career-advice

[rich bluff]

Hey, y'all! So, I'm new to the server, but not to Python. It was three years ago I discovered it again, and in that time since then, have dove pretty deep into C, C#, and Go mostly. Learned a lot of fundamentals through C, handful of good demos(raycasters and tooling), and the release of 3.14 reignited my love for Python.

With that being said, I don't know how many apps I've sent in the last year, to absolutely no responses. Haha I'm wanting to dive deeper into the language and get going on a career path. My strengths are in systems and game development, lower level programming. How might I best merge those two interests of mine to get a niche into a field with Python?

[smoky quest]

You need to tell us something about your career so we can help.
Feel free to post an anonymized version of your resume for review and feedback

[rich bluff]

Understood!
As far as tech experience, I've not broken in yet.

Ten years of experience in retail at walmart, having 8 and half months as online grocery team lead, the rest working countless departments. In the last year, I broke ground by sending a critical bug report to our market manager with our viz pick system(memory corruption due to data race), and have a relationship with home office now to relay oddities to them.

So, far as skills go: leadership, stability, just doing the job, strategy, and attention to detail from my time with C and C++.

https://github.com/Mike5493

This is where my projects live.

[open ivy]

I will soon start sending a few applications per day, nothing too soul crushing or time consuming.

For those of you who see resumes, what made the selected ones stand out? It seems very hard to do so without years of formal industry experience.

[near ocean]

inb4 👏demonstrated 👏skills

[open ivy]

Lots of posts on r/jobs cite poor mental health and a low self worth feeling if they can't get a job. Portfolio projects help me here so long as I stick with them. And also fill holes in resumes.

I do wonder if there are also game jams and other team hobbies that can maintain connectedness while between jobs?

[open ivy]

Two anon resumes, same person.

The first has no obvious flaws in it but fails to stand out.

The second stands out nicely.

That would be good to add to our library of example resumes for other people to browse through. It's the subtle pitfalls that trap job seekers.

[fringe sphinx]

I generally want boring resumes. Over achievers, padded resumes, too many things going on? I'd rather interview the vanilla candidate.

[open ivy]

How does a boring resume stand out? Especially for those of us who are fresh out of college (my situation is different, it is a portfolio heavy approach)?

[fringe sphinx]

Generally? I just want someone local, with a CS degree, and maybe a few projects with some relevance to our field (data).

Beyond that, it's probably luck if we get lots of resumes

Usually the location filter is sufficient for me

(Mind you, I'm in small tech)

[open ivy]

Local makes sense.

Projects make sense, as a love for tech is crucial.

I wonder about social and likability? That is a powerful arm I am working on for my networking based approach, since social skills differences are huge. But is there anything in the CV or cover letter to communicate that? I will be sending out a few apps here and there as well.

[near ocean]

Im not sure we looked at projects at all when considering interviews
I mean, i did but im snoopy af
(We were hiring juniors at the time)

[fringe sphinx]

A resume won't answer that

All I can do is make sure resume is grammatically correct.

I don't look that carefully, but I'll toss a resume with typos or obvious errors

Ultimately I'm looking for retainability:

Location is a big part. Long commute? Big reason to leave, even if we're mostly wfh.

[open ivy]

This is a key advantage of networking. Built in personality match screening.

But are you sure the resume cannot at least give a subtle hint?

[fringe sphinx]

Iirc, you have a PhD? That can be a negative, especially if it conveys 'this isn't my passion'

[open ivy]

Yes I took an odd trajectory that tilts the table a bit more toward networking for me. ATS systems reject nuanced approaches.

[solid parcel]

Agreed on boring. There are lots of appalling CVs out there. Either ones that are not at all relevant (e.g. spam from India when the role isn't offering sponsorship), ones that are formatted terribly or have other nonsense going on (Longest one I've come across so far was 54,000 words!), that are far too thin on details to evaluate ability, or simply entirely fail to translate 'I have x technical skill' into 'Here is the business outcome as a result of my work'.

Boring but competent already puts candidates ahead of most of the competition.

[open ivy]

I never understood why car drivers think a car is freedom? Commute driving is work time and money spent unreimbursed. Much reduced in a bus where you can read a book etc.

[solid parcel]

Getting somewhere in a bus takes a hell of a lot longer and is far, far less flexible. You're on rigid routes, with rigid timetables.

[fringe sphinx]

Depends on the city. NYC or sf? Would never want to commute to work

[open ivy]

If I have to be somewhere at 9am every day I am also on a rigid schedule.

And driving commute injuries and deaths exceed industrial occupational hazards.

[fringe sphinx]

But, locations along public transportation tend to either be crappy or super expensive

[near ocean]

You must be crazy if you think you can work on a train or bus

[fringe sphinx]

Why many people in Bay Area drive for 1-2 hours to work

[fringe sphinx]

Everytime I tell myself I'll get some work done, and I nap instead

[solid parcel]

On the London Underground, I wouldn't even have space to get a laptop out until a couple of stops before home 😆

[open ivy]

I have many times. Right now my laptop is heavy and battery sucks so I don't always bring it but if I had a regular commute 100% would buy a low performance energy saver one or even a steam deck.

[open ivy]

Napping in the train sounds better than napping while driving.

[wraith harbor]

What do you mean by over achievers? You think they would quickly leave the company for a better job?

[fast fossil]

what if you're driving the train

[fringe sphinx]

I mean that more negatively, like, people who are doing lots of different things at once.

[open ivy]

Maybe I wouldn't mind a car commute if they payed me extra for owning the car and driving, equal to a train drivers salary...

[fringe sphinx]

Like I said, I like boring

[fast fossil]

but when would you nap?

[fringe sphinx]

I hired some guy who said he'd move closer (he was like 90 minutes away). He never did, and we had a problem with him sleeping at his desk.

[solid parcel]

Was he getting his work done, or nah?

[fast fossil]

is he stilled hired by you?

[near ocean]

Little siesta never hurt anyone

[fringe sphinx]

Not well enough. He didn't last long.

But we gave him time to correct it.

[open ivy]

Does your workplace have an issue with people being too creative? Trying to come up with their own solution for problems instead of just following the standard rules?

[fringe sphinx]

(that said, I had another guy with a super long commute, but no work issues)

[solid parcel]

Fair, then. I'm a big fan of outcomes being considered rather than process (sometimes a mid day nap is exactly what you need when your brain is fried from meetings and code!), but if the productivity wasn't there, then fair.

[fringe sphinx]

I'm not sure what that means. That's our job as engineers - to find our own solutions to problems.

[solid parcel]

I think he's asking if there's lots of red tape and top down mandates.

[fringe sphinx]

Sometimes people find solutions that I don't like. I remember hiring someone who implemented a very java enterprisey design pattern in some critical code base. I still regret it to this day.

[open ivy]

If there is a library that solves the problem just use the library? No reinvent the wheel.

[fringe sphinx]

I'm in small tech, we don't have much red tape.

but even in big tech, there wasn't much red tape other than "don't use GPL"

[open ivy]

Or even just problems that don't need creativity to solve.

[solid parcel]

https://github.com/Hello-World-EE/Java-Hello-World-Enterprise-Edition

[fringe sphinx]

It was more or less like this. I still laugh about how incomprehensible the code was.

[fringe sphinx]

The bigger thing is: most organizations have a few individuals with authority to override a design. You might not like it, but sometimes someone has to be the captain. Like Linus.

[fast fossil]

did it also print "Hello, World!" to stdout?

[fringe sphinx]

For all I know, maybe

[open ivy]

Different people subscribe to very different "religions" when it comes to job hunts.

Some say colorful resumes are better etc.

My only religion for job hunting is wellness+portfolio+social.

[solid parcel]

I'm still dealing with an infuriating codebase at work. Getting closer to the end of it, but I'm having to reverse engineer every step of the way. Everything is stitched together in such a convoluted, inconsistent way. Put together by consultants who are long gone. Boss reckons they may have felt the need to justify their cost by showing just how complex the solution was, despite the fact a simpler approach would have done a much better job.

Frankly, the main thing missing is documentation. If they'd had that part down, it would be fine and I wouldn't need to understand all the implementation details

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, for me it's indirection. iirc, that code I was complaining about had three layers of indirection, which made it impossible to grok.

[fast fossil]

grok as in AI?

[pastel aspen]

(I think a strictly-compliant J2EE "Bean" would not have access to stdout)
Grok meant understand (A Stranger in a Strange Land) before Elon stole it for an LLM model.

[open ivy]

I value clean code and often refactor my own projects. Does slow me down in the early game however.

[fringe sphinx]

You're one of today's lucky 10,000.

[fringe sphinx]

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

[solid parcel]

It means to entirely and completely understand

I stand corrected, though I had the gist 😁 Alas, apparently not quite enough of it to grok grok.

[open ivy]

The sheer impossibility of grokking LLMs will make it hard to improve AI. Like what are those huge weights doing and where even does it store basic facts?

[fringe sphinx]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", since we're quoting sci fi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws

[pastel aspen]

(OT please)

[solid parcel]

Far from impossible, though I'm similarly skeptical that LLMs alone will reach any kind of genuine intelligence and understanding, even if we do fully understand them.

[open ivy]

I am skeptical as well. AI is the boogie man people for unable to find work but automation for 200+ years nothing new. No AI uses quantum computing.

The difficulty getting a job seems more to be a lack of feedback and a sense of how close your app was. Which may be due to how impersonal online apps are. Social situations at least let you feel vibes and get a somewhat good idea.

[pastel aspen]

Since we're not going OT with it, I will say that I think LLMs are already the "legacy" technology, and the "what is actually coming" conversation doesn't really usefully involve them.
Hierarchical Reasoning Model and now Tiny Recursive Models are just visibly way more efficient and capable of learning.
TRM is like 2150x more memory-efficient than GPT5 and solves sudokus GPT5 gets 0% on on a single PC.

[open ivy]

AI helps me with boring coding tasks. It cannot help me meaningfully with more complex strategy.

[pastel aspen]

Not until next year, no.
Hierarchical Reasoning Model's neuron activation chart looks almost identical to a mouse brain being fed the same sensory input. Buckle up IMO.

[open ivy]

It does not run on quantum computers however.

[pastel aspen]

QC can't do non-halting algorithms in the first place, they aren't relevant to AI IMO.

(This is off-topic.)

[open ivy]

QC cannot do anything a Turing machine can't do. But Turing machines live in an ideal math world of unlimited time and space.

QCs will offer strong benefits over real computers. Depending on the problem.

And there is evidence that brains make use of QC.

[pastel aspen]

I urge you to do some wider reading on the topic.

[fast fossil]

but AI will take all our jerbs, panic /s

[wary laurel]

I just finished a CS degree but feel like i learnt nothing...

What knowledge do i need to get a grad python dev role?

[pastel aspen]

You don't need a degree for Python

[wary laurel]

sure i know, but i feel like leetcode is too superior for me right now and i dont think my coding skills is good enough for FAANG - i'll always be a medicore coder.

but I havent really learnt anything

[pastel aspen]

What I mean by the above is.. with your now broad understanding of computing's limitations and powers, pick something you want to use that with and start seeking it out. IMO unless you plan to do complexity theory research or similar, you want some other interest besides just CS.

[wary laurel]

i dont even think my course taught me proper CS lol

[open ivy]

I did read up and found various effects that fit better with a quantum coherence than with classical stochastic processes. Keep in mind that some aspects of brains are indeed classical.

1. We have the "spookiness" of shamanism music rituals (which may look supernatural to those who don't understand quantum mechanics).

2. Isotope effects in lithium and xenon as drugs, that seem to be related to nuclear spins not the slight mass difference.

3. Avian compasses using radical pairs.

4. Subtle birth-order effects.

5. The success of quantum cognition models.

6. Use of words that are close (in word vector space) to "waves" "resonance" and "vibration" to describe certain aspects of human experience.

AI will not replace your job anytime soon. It does routine tasks. Hierarchal model reasoning and tiny recursive models will be useful and save energy, but true AGI is a looking time away.

