CSCareerQuestions

Hey all,

Firstly, not sure if this is the best place to ask this question, but here it goes anyways.

I've been a Systems Engineer for about 6 years now, and it's fairly enjoyable. I get to program, play with hardware from time to time, but something is missing.

In my free time, I like to spin up projects on my home lab, write and host new open source projects, maintain a fairly complex network, etc.

A couple years ago, our company got hacked, and honestly, the aftermath was some of the most fun I've ever had at a job. I got to discover new tools to help my team (like Ansible to help us perform bulk actions across our tester fleet), I got to come up with clever ways to upgrade our fleet of machines to meet the new IT regulations and deploy them at scale once we got the green light to return to the labs and I got to think of new security strategies to help better protect us (my small team within the larger company) going forward.

After the dust settled, it was back to basically only programming, but I do miss when I was able to use my infra/ security/ networking knowledge for that short time.

If I were to change from Sys Engi to something else, what should I be looking for?

I'm a software dev/sysadmin mix, ~8 years' experience, looking for work again after some time off. (Based in a capital city in Australia if that's relevant)

I have no idea how to characterise the projects that I've enjoyed the most or would like to do in the future.

The projects that I've found the most enjoyable are not the ones that you see advertised by recruiters and companies; Kubernetes, cutting-edge, greenfield projects, massive cloud accounts... meh.

Some fun stuff I've done or would like to do:

• Upgrading that weird service everyone is accidentally relying on but afraid to touch
• While money pours into LLMs in healthcare, fax machines were still used every day
• Working out the "low-level" part of the system colleagues put off for 2 years because nobody wanted to read through the boring 400-page ISO spec
• Maintaining that abandoned 500K line Java system with most errors being RuntimeException with a null description
• Working in small teams, max 8-10 people

Any tips to characterise this kind of work to focus my job search? I know it's different from working at a software company pumping out features.

Tight deadlines and shoestring resources don't bother me (as long as I get my salary!). Having people who don't take it all super seriously along the way is super important.

How do I look for this? Trial & error? I feel like there must be... consultancies? ... working on these kinds of projcets. Perhaps there's some name or buzzwords that I need to use? Or would I need to talk with one of those mega big consultancies like Accenture?

Of course very open to the possibility that I'm being totally unrealistic and way too picky in a down market.

My bread and butter is working in Go, Python, backend and OS stuff. Networking, Linux, BSDs, that kinda thing.

Thanks all!

I am privacy conscious so I would like to use my proton.me account, but I wanted some advice. Should I use my gmail account for career related purposes or should a proton.me address be fine?

When I come across such infographics with tips, I sometimes wonder, if you follow all these tips, then where will you find the time to program? Of course, all this is useful, but every developer knows how much you want to get done with all public affairs and immerse yourself in the code, especially if it is the code of a project that you love. And on the contrary, if you have to write a rotten project, with a stupid team, while working for a mercantile scumbag, no matter what you do, you will be sick of work. What is the conclusion here? Either you do what you love; or love what you do. And you will have much more free time. What about burnout? We are all phoenixes...

!

It was an internship for a full-stack developer role. I was given two days - today is the final day, and I did not even start with the project as I was too stressed to complete the task, worrying about designing and modelling the database part, and because I have a really vague idea about system design. The skill requirements for the project are NextJS and MERN stack - which makes little sense. It said nothing about state management library, so I was also really confused about that.

Here are the requirement of the task project:

• make use of NextJS
• create a LinkedIn clone, without the feeds
• must have shareable short-link profile
• should be SEO-optimized
• should provide API for creating and editing profile
• should make use of good UI practices
• explain the reasoning behind the system design decisions
• explain the steps required to run this application
• use of ChatGPT was allowed
• share this on GitHub

I think that I was being fooled - that I was being made to work on a project for free, and that this test is very unreasonable and a big red-flag into the startup's WLB. Just wanted feedback on whether I was being unreasonable?

