My journey to becoming a better Software Engineer

Cereal_Bowl_Assassin

Superstar
Supporter
Joined
Jul 3, 2018
Messages
10,262
Reputation
4,169
Daps
56,102
December 9th, 2019
  • Started a tutorial on graphic design because there are some affecrts and images that I want to ass to my site that I cant do with html/css
  • Heading out to cali this week to be interviewed for a show hosted by laurence Fishburne on pbs about software engineering and working in the industry
 

cartierhoe

Veteran
Joined
Jul 7, 2015
Messages
25,083
Reputation
8,801
Daps
119,150
Reppin
South Florida
I'm telling you bro. You don't wanna be that cat with no real-world experience applying for jobs after graduating.

If you have actual work-experience while being in school the transition after will be much more easier.

Plus if you get two to three internships before you graduate, you can know what you do and don't like.

People with experience are way ahead of the curve than those that graduate with none.

And most jobs are looking for experience with a degree.. you can also haggle for more pay because you have the experience. The job seeking process is a bytch when you ain't getting call backs.

I suggest looking for summer internships NOW!
From someone also in college in IT, would you suggest getting a cert while still in school or just going for the job/internship while still in school?
 

SheWantTheD

Veteran
Joined
Sep 10, 2015
Messages
40,225
Reputation
2,294
Daps
100,043
From someone also in college in IT, would you suggest getting a cert while still in school or just going for the job/internship while still in school?
Like another poster said if you can do both great.

But experience trumps certs and a degree.

I'd focus more on getting experience. If you land an internship you can study for certs on your free time.

Or study during your job search.

A good channel I recommend on resumes and job search is Andrew LaCivita on YouTube.

Most companies use ATS or applicant tracking system. It basically scans your resume for key words and filters out resumes that don't contain a certain mount of key words. I heard about 3% of resumes get through the ATS.

Would really have a better chance networking and emailing someone who works at the company such as HR, vice president, someone who can refer you to someone else at the company etc. That shyt can be scary but it's better than sending in 100 applications and getting 5 responses.
 

cartierhoe

Veteran
Joined
Jul 7, 2015
Messages
25,083
Reputation
8,801
Daps
119,150
Reppin
South Florida
Like another poster said if you can do both great.

But experience trumps certs and a degree.

I'd focus more on getting experience. If you land an internship you can study for certs on your free time.

Or study during your job search.

A good channel I recommend on resumes and job search is Andrew LaCivita on YouTube.
Much appreciated both of ya'll :salute:
 

SheWantTheD

Veteran
Joined
Sep 10, 2015
Messages
40,225
Reputation
2,294
Daps
100,043
Much appreciated both of ya'll :salute:
Also I suggest looking into what specific field you want to be in and focus on building your skills on that.

Because in IT there are so many different job positions that require different skills.

For example if you want to be a java developer.. look up jobs with that description and look at what programs companies want you to know etc.

School can be useless in that you are learning a lot of different things but if you want to be say a cyber security engineer, you'll only use information you learned from one or two classes.

Gonna have to do a lot of self learning (at least in my experience).
 

cartierhoe

Veteran
Joined
Jul 7, 2015
Messages
25,083
Reputation
8,801
Daps
119,150
Reppin
South Florida
Also I suggest looking into what specific field you want to be in and focus on building your skills on that.

Because in IT there are so many different job positions that require different skills.

For example if you want to be a java developer.. look up jobs with that description and look at what programs companies want you to know etc.

School can be useless in that you are learning a lot of different things but if you want to be say a cyber security engineer, you'll only use information you learned from one or two classes.

Gonna have to do a lot of self learning (at least in my experience).
Very interested in going into cyber security
 

SheWantTheD

Veteran
Joined
Sep 10, 2015
Messages
40,225
Reputation
2,294
Daps
100,043
@Cereal_Bowl_Assassin I have a couple questions for you.

How did you get an interview and call back for your first ever engineering job and for the one that you are at now? Did your school help you with that?

What skills did you have prior to the job that helped on the job? What skills did they require you to know? Did they train you?

Did they ask you technical questions during the job interview? Can you give some examples?
 

Cereal_Bowl_Assassin

Superstar
Supporter
Joined
Jul 3, 2018
Messages
10,262
Reputation
4,169
Daps
56,102
December 17th, 2019
  • I'm usually not one to make excuses but I totally fell off the wagon, not because of laziness but work was kind of crazy and some personal issues outside of work a long with the holiday time really slowed down my progress. I'm hoping I could do a little something tomorrow but that isnt looking too promising as well. It's all one at the end of the day
 

Cereal_Bowl_Assassin

Superstar
Supporter
Joined
Jul 3, 2018
Messages
10,262
Reputation
4,169
Daps
56,102
@Cereal_Bowl_Assassin I have a couple questions for you.

How did you get an interview and call back for your first ever engineering job and for the one that you are at now? Did your school help you with that?

I just applied to a bunch if jobs on indeed and angel list. I treated my application process like an actual job and I didnt skip and corners. So if a job requires a cover letter I tailored it to the job if my skills were the right fit, I also did it with my resume. I wasnt the best programmer at school but I was the first person to find a job and I think the reason for that was I was honest about my skillset on my resume and interview. Also people skills are big imo. You know the stereotypical superstar engineer that doesnt talk? Those are the ones that had a tough time finding a job.

The school helped me but they dont offer job placement. They have a bunch of connections and they introduced people to companies if they felt the fit was the right ine.

What skills did you have prior to the job that helped on the job? What skills did they require you to know? Did they train you?

I didnt have any skills to be honest. I attempted a few coding challenges for other schools without much knowledge of coding and I bombed pretty bad.

Holberton required a video intro, then you had to create a website and that was great for me because it was my first real dive into coding. After that they required you to do some things on linux but they just wanted to see how you would figure something out..it wasnt difficult looking back but at the time when it's all new it's very terrifying


Did they ask you technical questions during the job interview? Can you give some examples?[/QUOTE]

Since I work as a DevOps engineer I was required to know system design, networking, automation, be able to read anyone else's code and make changed where necessary, and of course linux is, bash and python scripting and some coding but not much.

However some other companies may want something a bit different like more coding. Nothing to crazy but every DevOps engineer should know how to code.

But to truly answer your question, every programmer,developer,engineer should know algorithms and how to use them within programming. So something like big O notation would be very important.

So an example would be

For a DeVops/SRE:

You have 10GB of text logs. Each log line corresponds to a single HTTP response from web frontend. You goal is to write a simple, reusable tool that returns the percentage of responses that were HTTP 5xx errors, broken down by domain, for a given timeframe.

For a programming position:

Q1.How to convert a list into a string

Q2. Given a sorted linked list and a value to insert, write a function to insert the value in a sorted way.

  • Once you answer these questions you should explain the big o time complexity(how many times does your code need to run in order to finish) of your function and explain tour thought process. Always white board as well.

Also my bad for getting back to you so late. Life has gotten in the way a bit lol
 
Top