again, situation and context. I've never done such things but I can imagine scenarios in which I might

[vapid jay]

yo

[gilded valley]

i mean it's just a question that I'm asking to explore your viewpoint.

As it is right now, I don't really understand the justifications behind your viewpoint, this question helps be understand them

this isn't some attempt at a gotcha

[smoky quest]

then you could say it's a cost of opinion and creates some fears and question marks about you

[gritty rivet]

If you have a career-related question you should go ahead and ask 🙂

[gilded valley]

refusing to hire a godlygeek, an obviously great engineer based on his Foss work, over what he views as an implementation detail seems a little silly

I don't really understand this response. my original point was this, and asking whether you agreed this was a downside of your approach. is that fair or unfair?

[smoky quest]

That's missing the point.
The point isn't that I will reject godlygeek. The point is that it creates risks and fears and they might or might not be able to be addressed by the candidate.
So if Godlygeek was able to and had the opportunity to address them, then they might get hired. Otherwise they may not. It's something that could have been completely avoided altogether
And a concrete example could be that if I am hesitating between Godlygeek and another candidate, I may go with the other because they would be safer.
But again, Godlygeek is a very mild case from something that happened years ago. His public contributions and his experience would make it easier for him to deal with these situations.
If we were talking about a less accomplished person like someone's first job or second job, they may not get all these chances.

And since we named names, I want to be explicit that I have seen Godlygeek's code and have been arguing with him long enough that I would be delighted to work with him.
I don't think I would put him through a normal interview. More akin to meeting the teams than anything.

[summer roost]

hah, ❤️

[smoky quest]

also !rule 9

[summer roost]

lol, I almost did it 😂

I also think that the effect size that this has is probably pretty small. I don't think using a different job title makes you much more likely to pass a resume screen, and I don't think having a job title discrepancy makes you much more likely to have an offer rescinded after a background check.

[near remnant]

Yo sup

[weak cape]

godly geek is a good codah?

[pine sleet]

apparently

[weak cape]

can i surpass him in a year?

[smoky quest]

If you can surpass someone in a year, they wouldn't be that good in the first place.

[weak cape]

:(

but i wanna surpass him in a year im tired of being a bad codah

[valid summit]

Any dev, interested in being my partner on a big project should feel free to dm, I'm a noob but I've got a good idea and you must know open sea deep learning, machine learning, already got base codes too, big one tho

[fringe sphinx]

You can surpass yourself!

[frigid spade]

Hey guys I'm 16 should i go to college or nah

[vapid jay]

yes

even cc would be useful

[pine sleet]

100% should if you are financially able to

[smoky quest]

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

[weak cape]

thanks babe

[fringe sphinx]

I don’t usually share slashdot links, but man this one is good: https://m.slashdot.org/story/418358 Bjarne Stroustrup: “I meet a lot of sort of — I don't know what you call them, "junior geeks"? — that just think that the only thing that matters is the speciality of computing — programming or AI or graphics or something like that. And — well, it isn't... And if they do nothing else, well — if you don't communicate your ideas, you can just as well do Sudoku... You have to communicate. And a lot of sort of caricature nerds forget that. They think that if they can just write the best code, they'll change the world. But you have to be able to listen. You have to be able to communicate with your would-be users and learn from them. And you have to be able to communicate your ideas to them.”

[late flame]

I agree fully with this. You can become a good programmer by programming well. You can only become a great and successful one with effective communication.

[glossy holly]

how do i get help with my python code? im a starter

[delicate bane]

ah that was some pretty good advice in the link

[lone geode]

Thanks this was very helpful.

[lone geode]

Awesome I will do just that.

[lone geode]

Thanks for the suggestion, The first link you shared is it useful to watch if I haven't yet graduated CS? My University starts this Sep, I am just a beginner in Python.

[glossy holly]

can someone help me ?

[dark thunder]

i’m a freshman in college right now and don’t have a gpa yet, but i want to apply for scholarships and need to have a resume made. what are valid things i can start putting on my resume. are things like personal projects something i can do? please give any advice that can help me create a resume that companies look for when finding interns. Thanks

[gritty rivet]

Yes,. projects. Talk to your university career services. Do all the stuff https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/computer-science-internship-resume

[vernal raven]

I am a student of Electronics and Telecommunication, by doing this course I realised that I like game development, can someone tell me what should I do right now? And which degree should I aim for?

[dark thunder]

when using personal projects, how does it work. like, i feel like people can lie about personal projects etc. is it a case where they just take a students word for it?

[outer granite]

Which semester?

[buoyant seal]

CS degree is great. If u have degree with more software development orientation that is even better may be

Recommendation not to slack off at Linear Algebra for sure. Pretty essential discipline for computer graphics
May be physics and differential equations could be nice to know too.

Besides that, obviously all the way into programming disciplines.

First seriously to learn language depends on if u wish making web, mobile or desktop games

[late flame]

Well they'd expect you to link to a GitHub or something. If you made a website, give them the URL.

Otherwise you can fake a resume but not an interview. If you claim to have dinner something really impressive they can grill you on that and find out quick if you're lying.

[wanton onyx]

what should I do I want to persue data science as career option but I have started my career in MERN stack developing due to university placements so should I go with what I want or should I wait for the right time to change my job into data science?

[buoyant seal]

Also, when u will be in tech interview, information will be checked if your answers and shown technical skills match given GitHub code quality. All lies will be easily revealed.

As long as their tech interviewers aren't brain dead idiots that 10 times in a row check leetcoding only though

[vernal raven]

Final year's first semester

[outer granite]

I think you should continue with the current degree since it's your final year, develop skills related to your passion outside of your academics since many courses that are taught in Electronics have programming involved along with mathematics that is required for game development. You can always choose to pursue post-graduate in game development and become more qualified as a game developer.

[vapid jay]

Do you think I could have a career in using Python inside Excel? I think I might enjoy that... But, will it be enough to get and keep a job?

[buoyant seal]

this feature is super new. and cloud depended. highly likely nobody adopted using it, and those who think adopting, could be very hesitant due to cloud restrictions in using it.
If u want to pursue career of Data Scientist, get a degree, and learn python,numpy,jupyter,matplotlib and etc stack of tech that is commonly used for data today

[vapid jay]

I re-read it 3 times and I am still unsure whether you are answering my question though... yes or no?

[buoyant seal]

i think u will not be able to secure a job with learning just Excel and macroses

because there is nothing to back it up. Those are just tools (very simple tools), people ask to solve real life problems

[vapid jay]

I don't understand what you mean by "they are just tools"

[buoyant seal]

it is like... asking can i secure a job with only learning how to use Microsoft Word and Notepad?
your original question sounds exactly the same to me.
It does not answer how you are going to use it, for what

[vapid jay]

Is Python a tool or a solution to a real life problem? People ask that here and it's OK. What's bad about asking the same question specifying Excel?

I have no idea about what you mean by "using Notepad"?

You can't put Python inside Notepad? Or can you?

[buoyant seal]

i can. Some beginning people start to write python with Notepad++ 😄
And at linux we could be fixing stuff in files with Nano/Vim editors

[buoyant seal]

TLDR: your question does not answer what job role you wish to pursue. What kind of job duties u wish to have.
Learning Excel and its macrossing alone is like learning how to use Microsoft Word, every high level enough PC user can do it.
Not everyone is capable to use it for specific fields like Economics and etc

[strange nova]

Oops clicked into this shit

Have this channel muted for months

[vapid jay]

Shit?

[vapid jay]

I would like to be coding Python inside Excel. This a job I think I would enjoy.

[summer roost]

as of right now, definitely not. In the future, possibly, though still probably not.

