Awesome news!

I interviewed last week in Seattle for a front end role. Based on the email, I was expecting a series of informal conversations with the people I'd be working with. Lol was I wrong! When i arrived, I waited for a bit in their comfy lounge then was greeted by the person I had talked with on the phone. We chatted for a short bit then he set me on some coding tasks. I was definitely not expecting it. This is the problem I was given:

After I completed that (in his words pretty quickly) I had to turn that into some html/js logic. If you can imagine a grid of squares, then you need to apply the same logic such that the grid is highlighted in a spiral pattern. He also wanted to implement it in an anti-spiral such that it started from the center of the grid then spiraled outwards. The second part of that is essentially using the same function but passing in different initial params and account for a few extra if conditions.

I got an offer letter shortly after the in person interview that was slightly on the short side. After a little bit of negotiation, I got a 7% increase from their original offer (I was aiming for 5-10% increase). Awesome!

How are you doing goofy? Do you have an offer yet? That would be sweet if we both move into a new role in the same week

Congrats Craggoo!

Thank you kindly. I think I can say the in person coding exercise was about as stressful as can be. I ended up getting a laptop to use where a number of keys were basically non-functional (intentional stress? lol).

Congrats Craggoo!

I didn't realize you were looking in Seattle. I've been here a little over a year, so I'm not a "native" but feel free to PM me if you have questions about the area

Is that your way of saying you're not used to the year long rain yet?

Congrats!! Awesome work, especially crushing the interview that you didn't even expect/prepare for

Not yet, the bureaucracy moves slow, recruiter told me it might be a couple weeks before an offer (after team placement/comp discussion). Have another onsite on Monday, and had a phone screen today that felt like it went well and will likely lead to an onsite. Not sure how many companies I should try to interview with, even doing 3 right now it feels like with all the recruiter calls/phone screens/onsites I'm having to take a lot of random vacation days/weird hours off at my day job. While I'm obviously more sensitive to this than the people around me, I'd be a little surprise if my manager didn't suspect something by now.

Speaking of that phone screen today - I know a couple people at this company who encouraged me to apply at a level higher than I otherwise would have (like, senior + 1) because it's kind of a freeroll (if they don't like you for that, they'd still offer you senior) and they both said it's easier to come in at that level than get promoted internally.

So, one of my phone calls for applying for that level was talking about leadership background like - how would you do conflict resolution on your team? I kinda bull****ted my way through it (and I'm sure he could tell I was) because I was mostly feeling like, jesus, if high-level engineers need to get involved in ****ing conflict resolution then you already ****ed up in the hiring stage, but that's not really a great answer to the question.

But to some extent, that feels like a hard skill to pick up (or at least talk about well enough to sell in an interview) without training of some kind. Assuming you work with good professionals, it seems like something that doesn't really come up very often? We have that one dbag at my company who I've posted a couple stories about and the resolution to his self-inflicted conflicts was to bring the VP of engineering into it, lol.

idk, what do you guys think?

Kind of random aside... the head boss (where I'll be starting shortly) worked at Microsoft for > decade. I was chatting with him after my stress test interview. I did learn one thing from him I thought was somewhere between wtf and wowzers. From what I can gather, Microsoft has really intensive interview sessions similar to Google, Amazon, etc. That wasn't the interesting part. The really eye-opening part is that, lets say you have 6 people interviewing you... if 5 say you're kick ass and one person doesn't like you... all it takes is one bad vote to prevent you from getting hired. One ******* and you won't get hired!

Something to keep in mind for those of your interviewing at MS.

Bolded your faulty assumption. It would be nice to think this is the case. Based on my personal experience and that of my close contacts this is a pretty utopian view. There is a reason there a measure of "average", "above average" and "below average". Not everyone can be average because if they were then above average would then need to be redefined to the top 50% of the original above average group and so on and so forth [basic premise of Calculus].

1 no is enough to tank you at most places.

It sometimes depends on why it's a no, but most places I've worked one no means no hire

Yeah, we’ll proceed with an offer if someone was a no but they’re convinced by what they hear from other people. But everybody has to be on board with the offer at the end of the discussion.

Yea common to require unanimous decisions, never heard of a place where someone in the interview process can say no and the person is still hired.

Trying to get create something in CloudFormation, that you can create in 30 seconds in the AWS console, is a good way to kill a day.

Is there anything that can help other than designer (which doesn't' really validate if your stack actually works)?

This looks interesting: https://awslabs.github.io/aws-cdk/index.html

To get your first work experience, you will need to get a good internship.

To get an internship you'll need to go to school.

To land a higher chance of getting any internship, you need to go to a good school.

To be able to go to a good school, you'll need to succeed in highschool.

To be able to succeed in highschool....

I hope you get the point. As much as it sucks, it's really hard for people to break it into the industry. At least in the bay area, it is ultra competitive for new grads. There are just so many new grads competing for jobs.

Congrats Craggoo!

This was my reasoning for pursuing a degree. My current resume is: B.S. Physics + Professional Poker Player(15 Years) + Portfolio. Does that even make it past HR? Would a hiring manager even look at my portfolio?

If I have an M.S. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech it should at least get me a second look. I'm not sure if it's worth the money/time investment to get a B.S. in the meantime, though.

I've worked with some guys with Physics degrees and no CS/CE/EE degree, so it is possible to get a job without it. Most of them had a pretty steep learning curve though and struggled for a bit.

If you do choose to get a degree, BS vs MS probably doesn't matter for like 99% of positions.

Which one can you get faster? Which one can you get cheaper? Weigh those two things and then go with it.

Get the Masters. You only have to take CS courses then and you'll take more of them in less time. It's also easier.

Another way to consider is triple byte. They are setup for non traditional people like you. If you can pass their test you are quite likely to get hired. Referral link: https://triplebyte.com/iv/XEr8COY/cp

They only work in Bay area, Seattle, la, and New York

I think the current plan with MS is a good one.

There's obviously going to be some % of people who just immediately pass on you.

However, in big tech cities there are way way more companies who are not doing well vs the FAANGS who are historically great. It is very difficult for those companies to hire great people and end up with mediocre people so they'll take a chance on you because you can end up being great and out of their normal hiring league.

Outside of big tech cities it'll be harder to find as many opportunities like that.

I'm a college drop out who is a lead engineer at a fortune 100 but ymmv

Yea but what was your first dev job grue

Lol i dont think its true at all you need a prior internship to land a job. Demand is so high rn

I didn't go to college at all and got an internship at one of the AppAmaFaceGooSoft companies. I think a body of nontrivial work is the greatest boon to your chances of getting hired if you're not a young kid coming out of a CS program.

$30/hour contract for 3 months. Had a portfolio, was enough to get me in the door.