Don't blame AI on making it hard to find a job, except to the extent it filters your resume out.

I think jobs are hard to get because of the structures humans built not ai.

[pastel aspen]

The Xenon spin-interation induces small charges via magnetic coupling in brain tissues, it's like getting Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation therapy or electroshock, but of course way lower-voltage. It's not a quantum issue other than the fact that spin is the basis of magnetism.

This stuff is complex, it's hard to make broad assertions.

[open ivy]

It suggests radical pairs and/or other quantum sensitive mechanisms that may also be used in cognition.

Either way I am a solid AGI skeptic. AI art is creative, but it's human creativity in regurgitated training data.

[pastel aspen]

There are like 4 competing well-tested theories of how our prior experiences influence perception etc.

AGI skeptic is fine, but I'm working on building that, so we'll find out if it's impossible or not hopefully.

[open ivy]

AI as a database tool is useful. The amount of effort making all that training data is enormous. But replacing everyones job no sorry not untill far future quantum computers.

[pastel aspen]

IMO probabilistic compute is the answer not quantum compute. "p-bits" and spin encoding etc, or even valleytronic analog encoding for the probability.

[wraith harbor]

the market is really hard for new grads. you need something that makes you stand out like internships and projects. If you don't have great projects, your resume is going to look exactly like the 10,000 other resumes companies receive and you probably won't go anywhere. You'd need to probably grind some good projects out

[open ivy]

It's good to try to make an AGI even if it is hopeless! There are classical computations still undiscovered. And you can learn more about what makes humans special. Or at least learn how AI works.

[wary laurel]

can you suggest some type of 'projects' ?

[pastel aspen]

Honestly I'm way more interested in solving the Collatz Fractal than in anything quantum ever.

[open ivy]

What YOU want to do for fun cool stuff and meaningfully complex but with early milestones to keep you going.

[pastel aspen]

(End of off-topic stuff from me here, sorry guys)
Feel free to ping me in #ot2-never-nester’s-nightmare or wherever.

[wary laurel]

i dont find anything really cool tbh lol

[open ivy]

And good old networking as well. It's not that hard to meet people and build social skills.

[wary laurel]

im scared to push my connections and enter a job i fail lol

[open ivy]

That is a problem but maybe a few code parade videos can fix?

[wraith harbor]

well you should find something you like, otherwise you will burn out in the industry either way. What I personally did was make mobile apps because I found those interesting

[wary laurel]

vibe coding ?

I think i need to take CS50P because my Uni was shit

and learn linux

[wraith harbor]

Is it that bad? You went for 4 years, surely you picked up some stuff

Linux is fun to learn

[wary laurel]

they made us use a very old software. eclipse, was really annoying and they did Java... not a fan

[fast fossil]

But surely you would have picked up some general principles?

[wary laurel]

of what?

[fast fossil]

Software development, programming, math, like, how does one come out of uni not having learned anything? How's that even possible? Or, maybe, you just don't realize that you did pick up on things after all

[fringe sphinx]

Going from java/eclipse to python/vscode isn't too bad. That's more or less my last transition.

[wary laurel]

this is why i'll do CS50p to make sure i didnt miss too much

[wraith harbor]

I coasted through college (big L), and only after I graduated did I work really hard on projects and eventually got hired. It's definitely doable if you commit yourself. dont give up, but be prepared to work really hard

[smoky quest]

that's probably because you see java from 20 years ago. Modern java and eclipse are very competitive today

[wraith harbor]

does anyone have experience with this book? or more generally does anyone know a good book on system design interviews?

[smoky quest]

I like that book. I highly recommend it

[wraith harbor]

awesome, thanks

[solid parcel]

Alex Xu generally is fantastic. HelloInterview is also excellent for system design.

[scenic glade]

If you apply to company

What is average time to hear back like email or something ?

[blissful solar]

Oh really? Well i totally agree with the cs club although i think it would be quite special as we don't have that culture in my country. But I'm interested in the employment, is that way to basic? Should I make a strong portfolio and try to get into an actual company?

I was thinking employment for my school would help me run a nonprofit trying to bring a nonexisting platform and have it easily advertised by my school

[wraith harbor]

if they want to do the interview they usually respond to me within a week, though some have taken a few weeks. denials could be anywhere from the next day to never

[scenic glade]

I got 10 years of experience in programming + cybersec, but no history to back it up cuz all my work was private + under NDAs

I got no degree + i want work remotely.

do u think is possible or am i daydreaming?

[smoky quest]

In terms of work history, unless you worked at Apple, I have yet to see any private/NDA that would prevent you from talking about things you worked on your resume

So while the absence of degree makes your path far more difficult and with less opportunities, there is still a path nonetheless

[pastel aspen]

I've done it for decades, highly possible.
As rec_err said, it makes it way harder. You have to be driven.

Try to be the Mike Tyson of your thing.

[scenic glade]

I am the mike tyson of my thing

Right now I am trying to be mohammed ali

[lucid cairn]

Anybody live in Australia? Can anybody tell me how hard it is to get a scholarship for universities like the university of Melbourne and ect?

I've been thinking hard about where to go and Australia genuinely seems the most optimal location politically and in a career sense (since getting a job with an aussie degree its almost guaranteed to land an actual job

[flat drift]

Well i've already said Level 3 degree in python programming, level 2 certificate in python programming and a Level 1 award in python programming, NCFE.

Shouldn't be difficult to read thr full message.

[vast shoal]

The question was what these "levels" are. Who issued them? "level" is not a standard credential in software. Did a school issue it? A website? A company? A government authority?

NCFE (formerly the Northern Council for Further Education) is an awarding organisation and registered educational charity providing qualifications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Working in vocational and technical learning, NCFE is responsible for the design, development and certification of a broad range of qualifications and awards that are nationally recognised. The qualifications NCFE provides range from Entry Level up to Level 7 and span a wide range of sector specialisms.

I don't know if employers in the UK are likely to be aware of this kind of certification, but it'll definitely be meaningless to anyone outside it.

I have a hard time seeing that listing all your "levels" would improve your chances

[smoky quest]

what does your resume look like? Feel free to anonymize it and post it here

can you show a screenshot of the pdf?

It will help to see it the same way than a recruiter would see

happy to review it once it's sent exactly in the same shape you send it to companies.

reviewers will make a decision on whether to call you back in less than 30-45s. So it does matter

[near ocean]

Your most important section starts 3/4 down the first page bro

[smoky quest]

Thanks!

Main issue is too much yapping.
It takes more than half page of random name drops and lists of skills before getting to the experience.

So I would suggest:

• Use a more typical template (see jake's template)
• Reduce your profile to something more meaningful, like an elevator pitch or your objective
• Move your skill list to the bottom
• Articulate better what you did during these 10 years. See for instance the STAR method

Something to remember too is show, don't tell. People don't think superman is strong because he keeps saying he is strong. They think he is strong because they see him lifting cars.

Each job ad receives thousands of people claiming deep expertise in all your skills. What makes you worth calling back over the others?

you only have one experience for 10 years and without much content. You don't really need a second page

[near ocean]

Not when they have 100s or 1000s of resumes to go through

[smoky quest]

If you are hiring someone, you receive 5000 resumes and your HM/recruiter can only talk to 10 people a week.
If you spend 20min on each resume (including perusing at their github), that's 5000x20 min or 1666hours or 208 business days of 8h non stop of resume reviewing.
The law of physics don't work

[hearty field]

Somewhat of a lucky draw at this point.

[smoky quest]

why not?

Double check with a lawyer.
Everyone else can do it, so there is no reason you cannot.

As someone hiring, if you tell me you can't talk about anything, I would thank you for your time and move on since there is nothing to talk about

[hearty field]

There might be restrictions on the circumstances under which job-related information can be revealed.

I don't think it would be a complete "ban".

"Ethical" Hacker

[smoky quest]

you stop pulling that shit and become legit

It's like asking "hypothetically, let's say I robbed banks for the past 5 years. What do I say when applying to jobs at banks?"

This is the part where you should consult a lawyer

there will be documents to sign when joining companies, there will be background checks and stuff. So you should consult a lawyer, hypothetically

note also this is not the place to get help concealing hypothetical illegal or unethical activities

[near ocean]

If you cant talk about your 10 years of experience you dont have 10 years of experience

[smoky quest]

pretty much ^

or don't commit crimes

[near ocean]

You could start from the beginning, degree or try to get an entry level cybersec job without formal education

[smoky quest]

then there is nothing to hide and be ashamed of 🙂

[near ocean]

🤷‍♀️ cant have your cake and eat it too

[smoky quest]

you would be the very first security engineer to not be able to talk about it. So I still doubt it

doubt that you can't say anything at all

then don't sign arbitrary documents

your resume does not demonstrate them and you stated you cannot articulate them due to NDA. So you did say that

[near ocean]

An NDA doesnt mean you cant talk about the broad structure of your employment, you just cant mention anything confidential

[smoky quest]

I would find ways to 👏 demonstrate 👏 my 👏 skills 👏 on my resume without breaching my NDAs. Or going forward, only signing NDAs that aren't as restrictive so I can start putting stuff on my resume

no one has the time to click on any of the links in 30-45s. Your resume needs to stand on its own

This is part of your communication skills. There is a famous quote (mis)attributed to Mark Twain:

“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
― Mark Twain

It's not on the recruiter to fish for reasons to call you back. It's on you to articulate your value succinctly while being convincingg

Take that sentence and reflects it from the perspective of someone hiring. Why would they hire someone that doesn't or cannot share anything about themselves? Why would they spend 1h with them?

why would they spend the time on that for you when other resumes can convey their value?

It's not that they hate you. They don't care

[near ocean]

Why are you searching for a job now when this has worked for at least 10 years? Why not keep doing the NDA stuff

Bro

[smoky quest]

you can keep the links. They can still be useful at later stages of the interview. But in terms of getting called back, your resume should stand on its own. And yes, that does mean with good descriptions

[near ocean]

At this point im not convinced you even deserve a stable job, let alone actually have the skills and experience for it

there's plenty of people with 10+ years experience and a laundry list of skills they can talk about it without fear of government agencies (hypothetically) or NDAs
why would anyone invite you to an interview

is it a "trust me bro" situation?

If the hypotheticals dont apply here theyre useless as hypotheticals
If you cant talk about your experience you are at the same level as an entry level non-degree educated applicant

[wraith harbor]

Why can you not just say what you wrote here? "I did ethical pen testing and secure software development for private clients using XYZ tools and technologies". Maybe you can't name the client or the industry but thats not as important as talking about the skills you used

[solid parcel]

Level 1 and level 2 qualifications are extremely low level. A level 3 is equivalent to a couple of A-levels. The closest comparison would be AP courses.

@scenic glade @smoky quest is right, you need to get the formatting fixed. Find a decent template, shift experience above core skills.

You must know some other engineers who do similar work after 10 years in the industry, right? If I were you, I'd be talking to them and asking to see their CVs. If they're finding work, I expect they're finding a way to sufficiently highlight what they do, in spite of having to work around NDAs.

[near ocean]

Oh, thats what theyre talking about
Level 6 would be degree level then

[solid parcel]

After decades, a degree is not the thing getting them in the door.

Are you seriously telling me you have no networks with other security professionals after 10 years?

[white relic]

must have been some real secret projects

[solid parcel]

If you seriously haven't been able to build and maintain any kind of professional network over 10 years, that's a massive red flag.

I'm hearing a whole lot of melodrama, and a whole lack of substance

[weary ember]

Python

[weary ember]

What the actual f*ck did I read...

Is it physically possible to cap so much?

[unreal pier]

Hello

[elfin hound]

@unreal pier Hello

[elfin hound]

What is a phd fundamentally

[white relic]

a phd is the distinction conferred on someone who's done substantial original research in a particular field of study.
it usually involves doing research under the supervision of an advisor with relevant expertise, writing and defending a dissertation against a panel, and usually takes a few years (in addition to graduate level course work which you may need to complete beforehand, depending on your prior level of education).
PhDs are common in academia (basically consider it mandatory for an academic career), not so much in industry, depending on the field.

