career-advice

[hearty island]

relatable

[delicate bane]

💀

you should learn excel really, really well too

vba is used for excel

[ocean ledge]

yes, but no-- you'll climb ranks at the big 4 quickly for 2-3 years then realize no one really cares because they have dedicated tech teams

just learn vba well and learn tax law

so like 90% of this server, as i've found

[primal quartz]

thank you!

[primal quartz]

thank you!

[silk flax]

true

[summer roost]

There's selection bias in that. Well paid people are less likely to draw attention to their compensation than poorly paid people.

[delicate bane]

i also think it has to do with response bias too. the people working usually dont have time to chat in discord even if they ARE members of the server

unlike the students, etc.

[summer roost]

Also true.

[delicate bane]

[hearty island]

I just chat while I'm in class

bc online class is boring

[swift veldt]

!rule 6

[inner wren]

Rules

6. No spamming or unapproved advertising, including requests for paid work. Open-source projects can be shared with others in #python-general and code reviews can be asked for in a help channel.

[ocean ledge]

what the hell is an aws job seeker

[glossy pecan]

Learning to code is a great skill to get paid more in general, whether you want to be a coder, an accountant, a salesman or a marketer

A career in tech can be extremely rewarding, even outside of the SV bubble

[delicate bane]

an aws job seeker

a [insert buzzword] job seeker

💀

you could literally put so many things there

[glossy pecan]

Lol I mean I guess it’s no different than any other platform or tech stack

People specialise in it, I guess

[delicate bane]

my classmate is a cloud engineer

💸

[glossy pecan]

Yeah it’s decent money

And fairly easy work

As long as you don’t mind always working with that platform

[unkempt sandal]

i heard that computer science jobs are overcrowded and its hard to find a job

is that true?

[obtuse thorn]

!warn 422450051458007050 we do not allow advertising for businesses or paid work here.

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied warning to @earnest barn.

[fossil ruin]

the computer programming/science and tech sect are having an overwhelming increase in people, but they are in demand and will continue to be in demand y'know since everyone has a use for tech whether that be programming or whatever

[delicate bane]

also depends your job market. some places are more competitive than others

[little trellis]

Humanity literally cannot produce enough skilled developers to meet the demand

Wouldn't worry too much if you're dedicated

And have some natural aptitude

[delicate bane]

US BLS says developers are looking at much faster job growth than average job

[little trellis]

Unless you're a game dev. Then I might worry

[unkempt sandal]

thanks, thats good to know

i will work hard in college

and now

[delicate bane]

try to get an internship(s). it will make it easier later on

since that's technically job experience

[little trellis]

It may seem like everyone is trying to become a developer now but a lot of that is probably because you spend a lot of time in developer circles. In reality, less than 20% of all graduates are in STEM and even less than that % are engineers.

[unkempt sandal]

alright cool

are there actually internships accessible for 17/18 year olds?

that are legit

[delicate bane]

are you in the states?

[unkempt sandal]

yes

[little trellis]

What state?

[delicate bane]

itll be tough but they ARE out there

[unkempt sandal]

ill just say east coast

[delicate bane]

usually theyre made for high schoolers like you

but better yet

you should look into hackathons

[little trellis]

New York is rough for entry level stuff. Boston is better

[delicate bane]

bc those tend to be more accesible

for those your age

[unkempt sandal]

what exactly is a hackathon

like are you actually hacking?

[delicate bane]

💀

[unkempt sandal]

or is it just coding challenges

[delicate bane]

y'know i never thought about the name until now

[little trellis]

Just building something with a team over a set period of time.

Generally has a theme

[delicate bane]

yeah its usually some sort of product you produce

[little trellis]

Like a game jam would be making a game

[delicate bane]

in like a weekend

[unkempt sandal]

ohh that sounds kind of fun? as long as i get good teammates

[delicate bane]

💀

[delicate bane]

yeah def

teammates are key

[unkempt sandal]

i thought it was like 1v1ing people somehow

ik it sounds dumb LOL dont say it

but something like that seems scary

[little trellis]

Nah, that's probably more like competitive programming.

You can also go out end help local businesses with the website or whatever. Maybe automate some trivial business stuff for them.

[unkempt sandal]

alright cool!

ive thought about building websites but tbh i wouldn't really be too interested in stuff like that. Do you have any ideas of what I could automate for them? Could I use simple python or java to do so?

[little trellis]

Python is great for automation.

You could work on some stuff to move their data around.

Maybe they get emails and want something to trigger off of those. Or they want some basic stats sent to their slack channel each day.

[unkempt sandal]

Alright cool

[little trellis]

I get that, I don't like web dev much either but it can be a necessary evil.

[rotund hawk]

elektrikcin

[unkempt sandal]

Over the past 2 years ive learned a lot of python basics, i haven't really touched upon it in a while though (i'm still coding because I'm learning java in school). I'm using Python Crash Course

do you have any resources you'd recommend for me to look into automating stuff for local businesses? that sounds really cool

[little trellis]

hmm I think there is a book about stuff like that. Haven't read it but I've heard it's good.

https://automatetheboringstuff.com/

Their website is definitely a bit outdated haha

[unkempt sandal]

alright thank you

i probablyhave to finish up with the basics before doing that stuff but i definitely wanna look into it

[little trellis]

For sure, I think that book is meant to be pretty basic.

Feel free to reach out if you have questions in the future

[unkempt sandal]

alright i really appreciate that bc im pretty sure ill have more questions haha

[little trellis]

Haha as you should

We allowed to share personal projects done with Python here? Don't see anything against it in the rules. Maybe not the right channel for it though.

[zinc rover]

Maybe in offtopic channels

[lucid vapor]

You can share it in #python-discussion as long as it's open-source.

[trail shadow]

[hearty island]

?

[trail shadow]

Sorry I thought this was general mb

[vapid jay]

Hey y'all amazing people!

I have Google as my dream job, and I'll do anything to go there. Now I've been coding for nearly 5 years, just practicing the language itself. I know Python, C, C++ and Java. Could you guys recommend me some books on Algo and Data structures? The book doesn't need to be for every language that I know, you can recommend me any Algo / DS book of any language and I can use it in other languages.

Thanks in Advance <3

[vivid kiln]

The Algorithm Design Manual by Steven S. Skiena, and Elements Of Programming Interview.

[fickle bough]

hi, about half a year ago I came here looking for advice on whether or not data science was a good career path... I am proud to say I have been admitted to the best university in Europe for this subject!

Now I just wanted to triple check here if Data Science(with machine learning) is gonna become a big necessity for companies in the years to come, any thoughts on this?

[cinder slate]

Data science is everywhere now, I think you gonna be fine

[vapid jay]

Data Science is the future. Mark my words. This time is now the time of AI and ML

[grave pivot]

Web 3.0 is rising too, now is a very good time to start learning for future

[vapid jay]

Web 3.0 already here

??

[grizzled tundra]

What's web 3.0?

[vapid jay]

www3

[grizzled tundra]

Ni hao

[vapid jay]

I'm fine. You?

[grizzled tundra]

Bien, gracias

[vapid jay]

K

Cyka Blyat

:)

@grizzled tundra you from USA?

[grizzled tundra]

Nope, you?

[vapid jay]

I'm from Bangladesh

Where you from?

[grizzled tundra]

Oh tahole bhalo e

[vapid jay]

Yo yo wyf

🤣

[grizzled tundra]

India

[vapid jay]

[grizzled tundra]

But yeah, it's good, you know

[vapid jay]

Yeah

[grizzled tundra]

I'd be excited to see what web 3.0 brings to the taboe

Table

[vapid jay]

Bruh, I'm craving for some Biriyani

🤤

[grizzled tundra]

Oh okay. That's a discussion for some other channel lol

[vapid jay]

Come to lobby

Actually, come to #ot0-psvm’s-eternal-disapproval

[cinder slate]

Biriyani is fucking awesome

[vapid jay]

Amen!

Don't forget Pani Puri

Or Golgappa

[cinder slate]

Pani puri!!! I've been trekking in India for 9 months and got addicted to their kitchen

[vapid jay]

Ah man..

Now I'm hungry

I'll have some snacks and think that I'm eating Pani Puri XD. Bye. Cya.

