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Search - "resume advice"
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How I've got my previous job?
Imagine you are in a wild techno club. Dark aisles, A dj from berlin behind the turntables blasting out hard beats, couples kissing on extasy pills.
And there was a friend I've didn't meet in ages. "how do you do?" she asks. "ah... you know i'm on a job hunt for a year i feel misrable". "really? my dad is looking for somebody, send him your resNZNZNZ!" "WHAT? can't hear you!" "Send him your resume!" "Ahhh! okay great!"
So on 24. december 5pm, snow outside, i've sat on wooden table in the kitchen of her father discussing the conditions for the job. It was the start of a crazy time. Dining with millionaires on their Castles. Shaking hands with top businesses leaders. Going to China and having dinner with the 500 richest chinese at once. Wild!
so my advice for you nerds, don't stay in your comfort zone behind the screen on weekends. Vistit a techno club sometimes. You may find a pretty girl/boy with a CEO as a father.rant last job techno wk77 i'm a graphic designer switzerland job hunting rich people are just like you&me china14 -
Let me share a piece of advice to entry level devs that are getting ready for job interviews that I wish someone gave to me when I was first looking for work straight out of school. Do not focus making yourself look good to this company by trying to make your resume flashy or trying to oversell yourself. Although its important to present yourself sure, but it should not be the foundation for you to base your interview goals around. Rather focus on the company itself. Find out whether the company itself uses modern technology,practices and upholds to project management and the software development cycle, find out how they work,communicate and develop as a team. Simply put focus on whether they are worth working for instead of looking like your worth being hired. Can they collaborate,communicate and solve problems efficiently. Otherwise you may end up getting hired and hating your job. Just a thought and some advice on my own experiences. Hope it helps someone.3
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So about 3 weeks ago I was laid off from my dream job due to corporate bullshit. From the feedback received since then it is clear that the company made a mistake hiring a brand new React dev while they really needed an experienced one. Because the consultants who were supposed to be weren't. And the other in-house front end dev was an elitist asshole. And I never received proper feedback until it was too late. Actually I still don't have proper feedback save for some vague stuff which really sounds like the kind of feedback you'd give someone in the middle of their learning process. They even said eventually given more time I could have made it. But alas they felt they had to make a call in the best interest of the company.
Things moved fast since then, I took a week to recover and then I spent time updating my resume before getting back in touch with the recruiter who got me my last job. Great guy and he was happy to help me again. Applied to some positions, got some replies, first in person interview I go to they are immediately willing to take me on.
So now I'm supposed to start tomorrow but somehow I'm having my doubts. The company isn't an IT company but rather a fashion company. They believe in developing in house tools because past attempts with external companies resulted in them trying to push their vision through. Knowing who they worked with I agree, they tried to oversell all the time. But after talking with their developers I noticed they are behind on their knowledge. But so am I. So there was no tech interview which means I am getting an easy way in. And if they honour their word I'll be signing tomorrow for around my old wages.
So you'd think that sounds good right? And yet I'm worried it's going to be another shit show working on software without proper analysis or best practices. I mean the devs aren't total idiots, they are mediors like me and I think their heart is in the right place. They want to develop a good project but it will be just us 3 making a modern .net wpf application with the same functionality of the old Access based system currently in use. I was urged by the boss to draw on my experience and I think he wants me to help teach them too. But I'm painfully aware for my decade since graduating I'm a less than average .net dev who struggles with theory and never worked a job where I had someone more experienced to teach me. I coasted most of the time in underpaid jobs due to various reasons. But I'd always get mad over shitty code and practices. Which I realize is hypocritical for someone who couldn't explain what a singleton class is or who still fails at separation of concerns.
So yeah my question for the hivemind is what advice would you give a dev like me? I honestly dislike how poor I perform but it often feels like an insurmountable climb, and being over 30 makes it even more depressing. On the other hand I know I should feel blessed to find a workplace who seems to genuinely believe that people grow and develop and wishes to support me in this. Part of me thinks I should just go in, relax, but also learn till I'm there where I want to be and see if these people are open to improving with me. But part of me also feels I'm rushing into this, picking the first best offer, and it sure feels like a step backwards somehow. And that then makes me feel like an ugly ungrateful person who deserves her bad luck because she expects of others what she can't even do herself :(4 -
Hi ppl of devRant! I’m not really a dev but I love reading your rants :) I decided to post my first rant because I think I could use some advice from you.
Background: I’m a student just finished my first year at uni. Earlier I applied for a developer intern just for fun and somehow magically got in. However, I'm a statistics major (not even CS!) and only know basic java stuff. I guess they hired me because I speak ok english and a little french? I live in a non-English speaking country but the company has a lot of foreign customers.