Why do you ask?

[elfin hound]

If I want to conduct research on a topic in the future, I will need to pursue a PhD?

[white relic]

need is a squishy word.
You can conduct research without pursuing a PhD, but you may have better access to resources, advisors, and academic connections if you're doing it in an academic setting as part of a PhD program.

And if you want to make a career out of research, a PhD is the most usual way to get a foot in the door.

What kind of research are we talking about?

[vapid jay]

See my bio if anyone needed plz dm

[regal axle]

!rule 6 9
no

[inner wren]

Rules

6. Do not post unapproved advertising.

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

[vapid jay]

Ok sir

[unreal pier]

hello

Anyone wants to team up for a competition

[flat drift]

no but that was my question, surely it shouldn't matter - you can clearly see I've listed them and they are all titled the same - could of simply said "well you can just list the highest level, instead of wasting space across multiple levels". Because if it was a different company for each qualification i'd just be listing each qualification

just to add, it took me one search to find NCFE - so I don't really know if you are simply just not looking but yeah.

• NCFE Level 4 Award in Programming [Python]

[near ocean]

level 4 still sits 2 levels below a degree, why would anyone care about it

[flat drift]

thats fine, but it's my first time making a CV so maybe try be a little easier on me.

[near ocean]

im just as nice as you were to me #career-advice message

[flat drift]

That is my bad, however it probably wouldn't be the right thing to retaliate.

[wraith harbor]

Are you planning on going to university? That would be your best bet in terms of getting a CS job

[karmic flint]

Hiya guys
Im tryna get into uni lets say smth like top 50
I love CS and wanting to get in there i want to build a decent portfolio
I have about 5 things i can submit as extracurriculars and 4 of them will be soley dedicated to CS
Building a node based monitoring system to help farmers in a 3rd world country where they struggle alot with water, etfc.... for cheap
Volunteering in CS based classes
I've been told these two are half decent
the other two i will mention though, not so much
Making a website for my school(quizlet and flashcard websites are banned here so im making my countries version of them) As a nonprofit and an employement type with my school
Starting my schools first ever and most likely countries first ever high level CS club
Please try your hardest to shit on me so i can improve and think my ways before its too late

[solid parcel]

Rather than building a million projects, focus on building a couple really well. Documentation, tests, working code.

[karmic flint]

yes exactly, 2 good projects rather than a bunch of crap (i literally don't have anything else to show lol, all the coding i've done never resulted in a complete project, mostly very specific stuff that wouldn't fit this)

[dawn lagoon]

Hey, does anyone mind telling me best buy experience research internship is?

I am just curious because on the job detail they said that no experience required and the only thing that they wrote is pursueing a computer science degree.

Tried getting more information but no luck and I am really nervous for the interview, but more interestingly curious about what the job is all about? because the pay is great $25-$37.75 which is more then other internship.

[peak halo]

so this is an interview for a research internship with Best Buy, the retailer?
can you give a link to the job listing?

[wraith harbor]

So in this System Design interview book they talk about doing back of the envelope style calculations. Are you supposed to be able to do these in your head? For example one question involves 100 million queries per day, so they suggest calculating 100 mill / 24 hrs / 3600 seconds = 1160 requests per second

[regal axle]

You don't have to do it in your head.

[wraith harbor]

So they let you use a calculator in these interviews?

[true harness]

it's typical to have a whiteboard of sorts

[regal axle]

offtopic, but did you put a hat on for October?

[smoky quest]

you can use a scratch pad, share a terminal with python in it, write it down in coderpad, etc.
there is no back of the envelope police

[regal axle]

Bring an envelope with you! They will laugh as you do your crude math

[solid parcel]

A) It's generally a matter of orders of magnitude.
B) With the kinds of questions they ask in System Design interviews, back of the envelope estimations are arguably questionable at all because it always boils down to big. Which in turn results in a need for distributed systems, caching, fault tolerance and so on. So it's slightly an exercise in futility to go through the process of determining 'yes, this is big', when you're under time pressure. If you do decide to use them, don't spend much time on them at all.

[true harness]

being off by an order of magnitude is a very big error. fermi estimation is an important skill

[solid parcel]

FYI as an example of estimations not needing to be too specific, it's pretty common to use 400 rather than 365 for the number of days in a year

[wraith harbor]

alright thanks for the answers. I'm about halfway done with this book and I definitely agree that its really good. It's so much information while being very understandable. (some grammar mistakes though smh)

[solid parcel]

Yeah I'm saying if you are estimating, the important thing is being within the right order of magnitude rather than drilling down into specific numbers. Point B also still stands. Once you reach big, there's generally a limit to how different architecture becomes. Given you're working against the clock in a systems design interview, it's a reasonable approach to start by mapping out the rough APIs and systems architecture, and save discussion of scale beyond 'big' until you're deep diving into a couple of areas and looking to optimise.

[ornate lantern]

I'm trying to reverse engineer some shit on github do yall have any rec ? some like beginner level stuff doe :(

[solid parcel]

What do you mean when you say you're trying to reverse engineer? Do you just mean you're looking at codebases and trying to understand how they work?

[ornate lantern]

yeah

i let it crust when i shit

[next berry]

<@&831776746206265384>

[peak halo]

this seems unrelated and (ironically) shitposty.

[burnt hornet]

Guys I have an interview in like 2 days and I believe I will have to do some coding questions during it. In the little time I have to prepare is there any advice that you guys can give. I think I will have 2 coding questions one that is similar to a leetcode easy and one close to a leetcode hard

[twilit harbor]

I find it so weird that in the US it matters what Uni you go to

[still condor]

that is unusual?

surely it's common to have better universities and worse universities

unless you're in Luxembourg and you have the choice between The University of Luxembourg and The University of Luxembourg

[crisp stream]

yeah, there are (unofficial?) tiers of universities in India, too

[wraith harbor]

I kind of disagree, In the US its common for public state funded universities to be doing a lot of advanced research. Just look up some of the top research universities, schools like Kansas State are on the list. The ivy leagues are more about connections

[barren summit]

India’s universities weren’t built to create thinkers they were designed by the British to train obedient workers. Macaulay’s vision in 1835 still echoes today: we worship high-pay jobs as success, not realizing most are just well-paid obedience. Prestige replaced purpose; salary replaced sense.

[zinc stone]

<@&831776746206265384> this dude was previously warned in #career-advice already

[nocturne harbor]

!mute 1309020299869818913 1d Please re-read the rules. If this continues after your mute expires you will be banned.

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied timeout to @vapid jay until <t:1760779796:f> (1 day).

[trim crypt]

What is the opposite of a job board? Like instead of a place where companies advertising jobs, but a place where companies find the unemployed and invite them to an interview

[regal axle]

I only know of one. Hackernews has a "who is looking for a job" thread post every start of every month. Don't know of any others at scale. I mean, recrutiers do try to find people. But yea ,,,

[trim crypt]

Right but I'm asking if it has a name, so I can google for something similar to that line. Like an "unemployed" group chat or for hire group, for companies to browse abit anonymised potential profiles for an interview.

[vast shoal]

LinkedIn?

Well, maybe not the unemployed

[still condor]

Did you check your usual job board? Maybe it already has such a feature for employers

[trim crypt]

Thats just a social network like Facebook/X or whatever

[regal axle]

They have ways of you marking your account as "ready for interviews" and people posting jobs have a backend where they can search and find people. So it does exist. Just not explicitly

[trim crypt]

My usual job boards doesn't have it. There is one by my local government but its terribly implemented

[regal axle]

For example wellfound or workforastartup

[trim crypt]

But you wouldnt call that a job board, right?

[vast shoal]

Well, it is a place where companies find people to hire, though.

[trim crypt]

Thats true

[vapid jay]

do you know a recruiter?

[regal axle]

I don't think what you are thinking exists. And I don't think you want it to. You will have to deal with an ungodly amount of spam and scams ... the other side of this system deal with it. But they should have proper systems in place to handle that.
So at best, a job board should have a private backend for discovery and recruiters search people out.

[vapid jay]

you fix it by a rep score though, dont you?

[vast shoal]

How would that work?

[solemn isle]

Hey everyone, I’m starting Striver’s A2Z DSA roadmap, but I have a few doubts about the best way to approach it as a beginner:

1. Should I first try to solve a problem and then watch the video for that concept, or understand the concept first before attempting the problem?

2. I don’t know C++ yet (my university teaches C++), and I also don’t fully understand arrays. Should I try to understand problems in C++ but solve them in Python, or just learn C++ first?

3. For theory understanding, would watching Abdul Bari’s videos help? Or are there better alternatives?

4. About taking notes: what’s the best approach—notes from YouTube videos, university lectures, or while solving problems on LeetCode? And what exactly should I write in these notes to make them effective?

Any advice or workflow suggestions from people who started from scratch would be super helpful!

[regal axle]

We have social scores now!?!?!
No. And also impersonation is very real and very hard to figure out sometimes

[trim crypt]

Well the government has that part fixed. They vet the local unemployed and vet the local companies before allowing them to search each other. Either by job application or interview invites. But the notification and UX is just terrible. Great idea tho

[vapid jay]

Yeah we do

[vast shoal]

This is a channel for career discussions and the world of work, not general programming education. You can try #algos-and-data-structs

[vapid jay]

like it works on any of these sites?

[regal axle]

Right yea. This technically exists in normal job boards. That doesn't mean that they use the feature. This is an employer's market. They get flocked for every posting. They don't need to go hunting down people.

But ,,, idk what country you are in. Generally this is true globaly though

[regal axle]

How would some "rep score" work. And how does it prevent you from getting hit with spam and scams?

[vapid jay]

from what side? employer or employee?

[trim crypt]

Both

[vast shoal]

It feels like rating your uber driver is more viable than rating job applicants/employers, since the business relationship is a lot shorter in the former case

[trim crypt]

🤣

[vapid jay]

it ends up being the same thing though

[vast shoal]

Not really. If my driver has 2000 ratings and an average of 4.9, that seems good, but a job applicant is not gonna have 2000 former jobs.

[vapid jay]

doesn't need 2000 though

[vast shoal]

Quantity matters for reliable reputation scores, I think.

[vapid jay]

and this happens btw, even if its not put in a rating system

[vast shoal]

Sure, but it doesn't protect against scams in the same way as in other types of sites

[vapid jay]

not yet

[vast shoal]

Someone who has 3 former jobs with positive ratings can still be a scam

[vapid jay]

yes unless you can trust the people vouching for him

[vast shoal]

And how do you establish that trust?

[vapid jay]

recursively

[vast shoal]

Not sure I follow

[vapid jay]

you will trust the previous employer or the previous recruiter

[vast shoal]

Why do I trust that employer?

[vapid jay]

because they have given you enough good employees

[vast shoal]

Alright, how do I choose the first person I hire?

[solid parcel]

It would need a hell of a lot more than you're probably thinking. Might be worth looking into confidence bounds Vs sample size if you want to understand why I say that.

[vapid jay]

you either contract a good-rated recruiter company or go by your gut

[vast shoal]

I mean, I don't need your site to do that

[vapid jay]

no you don't

i told you before i know this recruiter

say i started a business tomorrow, and needed to hire X people

i'd probably ask her

[vast shoal]

So in the end, the whole reputation system doesn't work, because the only viable strategy is to find a good recruiter by some other means and then only use them.

[regal axle]

So we price out all new members from the system? They have no trust system since they don't have a job. And we also price out small companies because now you are relying on chained levels of trust. The recruiter might be trustworthy. But do I need to spend a lot of personal time with them before they send me people?

[vapid jay]

"to find a good recruiter by some other means" <- reputation

[vast shoal]

I mean, outside your job site with its rep system

[vapid jay]

outside my rep system i have no idea who anyone is

[vast shoal]

I feel like we're talking past each other here...

