I've seen some discussions about hiring in here. Do any of you guys pull credit reports and look them over? Or is it included as part of the background check?

I used to work in the background screening industry, so ask me anything about background checks.

In regards to credit report checks, there is absolutely no reason why an applicants credit score should be checked over. Unless they are in a position dealing with finances or handling money. Depending on which state you are from, there may even be laws disallowing that.

Looking at my recent background check report that was done recently. There was no credit check.

Might pull a credit report on the company I had an offer from if they are small maybe if that's what you mean? If someone does a credit report on me without discussing reasons first I'd be a bit taken aback.

I remember it being something companies like EDS did with new grads but it's not something I'd expect from companies anymore.

It can be common at times with sales positions, mostly if you were going to be given an expense account.

Interesting responses. I just assumed it was the default in states where it isn't explicitly illegal because more info is always better and it's easy and cheap to get access to.

lol, this response made me laugh:

wtf is cnet? apparently it takes 21 sec to load so not gonna bother going there

i use virtualbox locally to do development in a VM so i can keep my main windows install clean, this has worked well. but i'm wondering if i even need to do that locally..

are there cloud providers that i can run a VM off of, and then somehow remote in and simply do all my work in the 'cloud' on like a virtual desktop?

then i dont have to worry about my own laptops hardware specs, and i dont have to worry about local backups, etc

exercism.io is awesome.

however, it is like you are just solving to beat the tests than to necessarily answer the question.

So... despite failing to implement merge sort properly in my programming test, I somehow still got through to the next round of the hiring process lol.

now they require me to film my self on video answering these 4 questions, having never done a prerecorded video interview before, any advice? <3

- Why would you be a fantastic hire for Alpha?
- Why do you want to work in the technology sector?

- What skills do you think you need to succeed as a Graduate Developer at Alpha Technology Services?

- Outside of work, what do you do for fun?

Question one I would explain to them how I can get the **** done that needs to be done, while fitting into whatever culture they have.

Question two, make up some word salad around "passion for development".

Question three, do research on their site, press releases, any other published material, then tell them what they want to hear.

Question four, some combo of healthy, adventurous and/or cultured hobbies that are not too time consuming (crossfit, hiking, cooking, wine tasting (maybe?)). Dash in a moderate amount of nerdy hobbies if that fits the culture.

Thx friend, I never knew how complicated the hiring process actually is until now

wow my compilers final was the most ridiculous test i have ever taken

the moment i knew i was in trouble was when i went to grab my test off the top of the stack and thought i grabbed 3 by accident. a full 1/2 of the questions were "wtf i have no idea" and had one impossibly difficult "trace this code" problem, that had a part b) that required you to draw the stack frame after execution and i had no idea.

the one problem i thought i did well on was to write assembly code for this massive function, my code was 2 pages long and took me about 45 minutes alone. but that was only a 15 pt question.

then some essay questions worth 15 pts that i guessed on 2 and left a third blank. it was like compare/contrast dynamic functions in java vs the static way it's done in C++ (minus virtual functions) and i couldn't even bull**** an answer.

I'm about ready to quit a side job that pays high 4 figures a month, where I do **** all, out of frustration with the lead dev. I need talking down off this ledge.

He's the only full time dev, so he's written pretty much everything. They brought me in as the node guy - but early on he threw a fit because he couldn't stand me fixing his beautiful beautiful code. He refuses learn anything or take my word for anything unless he personally learns it the hard way. So I got put on ancillary stuff.

Fast forward 4 months - I basically said to the dev and leadership: "You hired me to be the node guy and you promised I'd be able to go in and clean this stuff up at some point. So either we let that happen or I am gone." The lead dev relented and gave me co-ownership of the framework, although I suspected that every major change is probably going to be a battle.

So talking through the app last week it turns out the lead dev's beautiful token system that validates microservice to microservice communication - DOESN'T WORK IF YOU EVER HAVE MORE THAN ONE INSTANCE OF SAID MICROSERVICE. He's storing the tokens in global variables that are only native to that instance. Ugh. So our app works fine unless we need to scale up to more than one instance of a single-threaded app server.

