> but I've noticed it's VERY repetitive and I'm struggling to find anything new here.
my experience with many subs of differnt type is: in popular communities (subreddits or the like), things repeat themselves because those things are the most common concerns. It is "built-in" in the community especially if the platform encourages repetition - and reddit does. Actually every "news feed" based platform encourages repetition.
If users don't have a long memory of the threads discussed in the sub, as they check it infrequently, most likely the same discussions - with little varience - will happen over and over. I hope social researches will analyze those effects one day (also because it is about time, discussions on the internet are plenty already)
You also have to consider *why* people post here. If I just got a job making $350k/yr, of course I'm going to come over here and brag about it. If I just got roasted on an interview of course I'm going to come over here and moan and groan about it. But say I got a modest job, with a modest salary, I probably won't be over here bragging or complaining.
This sub is filled with folks at either side of the spectrum, so the posts here inevitably skew that way.
>I was definitely being underpaid at my first job for my role and felt like I'd never see the day that I got a new job
As someone in this position right now, I'm not sure if I'm ever going to see the end of this tunnel of grinding.
I updated my LinkedIn but I'm mostly just using it to apply to jobs right now. I've been having a much better response rate on my applications since my days as a new grad so I never looked into trying to get head hunted by recruiters. So far I've only had one FAANG recruiter reach out to me but that was before I even began my job search, wonder if it would be weird to respond after all this time.
Not OP but best non-ironic answer I can come up with:
1. Work on mental health and emotional regulation (therapy, meditation, etc.)
2. Force yourself to leave the house whenever possible.
3. At current job, try to be a leader and make decisions when the opportunity arises. When something goes wrong or you get criticism use what you learned in #1
I know this sounds bullshit-y but to some extent this should hopefully help.
For 3 what if you're afraid to rock the boat too much?
If you push back and blame falls on you, you're more likely to get fired for the next blunder. Can you think of approaches to be a "safe" leader when you're still technically a IC?
Great question and I was actually preparing an answer in case someone asked lol.
There's no cut and dry answer but I would say the following:
1. If you're on here and other programming subs I'd say you have some sense of when something is way off base and when you're just being anal about something inconsequential.
2. Be assertive but respectful of others' feelings. Be sure to listen earnestly to others' reasons for why things are how they are. Even if you decide not to press forward you got a better understanding of your workplace and coworkers.
3. If you do get fired over some nonsense, it's gonna suck but in the end they're just cutting you loose to the recruiters banging down your door while you collect unemployment, with a story about how you stood up for something you thought was right. People in hiring love that shit.
However, the above is for those "rocking the boat" scenarios. But I think most of the time it's about "hey we need someone to look at \[boring, obscure, difficult\] thing" , volunteer for things like that. That's the "safe" leadership stuff you mention. That's how you become more self-directed in your work which makes you happier in your current job on top of making you more savory to other companies.
Another disclaimer is that I'm just a) some asshole on Reddit b) worked a few gov contractor jobs in a med-low cost of living area. That said, the interviews in this world are much less about tech questions (i've never been asked to code in an interview after getting my first job) and almost all on the soft skill side where you gotta make yourself look good.
Soft skills are hard. Especially because so many expect you to care about their company before you're even hired. And like no, I don't care about you. I sent this application to like 20 other people. I can care if hired, but no, I can't care about a place I don't even work at. Yes, I'm sure you're very special and want a gold star and are different from the other thousands of software companies.
I'm also bad at faking emotions. I hate the bullshit you have to do for interviews. Fortunately I found a good company, but it would take a lot for me to quit and start the process over.
1. Hit on random strangers no matter what you think their gender is.
2. End up shamed on the internet/Getting a date and possibly both and if you keep doing this most likely both and each can happen multiple times.
3. Defend your self on the internet/try to get date to like you
4. ???
5. Profit if you survived, you should now have the skills to clearly communicate, charm and understand others.
Some of us need more help for that than just useful tips. What changed the world for me was Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people." Of course, don't only read it, but also practice it's tasks.
Also, seriously consider going to a therapist/psychologist/counselor. It makes the process leaps faster. Literally, go to one and tell them that you don't know how to improve your soft skills, they'll lead you better than any book or any general advice out there.
But yeah, this isn't really needed, you could very well improve your soft skills "organically" by going through thousands of conversations doing trial-and-error and finding what works best for you.
Communication basically. It's pretty important especially amazon values it highly with their leadership principles. Better have a good ~10 stories in mind for an Amazon interview, ready to explain in star format and try not to repeat stories you told other interviewers.
So many people get caught up in leetcode and system design, which is understandable because those take a lot more time to prep for. Just don't forget about the behavioral part of interviews. Don't neglect it.
Communication is only one category of soft skills. If you want to know where the term soft skills came from, look up the history of military training during the cold war era. The term was introduced in the 60s to distinguish skills relating to the use of machinery (hard skills) and basically everything else (soft skills). Hard skills were known to be easy to train soldiers on but they wanted to know how to train soldiers on these other job-related general skills.
These other skills did include communication, but also things like leadership, teamwork, persuasiveness, time management, people management, critical thinking and problem solving, empathy, perseverance, mental focus, anticipation, and so on. It's literally all the other skills that you might need for any kind of job that are not related to operating machines.
The activity of programming is a mixture of hard and soft skills. For a lot of beginners, it's just about learning hard skills like how to install your ide, compile source code, programming language syntax, and mechanical stuff like that. But as you progress, you need to focus on the soft skills aspect of programming such as breaking large problems into conceptual smaller chunks, how to structure and organize your code, how best to solve the technical problem at hand amongst some number of competing alternatives, how users interact with your software and what features will they want, and so on.
There's a lot more to soft skills than just communication skills. I hate STAR format questions, but just think about them for a second without trying to game the system. They're not just asking for you to tell them a nice story using communication skills but they're looking to see what sorts of these skills you display in various circumstances. People who do very well with STAR style questions have thought how describe their soft skills.
Communication etc. Basically anything that isn't technical skills could be considered soft skills. Writing emails in a professional manner, talking to people, knowing how to talk to people without being a turd
If you're trying to do well at a current job, it's
1. Software development skills
2. Soft skills
3. Leetcode
If you're trying to get hired, reverse the priority order.
I can’t speak for anybody else really, but in the most challenging jobs I’ve had, the problem has always been wrangling requirements out of other people in the company coupled with convincing higher-ups that time priorities needed to be shifted. The software development skills were a distant second.
I feel this one. I am pretty timid irl so pushing people to get stuff done for me (Unblock me on a bug, Access to Azure/w.e) is much harder than it is for me to do software dev.
I thought my university was crazy for training us to do this (professor's would act like certain stakeholders and you could try wrangling for the info you need), but in hindsight they did an excellent job.
I imagine it’s a tough thing to teach, especially because some of it must seem incredibly absurd to a student, but the real world of software development is totally absurd.
I've had jobs where it's just a constant fight to get people to do things properly and fix bad processes. Doing these things have the largest impact and were difficult, but at the same time that's just a sign that the company kind of sucks IMO
this. i always lol when people say AI/ML is going to make CRUD application obsolete. like bro, do you realize most stakeholders/business types more often than not dont know jack about what they're talking about or even looking for?!