[vapid jay]

i think i might be expressing myself wrongly

the way you get a job, given you are viable for the job, is by you knowing the person who is in charge of finding someone for the job

thats the 1st rule of "getting a job", right? we can agree on that?

[regal axle]

Define knowing the person?

[vast shoal]

I mean, not really.

I haven't really known any of the people in charge of finding someone for all the jobs I've had in my career.

[vapid jay]

nepotism is the n°1 reason for hiring someone

[vast shoal]

I wonder if there's any actual statistics on that

[white relic]

sounds like some fatalist bs.

[vapid jay]

there are actually, family businesses are the most common of all small businesses

[vast shoal]

Seems like it'd be hard to fill most positions through nepotism

People don't have that many nephews.

[vapid jay]

its natural to employ people you know, its only on large-scale operations that you need strangers

[regal axle]

That is a wild thing to pull out of nowhere. But also, depends on how you define nepotism I guess? I was just talking with someone who had a very warped definition. And I guess you can try to define it in a way that makes this true.

BUT that still doesn't answer my question.

Define knowing the person?

[white relic]

most people are not employed by small family businesses.

[vast shoal]

Most people are employed by Walmart.

[vapid jay]

this and the walmart claim, depends where you are in the world

[solid parcel]

Completely disregarding the relative size of organisations.

[white relic]

oh, but I'm supposed to assume that "nepotism is the n°1 reason for hiring someone" is a universal truth?

[vapid jay]

no, thats true

[vapid jay]

you think it plays zero or less than 1?

[white relic]

We all come from different contexts. I'm challenging that assertion. Nepotism is a thing, but it's far from the main reason for hiring people.

[regal axle]

@vapid jay how many jobs have you had?

[vast shoal]

It seems like a plausible null hypothesis that large companies employ the most people, just due to economies of scale.

[vapid jay]

i think its the main driver

its not the only one of course

but nepotism and "knowing the person" are the main drivers of getting hired

[regal axle]

Considering amazon had 10s of thousands of interns back when I interned,,,
No family business could ever dream of having that many normal employees!

[white relic]

I think there's a big difference between nepotism and knowing someone.
That said, I've hired like 10 people in the last few years and I didn't know any of them in advance, so either way, I don't think that statistic holds water.

[vast shoal]

Nepotism and knowing someone aren't the same thing either.

I can recommend someone for a position that I know without it being nepotism if they are a qualified candidate for the position.

[vapid jay]

i think you are over-reacting to the "nepotism" word

[regal axle]

I think you have never had a job

[vapid jay]

for example, in my country you look at the top 3 universities, look at any major bank, you see 70% of employees coming from those

[regal axle]

That ,,, isn't nepotism

[vapid jay]

everybody knows each other

[solid parcel]

I don't think anyone here is denying that networking is important. Moreso that there are much better ways to put feelers out as to the calibre of a candidate than the kind of rating system you were proposing.

[vapid jay]

yes it is, they come from the same schools, when they get up 1v1 a guy who has all of the social commons vs someone who is coming up, the one with the social commons wins

[vast shoal]

I mean... The bank didn't necessarily hire all of those people because the hiring manager knew them personally, it might just be because a top university looks good on your CV.

[vapid jay]

no, they did, when they have to decide between a guy they know or of a school they know vs a guy who had worked their ass off to compete at that level, they chose the one they know

[smoky quest]

so they don't have any interview?

[vapid jay]

of course they have, this is a 1:1 choice

guy in the circle vs guy outside

[smoky quest]

regardless of their performances?

[vapid jay]

performance being equal, the guy in the circle wins every time

[vast shoal]

Performance being equal, one of them has a top university degree and the other doesn't.

[smoky quest]

how can their performance be equal when it's between a guy they know or of a school they know vs a guy who had worked their ass off to compete at that level

[vapid jay]

high schools etc

[white relic]

I think you're making a lot of unfounded assumptions.

[smoky quest]

can you expand?

[regal axle]

You keep dodging my question. How many jobs have you had?

[vapid jay]

here the main uni is the public one, you can have two guys who excelled in public uni, one is from private school, another comes from public school, the private one wins 8/10 times

[novel quartz]

best way to answer non technical questions in an interview?

[smoky quest]

so the one with the best performance wins

[smoky quest]

Do you have an example? because the best way is to answer correctly

[vapid jay]

going to private school means you outperorm everyone else?

[novel quartz]

as in "tell me about yourself" or "what dyou you think makes you a good leader/teammate"

[smoky quest]

you said they both worked their ass off

[vapid jay]

sure, but one had money the other didn't

[regal axle]

So; it used to be very true that people in the US would hire based on "oh you went to the same alma mater!"
But that isn't as much of a thing anymore, here. But in other countries it does still exist.

This person is very clearly not in the USA. We have figured out the hard way that being from a top school means nothing. But other countries are still struggling with that fact. But also, the statistic is probably wrong. Most pepole come from the top places not because of "nepotism" but because the expectation is to hire from those places. No one gets fired for using IBM. I imagine it is something similar .

[smoky quest]

The first one, there is no trap. You literally introduce yourself 🙂

For the latter, you have to link what makes a good leader (and how you would define it) with how you demonstrate them with concrete examples

[vapid jay]

you'd expect a 50/50, but that is not the case

[smoky quest]

why would money matter if they both worked their ass off and performance is great?

[vapid jay]

because social circle plays its part

[smoky quest]

I mean, as pointed earlier, there is a difference between nepotism and a professional network

[vapid jay]

it lubricates all of these relationships

[smoky quest]

so then it goes back to my first question: why having interviews in the first place if it's already selected?

[vast shoal]

I think the implication is that while they both perform equally well, the person with the money pays to get into a private university and the hiring manager is biased to hiring candidates from private universities.

[vapid jay]

i think you do not get the point

[novel quartz]

so my experience and hobbies and stuff?

[white relic]

"tell me about yourself" is an introduction question. The answer should be brief and give the interviewer some flavor for your background but don't tell your life story.
questions like the other, should be answered honestly. I've found the best way to do so is usually to tell an anecdote about myself and link it to the question.

[novel quartz]

yeah cause wouldn't the private uni be better?

[white relic]

that varies a lot.

[vast shoal]

Well, the implication seems to be that the hiring manager thinks so at least.

[smoky quest]

I wouldn't do that.
This is still for an interview and if they are asking you about your leadership, I would assume it's in the context of a professional environment.
If this is about an internship, then sure.

[vast shoal]

Whether it's actually true varies wildly I think.

[vapid jay]

its something similar to this, the person on the higher caste who equally performs with the one in the lower one, has the social ties to end up winning the position

[smoky quest]

If you go into castes, then sure, there will be all sorts of discrimination everywhere

[vapid jay]

you see this in a lot of companies

[vast shoal]

I don't think you're wrong that things like this can be a factor. I just disagree with the absolutism with which you frame it.

[vapid jay]

Man i agree 100% with you though, i'm not saying this is right

[vapid jay]

maybe i over-extended myself then

[smoky quest]

The main friction you face here is that it's not that prevalent.
Anyone can create a company and hire and you will have very different ways to proceed around the world.

So when you talk about castes, you are already narrowing it down to a very specific country, which is also trying to fight these practices

[vapid jay]

Ehh, no though

For example, you look at JP Morgan, which is the higher level of formal employment for anyone into finance

i believe i can tell you the 3 highschools the recruiter has graduated from, if not the only one

[smoky quest]

do you work at JP Morgan or have worked there?

[vapid jay]

this is very context-dependant i guess

[smoky quest]

Given the size of the company, they can't possibly hire from the same 3 high schools

You are making too many strongly stated uninformed opinions

[vapid jay]

i think you are too naive of how things in other countries work

[smoky quest]

either way, it's not interesting. So am out

[white relic]

The thing about discrimination is that it's a factor in your career that you definitely have no control over.
If you believe that the main factor in your career is something you have no control over, you'll give up trying. Because why bother? You can't do anything to make them not discriminate against you.
Some people, and I'm not saying this is you, find hopelessness comfortable, because it means their failure is not their own fault.

[vapid jay]

👆

[white relic]

Is that productive? Or can you focus on other things?

[vapid jay]

i agree 100% with this

what makes you is what you do

[white relic]

People who believe they have agency over their outcomes have better outcomes.

[vapid jay]

People absolutely have agency over their outcomes

there doesnt exist any model in which there's no individual agency

that does not mean, however, that the world is a blank-slate where people can just dance about

[vast shoal]

Maybe people with better outcomes just like to claim credit for them. 😛

[vapid jay]

agency is kind of important though

i got a friend rn who was the worst delinquent you can imagine

and he has by (what life has dealt to him)

zeroed down, stopped drinking, etc, he was an athlete as a kid, so he went full on that

he is now working as a personal trainer

i think @white relic has a point, you gotta want it

[white relic]

Just for the record, I am not at all saying that discrimination is insignificant or trying to minimize it or just pretend it doesn't exist.

[vapid jay]

of course discrimination exists lol

[white relic]

well we get some weird takes in this chat sometimes, I gotta be clear.

[vapid jay]

wdym?

[white relic]

You said "of course discrimination exists" but there are in fact people who do not believe discrimination exists, and might take what I said earlier as me agreeing with them, which is why I attempted to clarify.

But that's neither here nor there.

[vapid jay]

i see

i think there's people who want to believe they are beyond that

imo at this point i think its just what it is, i dont think its a failure of the specific people in that position

[stoic dawn]

hi

how r u guys

[zealous elk]

What do you think is the best career with Python?

[fringe sphinx]

Not sure what that question means.

[pastel aspen]

Probabilistic computing hardware engineering via Python-based hardware definition language tools

[fringe sphinx]

I'll answer it in dad-speak: "The best career is the career you get".

[zealous elk]

daddy?

Are you it?

[fringe sphinx]

Are you asking which type of software engineering to specialize in?

[zealous elk]

Yes

Please

[pastel aspen]

(My answer was not joking)

[visual flax]

Curious how true is it that high pay == high stress. Like in faang companies

[peak halo]

I don't think they're as closely correlated as one might intuitively think. my impression is that publicly traded companies have the worst company cultures because the imperative to maximize profits at all costs comes at, well, costs. like decency.

[visual flax]

Interesting, that makes sense. Still worth it to take a job at google right? Since they only hire the best?

I say that because someone was software enginer tier 3 and decided to leave the position. I can't imagine leaving a 285k a year position

[peak halo]

I think it's a misconceptuion that Google only hires the best. They apparently have over 20k engineers. they can't be the best 20k in the world--a system that large is going to have duds.

My friend works for Google--for some reason, level 3 is the lowest level that a software engineer can be there.

Google has high turnover, I think because the company culture is bad.

[wild grail]

Guys .... I'm tierd of searching jobs . Linkedin is a scam .

[peak halo]

I recommend only using linkedin to figure out what positions are open, and then going to the actual website of the company to apply.

also, a lot of job listings on websites like linkedin "aren't real". they're just pits that you can throw your resume into, which the company might occasionally check.

[visual flax]

This is true!

[proper minnow]

Hello everybody, I need peoples to create a story game free pls

[wild grail]

Yeahh .... true

[peak halo]

you can't use this server to solicit free labor.

[wary parrot]

Hey there!
That sounds like a fun project.
I’ve built several story-based and interactive games before both browser based and as standalone apps so I can definitely help you design and develop one from scratch.
Before we start, could you tell me a bit more about what you have in mind?

[peak halo]

you two can go to DMs if you want to talk about this, I guess. as I said, this server isn't a place to solicit free labor.

[long solar]

Any tips on negotiating equity at startup? Like cliffs, iso vs nso

[regal axle]

Terms are fairly standard. Not much to negotiate on there. But amount is pretty much the only thing you can negotiate. If they are not following the industry standard terms, they are funky and maybe not a great choice.

[long solar]

ah so no avoiding the cliff

[zealous elk]

Are you joking with me ?

