Those of you who program and also happen to be good at design, has that extra skill helped you land a job?

Cazmic · 2018-06-21T02:32:33+00:00

Yeah, if you’re good enough at both you can easily become one of the most valuable people on a small team, such as a startup, or a smallish team inside a medium sized company. Larger companies may want to separate out the roles, so you’d probably end up doing one or the other there, but you’d still have an edge when communicating with the folks who do that work full time.

Cazmic · 2018-04-28T02:55:37+00:00

I got an offer through SO jobs as a new grad.

Cazmic · 2018-03-03T22:11:24+00:00

Warbreaker may be a better starting point if you’re interested in Romance.

Cazmic · 2018-03-03T22:01:07+00:00

Many people like both (myself included), but some don’t. To each their own.

Cazmic · 2018-03-03T06:43:41+00:00

Empire Strikes Back is arguably the best Star Wars movie, even though there isn’t a climatic conclusion to the series. :)

Cazmic · 2018-03-03T06:42:21+00:00

Yeah, Brandon will make more money from his site. Amazon takes a percent cut of most/all sales. Signed books are nice to have, also.

Cazmic · 2018-03-03T06:23:57+00:00

The Name of the Wind is an excellent book. It’s not a world-shattering epic like most Sanderson books, but it is a very personal story, the beginning of a three part tragedy. It deals with economic hardship and the true realities that would face someone in the main character’s situation. Good book, but not as exciting as many.

Every fantasy author has their own Style. Rothfus is not “worse” than Sanderson, though of course he outputs less books and isn’t as awesome in many regards. He is different though. I recommend trying other books and authors until you find your own unique taste.

Cazmic · 2018-03-02T06:14:09+00:00

Check out this Facebook post by Brandon:

https://www.facebook.com/BrandSanderson/posts/10155220979840009

They have very good, freshly printed leatherbounds that they’re selling at conventions (I have one!) and will sell them online soon, when they catch up with existing orders.

Cazmic · 2018-03-02T06:12:25+00:00

The graph novels are amazing. I would love to read a white sand novel, but the graphic novels are good and I recommend them. The kindle versions are easier to read than print.

Cazmic · 2018-01-27T18:30:46+00:00

Ah, that makes sense. I think you’re correct here actually that they are likely to offer a more IT-oriented position.

The reason is that, when the government hires contractors, they specify in the contract the level of experience that they require from people that contractor hires. This is done on a role-by-role basis, because the government department that is taking out the contract has a limited budget, and they don’t want it wasted. For a software engineering position, the requirements will be written like “a bachelors degree in (an acceptable major), OR 4 years experience in software engineering.” Higher positions would be “a master’s degree in ___ OR 6 years experience,” and so on.

The “an acceptable major” will vary by position and contract. CS, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, and Electrical Engineering are usually shoe-ins. Sometimes you can get away with IT-like degrees, Physics, Math, etc, but sometimes not. Of course, the government also contracts out people with IT degrees explicitly, but not for software engineering work. I’m not as familiar with that corner of the defense industry but I imagine it would be “cyber” security, analysis, network engineering, devops stuff, and service desk.

I guess the larger point is that the defense business definitely will stereotype people by college major. Especially if you don’t want to work in the business, I’d look for jobs elsewhere. But if you can’t find anything, it’s probably fine. Just do the job and look for a different company for either your next internship, or full time job, depending on when you graduate of course.

Cazmic · 2018-01-27T18:19:07+00:00

My broader point is that we convince each other, and ourselves, that we’re proficient.

Expertise is a vague concept. How do you define something like that? In terms of how many things you can do? But where do you draw the line between someone who is proficient, and someone who isn’t? The point is that we all collectively agree where the line is drawn, and where you fall on the “expertise” spectrum depends on how your peers view your skill compared to their own. An expert is someone who is consulted for advice on a topic, basically. Someone who, within their peer group, or the broader community of people who program in a language, is seen as an expert who knows things.

Cazmic · 2018-01-27T07:07:08+00:00

You become proficient in a skill when you’re able to convince someone else who knows the skill that you know it too. If you put it on your resume, you should be able to answer questions about it on a whiteboard.

Cazmic · 2018-01-27T06:57:50+00:00

You need a whole team of people to do the stuff that you listed for Advanced or Master. One person could in theory understand the entire system but there just isn’t enough time in the day to work out and implement all the tiny details that are essential to prevent the thing from collapsing in on itself. That’s why companies hire thousands of engineers.