Compounding the problem - we have "microservices" with no defined DevOps role other than what this same lead dev learns the hard way on the job - so he's always in a panic and never has time to think anything through or refactor. I was really hoping he'd just transition into the DevOps role and give me the node framework. But he hates the DevOps stuff, so he continues to own everything except the web client, work 12 hours 7 days a week, and crank out feature after feature slapped onto the framework in a panic.

So I spent a week fixing this issue and then of course have to fight a huge battle with him arguing with me - that it's not really broken because something something, no clustering, just separate instances running in containers. Doesn't matter bro - node instances never share state and there's no magic solution other than the only solution of a shared async DB access (a lot of the token validation code was synchronous).

He's like "We've got some magic way of sharing state across instances that you haven't seen yet." Lol. Then he pivots to "Can we just pin users to each node instance?" No we cannot. That's the stupidest idea yet - and doesn't have anything to do with the problem of many to many microservice instances talking to each other.

But he swears this is absolutely the only place that he's storing anything triggered by a request in a global variable that is expected to exist for subsequent requests. Riiiiiiggght. I just happened to stumble upon the one case in your 10s of 1000s of lines of code where you obviously don't understand how an asynchronous stateless mutli-instance app is supposed to work.

I basically went off on him on the Monday meeting with everyone else on the call. Not good. The only resolution I see to this long term is me owning the node framework - which I'm not even sure I want that hassle. Also the company could run out of runway any minute. But the owner and only investor seems willing to fund for a while longer. So now I'm working on some stuff the owner doesn't care about, with almost no fleshed-out requirements, that feels an awful lot like busy work.

Compounding the stress level is they pay monthly and "NET15", which means by the time I get paid every month, I'm into them for 1.5 months of work. It always gets stressful around that time that they might mothball the company and say there's no funds to pay anyone. And the CEO still hasn't cashed my check for my founder's shares and ignored my last email asking about it. Urgh. My biggest fear is that this thing actually hits and I miss out on a few $M.

But the money is nice. Also I think the product is a good idea - so I keep hoping they'll get some series A. Then the big boys will come in and realize they need to revamp the entire codebase. I'm going on vacation in 2 weeks. Just need to hold on until then I guess and re-evaluate.

Oh yeah - I think the most annoying part is we spend the first 10 minutes of every meeting shooting the **** and joking around - while we've delayed "go-live", "F&F", "MVP", whatever you want to call it by 6 months and counting - and the app is crashing and burning all around us.

Your thinking about the "big boys coming in and realizing they need to revamp the entire codebase" is very off. No one in the entire world invests a Series A with a primary (or even tertiary) goal of refactoring a code base. Money is raised in order to build more features, grow more customers, and other wise do things that you currently cannot do because of lack of resources. While it may be the most beneficial thing to building a scalable and stable foundation from your perspective, that just isn't going to fly at the investor level.

I would remove your emotional attachment to this company and the work immediately. Think of it as a paycheck that one day might turn into 1.5 months of volunteer work, and hopefully no more than that. If you don't want to risk becoming a volunteer, then leave before things get ugly.

What are the upcoming milestones for the company? Do you think he is trying to actively raise money right now, or is there an upcoming catalyst that may make sense to stick around for?

Good to know about Series A - thanks. I guess King Richard will never be returning from the crusades on this one. More like Nurse Ratchet walking into the previous night's ****-show and lobotomizing everyone. (heh - I'm stealing that for politics)

As far as removing emotional attachment - I get that in theory. But in practice if I don't like and believe in what I do - I'm miserable. At some point the dam is going to break. It's not like I'm broke and need the money. I realize I am very lucky to have jobs where I can be passionate about what I do and a lot of people don't have that luxury.

But every month of this could literally bump up my retirement by 2-3 months - considering 100% of this paycheck is going straight to savings. Also it could contribute to my dream of owning two places outright and renting out one of them. So future suzzer would probably want current suzzer to suck it up and ride this thing out.