[cinder slate]

xD

[main thicket]

The people who do software Dev aren't the same people who do data science

It's not a requirement and likely will never be

And data science is something basically every big company has always done, there's just a push towards doing it better and more properly

Using data to improve business is a concept as old as business

[errant axle]

Where you from are?

[ashen elk]

another thing is that companies don't always need data scientists. old guard companies may have senior data scientists to lend some credibility and manage the project, but a lot of the stuff can be done by analysts too.

IMO data is becoming hard to get too. EU has its GDPR which is pretty comphrensive and even America seems to have woken up especially after snowden (also is the closure of Facebook's Friends API)

There is even talk about regulations and an organization to oversee the buying and selling of datasets

[ashen elk]

hm...which is that? uni of Edinburgh? do they have scholarships for international students?

[silk magnet]

What do you think should be the path to success as a software engineer ?

[hearty island]

DS/algos + personal projects + internships + OSS

[silk magnet]

thankyou

[silver rivet]

what does OSS stand for? and what do you think are good personal projects to go for?

[hearty island]

open source software

your personal projects depend on your ability

some people who start off like to build a calculator

!projects

[inner wren]

Kindling Projects

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

[hearty island]

ned bat has some good stuff here

you can also search up "project ideas" on github and there's like a ton of stuff you can do

[ocean ledge]

just be good at stuff, and have a curious appetite to learn-- you don't need to heavily study ds/algos or contribute to oss, you just need to look at what the market wants and build a skillset around that

[tribal summit]

Hello everyone

I can't choose between AI/neural networks and networking (django, flask)

I want to do something in scientific way, you know, when you are able to develop something new, something interesting

[vapid jay]

APIs

[tribal summit]

Networking seems to me like a routine work

is there much more stuff to learn for beginner in networking?

like OSI and protocols, etc

on the other hand, there is MATH in AI and data science

[hearty island]

being a network engineer isn't easy

there's still a lot of stuff you gotta know

if you go into #networks you can see a pinned message for an intro to networking

[fickle bough]

nope, Maastricht Universiteit in the Netherlands, according to leaderboards it's at the top, sometimes it's Gronnigen or Vrije but those gave me an offer too.
Uni of Edinburgh only had Computer Science with AI (which I also got admitted to lol)

[vapid jay]

Anyone got a nice web-based text editor?

Oops, wrong chat

[grizzled tundra]

True, networking is a sea

[rapid bison]

Hi everyone, anyone have experience with mid-career (mid-40s) switch from a non-technical profession (e.g. business development/sales) to software engineering? I've enjoyed programming since I was young (self-taught C, Python, Ruby), kept up to some degree as a hobbyist building pet projects (I wouldn't venture to call myself anything more than a beginner/early intermediate) but never did a degree in it or pursued it as a profession. Thinking about doing a mid-career switch now as I'm dead tired of my current career/line and wondering if I should finally scratch that SWE itch, or if it's even feasible/advisable. (I don't mind starting from the bottom.)

[frosty cape]

Is there any other language(s) really worth learning if I want to pursue a carrier in Computer science but have no idea which direction specifically?

[hearty island]

Python

good intro language

[merry meadow]

Hi everyone, I am 13 years old and have done almost every python exam there is. I can code almost everything and have been working for HSBC UK as a coder for there website. I get payed 30K British pounds a year (where as if I was older) I would be getting 100k+ if I were older. Are there any jobs for me to do where I get payed more

[hearty island]

^^^

[ocean ledge]

move out of europe

[merry meadow]

I was asked by them

[main thicket]

Everyone's definition of what is new and interesting is different. To many, making websites is new and interesting, you're making something new and can use your creativity. To me, it's doing the same thing again and again with different content, it doesn't involve any real stimulation. I'm more into maths and physics and hardware design.

Try a few things, figure out what you like

[delicate bane]

some people like research

some people dont like me

[hearty island]

research is hard dude

I asked literally all the CS professors at Hofstra if I could do research with them and they refused

adamantly refused

it was very sad

[near ocean]

undergrads doing research is exceptionally rare

[hearty island]

uh

I got a research opportunity at UB by asking a data science prof

and he also had like 15 other students doing research for him

UB is a very research oriented university tho

Hofstra is ....something....

[near ocean]

undergrad students or postgrads

[hearty island]

undergrads

it was all undergrads

they may do it differently in the UK

[delicate bane]

i did a summer research internship once

i can do it again this summer but im leaning against it

[hearty island]

did you get paid for it

[delicate bane]

yep

that grant money

[hearty island]

that's good

[near ocean]

what kind of research did they do tho, when i think of research i think of phd research or postdoctorate research positions

[hearty island]

I don't really know

they were working on projects that he assigned

I'm pretty sure no matter what they did as an undergrad they were still et al

[near ocean]

undergrad projects? like, their keystone project?

[hearty island]

no

like separate research projects

https://engineering.buffalo.edu/computer-science-engineering/people/faculty-directory/kenny-joseph.research.html

this is the guy if it helps

[near ocean]

yea i dont think thats undergraduate stuff

[hearty island]

oh but it was

he was working with undergrads

[dark lintel]

Hi

[near ocean]

you sure he wasnt just getting them to fetch him coffee?

[hearty island]

yes

[dark lintel]

How would you improve your chances of being hired as a contractor while living in 3rd world?

[hearty island]

UB is known for having research opportunities for undergrads

[main thicket]

Undergrads doing research is both common and basically a requirement for competitive universities

You simply can't get into top universities in stuff like ML without first author papers in top conferences

[near ocean]

never seen undergrads be invited to a research lab by a prof, especially young kids without publications

[main thicket]

it's very common ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's not self directed research for reference

Generally they're given the project

Unlike a post doc where everything you do is decided by what you want to do and have ideas for

[near ocean]

how is it different to a keystone project then

maybe i just have my terms mixed

[delicate bane]

what raggy said applies to my experience too

[summer roost]

I worked in a research lab as an undergrad. Not ML, it was wifi/wireless/communications research.

[delicate bane]

for example, this summer, for a certain big lab, theyre asking for grad students to help scope projects + supervise for undergrads and even high schoolers

[summer roost]

It's very common for there to be undergrads in research labs, in my experience.

[delicate bane]

idk if i want to work with a bunch of kids

[hearty island]

Some of the kids were working on more complicated things than upperclassmen

[delicate bane]

maybe its dif in the UK?

[hearty island]

like machine learning applied in robotics and stuff

[delicate bane]

US has a lot of research grants

[hearty island]

some guy was coding AI for games

[delicate bane]

one of the companies i applied for is making people do this

https://www.pymetrics.ai/

bunch of games you have to play

time to minmax for the highest score

oh sh*t

one of the games is an exact replica of that one trust game

the one where you send money to someone, it triples, and they decide how much they want to send back if any

some of these games are hard

[main thicket]

Because often capstone work isn't proper publishable work for undergrads, it's a lot longer term, etc. Working in a lab is focused work usually across multiple projects with the primary goal of publishing, not a required year long project that every person has to do that may or may not be publishable

There's no associated required assignments or reports, you may get paid for it if it's working as an RA, you can be involved in multiple things at a time, your work may be support work building up the research line, not just an independent research project. Often this stuff will happen part time alongside full time classes + over the summer.

[delicate bane]

sounds right

[delicate bane]

you know what i wonder

every time they ask about visa sponsorship on these job applications, do you think the people who say they need visa sponsors go in a separate pile?

just curious bc its on every single app

what do you think @hearty island ?

[hearty island]

I think so

[delicate bane]

like why else would they ask, right?

[hearty island]

Bc they have to do some work to sponsor you

[delicate bane]

and money

i heard its like thousands

💸

[hearty island]

And they’re debating if you’re worth that extra work and money

[delicate bane]

sounds expensive

[hearty island]

Immigrants have it very hard

[delicate bane]

🕯️

[hearty island]

God knows how my dad did it

I really don’t know

I’m very lucky to be born in the US

[delicate bane]

i think it was easier in the past

much less competition

[hearty island]

always going to be grateful to my dad for that

Even if we don’t get along at times

He did everything he could so I could have a good childhood

[delicate bane]

This is an office or home based position. We are seeking applicants from Washington, D.C, and from any state except Colorado.