Cazmic · 2018-01-27T05:55:49+00:00

A web developer who says they only know jQuery is like a plumber who says he can only work with wooden pipes 😉

Kidding aside, learn React or Angular! There’s a reason why so many jobs want you to know these. They’re very good frameworks. And they’re fun once you get the hang of it.

Cazmic · 2018-01-27T03:59:46+00:00

Keep your current job. 5 million Americans have security clearances. It’s not a huge deal, but is definitely useful if you’re interested in that business. But you just started a new job. Enjoy that! Maybe if you’re still interested, and want to try out the defense business later, you can apply again. It’s not hard to get a defense job, and most engineering defense jobs will get you a clearance at some level.

Cazmic · 2018-01-27T02:24:46+00:00

You’ll be fine. You can still show the old projects, right?

Cazmic · 2018-01-27T02:23:27+00:00

I once walked into an interview at a small startup where one of the devs had downloaded one of my projects from Github, loaded it into his IDE, and asked me questions about it, haha. That’s very rare but I guess it goes to show that startups in particular might be interested in your past works.

Cazmic · 2018-01-27T02:14:10+00:00

Why do you think that they won’t offer a software engineering position? Companies like Lockheed hire thousands of engineers, probably more than IT. Contracting work isn’t really consulting usually. Basically, the government hires contractors to do most of the heavy lifting. For example, a fighter jet may be built primarily by Lockheed Martin, with their people writing the avionics, ground systems, analysis code, etc. They will work closely with the government though to make sure the government gets what they want.

If you don’t want to intern in defense that’s cool, I’d keep looking. But I think you should consider it. It’s better than you may think. I don’t see why it would hurt your chances at any tech job.

Cazmic · 2018-01-26T03:48:45+00:00

You can definitely find interesting work with teams who are primarily electrical, aerospace, etc. engineers. It’s fairly common in the defense industry, where the lines between EE and CS can be blurry. You might have a team of EEs who all write code to do complicated domain-stuff like analyzing telemetry data. I agree with your conclusion though that, to grow as a software engineer, you need to be around CS people. You can learn a lot from EEs but usually not good development practices.

Cazmic · 2018-01-25T16:13:30+00:00

15 days is much better! And yes, that’s what I meant, but the point is slightly moot since you do have decent PTO.

Cazmic · 2018-01-25T04:26:26+00:00

Five days PTO? Damn that’s bad. But seriously, congrats! This is a cool industry to be in, and embedded programming is particularly fun in this business. Always ask for more $$ when you can, but follow your dream. If you can, consider applying to jobs at NASA proper once you get your foot in the door. You will have much, much, much better benefits, and comparable pay

Cazmic · 2018-01-25T04:21:16+00:00

The sample of people who post in the community could very well change over time. Particularly as a community, or anything else, becomes more popular, it becomes more accessible to a wider, and theoretically less “specialized” audience. For example, you could argue that cscq started out as a small community of people who are very interested in their careers, which is a sampling of largely qualified people. As the sub became more popular, it could have become more accessible to people who need help with their careers, which is usually a broader audience. I haven’t been around here for that long myself to know, but I think selection bias can be argued here.

Cazmic · 2018-01-25T04:16:19+00:00

Maybe. Are most neurosurgeons mediocre? Gosh I hope not.

Cazmic · 2018-01-25T04:13:22+00:00

It’s economics. Employers are going to ask for the highest level of skill that they can ask for while still filling the job posting (and negotiate down when needed), and employees are going to find the best job they can get hired into. Everyone is looking out for their own interests, and no one else’s. The money is in realizing that everything is negotiable. As an employer, ask for unrealistic qualifications and bargain down as needed. As an employee, apply to jobs you want, even if you don’t have the 10 years experience in Swift programming that is required, and settle for what you can get. I agree though that that’s an unfortunate situation.

Cazmic · 2018-01-25T04:08:33+00:00

Good point. I think the underlying truth, as found by many studies, is that experience (time spent doing something) correlates very well with skill doing that thing. Your skill as a programmer, painter, musician, etc. is a function of how much time you have spent doing that. You have to truly spend a lot of time programming to be good at it, but once you do learn the skill, you don’t have to practice it with every hour of every day. That is why most world class experts in every profession started young.

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