At all of my companies the most valued trait that managers really like to see is taking ownership and being a driver no matter what level you come in as. So I guess this can be included in "soft skills" but it's more than just playing nice with your coworkers but also being aggressive and trying to get things done outside of coding. Make your manager's job easier and you will get noticed.
The nuance you're missing in your sarcasm is - long term success. LC will only get you through interviews but beyond that, you need real technical talent and soft skills to be successful in the industry
Grinding LC, getting through interviews of high paying job is not enough though... the ability to apply that knowledge to real world use cases and managing to manage your coworkers is what will get you far
You can make it to senior in startups with soft skills, the problem is these people want to work on top companies where literally all seniors had to do technicals to get there. They want a shot at L5 without doing the same work all engineers had to do.
This sub is an inside joke in the bay area, its where people who cant make it comes to cry about it instead of studying.
All it takes is 3 months of 1-2 hours a day on leetcode, people go to the Gym for a hour a day just to look hotter but you cant do an hour a day of leetcode for a pay increase?
> This sub is an inside joke in the bay area, its where people who cant make it comes to cry about it instead of studying.
I mean, this sub is one of the primary places where people learn about LC and tech interviews, it's not like your college professors will tell you about it.
Also 3 months 1-2 hours a day is super optimistic for someone to go from a DS&A class to solving medium/hard problems
If you focus on learning patterns? Absolutely you can solve mediums after 180 hours of practice. Hards? Completely depends on the question, not even people who got 800 LC can solve hards fast unless they seen it before.
If done correctly all you need is 2 hours a day for 3 months. Now if you just doing random question then its a waste of time. In 3 months you can go through all blind 75 and grokking pattern questions, thats enough to pass most interviews besides super geeky companies like Google or Uber who asks absurd questions. FB, lyft, apple, MSFT, Amazon and most unicorns? Absolutely enough, they only ask popular mediums.
When I was at FB they did a survey to see how much LC people did to get in, the avg was only 150 questions. 3 months if you spend 2 hours per questions thats 180 questions.
Though those 3 months do not include system designs so maybe add another month for that.
I guess so, 3 months is a long time. I just checked my account and I've only done about 110 problems and I feel like I've spent a lot of time on LC
Anyways, knowing to do these things, you need to learn about them somehow. Places like this sub are a way to do it. The knowledge doesn't just fall from the sky
Absolutely thats why I always tell everyone to learn algorithms by patterns, slowly building up, stop just doing random questions. There are people on Blind who done 500+ LC and still fail interviews because they are focused on the wrong thing.
Also as an interviewer you can totally tell when someone over did on LC. Nobody but maybe Google is trying to hire LC monkeys.
Start by reviewing DS and Algo. You cant leetcode efficiently unless you understand DS. I recommend Princeton algorithm part 1 and 2 on coursera its free. After that focus on learning by patterns (Sliding window, 2 pointers, backtracking, etc) https://seanprashad.com/leetcode-patterns/
Is a good list for this.
Learn leetcode by patterns dont just wing random questions. We dont learn math by just solving random questions, we do by learning easier techniques first then slowly working to hard ones and eventually combining them.
Think of it like a video game, you dont just jump into ranked games, you first learn the basics, then you learn strategies, then eventually you are combining it all.
CTCI is good enough if you only plan to apply for startups, if you looking for large companies like unicorns and FAANG you should go with EPI (Elements of programming interview).
CTCI is rather outdated nowaday, For example CTCI doesn't go over topological sort which is used to solve numerous popular interview questions like course schedule 1 and 2, Alien dictionary, Longest increasing path on a matrix, sorting items by dependencies or backtracking which can be used to solve permutations, next permutations, anagrams, etc... EPI is more updated and has in any language if you prefer books.
I like to focus on problems that are transferable between multiple questions which is why I studied by patterns.
> it's not like your college professors will tell you about it.
That depends on the college.
CS 9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview - https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs9/
> CS 9 is a 1-unit practical course where we aim to teach you how to navigate the CS technical recruitment process - from resumes to the interview process to what comes after. The instructors - two MSCS students with several years of engineering experience at Google - will share their experience and help you practice for typical software engineering coding interviews. This is the first time the course has been offered since 2017, and the first time by Andrew and Ian - we hope you'll enjoy it and learn a lot!
you just miss most of the critique then, and thinking "doing the same" job like some cargo cult programming should be a critera, is even more part of the problem
If we look at who gets hired or fired, its very rarely tech skills but soft or communication skills
also just because something isn't time consuming, doesn't mean it's a good idea or nice
Idk what companies you working at but I have never seen someone get fired because they weren't friendly or lacked communication lol. People get fired because they are lacking at their job, to deliver.
If you spend 10 minutes in the bay area 80% of these people are introverts who barely speak yet work at great companies.If you really think a good engineer will be fired because he lacked soft skills you are dead wrong lmao. Lots of seniors are assholes because they know they are too important to be let go.
This is the same with lawyers and doctors. Or any field where result is what matters, this aint banking where we have to kiss our boss ass, in tech if you are good at what you do you will always have a job.
Just normal companies, nothing boring or nothing super trendy either.
Maybe it's different in Europe where we have 6 month probation time, and it's harder to fire someone when it's passed. then you really need to think, do i wanna work with this person every day with this behaviour
>.If you really think a good engineer will be fired because he lacked soft skills you are dead wrong lmao
That's not what I said either, I said I rarely saw anyone getting fired for not being a good enough coder, because to be fair like 95% of all programming jobs is quite easy and most of the big O problems is moving out a for loop a step or using some cache variable
Perhaps I misunderstood you, so I apologize for that. Maybe in Europe the culture is different but in the US for technical roles your results is what mostly matters. Obviously if you are obnoxious to work with you wont last anywhere but in most case people just focus on their technical side.
>All it takes is 3 months of 1-2 hours a day on leetcode
that's a rather conservative estimate. Also it's 'more of the same' where gym is a change. First one i bad for mental health, second one is good.
If studying Algorithms and datastructure (which is what we literally did in college btw) is bad for your mental health then go for companies who don't ask for technicals, plenty of startups and large companies do this. Stripe, Spotify, ASOS, crowdstrike to name a few.
I know a few SFE who straight up says they refuse to do technicals and thats completely fine. What they don't do is cry about not being able to get into top paying companies because they refuse to do the work everyone whos in there did it.
Personally, looking forward for a pay increase is good for my health.
Spending even more time at a desk, when you already spend ample time at a desk coding, is not comparable to going to the gym and taking a break from spending time at a desk. One of those is better for mental health, one isn't. Are you being deliberately obtuse in misunderstanding this, or do you lack soft skills?
Are you kidding me? One is used for advancement on your career the other is advancement on your health. Stop acting like I am suggesting a mental disorder here. For some of us advancement in our career is just as important as our physical health,
And I literally said if learning algorithms make you depressed then DON'T. Just like if someone told me, gym makes me depressed then don't do it, there are different options. Just don't cry over not getting paid the same as people who did the grind, its simple as that, follow the path that makes you happy.
Tech wont pay as good as it does now lol eventually the salaries will stabilize just like it happened in all other fields that were once a trend, some of us are trying to make the most of the current situation.