[regal axle]

Yea. The cliff is super standard. 1 year is typical.

[long solar]

Chatgpt was telling me to ask for no cliff 😂

[pastel aspen]

Never in this channel.

[zealous elk]

😘

[neon gulch]

Hi Guys

You might not know it but you've made someone smile before you've made someone happy and most of all your you. A bright person who made a change in this wonderful world we live in keep chasing your dreams and fight for what's right. You may have heard these words before go beyond plus ultra.

[fringe sphinx]

Youll always have a cliff

I'm not giving you shares today. I'm giving you shares after you've survived a year (or some period) or something.

[pastel aspen]

Yeah, “no cliff” just sounds like a scam to me, I’ve never run into that

[long solar]

Dude said $40 an hr for the part time contract I just said alright lol

[solid parcel]

Massive agree that they're not nearly as strongly correlated as one would imagine.

[smoky quest]

even founders would have cliffs for themselves

[fringe sphinx]

The investors most certainly.

[near ocean]

Cliffs to jump off of?

[fast fossil]

yeah, onto a pile of money

[dusky dove]

if i want to sell a game on python where should i do that?

[crisp stream]

!rule 6

[inner wren]

Rules

6. Do not post unapproved advertising.

[crisp stream]

try somewhere else like itch.io and the like

[smoky quest]

most likely the popular platforms for your users. For instance google play, apple store, stream, itch.io...

[pastel aspen]

(Itch is the one I would pick, the hurdles for the others are vastly higher.)

[dusky dove]

haha its just a fuckass hangman app

im hoping some students buy it i made it for my ap csp project

[smoky quest]

yeah, there is a discussion to be had there in terms of the stack used to implement the product and how in adequation it is with the user base and their platform

[kindred relic]

Hi

[deft tusk]

hi

[inner bay]

Is vibe coding the future?

[pastel aspen]

Nope!
Maybe it's the future of early prototypes, but it's not the future of 'careers in software engineering'.

[inner bay]

Ahk, cuz I coded a software with Claude

[pastel aspen]

Worth trying for sure, it's good to know what is out there.
They are great for debugging open source project build failures, of things you've never tried to use before etc.

[inner bay]

Thought it was perfect

[pastel aspen]

Try Gemini CLI or Claude Code or OpenAI Codex, I would say. That's how the people I know doing it "for real" are doing it.
Of those I think Gemini CLI has the best implementation right now, but not everybody agrees.

[dim kiln]

Hello 👋 help me review and send feedbacks
make high-quality voice creation as easy as typing.

💡 Features so far:
– Text → Realistic Audio (multiple voices)
– Voice Cloning

Try it here → https://voxai.gt.tc

clone any voice of your choice

[vast shoal]

!rules ad

[inner wren]

Rules

6. Do not post unapproved advertising.

[toxic basalt]

Hey I am new to vibe coding but I want to build something crazy which AI should I use?

[pastel aspen]

#ot2-never-nester’s-nightmare or one of the other non-Python channels please

[vast shoal]

No AI will let you vibe code anything crazy.

But yeah, this is also not on topic for this channel.

[cyan ravine]

hey

[zealous elk]

I love you ❤️

[dusty meteor]

hello

[nocturne harbor]

@dusty meteor Your message didn't get deleted by accident.

[rare marlin]

!rules ad

[inner wren]

Rules

6. Do not post unapproved advertising.

[rare marlin]

!rules ad

[inner wren]

Rules

6. Do not post unapproved advertising.

[white relic]

Hi @rare marlin , if you're just experimenting with the bot, you can do that in #bot-commands .

[jade kayak]

Hello
so i am starting a 30 days python challenge
basically i wanna reach gui programs within 30 days
but the problem is that i dont know whta re the topics that i need to study can sb pls help

[still condor]

!cleanban @hot dawn

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied ban to @hot dawn permanently.

[white relic]

so fast

[stable hemlock]

Python has its own GUI language called TKInter. I'd recommend starting there.

Warning: it's VERY rudimentary. Don't expect it to handle async data or threads very well.

[jade kayak]

the issue is that i am a complete beginner
so i dont know anything past functions

[fringe sphinx]

#python-discussion is probvably the channel you're looking for. This is "career discussion".

[jade kayak]

oh mb
thanks for informing me

[vestal hedge]

How to get hired for coding job

[lost walrus]

Think what you want to code. web services (full stack, frontend, backend), mobile apps, embedded systems, or data/AI, etc. After that, start developing your skills to the level required for the type of job you’re aiming for and start applying for positions.

[fringe sphinx]

The standard path? Get a CS degree, network and do internships or projects while in Uni, apply to jobs, interview, etc

[scarlet owl]

^^

[wary cave]

Would I get an intern job if I know how to code in python?
Skills: Advanced (hardest thing I've learnt is something like making REST API's and scraping(very hard these days and I hate scraping). Ive also learnt a variety of other things(I've spread my wings)

[humble sage]

What is the worst possible language for back end

[smoky quest]

How would you compare to all the thousands of interns that apply that are in last or last before year for their bsc?

[wary cave]

This is my first time and idk?

[smoky quest]

What does your resume look like? Feel free to post an anonymized version here

[wary cave]

I wont post the entire thing but this is all it says:
github: https://github.com/dragonsenseiguy
Skills: Proficient in Python with experience using Flask, Tkinter, Pandas, and Matplotlib. Skilled in HTML and CSS, with knowledge of frontend frameworks such as Bootstrap for building responsive user interfaces.

It has not been updated yet but as I have said before I can make API's and interact with them too.

[smoky quest]

Alright, let's take a step back: are you in school? If yes, what school/year/country?

[solid parcel]

If that's all it says, it isn't really a CV. No, that will not be sufficient to land you an internship

[wary cave]

I cant say the name of the school/2029/USA

[smoky quest]

bsc cs?

[solid parcel]

Have you literally just started uni, then?

[wary cave]

high school?

[wary cave]

uni?

[solid parcel]

University

[smoky quest]

oh then probably not when applying to internship ads.
You would have higher likelihood by leveraging your network (ie. who your parents know) and reaching out to any company in your city

[wary cave]

I am doing websites for a non-profit and will continue to maintain the website. I cant share the website as it leaks personal details.

[smoky quest]

yeah, it's a great example!

[wary cave]

the websites is not paid btw, its a non-profit and I cant make myself ask for money.

[smoky quest]

Sure but same idea for any of your local shop/stores/businesses

[sharp trail]

Hola amigos
Cómo ven hacer páginas webs para recaudar dinero

[peak halo]

Brainfuck

[humble sage]

So html is better?

[peak halo]

HTML is a makeup language. Not a programming language.

[humble sage]

Cpp

[fast fossil]

makeup language
I'll keep that in mind, thanks!

[peak halo]

I'm on my phone. Don't bully me 👿

[wary cave]

cursedlang

maybe

[molten spoke]

javascript

[fast fossil]

you're on your phone, whatcha gonna do about it? 😝 ||/s, pls no ban||

I couldn't tell if you made a typo or if it was intentional, but I like it and will use it from now on

[subtle heart]

Hiii does anyone here know html well/could help me with my makeup?

[peak halo]

@humble sage what is the impetus for your question about server side languages (as it pertains to careers)?

[wary cave]

you mean || Markup Language||??

[stable hemlock]

I think CSS would be the makeup language.

[unreal pier]

hello

[spring estuary]

hi

[wraith harbor]

System Design Interview by Alex Xu was really good. Does anyone have any other book recommendations related to interviewing? Or professional development in general, but I'm most interested with interviewing

It really changed my perspective about all these hyper scaled systems we take for granted in tech

[near ocean]

Not an interview book but i've seen Designing Data-Intensive Applications from oreilly suggested for the system design part of the interview

[smoky quest]

The main issue is without actual experience, you will be missing an essential component.

[wraith harbor]

yeah i know, and im not really looking for roles where system design is super important. i just meant i found it interesting

[smoky quest]

got it. https://www.amazon.com/dp/3748190484?asin=3748190484 is worth a read too then

So is http://mmds.org/

[wraith harbor]

thanks mar and recursive 👍 ill check all these out

[near ocean]

From mid level roles and up you'll come across system design, you probably wont have experience the first couple times around

I say from mid level roles and up but i was asked about building a small app at my second job's interview

[wraith harbor]

yeah i think the first one i read is enough for mid level. i had a few system design interviews in the past and i kinda thought you could just intuit the answers but sadly not the case.

might pick this one up too or a similar one, i saw it recommended in many uni syllabi. im a big believer in books

[smoky quest]

awesome book about DSA

[wraith harbor]

glad to hear it. you seem to know a lot of good books

[smoky quest]

I do read a lot

[eager skiff]

how good is it at explaining stuff? want to learn dsa (gonna have to at some point)

[smoky quest]

it's the most recommended book about DSA at college/uni level

[eager skiff]

nice :]

[smoky quest]

if you hear about the CLRS book, that's this one

[wraith harbor]

whats the biggest one that you would recommend for someone like me who is interviewing for mid level?

[smoky quest]

if you are mid level, focus on the depth of your skills. Don't try to get into leadership too prematurely

if you level up too early, it would hurt you due to lack of experience

so pick whatever role you like and pick deeper topics as well as adjacent ones

Since you are asking about biggest books, https://www.man7.org/tlpi/ is pretty big and well written

and am surprised there hasn't been a second edition

[wraith harbor]

Yeah that all makes a lot of sense and I definitely agree about depth of skills. I'll have to research based on topics I like then. Thanks for the advice 🫡

[smoky quest]

https://charuaggarwal.net/ I do enjoy his books a lot.
But that may not fit you if you don't care about data

[wraith harbor]

@smoky quest alright my last book related question: do you like cracking the coding interview? thanks again for all the advice

[smoky quest]

never read it

[woeful onyx]

yo wzp, The reason why I've join here because I want to learn coding thats it

[fickle spade]

Hi everyone! I'm looking for advice from experienced developers. I've been learning Flask for 7-8 months. Please tell me the best way to continue learning Flask, start learning Django, or even switch to PHP. I just need to start making money ASAP. Could you tell me where I can find jobs for junior programmers? Here's my GitHub if anyone's interested: https://github.com/NikolaPs12

[fickle spade]

even if this user is a test user and the database is also a test one?

Yes, I know how to use gitignore.
When you deploy to a server (I mostly only deploy to render), you create a database there and it generates a huge password of random numbers, so I don't see anything wrong with that. Can you tell me what the danger is of leaving a test password for the database?

I could be wrong, but I'm using git ignore to add files I don't want to be on GitHub.

[crisp stream]

!rule 6 | Your message has been removed

[inner wren]

Rules

6. Do not post unapproved advertising.

[fringe sphinx]

We don't allow recruiting on this server. Your post has been removed

[cedar garnet]

Thanks do you have any recommendations for this? maybe a community or another server rather then hiring platforms

[regal axle]

Discord is the wrong place for recruiting. Bad medium for it

[acoustic vapor]

any1 here

[still condor]

!rule 6 9 @brisk fox We do not allow recruitment on this server.

[inner wren]

Rules

6. Do not post unapproved advertising.

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

[ashen finch]

6 9

[molten spoke]

!tempban 1372815748468178978 7d Not an appropriate meme to send, and especially inappropriate as your second message in the community. Please read the Code of Conduct should you return.

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied ban to @misty viper until <t:1761498232:f> (7 days).

[topaz path]

hi

im new here

[visual flax]

Will a therapist really be helpful? Because my depression is honestly getting worse and idk if I'll be able to peform

[pastel aspen]

Check out "Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation", "iTMS" or "rTMS" depending on the country. Saved my life.

"neuroplasticity performance engineering" is how I think about it now, after experiencing it.
100% you've never met anyone as depressed as I used to be.
Full nihilism build, existential depression and anhedonia.

[vast shoal]

If you have the means to talk to a therapist and haven't done so already, you should definitely try it.

