IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

Foler · Jan 30, 2023

Open to giving out big tech referrals to people who can keep forum life away from RL… Looking for real software engineers… Experience in distributed systems a plus. TC will most likely be 300k-600k depending on experience.

Foler · Jan 31, 2023

BrotherWu said:
Amazon recruiter contacted me about a 300k job. Big tech is really going big on salaries in this environment. I agree to talk to them about it and they send me a package that includes like 2 hours of coding exercises and who knows how many (3-4?) hours of recommended prep work.

Fuck. Off.

You know who has time and desire to do that shit? Unemployed people.

You all realize that you can skip all these bullshit automated coding tests screeners that tech companies give out by getting on blind and asking for referrals, right?

Foler · Jan 31, 2023

Nice resource for tech people to gauge your value and evaluate TC.

Levels.fyi | Salaries & Tools to Level Up Your Career

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If you work in tech and aren’t on blind then you’re doing life wrong. People hand out referrals to any company you can imagine akin to the government handing out dollars to Ukraine. You’ll also usually find inside info on what company culture is like and when layoffs are going to happen before they break the news.

Must be taken with grain of salt - lots of TC chasers on here and people who have genuine bad experiences at their company but remember that their experience may not be reflective of entire company. From my experience, if it’s a big company then it’s really the team you land on that makes or breaks it.

Blind - Anonymous and Professional Community

Blind - Join a vibrant community where professionals discuss careers, workplace dynamics, and more. Get career advice, engage in debates, and connect with peers.

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Pretty good layoff tracker

Layoffs.fyi - Tech Layoff Tracker and Startup Layoff Lists

[LIVE] Tracking all tech startup layoffs — and lists of employees laid off — since COVID-19. This page is constantly being updated.

layoffs.fyi

May write a tutorial post one how to crack stupid tech interviews, specifically at bigger tech companies. Lmk if anyone would find that useful

Foler · Jan 31, 2023

Ok resources for cracking software eng tech interviews.

Leetcode but specifically the blind 75 problem list

LeetCode - The World's Leading Online Programming Learning Platform

Level up your coding skills and quickly land a job. This is the best place to expand your knowledge and get prepared for your next interview.

leetcode.com

Reference this resource for problem list of blind 75. Great resource that can generate lists of leetcode problems to prioritize based on how much time you have.

Best practice questions by the author of Blind 75 | Tech Interview Handbook

The best practice questions to prepare for algorithmic coding interviews by the author of Blind 75 spread across a 5-week schedule

www.techinterviewhandbook.org

also recommend educative.io courses

Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions - Learn Interactively - This is a must do course. I’d HIGHLY recommend doing this before jumping into leetcode and blindly doing the problems. Coding problems have patterns and when you can identify those patterns it makes them tenfold easier. This course teaches you those patterns.

Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers - Learn Interactively - for system design

Grokking the Low Level Design Interview Using OOD Principles - Learn Interactively - for OO design

Conquer the coding interview. Master algorithm and data structure. Tech interview prep. LeetCode made easy. Free practice programming interview questions. - Course similar to grokking coding course to identify coding problem patterns. Would do grokking before this and use this as supplement

https://www.tryexponent.com/?src=nav - variety of interview resources, would use this as a supplement to other stuff I linked, if you have time

Anonymous mock interviews with engineers from FAANG and more - expensive but well worth it mock interviews

Id strongly recommend doing the grokking coding course before jumping into leetcode. You’ll learn common problem patterns and once you ace identifying those it’s pretty easy to identify the type of coding problem and what are best approaches.

I know we have software chads who are too cool to subject themselves to doing lowly coding interviews. That’s cool but if you like high TC then you have to play the game

TJT · Feb 14, 2023

It's looking like most offices here in Austin are all very gradually walking back everyone to being in the office fulltime. My wife's work was full remote until last summer. Then it was 2 days a week. In Q2 2023 it will be 3x a week.

Both of the places I am working are currently pushing for once a month/once a quarter in the office from now on.