[buoyant seal]

Open hiring web site and try finding vacancy Excel handler.
Then get more realistic and search vacancies where Excel or Python is only part of bigger pool of required skills

[summer roost]

I'd expect that people will mostly continue using normal Excel formulas for almost everything, and continue using VBA for things that a formula can't do (like macros), and that the Python formulas will only wind up being used for occasional analyses - much like the more complex formula functions that already existed

[vapid jay]

But... do you think there will be jobs like that in the future? Excel is so popular... and Python...

[summer roost]

I expect that there will be very few jobs where someone spends the majority of their time writing =py() formulas

[buoyant seal]

https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2023/08/23/python-excel.aspx#:~:text=And the cloud integration means,in Python in Excel calculations.

And the cloud integration means an internet connection is required -- users with a local version of Python installed won't see any customizations made to that installation reflected in Python in Excel calculations.
this is freshly started functionality that works only if internet connection/cloud subscription is present stuff.
There are good enough chances it will be never welcome and can become dead within some time frame.

It is common for big corps to have a big graveyard of not succesful solutions https://killedbygoogle.com/
Community and Corps can be not welcoming to adopt Python usage in Excel behind cloud paywall of obstructions. Too little ownership is present for their work.
It can become succesful, it can become not. So far likelyhood more towards it will be yet another project in graveyard

[gilded valley]

pyxll is pretty big at my company, there's tonnes of people who know a little python for things like statsmodels but are mostly excel people.

but darkwind's point is the main one - tools don't make a carpenter

[vapid jay]

Sad because I like the idea of opening up Excel on all computers with Office and being able to... do my job!

[summer roost]

🤷‍♂️ I can do my job without much more than Notepad, heh. No Excel subscription required

[buoyant seal]

that is the problem. you can't run Excel with Python at your computer. it requires online/maintained microsoft servers to have this functionality working in their current implementation.
They did not add python to be present locally 😅 They released an online game with microtransactions -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGmXPk5MhuU

[summer roost]

hm. Never heard of pyxll before, but at a glance, it seems a good deal more powerful than the =py() stuff microsoft just announced

[gilded valley]

it seems pretty great. I haven't tried it myself because it's a per-user license. seems like almost a superset of the =py stuff though, I agree.

broader point is just that python+excel can be a powerful combo, but you still need some underlying domain-related skills/knowledge to motivate the use of the pair.

econometrics is the kind of thing where it could shine, except for the fact python is a third class citizen there (after Stata and R)

thinking about it, the one thing I'm excited for with the =py stuff is just that I can write string manipulation etc and just give it to my coworkers and save them time. or fix chatgpt code for them etc

[eager tusk]

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[onyx basin]

@last moat hello, I was out of my house didn't see your replies on the post..
I have a question

what if I accidentally scraped some data from that was copyrighted... is there going to be anything bad? like what's the worst thing that could happen? could they sue me?

@broken cargo sorry for not replying since I was outside of the house..
well I won't be using the copyrighted data or anything.. I would be coding a program for the client to use for him to scrape data from the website..
I will ofcourse be away of websites that have selenium or any other web scraping tool illegal to use on their website

[toxic mural]

hi there

[buoyant seal]

It depends on scale, and country
If u scrap a lot, prevent their ads and resell for money from big corp like Google, they can sue u
If it was one time, and u don't use it publicly, it can went under radar and will be just unethical.
Tldr: everything at your own risk and every case is different. Not recommending advertising such talents in resume, in order to avoid getting attention of other people that built their business on this shady ground.

Web scraping is good and ethical only for QA and scraping on web sites with which u have consent of owners (sometimes necessary to make API out of legacy stuff)

[toxic mural]

Can anyone of you help me in #questionandanswer

#1035199133436354600

[onyx basin]

thank you for clearing that!!
but what about a client that wants me to scrape a "houses for rent" website for houses to rent and put them on a form

well scraping websites for data (or copyrighted data or data that is paid for) isn't legal obviously and I wouldn't do such projects..
so could we say I'm in the safe zone (ofcourse obeying the TOS of the websites)

[buoyant seal]

so it is unethical shady business. legality depends on your country laws. consult local lawyer

[buoyant seal]

so could we say I'm in the safe zone (ofcourse obeying the TOS of the websites)
u can't obey TOS and steal copyrighted data at the same time 😅

[onyx basin]

no I meant to obey TOS: if it has no problem with scraping then we'll scrape and if not I'll not
sorry for misexplaining 😅

[buoyant seal]

Sure. it is magnitudes better if not protected by TOS, but still not full proof.
Ideally u have consent of owners.
without consent... and not forbidden by TOS and robot.txt? Sure, they made it publicly available, so i would say it is fair enough to me to scrap then
What is not forbidden, that is allowed 🤓 (don't apply this advice to everything)
Still ideally, u should use APIs or having written consent.
(P.S. robots.txt file regulates if stuff is forbidden from scraping or not. if it is not covered by robots.txt, then it is allowed)

[onyx basin]

thanks a lot for explaining this!!
ok if I get a written consent... where do I include it?

[buoyant seal]

Git commit to private repository, and have therefore copy at local PC and in private repository in cloud 😉 Should be good enough to me.
U need to keep access to original email where u received answer though. Because everything can be forged or deleted, and best to have original email that contains the mail in question that allows it
Just keep under hand for the years while it can be still needed.

I will point again, that if the stuff in question is not forbidden by robots.txt and not mentioned in TOS, then it is certainly automatically allowed.

Their fault of not forbidding (even if they wished). internet is public place after all.

[onyx basin]

I really appreaciate your help bro!

Hey Darkwind, sorry for overloading it with questions but let's say I accidentally scraped copyrighted or illegal data from a website.. but the client is the one who was using the program and he's the that actually scraped the data (I just built the bot)
who's in charge me or him?

[buoyant seal]

Consult lawyer

[onyx basin]

👍 thanks!

[broken cargo]

(i am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice) i'd say it depends, assuming the web scraper is run on the clients computer if you are either tasked or claim to implement a system to prevent accidentally scraping copyrighted content its probably your fault, if you select or review the urls that get scraped it may be your fault, if you simply write a web scraper without knowing what it will be used for and the client doesn't even tell you what they will scrape it probably won't be your fault, and if you host the web scraper instead of it running on the clients computer and a client uses it to scrape copyrighted content you are also distributing said copyrighted content so you'd most likely take some kind of responsibility

although you should definitely consult a lawyer

[onyx basin]

oh, and i'i'll need to run the bot at least once so I can check if there's bugs or not, and if it scrape copyrighted content that would be on me (probably)

thanks for helping ya'll

i'i'll make sure that it's 100% legal to scrape (by reading the TOS and robots.robots.txt)

[broken cargo]

(again, i'm not a lawyer, this ain't legal advice) well in that case you can just delete the copyrighted content afterwards if you want to be absolutely safe(and safe on storage space), but scraping copyrighted content isn't even illegal(look at how much copyrighted content ai companies scrape), using the scraped content in ways that violate its copyright is

[eager jungle]

Using copyrighted content for personal use isn't Illegal, if you use it for buisness, then it is. If the client uses the scraped content for business use, like let's say, using an image as thier own image in marketing, or using copyrighted music in thier videos, then it's illegal

And, if they process the copyrighted data to produce thier own Material (eg: a parody song from some copyrighted song) then I sure it's ok upto some limitations

[onyx basin]

oh okay, I thought only scraping copyrighted content would make them hunt me down 😅

[eager jungle]

Then it's illegal to see those content cause you are registering in your brain 😂

[broken cargo]

in general copyright is weird, you can violate copyright laws by downloading a exact copy of a retro game(you want to play again, on modern hardware) you own a physical copy of from a archive to avoid the trouble of getting a [insert ancient console here] cartridge reader which makes no difference for the company(as you get the exact same result you'd get if you played said retro game "legally") beyond you saving yourself 10+ hours of fiddling with ancient electronics, you can scrape(and in some cases even use for a specific purpose, e.g. training a image recognition ai) terabytes of copyrighted materials without breaking any laws(unless you scrape far too quickly in which case it may count as a ddos attack but your internet shouldn't be fast enough for that, unless you live in a data center)

[broken cargo]

worst case you accidentally scrape pirate bay in which case you may get a email from your ISP threatening to turn of your wifi

[onyx basin]

well thankfully my internet can run a hardly potato

what's pirate bay exactly?

