1) Code some full stack web apps that aren't stolen from courses and have some novelty or complexity to them
2) Be somewhat competent at coding challenges in case companies test them (but I don't think some local consumer brand co looking for a front end dev is going to do multiple rounds of whiteboarding)
What could go wrong?
you spend all day on Jow Forums and jerking off instead of applying for jobs, then you end up applying for welfare out of necessity and soon become a NEET
actually, no wait, that sounds pretty comfy. nothing can go wrong, desu
I've interviewed many developers, and myself have been interviewed many times. Here are my pointers....
1. Be HONEST (dont be afraid to say 'i dont know')
2. Be YOURSELF (chuckle if something is funny, maybe crack a joke). They are trying to see if you are a good CULTURAL fit too you know ;)
3. Ask questions. Too many times candidates get asked 'any questions?' candidate says 'no'...interviewer might interpret this as lack of interest.
4. Don't be afraid to challenge concepts of the questions posed to you. If someone on an interview panel asks you a dumb question, challenge the question nicely, by asking a question about it, dont just call the question or person dumb ;)
5. This is a CAREER, not a JOB. YOU should have long-term, life-long even goals about what YOU want to do. Do not be afraid to share them.
6. Don't ask questions about what YOU will get (money, vacation, perks) until you get an offer.
....there are more, these are the important ones.
Good luck user, i got my first job with an server-client php app, I built to manage a business, running on my laptop. Demo'd it in the interview, answered some questions, got in. That was 18 years ago. Been a dev ever since. 6-figure style ;)
Best of luck to you user!
Thanks bro. I wonder about 5 though because my super long term goals are doing/being able to do deeper, more complex work and moving out of my regional city. I'd probably have to lie about that because low-paying dev jobs at non-tech companies aren't going to grow your experience/career very much.
Do you have any advice on making self-made github/resume projects? All the people I see on reddit like "I'm not calling getting callbacks, what's wrong?" have tic-tac-toe's and to-do lists from video courses as their job-seeking portfolio. If I can do better than that I should at least pass resume screens here I think. I'm in Canada, a major city but not Toronto.
It really amazes me that CS kids from like Berkeley or Waterloo can do better solo dev projects in a weekend long hackathon than most bootcamp/self-taught wannabe devs can do with no time constraint, I wonder how they get so good. Obviously IQ is huge but what else? Idk. I have to tap into some of that energy so I won't be another stolen template project idiot out here complaining in 8-12 months
welcome to the developer world my friend. Most will help you in anyway they can, knowing what its like to start in this field. Some, rather, the elitist few, will try to intimidate with large words on lofty-ideals on condescending faces. Don't let them rattle you, its their own insecurity that they mask.
About Pointer-5, yes, you might not want to say "in a few years I want to be somewhere else doing more interesting things"...but you MIGHT say "in a few years I would like to have a deeper understanding of the work and more wisdom."
Don't worry about the hackathon crowd. You do NOT want to work for a ginormous startup/corporation. I worked for a startup in my state about 8 years ago. Company got rich fast, started giving us 'perks'...provided lunch, then breakfast, and because our sprints/timelines were so short, dinner as well. As fun/cool as all that was, i will NEVER, and i mean NEVER as NOT EVER, give up my personal or family-time again for a company that doesn't have MY name in the title.
Working for a company, you are a resource. The moment it takes more money or energy to get value out of you than the actual value you produce, you SHOULD be fired. Honestly, you should have quit long before, but leeches get burned; thats how it works.
As as the solo-projects you refer to, those are cool, but, what are they for? I've had some of the most fun, solving problems for smaller companies. Thats how I approach what I do; its a game of sorts. A mystery or puzzle I have to solve.
LOL i'm rambling, its fun talking to someone just getting started in the business. Tell you what, i'm going to play some Warcraft before I start my workday, but i'll keep checking this thread.
Ask any question you like, I'll answer as best I can :)
Cheers
Any suggestions on a stack to get good at? I hear React is popular so maybe the so called MERN stack would be good?