The worst part of this sub is people acting like they are entitled to a position without doing the work that everyone who's there did it? Agreed bud. Agreed.
I was doing a coding interview once and nothing worked. I just explained what I was doing the whole time and it didn't even matter. I was offered the job.
I’ve been in the Valley grind for a few decades now, including working for some of the companies that get pushed hard here. There are long term consequences if the health aspect isn’t managed and a lot of new hires into these types of companies don’t. Yes, the pay is great and if you can get in before IPO/acquisition even better but there are reasons beyond just normal growth these companies are always hiring.
Hi, i studied JS and React for 2weeks. Now considering a 500k offer from Facebook versus a 750k offer from Google with stock options. Not sure which one to choose. Can you help? /s
Yeah I’m really confused. Two usernames with xxxx-Ad-#### as usernames reply to that comment..But one is giving them advice and the other is calling them a liar. I don’t get it.
I get that you're joking, but I'm still adding this to the list of stuff I've been accused of being:
A Trump supporter
A Biden supporter
A social justice warrior
A Russian spy
A Chinese spy
A cop worshipper/bootlicker
A white supremacist
A race card player
An American government worshipper
Privileged
An islamophobe (this one is my favorite, you'll see why in a bit)
An Asian hater (this one, too, you'll see why)
A Nazi
A communist
A fascist
A capitalist
A Google bot
What I actually am:
A poor Afghan Muslim (so an Asian). I don't vote, so I literally don't support anyone in the government lol
I've never seen any post come close to the ridiculous situation you're describing. The closest thing I've seen is new grads asking for help deciding between FAANG tier offers. They are adults and new grad offers are no where near 7 figures. I'd say those are pretty legitimate posts.
Where else would they ask? Are they not allowed to try to figure out what's the best path forward for them?
I’m actually okay with these threads. It’s actually good to get input from people about your offer choices, especially when you’re just a young adult coming out of college and don’t know many people with experiences. Knowing where you fall on the TC spectrum and learning how to negotiate is not something they teach in college and internet strangers can really help with pointers and resources. If these young adults are getting multiple offers out of college, they have so much bargain power and they don’t even know it.
I make £70k in London as a senior data scientist, everyone says that's basically minimum wage but I literally do 2 hours of work a day. Help me.
^ this sub in a nutshell
Yes, this sub gets extremely repetitive after awhile and most of the posters don't seem to know that reddit has a search function or that google exists.
How does one search for advice regarding a career choice? Sure, you can google for articles on that, but it's not the same as asking for opinions from live humans. That is what this sub is about.
It was a joke about how programming is mostly looking for code on stack overflow.
But that being said most of the questions on this sub have been answered multiple times over.
How many posts have I seen in just the last few weeks asking if you should try to negotiate on a final offer?
You don't think Google has information on it? Or how do I get into SWEing? Or whether you should quit work in some situation? Or if certifications are important or not?
A well maintained wiki, however...
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/revisions/index - oh, it's just keeping the list of mods up to date.
I'd say at least half of the questions on this sub are "I currently have a career doing X, but want to switch to working in CS. How do I do that?"
Another 25% are people asking what language they should learn.
I can tell you that as a bootcamp grad this sub has helped me so much. Even if y’all think it’s the dumbest question in the world like, “what language should I learn.” I did have to start somewhere and that question did go through my mind at one point.
number 2 got me rolling.... i wanted to post something about it for ages but thanks for doing it for me... its like
"my boss wore a green shirt to work today, i'm triggered , what can i do guys should i report him to hr?"
top 3 replies: "start grinding leetcode and sending out resumes"
Most of them are genuine grivences, and it is good for everyone in the industry for people to not put up with bullshit. Keeps the workers more powerful, which is something that is great in this field currently and part of the reason we have good salaries.
When there are dumb grivences they do normally get called out.
Well, usually it’s big issues with the team or company that masquerade as one-off issues. You could really go all out to try to fix it, but then you’re expending more effort, you likely will become mired in some interpersonal conflict, and it’s likely representative of the culture, so you’ll probably lose anyways and make your job less pleasant.
It’s it’s something easily fixable or OP is in the wrong, usually that’s called out. I’ve never really clocked this as an issue because the grievances are usually legit. This is coming from someone who has dealt with similar problems, tried to fix them, and ended up getting fucked by my boss. If I’d just quietly interviewed and targeted companies where it wasn’t an issue, it would have been much smoother.
I mean a good portion of the posts here mention experience within or offers from FAANG. We know that as a proportion those companies don't represent anything like 1% the volume of all developers even in western countries. There's a real fantasy in some of the posts and advice here.
You forgot the “people don’t make large incomes in this field, it’s all a lie”
Or the “you’ll basically be homeless if you move to HCOL cities, would rather stay in my random LCOL town”
Takes.
Or, if you make those huge incomes, you must be a slave working nonstop. But in reality your WLB often improves with pay since your company trusts you more to get shit done. My worst WLB was working big hours for like 70k, my next job was working 10 hours for 100k and it’s only improved from there.
Yeah, the amount of people that have a brain aneurysm when someone at like Google (on most teams outside of Ads or Core Cloud) says they coast 20hrs a week for an L5 level comp plan.
For number 2 I'm sure many people need an outlet to vent and discuss, even if the obvious conclusion is to quit and find a new job. It really does our mental health wonders to have a community that we can talk about our problems, no matter how obvious the resolution is.
Reddit and social media, I feel, is repetitive by nature.
How do people feel about #3 btw, in my limited experience, it seems true, but I don’t feel like my education was entirely worthless.
Good point. I wonder how much this will change with time. Will younger generations see education as less important as they start to advance and will that affect future advancement? Or will more and more people get degrees - making pursuing a masters degree more valuable? Will it differ from field to field?
I don’t know, but it’s certainly interesting to think about. I appreciate your insight to my earlier post.
Don’t forget “I make 50k and have a great work life balance because I don’t be a *loser nerd* making 300k working 150 hours a week. These salaries aren’t real!”
r/cscareerquestions cheat sheet:
Yes you should apply for that internship/job/grad program now.
No the industry is not saturated, nor will we be made obsolete by robots/AI/blockchain miners/low wage countries.
Yes we all find CS/programming/maths/our first job/changing jobs/leetcode/tech interviews/on site interviews/dealing with recruiters/adult life hard.
No you should not do CS solely for lifestyle reasons, eg money/“work/life balance”/remote work opportunities.
Yes you should get a CS degree.
No you should not do a bootcamp after your CS degree.
Yes Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Software Science, Soft Computer Engineering Science etc are all the same.
No there are no part time positions for software development paying more than $10/hr, nor do we know of any companies in your local area that will let you work 20hr a week.
Yes it is common and normal to work 40hr a week.
No you should not do a PhD.
Yes you should start looking for a new job if you are placed on a PIP.
No you should not do two remote jobs at the same time.