[eager jungle]

https://youtu.be/InzDjH1-9Ns?si=hnipjiEjVxpiY48k
This is video gives some insight, but this is what I was able to find for now 😅

[eager jungle]

Just as you here the name

The bay of pirated content

[onyx basin]

just like hacked content?

don't worry about it, I'll do some research on it

thanks so much for helping me out understand this!!

[eager jungle]

Sure then 👍

[broken cargo]

a site for searching pirated count(e.g. games), it got seized and raided by the swedisch government a few times, switched domains a few times but continues coming back each time something is done against it

(i hope me uploading a picture of pirate bays logo doesn't anger the mods)

[onyx basin]

oh, ok

Is it ok to put a selenium project in my resume??
this is the project:

[gritty rivet]

You used Selenium to send a tweet instead of the API? That will raise questions

[onyx basin]

I think I checked twitter and they have no issues with tweeting with bots

[eager jungle]

Times have changed

[onyx basin]

wow

what's going on with X these days??!

[eager jungle]

Api has fee structure now, this caused like a uproar in developer community, few months ago i suppose

[eager jungle]

I don't think it will, he can just put "the developer has no intention of breaking the tos of Twitter and this project was made for educational purposes"

There are WhatsApp bots, Facebook bots, Instagram bots etc

[onyx basin]

well that's a good point since I don't have that much GOOD projects with selenium (but I mean I would've broke the law and I would be "guilty") I'm really living the moment

[gritty rivet]

It's not Selenium that's a problem, especially if you're applying to jobs where it's a relevant skill.

But using Selenium to avoid using an API when an API exists does look very amateur even regardless of ToS questions.

If you want a strong Selenium project it should probably be for front end testing or something like that

[broken cargo]

i'd not include it

[onyx basin]

but is it possible to tweet using an API?

[onyx basin]

I beginning to feel the same...
I could include smth way better (not way way better but you get the point)

[eager jungle]

There is a sector of development called ETL, and this can be used there. It's just scraping data

[onyx basin]

well how about playing it safe and scraping a amazon product price instead?

[true harness]

ETL is just scraping data ?

[eager jungle]

Extract Transform Load, not only scraping if 😅

[onyx basin]

I ain't know nothing about ETL

[onyx basin]

cool

[gritty rivet]

Easily https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/tweets/manage-tweets/api-reference/post-tweets

[eager jungle]

Extracting data(scraping data), Transforming data(data cleaning), Load(saving data in needed form)

[onyx basin]

well i might look back into the project if I'm going to edit to to tweet via/API

[vapid jay]

Oh then I don't want this job anymore.. 😦 Need to keep looking for a job I like.

[eager jungle]

Actually, Excel has announced a new feature where you use python inside of excel

[lapis wind]

That is what Darkwind is on about

the scripts are limited to running in the Azure environment though

[eager jungle]

😮 I didn't know about it

Maybe in future they would add it, well until then pandas is the way ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

[onyx basin]

well, do I not even include selenium and beautifulsoup in the skills section

[eager jungle]

Well why not?

[onyx basin]

I thought it would be a downgrade maybe similar to putting a selenium project

I know putting a selenium project isn't really a downgrade but I don't want to code up the project again so it tweets via API...
I'll just choose another project

[eager jungle]

Depends on what job you are trying to get

[onyx basin]

yeah mainly selenium right now cuz I don't have that much stuff that I can work in

[eager jungle]

There is another domain within the scraping region, where you use http requests to scrap data, and it's the most powerful way to scrape, but hard

And it's the fastest too

[onyx basin]

talking about stuff to work in...
are these skills enough to get a job?? (those are skills, I'm not talking about working with api's and other stuff) (ENTRY LEVEL JOB)

[onyx basin]

You mean smth like BeautifulSoup?

[eager jungle]

Selenium and beautifulsoup are tools, they aren't skills

[onyx basin]

I can seee that I just messed up lol

yeah I think most of this are tools or even all of'em

[eager jungle]

Based on your photo, i think you have skills of web development, Data extraction

[onyx basin]

yeahh, kinda... But I'm not that experienced with it tho

didn't complete my learnings with flask that's why it's a 3 out of 5

[eager jungle]

Well there is a roadmap for web development, but i doubt there is a roadmap for ETL

[true harness]

anyone can just say they have skills; are you also demonstrating them through projects?

[onyx basin]

well I'm not looking to mainly work as a web dev
I'm just a teenager hoping to study at a IT university, but just learning on my own before university

[gritty rivet]

Nobody cares about the made up numbers, and I doubt you'll see a lot of jobs asking for Tkinter....

When I got my current job, my portfolio was really one main project: a simple REST API built in Flask. No front end, but a lot of documentation and tests and stuff like that.

I guess my point is, it's not really about the libraries you use.

[onyx basin]

yes, I made sure to have projects that show all of em, except for selenium since we thought it would be better to not include it in msgs above

[eager jungle]

The skill you need is to adapt and learn fast, if you can do that, I'm sure you will be alright

And ofc, code which is understandable

[onyx basin]

that'll be tough, jk

[eager jungle]

Haha that's a skill you just learn within few months

[gritty rivet]

That's good. So this resume is primarily for your university applications? It's pretty rare for a high school student to find paid work in programming

[onyx basin]

well, no...
I didn't even plan to work when I first started learning programming
but I'm going through in a pretty much difficult part of my life with my family..
so I'm trying to get some money

yeah, been pausing my learnings for 2 weeks now preparing and searching for websites to work on and found upwork (it was the best)

[onyx basin]

I'm not specifically looking for a full time or part time job..
just trying to find some projects I can do here and there

[gritty rivet]

A normal high school job will be more realistic and will pay better. Upwork is full of highly experienced people who charge $10/hour and less. You're unlikely to compete with them

[eager jungle]

Yes you found the right one, i worked in upwork for like 3 or 4 months, and was able to get like 1k $, by working for Data extraction.

Sorry it might sound like an advertisement 😅

[onyx basin]

well.. I live in syria

[eager jungle]

In beginning, you will have a very hard time to find customers, but once you find them, they will keep coming back

You would need to improve your communication skills if they lack

[onyx basin]

no, not at all... I was wondering how much could someone make on upwork and you gave me the answer..
thanks

[eager jungle]

But Beware, there are many people waiting there for using your work for very cheap rates

[onyx basin]

grammarly will cover my back 🤣
jk I have some decent communication skills in english

[eager jungle]

You would be forced to get very low paying jobs at start, but that's the only way to start

By asking them to leave good comments and high ratings, you can get good customers

[onyx basin]

I've checked the pricing for peeople who offer selenium projects pretty much most of them were starting from fifty usd
and some fourty
I'll start with 25 I guess

[onyx basin]

I thought it would be annoying to ask them

ok so now what do I put in my skills section??
and do I create another section to put in the tools???!!!

[eager jungle]

Nope, if you are talking about upwork, then they come under skills

[onyx basin]

I just noticed that there's a python.org/jobs

so do I just use the same resume?

[eager jungle]

Thats not under my experience, so I wont be able to help you with that

There are great people here who knows about how to land a job, you can ask them

[eager jungle]

But i seriously think in my opinion that you don't need to do a full time job before joining college, cause once you join, you can't handle them both

[onyx basin]

well yeah I'm planning to just look into small projects 😅

[eager jungle]

Then in "my opinion"(it's just my opinion) freelancing would help you the best

[onyx basin]

yes, wait you're making me be confused a bit
doesn't upwork have a section for freelancing??

