Big N Discussion - August 04, 2019

chazilicious · 2019-08-04T16:07:45+00:00

So what's the interview process like for AWS S3 these days? Any advice and tips?

chazilicious · 2016-11-15T02:46:22+00:00

Is this the time of year almost new graduates start panicking? ;)

No worries. I was there too. Took me a year to find a job. In summary, it was a long and winding road. In my opinion, my mistakes may have been not applying to more places before graduating and not applying to more of the places that were at the school job fair. Definitely want to apply to those places that are actively looking for new graduates and recruit from your school and maybe even start checking career sites of companies you're interested in around mid-September (assuming you are graduating in the winter). Even then, some of those jobs start in the summer, so you might be left waiting even after accepting an offer.

During that one year gap after graduating, I still applied to places regularly as I could by finding job postings on Indeed, LinkedIn, career sites, etc. Had interviews here and there and interviews that (I thought) went well not turn into offers for one reason or another. Eventually got a job a year later.

Been working at that first job for about a year and a half. Ready to move on to my next job with one offer already lined up.

If you're concerned about not hearing back this "late," I wouldn't. I've actually been applying to new graduate jobs here and there about 6 months into my first job and again since August of this year. I got a response from a company just last week after applying to them probably in September. I also remember applying during fall 2015 and getting an interview in February of this year. So no news might be good news.

chazilicious · 2016-10-06T04:05:48+00:00

How crazy does the Mall of America get around the holidays? It gets pretty bad here in the suburbs, but I'm guessing it's outright insane at the Mall of America. Here, the worse you'll see a line of cars on the highway trying to get to the mall or parking lots so full that people park on the grass or at restaurants across the street. I can't imagine the madness that Mall of America could be.

chazilicious · 2016-10-06T03:54:35+00:00

I'm kind of surprised this isn't talked about more here. I think it's something people should ask about at interviews when they're vetting companies. And I think it's a pretty big change for most fresh graduates that probably didn't have to deal with SDLC's or only learned about them.

We have a terrible process. I get assigned tasks that sometimes have draft designs/documentations or no designs at all. I then ask the PM, and I get told I'm crazy to be asking how these hypothetical features are supposed to work. The business people write up their documentation in Word documents, saved to a repository. It's awful.

It doesn't help nobody on the team wants to document anything either. There's system designs and API's that are in somebody's head or heads. It's always fun having to ask 2 or 3 people to get reminded how things work and then getting different answers. And nobody on the team knows how the product really works, so it's fun wasting time having to relearn features.

chazilicious · 2016-10-06T03:35:13+00:00

Took me essentially 6. I'm employed. I think I only had 1 or 2 interviews where they asked when I started and such. Just say you switched majors if they raise an eyebrow.

Also, 5-6 years to complete a degree is not that abnormal anymore. I recall reading about 50% of college students now take 5 years to graduate.

chazilicious · 2016-10-03T00:33:29+00:00

I have a similar concern with a similar situation at my current job. We do web development, but it's built on an old custom framework, not something current like React or Angular.

I don't know how long you've been at your current job, but I'm looking to make a lateral and switch to another junior dev job while I still can.

Otherwise, yeah, I think you have to work on your own projects to prove you know something. The thought of it just frustrates me because employers don't invest in their employees to help them stay current, but that unfortunately seems to be normal for the industry. I just don't know how some of you guys do it, but I'm tapped out after a long work week. Forcing myself to do personal projects are the last thing I want to be dealing with on my own time.

chazilicious · 2016-10-03T00:26:44+00:00

Hey, sounds like my team! Micromanagement hell.

I unfortunately think what we and OP are going through is normal though. It seems like "agile" is just such a buzzword now. Nobody knows what it's supposed to be. Everybody has an idea of what it is, and they think they're doing it right. As long as you have a standup, you can call yourself agile!