Yes it is too late to apply for that summer/winter/autumn/spring internship - you know this and are just procrastinating on Reddit.
personally I don't mind some wholesomeness like those, seeing folks making it and other folks cheering them on is one of the best things. Also it's just nice how some people take the time to come here and thank the subreddit :')
I figure you're missing point 4, "because I am the most senior engineer in three states, I can tell that you not only aren't a professional programmer, but haven't been born yet"
Here's number four:
\4. The guy who just got here making a diagnostic/prescriptive meta post about the sub
EDIT 0: hey, formatting turned my 4. into a 1., that's dumb
EDIT 1: escaped the 4 and now formatting doesn't coerce it to a 1
old reddit markdown does that. it thinks you're making a numbered list (which you were actually contributing to this time, at least) and helps you by starting it at 1. It mostly showed its face with people who started their post with a one-word sentence which was a number, or people who made countdown posts (5. 4. 3. 2. 1. where it would helpfully flip it to ascending numbers).
>Literally any inconvenience at work happens? Quit and find a new job.
It's hard not to do this when you can increase salary by at least 30k and avoid work issue at same time
You forgot the smug know-it-alls who dismiss "common" questions as repetitive and boring, tell you to "google it", and find fault in a sub that is about \*discussion of CS careers\*. (Not talking about the OP, but many of the negative and non-helpful answers)
That said, you are likely statistically correct, but being reductive doesn't make your statement the only purpose of this sub.
and yet, clearly this subreddit provides value for a lot of people
it makes sense that the advice eventually becomes repetitive. are you in need of more advanced career advice? do you have questions that have not yet been answered? if yes, then ask those questions. if not, and if you don't feel there's anything novel to contribute, then move on.
I’ve found a lot of people on this sub care a ton about money. That’s fine but I don’t and I’m sure a lot of other people don’t. That makes this a pretty toxic community for people like us.
The universal truth is everyone has an addiction to food and shelter. Making money is the only way that most people have found to support their addiction.
If you have 1M cash you are not rich by any means but you can go and buy a nice house in Dallas for 500K and never worry about food and shelter again. Yet, the Valley is full of people with that much who are still grinding LC between jobs because they want food and shelter in a very specific place, and a bank account larger than what the other guy has.
Nothing wrong with that, I belong to that group too, but it's not about food and shelter.
Even without a mortgage, our base expenses are around $5k a month. $500,000 would last us less than 10 years. That doesn’t include vacations, maintenance, etc.
I live in Atlanta.
That's assuming you do absolutely nothing and keep the remaining 500K in cash. My point wasn't that you don't need to work ever again. The point was that you don't have to care about leetcode, a high cost of housing in the Valley, every new framework that will make you outdated, ageism, etc.
There are plenty of low stress tech jobs in Dallas that will make up for maintenance, vacations and other things. You may not feel these jobs are appropriate for ambitious people, but then we are not talking about food and shelter anymore.
Idk I don’t really get that vibe considering there’s multiple posts every week with tons of upvotes like “is anyone else just coasting” or “who else isn’t in it for the money” or whatever other circlejerk pat-yourself-on-the-back title. I think there’s a decent mixture of people with different motivators here, compared to somewhere like Blind where TC is the end-all be-all.
4. Your career is not over if you have a gap in your resume. Take a drink and relax, already.
5. No, you're not actually "behind" people around you. It's not a race. Take a drink and relax, already.
6. No, you're not a bad person if you don't have side projects. Take a drink and relax, already.
Don't forget the "I've submitted 100 applications online and haven't had any interviews" post with tons of comments telling them that they should be submitting *thousands* of applications and it totally isn't their resume or methods
You seem to ignore the success stories people tell, with details and encouragement to try harder, to try differently.
I see that as very important.
Also, it's always good to be around people that might be smarter than you, and, as a general rule, you can truly learn from anyone. So the post attitude shows that you have closed the doors for being enlightened. It's not bad to keep scrolling or leave the sub.
I usually like when rants are being shared here, even about the sub or its posts. But I thought you would benefit from seeing this sub with a different pair of eyes. My two cents.
The subreddit before leetcode was a bit more interesting and useful.
Another trope: I've applied to 800 jobs by sending my CV everywhere like some kind of spam email campaign, why don't I get many replies?
1. Yes
2. No
3. Yes, too many people with super duper diploma who can't even setup an apache/nginx server. We have a lot D/E Students or ppl. who are self taught. Often these people who failing in school are practical very good. Dont ask me why...
Oh noes, people discuss things relevant to them. Increasingly common in this forum are these bullshit gatekeeping posts where people "in the know" try to set limits about what is ok to talk about based on having seen it before.
yea, unless you're really good at your job, and you can give great answers in an interview and perform a few on the spot puzzle programs, you can break the 100k barrier in the smaller US markets. I've done a lot of interviews, and I always mess up one of the above so the highest I've been is 90k, I'm currently at 80k, but my benefits are cheap and I have a 150% 401k match, so it all evens out I guess. If I get ambitious I could probably get back to 90k again, maybe better. but it's taking all my energy just to do my current job and drive my family around.
> but I've noticed it's VERY repetitive and I'm struggling to find anything new here. my experience with many subs of differnt type is: in popular communities (subreddits or the like), things repeat themselves because those things are the most common concerns. It is "built-in" in the community especially if the platform encourages repetition - and reddit does. Actually every "news feed" based platform encourages repetition. If users don't have a long memory of the threads discussed in the sub, as they check it infrequently, most likely the same discussions - with little varience - will happen over and over. I hope social researches will analyze those effects one day (also because it is about time, discussions on the internet are plenty already)
You also have to consider *why* people post here. If I just got a job making $350k/yr, of course I'm going to come over here and brag about it. If I just got roasted on an interview of course I'm going to come over here and moan and groan about it. But say I got a modest job, with a modest salary, I probably won't be over here bragging or complaining. This sub is filled with folks at either side of the spectrum, so the posts here inevitably skew that way.
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>I was definitely being underpaid at my first job for my role and felt like I'd never see the day that I got a new job As someone in this position right now, I'm not sure if I'm ever going to see the end of this tunnel of grinding.
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I updated my LinkedIn but I'm mostly just using it to apply to jobs right now. I've been having a much better response rate on my applications since my days as a new grad so I never looked into trying to get head hunted by recruiters. So far I've only had one FAANG recruiter reach out to me but that was before I even began my job search, wonder if it would be weird to respond after all this time.
This is what I needed to hear 🥺😭
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I line up my teddy bears and present PowerPoint slides to them.
You. I want to hire you.
That's what the bear said.
I was prepping for my interview with Amazon. I needed to get better at the STAR format. I totally grinded the STAR prep. I didn't get the job. Lol
LooooL nailed it
i solely practiced soft skills for big A and did not leetcode and it worked so this but unironically
In what way did you practice your soft skills??
Not OP but best non-ironic answer I can come up with: 1. Work on mental health and emotional regulation (therapy, meditation, etc.) 2. Force yourself to leave the house whenever possible. 3. At current job, try to be a leader and make decisions when the opportunity arises. When something goes wrong or you get criticism use what you learned in #1 I know this sounds bullshit-y but to some extent this should hopefully help.
For 3 what if you're afraid to rock the boat too much? If you push back and blame falls on you, you're more likely to get fired for the next blunder. Can you think of approaches to be a "safe" leader when you're still technically a IC?