[eager jungle]

Well, yes ofc, I'm telling about freelancing in upwork

[onyx basin]

oh ok 😅

I just wanna ask you if you were working freelancing on upwork or on a literal job

[eager jungle]

There both kind of posting there in upwork, some are small projects which end within a week, and big projects which continues for months

[onyx basin]

wow I thought projects would averegly will take 3-5 days

[eager jungle]

Most of them yes

Probably sometimes just within a day

[onyx basin]

oh, thanks for helping me and clearing the way out

[eager jungle]

Sure then 👍

[onyx basin]

see you soon bro!

[eager jungle]

And hey, don't forget, try to learn as much as possible on your own using google

Even if don't understand keep on searching

[onyx basin]

👍I'll do!

and I apologize for the 1000 questions I asked on this channel today😅

[timid bloom]

Hi what is a good computer for my first year of college going into computer science major

[buoyant seal]

i like my faithful Intel I5-10400 processor with inbuilt HD graphics
16 GB ram is must minimum for comfort
and very nice to have 1 TB of SSD

Everything else is not important.
Good processor, inbuilt graphics with no problems regarding drivers, high RAM and SSD pretty much the only thing that matters 😄

At least if u don't aim for heavy computer graphics and machine learning, or photo,video processing, where u may need better GPU

Regardless, modern videocards inbuilt into CPU are powerful enough to run heavily modded minecraft with 200+ FPS quite fine.
even if u will dive into game industry, this hardware power will serve enough you for very long time

Also students dont make any serious enough machine learning projects where they would need going beyond CPU processing anyway.
So for university it will be quite fine for all purposes to go without external video graphics in my opinion 🙂
Better using extra money to buy several 23+ screens. It is ultra nice for programming having two screens or more

with modern program resource hungriness, potentially good idea to aim for 32 GB ram PCs already when buying 😅

TLDR: More RAM, More SSD, More Screens, Good CPU with inbuilt GPU. Say no to external expensive video graphics in my opinion (not cost efficient worthy spending. Removing external video graphics alone, allows maximizing other important parameters cheaply)

[harsh river]

& lots of unis have computers labs for student use if they need anything powerful

[vapid jay]

But that’s why I wanna rapid fire startups

If I have 5 vs 50 ideas and all of them are roughly drafted as apps or whatever then the likely of the 50 starts vs the 5 will be a lot higher if one of them succeeding

[vapid jay]

Any macbook with An M1 chip and above

[buoyant seal]

And most importantly, never buy MacBook with M1 chip or higher.
They are pain in the ass, that runs arm64 architectured programms only.

Buy normal Amd64 processored PC, to run Windows/Linux that will support 99% programms in the world

[vapid jay]

Arch Linux is now natively available for m1 and above for Macs too

[true harness]

the laptop talk is certainly off topic

[vapid jay]

Is there a better place to talk about it

[true harness]

!offtopic

[inner wren]

Off-topic channels

There are three off-topic channels:
• #ot0-psvm’s-eternal-disapproval
• #ot1-perplexing-regexing
• #ot2-never-nester’s-nightmare

The channel names change every night at midnight UTC and are often fun meta references to jokes or conversations that happened on the server.

See our off-topic etiquette page for more guidance on how the channels should be used.

[abstract olive]

can anyone tell me is ai prompt enginnering worth pursuing

and that it is hard or dead level hard

[timid bloom]

Send me the link to that laptop

Can someone help me get a laptop for computer science major

[true harness]

ask in an off topic channel

[buoyant seal]

https://gigatron.rs/laptop-racunari/lenovo-thinkbook-15-g4-iap-i516512-21dj000lya-535880
As example. Lenovo is also enjoyable in terms of drivers (they all work out of the box for Windows/Linux)
https://gigatron.rs/laptop-racunari/lenovo-ideapad-5-pro-14iap7-i5161-82sh0076ya-535805
or this one, it has 1 TB SSD after all 🤔 512 is kind of small (enough to survive at Linux, but will be not enough for Windows)
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 series in general fit the case. Some ThinBook/Yoga Slim fit too
https://gigatron.rs/laptop-racunari/lenovo-thinkbook-15-g4-iap-i7161-21dj00brya-536495
Ideally u will find model with battery possible to remove and replace just in case 😄 it will make safer transportation and easier maintance

[last moat]

bought this beast octa-core + gtx 1650 in 600$

[buoyant seal]

lets move into #ot2-never-nester’s-nightmare

[fringe sphinx]

I'm unsure what you're asking. Are you asking whether it's a good job or a good career? This is very situational: where you are, what your level of education is, what your motivation is, etc. A good gauge of a career is the level of education required: prompt engineers are considered fairly low level jobs, and although the work is creative and challenging, it's a low level job in the hierarchy of ML/AI/DS.

[frigid spade]

Preciate it!

[sleek egret]

no, it is not worth pursing at this time

first off, no such "career" exists. second, the very concept didn't even exist a couple years ago. within a few years, it may sound the same as "google search query engineering"

or it may become a career path. but it certainly isn't right now.

[brazen island]

Some people at work have essentially created a spin-off teaching laymen how to use GPT. If they were doing this on their own time they'd be making a lot of money 🤦

[sleek egret]

good for them. that doesn't make it a career worth pursing

[brazen island]

I think we got to make a distinction between "worth pursuing" because it makes sense as a technology and "worth pursuing" because it can hypothetically make money. Personally, I wouldn't get into that because I think it's stupid but there's people willing to pay for it I guess

[sleek egret]

crafting prompts for chatgpt is certainly a skill that I think is worth learning

my point is that that doesn't make it a career path

[gilded valley]

to be clear, you can't really know whether or not it's a career path at this point. I'm personally inclined to think not, but I can see paths where it is a job on par with other kinds of engineering

if it is, then what it looks like is unknown

[smoky quest]

It's a role, not a job.
It's also definitely not on par with other roles at the company if we solely focus on the prompt itself.

There is also a technical component people forget about like how you could hook up some vector db and stuff to it.
It also combines different skillset together, like being able to leverage openai in the context of a fullstack responsibilities.

So at this point, I would tend to agree it's not a career at this point in time.

[fringe sphinx]

Theres a diff between career and a job / side hustle! That was my orig point to OP: prompt engineering as a entry point might make sense to some people depending on status, goals, privilege, opportunity etc

[smoky quest]

my take is it will be commoditized and provided by other companies (google, aws, etc.) and end up being no different than leveraging any other service in AWS

[brazen island]

That's the case already

[fringe sphinx]

I dunno, i think of it as a new type of business analyst. It’s a very business specific / domain specific role. Not just prompt but creating and evaluating training sets, etc.

[smoky quest]

so like SQL?
You don't have a SQL career. You have SQL as a skillset for DE, DS, dev, devops, etc.

[brazen island]

Azure cognitive services has a bunch of "templates" you can use that use the openAI api. This isn't prompt engineering tough, OP's question was more specific.

I don't think anyone will ever pay you to write prompts. It's just part of your day job. You get your work done by prompting, googling or whatever. The people at my work did prove that learning to make prompts at a very high level means you can at least "sell" the idea of becoming a prompt engineer to other people, it doesn't even need to exist. It's a bit like blockchain, so much hype that you can still make money off it even though the core is maybe a bit flawed.

[gilded valley]

is site reliability engineering a career? I'd say yes. it didn't exist 20y ago. prompt engineering could be at that point now

[fringe sphinx]

There’s lots of job postings literally for ‘prompt engineers’, so I dunno

[smoky quest]

That's a non-sequitur.

[gilded valley]

at some point in the last 20y a new career became a thing. prompt engineer could be becoming a thing now

[brazen island]

Just like there were many job postings for y2k, blockchain, web3, ... specialists. It's just the hype train. Prompts are just the next way to interact with all of the information on the internet. It's Google search 2.0. Prompt engineer makes as much sense as google search engineer. People'll realize this after a while.