Edit: Here's what the listing says:

>Are you a passionate Full Stack Development intern looking for an exhilarating opportunity? Look no further! <company-name>, an innovative company, is seeking a talented intern with expertise in Node.js, JavaScript, ReactJS, HTML, CSS, MongoDB, and Next.js. Join our fast-paced team and gain invaluable experience in a dynamic work environment. > >Selected intern's day-to-day responsibilities include: > >- Collaborate with the development team to design and implement user-friendly web applications using cutting-edge technologies >- Develop and maintain scalable backend systems using Node.js and MongoDB to ensure efficient data management and retrieval >- Create visually stunning and responsive frontend interfaces utilizing ReactJS, HTML, and CSS to deliver an exceptional user experience > - Conduct thorough testing and debugging to ensure optimum performance and seamless functionality across different platforms > - Assist in optimizing website performance by analyzing and refining code, and implementing best practices > - Contribute to the development of RESTful APIs, integrating with third-party services to enhance application capabilities > - Stay updated with the latest industry trends and emerging technologies, sharing insights and participating in team discussions to drive innovation > >If you have a hunger for knowledge, a strong work ethic, and a desire to make a meaningful impact, apply now to become a part of the <company-name> team. Ready to revolutionize the world of web development? We can't wait to meet you!

The reddit cscareerquestions is all doom and gloom 100% of the time so I don't think I'd get a real answer there so I came here.

I am feeling pretty lost right now. I started at a local company in 2017 initially just as a shipper. They were like 5 dudes in the middle of nowhere running an online retail store and so after shipping was done I had a lot of downtime. They were doing a lot of stuff really inefficiently because of some tech debt they had accumulated, and a lot of that work was getting pawned off on me because I was the new guy. Well, I didn't wanna do that so I started learning programming, specifically Python, and made a bunch of applications over a few years that automated/worked around/replaced that old broken stuff. This ended up becoming a really important part of everyone's work day and my software has saved them 1000s of man-hours annually and honestly I think that is a conservative estimate. My work in part helped them grow their product offerings significantly because they weren't having to do a bunch of stuff manually anymore. (Inventory updates, Customer order and tracking updates, Updating/pulling stuff from databases, eventually integrated my stuff with some vendor APIs who offered them, web scraping to get info on hundreds of thousands of products and more!)

In 2019 I decided I really enjoyed doing this and wanted to get paid to do it for real, so I went back to school for computer science. December 2023 I graduated with a 3.42 GPA. And I've had almost no interviews. I was really close to landing one position through a hiring manager I knew personally working with .NET, but right before I was hired the CEO closed the team and shifted priorities. Since then, I've had absolutely nothing and I've exhausted all my other connections in the industry with similar results.

I've been applying constantly. I know the market is in a bad spot right now for juniors and entry-level people, but I can't even get anyone to respond to my applications and I'm feeling pretty down about it. I feel like I could make an impression if I got into a room with somebody and could talk about my previous job, but I'm just not getting to that point.

I think I really fucked up prioritizing working at said company making software instead of internships and now I'm feeling screwed. Am I screwed? Am I overreacting? Do I just need to keep at it or do I need to go back for my master's? I really don't want to do that... I'm not sure I can financially do that. I dunno. Give me advice?

Honestly, I'm so done. None of the YouTube videos are helpful. Some videos have projects that are so basic and lazy, some are very much tied to a specific platform, like Cloudflare, AWS and GCP, and some are so insanely difficult, I am not sure what project I'm supposed to do.

Some say: to-do projects are too basic. Some say that URL shortener is not worth it. Some say that real-time chat apps are overdone. There's also front-end stuff, like React, Vue and Svelte. And if that's not worse, there's also opinionated answers, for back-end like for example, Rust being the future, avoiding JS or Python, or using niche backend like Phoenix or Laravel and micro-framework in some niche functional language. Then there's also this low-code/no-code stuff. We're also supposed to learn extras like Docker, Kubernetes, websockets, service workers and what-not other stuff.

I've wasted most of my time worrying about the stack and idea, that I've left them incomplete. What do I even make then as my project? A git hosting platform replica? A live-streaming social media? Almost like as if people are looking to hire a one-man army to handle the entire department. I've also completed the core lectures for FSO, but I'm still struggling.

Hello all! I'm a senior dev at a bank and am considering making my second attempt at Amazon's interview process. My first attempt was almost two years ago. Made it through the code challenge but not the four interviews.

I wanted to hear from current Amazon devs what it's like there right now. Pros? Cons? Any insight given current market dynamics?