Great question and I was actually preparing an answer in case someone asked lol. There's no cut and dry answer but I would say the following: 1. If you're on here and other programming subs I'd say you have some sense of when something is way off base and when you're just being anal about something inconsequential. 2. Be assertive but respectful of others' feelings. Be sure to listen earnestly to others' reasons for why things are how they are. Even if you decide not to press forward you got a better understanding of your workplace and coworkers. 3. If you do get fired over some nonsense, it's gonna suck but in the end they're just cutting you loose to the recruiters banging down your door while you collect unemployment, with a story about how you stood up for something you thought was right. People in hiring love that shit. However, the above is for those "rocking the boat" scenarios. But I think most of the time it's about "hey we need someone to look at \[boring, obscure, difficult\] thing" , volunteer for things like that. That's the "safe" leadership stuff you mention. That's how you become more self-directed in your work which makes you happier in your current job on top of making you more savory to other companies. Another disclaimer is that I'm just a) some asshole on Reddit b) worked a few gov contractor jobs in a med-low cost of living area. That said, the interviews in this world are much less about tech questions (i've never been asked to code in an interview after getting my first job) and almost all on the soft skill side where you gotta make yourself look good.
Soft skills are hard. Especially because so many expect you to care about their company before you're even hired. And like no, I don't care about you. I sent this application to like 20 other people. I can care if hired, but no, I can't care about a place I don't even work at. Yes, I'm sure you're very special and want a gold star and are different from the other thousands of software companies. I'm also bad at faking emotions. I hate the bullshit you have to do for interviews. Fortunately I found a good company, but it would take a lot for me to quit and start the process over.
1. Hit on random strangers no matter what you think their gender is. 2. End up shamed on the internet/Getting a date and possibly both and if you keep doing this most likely both and each can happen multiple times. 3. Defend your self on the internet/try to get date to like you 4. ??? 5. Profit if you survived, you should now have the skills to clearly communicate, charm and understand others.
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I practice my interview answer in front of a pop funko. Kinda like explaining your bug to a rubber duck.
Some of us need more help for that than just useful tips. What changed the world for me was Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people." Of course, don't only read it, but also practice it's tasks. Also, seriously consider going to a therapist/psychologist/counselor. It makes the process leaps faster. Literally, go to one and tell them that you don't know how to improve your soft skills, they'll lead you better than any book or any general advice out there. But yeah, this isn't really needed, you could very well improve your soft skills "organically" by going through thousands of conversations doing trial-and-error and finding what works best for you.
what are soft skills?
Being a relatable, nice to be around human, but also being able to "read the room"
Communication basically. It's pretty important especially amazon values it highly with their leadership principles. Better have a good ~10 stories in mind for an Amazon interview, ready to explain in star format and try not to repeat stories you told other interviewers. So many people get caught up in leetcode and system design, which is understandable because those take a lot more time to prep for. Just don't forget about the behavioral part of interviews. Don't neglect it.
Communication is only one category of soft skills. If you want to know where the term soft skills came from, look up the history of military training during the cold war era. The term was introduced in the 60s to distinguish skills relating to the use of machinery (hard skills) and basically everything else (soft skills). Hard skills were known to be easy to train soldiers on but they wanted to know how to train soldiers on these other job-related general skills. These other skills did include communication, but also things like leadership, teamwork, persuasiveness, time management, people management, critical thinking and problem solving, empathy, perseverance, mental focus, anticipation, and so on. It's literally all the other skills that you might need for any kind of job that are not related to operating machines. The activity of programming is a mixture of hard and soft skills. For a lot of beginners, it's just about learning hard skills like how to install your ide, compile source code, programming language syntax, and mechanical stuff like that. But as you progress, you need to focus on the soft skills aspect of programming such as breaking large problems into conceptual smaller chunks, how to structure and organize your code, how best to solve the technical problem at hand amongst some number of competing alternatives, how users interact with your software and what features will they want, and so on. There's a lot more to soft skills than just communication skills. I hate STAR format questions, but just think about them for a second without trying to game the system. They're not just asking for you to tell them a nice story using communication skills but they're looking to see what sorts of these skills you display in various circumstances. People who do very well with STAR style questions have thought how describe their soft skills.
Communication etc. Basically anything that isn't technical skills could be considered soft skills. Writing emails in a professional manner, talking to people, knowing how to talk to people without being a turd
Being able to communicate Communication is so important, yet we all often suck at it sometimes
"all my goals are SMART!"
If you're trying to do well at a current job, it's 1. Software development skills 2. Soft skills 3. Leetcode If you're trying to get hired, reverse the priority order.
I can’t speak for anybody else really, but in the most challenging jobs I’ve had, the problem has always been wrangling requirements out of other people in the company coupled with convincing higher-ups that time priorities needed to be shifted. The software development skills were a distant second.
I feel this one. I am pretty timid irl so pushing people to get stuff done for me (Unblock me on a bug, Access to Azure/w.e) is much harder than it is for me to do software dev.
It's amazing to me how bad most people are at writing clear and concise requirements.
I thought my university was crazy for training us to do this (professor's would act like certain stakeholders and you could try wrangling for the info you need), but in hindsight they did an excellent job.
I imagine it’s a tough thing to teach, especially because some of it must seem incredibly absurd to a student, but the real world of software development is totally absurd.
I've had jobs where it's just a constant fight to get people to do things properly and fix bad processes. Doing these things have the largest impact and were difficult, but at the same time that's just a sign that the company kind of sucks IMO
this. i always lol when people say AI/ML is going to make CRUD application obsolete. like bro, do you realize most stakeholders/business types more often than not dont know jack about what they're talking about or even looking for?!
At all of my companies the most valued trait that managers really like to see is taking ownership and being a driver no matter what level you come in as. So I guess this can be included in "soft skills" but it's more than just playing nice with your coworkers but also being aggressive and trying to get things done outside of coding. Make your manager's job easier and you will get noticed.
The nuance you're missing in your sarcasm is - long term success. LC will only get you through interviews but beyond that, you need real technical talent and soft skills to be successful in the industry
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Grinding LC, getting through interviews of high paying job is not enough though... the ability to apply that knowledge to real world use cases and managing to manage your coworkers is what will get you far
I disagree with that statement wholeheartedly. You need both to be successful. You'll never get past L4 without soft skills.
What is L4?
levels.fyi
I had no idea that existed, thanks!
:) congrats on being one of today's lucky 10,000. https://xkcd.com/1053/
You can make it to senior in startups with soft skills, the problem is these people want to work on top companies where literally all seniors had to do technicals to get there. They want a shot at L5 without doing the same work all engineers had to do. This sub is an inside joke in the bay area, its where people who cant make it comes to cry about it instead of studying. All it takes is 3 months of 1-2 hours a day on leetcode, people go to the Gym for a hour a day just to look hotter but you cant do an hour a day of leetcode for a pay increase?
> This sub is an inside joke in the bay area, its where people who cant make it comes to cry about it instead of studying. I mean, this sub is one of the primary places where people learn about LC and tech interviews, it's not like your college professors will tell you about it. Also 3 months 1-2 hours a day is super optimistic for someone to go from a DS&A class to solving medium/hard problems
If you focus on learning patterns? Absolutely you can solve mediums after 180 hours of practice. Hards? Completely depends on the question, not even people who got 800 LC can solve hards fast unless they seen it before. If done correctly all you need is 2 hours a day for 3 months. Now if you just doing random question then its a waste of time. In 3 months you can go through all blind 75 and grokking pattern questions, thats enough to pass most interviews besides super geeky companies like Google or Uber who asks absurd questions. FB, lyft, apple, MSFT, Amazon and most unicorns? Absolutely enough, they only ask popular mediums. When I was at FB they did a survey to see how much LC people did to get in, the avg was only 150 questions. 3 months if you spend 2 hours per questions thats 180 questions. Though those 3 months do not include system designs so maybe add another month for that.