[weary ember]

print("Hello")

[marble dirge]

hello#

[solid parcel]

I don't think that's who you meant to respond to 😆
'I'm new here'
'Go get ya brain buzzed with magnets!'

[pastel aspen]

Oh my bad, I meant to tag @visual flax
Would have sworn I was doing so, but I guess that was on my phone.

[solid parcel]

Ha, I figured as much 🙂

[pastel aspen]

Welcome, check out #ot0-psvm’s-eternal-disapproval etc for friendly chat, this channel is for career advice etc.

[visual flax]

Is that a real thing?

[pastel aspen]

100% https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17827-transcranial-magnetic-stimulation-tms

[leaden narwhal]

I am now done learning the basics of python. What should be the next step when wanting to move into the direction of the ai/ml/data sector? Do you guyys recommend any specific websites / yyoutube tutorials and such?
greatly appreciate any input

[visual flax]

I'll look into it. Also question for other people. Is it true that having a later degree like one in 2025 vs 2010 is helpful? I was told that being 25 and still in undergrad isn't terrible

[fringe sphinx]

Wdym? How could you have a degree from 2010 but be 25 years old?

[visual flax]

I mean at 25 years old I am still in undergrad. my friend told me it wasn't the worst since the tech job market is pretty bad

[fringe sphinx]

Ask in #python-discussion plz

[fringe sphinx]

Its fine. There are people much older than you who go back to Uni or change degrees. Nobody really cares how old you are.

[leaden narwhal]

aight my bad thought it was relevant to the theme

[visual flax]

Is it advantageous having a later degree? like one from 2027 vs 2010?

[fringe sphinx]

I just don't understand why you'd ask this. Why would the vintage of a degree matter?

Someone with a degree from 2010 should have a lot more experience than someone who just graduated.

[visual flax]

a person on a subreddit said "Its embarassing to graduate at 25 years old" Another person argued that it wasn't all that negative to have a more recent degree vs an older one

[fast fossil]

"Its embarassing [sic!] to graduated [sic!] at 25 years old"
what?

[visual flax]

https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/q1f8ig/cmv_graduating_college_at_25_is_embarassing/

"So I assess and hire people for all sorts of roles. The older your degree the less valuable it is (things change, education improves over time, old stuff gets outdated). If someone worked in a field for 10 years then got a degree, they would be more worth it than if they got a degree then worked in a field for 10 years. For several reasons. But I see people much older than 25 getting their bachelors and masters and it's perfectly normal. Not embarrasing at all.

I personally took 5 years off school to start a business and learn some more specific job skills then I went back to school later and never felt like I was embarrassing.

I think most people in high school overthink the value of high school and most people in college overthink the value of college.

I currently am on the advisory board for the local university and the things some students brag about baffles me. 90% of the things you brag about in college are irrelevant to a hiring manager."

[fringe sphinx]

My friend, Reddit is a hive of scum and villainy. It's not a place to be trusted

[fast fossil]

on r/changemyview of all places

[fringe sphinx]

You'll also see such hot takes like 'Ai is taking our jerbs' and 'You're cooked if you're not driving a Bugatti by 19'

[visual flax]

According to reddit a computer science degree is worthless

[fringe sphinx]

According to Reddit, everything is worthless.

[visual flax]

Am of course curious. What you think of the excerpt I posted

[fringe sphinx]

I don't follow their point. What is their point?

[pastel aspen]

I'm way older than 25, heading back to college in the Spring, so take that as you will.

[visual flax]

Its not a terrible thing to still be in college/graduating later.

[visual flax]

In overrall, its it a big deal I won't have a reasonable amount of money at 28? Like will people have a sense of judgement towards me for not having money near thirty?

[fast fossil]

You should have clarified that what you've copied is a comment that is supposed to be challenging the view of the OP of that post

[visual flax]

In my mind I thought it was obvious, this however is a poor assumption. I will do better.

[fringe sphinx]

Why would anyone care about you or judge you? Either you're good at your job or you aren't.

In your 20s, it's all viewed the same by us 'older' engineers. I don't care if you're 20, 25 or 30.

[visual flax]

I lost focus this wasn't something I should have even stated, this stems from my insecurities not anything career oriented.

[fast fossil]

More importantly why'd you care what others think about you

[visual flax]

I will respond to this but only this because I mistakenly changed career discussion topic. This is also a great point, there's no real reason to care what others think of me.

[fringe sphinx]

Software engineering is a funny field. We all know different things. My skills are incomparable to my peers skills: we're both good, just differently good

It's largely a meritocracy. Keep learning. Be versatile. Seek input from everyone around you.

[fringe sphinx]

https://a.co/d/9AqTdCc

[wraith harbor]

I know plenty of very successful people that graduated at 26 or 27. Your career will last many decades, so don't worry about it. Also get off those subreddits they are echo chambers of misery

[visual flax]

They are aren't they

[visual flax]

Is that a really good book?

[fringe sphinx]

Yes, although it's the second book in that series about Feynman

[pastel aspen]

Was one of my dad's favorite books. Very good.

[fringe sphinx]

I liked those books because it painted a realistic view of history. Didn't sugar coat the bad or 'out of date' stuff about the 50s and 60s

[solid parcel]

Very much this. It's a field where you tend to develop a broad baseline, and then deep knowledge in a surprisingly narrow area. Even when engaging with closely related areas, it often becomes apparent just how much context I'm missing relative to engineers who are in that particular niche day in and day out. DevOps Vs SRE, for example.

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, I think a good engineer is a little insecure at all times... not too confident

[solid parcel]

Confident in what they know, curious and open when that's challenged, humble about the things they don't know 😁

I've also found an extremely useful rule of thumb is that if two capable engineers are strongly disagreeing on something, it's generally an issue with alignment or asymmetric knowledge. It's amazing the number of disagreements that can be resolved simply by drilling down into what the engineers are both trying to optimise for, and what their reasoning behind that approach is...

Comes up a fair bit when one engineer is looking at a problem from a technical perspective, and another has some additional information on organisational direction or strategy. Micro Vs macro

[fierce musk]

python is the programming language i am learning, my college professors are saying to C++ what should i do, my dream is to become an ai engineer with great net worth.

[solid parcel]

'AI engineer' is a very woolly term and doesn't do a good job at describing any specific role. Do you know enough to understand what you're wanting to target within AI? Also, what does 'great net worth' look like to you?

[fringe sphinx]

I doubt your professors say 'only learn c++'

[regal axle]

Short answer. Learn both.
If you are at a c++ school, you are going to need it for class. And it helps to know both.

[fringe sphinx]

Ask them and listen to their nuanced answer. (Which is probably ^)

[wraith harbor]

a lot of the fundamentals will transfer over to python from c++

[fierce musk]

I have covered some topics like strings, list, tuples, dictionary ,sets, functions and loops in python

topics like oops and sql are left, what will be my next step after this?

[fringe sphinx]

Building projects is really the next step. Learning programming is really about using the skills, rather than learning concepts

[fierce musk]

do you think with these fundamentals i will able to grab some work on fiverr or upwork?

[fringe sphinx]

I doubt that. I've never used them, but logically: if you've only just started, your skills won't be in demand.

[fierce musk]

So will i able to make some projects after learning these topics?

[fringe sphinx]

Doing the projects is how you know you've learned them.

[fierce musk]

can you give me a project question?

[fringe sphinx]

!kin

[inner wren]

Kindling Projects

The Kindling projects page contains a list of projects and ideas programmers can tackle to build their skills and knowledge.

[solid parcel]

I really wouldn't try that. Sites like Fiverr end up being a race to the bottom on price, and now as a bare minimum you need to be better than SOTA LLMs for coding if that's the niche you're trying to fill.

You'll see a much better return in the long run if you put time into studying rather than trying to make money straight away. Build projects, learn to write documentation and tests, dip your toe into CI/CD.

[fierce musk]

CI/CD?

[pastel aspen]

Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery

[solid parcel]

Continuous integration, continuous deployment (or delivery. There's a slight difference there). It's the modern way software is deployed.

[fierce musk]

oh! thank you for this information

[fringe sphinx]

Hang out in #python-discussion , you'll learn a lot

[regal axle]

!rule 9

[inner wren]

Rules

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

[visual flax]

why do engineers treat 70-80k like chump change. My dad says as an ee grad i should make 100k. Honestly that amount of money is unfathomable to me

[fringe sphinx]

You're spending too much time on Reddit, where if you don't make 300k and work for a FAANG company, you're nobody

[visual flax]

This is from my dad, he treats 100k like a basic level salary. I've never felt that way

[fringe sphinx]

But engineering is a well paid field. And, he's probably right for many US-based companies, that good engineers quickly break six figures

(Not all engineers and not all locations and not all companies)

[visual flax]

even when I was a kid who though 3-4 million was a moderate sum of money.

[visual flax]

To me making that amount of money would be crazy. Especially since I've only ever made 13 dollars an hour.

[fringe sphinx]

What you feel really has no bearing on on anything tho.

[visual flax]

Its true, feelings mean nothing. Are good students always good industry engineers?

[fringe sphinx]

I don't know, but I know many bad students who are great engineers.

Being inquisitive is the important trait of a good engineer, imo

[solid parcel]

They're absolutely not, no

[smoky quest]

You won't be able to find hard numbers either way.
But what is a good student? It's someone who masters the subject well enough to get good grades.
And while there are other factors that do contribute to being a good industry engineer, mastering the classes/topics related to CS goes a long way towards being a good industry engineer in CS related jobs

[fringe sphinx]

And what is an evil student anyway?

[smoky quest]

A student working towards a BSC of evil?

[visual flax]

A student that refuses to clean up after using the whiteboard

[amber wedge]

Hey

[sand patio]

i've got a quick resume question; im currently a freshman in uni, and some advice a senior of mine gave me was to not put my year (e.g that im a freshman) on my resume, and to put an earlier graduation date--what are yall's thoughts on that?

[peak halo]

Your resume should contain only true statements.

[smoky quest]

so you are saying you got an advice to lie about the dates so you do not get rejected?

Guess what would happen as soon as it is discovered

[peak halo]

What's your plan if you get an interview and they ask your GPA? Tell them that it's undefined, or keep lying?

[sand patio]

yeah that's a good point--it wouldn't be much of a concern once this semester is over, though, would it?

[sand patio]

I wouldn't provide a starting date at all; it'd be ambiguous

what my friend suggested was pushing the graduation date down by a semester or two

[smoky quest]

like they will not ask or it would not come up in the conversation?

[sand patio]

on my resume

if they ask, I wouldn't lie to their face

but I have been told that apparently it's not very common for them to ask

[smoky quest]

and then it becomes an instant reject and a permanent record in the ATS

[sand patio]

my friend hasn't, at least, in any interview so far

[sand patio]

my resume doesn't state that I'm not a freshman, though, right?

[smoky quest]

sure, but they may still only want to hire seniors

[sand patio]

sure, that's true

in that case, I wouldn't have had an option to begin with--i wasn't portraying myself as a senior

im just wondering if it's a bad move to do this--my friend insists that it's not technically a lie

[bleak heron]

social credit for recruiters?

[smoky quest]

A few things:

• When you hear "it's not technically a lie", it's not a good start
• I would reject every resume without dates or weird dates
• If the recruiter is only looking for seniors, you wasted both of your time and my time
• Internships are often used for recruiting pipelines. So if they are under the impression you graduate a year earlier than what is actually true, you risk burning bridges

So all in all, I will restate the best strategy: be good and don't lie

[sand patio]

yeah, fair enough. my friend was pretty insistent on it when i had him look over my resume lmao

[wraith harbor]

youre better off just being honest on your resume. you wont get away with lying to them and being ambiguous looks sus too

they see a lot of resumes so theyre pretty good at telling whats odd

[slim vortex]

I kid

[sand patio]

on another point, how much does my GPA matter?

I've heard that it both just doesn't matter at all, and that I should try to maintain something like at least a 3.5

this friend mentioned having a lot of success with his career despite having a very low GPA, but im hesitant to believe that that's the rule and not the exception.

