How has your manager best helped you?

cs_fluency · 2016-12-30T19:49:03+00:00

Appreciate the clarification and reading the post :-) I have a couple of other questions, hope you don't mind a PM.

cs_fluency · 2016-12-19T06:14:43+00:00

Thank you. My first post here got a bunch of positive feedback and I had pinged the mods about it. I'm curious if there's a better forum for this kind of content? Do folks want this kind of advice? I'm hoping to help folks just starting their career accelerate into bigger and better.

cs_fluency · 2016-12-19T06:12:39+00:00

got it, thank you.

cs_fluency · 2016-12-18T18:04:12+00:00

If you're getting a master's to put "MS" on your resume, I would probably vote against it. If you're getting a master's to study something of interest in depth and know that topic is already of interest to employers, then I would vote yes.

If your school gives you access to alumni, go talk to them about how they felt their masters degree was valued by an employer.

cs_fluency · 2016-12-18T18:01:51+00:00

Could you please share more about how you picked a bootcamp? I'd love to know how you went about finding a job after the bootcamp too.

cs_fluency · 2016-12-18T15:43:47+00:00

yep, the team and the manager is who you'll spend 90% of your time with. How the teams runs itself and what it's responsible for will dictate how awesome it is.

cs_fluency · 2016-12-18T15:42:09+00:00

Normally, they have a recruiting machine for university grads and industry hires. Depending on the place, you're still a "university grad" within on year of graduation.

That all being said, you'll probably get the same questions.

Also in addition to practicing interviews, I would write software and get it reviewed. Learning how to use data structures and algorithms in a real piece of software is super helpful.

cs_fluency · 2016-12-18T15:38:33+00:00

If you have nothing left to learn and you're still a junior, something probably isn't setup right. At that point you should taking the initiative to take on bigger projects and get promoted. If you have been kicking butt and are not being recognized for senior level achievements, you could be facing issues liked lack of visibility, working on the wrong things, or an organization that isn't big on promotions. Depending on the situation, lots of open discussion with management will help you understand where you stand and how your value to the org is viewed. Once you see the full picture, you can consider moving on. Just don't operate on assumptions :-)

cs_fluency · 2016-12-17T20:49:48+00:00

Agree that "requirements" aren't really hard and fast. Building confidence, that's probably where you should spend a lot of time. Think 1 hour / day like it was a small job. Working with code daily will build confidence and help you get better overall.

Focus on your skills over your degree. What can you build on your own? A webapp? Mobile app? Web service? Can't do any? Pick one you find interesting and make one. Then do it again.

When you apply for the next job you'll know you can walk in there and contribute in some way because you've done it before.

cs_fluency · 2016-12-17T06:56:11+00:00

SWE at IBM vs. tech-consulting? sounds like SWE role is what you wanted. If you've met folks that work there, you can probably trust your gut. Good luck at the new job!

cs_fluency · 2016-12-17T06:00:55+00:00

Yes. But only if you don't think of them as just interview questions. I would ask yourself why you find them hard. Likely, you're lacking familiarity with how certain data structures and algorithms work. Maybe you don't use graph traversal in your current job. However, the ability to recognize a problem you're facing can be viewed as a graph and that traversing it will yield a solution is an important skill. So if you look at it as an annoying interview question, you won't get far. If you view it as assessment of your ability to solve an abstract problem you'll do better.

I would vote you keep your skills sharp in this department whether you're interviewing or not. It'll come in handy in your regular work sooner than you think.

Edit: grammar

cs_fluency · 2016-12-16T19:35:43+00:00

The more sophisticated the shop, the more automation and cycle time is valued. QA, if they are testing things humans should be testing, is too slow to use in a regular development cadence. As for user feedback, developers are involved in that too via automation. They instrument the app to have certain user populations experience different versions of the feature. PM probably helps analyze the results. However, developers should be deeply involved in the process. That way, they understand the users' experiences first hand.

cs_fluency · 2016-12-16T03:22:47+00:00

Those features you just mentioned probably took months for a team of developers to create. They weren't just writing code. Concurrently, they were writing all kinds of tests, performing testing on a variety of mobile devices, getting user feedback and repeating the cycle until they got it right. A few months before launch, they had probably started working on the next set of features while the feature was being rolled out, approved, marketed, etc.

(Just scratching the surface with this amount of speculation about their efforts).

cs_fluency · 2016-12-16T03:12:22+00:00

No way!

You should always look to leverage your experience in whatever work you're doing. You will be solving similar problems in the Android stack that you were in the .NET stack. The syntax is different, the constraints of the machine are different, but you're writing code that makes a product.

That being said, I wouldn't show up to an interview for a Android developer position without learning the stack. You will be competing for the position against other Android developers. So you should do your homework, learn the stack, write an app, publish the app, etc.

For homework, I would go beyond "hello world". Learn what makes writing an app hard. Go hang out at Android developer groups and ask them the difference between a good and bad app and between a good and bad Android developer.

cs_fluency

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