RIP colorado

[hearty island]

@delicate bane they said screw Colorado

What did Colorado even do

[delicate bane]

i honestly have no idea

like whats dif about that state work-wise

[hearty island]

Do they not like the time zone in Colorado

Is that it

but they’re picking people from states adjacent to Colorado

So same time zone

Rex say you’re from colorado

[delicate bane]

honestly if i was from colorado

id be semi-pissed

[hearty island]

Me too

[grizzled tundra]

RIP

[delicate bane]

You are curious and bring genuine excitement to learn new subject areas and are comfortable to be scrappy as and when needed
what do they mean by "scrappy"

sounds like disorganization

[delicate bane]

For Colorado residents, compensation range is $20-$35 per hour.
this is from a separate listing but look at this

maybe they have to offer more compensation to colorado peeps?

but tbh idk what average compensation is so

[summer roost]

https://www.denverpost.com/2021/01/01/colorado-laws-businesses-employers-workers-2021/

Colorado passed a new law that went into effect this year: if you advertise a job posting to Colorado residents, it needs to include pay ranges and benefits up front

Possibly they decided they don't want to do that, and so the job is not being advertised to Colorado residents.

[delicate bane]

ah. this is good info to know

and kinda scummy of them to do that to avoid that regulation

good on colorado tho

maybe i will consider colorado as a future place to work/live..?

[true harness]

living costs are hella low there

[summer roost]

It's not scummy to decide you don't want to cope with local regulations of some states, and choose not to

When every state has different labor laws, it's a nightmare for companies to keep up to date and I'm compliance with all of them

Another possibility is that they flagged that they'll need extra legal review before they can advertise jobs for Colorado, and so they're avoiding advertising to Colorado to save money on billable hours for attorneys

[delicate bane]

[cursive socket]

Does anyone want to contribute to this project? This is to make a repo that holds all of the artworks of each and every distro... https://github.com/happyeggchen/Distro_wallpapers

[abstract breach]

why are you posting this here man @cursive socket ?

[pliant veldt]

Is data science fun?

[main thicket]

Fun depends on the person doing it

[balmy citrus]

ya eggzactly

[little trellis]

People find accounting fun

[hearty island]

Tell me why I just saw someone post a whole database of amazon, Facebook, and Netflix hiring managers on LinkedIn

now they’re gonna be flooded with tens of thousands of emails and they’re going to respond to no one

[dark escarp]

does anyone with adhd code?

like is it possible for someone with adhd sit on a screen for 8 hrs and not get distracted?

[rancid wren]

that's me

and yes, if you are into it, it does become possible.

i do occasionally have battles with my mind, but once i get into a certain concept, the satisfaction of writing a program (and fixing it till it works) becomes stronger than my adhd

[hearty island]

I just code while I'm on the server

[ocean ledge]

drugs help

[zinc rover]

Any where i can find some good paid internship remotely?

[hearty island]

indeed

[peak halo]

@rancid wren please remove the noisy characters from your name, per our nickname policy in #rules

[hearty island]

glassdoor

[zinc rover]

indeed

[sonic mica]

will there ever be too many programmers it'll be impossible to get a well-paid job at programming? well-paid = 50k USD+ a year

[eager turtle]

Now days programmers are pretty rare, but slowly it'll become common and then other jobs would be the rare ones

[sonic mica]

does a job becoming common necessarily make its pay less?

[main thicket]

It's a demand vs supply thing

Personally I think it's already happening given the exponential growth in people taking CS majors in the last few years, and given the junior market is already starting to become way more competitive

Give it another 5-10 years and the salaries will probably start becoming more normalised

I mean it probably won't go lower than 50k an year, especially given inflation. But it'll become around the same as or lower than engineering majors

[upbeat scarab]

is the best time to apply for summer 2022 internships this fall?

not sure about the time frame

[hearty island]

Yes

that’s the best time to apply

lots of options

Don’t get me wrong there are still summer options for 2022 during the summer of 2022

but it will be harder to get in bc more people are applying

[shadow moss]

It doesn’t matter as long as it’s before close date. Few companies will look at applications before that.

So early spring 2022 is fine as well

[upbeat scarab]

got it

does anybody have a guide or something on how to get started looking for internships?

I've had two internships thus far, but both were research under professors

I don't have any personal projects but that's what I'm working on right now

other than that, I'm a bit lost on what else I gotta work on for this process

oh and I haven't done any leetcode or anything

[shadow moss]

If your university has career department or similar, ask them, otherwise job boards or like.

But most of info gets dropped early spring.

Like Jan/February

[hearty island]

You don’t need to grind leetcode if you know ds/algos well

but I am assuming you used DS/algos for research under the profs

[shadow moss]

This year was bad for internships because COVID

Last year was awful

Hopefully next year is much better

Since many companies were WFH or limited in capacity, they didn’t hire interns.

[hearty island]

smh textron

I am still not ok w textron not letting me be remote

I’m literally doing work on a computer I’m not doing a goddamn residency that I have to be in person

I regret that CUNA mutual group interview so much but I really didn’t know anything in DS/ML then so I deserved to get rejected

[sonic mica]

for example, computer engineers earn about 97k a year, so what type of engineering are you talking about exactly?

and is it true that there will never be too many good programmers?

[main thicket]

Mech eng/elec eng/etc. They're not that much lower tbh

But I think over time the 200k starting salaries at big companies are going to start to fade

[main thicket]

In the "We could always do with more good programmers" sense yes, not the "they're always going to be making bank sense"

[sonic mica]

I mean for a really good programmer 200k+ would still exist, unless there are too many good programmers, but I don't know if that'll ever happen

[main thicket]

As I said, CS enrolments are currently increasing exponentially

[sonic mica]

even if someone has a CS degree, I don't think that necessarily makes them a good programmer, experience is what makes people get better at programming I think

[main thicket]

CS isn't special here, every other field with high salaries like that gets flooded and salaries go down unless there's an artificial cap (like medicine)

[main thicket]

Why wouldn't whatever makes someone a good programmer also increase with the number of people getting CS degrees??

[sonic mica]

hmmm, right

[main thicket]

Unless you think somehow there's only a finite supply of people which can be good programmers and they're all already being utilised to the maximum so everyone else joining CS is inherently going to be not good

[near fern]

i mean theres a point to be made there

[main thicket]

No there isn't. CS isn't special as a field

Every field with high salaries like that goes in one of two directions. Either it becomes extremely competitive, or salaries go down. Most likely a combination of the two

That's how the free market works

[sonic mica]

hmmm, I am also wondering if that will make it much more uncommon for people that don't have CS degrees to get hired

[main thicket]

That's also already happening. It's much much harder to get an intro programming job now than it was 5-10 year ago

5-10 years ago people would explicitly tell others to not bother with college, just self learn or go to a bootcamp and get a programming job

[sonic mica]

at least big companies still don't require a CS degree

but I think they might require it in the future

not sure

[main thicket]

It's opposite now. The general advice is "if you can do it, do a degree. It's a lot harder without and it can block your progression"

[main thicket]

They don't require it but it's much harder to get in without for a variety of reasons

[sonic mica]

hmm, does that necessarily mean it's the end of the world/end of programming career if someone doesn't have a CS degree?

[main thicket]

Nah not at all

[delicate bane]

it must be harder to get promoted without a degree

[main thicket]

But in 10 years? Probably

[delicate bane]

even if you get an entry level job

you see that with graduate degrees + promotions

[summer roost]

It's always been harder to get a programming job without a CS degree - at least, it has been ever since CS degrees began to become relatively common in the 90s or so.

[main thicket]

Yep, but the junior market has become way more competitive in recent years.

[hearty island]

oh boy cs degrees are definitely recommended

[summer roost]

Not at all - the hardest part if you don't have a degree is getting your foot in the door. Once you've had jobs in industry, your promotions will be based on your skills and merit, just like everyone else's

[delicate bane]

[main thicket]

Without a degree, to get into a big company, you have to:

• learn stuff on your own to begin with
• get hired somewhere else first (big companies aren't gonna hire Devs without degrees or experience)
• do cool enough work to get noticed there (WordPress or basic webdev isn't likely to get noticed as easily)
• learn algorithms and data structures and interviewing techniques

[sonic mica]

hmmm, and when it comes to senior dev jobs, is it more about the experience or more about CS degree?

[main thicket]

It's an uphill battle nowadays

[summer roost]

entirely about experience.