They're pivoting the product away from consumer-focused to white-label for big financial institutions to offer their high-dollar clients. So the focus now is being able to show a bunch of internal metrics and user-tracking stuff - which of course is being tacked onto the nightmare framework in an even more hodge-podge way. IE - we now have two instances of each microservice running - one for the normal flow and one for the internal tracking flow. Can't imagine that will lead to complications!

This company could be the poster child of "You must be this tall to use microservices". We'd be sooooooooooooooo much better off with PHP going to postgres or pretty much anything else.

So once they get that where they want I guess they will start shoving it in front of big banks looking for partners. Which is frustrating because we were so focused on "go live" for so long but now no one cares. But I think the pivot makes sense from a company POV. I just think the codebase is probably past the point of no return - and is being demonstrated now in how long it takes to add these admin features.

So the milestones are... not sure. The only concrete milestone is get to my vacation w/o going postal (verbally).

I'd reiterate what LL said, and point out that not only is the Series A not going to lead to refactoring code, it's probably not going to lead to the "big boys" coming in at all in any particular area. If you're counting on things changing for the better - don't. It's almost certainly going to be the opposite.

I still don't know why you accept the payment schedule they're offering. I wouldn't be getting 1.5 months in the hole with them. Especially since if there are financial difficulties you're not going to quit right at 1.5 months, and are likely to stick it out another .5 - 1.5 months waiting for the paycheck and back pay.

As for the founders shares. They're probably going to be worthless. If they end up not being worthless as long as you've got documentation you can always sue them for what you're owed.

I asked for bi-weekly when they put me on salary. They said they couldn't do it because it would cost a ton more money with their payment processor - and that everyone was on monthly. I don't know if they would have relented if I'd threatened to walk, but things were still good at that point. Also the salary was a lot more than I was expecting lol (basically 80% of a very competitive full time salary for my role - which goes up to 100% if I quit my day job). So threatening to walk over the billing cycle seemed like a dumb idea.

They converted me because they said they wanted to define their costs each month. But based on the amount I've worked - they definitely cost themselves a lot of money converting me from hourly to salary. Might be a different story if the lead dev let me own more.

Oh yeah - they did verbally promise I'd get paid on the last day of the month every time. But the contract says NET15. It's been creeping closer and closer to the full 15 every month until finally hitting it last month.

I will definitely clear up the billing schedule up front next time. The good news is if they pay me for March, I will be on vacation the first two weeks of April (which I'm not charging them for). So at that point I can walk away with them owing me nothing. Might be a good time to make some ultimatums.

As for the founders shares - I've got documentation that says I can buy 160,000 of them for $.001/share. And I've got emails with the CEO saying he got my check but couldn't get to the bank to cash it because of a flood. But so far no cashed check for $160. Suing seems much less preferable to him cashing that damn check.

Why wait for next time? If you're unhappy and considering quitting, it seems you like you have a lot of leverage to make the situation better for yourself.

You don't need to be unreasonable and can negotiate somewhat. They can pay twice a month, they can pay you more, they can pay on the 15th of every month for the 2 weeks work you've done and for the next 2 weeks you'll work. And so on. If they can't make anything work, then so be it and you can make whatever choice you want to make.

Read the edits. April 15th might be a good time for me to make demands. But getting ownership of the node framework, and getting that check cashed are probably a lot more important than the billing schedule. It sucks but if I can live with it if I get those other things.

Sounds fair.

I've been at a company that used the same excuse of payment processor to pay people monthly instead of bi-weekly.

What our reason was, and what your reason may be, is a cash-flow crunch that they can reconcile on a month-to-month basis versus every 2 weeks. It can take an incredible amount of time to decide who and what to pay and what not to and sending all the necessary communication for payables and receivables, etc. and making other tough decisions.

Much easier to do that monthly and still manage a company than do it every 2 weeks and then it feels like the only thing you are ever doing.

Another, more benign reason is possible: outside of the US monthly pay cycles are relatively common.

Oh, paying monthly is absolutely easier on the company. I don't think there's any question of that.

That doesn't mean people need to accept it. Everything is negotiable, and you have to realize that accepting longer pay periods means you're extending more credit to your employer.