I have a young family now and so going through the process again would truly be an investment for me. My main motivation is the comp package, having the big A on my resume, and seeing what it's like in the big leagues.

Do sane people still try to get jobs there? Are you walking on egg shells waiting for the layoff hammer to drop?

I'm a career transitioner looking to get a higher paying job working as a Web Developer. I've been self teaching for a bit over 3.5 years now and am currently working part time at a very small start up while still working on my own personal projects and slowly researching and studying CS topics.

I have been networking, mainly online and some locally. I also have been trying desperately to get away from mainstream social media platforms (left instagram, left reddit). But I find myself being highly encouraged by those within my network to keep my LinkedIn profile maintained and regularly post as a part of appealing to recruiters. I dislike the LinkedIn platform and what I perceive to be toxic positivity that proliferates on there. I also have reservations on hosting all my code on Github, but that seems to be what everyone defaults to for showcasing their portfolio.

I generally want to use alternatives to FAANG products whenever possible, and even though it's not in the acronym, I include Microsoft in this list. I'd like to move away from using Microsoft products (LinkedIn) and their acquired platforms (Github) without nuking my potential career prospects.

This is more asking about long term advice as I believe as a new developer, this may not be possible (?).

Nevertheless, I'm seeking any advice on how to still advance my career in tech while staying off of these major platforms.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

TLDR; New web developer wants advice on how to continue to advance career without use of major media platforms, specifically LinkedIn, but also Github.

There's this new thing (to me) going around called "automated recruitment". From contacting candidates, to assessment, to (sometimes even) job offer, the person just goes through a pipeline. There are a few products that provide this experience and others that only do a part (contact, assessment, contract + onboarding, whatever else).

I ended up in one of these pipelines and was assessed by TestGorilla, which was a very unpleasant experience. So I'm curious if someone got through something similar and what their experience during and afterwards (working in a place like that) was like.

I'm currently studying CS and I'll get my bachelor's degree next year. I've been searching for remote SWE internships for months now and have not had any luck. I even made a project to put on my resume and it's still just rejection email after rejection email. Maybe I need more projects? What tips do you have for getting an Internship?

I really don't want to go back to my previous job cause working with old people in rural America as a minority is literally hell. I think I might just go into omega debt instead lol.

Hey everyone,

I haven't had that great of luck landing a new-grad/entry-level role since I graduated 9 months ago (May 2023). I'm thinking of changing my career focus and possibly pivoting out of tech.

For context, I have almost 6 months of mediocre internship experience as an Embedded Software Engineer. I also have experience being a coding team lead for a project as part of a club activity at my uni for two semesters, to which I actually I enjoyed. As for roles, I've been applying to Embedded SWE, general SWE, hardware SWE, and systems engineering roles.

While this experience looks okay on my resume as a new-grad, it's been a struggle for me in searching for a job, and getting through the technical interviews. There's this element of dread in looking for jobs, preparation for job interviews, doing leetcode and even while working on personal projects.

Recently I've been thinking of looking into becoming an accountant or something similar since I like crunching numbers and since credit card churning, and FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) plans interest me a lot. So I'd have to go back to school and prepare for the CPA Exam. If I were to stay in tech though, I would consider going into IT by getting the CCNA certification, maybe.

I could use some advice from those with experience, and I could also use advice from people who have pivoted in or out of tech and how you handled executing a career change.

This dude is extremely persistent about having irrelevant things his way, and when he doesn't get it, he acts as if it were a personal attack. Do you guys have any argument or method to deal with this kind of people?

I used to say "whatever" and let him have things his way, but as I got more experienced I started to listen more to his arguments and basically respond "this makes no sense" (not with those exact words, of course).

Be it in terms of culture, processes, challenges, ways of working...

Seems like a pretty common pattern to move from elsewhere in the world to the Silicon Valley, curious to see if people want to share experiences.

I feel like lately a lot of job boards have become populated with scams, training courses disguised as jobs and the few jobs that are posted are just posted for show. Indeed.com is a good example as it used to be decent some years ago and now it's hard to find an actual listed job. Linkedin is okay so far.

What job board do like you use when looking for where to apply? What are some decent job boards that like you had success with? Are there any job boards aren't well known and still good?

Are there any community similar to "resume reviews" subreddits on Reddit?

