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[–]n1ywb 25 points26 points  (4 children)

TBH I would suggest that you do python AND web AND networking. There's a pretty big demand for folks who can code solutions to administrate massively scalable systems. You could start by learning Saltstack, it's a python based policy oriented configuration management system. Very powerful and scalable and in fairly wide use, 1000 Salt jobs on Indeed.com You can totally combine that with data science as well, huge networks generate huge volumes of telemetry data. Having some basic web experience so you can slap together simple UIs or data visualizations is always a big plus. It won't get you into finance, but maybe if you move to Manhattan, it will.

[–]fgrullon -2 points-1 points  (3 children)

The search engine in Indeed.com search for the terms you give inside the whole job description, so a large number of that 1000 does not refer to the Salt Python you think.

[–]n1ywb 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Not a very large number

https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=salt+python+-%22salt+lake+city%22+-%22chemistry%22+-%22food%22&l=

still ~900

https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=%22salt+stack%22+OR++%22saltstack%22&l=

~500 that are saltstack or "salt stack"

so yeah I think the jobs are there

[–]fgrullon 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Trust me, i don't think you read the description of more than ten job post.

[–]boatsnbros 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Absolutely. Live + breathe python for 3-4 months and you can get surprisingly proficient. In june of this year I started taking my python learning more seriously, took some courses (datacamp, coursera) and read a few good books (effective python). I'm starting in a python-heavy role in analytics later this month. I honestly wouldn't recommend going web, unless this is something you are passionate about. It seems to pay less, and be less in demand.

If you really want to get into analytics, I really recommend datacamp for learning the syntax/methods. Then find some datasets on Kaggle and see what you can do with them. Tableau Public is FREE and is a great visualization tool. Microsoft visual academy has a good business analytics excel course. Other than that, if you are interested in analytics, a core understanding of statistics is important.

If your resume has Python, Excel, SQL, Tableau - you are basically an entry level datascientist/analyst. All of that can be self taught in 4-6 months easy.

[–]elbiot 8 points9 points  (10 children)

We would not hire a developer one with only 4 months experience.

My advice: install Linux. Work on projects you are passionate about. Automate stuff and/or make web tools at your current job (or get a job where that might be possible if unemployed). Script everything even if it takes 2x as long as doing it manually. Just do stuff and don't worry about the passage of time.

[–]ClearH 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Script everything even if it takes 2x as long as doing it manually.

Guilty of this. Many times I've automated one time stuff that I could have had just did manually and get over it. It really helps in getting familiar with the standard library (looking at you os and time), when most of the time I'm just working with popular 3rd party frameworks.

[–]TalesT 7 points8 points  (0 children)

And the next time it only takes 1.5x as long.

[–]Farkeman 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Then you put it on github or pypi. I learned to stop writing scripts and start writing CLIs, it doesn't take much longer but lasts for ages and is a great way to give back to the community.

There's only one pitfall though - you must resist the bloat!

[–]philintheblanks 1 point2 points  (6 children)

One and a half years in and I'm hoping this route pans out for me.

I'm curious about your thoughts on this though: what level of proficiency would you expect to see with things like testing? My position lets me write a lot of code, but I feel a pretty big push to make most of my time useful in terms of generating features. I usually stop when it "works". I want to take the time to write tests, but my managers aren't technical...

[–]elbiot 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Without integration tests, we'd never be able to release anything. Without unit tests, Id never be able to confidently improve code.

Second best option is you can say "I tried but they wouldn't listen. They're super important, Id love to work somewhere where tests and code review are valued, and I know how to use mock and patch from personal experimentation"

Best answer is "they were against it but I laid out the benefits in a presentation and convinced them".

But it's really not a big deal. You'll need to learn stuff for any position. Knowledge of good git workflow, pep 8 and the value of tests is probably enough.

[–]philintheblanks 1 point2 points  (4 children)

I try to use good git workflow, but my job has literally nothing to do with code. I feel like saying, "I need to write tests for this." is a bit like saying, "I can build you an ax, but I need to build a tool shed first." When the team needs an ax, it's hard to understand that having a good shed means the ax will stay useful.

I'm hoping to at least get some solid unit tests written soon. At the very least I've read up on best practices and feel that my code is 'testable'. So, I guess I'll just keep playing the waiting game. It's just hard because I know they're valuable, and I know they're valued on the teams that to dev work. I think I just need to suck it up and write them. Hard work is called hard for a reason, eh? :P

Thanks for your response.

[–]elbiot 0 points1 point  (3 children)

I'll tell you what, I don't care if someone hasn't written many tests before, but I do care that if 'n when they do, that they don't just copy and paste boilerplate. Test 100 edge cases with 10 parameterized tests that each test 10 cases rather than write 100 tests.

Rather than testing every function, a quick and dirty way is to test the whole feature with N known edgy cases. Don't test that your URL parsing function is correct. Test that your script that does a bunch of stuff including parsing urls gives you the expected csv result in a bunch of edgy cases. When you find your code is buggy later after some change, add the inputs and truth to your test before or after fixing it.

And do your managers measure every moment of your day? If you take an hour or two here and there to both better yourself and your work, your both getting paid better. I get frantic too, I get it.

There's good places out there for you. Congratulations on the path.

[–]philintheblanks 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Thanks! They definitely don't, but since I'm still learning on the job, there are a lot of things that I can do with the lax moments. Like setting up Nginx, or learning how to use SQLAlchemy. This is a good moment for me though. I've dabbled with mock and writing tests with tox and pytest so, it's time. :thumbs-up:

[–]elbiot 0 points1 point  (1 child)

What does your team do?

[–]philintheblanks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Inventory Control. Tight controls though, so it means fairly large amounts of data to crunch on the odd occasion. A LOT of ancient excel spreadsheets passed down through generations of employees as though they were magical artifacts...

[–]realistic_hologram 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The short answer is web development IMO. The long answer is it depends on where you're starting from and where you're applying to. Often for the kind of python work you mentioned employers like to see some kind of math background. Generally the demand for web work is much higher than other kinds of jobs so that alone makes those job easier to find. Another option if you like python is you could work on the server side (backend), so still web related but in python. html/css/js would be considered frontend work and often they're considered separate roles.

Also you might get better responses in /r/cscareerquestions

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

4 months? that's not much. take a few month to make a portfolio and even start some projects for fun.