[smoky quest]

at some point in the last 20y a new career did not became a thing. prompt engineer could not be becoming a thing now

[gilded valley]

not all hype goes nowhere - 99% of it does. I don't think prompt engineering can be dismissed out of hand

[gilded valley]

so you're saying SRE isn't a career?

[brazen island]

This discussion is 100 % circular, suit yourself. I don't really care 🤷

[smoky quest]

Whether or not X became a new career has no bearing on whether or not something unrelated becomes a career

I am not even sure why we go into these fallacies

[smoky quest]

It strongly reminds me of the chewbacca defense

[gilded valley]

it gives a pattern that could be being followed. it gives a reference point for what it would look like if it is becoming a career.

[sleek egret]

I guess it's possible, but IMO, it's far too narrow in scope and relies far too much on learning how particular black-box systems interpret prompts. further, there is no real theoretical underpinnings. thus, if it does become a career, it will be at the level of "knowing excel" or fixing HVAC systems

[brazen island]

Do SRE's create more value to a business than the wage that is put into them?

[smoky quest]

There needs to be a link between them, some parallel that can be established. The mere existence is just not sufficient

[gilded valley]

arguably it's taking a blend of skills - in this case a mix of MLE skills, product design, and hackery - and wrapping a career path around them

[brazen island]

What but that's not prompt engineering

[sleek egret]

rarely, IMO

[gilded valley]

plenty do plenty don't

[brazen island]

Prompt engineers have no MLE skills. It's literally just writing the prompt.

[sleek egret]

software development focused on AI/ML is, IMO, a viable career path. "prompt engineering"... not so much. again, IMO.

[gilded valley]

prompt engineering roles are usually about optimising embedded prompts for AI products,

[gilded valley]

at least the ones I've seen

[sleek egret]

how can you optimize something if the thing is a black box and you have zero idea of the resources necessary to execute your prompt?

[gilded valley]

hand waving and or setting up some degree of empirical testing

[brazen island]

You can't also put it beyond companies of taking a software engineering job and renaming it prompt engineer to win the war for talent

[sleek egret]

GPT prompt engineering is the same as "google search prompt engineering" except targetted at different products

i.e. it's not engineering. and it's something you can a random reasonably intelligent person to do with zero actual technical skills.

[gilded valley]

but that's exactly the point. there's a million products that are just wrapping gpt. if there were a million products wrapping Google search, maybe gooogle search engineer would become a job

[sleek egret]

which is not to say that there aren't people who are much better at prompt engineering than others

[brazen island]

prompt engineering is not about the integration of the API and making the product. That's just software engineering..... It's just writing the prompt, nothing more. You can make the definition of prompt engineering so large that yes indeed it becomes useful but it's no longer in the spirit of how the term was originally coined.

[sleek egret]

I agree with that. I just don't think it will be a good career path. IF it develops, it will pay 1/2 to 1/3 what a random software engineer gets paid. and 1/4th to 1/8th what an AI/ML engineer does.

further, I don't think that deep knowledge of how AI models work will be of any help in prompt engineering

[gilded valley]

first job ad. there's plenty of room for working with the api within the scope of this job

[sleek egret]

hitting an API to send queries is literally something I expect freshman interns to be able to do

I mean come on. calling request.post does not a career make

[brazen island]

That's just the company leaning into the hype and the buzz around the term prompt engineer 🤦 . It's marketing on the side of the company. It's just the same as people being called "data scientist" but all they do is make bar charts in Excel.

Realistically this job could've been called data scientist, NLP or anything else. It's just called prompt engineer to ride the hype train and get in applicants.

[gilded valley]

agree.

I also think I'm 10y it won't be a role. I think a handful of strategies will come to dominate and be handed down to us by LLM companies.

but I don't think this is something where high conviction is warranted

[sleek egret]

I've seen people get overly focused on new tech again and again over the decades. it's dangerous.

that said, I think leaning a bit about how to phrase queries to chatgpt (and similar LLM's) is a good skill to pick up

[gilded valley]

this is what every prompt engineering role I see is. it's also clearly a much much lower technical bar than for an SDE.

it's a product role focused on optimising a single feature within the product by applying analytical skills

[sleek egret]

but it's no more a career path than "REST API engineer" is a career path

[brazen island]

While only using 2 HTTP verbs 🤣

[gilded valley]

well it seems about as different from existing roles as SRE is distant to SDE/Sysadmin

[fringe sphinx]

Bjarne said it well (just saw this yesterday) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QxI-RP6-HM

That’s my new response to anyone asking about Ml/AI/whatever shiny new tech when they’re just starting

[sleek egret]

yes, but the question wasn't about ML/AI , it was about "prompt engineering" as a career. that didn't even even exist a year ago.

writing some AI prompts as part of your job, sure. that as a career... nope.

[vapid jay]

This sounds awesome

[brazen island]

Slightly off-topic but whenever Soustroup brings down his ideas down to the level of mere mortals or I can understand what he's trying to say for some reason I'm always reminded by how smart the guy is.

[sage night]

anyone wanting to do some mock behaviourals?

[fringe sphinx]

It’s Microsoft. It sounds awesome until you realize how broken the idea is. In this case, the code runs in a sandboxed non networkers anaconda install (with a limited library of packages: no pypi) running in azure that you have no control or insight into

[sleek egret]

I don't think anyone should be mocked, even those who behave

[lusty spindle]

Hello everyone. Is there a tag to ask a question or is it open ended?

[smoky quest]

it's open ended

[gritty rivet]

If it's a career question you're in the right place, if it's a technical question see #❓｜how-to-get-help

[muted bridge]

as a freshman in college, what can I do to improve my hire-ability for internships/jobs?

Currently, I'm taking a data structures class, and I'm also completing a course on coursera for web development, but I'm not sure what else I should be focusing on if I want to land internships this summer

[late flame]

That's basically all it takes.. Just be really good at the DSA stuff for interviews

[muted bridge]

what's dsa

[fringe sphinx]

Four things: 1. get good at programming. Your courses aren’t enough. 2. Projects: you want a small portfolio of meaningful projects, showing your ability and interest in engineering. 3. Internship/work experience is highly desirable: this makes a big difference when we review resumes. 4. Get involved in an open source project: don’t just be a bystander. It’s impressive when a candidate has been involved (for several years) in a substantial project.

Dsa=data structures and algorithms. You should also be able to tackle any leetcode easy (or equivalent) easily, and preferably harder with some effort. This is because leetcode )or equiv) type questions are a standard hiring filter

My answers are more about what you should do in the next 4 years.. freshman internships can be hard to land

[muted bridge]

I'm aware there are freshman and sophomore specific internships I'll try to apply for those

as for open source projects, how can I get involved in one

[fringe sphinx]

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

[muted bridge]

also, im thinking about starting a programming club at my school, does that help?

[fringe sphinx]

Contributing is more than coding too: reporting and triaging bugs is a good place to start

Not sure it helps on the resume but: networking (knowing people) and working with others is important. Your future jobs will likely be through someone you know, so clubs is probably a great idea

[late flame]

Data structures and algorithms

[muted bridge]

alright

[muted bridge]

this stuff seems hard to put on a resume. How can i tell employers that I worked on an open source project?

[fringe sphinx]

You would just list it under projects or contributions

The thing I look for is the candidates ability to talk about the details of whatever they worked on. Lots of people say, ‘i know pandas’ because they did one project that used it, but then can’t talk about it in depth.

Bonus points if it’s career relevant. Like: want data science? Would look awesome if you contributed to anything related to it

[muted bridge]

you said courses aren't enough, so what can I do to make them stand out? I was thinking of taking data structures, finishing the fullstack course on coursera, starting an additional one for data science, and then using that knowledge somehow on a project. Would the project make me stand out?