[main thicket]

As soon as you're in the industry as a Dev for more than a few years, your lack of degree doesn't matter

Generally speaking

Might be harder to go into management type stuff though

[summer roost]

big companies aren't gonna hire Devs without degrees or experience
I work at a company with 6000 people in our engineering department; we still hire fresh college grads without CS degrees.

[sonic mica]

hmmm, so in the next 10 years, people will be applying for junior positions for anything, even minimum wage, just to get experience, then they can move on and actually get a decent senior dev job

that's my prediction

[main thicket]

I was referring to the actual well paying (FAANG and similar) hiring people without degrees OR experience

[summer roost]

so was I

we're not FAANG, but we're up there, and well paying.

[main thicket]

You have 0% chance of being interviewed even at Google without any experience

Unless you've made something magically awesome but those are few and far inbetween

[sonic mica]

and what about resume`, will it ever be more important than CS degree in the future?

[main thicket]

Resumes always been important

[lost girder]

whitout cs degree???

[summer roost]

My starting salary was $82.5k in 2009, during the great recession, and there were people hired alongside me with college degrees, but not CS degrees, who had taken programming classes.

[sonic mica]

like, would the employer look at the large scale projects you worked on or require a CS degree before doing anything

[lost girder]

i am currently doing cs in college

[main thicket]

Bro that was 12 years ago

That was an incredibly different time

[summer roost]

sure. Our hiring policies haven't changed since then. We still hire people without CS degrees.

[sonic mica]

I mean, ye, I'll also enroll in a CS college in the next year, but if I don't, just wondering if I can still get into programming career

[lost girder]

^

[main thicket]

Also any Stem degree is much better than no degree

[main thicket]

Your practices haven't but the market has

There's way more competition now

[lost girder]

man i like cs but i hate math

[sonic mica]

you'll need math like... 2% of the time?

hell, 1%

[lost girder]

thats why my gpa is sooo bad

[summer roost]

It's possible to get into a programming career without a CS degree. It's a more difficult path, that will make it harder to break into the industry, and that will result in you making less money than peers who have CS degrees, probably for your entire career.

[lost girder]

calc 2 and 1 is so dumb lmao

[sonic mica]

I just hope gaining experience to apply for senior dev jobs later can get me out of that hellhole if I don't get a CS degree

[main thicket]

It's much more difficult to break into. But I think it's easy to make as much as CS majors once you're in

[summer roost]

you're likely hired at a lower rate than people with CS degrees for your first job

[main thicket]

That's true

[sonic mica]

yes, and I won't really care about it

[lost girder]

also should you get a masters in cs or does it matter?

[sonic mica]

just gonna apply for experience

[main thicket]

Don't bother

[summer roost]

and after that point, you'd need to get better raises (as a percentage of your comp) than your coworkers to ever catch up to them

[sonic mica]

not money

[summer roost]

if everyone gets 10% YoY raises, you'll never catch up to someone who starts above you.

if you like programming and don't like math, you should look for a college that has software engineering as a degree, rather than computer science. It's less math and theory, more design and practice.

[main thicket]

But you generally wouldn't stay in the same place for all your life, you'll move after a couple years and be on the same pay

[sonic mica]

I don't need promotions either I think, I can quit the job and find a senior dev position somewhere else

maybe that sounded foolish

[main thicket]

So the net loss is mostly just the difference in salary the first few years

[marsh wind]

more or less it's what peopel do

[main thicket]

Which probably equals out with the debt and opportunity cost of a CS degree anyway

[summer roost]

sure, but so will they.

if you move jobs and get a 20% raise, but they also move jobs and get a 20% raise, you still haven't caught up.

[main thicket]

The new job doesnt know or care about your original salary, they're now evaluating this person with 2 YoE with another person with 2 YoE

Generally speaking it's pretty easy to find a job that doesnt ask for your old salary or just refuse to tell it

[summer roost]

many do still ask, and it's unwise to lie. So that's still a drag on your salary, limiting the places that you can switch to.

[main thicket]

The only reason you started off with a low salary at first was because you were desperate (didn't have many options) and they were taking a risk. Once you move for the first time, you aren't as desperate anymore (more options) and there's no more risk than a CS major since you already have experience

[summer roost]

and there are still some - government contractors, I think, for instance - that have separate pay brackets based on whether or not you have a degree

[marsh wind]

can't you say that you are not willing to share?

[main thicket]

I have never applied to a place that asks for previous salary, only ones that ask for desired pay

[summer roost]

you can, sure - but they can decide not to move forward with you if you do

[sonic mica]

I mean... doesn't your salary count as "personal info"? which you're free to refuse sharing even in job interviews?

[marsh wind]

hm really? cause that's kinda personal info

[hearty island]

how am I supposed to even give them desired pay

they're going to lowball me

[main thicket]

In practice, nobody will

[marsh wind]

that's why they ask

[summer roost]

you're free to refuse, they're free to take your refusal into consideration. 🤷

[main thicket]

I either refuse, write 0, or ask them for more than they can afford so they have negotiate down

[hearty island]

that works

I wrote 0 most of the time

[marsh wind]

trick is, I guess not ask too much upfront 🙂

[sonic mica]

ey, what about degrees from another countries as well, does a person that have a CS degree from a university in another country get paid less?

[marsh wind]

for them to just discrd

[summer roost]

going higher than they can afford won't necessarily force them to negotiate down. They can just decide to pass on you based on you wanting more than they're willing to pay.

[main thicket]

That's fine with me :p I'm a competitive applicant

@summer roost You're all talking in hypotheticals. "you'll have lower earnings without a degree! (if you move to a job that asks for your pay (rare) and if they reject you for not giving it (rare))"

[summer roost]

well, no - I'm talking probabilistically

it's not true that every person without a CS degree will make less than any person with a CS degree, obviously

[main thicket]

not in my experience, other than for immigration reasons

[summer roost]

but it is true that they'll start with a lower salary, and have some extra drags on their potential earnings relative to someone with a CS degree.

[marsh wind]

hm. unless the uni of that degree is shit or something very obscure should not be an issue. as long as you can prove it's not worthless in a way

[ashen elk]

people without CS degree get into google 🤷 just that winning a code competetion is hard too

[sonic mica]

imagine not being allowed to use google, on a google code interview

like what the

[vapid jay]

wow

[main thicket]

Why would you be allowed to use google lmao

But you will have to code in google docs

It's so shit to code in google docs lmfao

[hearty island]

no syntax highlighting nothing

fun times

[sonic mica]

because 90% of programming is basically googling stuff, you can't keep everything inside your instant memory

[summer roost]

sure. I agree that it's possible for people to get into a job without a CS degree - no one is debating that, just about whether it's an easier or harder path (I say harder), and whether it will hurt your chances of outperforming your peers' salaries (I say it will)

[marsh wind]

realistically though, from what I heard or saw CS or STEM degree works either way. humanities and all non-stem degree can be more tricky

[ashen elk]

what I heard is that they see your approach to solve the problem, rather than the code itself??

[main thicket]

you won't be required to do anything that requires googling

[vapid jay]

You can do that?

[main thicket]

@vapid jay Google interviews force you to use Google docs to code

[ashen elk]

if someone can code on a notepad, then they are pretty good right?

[main thicket]

They'll have a shared google docs file they send you, you'll be on a Google hangouts call with you. The file with be preformatted with monospace fonts but that's it, just a blank docs page

[ashen elk]

they have got all their stuff down perfectly then

[sonic mica]

also I think coding interviews are unfair in the sense they're like IQ tests, they don't really measure how good you are at programming

[main thicket]

They're not like IQ tests lol

[sonic mica]

they're like... math tests

[main thicket]

Not even close to like maths tests

[sonic mica]

that's just my opinion

[marsh wind]

all coding tests are subject of intesnse arguments 🙂

[ashen elk]

From the sample question videos I have seen (for google) the questions are just interesting and require out-of-the box thinking. I dont think they test your IQ

[marsh wind]

https://medium.com/swlh/why-you-should-never-consent-to-a-coding-test-in-an-interview-8e22f5078c7f

[main thicket]

There's like 5-10 algo/data structure things you need to know and then you need some practice, it's really not that hard for anyone, even people terrible at both IQ tests and maths tests, to do really well

[sonic mica]

and tbh, I think a much better way to interview people who apply to the company is to give them code that caused a recent bug and ask them to fix it

[hearty island]

have a fun time endlessly applying for a company that doesn't give you a coding test for an internship

[main thicket]

They're probably bad at judging programming skills and disadvantage particular types of programmers over others

But nothing like math or IQ tests

[marsh wind]

problem is, I think, when you start out it's really hard to properly assess skills fo 100s of applicants

[ashen elk]

I heard the questions asked are just the ones that require out-of-the-box solutions, thus checking the calibre of a candidate

[marsh wind]

so companies chose "lesser" evils of coding tests/challenges.

