#~2 YoE, curious to see what you'd think

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

lofty tartan
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this is 0 YOE

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when people count YOE they generally mean post graduate, working full time

static parcel
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working

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full-time

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though

lofty tartan
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if it overlaps with college it won't be treated as such though

static parcel
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frankly I was already at the level of a graduate before I even started university

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and I try to add extra context in my cover letters

lofty tartan
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i mean you can try to hide grad date and see if they take you more seriously

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also many NGs aren't amazing software engineers

static parcel
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you may have a point, in that my resumes might get immediately filtered out, n especially without a cover letter ever getting read

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@lofty tartan you did give me an idea though, I probably should've included this as the first point in my Evil Corp position, instead of leaving it in the cover letter (draft version):

  • Demonstrated strong performance in internship due to prior experience and mentorship of other interns. Received an accelerated full-time offer in a month.
lofty tartan
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getting an internship extended, even multiple times, is not super uncommon

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i don't think it's something they'd particularly care about

static parcel
tame niche
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Hey @lofty tartan sorry for the ping can you review my resume too 🥹

lofty tartan
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yeah sure

static parcel
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maybe I could somehow make it clearer, but

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I got a starting offer with comp equivalent to devs who had been working for ~2-3 years there

tame niche
lofty tartan
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again not super unheard of

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geico was known to have some insane pay disparities

static parcel
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yeah, I just wouldn't consider that an "extended internship" at that point

lofty tartan
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their NG offer is more than what some seniors were making at the company

static parcel
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yeah, you tbh can kinda blame some of those devs for staying stagnant

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and not pushing for raises

tame niche
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Just messaged you Jaquet 🙂

lofty tartan
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think general motors may have had something similar too

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ok

static parcel
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I had essentially no mentoring beyond that point, except quick project onboarding, hence idk I wouldn't have wanted to call that an extended internship per se

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maybe I should try and make that very clear, somehow

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though there's probs nothing that will truly convince a hiring team other than raw post-uni experience, I guess

lofty tartan
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kind of varies how much help people need to get up to speed. usually for me it doesn't take much if there's good documentation

static parcel
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sure

lofty tartan
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as for the actual content

static parcel
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(for context, I had been programming for around 8 years at the point of the internship, ever since I was a kid)

lofty tartan
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for the first one maybe my questions would be how were you dealing with non-uniform network traffic? because a lot of traffic is not uniform in nature. and bearing that in mind you can get bottlenecks, so i'd be very curious what your solution was to that

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for the second one you should have at least 2 more bullet points

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the second bullet point is far too vague. what external systems? people collaborate with analysts and designers all the time, this is very normal

static parcel
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but I'll add some examples

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the collaboration point was a weak attempt at sneaking soft skills in there, but I'll remove it as it does seem kinda bloat

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and too generic

lofty tartan
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projects are solid, although once you have time in the industry the bar for these gets higher. it seems like the first project and the third project could be somewhat similar (i've done low latency networking stuff in the past)

static parcel
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hence can't give details on the solutions, NDA/confidentiality

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but there's a lot of fancy algo/routing stuff going on

static parcel
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but thanks for the help

exotic geyser
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@lofty tartan is correct - if you're based in the US, for most companies this would be 0 YOE because you're counted against your grad date. If you misleadingly don't include intern titles because you think they're "full time" it marks your resume as a red flag. You might be able to convince startups tho

Going into full time without an internship also is hard to make sense of timeline-wise - you need to make this exceedingly clear, and no one's gonna bother parsing a cover letter if your resume is this hard to parse. Additionally, there are lots of "fulltime" engineers who claim to be at a certain level but in reality are just at an intern/junior level

Which brings on the 3rd issue - your experience is all over the place, and I have no idea what you're aiming for here. You need to narrow down your focus, otherwise you're coming off more as a novice in all things. What most firms look for in engineers with 2YOE are demonstrated mastery over a specific stack aligned with the team - you do not have this at all.

Formatting is also non-standard and just listing your tech in a single bullet is rarely a good look if (again) you don't have demonstrated mastery.

You also are missing high-level objectives relating to the business/business goals - your scope appears to be more at an intern/junior level than a mid.

I will tell you as someone who was just as ambitious - the only reason I even landed mid-level offers as a fresh college grad was because of how clearly I exhibited 1) business and product alignment and 2) technical depth and proficiency in experience. Even in this case, there were only 2 non-startups that took me as a mid-level at face value (Amazon and Twilio).

If you want to be taken more seriously here as a fulltime eng, I would suggest 1) cleaning up formatting, 2) make your timeline exceedingly clear, and 3) improve your communication on business alignment and value added. But your best bet would still be aiming for new grad roles

static parcel
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there's a lot to digest here

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If you misleadingly don't include intern titles because you think they're "full time" it marks your resume as a red flag.
Internship was 1mo, converted to junior afterwards where I had responsibilities equivalent to grads with 2-3 yoe in the company. Pushed for a further 20% raise 4 months in with strong feedback from the lead & rest of team.

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But really, I was considered "past junior level" primarily to my skills relative to the other devs. I'm definitely still on the junior level in the context of more serious tech companies.

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The startup that I switched to is mostly composed of ex-FAANGs, and during interview rounds I got feedback on the levels I'd be considered at those companies, which would be equivalent to the higher half of SDE 1 at Amazon.

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Other than adding a bullet point on my initial internship experience, I'm not sure what I could do here:

  • Leveraged prior programming experience and proactively mentored peers during internship program, leading to an accelerated full-time offer within a month.
static parcel
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I have tried to rotate my project list based on where I'm applying, e.g. I could switch out all three of the projects listed to full-stack webapps.

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The current resume tries to focus more on low-level / networks, aligning with my most recent position.

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Formatting is also non-standard and just listing your tech in a single bullet is rarely a good look if (again) you don't have demonstrated mastery.
Good idea, I'll try and tie them directly into the other bullet points instead of lazily listing them.

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If you want to be taken more seriously here as a fulltime eng, I would suggest 1) cleaning up formatting, 2) make your timeline exceedingly clear, and 3) improve your communication on business alignment and value added.
Will try.