The problem is, the longer I stay, the more I feel that they only hired me out of charity *sobs* There isn’t much for me to do, and most of the time I couldn’t understand what my co-workers are doing so I can’t really help them either. Plus, they don’t seem to need my language skill as much, so I kinda feel useless here.
It’s my 5th (maybe already 6th?) week here and the only thing I did was fixing an itty bitty bug that literally needed only one additional line of code. Yes it took me a while to set up the environment, learn js from scratch since they use js for this project, and locate the issue but I’m pretty sure it’d probably take someone who’s familiar with the project, like, 3 mins? And now that I’ve fixed it and the merge request was passed, I’m out of work to do again. I talked to the lead and he pretty much just said “read more of the code”. Guess I can do that. I’ve spent like 4 days going through the code but is this really promising?
I want to spend time on learning actual stuff rather than yet another resume ornament. So what should I do? Should I ask for more help/more work to do, or keep learning on my own (I’m quite interested in algorithms, maybe I could make use of my time to study that?), or even leave?
Sorry for the long rant. I know ass-kicking devs probably hate useless, underqualified ppl at work in real life but believe me it really hurts to be one and I hate myself enough already so I’d appreciate any thoughts/advice :/10 -
As a part-time student, I have been having a very hard time getting a job. I have worked as a developer before but I had to leave my job due to various reasons but I never stopped brushing up my skills on different levels. So I have an employment gap in my resume. So what?!
Now, the moment an employer hears that I'm still a (fucking part-time) student, the assholes immediately turn their faces away and never call back. And I know that I'm a good developer (at least I can pass the stupid assignments they ask me to solve) and that there's a shortage in good developers in my country anyway. It's just depressing!
Anyway, I had to let it out somewhere. Also, if you have some advice for me, I'd love to hear it.2 -
Idk despite whatever my resume may suggest, I think I'm still a Junior. Dunno if that'd ever change tbh. I mean, that's the downside of "cutting edge tech", right?
I don't have any advice.
Everything important has already been said by somebody out there.7 -
Guys, I have an interview Friday to a company I don't necessarily want to work for but I need the job because I just finished a coding boot camp not too long ago. What are some templates for Fintech, business macho companies that I can work on? Also, my resume sucks ass. Any advice is appreciated.5
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have a couple friends now who have gotten dev jobs at microsoft. I've since turned down their offers to apply and have them vouch for me twice now - not sure if their recommendations would mean anything to begin with at such a place.
this has gotten me a lot of criticism from peers and mentors who have chided me for "throwing away a golden ticket" on my resume.
at first I declined because I sure as fuck did not believe I had the skills to last very long there - and truth is I probably still don't.
but now I see it as a case of the cliche "corporate devil" that everything I believe in in terms of software freedom is squarely against.
I mean, I don't really think I have the chops to make it far with the open source and free software communities either, but if I had to pick a dream or a goal to move towards, that would be it. I don't want money or reputation. I just want to be free to tinker with the world as I please.
maybe I'll have the courage next hacktober... but until then, I'm just gonna focus on learning and self-improvement. no one can ridicule me for being a dumbass if I'm actually putting in the effort to learn and improve, right?
would welcome any advice for aspiring open source contributors, as I'm not really sure where to begin that wouldn't make me look like a total hack (pun not intended)5 -
I keep posting that I need job and I appreciate the feedback but I feel just saying that makes it seem like I'm not trying.
Like. I legit don't know. Could it be my cv that's a dud? Thinking of paying a resume writing thing
Cause I'm actually trying hard af to learn new stuff as well keep doing what I'm good at.
I got one interview in a year and even then they didn't gimme the chance to show tech side. It's soo tilting.
I'm actually competent though inexperienced I think.
Any advice or questions please. I legit need to sort this out this year. Like its very important that I do.
Help.13 -
I failed at university, spent too long there without ever graduating. I learned a lot through self-study, though. The only company I worked at was an arrangement with a friend whose company needed people, so I stepped in, but eventually I deserted the job after the company went out of money and I went two months straight working without getting paid. Now I feel apprehensive of putting that job experience in my resume because I didn't come out of it in good terms with the company. I have many unfinished projects but keep them private on GitHub because I feel like the code is too bad to show off. How do I even get a job, now? Should I just quit the industry altogether? Aaaaaaaaaaaaa
Right now I'm just self-studying some things I had wanted to do since college (namely computer graphics and trying to build a game engine) but never actually got to study formally because I kept failing at the prerequisite courses because I always kept distracting myself from my studies and just not putting enough effort. Anyway, I'm willing to listen to your advice and your judgment alike. I feel somewhat confident that I can actually do a good job, but I also don't feel confident enough to apply for jobs since I always feel like my skills are lacking. I know about impostor syndrome, but at the core of it is the matter: is this impostor's syndrome, or am I in fact *actually* consistently bad and incompetent? Rationally speaking I tend to feel like the latter, yet I know the only thing I can do is to try and be better. I guess.