[update] As suggested by @mac@programming.dev and @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de

made post in !engineering_resumes@programming.dev

https://programming.dev/post/9428024

Hello everyone,

Wanted to discuss that topic as every year a few people consider a PhD.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/11175824

> Tips for getting contract work > > I'm looking for part-time and/or short term contract work, but having a hard time because all the major job sites have either no ability to filter, or the posters just select every option so their post shows up in every search. > > Does anyone have any tips on how to find this kind of work? Is it best to source it on my own, or are there good agencies to work with? > > I'm looking for any kind of developer roll (I've done backend and full stack), and am open to mentoring/tutoring as well.

I have 7 years of experience, at this point software development is mostly a job. I have hobbies that have nothing to do with it.

I'm curious to see if this is the general trends, or if people are still fidgeting with side projects even after years in the industry.

What talking with a friend who transitioned from marketing into cloud (AWS) and then into security, and he spends a lot of time studying to ensure he understands all the concepts required for technical discussions.

Curious to see what the community opinions are. Feel free to share your initial background as well.

Curious to see the answers, as I know some people just work a few hours per day

Asking because I'm currently in a pretty happy position. Work is chill, colleagues are nice, full remote, pay is quite good. I've been here for one year and a half, and I could see myself staying here almost long term. My practice lead has been here for more then 10 years, he still seems pretty happy.

I know that goes against the usual consensus of moving every 3-5 years, so I wanted to see what you think about this.

Hello everyone,

I was about to post a link to an interesting article (https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/measuring-developer-productivity-bae), but I then remembered that this community only allows questions.

Could we maybe update that rule so that interesting career-related articles can be shared too? The alternative I see is having a dedicated "cscareer" community, but I don't think it would be really useful as the current activity here is quite low

Not really looking myself, but just curious to see if people have insights to share

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/7188164

> This community is currently admin run and doesnt have a dedicated mod team. Recently been getting a bit more activity > > I just went through and updated the sidebar for the community to give more of a description about it. If youre interested feel free to say so below > > !cs_career_questions@programming.dev > > Note: to be a mod its preferred if your account is within the instance since lemmy doesnt handle cross-instance modding that well and this makes it so you have access to features added to pangora that other instances may not have

We usually hear that it's London or Zurich due to high salaries being available there, but the high cost of living might take away a good part of it.

In your experience, which is the best city? Feel free to give your own criteria, be it the weather, culture, ability to navigate in English, etc.

I am planning to write some articles related to tech news to pass time. I am just wondering whether it is a good thing to include those in resume to strengthen my portfolio. I don't really mind writing them even if it doesn't, but I just have some space in my resume that could be filled with some good things.

Who here has gotten a dev job in the last few months and is excited about it?

Did you bump your pay? Improve your work life balance? Get a better manager or team? Are working on something you enjoy?

I want to hear all the positive career news you folks have to give!

If you look up my username on LinkedIn, you can get a good summary of my career. Most of my jobs have been go in, fix things, then on to the next thing; though the immediate COVID period was pretty bumpy in that regard (shorter-term gigs). I'm pretty sure I need another cert or two at this point, but have had some family issues distracting me the past few months from studying/focusing on what's next. I'm also working three different things right now (1 5-10hr/wk PT job + 2 intermittent gigs). I can't remember the job market being this bad or picky in my life; and I actively wonder how I'd be able to leave the field entirely. It feels like everyone wants a unicorn on the cheap these days.

Something with a "solid" 10-15/hrs a week would be an improvement over what I have going on right now; let alone full-time work. How do I even find such a thing on LinkedIn/Indeed/whatnot? Reddit's gotten me at least two jobs in the past, but the state of things there seems to be less promising these days. I figured I'd ask here to see if anyone else is in a similar situation, and how they're managing.

Thank you.

I just graduated with a B.S. in CS in May 2023. I've been working at a big non tech company in a data engineering type of role with AWS and Terraform. My team's culture, team members, and PTO hours are great. The work is easy, but I also don't learn much from it.

I've only been at the job for three months, but I was just headhunted by a recruiter for a tech company similar to iRobot ( they don't sell robot vacuums, but they sell hardware with similar levels of tech behind it and are in the same stage of growth and have also been recently bought out by a magma company). They are offering about 25% higher base than my current total comp. Both jobs are remote btw.