[fringe sphinx]

The project is the important part: do something meaningful, challenging and interesting (for your own sake: it sucks working on something you don’t like)

[muted bridge]

okay

[fringe sphinx]

But start small. Baby projects!

[muted bridge]

and how much time should I invest in these projects?

[fringe sphinx]

!kindling is a resource, and for ml learning, check out https://www.kaggle.com/learn

[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.

[muted bridge]

what is it used for?

[fringe sphinx]

No idea. Have a life and be balanced, I’d say. Just keep challenging yourself

[muted bridge]

oh projects

[worldly smelt]

Hey everyone Im totally new in this field

If I want to learn AI and machine learning, should I learn python first?

[muted bridge]

oh, I forgot to ask, should I be learning web development first?

[fringe sphinx]

I don’t think so, better to stick with Python and get to an intermediate skill level first

[worldly smelt]

@fringe sphinx bro can you plis ans my question?

[fringe sphinx]

Python is the main language for Ml and AI, and it’s the starter language for most CS majors nowadays (was Java)

[muted bridge]

when is intermediate

[sleek egret]

after between 1 to 10 years of experience

[worldly smelt]

Oh okay, do you have any good sources for learning AI and ML?

[sleek egret]

or to put it another way, when the challenge in writing software for you is no longer the language, but the problem

[muted bridge]

okay that makes it better

[fringe sphinx]

Are you a good Python coder?

[sage night]

@fringe sphinx i have a one hour long behavioural panel interview this week, the final round for an internship ive been trying for. any advice or anything I should keep in mind during?

[muted bridge]

where can I see sample resumes of software engineers

[worldly smelt]

I dont know anything about python

[true harness]

the third pin has a good example

[muted bridge]

i see

[fringe sphinx]

!resources You should worry then about learning Python first: you need to succeed there. Check out a byte of Python for one good place to start

[inner wren]

Resources

The Resources page on our website contains a list of hand-selected learning resources that we regularly recommend to both beginners and experts.

[muted bridge]

and if I don't have projects to showcase on my resume, what should I do instead?

[fringe sphinx]

That I really don’t have any advise for!

[worldly smelt]

Bro if I want to build trading bots or algos which specific field of python should I focus on?

[sage night]

lol

np thanks anyway

[fringe sphinx]

Just start with basic Python and simple programming projects. Once you can code well enough, then decide what to learn next. There’s simply too much you need to learn at this point.

[late flame]

You're trying to learn heart surgery before learning how to treat a paper cut. You can't just jump into fintech, since it's a hard field with a lot of regulation to consider

[sleek egret]

you also need to know finance, how financial markets operate, and often a bit of accounting too

[sleek egret]

you should focus on understanding market operations and how/why prices change

[worldly smelt]

Thanks everyone

[peak halo]

!warn 562290189653901323 This server is not for promoting your music

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied warning to @next acorn.

[vapid jay]

what is the fastest track to getting a job/intership with python?

[late flame]

University degree.

If you can't get one, personal projects and contributing to open source

[fringe sphinx]

Well, fastest track is to have a family member in the industry 🙂

[vapid jay]

my dad works in web dev buts thats not rly software engineer

[vapid jay]

then my question becomes whats the fastest track to building personal projects? like i dont even know python rn

is automating the borning stuff with python good for learning synta

[rugged zephyr]

hey my teams been doin story point meetings for like a month. and i dont understand how we are getting any value from spending 2 hours a weekx12 ppl doin this. we point each feature. usually the 2 people guess the points and then one of them does the feature. the points dont rlly ccme up again on than on a report that tracks points completed in each sprint. we are kinda early doin this.

Has any seen point systems provide value ? or used to make future decisions? how so? im just kinda lost on what r getting outta this and everytime i ask i get some weird answer i dont understand about how they will be used tto help guessistimate workload but we dont rlly do that we just shove everything in the sprint that needs to be done in the next two weeks

sorry if this is the wrong chat for this it just seemed less weird here than anywhere else

[late flame]

That counts, especially if he's pushing projects. I used Python for Web Dev

[rugged zephyr]

u shud learn stats first

[late flame]

Well step one is learn Python. That should take up your time for six months. Ask your dad for help since he's already in the industry.

[vapid jay]

he just maintains and updates 1 website

[late flame]

Yeah but what does the website do?

[vapid jay]

and he just works with it mostly html and css and drupale but no javascript even

[vapid jay]

colege website

[late flame]

Yeah my last workplace had that system then dropped it because it didn't matter.

You're creating points but not using them, so why bother?

[late flame]

If it needs to handle a load on limited resources, handle payment processing, etc there should still be some real work involved. And I'm sure he knows enough to get you get started

[vapid jay]

ngl his not very helpful, but his being honest, he says only i can teach myself by building stuff

[rugged zephyr]

i mean we are early on so we may use them. but everyone ive talked to at other places is either in camp. " story points dont matter" or " we switched to time estimates and just take tasks according to time" but ive yet to find anyone whose like " ya heres how we make points valuable "

[rugged zephyr]

ur dads right . listen to ur dad

[vapid jay]

best way to learn x is to build somthing with x is what he preaches

problem is i dont know what to build, maybe automate the borning stuff?

[rugged zephyr]

what do you do for fun"?

what do you like? what do you watch? what do you daydream about? whats something you hate doing?

what do you study?

[vapid jay]

god, if i can find a way to automate making powerpoints into anki flashcards, like even for med school in the future

[vapid jay]

computer science rn

[rugged zephyr]

https://github.com/patarapolw/AnkiTools#ankidirect-api so heres the python package for making anki cards

[fringe sphinx]

I think you're overthinking this. Start a tutorial. Learn. You'll know when you're ready for something harder, then ask for help

[rugged zephyr]

and hteres lots of python/microsoft stuff for pulling data out of powerpoints

[summer roost]

Automate the Boring Stuff is great. Read it. 🙂

[rugged zephyr]

https://projecteuler.net/
https://adventofcode.com/

also these are great places to solve problems using fairly basic syntax. as some one who didnt study csci in college i found them super approachable

i worked with a guy who learned making stuff, another who learned from youtube and udemy, another who went to college, and a 4th who mostly just read books, and yet another who did solve this problem code challenges.

you gotta find what works for u*** everything above is a mostly obviously ur gonna do a combo

also once in a while u encounter the forbidden " i just read the docs and then got a job" guy

[vapid jay]

that or Python Crash Course? which one would you say teaches more?

[rugged zephyr]

ur not trying to learn more or learn fast. just do whichever one is more fun or interests you. if you dont love this u arent gonna get far even if u pick the most efficient learning path

[vapid jay]

How difficult is it to create a program that converts PowerPoint slides into flashcards (with flashcard api or som) ?

[lusty spindle]

Thanks 🙂

[smoky quest]

Hi!
It has nothing to do with this channel.
That's a question more appropriate for #❓｜how-to-get-help or #python-discussion

[marsh wind]

Imo any kind of estimate is garbage. Time in some way is even worse bcs when you estimate wrong (and you will) someone will try to hold you accountable for that

[buoyant seal]

i thought after years i would start better estimating... it did not happen.
All tasks remain random in time to complete. Any task at any moment can grew in complexity and start capturing N times more time than originally 😄

[marsh wind]

exactly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVBlnCTu9Ms

[raven rune]

Guys may i ask you a question about how can I add more than 1 language in a vsc page? I mean is there a way to set the page as HTML and CSS here?