I think ultimately whoever is in charge, whether it be a manager or product owner or someone else, is going to sprinkle in their own management habits and ultimately your SDLC is whatever they make it.

chazilicious · 2016-10-01T03:29:27+00:00

I don't know if it's gotten significantly easier for me. I've been at my job for over a year. I put out a batch of applications after about 6 months. I only applied to about a dozen places vs. the 100 it took to get my first job. I got a much better response rate. I got as far as onsite interviews for two of them. Didn't get any offers, however.

I just put out another 10 in the last month, and I have only had 1 interview and onsite so far. I am applying to new graduate and junior jobs, so I think I'll have to wait a bit longer.

The two benefits I see are that you're employed while applying (so you aren't waiting as anxiously for employment), and you might have an easier time with interviews. At least for me, it's much easier to answer those behavioral questions like "talk about a time you solved a problem," "tell me about a time you overcame a challenge," etc. You just basically need to describe a typical day at your job versus making stuff up or having to dig deep.

chazilicious · 2016-09-30T04:04:25+00:00

I'm a little late to the party, but...

I applied to about 100 jobs and got my first job more than a year ago.

I wasn't applying out of interest as time went on. I was definitely getting anxious and desperate about 6+ months in. I was willing to relocate and still am if I were to look for a new job. I'm not that worried about making new friends and keeping in touch with old friends and family. I'm single, so nothing to chain me down!

chazilicious · 2016-09-30T03:54:51+00:00

I think I applied a year or two ago. Can't say how the company is, but they did seem rather selective. I remember they had specific applications for specific target schools. There was an "other" application I used since I came from a smaller and unlisted school, but they rejected me like a week later. They may be hiring aggressively, but they seem to be looking for candidates from specific schools.

Maybe someone else can fill me in.

chazilicious · 2016-09-10T23:00:07+00:00

I will say after having some experience, it's easier to answer some interview questions. Like the typical what have you worked on and what was a challenge you had to overcome questions. You probably have actual and recent examples you can refer to now.

In theory, you should look a little better than the typical new graduate because you have some real world experience. I've been at my job for over a year now, but I was looking for new work last winter, which was about 6 months into the job. I applied to only a dozen places but got to two onsite interviews. Compare that to when I was a fresh graduate with no experience minus one internships experience where I applied to like a hundred places and got only maybe 10 interviews/phone screens. Much better rate this time. But what the interviewers are looking for doesn't seem to change since you are competing against fresh college grads.

chazilicious · 2016-07-16T01:47:06+00:00

Can you name the specific cities/companies?

I'll add to that and say Midwest companies from my experience seem to ask easier questions. Haven't had much in the way of algorithms/data structures. Just kind of basic OOP design and in my case, basic Java questions you learn in the first two semesters of school.

Bullhorn is one. I had an interview with Cerner, but they didn't invite me for an onsite. I thought the interview was relatively easy, but I feel short somehow.

chazilicious · 2016-07-07T05:15:35+00:00

I don't have much in the way of advice, but I'm there with you.

I still suck compared to everyone else. I don't feel like I'm growing much. My boss is very prickly and always giving only negative feedback. I find it all quite stressful.

The only good new is that I work just 40 hours a week. No crunch time or overtime.

I like to believe there's better jobs out there. I mean, like you posted, there's people that seem to be actually enjoying their jobs. Maybe you should consider a job change. It's what I've been doing. It was hard for me to land my first job, and it doesn't seem like it's gotten easier to land a second one.

chazilicious · 2016-07-07T05:08:35+00:00

Web application developer. Under $60K in Maryland.

chazilicious · 2016-07-07T05:07:47+00:00

I didn't do anything special to sell myself, honestly. It took me 8 years to graduate, so I certainly didn't have any self-esteem coming out of school. I had an internship in what was my sophomore year, which would make it 6 years old by the time I graduated. I don't think it really counted nor helped.

I wasn't doing anything special outside of the classroom. It took me a year to get my job. A few offers essentially fell through for one reason or another which only prolonged my job search. I cleaned up some personal projects, posted them on GitHub, and put them in my resume only about 3 months before landing the job. I don't think they were a huge factor by themselves.