Any ideas on open source and getting stuff on your resume that way? People on reddit suggest that often I've found but I think any reasonably high quality project would probably have even higher standards for code than most local companies here. Idk though
What are some tells in someone's resume descriptions of their project work (or their code even) that let you know that person's an amateur/not worth the hire? And if you have a relatively simple app/website are you better off describing it simply or trying to "tech" it up more and make it sound impressive?
Do you have a degree? How old are you?
Stacks are a means to an end. And as good as Angular and React stacks are, there is something to be said for the value proposition of good ole php stacks (laravel, vue etc).
Getting good at a stack will start to specialize you. Thats fine, but remember that as you start changing jobs and grow, you might have to know other things so, more important that a particular stack, is how stacks work in general.
Do you know linux? If not, then you should start. If you are writing web software (stacks, apps, etc) they are most likely going to run on linux somewhere in the aether or someone eles's computer (read: cloud). Homestead (laravel/php ) is fine, but getting used to ACTUAL linux, apache or nginx experience is paramount. You're going to have to mess with it sometime in the future, might as well get it now.
My resume is about 18 years of "private, proprietary, in-house" software. I have NOTHING out in the github world for people to see (and I still get calls/emails a few times a week asking me to consider working here or there). Its DEFINITELY a route you can go, but only if you want to, or get something out of it. If you're trying to write books about this stuff, then yeah, otherwise, I haven't needed it, so you might not either.
"Amateur" is an often misunderstood, misused word. The word is french I think, but it means someone who does something for the love of it. By that measure, I am am amateur. ;) Anywho, TELLS are simple. When I ask a candidate about a particular line-item in their resume, and they start to shift around, I think they are uncomfortable.
One of my personal favorite things to do, is to ask the candidate about the ACRONYM-SOUP in their sills list. I don't put ANYTHING on my resume I can't speak about, so if I see "AJAX" on yours, you had better damn-well know what it stands for, or, I can now assume you are just padding that document to get in the door. To me, its a bad idea, so I'll be digging around for other bad ideas in there.
mid-40s, Associates only. Degrees don't mean that much to me or even other devs that I know. Business people care because they think it means something.
Spent half an hour once listing to a B.S. telling me "programming is just copy, paste, and hacks" ...yeah, his code product showed it, and he didn't last very long at the company.
Above most other things, have the ability to LEARN. Its so so so important (see how many 'so' i put there, thats how you can tell ;)
You are going to learn all kinds of things at ANY new place you work, so the ability to assimilate and process this new info is KEY. If you get a REACT stack under your belt, guaranteed your next company will be ANGULAR, or your current company will pick a competing stack for some stupid reason.
As a DEV (my own personal experience), you are there to help the business get done, what EVER it needs to get done. You do that in the best, cheapest, fastest way you know how. That has been my career so far. Once, I wrote a client solution on a 45 min plane ride to their offices. That was fun ;) Took some more tweaks, in the next couple weeks, but its still running as far as I know, been years since I worked there.
Didn't want to let these two things cross my mind without sharing them. These two nuggets are some of the best advice, that have served me the most over the years. I was lucky to hear them early on
1. Do NOT be afraid to say "I don't know" if you can honestly follow that up with "bu I'll (or I'd like to) find out"
2. If you can't explain it, you DON'T understand it.
I should get those tattooed on my butt. The first got me OUT of an interview (glad I didnt' get the job in retrospect) and the other helped me understand who to learn from at various places I worked. So useful. I credit the first to my own experience and strive toward honesty. The second I owe to a great friend I made in the business. I should email him now that I think about it.
Not a STEM degree, turning 26
I have an Associates of Software some-shit..its for microsoft nonsense I STILL don't do.
BUT, learning VB6 back in the day, taught me HOW to learn other languages (how control-structures work, iterations, classes, objects, concretions etc) and THAT I use err'y day :)
If you LOVE this stuff, embrace it. read, watch talks, get on forums, but, take all that with a grain of salt.