However, I am wary of the notorious culture of the magma company that bought it and how often that new parent company fires its devs. I am also wary of how a 3 month job would look like on my resume.

Edit: yes, this is in the US

Poor mental and physical health condition is the reason why I did not apply for college placements, and I've been jobless since then. Looking at the job page, I get discouraged so easily, as they are paying laughably low wages while also looking for experience and skill, and I'm having second thoughts about completing my degree.

I have graduated at the end of last September, and it has been more than a year. I don't have any job experience, including internship. What should I start with? I've been learning SvelteKit for quite some time, I'm taking a break from my portfolio webpage project right now, and learning to create a TUI editor in C. Any advice would be appreciated.

What do you think about applying (or hiring) applicants who have experience but not in the specific stack of the job? I've found jobs in fields I'm passionate about, but I don't always have matching experience in the stack. Does YOE matter more than stack or is stack experience quintessential?

Ex: 5yrs experience in C++ but the job asks for 5yrs experience and Node.js

I know some basic HTML, CSS. JS, and very little React -- I'm learning it currently. One of the things I see mentioned online is freelancing as a way to earn income. Now, I've tried this before in the past on UpWork, and it was nearly impossible to get anything out of it, I rarely received a response and that required submitting a lot of proposals which in turn cost a lot of money.

When I go on UpWork, many of the jobs need WordPress developers or an array of skills I simply do not have and appear to require a lot of time to learn.

Furthermore, I'm in an odd place financially and career wise, where I can't seem to get a job anywhere, not even at places that would've hired me before, and certainly not as a junior developer.

I suppose I'm asking for advice. If freelancing is an option to pursue, how do I go about it in the cheapest and most cost effect way possible? If freelancing is not the right option, then what can I do with what I do know? Lastly, is the job market in a weird state for every sector?

Hey there, everybody. Recent joiner who's been lurking. I have been searching the posts here and gotten some great info from them, but I've now got some questions of my own. Hopefully, they're ones that others have and they might benefit from the thread, as well.

TL;DR: I feel like I need more skills to apply for new positions, and I don't know which skills to learn or the best places to cultivate them that an employer would recognize as legitimate.

I am currently working as a Data Analyst (though that title is a reach, you'll see why below) since Spring of 2022. It's my first corporate position, though not close to my first work experience, and I have advanced very quickly. I am in line for my second promotion right now, depending on the completion of some goals. The trouble is, this company fucking sucks. It's a mess at every level. I am one of the most competent people on my team "data analytics" wise, and some of these people have been here for the better part of a decade. I really don't say that to make myself sound like some sort of savant, but to highlight just how poor the standards of quality and skill are. Our R&amp;D department is basically one guy whose file organization is about as clear as muck. All it took to be a walk-on was some creativity and a VERY baseline understanding of computers.

All of this to say that I do not have the same industry skills as other data analysts. My team is really pigeon-holed in the scope of what we do. Without giving away too much detail, it's basically just bioinformatics quality assurance. So the softwares I now know, and the processes I have learned, are largely industry and company specific. I opted to teach myself Excel macro construction to make my own life easier. I'm only one of two out of 15 people on my team that knows how to make them. All of it is self study. I can't go to anyone at my company, because they don't know anything, either. They don't even "allow" us to use SQL, and the data we produce is far, far too large for Excel.

I am currently finishing up the Google Data Analytics Certificate on Coursera. But I don't feel that any of it is enough when I read these job ads. There's another course that follows this one, but I'm thinking that I'd rather pivot to data science. That just leaves me with more uncertainty on which skills to invest in.

All this to ask: once I've completed the Data Analytics cert, what do next? Those boot camps don't seem worth it price wise, and I imagine that workforce is very saturated. I have considered applying to graduate programs for bioinformatics, but I'm on the fence about returning to academia unless I can get some sort of grant, and that's so competitive these days I'm not sure if I will outshine other candidates. I have some experience in JS. I am learning Python, R, and SQL. I have ordered the book "Automate the Boring Stuff" for my python learning, too.

Once I decide what to do, it'll be easy. I'm very good at learning these things and solving my own issues as I learn (which is most computer shit anyways). The problem I have is that I just don't feel like I have a good read on the industry outside of the very small corner I'm in.

Thank you in advance. Sorry that got so long-winded.