Anyway, completely unstructured thing, just me venting off my frustration and desperation in a place where at least people will read it and possibly offer some advice. Thank you for reading this far.4 -
Hey DevRant!
Not really a rant but a question:
I just got accepted into a coding bootcamp. Have any of you been involved in one? How was it? What would you do to make it a better experience throughout? Any advice or suggestions?
It's full time, six months long and I start in October and I want to make sure I make the most of the experience and absorb as much as possible.
I'm super happy that the course appears to be less just learning JavaScript and more involved in the Computer Science side of things, even including bits about C/C++, distributed systems, algorithms and data structures, software design/testing, cryptography, database management, and computer architecture. It also, of course, covers tons of resume work, interview practice, and networking.
Thanks!5 -
!rant
TL;DR - not sure if I should take a full-time gig at my current pretty good job, or go do an internship with AWS for the summer.
Needing some wizened development career advice, guys. I am coming to a small crossroads at the moment.
I am in my last year of school getting a BS in Computer Science. I love it. I had a pretty sweet job at a cool startup, until recently, when they were bought by a bigger company. This turned out to still be alright though, since they hired everyone on to the new company to keep our codebase alive and well (it's a pretty good product that they don't want to get rid of). Except they hired me as an Intern instead, which I thought was weird, but they said that's normally what they do with peeps that are still in school. Whatevs. But then I got offered an internship at some company called Amazon Web Services to be a Systems Analyst Intern (basically cloud support engineering from the sounds of it). And then I told the cats at the new company that I was considering this internship and they started saying they'd consider giving me full-time. And they didn't want to lose me.
Well... my thing is that both are tempting. Like the company that'd offer me a full-time gig would be cool because I'd get to keep working on the projects I'm currently on and I'd be immersed in a good development cycle and whatnot. Probably more full-stack programming, which I like a good bit and want to master more of. The Amazon thing seems cool, but I worry that it'd be more of a support gig. And as well as they pay, I may not get as good of development experience. Granted I was told I could definitely get into scripting to automate various things. But I just don't know how much would actually be that. Except having Amazon on my resume would likely be pretty great to have also coming out of graduation.
Down yet another avenue of thought, the AWS internship would only be for a few months in the Summer. So there's a chance I could come back and I could get my old job back. But maybe they would see me as disloyal or something and not want me to come back. I would also likely forfeit my retention bonus (which is an ok amount, but not a deal-breaker and it's spread out over 3 years) for staying on with the company after the acquisition.
I just don't know. Would it be better to stay where I'm at or go on a wild adventure over the summer? Help me, DevRant Kenobi you're my only hope...3 -
Hi everyone, I’m a college student and I have a career question.
I was contacted by a company to apply to their recent graduate program and it seems like a great opportunity for me. In the program, they assign you to a team (AI/ML, computer vision, automation, compilers, web dev, etc).
I need to send them my resume. I want to work with their computer vision team (I took a computer vision class and fell in love with it) but my resume only has web dev roles (I’ve only had web dev internships).
I’m worried that because my resume only has web dev stuff, I will be assigned to their web dev team instead of their computer vision team.
I really don’t like web dev anymore and I’m not sure how I can express that. Any ideas? Should I add an blurb in my resume expressing my passion for computer vision?2 -
In reply to this:
https://devrant.com/rants/260590/...
As a senior dev for over 13 years, I will break you point by point in the most realistic way, so you don't get in troubles for following internet boring paternal advices.
1) False. Being go-ahead, pro active and prone to learn is a good thing in most places.
This doesn't mean being an entitled asshole, but standing for yourself (don't get put down and used to do shit for others, or it will become the routine) and show good learning and exploration skills will definitely put you under a good light.
2)False. 2 things to check:
a) if the guy over you is an entitled asshole who thinkg you're going to steal his job and will try to sabotage you or not answer acting annoyed, or if it's a cool guy.
Choose wisely your questions and put them all togheter. Don't be that guy that fires questions in crumbles, one every 2 minutes.
Put them togheter and try to work out the obvious and what can be done through google or chatgpt by yourself. Then collect the hard ones for the experienced guy and ask them all at once. He's been put over you to help you.
3) Idiotic. NO.
Working code = good code. It's always been like this.