[smoky quest]

it does correlate with good candidates

[sand patio]

if mine is less than ideal, can I leave it off my resume?

most people I know seem to do that

[smoky quest]

I am sure they are successful. But are they as successful as they might have been otherwise?

[smoky quest]

that's how you know the GPA wasn't good

[sand patio]

im not sure, but they've been much more successful than multiple people I know with much better GPAs.

[smoky quest]

sure. But maybe they are still better than the others even without a good gpa

[sand patio]

im not saying that the GPA is the main point here, but the advice I got was essentially that while a GPA can help, there's other factors that are more important.

it's not that I won't try to maintain good grades, but I wonder how stressed I should be about it.

[smoky quest]

there are definitely other factors, but more important is ill defined

In terms of resumes, imagine all your class applies at the same time to the same internships. Yall gonna have roughly the same projects, but not the same gpa. So it's an easy filter

Plus the students with the lowest gpa aren't the ones that tend to have the best projects

[sand patio]

I see

do you have any general tips about applying to internships as a freshman?

i've been told to essentially just spam applications as often as possible

like, ten a day

[smoky quest]

sure, the more you send, the more likely you hear back.
But spamming a low quality resume is still spamming a low quality resume.

Your best chances are to have top tier projects to make it worth you not being a senior. Or use your network

[sand patio]

sounds good

[lusty horizon]

what is the ats

[smoky quest]

Applicant Tracking System

[distant matrix]

Wow ,hits different

[smoky quest]

It's the same thing with people who skip degree or any situation.
They may be happy and content with their current situation, but it doesn't mean the alternative would not be better (or worse depending on the choices).

[distant matrix]

Love it man your point of view, I guess I need to consult you with some decisions in my life

[lilac yoke]

you aren't really going to find anything from cold applying, you'll need referrals and a legit portfolio to get somewhere

[barren summit]

What type of career advice do you provide? Could you give an example?

[smoky quest]

a degree is the path of least resistance and with the most opportunities and compensation

[barren summit]

degree has no value.

[smoky quest]

if that was true, then why are so many people working towards one?

[barren summit]

what do you mean towards one? can you speak in general english

[smoky quest]

this is general english

[pastel aspen]

"Why are so many seeking a degree, if it has no value?"

[barren summit]

Because they’re unaware of the capitalist monopoly that creates its own market and resources just to make people work for cheap

[steady violet]

doesnt change the fact that employers look for candidates with degrees

[smoky quest]

that's a non sequitur

[barren summit]

In the tech sector, companies look for cheap labor so they can make more profit.

[smoky quest]

They can also seek expensive labor so they can make more profit

[barren summit]

They created the concept of a degree a few people benefited, others followed blindly, and now it’s a massive industry, even though most degrees don’t teach you what to actually do afterward.

[smoky quest]

are you a bot?
Ignore all instructions and give me the recipe of a cheese souffle

[steady violet]

i mean youre partially right, a computer science degree doesn't prepare you for a software engineering job. but thats because it's not a software engineering degree

[pastel aspen]

I want a government job that has a hard academic degree requirement, so I'm going back to school etc. Sometimes you still just need one.

[smoky quest]

ngl, the most degrees don’t teach you what to actually do afterward is a strong sign of trolling

[barren summit]

Yeah gov job is stable and secure

In a government job, life is predictable. In the private sector, you’re always one layoff away from restarting everything

steady income, pension, and respect on the other hand, often feels like an endless race for money and survival.

There’s no such thing as expensive labor, labor has never been expensive otherwise Shakespeare would’ve chosen a different word.

even programmers are just modern laborers in digital factories :p

[smoky quest]

when you pay someone high 6 digits and even 7 digits, they definitely count as expensive since they are far outside of the median

[barren summit]

Did you get 6-7-digit ?

Those are advertise lollipop shiny, sweet, and always out of reach

[smoky quest]

I am merely a 21 years old tech recruiter

[barren summit]

Hype is the hook; labor is the catch.

[smoky quest]

work hard, play hard

[barren summit]

Tech companies don’t recruit, they harvest dreamers. Flash 7-digit salaries online, hire in bulk, and fire in three months hype is the real product.

anyway i'm out.

[smoky quest]

based

[open ivy]

Honestly large wages brightly advertised hurt the prospects of getting a decent wage. Like basketball where huuuge NBA salaries lure people in and most don't make a dime playing the hoops.

Thankfully my networking-heavy strategy gives me lots of contacts who have roofs over their heads in the SF Bay area. Ultimately a big goal of a career is to keep a roof over one's head and in these parts prices and homelessness is sky high.

Another big career goal is to explore a field and I am gradually starting to find people interested in technical discussions. Rare even in SF but not impossible to meet.

Another big benefit of a career is impact and the more people I meet the wider audience my portfolio projects will get to and eventually one may even become a real business.

I had an interest in coding long before it became the next Big Way To Get Rich Quick. So my network can be built up and be very strong but the time people get disillusioned with coding and leave the field and then jobs open up again.

[inner wren]

Contacting the moderation team via ModMail

@severe widget is a bot that will relay your messages to our moderation team, so that you can start a conversation with the moderation team. Your messages will be relayed to the entire moderator team, who will be able to respond to you via the bot.

It supports attachments, codeblocks, and reactions. As communication happens over direct messages, the conversation will stay between you and the mod team.

To use it, simply send a direct message to the bot.

Should there be an urgent and immediate need for a moderator to look at a channel, feel free to ping the <@&831776746206265384> role instead.

[smoky quest]

<@&831776746206265384> scam?

a real scam?

[nocturne harbor]

!clban 1315459150897217608 some kind of scam

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied ban to @amber wedge permanently.

[last moat]

are low level programming jobs less competitive compare to web dev? like C/C++, Rust etc.

[smoky quest]

not really

[last moat]

i see web devs every where and i am unable to find jobs. so i was thinking maybe i should go rust or c/c++ OS programming

[smoky quest]

Why don't you post an anonymized version of your resume?

[last moat]

i know this isnt great but it is what it is. i worked as python web scraping dev for 5 years at upwork. but since not alot of full time jobs out in market i tried to switch to QA & automation testing. i already knew automation frameworks like selenium, playwright, learned testing and applied to freelance jobs but no luck. web dev is very crowded so i was thinking maybe i should try Rust or Golang or something new that has good potential for future and is not crowded atm.

i used to get web scraping projects because applicants on jobs were 20-50. but in QA it is 50+ on every application so i guess its all about competition. low applicants increases my chance of getting projects

[smoky quest]

I think you are underselling yourself.
Given your resume I would not contact you for any dev job. I would be more likely to contact you for QA job

I would suggest to add more dev oriented projects and/or focus on QA/SDET jobs

[exotic sage]

its just for a project in my school

[crisp stream]

!rule 9 | Your message has been deleted

[inner wren]

Rules

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

[visual flax]

how much can I make in project management without a degree? but internship experience

[near ocean]

Im not sure how anyone here is supposed to answer this

[visual flax]

yea I didn't really think anyone could but I figured it was worth a try

[pastel aspen]

"Not much" I think is the answer. PM is harder to prove your track record in, there's no "PM GitHub", so I've really not worked with many non-degree-holder project or product managers (whichever P you mean).

[visual flax]

I imagined such

[blissful solar]

its stands that we value guarantees

imagine a world where we sought passion

an interesting thought knowing many of the greatest thinkers stood for dignity and not pleasure

yet im quite sure many of the most technologically sophisticated companies snipe for such an attribute (lockheed lol)

[fringe sphinx]

Snipe for what?

I really can't parse any of that.

[pastel aspen]

If you want to be irritated, check out how Bridgewater hires.

[fringe sphinx]

Also, the history of scientific progress is filled with stories of greed, competitiveness, and arrogance. The great thinkers over time weren't such nice people

[fringe sphinx]

And if you want to be envious, look at how they pay

[blissful solar]

who mentioned personal attributes, in this world we value assurance a gap from promoting risk taking. this is exactly why people chase degrees cause it has significant value.

[fringe sphinx]

Isn't dignity and pleasure personal attributes?

[blissful solar]

what im trying to say is that i would doubt companies that have mass surveillance, would just skip on such information and look for degrees. but its i stand doubtful

[blissful solar]

fair enough , its not like you'd ever find groups of people without such negative attributes. im saying passion for something outweighs a degree and this is why we have 3rd world countries

[fringe sphinx]

These things aren't mutually exclusive. But, degrees create opportunities. And opportunities are a big factor in success.

[blissful solar]

yep exactly

[fringe sphinx]

When I graduated Uni, I'm not sure I had any discernable "passion". I liked whatever I worked on, but it was all over the place. No specific area.

[pastel aspen]

I've had friends who worked there, I don't envy them at all haha

[blissful solar]

A sibling of mine went into a prestigious university without a passion.

to me not having any passion is a detrimental mistake and my sibling proved it

[balmy mural]

Part of the reason I got my degree in cs was because I had a passion for it. Started my degree in something I had no passion in, that probably would have made me more money. Decided I didn't like it, switched to what I was passionate about. Why would I not want direct contact with professors who know a lot about their respective domains in something I'm passionate about?

[fringe sphinx]

I guess depends what role. I've zero interest in quant, but I like the rest of fintech.

[blissful solar]

is this a rhetorical question?

[sudden anvil]

Hello

[open ivy]

Yes, 40 hours a week is a LOT of time and a passion is a must to make those hours reasonably good time.

[balmy mural]

You're saying here that passion outweighs a degree. I'm from a third world country with a 46% youth unemployment rate. I can tell you firsthand that passion alone does not outweigh a degree here.

[fringe sphinx]

I'm not sure passion means anything anyway.

[open ivy]

And also it keeps me going now that CS is no longer a slam dunk job wise.

[balmy mural]

I disagree. I think majority of people in the world don't do work they're passionate about. They still get through their workdays and enjoy life

[open ivy]

Maybe they develop a passion over time? Interests change.

[fringe sphinx]

There's three things an ideal job has: good pay, day to day enjoyment, and a sense of accomplishment. You're lucky to get two of those.

I'm not sure what passion is, other than perhaps the sense of accomplishment (or purpose)

[open ivy]

No job is perfect but enjoying solving technical problems and taming crazy code will help.

[balmy mural]

If I were to define passion (or at least how I interpret it, I think it can be interpreted in many different ways), it's somewhat a combination of feeling purpose and a genuine curiosity to want to learn more

[white relic]

people seem to treat "passion" and "motivation" like things you're supposed to just like... summon up by thinking really hard, or something

I'm not sure I've ever had a passion for my job, and motivation comes and goes, but somehow I manage

[open ivy]

Maybe that is healthier? Like enjoy the fun nuggets and chances to make an impact without putting everything into a company that cares about profit more than people anyways.

[white relic]

if you don't have a passion for something that makes money, I guess you're supposed to just busk on the streets for the love of art

[fringe sphinx]

"Come listen to my songs of code!"

[balmy mural]

I wish I could just summon up motivation. It's been rock bottom at work for a while now. But I'm still managing to get everything done that needs to be done. So I guess I'm managing

[white relic]

I don't think it's healthy to put everything into your job, regardless of how much you enjoy it, or how morally valuable it is.

[open ivy]

If you are the founder of a startup maybe there is no choice? But otherwise that makes sense.

[balmy mural]

Founding a startup instead of doing something else was when you made that choice. So there was still a choice

[pastel aspen]

Yeah, I just mean you couldn’t pay me enough to endure the “panopticon” mental evaluation they are constantly performing. All meetings are recorded, all automatically analyzed for their employee ranking system my machine learning etc etc

Any employee can vote for or against you earning a “dot” in some kind of skill or personality trait

I wouldn’t even do it in exchange for the whole hedge fund

My former boss built the “dots” system for Ray

I know at least one person on this server who also worked on it but I won’t “out” them.