[main thicket]

nup, nothing out of the box

[summer roost]

there's a lot of debate over what is and isn't a good way to interview people for programming jobs - especially for very new programmers without a lot of specialized expertise.

[main thicket]

it's incredibly repetitive and anyone with some brain can get in at a relatively nice company with some leetcode practice

[ashen elk]

👀

[main thicket]

(assuming they get the interview)

[sonic mica]

I mean, it'd be better to slow down the interviewing process a bit and take more time to review applicants, taking more time to pick out the best applicant would be more beneficial for the company so that they'd get a better programmer, unless they're in a rush somehow

[summer roost]

what works best is actually asking them to write non-trivial amounts of code that you can evaluate - but that's a) a lot of work for interviewees, and b) a lot of work for interviewers.

[ashen elk]

@main thicket you make it sound so easy lol

[main thicket]

It's not necessarily easy, but it is simple

[summer roost]

second best is hiring them on a trial basis, and letting them go if their skills aren't up to snuff - which is a lot of risk for interviewees, especially when relocation is required

[marsh wind]

when we were interviewsing some devs our questions were all about comparing different approaches, architecutre questions, and asking them how would they solve certain issue, usually one we were facing recently

[ashen elk]

so what would you consider a google level question?

[summer roost]

and other than either of those, we're pretty much stuck with various algorithm based tests.

[marsh wind]

given though, we did not interview fresh grads

[main thicket]

I mean, I've given a Google interview. I know what they ask. They love graph questions (search, traversal, etc)

Actually my google interview was my first leetcode style interview lmao

[sonic mica]

I mean... I've read some reddit posts saying their company gives coding tests to applicants, those applicants applied to front end development positions, I don't really understand how knowing how to use binary trees would benefit an HTML dev

[ashen elk]

how does that matter?

[ashen elk]

mostly hard?

[near fern]

we're all gay for jobs bro gotta do what u gotta do

[hearty island]

don't worry guys I handled it

[main thicket]

Nah, Google questions are mostly leetcode easy and mediums

[ashen elk]

what???

[main thicket]

They just reallyyyyy like graphs for some reasons

[hearty island]

dynamic programming

[ashen elk]

so the hard part is getting the interview?

[summer roost]

<@&267629731250176001> ^

[wraith rover]

!Ban @vapid jay homophobia of any form is not welcome here

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied ban to @ashen mountain permanently.

[sonic mica]

so ye, as I said before, why would a company do an algorithmic coding interview for an HTML/front end dev

[main thicket]

The interviews not easy obviously but as I said, the way to pass it is straight forwards

[marsh wind]

it's a risk for company too

[summer roost]

yeah,, it is.

[sonic mica]

what would knowing how to use binary trees benefit a front end dev

hmmm

[summer roost]

training new people up is costly. As is interviewing, and hiring.

[marsh wind]

if the candidate is not up to standrats, it means they wasyed couple weeks or months of time

[ashen elk]

so what would you think is the toughest part of such an interview?

[marsh wind]

and potentiialy money

and now they are to start over again cause likely any other candidates they had already moved on

FAANG? getting foot in the door probably

[main thicket]

You need to:

1. get a referral or have good enough experience to get an interview
2. practice a bunch of leetcode to pass the interview

[sonic mica]

I thought hackerrank was better

[hearty island]

pick your poison

[ashen elk]

does winning competetions get some extra credits?

[main thicket]

Yes

Makes getting interview easier

[marsh wind]

I've been applying to deep mind (part of google) and some faang ones and did not get beyond apply step

[ashen elk]

@main thicket so how does the typical googler's CV look like?

[summer roost]

there was a story a few years back about google's hiring practices... They have a committee responsible for making decisions about whether to interview candidates, and as part of an internal review, their own resumes were anonymized and put in front of the committee. They passed on themselves.

[main thicket]

In my experience, people who are more on stuff like classic webdev etc have a harder time getting interviews, and also going through leetcode because it's less like what they do. People like me who are technically focused (like me) and can put cool stuff like ML or something on there with lots of technical words have an easier time getting interviews. Passing interviews depends on the person and how comfortable they are with algorithms.

[summer roost]

at a certain point, for certain companies, hiring decisions are essentially arbitrary. They have enough applicants that they can afford to pass on 99% of them.

[main thicket]

everyone's resume is different lol

[marsh wind]

so yeah, 1st step is probably to make it past ATS/other bullshit to actually get interview. Cause that is the step were you have least control. If you got interview - well then it's all about how you do it

[ashen elk]

yeah ik. I meant the type of achievements they put forward

[main thicket]

If I had to make a classic person who joins google as grad, I would say they are doing a CS degree, have decent grades, start interning places in their first or second year, possibly win hackathons or competition prizes if they're into it.

[summer roost]

the achievements you put forward should be the achievements you're proudest of, and that you think the company would find most appealing.

those will be different for eeryone.

[ashen elk]

hmmm...imma need up my competetions game

[main thicket]

yep, my resume is extremely different from the average G/MS/etc resume

My grades are meh, I dont do a CS degree, I don't have many projects, and my experience isn't just software

[ashen elk]

physics?

[main thicket]

Mechatronics

I do have super technical internships especially lots of ML that I started in 2nd year, and I have hackathon wins (both hardware and software)

I also TA 3rd and 4th year subjects (in mechatronics related stuff)

Together still makes me a decent candidate

[ashen elk]

hmm....lots of work to be done.

[marsh wind]

all in all, going through with CS or related degree (ie DS/ML oriented if you're into that) is the path of the least resistance. Whether your goal is FAANG or something smaller.

[main thicket]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[summer roost]

another reason for that is that these big companies have hiring pipelines in place designed to reach out to college students. Internships, on-campus recruiting, etc...

[main thicket]

I'm interested in what I do, I pursue what I want, I work hard learning stuff across half a dozen different fields. I'm basically already doing everything anyone can do.

If I had to say something to my first year self, I would tell myself to stop wasting time doing ML and go straight to control theory and robotics

[marsh wind]

yeah I guess so. Some places value internships a lot

[main thicket]

I probably also would have told myself to get started on electronics and mechanical design faster and get a 3D printer earlier

But those are more "foresight on what my most liked interests are" rather than "advice that's applicable to everyone"

[ashen elk]

get a 3D printer earlier
Ight, imma just drop a few thousand bucks at the nearest store and get one

[marsh wind]

my company, as I've noticed often take inters or apprentices (idk if it exist elswehere, but it's like when you study 50% time and work in company 50% time where company pays you some salary and for your studies) with a goal of hiring them full time after if they're good enough.

[main thicket]

i'm sure a 3D printer will help you with your ML career :p

[ashen elk]

lol I can't afford a laptop and you want me thinking about a 3D printer 😁

[marsh wind]

that way they can, often, save quite some time/$ hiring juniors people.

[vapid jay]

Did you get in that way?

[marsh wind]

no, my path was quite different

[vapid jay]

Oh

[main thicket]

It depends on company whether it's worth doing things that way. For a lot of smaller companies, taking interns is more about cheap labour for a few months because skilled interns are either in early years and use your company to move to bigger companies later, or they're good enough to apply straight to big companies

[marsh wind]

to begin with, I have a PhD in physics, so already my CV is not the same as your "usual" grad. And I was looking for DS/ML career which was quite a change making it more challenging

[marsh wind]

our startup, it's both because it's cheap labor first and because after you can hire them

we are 30-ish, with about 20 Devs/DS peeps. And, afaik about half of those used to be inters/apprentices.

yeah, in france it's called "alternance" cause, well, you're altering between work and Uni

[ocean ledge]

the market is about the same... you just don't hear a lot from the people who failed entering at that time either, everything is swamped with selection bias

[summer roost]

internships were without a doubt the most valuable thing I took away from college. They're very worth it.