Mist · Feb 14, 2023

One benefit of working in UC/telecom, almost everyone above entry level has been remote for like 20 years.

Phazael · Feb 14, 2023

TJT said:
It's looking like most offices here in Austin are all very gradually walking back everyone to being in the office fulltime. My wife's work was full remote until last summer. Then it was 2 days a week. In Q2 2023 it will be 3x a week.

Both of the places I am working are currently pushing for once a month/once a quarter in the office from now on.

Yeah my company is sniffing around on this for the fourth time in a year. I told them the day they hired me there was zero fucking way I was going to drive 90 minutes across town to sit in a shitty cube with an eye bleeder monitor while users come fuck with me all day. I was going to turn down the gig entirely, before they buckled. And since I hurt my back, I am even less interested in this bullshit. I don't need the stress, so I am actively looking. Good fucking luck finding someone who does what I do fully unsupervised, let alone at the modest pay rate I get. My manager better be really ready to do his fucking job again leading the team, because I am already set to pull the trigger if he pushes this shit again.

And its entirely so he can feel like a big swinging dick when he comes into the office, not for any logistical reason. You want a physical presence at the office with you to gargle your balls, fine you have two year one techs and all the ass kissers you hired to keep stroking your ego who collectively get less done than I do. Leave me the fuck alone to do my job. Austin is doing it because its mostly Cali style millenial shitheels with no work ethic in the tech workforce there, who have to be watched like the children they are. Plus middle managers are getting really nervous and need RTO to obfuscate how worthless they are.

I had played this game of using recruiters I know he uses to send a message to him about this shit, but he won't fucking learn. Inertia and QoL are the only reasons I stay at this gig. I got five interview requests the day I changed my status on Linked In from white recruiters, not pajeets. Fuck it I will jump ship for more pay. Probably less work, too. Then my boss can explain how he ran out the 25+ year IT vet who was doing all the training, workflow, bridge calls, and mentoring because he wanted to see my fucking face daily to his CTO who is already pissed at his inability to keep the place staffed. I bet that convo will go well.

TomServo · Feb 16, 2023

Phazael said:
Yeah my company is sniffing around on this for the fourth time in a year. I told them the day they hired me there was zero fucking way I was going to drive 90 minutes across town to sit in a shitty cube with an eye bleeder monitor while users come fuck with me all day. I was going to turn down the gig entirely, before they buckled. And since I hurt my back, I am even less interested in this bullshit. I don't need the stress, so I am actively looking. Good fucking luck finding someone who does what I do fully unsupervised, let alone at the modest pay rate I get. My manager better be really ready to do his fucking job again leading the team, because I am already set to pull the trigger if he pushes this shit again.

And its entirely so he can feel like a big swinging dick when he comes into the office, not for any logistical reason. You want a physical presence at the office with you to gargle your balls, fine you have two year one techs and all the ass kissers you hired to keep stroking your ego who collectively get less done than I do. Leave me the fuck alone to do my job. Austin is doing it because its mostly Cali style millenial shitheels with no work ethic in the tech workforce there, who have to be watched like the children they are. Plus middle managers are getting really nervous and need RTO to obfuscate how worthless they are.

I had played this game of using recruiters I know he uses to send a message to him about this shit, but he won't fucking learn. Inertia and QoL are the only reasons I stay at this gig. I got five interview requests the day I changed my status on Linked In from white recruiters, not pajeets. Fuck it I will jump ship for more pay. Probably less work, too. Then my boss can explain how he ran out the 25+ year IT vet who was doing all the training, workflow, bridge calls, and mentoring because he wanted to see my fucking face daily to his CTO who is already pissed at his inability to keep the place staffed. I bet that convo will go well.

My leadership has been pushing me to come back in 1 time a quarter.

Told them fuck no 3 times now.

When I was doing an architectural review of one of our cloud services coming back on pren to hit a brittle old API I caught a compromised aws account after being curious and digging through logs an alerts our fucking SOC and engineers ignored.

This shit would of caused a massive breach of 10s of millions of sensitive customer records.