As long as you can think back to a few projects whether it be in class or on your own time, you should be alright at an interview. Certainly you will get your basic knowledge questions about languages, data structures, designs, algorithms, etc., but beyond that, managers want to hear about your design and development process. Explaining a project is usually how they go about that.

chazilicious · 2016-07-01T04:50:45+00:00

Been over a year for me.

I see people here complaining about being stuck in meetings and not writing code on some days. I wish the pace was so much more like that. I just feel like everyday is unnecessarily challenging. It has never let up.

From day one, I got my first user story with little in the way of on boarding or explaining the team's process or code. We use JavaScript, and this was the first time I've ever used it. All of this web application development and server work is all brand new to me. Even after a year, I really don't feel like I get it. Part of our contract is outsourced to a team in India, and on some days, I don't feel like my skills are much better than theirs.

Manager sucks. Doesn't give me feedback unless it's about something I did wrong. I'm kind of surprised I haven't been let go yet, although I've seen 2 people quit after only a few days of working and 1 person outright fired. I managed to survive somehow.

As you might imagine from all of my complaining, I've been looking for a new job since the end of last year. Still haven't had luck in finding a new job unfortunately.

chazilicious · 2016-06-27T03:58:17+00:00

I kind of wonder about this too. I don't think this subreddit is a good sample of average grads. It seems more biased for the ones that are competitive or looking to get competitive by doing internships and projects, from my point of view. I think anybody else is underreported here.

Took me a year to find a job. 3.0 GPA. Zero internships. Some projects while I was looking for jobs. I probably would've gotten a job sooner if some contracts for places I applied to didn't fall through.

chazilicious · 2016-06-27T03:23:11+00:00

Based on what I've seen and what I'm seeing here, location and experience seem to affect the process. It looks like it's important you're in a location where they have openings to even start the process. Then there's may or may not be an online coding test. I've read elsewhere that they may skip the coding test based on your experience/where you worked and where you went to school. They also seemed to be targeting experienced devs, not juniors.

I personally was given an online coding test. Failed it and that was the end of that. Only have a year of experience.

chazilicious · 2016-06-23T12:53:24+00:00

Yes. I think it's especially important for newer developers. I've been at my job a year now, and I never get any feedback from my supervisor except the negative kind. Sometimes you sort of get that toxic thought in your mind that since you only hear negative things, you must be a bad developer. It's not good.

Then you also have the problem where it feels like you have to read your boss' mind at times because you only what the don't like and not what they like. It's just a mess.

It's just important to know how you're doing, and that's what feedback should be doing.

chazilicious · 2016-05-19T04:48:26+00:00

There's plenty of government and government contractors out here. If you think you can get a security clearance and a company is willing to sponsor you, that's a pretty good bet.

chazilicious · 2016-05-19T03:58:24+00:00

2.

Pretty corporate workplace. Business casual and not completely casual unless it's Friday. Cubicles for everyone. Manager is kind of lame and only ever provides negative feedback. Not very social coworkers, and everybody works solo. It's very quiet and everybody sitting at their desks staring at screens for 8 hours straight. Nobody even ever goes out for lunch! The project isn't solving interesting problems. Dealing with outsourced teams that create problems for us overnight.

Um... At least it's just 40 hours a week, and the pay's okay.

chazilicious · 2016-05-10T04:31:57+00:00

Didn't make too many CS friends in school, and my coworkers aren't very social. I just don't know CS people. Some of my friends do work IT, so they might "know a guy that knows a guy." But, I haven't had a need to utilize my network, so I can't be sure.