[ocean ledge]

i started a few years back at >150k, no experience in the industry aside from some projects-- just not in faang, since they usually won't look

i have a feeling the proportion of people succeeding to break into the industry year over year has actually increased since the financial crisis

[summer roost]

I'm quite certain that's true.

the height of the financial crisis was not a great time to be getting your first job.

[ocean ledge]

you probably had the worst end of the stick at the time

in terms of job hunting years

[summer roost]

yeah. Good time to start building a 401k, though. 🤷

[ocean ledge]

ha

[marsh wind]

yeah that's what most people said 🙂 I never had one so don't have experience with that :P)

for me the hardest, hopefully, is behind since I am closing on the end of my 1st year in the company, so going forward should be more straightforward

[summer roost]

yeah, definitely gets easier from there.

[flint tendon]

I am about to graduate High School and I am very fluent in Python and I have a good understanding of c

\c++

I was wonder If a CS degree is the way to go or if I should do a bootcamp or just try to get internships

[marsh wind]

Degree

just read the conversation above

[summer roost]

that's pretty much what all of the discussion above was about. You could scroll back an hour. 🙂

[marsh wind]

was running about 1-2 hours

[summer roost]

getting a degree is definitely the easier path.

[marsh wind]

plenty of info and arguments 😉

[flint tendon]

ok thx a lot

Im going to start reading the last coversation now

[ocean ledge]

also, look around and do a more interesting degree

don't restrict yourself 😛

[delicate bane]

double major?

i did that but neither in CS

[lucid vapor]

Maybe minor in something else that you like.

Not related to cs.

[main thicket]

Surely you dont think the market hasn't at all changed in CS of all things in 12 years?

Even when CS enrolments have been increasing so much over time

[vapid jay]

When did you guys start learning code?

[main thicket]

My first semester of university :p

[ocean ledge]

the year before i started in the industry

also, while enrollments have increased, so has the number of software engineering positions

[delicate bane]

first semester grad school, which is this semester

[vapid jay]

Cool

[ocean ledge]

the only thing that has changed is probably how much a person needs to know in the beginning to land a job

[marsh wind]

like first-first time? Turbo Pascal in school, 8th grade 🙂

[delicate bane]

i come from a non-technical background

[marsh wind]

funnily towards Uni I said myself that I don't wanna do just CS/coding stuff so I went for physics, and well, here I am 😂

[main thicket]

number of software positions has not gone 4x from 2006 to 2015 lol

[hearty island]

I did CS but I switched out

[vapid jay]

Nice

[marsh wind]

so much for not being in software related industry

[hearty island]

but now business analytics at Hofstra is garbage

[summer roost]

That chart says that CS enrollments today are 3x what they were in 2006. I'm betting there's more than 3x as many software developer jobs than there were in 2006.

[hearty island]

and I'm worried I won't have a career after I graduate

so I am frantically coding

[main thicket]

It says it's 300% higher, not 3x

[lucid vapor]

Same. But I have forever for that.

[summer roost]

that's the same thing...

[lucid vapor]

300% is 3

[summer roost]

ah, wait - that's 4x

[hearty island]

you're in college too?

[lucid vapor]

Nope.

[main thicket]

No it isn't. Compared to 10, 20 is 100% higher

[lucid vapor]

I'm still worried though.

[hearty island]

oh then you really do have forever

high school?

[lucid vapor]

Yeah

[hearty island]

yeah you have a while

[vapid jay]

I started learning....
yesterday

[hearty island]

it's pretty admirable you're taking charge of it now

[main thicket]

If 300% change in 2015 is 3 times as many jobs, 0% in 2006 implies 0 times as many jobs lmao

[summer roost]

sure. OK - CS enrollments are 4x higher than they were in 2006. How many software developer jobs do you think there are today, relatively to 2006?

[main thicket]

basic math

[lucid vapor]

Pffft. I haven't done anything towards it.

I just worry.

[hearty island]

I'm just trying to learn

that's all

[summer roost]

In 2006, GMail was 2 years old, "web 2.0" was a thing, and Facebook became accessible to the public.

[hearty island]

that is why I'm here

[lucid vapor]

That's admirable.

[hearty island]

thanks 🙂

[ocean ledge]

unpopular opinion, but rising cs enrollments also means a lot more mediocre new grads in the pool as well

[lucid vapor]

That's not unpopular, is it?

[summer roost]

the F of FAANG was in its infancy, one of the As was a bookstore, and the N still shipped DVDs in the mail.

[ocean ledge]

lmao

[lucid vapor]

It's true for any industry. More jobs means that people that don't care as much will do it for the money.

[hearty island]

CS is tough the graduating class was less than half of all the original freshmen

for my college

[marsh wind]

that chart only goes to 2015 though, we are in 2021, and I bet it's at least anoth 100%

[main thicket]

I assure you the number of SWE jobs did not 4x from 2006 to 2015. At best it 2x

[hearty island]

all STEM fields are very challenging

[lucid vapor]

They are, but the people who finish are motivated.

[coral stream]

hey @main thicket what would you consider doing robotics as a freshman, is it doing rpi or arduino or something

[hearty island]

I was motivated I was at office hours every day

[lucid vapor]

College is a valuable test, especially for STEM people (at least from what I know).

[delicate bane]

if you like ds/ml/ai, come hang out in #data-science-and-ml

[main thicket]

There's lots of "factions" of Robotics. There's hobbyist robotics which is more arduino type line following stuff, there's RnD which is stuff you can't even really get into without 2-3 years of university first, then there's industrial robotics which is a completely different thing altogether

[summer roost]

Do you have data to support that claim?

[coral stream]

What would you have studied earlier on? Hobbyist level stuff or straight into studying electronics etc

[main thicket]

source: https://www.economicmodeling.com/supply-and-demand-of-software-developers/

for reference, US gov predicts 2019-29 growth of 22%

jobs don't grow nearly as fast as enrolments responding to the jobs do

meanwhile many CS degrees are seeing doubling the number of applicants

[main thicket]

Depends on what your goal is. Robotics as a career? Robotics as a hobby?

Which part of robotics?

[summer roost]

That's true, but as a counterpoint, as of 2019 there were 700k unfilled tech positions in the US https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/18/there-are-70000-open-tech-jobs-here-is-how-firms-are-hiring-for-them.html

The US produces less than 70k CS graduates per year.

[coral stream]

As a career

Im interested in both software and hardware

[main thicket]

What part of robotics do you want to do?

[coral stream]

hahaha

[main thicket]

Reasonably speaking, you'll never make hardware as a CS major. You don't know enough to

[coral stream]

Im a mech eng

[ashen elk]

IMO its much more productive to improve yourself rather than counting on an increased job pool to create security for a future job

[main thicket]

In that case:

• learn your machine design really well and then extend on it (learn planetary gears, strain wave gears, etc)
• learn basic robotics hardware design concepts (back drivability, backlash, motor inertia etc are far more important in robotics)
• learn electronics and motor stuff (motor drives and controllers especially BLDCs). It helps to take a course or few in mechatronics
• learn embedded software (ARM focused ideally, learn RTOS and interrupt driven programming)
• learn robotics theory (control theory, robot dynamics, etc)

[summer roost]

The bureau [of labor statistics] reports that in 2004, 460,000 applications software engineers and 340,000 systems software engineers were employed in the US.

https://dqydj.com/number-of-developers-in-america-and-per-state/ says that there were around 4.2 million software engineers in the US by 2015. Though, admittedly, it's hard to find consistent methodology on how that's counted. If that's the case, the number of jobs rose by more than 4x in 11 years.

[main thicket]

It's a lot to learn so it's a long journey and you definitely need a lot of self studying

[main thicket]

unless you can find data from 2006 on the same site/dataset, it's really hard to compare. At least I have a consistent method of measuring

[ashen elk]

tbh honest, the job market is pretty saturated with mediocre CS grads. and a lot of stuff businesses want to do are already implemented and just require tweaks. There is prob gonna be a pop in the job market in a few years

[main thicket]

mediocre CS grads have always been there lol

the truth is you don't need more than mediocre to do 90% of work

[ashen elk]

increased sample space = more chance of finding mediocre colleagues

[hearty island]

yay mediocrity

[coral stream]

That's a long list! I'd definitely study them

I should forget about hobbyist robotics then and focus on the more technical stuff?

