Hunting For a Tech Job In 2015

Nerval's Lobster writes It's a brand new year, and by at least some indications the economy's doing pretty well, which means that a lot of people will begin looking for a new, possibly better job. If you're looking to trade up, here are some tips, some of which are pretty standard-issue ("Update resume," etc.), and others that could actually stand you in good stead, including using the Bureau of Labor Statistics to judge the median salary for a position before negotiating with HR. According to Glassdoor, Dice, and other sources, the average salary for many kinds of tech workers will only rise over the next year, so it really could be a good time to see what's out there. Good luck.

Comments

Hah

[Anonymous Coward]

The dice news website doesn't exactly jump out as being owned by dice (just that tiny logo in the upper left). Once again I made it about half way through before thinking "well this is stupid", and sure enough, good ole dice "news".

Re:Hah

[Anonymous Coward]

The dice news website doesn't exactly jump out as being owned by dice (just that tiny logo in the upper left). Once again I made it about half way through before thinking "well this is stupid", and sure enough, good ole dice "news".

Of course. Nerval's Lobster is a Dice shill for his own pap.

economy doing well?

[umdesch4]

"and by at least some indications the economy's doing pretty well"

Which indications are those? Forgive me, but I don't watch CNBC.

Re:economy doing well?

[umdesch4]

Even better, the linked article actually states "by all indications the economy’s doing pretty well". I didn't read past that.

Re:economy doing well?

[__aaclcg7560]

Wall Street broke new records.

The Dow gained 64.73 points to 18,024.17 That's up 0.4 percent from its previous high, on Monday. The latest close is the Dow's second 1,000-point milestone this year after closing above 17,000 for the first time in July. The S.&P. 500 rose 3.63 points to 2,082.17. That's a gain of 0.2 percent from its previous high, a day earlier. The Nasdaq composite fell 16 points, or 0.3 percent, to 4,765.42.

Re:economy doing well?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wall Street is not the economy. It's just people trading numbers which can up and down, there's no actual work output.

Re:economy doing well?

[lgw]

Where do you live? Here in the Seattle area, the economy is booming. From fast food to construction right through to dev jobs, everyone is hiring like crazy. There are about 20 new buildings (mostly highrises) going up in downtown Seattle, and apartments are going up everywhere in the suburbs. No question things are doing well here. Where's the suck?

Re:economy doing well?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you live? Here in the Seattle area, the economy is booming. From fast food to construction right through to dev jobs, everyone is hiring like crazy. There are about 20 new buildings (mostly highrises) going up in downtown Seattle, and apartments are going up everywhere in the suburbs. No question things are doing well here. Where's the suck?

Thats because seattle has lots and lots of whites and asians. detroit meanwhile is over 80% black maybe more like 90%+. detroit is bankrupt. seattle isn't. you see this pattern everywhere you go just nobody wants to admit it because its not how you're SUPPOSED to think. hard to move a business into areas with loads of blacks because crime makes security so expensive. you see this pattern everywhere. improve the area and the blacks cry about gentrification.

Re:economy doing well?

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't help but notice the distinct lack of industry in your raving about how wonderful things are for you. I mean, having lots of commerce and residential is great, but how is anybody supposed to pay for it? The money won't just appear out of thin air, you know?

Re:economy doing well?

[93 Escort Wagon]

The money won't just appear out of thin air, you know?

Have you seen the valuations for Snapchat and WhatsApp - or Facebook for that matter? We're well into Dot Com Boom 2.0.

Just remember to get out before it all evaporates...

Re:economy doing well?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Booming like crazy in Boston, NYC, Seattle, Austin (mostly tech), SF, etc.

Re:economy doing well?

[drinkypoo]

Have you seen the valuations for Snapchat and WhatsApp - or Facebook for that matter? We're well into Dot Com Boom 2.0.

Yes, but now there is not a startup around every corner. This is a much, much smaller boom. That should mean a smaller bust, but it also means less benefit for us while it happens.

Re:economy doing well?

[Anonymous Coward]

The DOW is not a good indicator of economic health. Look at the Bond market.

Re:economy doing well?

[TheNastyInThePasty]

Which indications are those?

GDP, Public Sector Job Openings, Employment Rate, Stock Market, Consumer Spending, Consumer Confidence, Housing Prices...

What are you looking for?

Re:economy doing well?

[TheNastyInThePasty]

That should say PRIVATE sector job openings....

Re:economy doing well?

[ranton]

Couldn't help but notice the distinct lack of industry in your raving about how wonderful things are for you. I mean, having lots of commerce and residential is great, but how is anybody supposed to pay for it? The money won't just appear out of thin air, you know?