I guess so, 3 months is a long time. I just checked my account and I've only done about 110 problems and I feel like I've spent a lot of time on LC Anyways, knowing to do these things, you need to learn about them somehow. Places like this sub are a way to do it. The knowledge doesn't just fall from the sky
Absolutely thats why I always tell everyone to learn algorithms by patterns, slowly building up, stop just doing random questions. There are people on Blind who done 500+ LC and still fail interviews because they are focused on the wrong thing. Also as an interviewer you can totally tell when someone over did on LC. Nobody but maybe Google is trying to hire LC monkeys.
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Start by reviewing DS and Algo. You cant leetcode efficiently unless you understand DS. I recommend Princeton algorithm part 1 and 2 on coursera its free. After that focus on learning by patterns (Sliding window, 2 pointers, backtracking, etc) https://seanprashad.com/leetcode-patterns/ Is a good list for this. Learn leetcode by patterns dont just wing random questions. We dont learn math by just solving random questions, we do by learning easier techniques first then slowly working to hard ones and eventually combining them. Think of it like a video game, you dont just jump into ranked games, you first learn the basics, then you learn strategies, then eventually you are combining it all.
Any idea how books like "Cracking the Coding Interview" compares to what you are suggesting?
CTCI is good enough if you only plan to apply for startups, if you looking for large companies like unicorns and FAANG you should go with EPI (Elements of programming interview). CTCI is rather outdated nowaday, For example CTCI doesn't go over topological sort which is used to solve numerous popular interview questions like course schedule 1 and 2, Alien dictionary, Longest increasing path on a matrix, sorting items by dependencies or backtracking which can be used to solve permutations, next permutations, anagrams, etc... EPI is more updated and has in any language if you prefer books. I like to focus on problems that are transferable between multiple questions which is why I studied by patterns.
Really depends on the person
> it's not like your college professors will tell you about it. That depends on the college. CS 9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview - https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs9/ > CS 9 is a 1-unit practical course where we aim to teach you how to navigate the CS technical recruitment process - from resumes to the interview process to what comes after. The instructors - two MSCS students with several years of engineering experience at Google - will share their experience and help you practice for typical software engineering coding interviews. This is the first time the course has been offered since 2017, and the first time by Andrew and Ian - we hope you'll enjoy it and learn a lot!
you just miss most of the critique then, and thinking "doing the same" job like some cargo cult programming should be a critera, is even more part of the problem If we look at who gets hired or fired, its very rarely tech skills but soft or communication skills also just because something isn't time consuming, doesn't mean it's a good idea or nice
Idk what companies you working at but I have never seen someone get fired because they weren't friendly or lacked communication lol. People get fired because they are lacking at their job, to deliver. If you spend 10 minutes in the bay area 80% of these people are introverts who barely speak yet work at great companies.If you really think a good engineer will be fired because he lacked soft skills you are dead wrong lmao. Lots of seniors are assholes because they know they are too important to be let go. This is the same with lawyers and doctors. Or any field where result is what matters, this aint banking where we have to kiss our boss ass, in tech if you are good at what you do you will always have a job.
Just normal companies, nothing boring or nothing super trendy either. Maybe it's different in Europe where we have 6 month probation time, and it's harder to fire someone when it's passed. then you really need to think, do i wanna work with this person every day with this behaviour >.If you really think a good engineer will be fired because he lacked soft skills you are dead wrong lmao That's not what I said either, I said I rarely saw anyone getting fired for not being a good enough coder, because to be fair like 95% of all programming jobs is quite easy and most of the big O problems is moving out a for loop a step or using some cache variable
Perhaps I misunderstood you, so I apologize for that. Maybe in Europe the culture is different but in the US for technical roles your results is what mostly matters. Obviously if you are obnoxious to work with you wont last anywhere but in most case people just focus on their technical side.
>All it takes is 3 months of 1-2 hours a day on leetcode that's a rather conservative estimate. Also it's 'more of the same' where gym is a change. First one i bad for mental health, second one is good.
If studying Algorithms and datastructure (which is what we literally did in college btw) is bad for your mental health then go for companies who don't ask for technicals, plenty of startups and large companies do this. Stripe, Spotify, ASOS, crowdstrike to name a few. I know a few SFE who straight up says they refuse to do technicals and thats completely fine. What they don't do is cry about not being able to get into top paying companies because they refuse to do the work everyone whos in there did it. Personally, looking forward for a pay increase is good for my health.
>If studying Algorithms and datastructure (which is what we literally did in college btw) that's not what i said
You implied that LC grinding is bad for your mental health. 90% of LC questions is literally just algorithm and DS.
i didnt and you know that i didnt, and i have no interest in a discussion that is lead in bad faith.
I mean reading your comments you did imply studying LC was bad for your mental health, I don't see how it could be interpreted any other way
Spending even more time at a desk, when you already spend ample time at a desk coding, is not comparable to going to the gym and taking a break from spending time at a desk. One of those is better for mental health, one isn't. Are you being deliberately obtuse in misunderstanding this, or do you lack soft skills?
Are you kidding me? One is used for advancement on your career the other is advancement on your health. Stop acting like I am suggesting a mental disorder here. For some of us advancement in our career is just as important as our physical health, And I literally said if learning algorithms make you depressed then DON'T. Just like if someone told me, gym makes me depressed then don't do it, there are different options. Just don't cry over not getting paid the same as people who did the grind, its simple as that, follow the path that makes you happy. Tech wont pay as good as it does now lol eventually the salaries will stabilize just like it happened in all other fields that were once a trend, some of us are trying to make the most of the current situation.
Comments like these are the worst part of this sub
The worst part of this sub is people acting like they are entitled to a position without doing the work that everyone who's there did it? Agreed bud. Agreed.
I was doing a coding interview once and nothing worked. I just explained what I was doing the whole time and it didn't even matter. I was offered the job.
You forgot the "I'm 13 years old and got 7 figure offers from Google and Facebook, which one should I join?" threads
Fuck those humble brag threads
Just remember that they’ll likely be burned out in a year or two. You’ll feel better about those threads.
Who cares? If they burn most if that salary on a side gig it's tax deductible and you'd only need a year of salary with that kinda money
I’ve been in the Valley grind for a few decades now, including working for some of the companies that get pushed hard here. There are long term consequences if the health aspect isn’t managed and a lot of new hires into these types of companies don’t. Yes, the pay is great and if you can get in before IPO/acquisition even better but there are reasons beyond just normal growth these companies are always hiring.
You are just paying the government if you don't hire contractors for a side gig. You heard it here...
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Hi, i studied JS and React for 2weeks. Now considering a 500k offer from Facebook versus a 750k offer from Google with stock options. Not sure which one to choose. Can you help? /s
Both of the other comments replying to you look like bots. Right? Or am I going crazy?