Guess where all those humps work? It's not from home.

To busy playing office politics and going for coffee.

Foler · Feb 16, 2023

Lol fuck the office. I was hired remote. My team is spread from north west to north east. 0 offices in Florida. I’d leave before ever moving

TJT · Feb 16, 2023

Foler said:
Lol fuck the office. I was hired remote. My team is spread from north west to north east. 0 offices in Florida. I’d leave before ever moving

I don't believe that you have job homie.

TJT · Feb 16, 2023

TomServo said:
My leadership has been pushing me to come back in 1 time a quarter.

Told them fuck no 3 times now.

When I was doing an architectural review of one of our cloud services coming back on pren to hit a brittle old API I caught a compromised aws account after being curious and digging through logs an alerts our fucking SOC and engineers ignored.

This shit would of caused a massive breach of 10s of millions of sensitive customer records.

Guess where all those humps work? It's not from home.

To busy playing office politics and going for coffee.

I'm going to do the 1x a quarter thing at Job2 because I am milking two FTE positions and I do need to keep up appearances.

Foler · Feb 19, 2023

Meta is such a lifeless shithole.

Bandwagon · Mar 1, 2023

This thread isn't my field and I was going to post this question elsewhere, but I feel like this thread probably has people that have had similiar experiences.

In my specific field, I'm "the smart guy" (experienced) where I work now, which is a firm of ~300 people in 9 different disciplines. I don't feel particularly smart, but I'm OCD as fuck and have put a lot of time into a wide range of niche things. I'm the go-to for a handful of things. In the last 6 months, I've had 3 or 4 different companies feel me out about coming to work for them. 2 of them in particular are small start-ups with funding and growing customer base, both of which are staffed by people that blow me out of the water. (At the other two places, I'd probably be in the top 25% as far as experience goes). Working with/for people that are more experienced & smarter than me is exactly what I want. That's my #1 short-term career goal, largely because I'm mostly self-taught.

In these conversations, I worry that the people I'm talking to overvalue me and what I bring to the table. Is there a name for this? Not "the worry", specifically, but the reality of that situation.

I think about some of the support people ask me for where I'm at now and about half of it is completely outside my expertise, but I can help solve the problem if they put it into a format I can apply (like telling a geologist to give me parameters I can turn into a formula, not a narrative about the history of rocks). If I were at some of these other places, I'd have someone with the right expertise to send those requests too.

tl;dr - Re-reading, this ended up sounding like I'm asking for emotional support for job offer anxiety or something. Really, I just think "Will I be as valuable there as I am here?" is a common experience when receiving job offers and I was hoping that it had a name I could look up. Read up on some advice to assess that possibility, etc. I don't have any hangups about being the dumbest guy in the room because I want to learn anyways, so that doesn't really bug me. I just don't know what my value is to those places and I assume this is a common thought in a lot of fields.

Foler · Mar 1, 2023

Bandwagon said:
This thread isn't my field and I was going to post this question elsewhere, but I feel like this thread probably has people that have had similiar experiences.

In my specific field, I'm "the smart guy" (experienced) where I work now, which is a firm of ~300 people in 9 different disciplines. I don't feel particularly smart, but I'm OCD as fuck and have put a lot of time into a wide range of niche things. I'm the go-to for a handful of things. In the last 6 months, I've had 3 or 4 different companies feel me out about coming to work for them. 2 of them in particular are small start-ups with funding and growing customer base, both of which are staffed by people that blow me out of the water. (At the other two places, I'd probably be in the top 25% as far as experience goes). Working with/for people that are more experienced & smarter than me is exactly what I want. That's my #1 short-term career goal, largely because I'm mostly self-taught.

In these conversations, I worry that the people I'm talking to overvalue me and what I bring to the table. Is there a name for this? Not "the worry", specifically, but the reality of that situation.