When i started out, if it wasnt object-oriented it was garbage. Now, talking heads are saying OO is garbage and functional/procedural is the new-again old-hotness. PHOOEY! All this, the languages, the code/text-editors, the operating systems, platforms, repository-managers are JUST TOOLS. THe more tools you know how to use, the more problems you can solve.
All there is to it. Anyone tell you different is selling you something :) I've written production VB6, C#, C++, Ruby (with and without Rails), Javascript, html (who cant), SQL, Java, Objective-C, Swift and PHP, on windows, linux, android, ios, windows (distributed), and IIS.
Its all the same. Another problem to solve while working within parameters.
Here is a fun thing we (older, seasoned devs, and even some younger ones) say when someone starts waving their degree around...
"I'd like to thank Stack Overflow for this degree" lol its now a meme, and for good reason.
Also, if you ever run into a person that thinks they can write weird, confusing code to build in some 'you have to keep me onboard or it all breaks' bs...do me a favor and simplify their code. EVERYONE is replaceable, its JUST BUSINESS. Never be THAT GUY, i LOVE getting rid of THAT GUY everywhere I find them.
Remember, to most people at the business (accounting, operations, H.R. etc) we are pretty much wizard-nerds. If we perpetuate the "you lowly-minded fools will never understand" we only hurt our reputation as a field. If we help THEM understand what we do, it builds value (read: salary ;)
What got you into development user? What got you on the horse? What keeps you on it?
>he thinks local consumer brand co will hire somebody without a degree and 5 years experience
kek
LOL'd at shift around
Yeah in the future I hope I score some points for being chill in person at an interview. Most of the tech career discussions I see on reddit are about tech giants where you get an online coding challenge then a series of in-person tests until you possibly get an offer and they don't really care if you're weird and have social problems. At their size it's like they'll find some team that can deal with you and even if you're not really job-ready as long as your algorithm skills are good they'll wait for you to learn.
I've even heard in some cases it's easier for college students to get bigtech internships than local ones because the big companies ask similar algo problems that can be prepared for at once vs. every smaller company having specific needs and not really being able to train you over a summer and get no work out of you.
Do you think enough web dev jobs in secondary markets use whiteboarding interviews that it's worth focusing a lot of time on that? What does your company do?
eh, maybe. If they can get user cheaper than degreed guy, maybe. If user can show he knows more about the domain-knowledge needed for the job and, just as important, is a good fit? Maybe.
Keep in mind tho, the people writing those reqs MIGHT not know what they mean. Case in point, when .Net (C#) was just coming out, headhunters wanted 5 years experience. It was still in fn beta LOL.
user, keep your chin up. Also, get to know some headhunters on a professional level. They will come in handy when you want to change positions or locations. And, hopefully like the ones I know, they will constantly be sending you potential jobs. Thats always nice. :)
Yeah, after meeting with the Disney guys in Seattle, Facebook over the phone, it was clear they wanted the "cookie-cutter" person. I'm NOT that. (laugh at a funeral type).
EVERY business, needs software. Most are small enough to not need a dedicated guy/gal for it, but some, especially where I am (manufacturing, finance-services, startups, etc) are needing people all the time. I've worked 18 years without one of those big churn-and-burn places...except one place that BECAME a churn and burn, and GM. I didn't enjoy either.
I like to actually solve the problems, not tell the manager his fn hair looks nice, or that he smells good. (brown-nosers piss me off to no end)
You think even no-name stuff and non tech company stuff will be that competitive? I look at it like the majority of bootcamp grads who all make the same 5 Rails or Angular apps are somehow employed, so why should it be any different if you're more skilled than them? Or do you think they have significant recruiting hookups from the camp?
Of course this all goes out the window if you're unable to make yourself more skilled than the competition
your posts are quite useful but please stop using ;) unironically. it keeps triggering my mental shitpost detector.
>Don't ask questions about what YOU will get (money, vacation, perks) until you get an offer.
kek. yeah enjoy wasting time and then get lowballed.