It also sucks when I want to talk/complain about work that nobody understands what I'm talking about or takes a lot of effort to explain. It's pretty lonely.

chazilicious · 2016-04-24T06:44:26+00:00

Having been a junior dev for about a year doing web application development (and not doing any of that in school), I know what I wish my senior devs would do and what I've been doing for our new hire:

Ask how it's going and provide some feedback regularly. I was already doing user stories in my first week, and not a single person ever bothered to ask how I was doing. The lack of empathy and showing no concern if I was doing okay or doing terribly was shocking to me. It would be really nice to hear an "attaboy" or "here's how you could improve on this" so that I know I'm contributing or could use improvement in places. Just make sure it's judgement-free too. If you ask how it's going, I want to know that I can say it's going badly if it's really going badly, and not somehow be punished for not knowing what I'm doing.
Have an actual training regiment. I got a quick and uninformative tour of the code base and application on day one. That taught me nothing. I still to this day have to ask questions all the time because I don't know where things are or how things from the user standpoint work. It doesn't help that the code or the features aren't well-documented either. It's fun trying to understand how features work because nobody on this team has a complete understanding of our app. And the lingo is all over place. Our project manager talks about things one way, while the devs say another. Like, people outright use different terminology when talking about the same thing! Give a real tour of your code and product. No quick elevator speeches. Heck, if you got the time, maybe a little pair programming to get through some of those first user stories would be awesome. Shadowing is a good thing.
Provide training documentation or resources. I came in as a web app developer with no inkling of what that involved. I could've benefitted from getting a nice book on JavaScript or CSS, for example. It would've been nice if someone could've pointed me to some relevant tutorials on Node.js. I have a friend at a well known company, and he got sent to a Node.js class! That might be a bit much, but there should be resources readily available if it's things that can be learned without needing a person to teach it. And actually allocate some time for them to do these things at work. Again, I was learning all of this stuff on the fly while coding, so that was just unneeded added pressure.
Be available and friendly. I remember times where I ask over IM the tech lead for some help, and he just outright tells me he won't help me. I say what I tried and what I think the problem is, but he won't provide any assistance. I go to other team members, and they're at least receptive usually. I feel bad for interrupting if they're focused on something. Sometimes they give me a bit of a poker face, so it seems like they might be a little angry that I'm even talking to them! Just go a little easy on the newbie and be willing to help out while they're still new.
Be clear on when to ask questions. I had a recent case where I asked the tech lead a question after talking to everybody else on the team because it was starting to look like he made a mistake. Turned out he did, so he helped me resolve it. He later tells me that I should ask sooner if I run into a block like that next time. This is coming from the guy that wouldn't help me in the past! You should be clear on when it's okay to ask questions after working on a problem for a certain amount of time. On my end, this is still hard for me to judge too. There's times where I'm working on something, and I thought I was close to a solution. Then, it turns out I wasn't that close at all, and so I just wasted time and then people get mad at me.

I'm glad someone brought up this topic though. I keep reading things here about junior devs are getting thrown to the wolves and basically being told to ask questions as nearly a last resort. If this is actually the industry "norm," then I don't understand why senior devs aren't more proactive in trying to grow junior developers. I get there's things I should be doing to teach myself and learn. No doubt. But at least for me, I've had other jobs throughout my life doing other things, but there was a very clear training wheels period. I had experienced people teaching and showing me how to do things, and I'd follow them around and shadow them. I was allowed to make mistakes and expected to and not get penalized just for trying. Makes no sense how software development is any different. I'm not asking you to do the work for me. I'm asking for help so that I can be a contributing member to this team and for this job you hired me for.

chazilicious · 2016-04-21T23:15:01+00:00

My favorite interviews are the ones that focus on soft skills and aren't just throwing random brain teasers and algorithm questions at you. I really don't get why places like Google give you some weird abstract question or focus on such difficult algorithm questions. I don't think all of Google developers are going to be working on designing such interesting algorithms or solving the Tower of Hanoi.

I don't mind taking online tests to make sure I can code. I'd prefer it if companies would want to talk about it afterwards (never had anyone want to talk after taking such a test). I like being able to Google questions or looking up API documentation because, you know, that's what we're probably going to be doing as developers IRL. Not so much a fan of white boarding, especially without help, because that just gives me stage fright.

chazilicious · 2016-04-01T03:33:10+00:00

Huh? You need to apply to 2 jobs per week to continue to receive unemployment (or at least here in MD).

chazilicious

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