[main thicket]

hobbyist electronics is a good starting point

[summer roost]

yeah, granted. I'm struggling to find better data one way or the other, though, in terms of absolute numbers of developers. And it doesn't help that there's now jobs like "data scientist" and "machine learning engineer" and "dev ops" that didn't exist at all in 2006 - they'd most likely have been counted as the same job back then.

[main thicket]

but dont go too deep into the arduino sphere

it's full of hobbyist morons who dont know wtf they're talking about and are quite quite often wrong

just learn concepts and move to professional stuff as soon as reasonably possible

[coral stream]

What do you think of raspberry pis

[hearty island]

there's that Michael Reeves kid

with arduino

he's not a "kid" anymore

[ashen elk]

eh, you can use any micro-controller

[main thicket]

michael reeves knows nothing very little about hardware

[main thicket]

raspberry pis are completely a-ok

they're just normal computers

arduinos are old and bad microcontrollers, they are slow, have a terrible library, expensive for what they are, and an even more annoying community surrounding them that's almost entirely detached from actual engineers

[flint tendon]

What would be considered a good microcontroller

[ashen elk]

arduinos are for boomers; youngsters become script kiddies using malduinos

[summer roost]

ESP32's are good and affordable.

[coral stream]

Ive heard of STM32 and PID?

[main thicket]

esp32s are g, stm32s, atmel's own samd, etc.

[ashen elk]

Teensy

[summer roost]

AdaFruit makes a bunch of STM and atmel based boards these days.

[coral stream]

Python is a fun programming language

[hearty island]

idk what a microcontoller is

microcontroller

[main thicket]

yeah as long as you use the newer stm32s and such, and not with arduino libraries, you're on a good path

[ashen elk]

C H I P

[hearty island]

oh

ok

[main thicket]

PID is a control algorithm not a micrcontroller :p

but yeah STM32s are king

[ashen elk]

W I T H P O W E R

[main thicket]

microcontrollers are mini CPUs that exist in basically every piece of electronics nowadays

[coral stream]

Ohh, thanks! Didnt know that haha. For the electronics part, should I go in really deep into it and know most of the theories that relate to robotics

[ashen elk]

which are coded in primitive languages

[coral stream]

Mostly c and c++ i guess

[main thicket]

they run your code and your code only. Rarely, they might run an operating system, usually they'll be no operating system or will have operating system-like features implemented in what you call a "RTOS" which is basically some hardware abstraction libraries + threading/etc libraries

[ashen elk]

no. hardcore engineers use Assembly 🤷

[main thicket]

Just go through AllAboutCircuits' online textbook thing, and then talk a lot in EE communities

[main thicket]

nobody writes assembly

[ashen elk]

some do

[main thicket]

pretty much nobody

[ashen elk]

(for a hobby I guess)

[main thicket]

worst case you might put a couple in-line assembly things within your code. More likely, your compiler has assembly like intrinsics to do that thing

[ashen elk]

Plenty of youtubers who build their own arduino and then use assembly for fun

😅

[main thicket]

yeah they're not any appreciable fraction of people who do work

basically nobody writes assembly for work

[coral stream]

Alright bet

Ive heard julia is a growing language

Do you think it will be used in robotics soon?

[main thicket]

it's already used by MIT's legged locomotion group for robotics, plus a few companies here and there (zipline iirc?)

you have enough to learn, not enough people use julia to bother learning it

learn your python and your C++, learn electronics, learn mechanical design, learn robotics theory

so much stuff to do

[coral stream]

Yes and I'm excited to learn about them. You give the best advice haha thanks raggy!

One more thing, should I invest time in learning ML, AI, Data science in python? hahaha

[flint tendon]

I use the Arduino IDE to write code for my ESP32 projects is there a better way to do this

[main thicket]

the people who do ML stuff are generally separate from people who build up most of the hardware/software

it's fine to learn, but only if you have the time

the fact that my degree is mechatronics means I already had the mechanical/electronics/mechatronics parts down pat in my degree which is why I had a lot of time to study the other stuff

as a mechanical person, you'll have to catch up on electronics/mechatronics stuff

[main thicket]

https://github.com/espressif/vscode-esp-idf-extension

[coral stream]

Yeah that's what I thought, that's why I'm starting as early as freshman year. I wish I had thought of studying these in my senior year high school haha

[main thicket]

dont stess about it, I knew no engineering coming into the degree

was always more of a physics/maths/theory person (still am)

[coral stream]

Yeah I love theory too!

[flint tendon]

Thannks Raggy

[main thicket]

my ideal robotics work looks more like this

[coral stream]

I know nothing about that yet 😂 but that seems quite interesting

[flint tendon]

Raggy do you use Python or C for programming ESP32's

[coral stream]

I'm investing a lot of time working in my math and physics fundamentals for now

[main thicket]

nobody uses python for esp32s

c or c++ all the way

[flint tendon]

ok, I use C but I have a friend that uses python and I was just wondering If that was common

[main thicket]

in general, 70% of embedded programming is C, 29% is C++, the rest is a mix of Rust, Python, etc

C is starting to lose to C++ over time

Of course theres a lot of people writing stuff to run Go, Python, etc on microcontrollers

[marsh wind]

Was about ask about rust 🙂

[main thicket]

But those are hobbyist projects meant for people who really like Go and Python

[marsh wind]

as it seems to be new system/low level lang

[main thicket]

not stuff anyone takes seriously

Yeah rust is gaining ground, especially because Rust support for STM32s is extremely good

Like "it's starting to become easier to use Rust than C because of how good the Rust stm32 HAL is" good

[marsh wind]

that's pretty cool

[main thicket]

japaric is magic to the rust embedded community

embedded is also a very conservative field though

will take time for Rust to gain significant usage

[leaden jasper]

@arctic aspen Please don't post spammy emojis in any of our channels.

[arctic aspen]

Ok

[hearty island]

Did anyone hear about the 100 hour work week for Goldman Sachs analysts

They don’t eat, sleep, or shower

that’s more hours per weeks than the average physician

[summer roost]

the mean response was 105 hours - meaning that some analysts reported more than that. That's 15 hours per day, 7 days per week. That's pretty difficult to believe.

I believe analyst's working conditions at GS are bad, but it doesn't seem physically possible for the average analyst to be working 15 hours per day, 7 days per week.

[hearty island]

Well

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/18/investing/goldman-sachs-analyst-workplace/index.html

I don’t think they’d lie like this

[summer roost]

note that that chart said "Source: Survey of first-year analysts, 13 respondents". It's possible that there's selection bias in play, and there really are 13 people in the company working those hours, I suppose. But I'm skeptical that it's reasonable to extrapolate it out as a population mean that applies to all GS analysts.

[hearty island]

It doesn’t

But those are truly awful conditions for the 13 respondents

[summer roost]

well - possibly. It's hard to draw any conclusions from a survey with so few respondents.

[hearty island]

True

Idk

[vapid jay]

investment banking as a field has a famously bad reputation for work-life balance

[hearty island]

Maybe more will step out and start talking about it

now that this survey happened

[summer roost]

it does. And 80 hours per week is pretty believable. But 105 strains belief...

[vapid jay]

the mention of the "saturday rule"-- attempted protection of only saturday off work-- is pretty telling of the culture

[ocean ledge]

not really-- a few of my good friends are in capital markets @ GS, and they're usually averaging 90, with 4 nights/week of using the black cab service to and from their apartments/hotels

but making >400 straight out of school is appealing to some, so wygd

[summer roost]

well, here's my suspicion, which I have no idea how to test: I suspect that if you ask those friends how many hours they work in a week on average, and ask them how many hours they sleep a night on average, and ask them how many hours a week they watch TV on average, or listen to music, or spend at the gym, or at the bar - I suspect you'll get an answer that's well over the actual number of hours per week.

It definitely is true that the hours for GS analysts are ridiculous, I'm not disputing that - but even the difference between 90 and 105 is >2 extra hours of work every single day of the 7 day week.

and... investment bankers brag about the hours they work. The culture encourages the extra hours, and it's seen as a badge of honor by people who went through it. Which means there's a cultural basis for exaggerating the hours worked.