If you follow this idiotic advice you will annoy everyone.
The thing about renaming variables and crap it's called a standard. Most company will have a document with one if there is a need to follow it.
What remains are common programming conventions that everyone mostly follows.
Else you'll end up getting crazy at all the rules and small conventions and will start to do messy hot spaghetti code filled with syntactic sugar that no one likes, included yourself.
4)LMAO.
This mostly never happens (seniors send to juniors) in real life.
But it happens on the other side (junior code gets reviewed).
He must either be a crap programmer or stopped learning years ago(?)
5) This is absolutely true.
Programming is not a forgiving job if you're not honest.
Covering up mess in programming is mostly impossible, expecially when git and all that stuff with your name on it came out.
Be honest, admit your faults, ask if not sure.
Code is code, if it's wrong it won't work magically and sooner or later it will fire back.
6)Somewhat true, but it all depends on the deadline you're given and the complexity of the logic to be implemented.
If very complex you have to divide an conquer (usually)
7)LMAO, this one might be true for multi billionaire companies with thousand of employees.
Normal companies rarely do that because it's a waste of time. They pass knowledge by word or with concise documentation that later gets explained by seniors or TL's to the devs.
Try following this and as a junior:
1) you will have written shit docs and wasted time
2) you will come up to the devs at the deadline with half of the code done and them saying wtf who told you to do that
8) See? What an oxymoron ahahah
Look at point 3 of this guy than re-read this.
This alone should prove you that I'm right for everything else.
9) Half true.
Watch your ass. You need to understand what you're going to put yourself into.
If it's some unknown deep sea shit, with no documentations whatsoever you will end up with a sore ass and pulling your hair finding crumbles of code that make that unknown thing work.
Believe me and not him.
I have been there. To say one, I've been doing some high level project for using powerful RFID reading antennas for doing large warehouse inventory with high speed (instead of counting manually or scanning pieces, the put rfid tags inside the boxes and pass a scanner between shelves, reading all the inventory).
I had to deal with all the RFID protocol, the math behind radio waves (yes, knowing it will let you configure them more efficently and avoid conflicts), know a whole new SDK from them I've never used again (useless knowledge = time wasted and no resume worthy material for your next job) and so on.
It was a grueling, hair pulling, horrible experience that brought me nothing in return execpt the skill of accepting and embracing the pain of such experiences.
And I can go on with other stories. Horror Stories.
If it's something that is doable but it's complex, hard or just interesting, go for it. Expecially if the tech involved is something marketable.
10) Yes, and you can't stop learning, expecially now that AI will start to cover more and more of our work.4 -
Since I sort of started web development seriously about two years and a little bit I’ve decided to raise the bar and intentionally lie in my resume to hopefully find a job that can help me to sustain my wife who is sick and my newborn son. I changed my experience to +3 years and out some “ghost” projects. No offers. Then, I put 5 years and tweaked projects and experience here and there. Again...nothing, nada, no offers. Should I just go all above and put 10 years and experience such as Microsoft and big 500 companies? I mean I hate to do this but I feel like I’m in a hole than I can’t get out while I’m gaining more and more knowledge every single day. I’m learning a lot about JavaScript which is my fav language as well as React. Authentication/Authorization and it’s different hierarchies/ inheritance methodologies as well as single and multi sign on methods applied to scalable web apps. I just what would be the outcome after lying so big. I hate lying but what’s so wrong with the market that I can’t find a job? Hold your fire and put in my shoes before ranting me. I don’t give this advice to anyone it’s just my experience looking for a job and my actual situation. ( currently working as IT Help Desk Level II)4
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!rant
so, I somehow got an interview with NASDAQ for the summer internship this year. somehow it was the only company that had cleared my resume for the interview process, other companies didn't even scheduled one.
and I messed up the first technical interview.
the interviewer asked me to find the largest element in a nested list in python.
for ex [[3,4],[5,2,9],[1,7]] would return [4,9,7]
it was a verbal interview on call and he asked what would I use? Lambda function or list comprehension.
I said lambda function. (I knew it was list comprehension, if I had to code I wouldn't have got confused between the two)
later he asked a couple of questions about linux and boot processes, I could answer some of the basic ones but not after 3rd or 4th question.
now I don't think I have anything to do for summer, as it's a little too late for finding the internships.
any advice?10 -
I'm a second year college student and I've had two interviews that both went well at one of the biggest security companies in the US. They said they'd get back to me within two weeks, and I've never been so nervous and excited in my life. I'd have to move to another state for the summer but I'd make a bit of money and have a great company on my resume if nothing else. Anybody here have any advice if I get the position?2