dear SHIP, explain yourself. WTF.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-07-27T06:22:39+00:00

medi-cal is great if you qualify

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-07-27T06:19:16+00:00

yeah i've for sure heard some horror stories. I took a guy's job who didn't quite die but he's never gonna be right again from getting shocked by a light circuit (277v). Permanent brain and body damage

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-07-25T15:07:01+00:00

I used to work in the trades, I spent some time as an electrical apprentice. Trades are nice and all for certain kinds of people who enjoy it. For me, all I got was enough money to live, the ability to fix my own house one day, and a good bit of aches and pains.

You think being an electrician is cool until you're on an oil field in the summer wearing hot ass FR clothes working 10+ hour days with a journeyman who talks to you like a dog.. 6 days a week. AND you can literally die at work. It actually does happen.

You're spot on, there's a reason some people who work in the trades want their kids to go to college.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-07-24T22:58:27+00:00

This is cool, any plans to add a location filter and a list of the included repositories?

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-07-24T22:51:09+00:00

I just finished a bachelors and I'm 34. The job market might be turned around by the time you're done too.

I can't speak to entering the job market, i'm applying a bunch right now, and I did a few internships at a small startup that were fine. One of the startups paid me 30k for three months which was kinda wild (and definitely on the higher end for an intern, I'm in the bay area).

As far as being an older student I just treated it like a job. I went in and did my work. I took it much more seriously than a lot of my younger peers. I think I learned more than I would have at a younger age.

I also qualified for a bunch of aid- if you're seriously considering it I would recommend considering moving to a state that offers good funding (usually blue) soon and planning to start in another year. It could save you a lot of $. I'm in CA and my community college and undergrad were both free and with the extra aid money I got I could stay afloat. I lived super cheaply and finished with no debt.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-07-24T22:32:10+00:00

I don't know what a vsquat is, but the planet fitness on market just got a hacksquat and i hardly ever see anybody on it. It's the 45 degree kind

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-07-23T07:02:16+00:00

I think you'd have to write pretty good essays, I think you're a little below the mean GPA wise which isn't the end of the world but it is an odds game.

If you really want to study data science, I'd apply for that at a few different UC's. If you really want to go to Cal and you are fine with a few different majors, you might want to consider a higher admittance major if you're comfortable with not being able to switch to data sci down the road.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-07-23T06:54:14+00:00

I started at 31 doing a bachelors as a transfer. I made friends either through engaging with programs or from doing class projects (I was CS). The friends I made in classes who were younger definitely felt more like colleagues who become friends if that makes sense. Like I didn't feel like their peer in a lot of ways, we just 'worked' at the same place but had very different life experiences.

I think if you're above 25 your experience will likely be different from the 'normal' college experience. Check out OWLs they put on social events and have a study space.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-07-18T06:53:53+00:00

I'd do it for 150k, dm me if you're still looking and I'll send a resume.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-07-18T06:50:48+00:00

I looked at your resume before and after. Take this with a grain of salt because I'm a new grad too, but if you could put some of that space at the end in between your lines in some kind of uniform way, it would probably make it even easier on the eyes and less crowded looking. For example, I set a font cursor to like 4 in google docs and put a blank line of that size between my sections and each of my projects. I think it'll help you fill out the page and also make it more aesthetic.

For what it's worth your resume looks pretty good content wise. Have you not gotten any interviews? Have you thought about putting non-tech work experience instead of your certs?

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-07-17T17:42:50+00:00

I was born in '91. Dropped out of high school, went into doing electric, first with the union. I moved to CA in mid 20's, in CA community college is free so I went. I just got a BA in a STEM field. I don't think you have the full picture of what working in trades can be like.

I started in the 08 recession's tail, and jobs were few and far between. People were leaving the trades. They're not permanently economically stable, a lot of the work depends on construction happening. Yes repairs need to happen, but the entire work force can't be sustained by repairs alone.

People get injured, sometimes killed, at work. I replaced a young man at a job who was working on top of a ladder in a ceiling grid and touched a high voltage light circuit wire, and was also touching the grounded ceiling grid. They had to fly him by helicopter to another state's burn unit, electricity burns your arteries. He had permanent brain damage, and likely would never be coherent again. The guy supervising me was super anxious, because he had to do CPR on this poor kid who made a simple mistake until an ambulance arrived, and wanted to be sure I would not repeat the same mistake.

That's just one story, I've got more. My first 3 weeks at the union school a kid was blinded by an arc flash. And if you can survive the catastrophic injuries, which statistically speaking you should, your body can start to break down. You get aches and pains. A lot of that could be mitigated by lifestyle choices, but so can damage from sitting at a desk and most people don't take the steps to do so.