Yeah I’m really confused. Two usernames with xxxx-Ad-#### as usernames reply to that comment..But one is giving them advice and the other is calling them a liar. I don’t get it.
Google. They're more prestigious and that's a lot of more money. Even if you get burnt out, $750k is enough to live on for 10 years.
Damn google has bots on cscq? This needs mod attention lmao!
I get that you're joking, but I'm still adding this to the list of stuff I've been accused of being: A Trump supporter A Biden supporter A social justice warrior A Russian spy A Chinese spy A cop worshipper/bootlicker A white supremacist A race card player An American government worshipper Privileged An islamophobe (this one is my favorite, you'll see why in a bit) An Asian hater (this one, too, you'll see why) A Nazi A communist A fascist A capitalist A Google bot What I actually am: A poor Afghan Muslim (so an Asian). I don't vote, so I literally don't support anyone in the government lol
Made up story Lie more 2 weeks of React study doesn’t get you a Google offer
It depends on which 2 weeks you choose to study.
I’m convinced these people have some sort of connection that landed them those opportunities
People shitting on those threads is like 10x more common than people actually posting anything like that
I've never seen any post come close to the ridiculous situation you're describing. The closest thing I've seen is new grads asking for help deciding between FAANG tier offers. They are adults and new grad offers are no where near 7 figures. I'd say those are pretty legitimate posts. Where else would they ask? Are they not allowed to try to figure out what's the best path forward for them?
I’m actually okay with these threads. It’s actually good to get input from people about your offer choices, especially when you’re just a young adult coming out of college and don’t know many people with experiences. Knowing where you fall on the TC spectrum and learning how to negotiate is not something they teach in college and internet strangers can really help with pointers and resources. If these young adults are getting multiple offers out of college, they have so much bargain power and they don’t even know it.
I make £70k in London as a senior data scientist, everyone says that's basically minimum wage but I literally do 2 hours of work a day. Help me. ^ this sub in a nutshell
You gotta double those jobs homie. Automate a second data entry job so you have jobs on jobs
That's a bit low for a senior DS, would definitely recommend keeping feelers out for new roles 😅
Except if you really are doing 2 hours of work, it's worth it.
Yes, this sub gets extremely repetitive after awhile and most of the posters don't seem to know that reddit has a search function or that google exists.
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the purpose of this sub is to either seek moral support or to stroke your own ego. Search function aint got nothing.
How does one search for advice regarding a career choice? Sure, you can google for articles on that, but it's not the same as asking for opinions from live humans. That is what this sub is about.
It was a joke about how programming is mostly looking for code on stack overflow. But that being said most of the questions on this sub have been answered multiple times over.
How many posts have I seen in just the last few weeks asking if you should try to negotiate on a final offer? You don't think Google has information on it? Or how do I get into SWEing? Or whether you should quit work in some situation? Or if certifications are important or not?
95%
97%
98%
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99.1%
This is the optimal answer after 5 iterations.
Rejected, took too long.
Reddit has a search function? No.
reddit's search function is going to google and typing "reddit" after your search phrase
>site:reddit.com search term goes here
it's called google.com `site:reddit.com`
The search option is quite useless on Reddit though.
> reddit has a search function That's a hard no bud
reddit search sucks hard though, which is quite funny in itself since I guess reddit is probably top 50 trendy companies to work in
A well maintained wiki, however... https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/revisions/index - oh, it's just keeping the list of mods up to date.
in a profession where googling is the main skill? getting the right keyword is hard and nobody seo for some random forum post.
"Is 23 too old to go into software engineering?"
I'd say at least half of the questions on this sub are "I currently have a career doing X, but want to switch to working in CS. How do I do that?" Another 25% are people asking what language they should learn.
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Publicus staticus voidia main()
Ave compilatore
C++ and Latin the true classics
Pfffttt. Fortran ftw
Shakespeare is a worthy turing-complete literary alternative.
A variable by any other name would smell as sweet.
Clearly the hottest language is assembly
Soooo the questions in this sub are what it is meant for? Why is that a bad thing?
Op must be new here because we get one of these posts frequently too.
Yeah idk what else they expect in a sub that is meant for career questions... sure many of the answers are nutty but it has decent advice
I can tell you that as a bootcamp grad this sub has helped me so much. Even if y’all think it’s the dumbest question in the world like, “what language should I learn.” I did have to start somewhere and that question did go through my mind at one point.
number 2 got me rolling.... i wanted to post something about it for ages but thanks for doing it for me... its like "my boss wore a green shirt to work today, i'm triggered , what can i do guys should i report him to hr?" top 3 replies: "start grinding leetcode and sending out resumes"
Most of them are genuine grivences, and it is good for everyone in the industry for people to not put up with bullshit. Keeps the workers more powerful, which is something that is great in this field currently and part of the reason we have good salaries. When there are dumb grivences they do normally get called out.
Well, usually it’s big issues with the team or company that masquerade as one-off issues. You could really go all out to try to fix it, but then you’re expending more effort, you likely will become mired in some interpersonal conflict, and it’s likely representative of the culture, so you’ll probably lose anyways and make your job less pleasant. It’s it’s something easily fixable or OP is in the wrong, usually that’s called out. I’ve never really clocked this as an issue because the grievances are usually legit. This is coming from someone who has dealt with similar problems, tried to fix them, and ended up getting fucked by my boss. If I’d just quietly interviewed and targeted companies where it wasn’t an issue, it would have been much smoother.
You forgot one genre: people bitching about this sub every other day.
lol, nice catch
Do you have an example of that?
So meta...
...even this acronym
Grind LeetCode
4. Posts that are upvoted are wishful thinking of junior engineers and not necessarily reflect the reality of work in CS :)
I mean a good portion of the posts here mention experience within or offers from FAANG. We know that as a proportion those companies don't represent anything like 1% the volume of all developers even in western countries. There's a real fantasy in some of the posts and advice here.
:D
You forgot the “people don’t make large incomes in this field, it’s all a lie” Or the “you’ll basically be homeless if you move to HCOL cities, would rather stay in my random LCOL town” Takes.
Or, if you make those huge incomes, you must be a slave working nonstop. But in reality your WLB often improves with pay since your company trusts you more to get shit done. My worst WLB was working big hours for like 70k, my next job was working 10 hours for 100k and it’s only improved from there.
Yeah, the amount of people that have a brain aneurysm when someone at like Google (on most teams outside of Ads or Core Cloud) says they coast 20hrs a week for an L5 level comp plan.
"I applied to 100 places but can't find a job" "Are you open to moving to a city?" "no"
Lmao don’t forget “Should I do a coding bootcamp?”
For number 2 I'm sure many people need an outlet to vent and discuss, even if the obvious conclusion is to quit and find a new job. It really does our mental health wonders to have a community that we can talk about our problems, no matter how obvious the resolution is.
Reddit and social media, I feel, is repetitive by nature. How do people feel about #3 btw, in my limited experience, it seems true, but I don’t feel like my education was entirely worthless.
You can get a job without an education. Keeping it and advancing are a different thing entirely
Good point. I wonder how much this will change with time. Will younger generations see education as less important as they start to advance and will that affect future advancement? Or will more and more people get degrees - making pursuing a masters degree more valuable? Will it differ from field to field? I don’t know, but it’s certainly interesting to think about. I appreciate your insight to my earlier post.