I know i can add css in the page as "style" but i want ask you if there's a way to set the page also as CSS

[smoky quest]

This has nothing to do with this channel.
You should check out #❓｜how-to-get-help

[smoky quest]

I don't really agree with that statement.
Because:

• It helps surface unknowns. Being able to talk about what prevents someone from establishing timelines is a good opportunity to figure out how to derisk them
• Practice makes perfect. People will be shitty at first. But over time, estimates will improve

[marsh wind]

I am not buying that... Been working on same project for 3 years and another project for over a year, with people of different experiences, different stacks etc. And so far I've seen very few estimates proving not harmful (hardly useful though), which was either a luck or it was a really small task or it was something that people has already done in the past (or very close to). Anytime we ventured in somewhat uncharted teritory, all estimates were complete garbage. IMO, you can keep doing those only if they are never used against you and if you don't make any kind of actual decision based on estimates. But if that's truly becomes the case, you are going agaist agile and lean principle about eliminating waste, and the time you spend to make estimates that are useless is precisely that - waste

[gilded valley]

my old boss had an argument against estimations that went like: the lengths of projects/tasks are log normally distributed, but people really can't think at all well in non-linear ways, so estimates often end up being wildly off

[marsh wind]

that's one way of putting it 🙂 Either way I admit there might be cases when they can be OK-ish, for example if all you do is dev e-commerce websites/platforms - the core will be similar so perhaps you won't be as wildy of the mark.

A subject of "guestimations" is often a source of rather heated debates 🙂 Personally I am very much with Allen Holub on this - he has multiple videos/articles on this, and all the pitfals and issues of guestimating that he talks about allign quite well with my and my peers' experiences. And it seems that there are quite some companies/teams that actually understand that and employ something akin to NoEstimate in one form or another... Hopefully I'll be able to get on board of one such team eventually :_

[smoky quest]

That's the whole point though.
If your estimates are garbage, it means you have no idea what you are getting into. And thus it's worth understanding or training/coaching

[marsh wind]

well that's often the thing with the dev - we do what we do because it was not done before (or was done by someone but you can't get access to it) and what we have to do is often higly volatile - requirements often change or simply emerge from what you are doing as you clients/user start to interact with whatever you've done so far, business priority change often, and all kind of uncertanities can pop in. Plus if you are not self containted and depend on some other app/team, it makes it so much worse.... Even in the self contained environment, despite your best efforts you'll run into some obstacles that you never ran into before (while using new tool, library, service or just in general). What I saw most ppl do when faced with this kind of tasks is ie make a guess and then double or triple it just in case. I have certain reservations to how that is useful 🙂

I think the idea of No Estimates approach with using forecasting instead of estimation has a lot of merit. It does require a bit of a different mindset and certain skillset to be developed, of course.

[smoky quest]

that's just different ways to skin the same cat.
Whatever makes people feel comfortable.

But at the end of the day it's just plain science and project management with different ways to call out the confidence interval.

[marsh wind]

again, that's first and foremost my experinece and opinion. your mileage may differ

[smoky quest]

I don't see any disagreement

[marsh wind]

that's just different ways to skin the same cat.
yes and no - estimates are usually done before you start any work, while forecasting rely on you starting the work and then constatnly adjusting your forecast based on how it went so far

[smoky quest]

Whether you call it forecast, story points, shirts, people day, etc. These are just ways to try to put some numbers on it and to set some expectation on the remaining amount of wait/work

[smoky quest]

and sometimes, putting estimates requires you to dip your toes and investigate, which is another way to start the work and updating your forecast

Different people will have different strokes and feel comfortable with one approach or the other or something completely different

The main issue is to ensure people across the teams do understand which unit is each other using

another issue is to convey the context. Someone more removed (ie. director, vp), won't care about the dependencies between the teams (they do, but not so much in terms of "when is X done?", unless it becomes a problem). What they will care about is the predictability and whether there is progress.
It will be on the lead/manager to do some translation to ease the communication between the different teams and the leadership

And to make the matter worse, even if two teams use story points or forecasts, they may use the same nomenclature that means different things (ie. 2 points in one team may mean something different in another)

So I guess my opinion and experience there is that internal consistency is more important than whatever methodology or unit a specific team might use

[marsh wind]

that's for sure true. The other thing, of importance to me, is that the team and its members should not be held accountable for estimations that are not good. If everyone is on the same page that estimation is just a guess and not an exact science and not a metrics to be used for bonuses, promoting someone etc etc, then be my guest 🙂

that's a big part of my beef with the whole estimation business, ie my bonus was conditioned by the management on the team achieving certain milestone in the app dev, except that a big part of what is needed to be done was defined in a very wide strokes, like "we need user permissions module" or we need to set up a sync service to our clients system via APIs that the client is yet to develop...

[smoky quest]

That's where I coach a lot of engineers wanting to be senior.
They ought to understand the requirements, talk to people, investigate the unknowns, and offer solutions that are adapted to the context.
As an engineer you cannot just stop at "user permission module". And that's awesome because it gives you opportunities to stretch yourself, work on your leadership and technical chops

[marsh wind]

well sure. Those things do get delved in deeply as we go through the dev process. But not before this target above was set

[smoky quest]

why not?

[marsh wind]

well because the management decided so set that goal at that moment 🙂

[smoky quest]

sounds like a company structure issue

[marsh wind]

it is actually😁

one of the reasons I already handed my resignation after getting a good offer in other company and will start there in 2 months

[smoky quest]

in my world, product brings problems. Engineers bring solutions

[marsh wind]

unfortunately you cannot get a lot of insights in future company details of how they operate without knowing someone on the inside, but based on my interviews at least things look better over there. Also, I'll have a role where I am no longer responsible for the whole team and product with its roadmap and shit

[smoky quest]

these are fair questions to ask during an interview

"how do you decide what to work on?" "how do you decide how to solve a specific problem?"

anyway, got to go.
Congrats on the new job!

[marsh wind]

well yeah I was asking quite a lot of those. But something I haven't asked things I should have asked in retrospective, cause of lack of experinece, most likely
thanks 🙂

[buoyant seal]

In our DevOps engineering team we are quite rarely having tasks that are known how to do 🤣
Every second task at least assumes small research and finding if it is possible to do in the first place

[floral topaz]

Guessing there’s a typo in the description. Any idea what they were trying to say by £175 - £200 per year?

[near ocean]

Thats probably per day

[fringe sphinx]

“… plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Dwight D. Eisenhower

Likewise, I think an over emphasis on the estimate itself is a bad practice, but estimating is a useful exercise. Estimates are often wrong… but often because of either a lack of careful thought (ie: a rushed estimate), optimism or incomplete information (which should be called out as: I don’t know). Steve McConnell, author of code complete, has a great short blog in this topic: https://stevemcconnell.com/17-theses-software-estimation/

[fringe sphinx]

(My McConnell link is a direct response to the No estimates argument)

[delicate finch]

I'm looking for a programmer who has some experience with python automation. I don't have a specific problem, I just need general help. If you are interested in an interesting project, please write to me!

[balmy spade]

You should use the help system. #❓｜how-to-get-help

[dreamy spade]

Is this channel not for career advice only?

[balmy spade]

Discussion of Python and the world of work

[leaden jasper]

It's for broader career discussions and also advice. We don't want this to turn into a venting and rant channel though. We do want discussion to stay productive, helpful, and insightful.

[dreamy spade]

Okay so asking everyone here how many days of vacation per year they have in their company doesn’t qualify those standards then.

[analog sun]

Sounds like it could be related to how benefits work at different companies

I have 128 hours of PTO, and gain a comp day for weekend work, no overtime

[balmy spade]

I don't know for sure but I believe I get approx six weeks a year now (8 year tenure). It increases each year and I loose track. Far more vacation than I know how to use coming out of retail for most my life. xD

[fringe sphinx]

Depends on country and seniority. You in US?

[dreamy spade]

Canada

[balmy spade]

ffiw I think your question is fair and square in "career discussion".