[ocean ledge]

i agree with you with that

its similar to tech also-- our industry also sort of brags in that way

[hearty island]

Godly geek is right that it’s only 13 respondents

Definitely not large enough to formulate an opinion

I just thought it was interesting

[summer roost]

well, my opinion is "working at GS sounds awful"

but I'm taking this as just one data point amongst many in favor of that opinion

[hearty island]

there was this youtuber who did an internship and then left her job as an analyst at Goldman Sachs

apparently the internship was awful

From her experience

Her account is EMERLENE if you want to see that story

[primal rose]

any idea on how is python job market in canada?

[swift veldt]

lol, brings me back when I did M&A.

Usually clocked around 80 to 100h at work.

It doesn't mean you are actively working for that much, it just means you are expected to be on-site for that long.

[digital fjord]

@modest minnow Hello, we do not allow recruitment

[coral stream]

anybody here know a website where to practice coding?

[swift veldt]

codewars

pretty nifty website tbh.

[coral stream]

aight lemme check it out

[supple nest]

is anyone here ISTQB certified?

[dark mica]

Do high school sophomore grades matter when trying to land a job at a FAANG company?

[hearty island]

not really

high school soph grades will determine your GPA

which is a metric for deciding what colleges you can get into

but FAANG won't ask for your high school soph grades

[royal pier]

leetcode?

[dark mica]

but college grades will determine your success with FAANG companies, right?

[shadow moss]

Determine your job performance, probably not but matter for hiring, yes. Though school matters a lot as well. If you are not going to well known computer/engineering school, it’s a hard road. You should also consider non FAANG careers as well.

[grizzled tundra]

Do you guys know about python anvil?

[plain swan]

well i have making app like paypal

i have doing logics

[delicate bane]

thats my favorite one

[delicate bane]

fang or die

[hearty island]

oh boy have you joined the FAANG side

[delicate bane]

what do you think

[hearty island]

nah

[delicate bane]

what gave me away

[hearty island]

doesn't seem like you

[delicate bane]

[severe goblet]

Hi Guys

[amber charm]

So ive been studying and looking at programming - i mostly do more theory (in school) such as von neuman and harvard architecture. Ive watched most of the '4 hour' python tutorials online. Whats next? i feel like there isnt a connecting video/tutorial next step after that

[leaden jasper]

The next step is to usually put the knowledge and skills to test and build on them with a project.

[fossil ruin]

Start making stuff

[fossil ruin]

This is a better way of putting it

[amber charm]

Hmm, i feel like there is so much to learn, especially seeing other people's open source work..
I feel like i know nothing compared to them..

[leaden jasper]

Well, focus in on something that interests you. The way I've found where knowledge sticks and I actually feel like I'm getting somewhere is by trying to build or do a thing.

[native haven]

How to automate opening multiple Spotify Desktop App #help-bagel

[hearty island]

@native haven wrong channel

[foggy birch]

is coding a safe career

is it ez to secure a job

i heard its a super competitve field

is getting a decent job ez

doenst have to pay a lot

just like a standard job

[amber charm]

If you only going for it for the pay then I don’t think you would like it

Cuz money doesn’t always make ya happy

[ocean ledge]

learn a trade, be a plumber

if you want the easy life, don't choose engineering

[hearty island]

What’s a standard job

like collecting trash?

???

[tough atlas]

Cs?

[summer roost]

The best way to answer that question is probably to look at median pay for software engineers in your country

[vapid jay]

Yo

[summer roost]

Any advice about how easy it is to get a job will certainly be country specific.

[vapid jay]

The average is still above a minimum wage, though

[summer roost]

Well, by definition

[vapid jay]

the digital boom that has happened over these last few years have increased the demand for software engineers dramatically

[summer roost]

If anyone makes above minimum wage, the mean has to also be above minimum wage

[vapid jay]

eeh, fair enough

But still, being a Software engineer is still a prety good career choice for the current market situation

From what I've gathered, it will just keep growing since everything is going digital

and we need people to attend the demand for the need of good/functional systems

[hallow lynx]

Currently applying for lots of junior/graduate dev jobs, got some replies and people wanting me to phone them and also a company that might train me for 13 weeks and after that give me a 2 year contract (Its free training and the contract is not obligatory). Is it worth doing 13 weeks unpaid training?

Also how long does it usually take before someone actually interviews you after applying for work?

Not in general, just for junior/graduate dev jobs.

[jade pewter]

early career opportunities are the most important & i think the most exploitative

with your situation, if you have nothing else on the table then the 13 weeks would be a good experience in the very least, just make sure you're not being committed to... coffee runs etc

when you're in uncompensated role like that then you also have to understand that the people who you are working for are implicitly valuing your labour as "worth nothing"

[hallow lynx]

The 13 weeks is virtual and accredited.

Its not just some 'company' training thing if that makes sense.

[jade pewter]

and usually if there's nothing at stake then there's little impetus for them to invest in you etc

yeah that's a good start, as long as you're mitigating the risk on your end

& you feel like the learning experience is worthwhile (something only you can evaluate)

at the same time you don't have to be comitted & can still search for other opportunities during those 13 weeks

[hallow lynx]

So you are free to take any offer during the training period, they'll train you up (It's accredited and recognised globally), and they'll offer a 2 year contract afterwards if you want to take one. There are no obligations though and I'll probably do the training and make little projects, if the training is offered to me.

[jade pewter]

yeah that's a good mindset, if you ahve nothing on the table- also demonstrates your work ethic for future prospective roles + references

with regards to the "actual interviews" response time it varies hugely

I've had... responses in at 1 am after applying for a role at 11 pm...

i've had... being totally ghosted randomly when talking with a hiring manager

there's no real "response" time, sometimes employers have in mind a expected start date or application deadlines, so it's unlikely they they'll respond past that start date

[hallow lynx]

Had one response this morning and I posted my application last night, its a remote area and I think they just can't find people, they asked if I'd want to move there and informed me of how isolated it is etc. Told me I've got through to their recruitment side (It's an agency), and I need to call tomorrow to start registration, think they are keen and there probably isn't anyone applying or qualified applying for that position but don't want to get my hopes up too much yet.

[hallow lynx]

Is there an average or will offers/rejections just pop-up randomly kind of thing?

[jade pewter]

in my experience taking it easy with the job application process is really the most productive way of finding employment

setup a application routine, & work on personal projects on the side, demonstrate that you're productive etc- anyway.

hmm i would say 2 weeks ?

if i don't hear a response within 2 weeks I wouldn't be surprised if I never hear back

[hallow lynx]

I'm thinking of applying for new jobs every Monday, in the mean time I'm learning stuff, making a new mini project every day and making one large project every week, plus making tutorial videos every now and again. Is this probably the correct way to go about things?

Or a good method?

[jade pewter]

but sometimes you might be applying like, as soon as they put out the job ad & they'll have a company policy or something that keeps it up for at least... x weeks

& then at the end of those x weeks will reply to applicants

[hallow lynx]

Gotcha, this is for big corps I'd imagine?

Or anyone?

[jade pewter]

there' not much value in getting caught up in the gymnastics of when will they reply kind of thing, it's all a bit mysterious

[hallow lynx]

Fair play.

[jade pewter]

government institutions more employment structure, private corps it's really hiring managers that dictate the hiring process (which can vary a lot)

[main thicket]

You won't have space for a new project every day on your resume, it's better to work on a significant project or two that you can put on there

[hallow lynx]

Its just on github.

[main thicket]

Nobody looks at your GitHub

[jade pewter]

as a general rule when applying if there's an opportunity you're really fond of & you've had the first interview & are waiting to hear back

[hallow lynx]

Wait seriously?

[jade pewter]

I think it leaves a good impression to follow up around the 10 day mark if u havent heard back

[main thicket]

Yep. Maybe in the days past but nowadays nobody does

They don't have the time

[hallow lynx]

Wow, why do they all ask for one then?

Just to see that you actually use it or?

[main thicket]

And the people usually screening resumes don't know enough code to even judge your projects

[hallow lynx]

Wow

So how should I go about getting past the screening?

[jade pewter]

it's like that for a lot of material you'll prepare for a job

cover letters seldom scrutinised, cv's glanced over (usually they'll pull it up during the interview lol)

[main thicket]

Not everyone asks for it. If they're asking for it, they might give it a glance but they're gonna see your project highlights and how often you contribute, not delve into it

[jade pewter]

they'll scrape through someoens linkedin if anything (which sucks)

[main thicket]

Yeah LinkedIn is more common