I think about some of the support people ask me for where I'm at now and about half of it is completely outside my expertise, but I can help solve the problem if they put it into a format I can apply (like telling a geologist to give me parameters I can turn into a formula, not a narrative about the history of rocks). If I were at some of these other places, I'd have someone with the right expertise to send those requests too.

tl;dr - Re-reading, this ended up sounding like I'm asking for emotional support for job offer anxiety or something. Really, I just think "Will I be as valuable there as I am here?" is a common experience when receiving job offers and I was hoping that it had a name I could look up. Read up on some advice to assess that possibility, etc. I don't have any hangups about being the dumbest guy in the room because I want to learn anyways, so that doesn't really bug me. I just don't know what my value is to those places and I assume this is a common thought in a lot of fields.

Yeah it’s called imposter syndrome. It’s what software engineers feel on the regular. Welcome to the party, pal.

Don’t overthink it. It CAN be as simple as “do you add value or not?”.

Sounds to me like you add value. Case closed.

Next.

Foler · Mar 1, 2023

Work issued RTO. Trannies are revolting in slack because “Muh pronouns be mislabeled in person” and no “all-gender bathrooms”, meanwhile other leftists are using it as an opportunity to shill unions.

Im sitting over here eating popcorn because I’m most likely exempt and if not fuck it I ain’t moving out of Florida, I got plenty of money to peace out.

Big Phoenix · Mar 1, 2023

Bandwagon said:
In these conversations, I worry that the people I'm talking to overvalue me and what I bring to the table. Is there a name for this? Not "the worry", specifically, but the reality of that situation.

Imposter syndrome?

Mist · Mar 1, 2023

The important lesson of imposter syndrome is that imposters can be quite successful.

Prodigal · Mar 1, 2023

Mist said:
The important lesson of imposter syndrome is that imposters can be quite successful.

Yeah, pretty much what I deal with regularly. I’ve called out many imposters for spending more time trying to place blame elsewhere than they do solving the problems caused by their own incompetence.

My boss will occasionally suggest pulling me in to a Teams meeting last minute when someone is full of shit, and they’ll start backpedaling, because everyone knows I fucking hate having my time wasted and most likely will start cursing well before they’ve finished bringing me up to speed on the discussion.

Control · Mar 1, 2023

Bandwagon said:
"Will I be as valuable there as I am here?"

It's a good question, and that should probably be one of the main things you should be chatting with the potential employers about.

Bandwagon said:
In my specific field, I'm "the smart guy" (experienced) where I work now, which is a firm of ~300 people in 9 different disciplines. I don't feel particularly smart, but I'm OCD as fuck and have put a lot of time into a wide range of niche things. I'm the go-to for a handful of things.

Working with/for people that are more experienced & smarter than me is exactly what I want.

I think about some of the support people ask me for where I'm at now and about half of it is completely outside my expertise, but I can help solve the problem if they put it into a format I can apply

Sorry to chop everything up, but what % of the population do you think can honestly say these things? How many people actively seek out and learn new things? How many can actually solve problems outside of a tiny circle of knowledge? How many people can put their ego and insecurities aside and actively seek an environment where they're the dumbest person in the room and need to really strive to grow?

Sure, some number of people at a small, fast-moving startup might (or might not, once you get to know them) blow you out of the water, but they're likely the founders or at least in the founding cohort. That's not going to stay true as they bring on more and more people. Also consider, if they could fill the position with someone better than you, wouldn't they do it?

Bandwagon · Mar 1, 2023

I'm happy to talk it through like this, but that's not really the reason I was posting. I just wanted to see if this was a defined concept with a name that I could go Google.

What you said makes sense and that's my feeling on the situation, too. I work with some great people, but a lot of people are just collecting a paycheck doing what they were trained to do. Their ambitions have nothing to do with work. That's fine, but most of mine revolve around work stuff and I really like working with other people passionate about the same stuff. I know I'm valuable as a new hire with potential, I'm just not sure about value beyond that in some situations.

Former coworker told me yesterday that if I am open to an offer, he guarantees he could get me one by next week at nearly double my salary. Told him that's not all that appealing to me because what I really want is to work with people that know more than me, and those places don't exactly NEED me. What a predicament

IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

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