[fringe sphinx]

This chart actually matches what I was about to say: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/pto-overview-us

My experience with big tech is 2 weeks for straight out of school, 3 weeks for a little experience, and then a bump to 4 weeks at mid level (or sometimes higher)

For some companies, this is inclusive of sick leave... I think that's the trend now. It used to be that sick leave was a separate block.

And, some companies have generous vacation schedules.

[balmy spade]

Oh good call. My vacation bank does include all of my sick days, self-study, and volunteer hours. Oh and two floating holidays.

I tell you; 25 some years of not having vacation or even a weekend off... working for a place that gives you vacation feels weird. xD

[marsh wind]

PTOs seems to vary wildly between the countries... In Europe we seem to have much more than US

[analog sun]

10000%

[balmy spade]

Y'all get some fantastic treatment in that regard.

[analog sun]

I'm taking a foreign assignment with the same company, but it will be based in a different country. My PTO almost doubles to 30 days

[marsh wind]

yeah, but I think your Salary to Cost of living ratio is a bit better, so it's all about trade offs

[fringe sphinx]

Oh yah.. some countries are super generous (france, I'm looking at you)

[balmy spade]

I do enjoy the better ratio as I work 360 days of the year with no protections of unpaid overtime. /sadjoking

[sleek egret]

If you add all that together, you start with 80+48+7*8=144 hrs of paid time off for salaried full-time employees. or 18 days

and cap out at 33 days after 6 years

[fringe sphinx]

Wait till you're the boss (or close enough). No true vacation. But, occasionally my feet are in the sand.

[balmy spade]

Yeah. I've passed on that offer several times now.

[sleek egret]

18 to 33 days of PTO isn't too shabby, IMO

[marsh wind]

depends what you are comparing to

[sleek egret]

how much time off do you expect? 33 days is two weeks off every 3 months

[marsh wind]

I did not say about expecting something, I only said depends on what you are comparing to 😉

[sleek egret]

there are only 260 working days during the year. 33 days is about 1/8th of that

[marsh wind]

for example here in France, I think on average someone working in software has 36 days of PTO + all national holidays

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, throw in remote work, and people are probably working 40% of working hours 🙂

[sleek egret]

thank god we're not france

[marsh wind]

that's debatable heh

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, my waistline wouldn't handle that.

incidentally, i thoroughly enjoyed london food.

[sleek egret]

11 national holidays,. so 41 days of 260 = almost 1 in 6 days. i.e. france works the equivalent of 4 days a week

[marsh wind]

and what is considered absolute worst case scenario in France would be 24 days PTO which is legaly minimum for full time employee

[sleek egret]

(260-41) * 8 = 219 * 8 = 1752 hrs. out of 365*16 = 5840 waking hours, that's only 30% of your waking hours at work

[marsh wind]

for nationatl holidays there is however a caveat - if it falls on the weeekend it's lost, so I think we almost never have all 11, but yeah, it's still a lot

[noble tusk]

anyone knows platform for unpaid internships?

[marsh wind]

also idk how US handles that, I know some countirest compenstate is with Monday off or with a day off you can take

[sleek egret]

your school is part of a network with a job site

[sleek egret]

the US does that too. though sometimes friday instead of monday

[noble tusk]

nah nah, no school its just me

[sleek egret]

then it's not an internship, it's a job. and unpaid jobs are illegal

[noble tusk]

😂

[sleek egret]

there may be non-profits you can volunteer at

[noble tusk]

yes but full-remote possible?

[sleek egret]

anything is possible

[noble tusk]

yes so what platform u search for them?

[marsh wind]

I doubt there is a dedicated platform

[fringe sphinx]

In lieue of an (unpaid) internship, also consider Open Source contributions. It can be just as challenging and perhaps more interesting to contribute to a significant open source project.

https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/exploring-projects-on-github/finding-ways-to-contribute-to-open-source-on-github

[noble tusk]

ok thanks

[delicate bane]

i heard a planet money podcast about vacation/PTO in usa vs. in europe. historical/cultural reasons lead to where we are now according to the podcast.

[sleek egret]

people don't come to the USA to lead a relaxing life

[delicate bane]

this is the podcast for those actually interested https://www.npr.org/2023/08/17/1194467863/europe-vacation-holiday-paid-time-off

[noble tusk]

usa very bad overall , germany provides best work conditions in whole EU

[sleek egret]

no one comes to the US for great working conditions

[marsh wind]

🤷 probably. But I think even in EU France is close to the top spot in terms of working conditions and vacation specifically

[gritty rivet]

There are multiple platforms for finding nonprofits that need coding volunteers. Here's the first result I get from a web search: https://stuartdotson.com/blog/top-software-engineer-volunteer-opportunities/

For open source projects to contribute to, check out https://github.com/MunGell/awesome-for-beginners

[late flame]

The US is worse than most other first world countries in many, many ways but it excels in one area: earning potential.

If you have the skills to get rich, you'll do it in the US and then ask the other issues don't matter. Being rich in the US is great, but being poor in the US is just awful.

[split citrus]

Do internships pigeonhole you?

[mild sentinel]

Does anyone have ideas how I can find a mentor or someone to kinda guide/give advice

[smoky quest]

nope. They won't pigeonhole you

[smoky quest]

I would consider them as adding opportunities, not removing them.
So for instance an interesting internship might open some new doors to you. But not having such a great internship will not remove opportunities for you

[deft herald]

You can ask questions here

[fringe sphinx]

Definitely not. I’ve hired software engineers with all sorts of internships. Lots of QA interns, for instance

If your intern is very industry specific (ie: aerospace or something like that), may want to be careful in wording the resume in more general terms.

[novel portal]

Hey i finally got a couple things on my github, was wondering if some kind souls could just verify that im doing it correctly.
dont wanna look stupid before i hit up indeed this week.
https://github.com/vogtzachary

[deft herald]

"doing it correctly" in terms of what?

[novel portal]

@deft herald looking professional

[deft herald]

Ok in that case, make your readme.txt a readme.md and add some formatting

[gritty rivet]

Looks fine at a glance but there's a high chance nobody is going to read your code. The really important thing will be how you present this on your resume, how you talk about it in interviews

[dull hemlock]

Is dsa and cs fundamental important for gettting job ???

[novel portal]

im trying to land my first job as a developer. just pushing some of the projects and want it to look like i know what the heck im doing lol

[gritty rivet]

Depends on the jobs, generally yes

[novel portal]

@deft herald @gritty rivet thank you so much for the information

[deft herald]

Yeah that's really important. IME the only time someone will look at a github link is when HR screens it, passes a stack of 10-20 candidates to the hiring manager, then the manager passes it down to the team members themselves to take a look, then maybe 1 guy will pull up the GH to roast your code with his peers looking over their shoulder

(not that i've done this exact thing before...)

[novel portal]

lol sounds daunting but im open to it lol

roast me but hire me lol. i dont think they're THAT bad

[dull hemlock]

i want to become a software developer it is necessary or not ??

[deft herald]

How would you become a software developer without knowing how to develop software?
This would be like asking "can i get a job as a truck driver if i don't have a drivers' license?"
Yes that material is 100% necessary.

[marsh wind]

Answer won't change. It depends

[deft herald]

btw, i was speaking about the material itself. Do you need to take these courses from an acredited university? That depends. Do you need to posses the knowledge that those courses teach? Absolutely

[gilded valley]

internships are the perfect way to try a career path you're not sure about.

I strongly recommend branching out if there's a field you might be interested in but are not sure

[gilded valley]

the story I always tell in interviews is about how I used internships to explore, and it goes down really well

[vapid jay]

I have a question, when someone doesn't know python, is it the right thing to sit and analyze a code and say it's okay, I don't know, I sit down and read the document. My friend is like this now and I want to know if he is doing the right thing?

[gilded valley]

there is no right thing, but this is the wrong channel. try #python-discussion

[vapid jay]

ok