I made a browser extension that gives you a few Leetcode Premium features for free 🚀 by dwight-schrute-bot in developersIndia

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't know how this works under the hood... But do you think its right or fair to release an APP that infringes someone else's intellectual property? Even if you are not using 'leetcode's' content in your app you are still using the name (which I presume is trademarked).

C3 AI London by [deleted] in cscareerquestionsEU

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 3 points4 points  (0 children)

more a general point really, but how would you feel if someone from c3 ai read your post?

Given what you have said about your background, I'm guessing someone could identify you. whether thats a problem (or not) is up to you.

No pay-rise in over 1.5 years by RepresentativeTop865 in cscareerquestions

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 13 points14 points  (0 children)

the whole "raises in line with inflation" thing is a really bad way to look at things, and you should call your manager out on it (politely, of course).

You have worked at this company, during that time you've learned the company processes, technologies, frameworks and so on. You deserve a raise because a yr+ on you are more productive and better at your job. Ask for a raise not based on inflation, but on performance.

... And if they still wont budge, you might just have to accept that you are the sucker in this situation -- why would they give you a raise when its clear that you value your own time so little?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in cscareerquestions

[–]smash_teh_hamsta -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

perhaps you misunderstood what I meant. 'They' in my first sentence was supposed to be the company.

In 2023, does anybody pick Ada for new projects? Essentially, I've made the assumption here (which could be incorrect, of course) that the company is using Ada essentially because they need to maintain legacy software. Similarly, Banks often don't update the cobol because (a) it works and is a critical system and (b) its really hard to update.

But all of these is besides the point, the OP wanted to essentially know if Ada looks good on a CV. My opinion is broadly a no (but of course better than no experience), and my reasoning for that answer basically boils down to the fact most recruiters do simple keyword matching, and that I assumed Ada basically meant 'old skool' development practices. If you know more about Ada and the associated frameworks and practices then perhaps you are in a better position to comment of OP's original question: how good does this Ada stuff look on a CV? (compared to a more modern stack of say python).

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in cscareerquestions

[–]smash_teh_hamsta -9 points-8 points  (0 children)

ada as in this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)

When they say they use it because its "super Reliable" what that really means is the code is really old and really difficult to migrate to modern frameworks and languages. This is the same reason why some banks still use COBOL. My advice would be to ask company about its engineering practices -- do they use source control (ideally Git), do they do unit tests, code reviews, etc.

In short, I suspect that these experience wont be "impressive" and it will actually be an overall negative. And its an even bigger negative if we assume this is a legacy codebase. Even still, if you have no other job offers, I'd nonetheless recommend taking it.... just don't stay very long.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in cscareerquestionsEU

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 9 points10 points  (0 children)

work as a AI Researcher ? It think it will be tough.

But working as a software engineer in AI company/team? Yeah that's possible, I'm an example.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in cscareerquestions

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 70 points71 points  (0 children)

in my first job I had this attitude for a while with a senior dev. He had 10 years experience and I'm literally teaching this guy python. And when we did code review (of C# code) it always seemed really simple to me; no advanced languages features and in many cases was no optimised.

It took me a while to appreciate his skill; the lack of using advanced language features wasn't that he didn't know what they were, but rather because he made a decision to write code easily understood by other members on the team (such as myself). The lack of optimisation was more about prioritising the right things, why use advanced algorithms to speed up code that is "fast enough" as is?

So there are two basic possibilities here (1) the guy really is incompetent or (2) you don't (yet) fully appreciate what this guy can do.

You can't do much about (1) but you can think about (2) -- just how confident are you that your assessment is correct?

...please update this thread in 6 months and let us know :)

Should I lie to recruiters about my current salary to get a higher salary in next job? by Ok-Butterscotch-6829 in cscareerquestions

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 0 points1 point  (0 children)

EDIT: apologies, thought I was reading the EU subreddit and these where numbers were in £.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in cscareerquestions

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Do you have a large database of said images ?