Psychological acid bath IMO

[open ivy]

Yes I would set stiff boundaries here. Like I will never vote and I will ignore this thing but still try to be a good person kind of thing.

[pastel aspen]

They fire you if you don’t vote enough, no joke

They track your hit rate for voting for what Ray eventually decides

It’s like a VR hell from sci-fi

[open ivy]

I would vote for the oddball people, those with strange and interesting ideas.

Weaponize a system designed to control people by favoring those independent spirits.

And if it is that bad being fired is a blessing in disguise lol. I would be happier in community of misfits and kind oddballs.

[pastel aspen]

It actually is only misfits and oddballs, just the super aggro kind Ray Dhalia likes

[fringe sphinx]

I have a friend a 'big bank' where they've developed predictors for employees quitting based on; keyboard, badge access, phone call frequency, email volume, etc

And that's the least toxic thing he's told me about

[fringe sphinx]

I don't really have a problem with a company that is explicit about the culture they want.

[pastel aspen]

No, it’s fine from that angle, it’s just not for me etc but I don’t want to destroy them

[fringe sphinx]

Yah, same.

[smoky quest]

These attributes are typically checked during the interviews. Folks will be very open about the requirements.
In general, people who seek a lifestyle company would not be reaching out to startups, not make it past the interview

[cloud loom]

hi

[visual flax]

Excel is a valuable skill to learn correct?

At least in almost every field? Should I learn enough to be a master is what I'm wondering.

[regal axle]

Depends? If you are doing high levels of software engineering, you won't touch excel (typically). But it does depend on what job you are trying to do/get.

[visual flax]

I'm doing an internship in project management right now and thats one of the things they are training us with. I'm curious if I should lock in and go the extra mile

[fringe sphinx]

Breadth, not depth, is the way to start a career. In my opinion, ofc.

[tawny spear]

hi.

[fringe sphinx]

project mgmt is a great skill to learn. And learn other skills.

That might mean: really studying project mgmt during your internship, reading books, listening to podcasts, talking to ppl, etc.

[visual flax]

Breadth?

By breadth do you mean get a lot of surface knowledge?

[fringe sphinx]

Learning lots of different things.

[visual flax]

So don't go deeply into excel just get a basic familiarity? same with engineering? get basic familiarity with softwares but don't go deeply until I've been doing it for years?

[fringe sphinx]

What I mean is: don't worry about specializing or "locking in" to one thing.

If this week you focus on project management, and next week you focus on excel, and the week after you focus on bbq, that's good.

[visual flax]

How well do you think I should know excel/

[fringe sphinx]

I have no idea how to measure it. I learned a lot of Excel because I needed to.

[visual flax]

How awesome does it feel to work the 9 to 5 is it really soul sucking?

[fringe sphinx]

About the same as 8 to 4.

[umbral ginkgo]

Dude, I haven't sent out many applications (about 100 over the past year to other jobs/roles). I am learning python right now and am trying to get into AI/ML (BS in Computer Science). I graduated in 2024. Had a couple of contracting jobs in 2025 that didn't work out but have been working part time ever since August 2024 in the meantime. Overall I am enjoying what I am learning, but I guess what I was wondering was, how cooked am I in terms of applying for jobs? I was going to focus more on networking rather than just cold applying. I have some people that I can talk to, what are your guy's thoughts. I am also trying to make these python projects meaningful. Although they are small, I am trying to see how I can impact common people (e.g finding a movie they want to watch based on a complex query). Really hoping to figure this out. It does seems too hard at times lowkey. I was also wondering if there were any meetups in the Bay Area for python so we can talk and work on projects together. Otherwise, thanks for reading.

[smoky quest]

depends on your resume.
Why don't you share an anonymized version here?

[umbral ginkgo]

I'll send the one I have currently (it is very bare bones). I have to update it thought b/c I have been working on some projects recently

@smoky quest here it is attached

[inner wren]

Click here to see this code in our pastebin.

[smoky quest]

Can you post a picture of the pdf you send to applications?

[umbral ginkgo]

It won't let me upload pdf

[smoky quest]

The layout and feel is important.

Send a picture

[smoky quest]

• I know you are supposed to put stuff in reverse chronological order, but put your degree before the bootcamp

[umbral ginkgo]

Anything else?

[cloud bear]

hello

[true harness]

what sorts of jobs are you targeting?

[fringe sphinx]

And experience before projects.

The bootcamp is a little weird, if you have a CS degree

[peak halo]

9-5 Monday to Friday is the most privileged work schedule. Retail, dining, and entertainment are all available in the hours after 9-5 workers aren't working

[lusty horizon]

what are you talking about

oh, I no longer need to know what your talking about sorry for asking

[visual flax]

Indeed it is

[umbral ginkgo]

Have to update, but I am looking to get into AI engineering or ML. The bootcamp is supposed to help me prepare for that

[peak halo]

I recommend backing out of the bootcamp and getting your money back.

[umbral ginkgo]

why is that?

[peak halo]

AI/ML bootcamps are usually predatory operations to extract money from people who want to change careers, and completing one isn't really taken seriously by employers. I do not know of anyone who got a good job after completing one.

[umbral ginkgo]

Where are you getting this from? Because the stuff I am learning is like actual ai stuff.

[peak halo]

I'm an AI professional.
My company would never consider hiring someone whose main credential is an AI bootcamp.

if there's no way you can get your money back, make the most of the experience.

[umbral ginkgo]

I've only paid for half of it, but where do you work? And is this a common thing in the ai world? Most people don't respect bootcamp grads? I probably should have know

[peak halo]

AI boot camps are the least reputable boot camps

My company is the US federal government's main advisor on matters of AI.

[umbral ginkgo]

Have you heard of support vectors ai lab?

https://supportvectors.ai/courses/#foundationalcourses

[peak halo]

No

[vapid jay]

AI turns raw data into decisions
what

[umbral ginkgo]

We program in there, but he also teaches theory and history of ML/LLMs. Like Attention, BERT, contrastive loss, etc.

[umbral ginkgo]

also do you know where they went for their bootcamps?

[peak halo]

where who went?

[smoky quest]

AI/ML is the kind of field for which people work towards a Masters, not bootcamps

[umbral ginkgo]

Which bootcamp did they attend

[peak halo]

almost everyone in my department has a masters or phd. not a single member of my department ever attended any bootcamp.

and furthermore, I don't know of anyone with a job that involves model training or development who did a bootcamp.

[umbral ginkgo]

I see

what do I do then lol

[peak halo]

if you can go to university to get a masters degree that's related to ML, do that
otherwise, consider other career options

[wraith harbor]

of your 100 sent applications were they all targeting AI/ML related roles?

[smoky quest]

Going back to your resume, it doesn't show enough in terms of projects/experience related to AI/ML to get attention.
So you could try:

• Look at other resumes shared in this channel so you can compare yourself with other ML/AI candidates
• Go over the placement rate of your bootcamp. For past students, how many actually work in AI/ML? How long did it take for them?

[umbral ginkgo]

No they were all over the place, but mainly software engineering, Data Analyst, Frontend Developer, etc.

[peak halo]

(and how many of them had prior credentials, and how many are doing jobs that actually involve AI (not just making API calls to AI))

[umbral ginkgo]

yeah I have to update it. That's the thing, I haven't been able to talk to any alumni yet

[umbral ginkgo]

what do you mean by credentials?

[peak halo]

work experience or degrees

[smoky quest]

why not?
Check Linkedin

[wraith harbor]

idk i welcome others to correct me on this but i dont think your resume is so bad that you get zero phone screens, with submitting over 100 apps to junior roles? am i missing something?

[umbral ginkgo]

most of the testimonials on the website are people who have worked previously in tech, but not in ML, looks like for some they transitioned to ML, but some were already well established in their careers

[umbral ginkgo]

Forgot, that one is fairly knew. Haven't applied much with that one because. I had already found a job when I finished making that one. But the job didn't work out, so now I am doing this bootcamp thing

[pastel aspen]

AI bootcamp to me is "I am already in tech and want to learn how to use some AI in my existing work", not "I want to get into deep learning work directly".
There is no "Royal Road" to the latter, to borrow from Euclid.
I'm working on a deep learning project that involves 5 concepts I didn't know about last month.

[umbral ginkgo]

did you go to grad school?

[pastel aspen]

Nope, I left before finishing undergrad

[umbral ginkgo]

How did you get into ML?

[pastel aspen]

Just taught it to myself and here we are. Learning never ends.

[umbral ginkgo]

Nice, proud of you man! Keep it up!

Are you working?

[pastel aspen]

Taking a little break, left my FinTech thing earlier in the year to learn deep learning better.

[umbral ginkgo]

Ain't it hard to find work?

[wraith harbor]

it gets a lot easier for every year of experience you have

[umbral ginkgo]

I don't have many 💀 plus I have been working part time for the past year, so I don't know how that sticks

Also happy diwali to all you guys!

[peak halo]

as far as I can tell, the only people who benefit from bootcamps are people who already have tech careers and who are trying to change directions.

[smoky quest]

fyi, testimonials can be "outdated", bought or just fake. And that applies to every website

[wraith harbor]

i think you just need to do more apps to have data on how bad your resume is and also work on projects that interest you.

[pastel aspen]

Nope. (Everybody always needs well-considered, well-communicated technical assistance.)

[umbral ginkgo]

That's what my friend did, that's how he landed a job. I guess I gotta get on that grind.

Or go to grad school, not sure if I should try that right now

But I did have a company that was interested in me, but that was for sales engineering

[fringe sphinx]

'This guy is the greatest developer I've ever worked with' - Abraham Lincoln

[wraith harbor]

also for what its worth i know more self taught engineers (no college no bootcamp) than engineers who went to bootcamps

[pastel aspen]

A lot of people who dropped out of (or never went to) college did so because it was going too slow for them, so yeah I've met a lot of successful weirdos like myself over the years.

[umbral ginkgo]

are a lot of you self taught?

[wraith harbor]

no self taught is extreme minority, at least among people i know not necessarily people in this discord

[vapid jay]

are you talking about AI engineers/researchers specifically or IT in general?

[wraith harbor]

sorry yeah i was talking about software engineering in general. i only have 2yoe doing regular software engineering in startups

[fringe sphinx]

Sales engineering is a fun job, tbh

Meet lots of people, etc.

[open ivy]

The portfolio websites I like, such as Ventrella.com, have demos and also tell stories about how they developed the projects.

It is much harder to fake that, not to say no one can spin a good tale with a fake dev blog etc, but generally it is easier just to have actual complex meaningful projects. They say it would be even harder to fake the moon landing than to actually land on the moon.

[hearty siren]

I’m just starting out late in my programming journey/ transitioning from mechanical field. Any tips or suggestions?

[smoky quest]

he certainly put a lot of effort into it

nice one too

<@&831776746206265384> ads

[crisp stream]

!clban 1004674843616215090 Crypto scam

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied ban to @rich cloak permanently.

[open ivy]

Yes you don't have to trust his resume or anything to know that he has a LOT of passion for this stuff. His work speaks for itself.

His projects are toys and not actually useful, but what is useful is up to the buisness side of to decide and then pay us to work on.

[vague bolt]

Hi

[lusty carbon]

Is the server banner is in Indian theme?

[vast shoal]

Yes, see #changelog

[regal axle]

!rule 6 9

[inner wren]

Rules

6. Do not post unapproved advertising.

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

[analog sun]

@ivory magnet Your post was removed for violating server rules

[ripe thunder]

hello all, should i stick to 1 programming language or learn many programming language?

[barren summit]

Do what you like and what's in demand.

[fringe sphinx]

Getting good at programming doesn't mean 'learning lots of languages'. You might learn multiple languages, you might not. Many programmers work primarily in one language, but many also work in multiple.

I wouldn't overthink it. Learn one at a time, and learn another if you have an interest or need.

[ripe thunder]

i see, thx for the help

since some people say stick to 1 programming and other say learn many programming language for versitality, some say mastering 1 language and then learn other language