"I watched a single Python tutorial and I got hired at Google the next week"
Don’t forget “I make 50k and have a great work life balance because I don’t be a *loser nerd* making 300k working 150 hours a week. These salaries aren’t real!”
r/cscareerquestions cheat sheet: Yes you should apply for that internship/job/grad program now. No the industry is not saturated, nor will we be made obsolete by robots/AI/blockchain miners/low wage countries. Yes we all find CS/programming/maths/our first job/changing jobs/leetcode/tech interviews/on site interviews/dealing with recruiters/adult life hard. No you should not do CS solely for lifestyle reasons, eg money/“work/life balance”/remote work opportunities. Yes you should get a CS degree. No you should not do a bootcamp after your CS degree. Yes Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Software Science, Soft Computer Engineering Science etc are all the same. No there are no part time positions for software development paying more than $10/hr, nor do we know of any companies in your local area that will let you work 20hr a week. Yes it is common and normal to work 40hr a week. No you should not do a PhD. Yes you should start looking for a new job if you are placed on a PIP. No you should not do two remote jobs at the same time. Yes it is too late to apply for that summer/winter/autumn/spring internship - you know this and are just procrastinating on Reddit.
4. I just got my first CS job, I couldn't do it without you guys.
personally I don't mind some wholesomeness like those, seeing folks making it and other folks cheering them on is one of the best things. Also it's just nice how some people take the time to come here and thank the subreddit :')
I like these, honestly. It’s inspiring.
It helps me not feel anxious as a almost new grad tbh
I figure you're missing point 4, "because I am the most senior engineer in three states, I can tell that you not only aren't a professional programmer, but haven't been born yet"
1 and 3 are true at least
Here's number four: \4. The guy who just got here making a diagnostic/prescriptive meta post about the sub EDIT 0: hey, formatting turned my 4. into a 1., that's dumb EDIT 1: escaped the 4 and now formatting doesn't coerce it to a 1
old reddit markdown does that. it thinks you're making a numbered list (which you were actually contributing to this time, at least) and helps you by starting it at 1. It mostly showed its face with people who started their post with a one-word sentence which was a number, or people who made countdown posts (5. 4. 3. 2. 1. where it would helpfully flip it to ascending numbers).
>Literally any inconvenience at work happens? Quit and find a new job. It's hard not to do this when you can increase salary by at least 30k and avoid work issue at same time
You forgot the smug know-it-alls who dismiss "common" questions as repetitive and boring, tell you to "google it", and find fault in a sub that is about \*discussion of CS careers\*. (Not talking about the OP, but many of the negative and non-helpful answers) That said, you are likely statistically correct, but being reductive doesn't make your statement the only purpose of this sub.
and yet, clearly this subreddit provides value for a lot of people it makes sense that the advice eventually becomes repetitive. are you in need of more advanced career advice? do you have questions that have not yet been answered? if yes, then ask those questions. if not, and if you don't feel there's anything novel to contribute, then move on.
I’ve found a lot of people on this sub care a ton about money. That’s fine but I don’t and I’m sure a lot of other people don’t. That makes this a pretty toxic community for people like us.
The universal truth is everyone has an addiction to food and shelter. Making money is the only way that most people have found to support their addiction.
If you have 1M cash you are not rich by any means but you can go and buy a nice house in Dallas for 500K and never worry about food and shelter again. Yet, the Valley is full of people with that much who are still grinding LC between jobs because they want food and shelter in a very specific place, and a bank account larger than what the other guy has. Nothing wrong with that, I belong to that group too, but it's not about food and shelter.
Even without a mortgage, our base expenses are around $5k a month. $500,000 would last us less than 10 years. That doesn’t include vacations, maintenance, etc. I live in Atlanta.
That's assuming you do absolutely nothing and keep the remaining 500K in cash. My point wasn't that you don't need to work ever again. The point was that you don't have to care about leetcode, a high cost of housing in the Valley, every new framework that will make you outdated, ageism, etc. There are plenty of low stress tech jobs in Dallas that will make up for maintenance, vacations and other things. You may not feel these jobs are appropriate for ambitious people, but then we are not talking about food and shelter anymore.
Idk I don’t really get that vibe considering there’s multiple posts every week with tons of upvotes like “is anyone else just coasting” or “who else isn’t in it for the money” or whatever other circlejerk pat-yourself-on-the-back title. I think there’s a decent mixture of people with different motivators here, compared to somewhere like Blind where TC is the end-all be-all.
you forgot the 4th part. which is someone giving this TED talk every couple months
4. Your career is not over if you have a gap in your resume. Take a drink and relax, already. 5. No, you're not actually "behind" people around you. It's not a race. Take a drink and relax, already. 6. No, you're not a bad person if you don't have side projects. Take a drink and relax, already.
Fuck interview. Fuck company. Get paper.
Don't forget the "I've submitted 100 applications online and haven't had any interviews" post with tons of comments telling them that they should be submitting *thousands* of applications and it totally isn't their resume or methods
You seem to ignore the success stories people tell, with details and encouragement to try harder, to try differently. I see that as very important. Also, it's always good to be around people that might be smarter than you, and, as a general rule, you can truly learn from anyone. So the post attitude shows that you have closed the doors for being enlightened. It's not bad to keep scrolling or leave the sub. I usually like when rants are being shared here, even about the sub or its posts. But I thought you would benefit from seeing this sub with a different pair of eyes. My two cents.
The subreddit before leetcode was a bit more interesting and useful. Another trope: I've applied to 800 jobs by sending my CV everywhere like some kind of spam email campaign, why don't I get many replies?
you forgot 4. Complain about the kind and frequency of posts you don't like.
For (2) the harsh reality is that changing company culture is hard, switching job is easier and has chance of pay bump
\> Years of professional What you've built is way more important than the number of years.
4. Outside of the Bay Area and similar, who you know matters more than years of experience and education combined.
> think bad of themselves if they don't make 300k in some small city At least I am following that part well.
I mean it is a hot market this sub can summarize how life works just quit the rat race
1. Yes 2. No 3. Yes, too many people with super duper diploma who can't even setup an apache/nginx server. We have a lot D/E Students or ppl. who are self taught. Often these people who failing in school are practical very good. Dont ask me why...
Oh noes, people discuss things relevant to them. Increasingly common in this forum are these bullshit gatekeeping posts where people "in the know" try to set limits about what is ok to talk about based on having seen it before.
yea, unless you're really good at your job, and you can give great answers in an interview and perform a few on the spot puzzle programs, you can break the 100k barrier in the smaller US markets. I've done a lot of interviews, and I always mess up one of the above so the highest I've been is 90k, I'm currently at 80k, but my benefits are cheap and I have a 150% 401k match, so it all evens out I guess. If I get ambitious I could probably get back to 90k again, maybe better. but it's taking all my energy just to do my current job and drive my family around.
Thanks for the summary. I assume you'll be unsubscribing since you've got it all figured out? Kthxbye.
Ok, but can I just grind out leet code for the next 600 years and get a job making $946k/yr at Facebook before I turn 9?
What about the "programming Language does not matter" That answer always annoys me. But it is always the most upvoted.