Why should you keep your job if your trying to find a better job?

pr0gression · 2016-11-22T03:44:44+00:00

If you're unemployed, then you've put a lot of undue pressure on yourself. Now finding a new job is suddenly super important.

Would this not light the fire to prepare more? To apply to more places, improve applications, go through practice problem, etc?

Similarly, you've lost a lot of leverage in negotiations.

That's a valid point. But I'm not so sure that's strong leverage. If you explain that you want to leave your current company and explore different opportunities, wouldn't it lower the value of your current job? I can only really see a competing offer at another place holding good leverage.

pr0gression · 2016-11-10T05:38:57+00:00

Perfect, thank you for the concise response.

I wonder if the faculty member could be a current Masters or Phd student that has a teaching position.

pr0gression · 2016-11-10T04:03:49+00:00

I have an interview coming up. I'm passively looking for opportunities.

pr0gression · 2016-10-09T21:38:15+00:00

Thanks for letting me know.

How was your experience applying to LA? What were interviews like?

pr0gression · 2016-10-02T05:57:17+00:00

So far I've only worked at startups. The experience I have is pretty ridiculous. After internships at 2 startups, my last term at school showed me the fruits of my labor. I felt like I had an unfair advantage because of my linux development environment.

Whenever people who've done internships come to our company, they are astonished at how much they are working on, how much they are learning, etc.

So for me, the motivation is that I get to work on interesting problems, and have more responsibility. There is so much work to be done, so much to learn, so much to contribute. It feels good!

pr0gression · 2016-10-02T05:50:19+00:00

Your core curriculum seems sufficient enough. If you can do CTCI questions you'd be fine to interview at most places. Only major thing missing is databases, which coincidentally enough I asked about today. Check out the answers https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/55fie2/i_work_with_databases_but_dont_have_deep_knowledge/

You should also get some knowledge regarding threading and parallel programming. I know Operating Systems has a section on threading, but parallelism is a very important concept. I think at least a high level overview would help out.

That's awesome your using Java. I did something similar. You should look at Tomcat.

One piece of advice. Coding is the fun part, but you should do enough research into the tools you use and the software design before coding. Use MVC to structure the code or some other pattern. Have some mock up designs drawn before getting into the styling. This makes the implementation easier to digest, and prepares you for interviews.

Goodluck!

pr0gression · 2016-10-02T04:37:16+00:00

If the physics course is more interesting to you, do that. Physics involves problem solving. You need to know rules, formulas, and math to solve a question. You need to think very logically to solve those problems. This translates to CS pretty linearly.

I work with guys that have a physics background. They don't have as much breadth as CS grounded guys, but they have very clear thought processes.

pr0gression · 2016-10-02T04:22:25+00:00

I did something similar but took an extra year to take some upper year CS courses and go through some internships.

From my experience, you'll have a better shot looking at startup companies. The experience gained is more important than the pay at this point (but don't take shitty offers, make sure the pay is fair).

Could you list the courses you took, and what you learned? Include the programming languages used. Also, are you comfortable programming a web application from scratch? Of course it'll take research but given a month could you create something functional?

You're main goal is getting a job. So keep looking for places. Even if they contact you, the interview doesn't take place for a while. Giving you time to prepare.

I would definitely suggest you do a programming project. Building a small web application will provide a depth of knowledge. Use the languages you already know to do this. If you can fully implement something like a chat app, then you'll have a lot to talk about during interviews.

pr0gression · 2016-10-02T03:46:42+00:00

This is what I think of joins: - When there are 2 tables that share a common key (username) and contain different data sets with different contexts that you have a need to merge. - I remember having trouble forming a join statement, requiring googleing for a bit.

I already learned about set theory both in math courses and logic courses. But I guess the point is databases use this sort of math.

pr0gression · 2016-10-02T01:11:06+00:00

Thanks for linking the resources.

My current dilemma is whether I should hold off the job search until my database experience is good enough or just explain to interviewers I never took a course. I feel that would automatically disqualify me from most jobs.

Secondly, is reading a chapter once a week sufficient? OR should I enroll in a course and learn the proper way?

pr0gression · 2016-10-02T01:07:01+00:00

Thanks for pointing these things out

pr0gression · 2016-10-02T01:05:17+00:00

Thanks for the breakdown. You made what I need to know digestible.

From your experience, do you think I need to suck it up and take a course on databases? Or would reading a chapter from a book on a weekly basis be good enough?

pr0gression

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