...while i'm thinking about it, i HAVE done a few coding challenges for jobs. After the first one ( i was excited the first time, like a virgin i guess), after the first one, I was just annoyed. They only prove that you can solve a problem with nobody looking, ...which means you could have just googled it, meaning its worthless. After that, I started whiteboading all my candidates :) "You say you know Javascript, write me a function that adds two numbers"
>can i use jQuery?
"Sure user"
>writes dollar sign
>stares off into space for a few minutes
"its okay user, lets talk about your other expereince" (he's not getting the job)
The reason the state of web development is in such a shit place is because you fucking amateurs are flossing the field for 15$ an hour
The issue is that unless there's somebody who can verify your ability, they will just use a piece of paper as stand-in.
In a software company, another dev can interview you.
In a local random-co, nobody can. So they will demand some kind of degree, even a bootcamp degree is fine because they don't know shit.
So the only thing you have left is to show them portfolio and be convincing. Talk like you are some self-taught genius drop out or some shit. it's bullshit but this is what normies want.
I DO enjoy wasting time..I'm doing my daily quests on warcraft betwen answering and posting.
i do NOT get lowballed, because I know the salary going in, OR, I like the company and want to be there. Most places I've worked don't have 'vacation days' .. I've taken more than five weeks off in one year. If the work is done, typically, nobody cares.
lol sorry to trigger you, thats just my personality. I'm generally upbeat. Maybe your shitpost detector is set to high ;) lol (couldnt resist)
#GetTriggeredSnowflakeScum
just kidding
>spend weeks going through the interview process
>get lowballed offer
yeah no. I ask for salary range at the beginning, if their offer is low I drop them. it's not worth your time getting strung along.
value yourself.
Honestly you'd probably know more than the director at the first software development company I ever worked for, and yes, he was a coder who started his own company, just didn't know jack shit. Probably the most important thing you can do asides practice more is look into some basic security principles and do some hacking challenges... because sometimes directors who can't code write login pages that do their validation on the front-end with unencrypted passwords...
Fair enough but I'd expect there to be at least one senior dev or tech aware manager in even a rinky dinky shop but idk
no, you're right. There are typically SOMEONE there who can at least tell you're bullshitting them. There have been a few times tho that I had to explain to a business person what It is I do. Thats always fun :)
I like trying to relate fixing software to fixing cars or making jet engines.
>I ask for salary range at the beginning,
>salary is competitive
I asked the salary for a position for a job posting i saw. their response was
>Salary varies with experience. why don't you come for an interview so we can sort things out?
At the end of the day, and didn't tell me in the email the compensation for that position
>salary is competitive
Well my skill is competitive too.
The reason companies do this shit is so they can lowball you with sunk cost fallacy. after going through weeks of interview process you don't wanna go through another again so you will take their low ball offer. it's a standard trick.
It normally comes up in the offer for me. BUT you CAN normally get a range of salary.
When the headhunters bring a position to you, THEY should know the range. Don't let them himm-and-haww about it. If they don't know, THEY aren't doing THEIR jobs.
if you have this kind of drive and focus why wouldn't you learn real programming and get a real job?
based gen x oldfag
LOL thanks user!
AM usually on B, but that got boring. I've seen ALL the YLYL (good and bad) and decided to look at G to see what was up.
Glad I did, Hope I was some help OP. Keep your head up, stay focused. This is YOUR career path, only YOU should decide where it goes.
I work at home now, so I'm gonna throw the ball for my dog for a bit, have a few coffees and pick what to watch on youtube while i work.
I'll check back later
~Love, Peace & Chicken Greese
just pull yourself up by your bootstraps amirite?
It'll be harder, take longer, and I'll be gatekept without a STEM degree
Maybe after a year or two doing full stack or even front end web as a profession and getting technical interviews down cold I could seek something real as you call it
LOL I don't wear boots. Here is my current screen, i'll post the work one later.
OMG, i cant post a screencap of my 4k screen. #LAME...had to downscale it.
(my 'monitor' is a samsung smartTv, flame me all you want, i dont care)
>muh response time
yeah, still dont care
HR HOLOCAUST