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

Khane

Khane

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Noodlemod_sl said:
@Khane, I too want to try my hand at consulting. What worries me is consistency. With a family and shit now I'm worried about health care costs and also consistency of keeping a job. Maybe my concerns are unfounded.
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Healthcare costs are not the issue. The only real issue is the other thing you mentioned... finding new contracts when one runs out. But when you take home the same amount of money in 3-4 months that it used to take you an entire year to earn, you can give yourself a nice cushion for times when you're in between contracts.
 
Deathwing

Deathwing

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Something tells me that you(and most people in this forum) are not ones that can deal being without work for a while even if it's still financially beneficial in the long run.
 
Khane

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The only thing that gives me pause is that I still have a mortgage payment. If I didn't have that I would do the consulting thing without a second thought.
 
Noodleface

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I hate when you put your resume on monster and now all day I'm fielding calls from banks and insurance companies trying to get me in for sales position interviews.
 
Noodleface

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Well I already got one call back from the one single company I applied for.

I don't know how to do this considering I'm working full-time and used a bunch of time off for the baby.
 
Lendarios

Lendarios

Trump's Staff
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Do you care?
Call in sick. for the interviews. Take half a days.
Work from home, half a day. Cable companies are notorious for showing up between 8 and 4 PM. Simply don't give a fuck. What can they do.. fire you..
 
Noodleface

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I only care because I do have a nice job that I love. The problem really is I've been stagnant too long. I have to be careful I guess. Got a phone interview Thursday and about 30 recruiters are slamming my phone and email today trying to get me all these crazy opportunities. One guy asked if I wanted to interview for a bios gig thag required 10 years experience. When I asked about it he said don't worry about it. Yeah...
 
Deathwing

Deathwing

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Define stagnant. I just interviewed a guy with a 4 page resume with most jobs lasting 9 months to almost 2 years. Why should I recommend this guy to my boss if he's just going to up and leave in a couple years? Most technical jobs take that amount of time to get proficient, let alone expert.
 
Khane

Khane

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Deathwing_sl said:
Define stagnant. I just interviewed a guy with a 4 page resume with most jobs lasting 9 months to almost 2 years. Why should I recommend this guy to my boss if he's just going to up and leave in a couple years? Most technical jobs take that amount of time to get proficient, let alone expert.
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Because that's the nature of the field. Was he a consultant for all those years? Is he looking to settle in somewhere now because he has a child on the way or otherwise is tired of the travel?

I mean, you just described 90% of software related resumes.
 
Noodleface

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All literature I've read on the subject is that you should job hop for the first 10 years of your career unless you're working at some phenomenal company to further your career. At some point obviously you'll want to settle down.

Also like Khane said, if he was consulting then that's something completely different.

I mean, I have a lot of responsibility here and stuff, but I'm not moving up.
 
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Deathwing_sl said:
Define stagnant. I just interviewed a guy with a 4 page resume with most jobs lasting 9 months to almost 2 years. Why should I recommend this guy to my boss if he's just going to up and leave in a couple years? Most technical jobs take that amount of time to get proficient, let alone expert.
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Not sure what you mean by proficient. If you are not changing programming languages, it only takes 3-4 months to get the new place code, DB etc. No more than that.
 
Deathwing

Deathwing

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Khane_sl said:
Because that's the nature of the field. Was he a consultant for all those years? Is he looking to settle in somewhere now because he has a child on the way or otherwise is tired of the travel?

I mean, you just described 90% of software related resumes.
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Consultant looking for a salaried position. Don't think he's settling down, he's been working since I was born.

Just because something is the norm doesn't mean I have to like it. I would rather work for people I can trust and trust me in return. Maybe that's too idealistic, idk. But it's why I thought the yty 4-5% raises I get here were pretty good. Yeah, I can probably get more job hopping, not sure I want to. How's that commute, noodle?


lendarios: technically proficient is one thing, I'm still not sure 3-4 months is feasible unless that's all you're doing the whole day. Fitting into the new system, getting to know your coworkers(half the devs here think it's ok to come in at noon), familiarizing yourself with shit that comes up only once in a while. Work is more than just coding.
 
Noodleface

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Commute is also part of it.

I drive 1 hour in and 1 hour home everyday in ideal conditions. Being in New England, during the winter it can hit 2+ hours each way.
 
Deathwing

Deathwing

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The commute joke was a reference to what people have to (typically)sacrifice in order to job hop. I like Ithaca so far, I have a 10 minute commute from the "outskirts" to downtown. But not a whole lot of software competition, so salary when adjusted for cost of living is probably a bit deflated.
 
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At noodle level, you'll probably need more time, ok, maybe alotmore time. But what is there to learn that in 4 months is not enough?

A SQL query goes into a bar, walks up to two tables and asks, "Can I join you?"
 
Deathwing

Deathwing

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Did you know the Borland 6 C++ compiler will return true for this?

if(0 + 1 > 0 + 1)

Kind of obscure, but it's one I ran into on my previous job. Do you know what optimizations your compilers makes behind the scenes? Corner cases and weird stuff that only comes up once in a while, but they will come up.
 
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I don't get your point... If you are using a shitty compiler, then the first thing you teach newcomers are the weird cases. How is that related to ramp up time?
 
Khane

Khane

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Deathwing_sl said:
Did you know the Borland 6 C++ compiler will return true for this?

if(0 + 1 > 0 + 1)

Kind of obscure, but it's one I ran into on my previous job. Do you know what optimizations your compilers makes behind the scenes? Corner cases and weird stuff that only comes up once in a while, but they will come up.
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You usually are good about not making bad analogies but in this case, bad example is bad. That would be a terrible interview question and a terrible analogy here on RR!
 
Deathwing

Deathwing

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I know interviews started this tangent but that example was not meant that way. That would indeed be a stupid question.

It was meant to gauge proficiency while working a job. Should you know that example after 2 years? 4 years? I have no idea but I hate running across that kind of shit because it feels like I should have already known.

Did you know gcc and most other compilers will optimize your compiled code to noops where it perceives you have checks that will never happen, even though they totally can.
 
Noodleface

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lendarios_sl said:
At noodle level, you'll probably need more time, ok, maybe alotmore time. But what is there to learn that in 4 months is not enough?

A SQL query goes into a bar, walks up to two tables and asks, "Can I join you?"
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I like to think if I stayed in the same field (firmware) I'd be able to pick it up rather quickly thanks to a lovely standardization called UEFI. UEFI is life.
 
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