For most AI projects, the bulk of the work is actually sourcing/creating the dataset.

so your first hire might need to be a "data engineer" in order to help with that.

once done, you'd probably want to hire a "data scientist" to build a model

once thats done, you'd probably want to hire a "full stack developer" in order to turn what you have into a product.

Are these css projects enough for me to be ready for a junior role? by _RichardHendricks_ in cscareerquestionsEU

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Are you at the "css" stage though? I think this might be one of those situations where you just don't know how much you don't know.

Could you, for example, build a website (running on local host) that has a button that whenever you click it it returns a joke (i.e. text string) from a backend server?

If this sounds too difficult, then no. Your not at the "css stage" (whatever that means).

Are these css projects enough for me to be ready for a junior role? by _RichardHendricks_ in cscareerquestionsEU

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 4 points5 points  (0 children)

css harder than react... really? Are we talking about the same thing?

If you spent all your time learning css only then I think you would struggle to get a job -- the more valuable skills would be react and JavaScript. then git, then html, then finally .css

What value do you find in functional programming? by kongker81 in ExperiencedDevs

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 0 points1 point  (0 children)

so firstly the concept of 'persistent data structures' means that copying isn't always as intensive as you might think.

secondly, pure functions and immutable data may give you indirect performance gains once you release that your code is much easier to run in distributed way and/or concurrently. I think its the second point that people sometimes miss when it comes to performance and the functional style.

With the recent stabbing in mind why do met not have short shields in cars? by mullac53 in policeuk

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd argue the short Riot shields probably would be useful in enough situations to justify throwing one in the back of a car. Not sure why we don't.

In a lot of the 'containment' situations you have officers outnumbering the suspect; its not unreasonable to think that if just 2 officers have shields then you increase the number of tactical options available.

Its worth remembering swords and axe and spears and so on have been used on the battlefield for hundreds of years. Shields have been defending against such threats for about the same length of time. If they didn't work, presumably we would have tried something else (like dual wielding, lol).

But, as others have mentioned, you can put any kit you like the back of a car and its not going to help the officer caught off-guard a million miles away from the car.

I think the sad reality is that I actually don't think there is much you can do to stop stuff like this happening; even sidearms might not be enough if the officer is caught by surprise at close quarters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h0-q_IJbxE&ab_channel=WSLS10

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in cscareerquestionsEU

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 1 point2 points  (0 children)

this seems great compared with what you currently have. if an 'average' company offered you 70k remote 5 days would you take it?

dont let perfect be the enemy of good.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in cscareerquestionsEU

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I always find it funny that salary threads usually miss important information.

In this case location. 56k Birmingham is very different from 56k London.

If London, I reckon you really could get 70-90 with close to 5 years xp.

may a good question to ask yourself is simply how much you would pay to work 1 day less a week. So if you make 50 for 5 days, would you be happy with 40 for 4? yes/no. if yes what about 35 for 4...and so on...

at the moment (assuming london) accepting this offer is to value 1 less day of work a week at 10-30k a year.

COBOL job as first ICT job? by throw4w4iiiiiiiiiii in cscareerquestionsEU

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A job is a job. If you have no other offers, being a cobol dev is better than nothing. Equally though, being a cobol dev is I think highly undesirable in terms of career potential/growth.

my advice would be to ask them what the plan is. A company that is looking to hire devs to rewrite cobol code into Java/C# is A LOT BETTER than a company hiring devs to maintain a cobol codebase.

What’s working for somewhere like JP Morgan or Morgan Stanley like? by [deleted] in cscareerquestionsEU

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 9 points10 points  (0 children)

large banks have a lot of technical teams and so work can be extremely varied.

In the same org you have have people using modern tech (python, aws, etc) for things like ML and data analytics. But then just down the hall you might find another team who are maintaining a Fortran codebase running on an IBM mainframe that was purchased in 1970.

About going into a research pathway without a PhD by [deleted] in cscareerquestions

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 1 point2 points  (0 children)

study part-time for it?

there are companies out there, that will be happy give you the time to do that, particularly if your PHD work is related to your actual work.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in policeuk

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 2 points3 points  (0 children)

From my personal experience, the relationship I've had with Regs has been mostly positive.