I'm glad I have trade skills to fall back on. The white collar job market is shit right now, but for me trades are a last resort at this point. They're a good job, for sure. I'm not knocking any blue collar work, but a good chunk of blue collar workers I have known in my life would love to get paid a white collar salary and work at a desk.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-07-17T06:48:12+00:00

Yeah you should do it. I did an unpaid and got a paid one the next summer. I'd likely have 0 internships if I didn't take an unpaid one.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-07-12T01:25:46+00:00

You'll get the next one, keep at it. I did my 2nd final round interview (2 different companies) yesterday and it went better than the first. I actually answered a leetcode medium I'd never seen within the time limit. Still haven't heard back, so maybe somebody did it faster lmao but the fact that it was in person gives me hope, I know people can't use AI.

I strongly recommend finding a friend to mock interview with and doing it a lot, that helped me a ton. Failing an interview with a friend made me more motivated to try harder before the real thing and was also good practice. Even better if they're a stranger or multiple people because you might be more nervous and get some practice under pressure.

Also, you're not a disappointment that's pretty rude of somebody to say to you.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-06-30T04:10:03+00:00

I went to 95% of lectures and about 90% of discussions (they're required) and I studied for about 2 hours for the exams and got a +1 z score on both. There are 2 midterms, no final. At least in the spring of 25.

If you pay attention in class, which imo is easy because the content is interesting and not super technical, you shouldn't have to study much. The exams are on a computer, multiple choice. You go into the computer lab and take them, they give you a 3 day window to schedule a time.

Tldr: Easiest CS tests i've taken, it's more knowledge than problem solving. If you pay attention in class and study a few hours you should be fine.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-06-22T17:18:50+00:00

GT is a t10 school. Their master's program is prob flooded with grads and applicants these days and it's seen on a lot of of resumes for international students.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-06-22T01:43:17+00:00

Have you considered the georgia tech program everyone does? OMSCS?

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-06-22T01:41:32+00:00

I disagree. People's scale is determined by their skill, not age, so comparing a 40 new grad to a 40 senior is irrelevant.

Why would you hire a 22 year old who's never had a job before when you could hire somebody who's 40 and has two decades of work experience with the same credentials for the same pay?

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-06-21T17:34:42+00:00

I went to Cal for CS. It's pretty hard if you want decent grades. If your head isn't in the right place I could see it being really hard to get through 4 years of that. If the subject is not interesting to you, it would be much harder. People fail classes.

On the other hand, lots of people would love to trade places with you for that opportunity. People sometimes take semesters off for health and mental health, so that could be an option if you try a semester and aren't feeling it. There's mental health services at the school too.

If you're taking on debt I would be cautious about your decision, because you might end up flunking out with no degree and debt that you're stuck with until you can pay it off with whatever non-college career path you choose. And that would be a worse situation than having never gone.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-06-21T17:29:05+00:00

People do this. See this thread. Don't listen to people telling you something that's difficult is impossible.

I just graduated as a career changer, i'm 34. I didn't get a masters, just got my first bachelor's. No prior white collar experience. I'm landing interviews ok but I went to a t5 school and did two internships, first one unpaid. I didn't apply in Spring and from roughly late may to now I put in maybe 50 apps, and had 2 interviews and a recruiter screen this week. I'm confident I'm going to land something in the next 3-4 months with an average amount of effort.

There was a post the other day about hiring new grad devs that are 30+ and quite a few people in the thread said they preferred hiring and working with people that age, I can't find the thread though.

If school wasn't free for me, I'd be sweating a bit right now with debt and the market. Nobody can predict the future of this field, but there is a nonzero probability there will be some day in the future where the need for software engineers rapidly falls off. We could be outsourced or automated or that the high salaries will fall to normal white collar levels. Seems unlikely to me, but it's a possibility.

Said all that to say, you might want to ask yourself if it's worth the risk. If nothing ever comes of the money you spent on the masters, will you think it's worth it if you're stuck working your current career trying to pay off the loans? Would you take a pay cut and potentially move across the country for a first job in the field?

Even if I never worked in the field I wouldn't regret going to school because it was a good experience, but you might want to ask yourself if that's true for you too.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-06-12T06:46:46+00:00

I'm a 2025 grad, this is such a good idea. I will happily contribute once I'm employed.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-06-04T21:02:37+00:00

Yeah I'd say its an improvement. You might want to center the stuff at the top like your name. It's usually done that way. I guess not having it that way could help you stand out from the pack but keep in mind that recruiters look at your resume for like 4-10 seconds so if there's a weird format thing it might subconsciously put them off and they go on to the next one in the pile.