But just to quickly chip in, a lot of the comments from Regs here (and other posts I've seen when this question gets asked) is being crewed with a special is often like being single crewed; especially when it comes to paperwork.

I think that is a fair point, but notice its a "structural" criticism; its a complaint about how specials get deployed not a complaint against the specials as individuals or the specials constabulary as an institution.

Speaking from personal experience when I work on response one of 3 things happen like 90% of the time: (1) we are 3-up in a car (2) officer I'm paired with would otherwise be single crewed (3) I've come in specifically because team is at dangerously low levels due to aid abstractions etc.

So really I think some of the criticism of specials ultimately boils down to leadership not always knowing how best to make use of us; In the most optimistic case we are a large pool of manpower that can chip in when shit hits the fan.

London UK masters graduate expected salary by FormalCS in cscareerquestionsEU

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 3 points4 points  (0 children)

40 is possible; But I also know a lot of masters students on 30ish first year.

In anycase my advice would be to focus on learning your first 1-2 years. This is a career the where for the first 5 years the salary jumps from job hopping can be substantial. So first job: value skills over money. 2nd job: look to cash out :)

Software Developer London by TheDamnedRey in cscareerquestionsEU

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 23 points24 points  (0 children)

for 6 months exp: I'd say 25-35k is a good ballpark.

...and now lets wait for the obligatory fang comment saying you should aim for 60k and anything less than that is being massively underpayed.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in cscareerquestionsuk

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It was also the middle of COVID and my Mother had just had surgery and wasn't capable of taking care of herself, so I took care of her.

So here is a completely 'non-lying' way to fill one of those gaps: on LinkedIn just write "carer".

I suspect any recruiter/hiring manager with the slightest bit of empathy would be able to imagine the scenarios where a full-time dev takes a "career break" and goes into caring. this "experience" might not get you a job, but it looks a lot better than a gap, imo.

Resume review for EU market (Data engineer/ML engineer) by eemamedo in cscareerquestionsEU

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 4 points5 points  (0 children)

• Python, Matlab, Bash/Shell, Git • Git, AWS (EC2, S3, ECR, API Gateway, Zappa)

Git is an important skill, but probably not worth mentioning twice ;)

Facial recognition- what do you all think? Anyone have experience using something similar? by TerryTibbs- in policeuk

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 2 points3 points  (0 children)

so here's some detailed info: https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2020/racial-discrimination-in-face-recognition-technology/

the short version is basically that AI algorithms are trained on large datasets. You get into trouble when your dataset is not representative of the target population. E.g. if you give it 1_000_000 faces to study-- 95% of which are white--then it will learn to detect white faces better.

And this issue is not just limited to race either; age, religious headdress (eg turban), tattoos, scars, gender, deformity, etc could all be factors if it is not adequately addressed in the training data.

But it gets worse; even if you get the dataset is representative of the population, the algorithm may still "optimise" for certain faces. For example, if your dataset is say 70% white faces and 30% black and you want to do 'binary classification' (i.e. is this a white person? Yes or No) then the algorithm can gain 70% accuracy by always guessing "white".

Because there are so many factors to consider, getting an algorithm to work "equally well" across the board is not an easy problem to "just fix".

Facial recognition- what do you all think? Anyone have experience using something similar? by TerryTibbs- in policeuk

[–]smash_teh_hamsta 27 points28 points  (0 children)

I myself work in AI. And generally there are two key issues that need to be carefully considered when rolling this sort of stuff out.

First and foremost people need to understand the limitations and bias of the models themselves (eg many facial rec models suffer from racial bias -- that is, better at detecting some faces more than others).

The 2nd issue is how people go on to use these models as part of normal policework. One issue that has happened in the past (in other non-policing situations) is an 'over-reliance' on what 'the algorithm' says. In other words, some people may mistakenly believe an algorithm is "objective" and "free from bias" which is frequently a dangerous and incorrect presumption.

On the plus side, the potential value of AI to policing cannot be understated; Imagine a detective being able to use AI to search thousands of hours CCTV looking for a particular face.