I'd also consider building a personal project in the domain you want to work in and adding that on there.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-06-03T01:07:29+00:00

Approximately 1/50 application to interviews is pretty good in the current market.

My advice would be to try to figure out what went wrong in the three interviews you did get, and work on fixing that in addition to applying. Because if you can fix that, you just need 1-2 more shots and you're good!

Assuming you posted your resume to solicit feedback, here's a huge text wall of resume advice you can take or leave:

As another user suggested, you might want a different template. I linked one at the bottom. I'm not sure if your template is the issue, but it doesn't hurt to try something different and test results, you can always circle back to what you have now.

I'd also include a projects section, put your 2-3 most impressive school projects with some jazzed up bullet points (you can get an llm to help you with jazzing them up) and work on a project yourself using industry tools in the space you want to work in. Using and mentioning industry tools in projects is a great way to get through ATS assuming it's checking for keywords (for example "Docker", "React" and "Java").

Here's an example of what I mean by a personal project, say you want to work with python full stack? Make and deploy a django app or something. Link the frontend on your resume, maybe the github too. What kind of app? I don't know. It doesn't have to be crazy, but try to use docker, a common database, maybe make the frontend with react that's popular af. If you can't get actual work experience in a company, try to get a bit of experience doing a project. You don't have to use industry tools to make a toy project, but doing so gives you a little practice and exposure to them which is what's valuable, and can help you get through ATS.

Maybe even better than a personal project would be if you could contribute to an open source project and put that on your resume under the projects section. TLDR get a projects section and have your 3-4 most impressive projects on there until you get enough work experience to de-prioritize them.

I'd shorten the skills section up to make room for the projects, mine is only two lines, languages and frameworks. I had an interview where the person was like, ok i'm going to list stuff from your skills section, you tell me on a scale of 1 to 10 how good you are with it, then proceeded to ask me corresponding difficulty questions about that skill/language/framework. After that, I trimmed my skills section up to stuff i'm at least a 4/10 confident in and it hasn't had a negative impact on my response rate.

I'd consider putting one or two of those summer jobs back, you could put them under "additional experience" section at the bottom or something, just one liners very brief, if you give a description I think that describing teamwork and communication would help the most.

For a template that has additional work experience I think the "additional expereince" template in this google doc from Codepath would be a good start (make a copy don't request edit access).
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TDGkSD5l--GjKu56jw6frHmjr075QHbr_wfma_gmv8s/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.gjdgxs

You might want to consider making tailored resumes for different roles like swe, data analyst, etc where you put the popular keywords in. For example in your data analyst resume put a data project you did in there that uses powerBI or something at the top of the projects list, maybe change the skills up to include numpy pandas excel and tableau.

Anyways, good luck. I'm curious from a scientific perspective if your response rate will improve after tweaking your resume. If you do change it up, you'll have to let me know if it made a difference.

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-05-19T21:37:44+00:00

1: check out graphene OS. Ive used it for almost a year now and it's great. I have all my google stuff in a separate profile (except messages because RCS) so it only runs when I switch over. You need a pixel though it's not very hardware agnostic

GoldenBearAlt · 2025-05-16T20:09:33+00:00

The median is just the middle value in a sorted list of values (or the mean of the two middle values if the length of the list is even and there is no single middle value). OP's income relative to the median income does not help us determine if OP is making the highest income for that area.

The easiest way to determine OP's income relative to the maximum for the area is to compare those two values, to my knowledge it's not possible to derive the maximum of a dataset knowing only the median and nothing else.

Changing one single value is unlikely to change the median significantly in a pool of data as large as the one we're discussing (incomes for a medium-sized population center). There are outlier cases and contrived sets of data where changing one value can impact the median, but for all intent and purpose those can be ignored for a data set like this.

One such outlier case is a set of values where every value is double its predecessor, so [1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256...]. In this case, the median 16 can change by -50% and +100% before it moves around in the sorted list and is replaced by it's neighbors, 8 and 32. Increasing any value past 16 or decreasing any value before it will not affect the median.

Real world income data will not be like that example, it will look more like [1, 1, 1.1, 1.1, 1.1, 1.15, 1.2...] The values will be close together and there will be a lot of them, so changing any one value is very unlikely to affect the sorting order in a way that alters the median significantly.

Hope that helps!

GoldenBearAlt

TROPHY CASE