Complaining about a lack of manufacturing jobs in today's economy is little different than complaining about the lack of agricultural jobs. Yes these have historically been sectors of the economy where the majority of people worked, but that is no longer the case. The lack of agricultural and manufacturing jobs are not a sign of a weak economy, they are the sign of a strong one.

Manufacturing and agricultural output are still good metrics for measuring an economy, and the United States is certainly strong there.

Re:economy doing well?

[bzipitidoo]

When job hunts for you, then economy doing well!

Re:economy doing well?

[Anonymous Coward]

Search the App store (any App store) for anything, and you'll find *thousands* of apps for your search criteria... Could you honestly claim there were that many "apps" (and companies behind those apps) in the first dot-com? (heck, there are more apps now then there were websites back then).

Re:economy doing well?

[ShanghaiBill]

The money won't just appear out of thin air, you know?

Yes it does. The Fed can easily expand or shrink the M1/M2 money supply to meet the needs of growing economy. Saying money can't appear out of thin air is as silly as saying the earth is flat.

Re:economy doing well?

[ShanghaiBill]

Really? Booming like crazy in Boston, NYC, Seattle, Austin (mostly tech), SF, etc.

I live in San Jose, and I get several calls or emails every week asking if I am available, or if I know anyone who is. The tech job market is booming here. If there aren't enough jobs where you live, then stop whining and get on the bus Gus.

Re:economy doing well?

[Anonymous Coward]

And which Indian or Chinese province are u from? 2015 is projected to be a year of stalled growth in China. So we'll be ransacked by cheap competitive labor from there. We will also continue to be ransacked by cheaper eastern European labor

Re:economy doing well?

[__aaclcg7560]

If there aren't enough jobs where you live, then stop whining and get on the bus Gus.

When I was out of work in Silicon Valley over the last few years, commentators told me to get on a bus to get a natural gas job in North Dakota. I pointed out that North Dakota was in the boom cycle. What would happen when it goes bust? We will find out soon enough with cheap gas..

Re:economy doing well?

[buddyglass]

Sure, I've got some free time. I'll do your googling for you. U-3 unemployment down 1.2% from 7.0% in Nov-2013 to Nov-2014. Should reach pre-recession levels by end of year 2015, if not earlier. Two successive quarters (Q2 and Q3 2014) of high GDP growth (4.6% and 5.0% annualized). Stock market still doing well, though I question how long that can last given its overvalued relative to GDP. U.S. Consumer Confidence index for Dec-2014 is at an eight-year high. Oil prices are low and project to stay that way throughout 2015 (good for the overall economy, but bad for U.S. energy producers). Core inflation under 2%. Weekly unemployment claims (4 week moving average) down around 300k, matching pre-recession lows.

Re:economy doing well?

[buddyglass]

Lots of businesses are relocating to Texas due to low taxes. Texas has relatively high rates of blacks and Hispanics. Also relatively high crime. Especially in the urban areas where these businesses are relocating. So your logic fails. "Security" is not a major expense. State taxes and cost of labor are.

Also- Atlanta is "blacker" than Detroit and has markedly lower crime.

Re:economy doing well?

[lgw]

And which Indian or Chinese province are u from? 2015 is projected to be a year of stalled growth in China. So we'll be ransacked by cheap competitive labor from there. We will also continue to be ransacked by cheaper eastern European labor

Cheaper than robots? The 21st century will see the end of unskilled labor from the mainstream economy, much as the 20th saw the end of agricultural labor from the mainstream. It's good to learn a skill.

Re:economy doing well?

[meustrus]

There's an important difference between the dot-com boom of the 90s and now. In the 90s you needed lots of capital and the smartest minds available to get online. Now you don't. Anybody with a little bit of programming skill can write an app in weeks and make it available to everyone. Anyone who needs a server can get an AWS instance and expect it to scale up when they need it to. Anyone who needs revenue can get a Google AdSense account. And anyone who actually needs substantial capital can point to Facebook's success. Not that Facebook or any other capital-driven businesses are immune. There may well be a bust. But the industry is more mature, the rewards are easier to define, and nobody wants to see their kids' faces when their investment decisions contribute to Facebook's demise.

Re:economy doing well?

[Archtech]

Exactly. Check out, for example, this: http://www.paulcraigroberts.or...

Or this: http://www.paulcraigroberts.or...

If Roberts' in-your-face tone doesn't suit you, try the soberly factual John Williams at http://www.shadowstats.com/

Re:economy doing well?

[Archtech]

"The money won't just appear out of thin air, you know?"

Funny you should mention that... take a look at http://www.opednews.com/articl...

Apparently there is no real need for taxation any more. All the government has to do is run the printing presses and print up as many dollars as it needs - plus a few trillion for its good buddies, of course. Because the rest of the world owes the unique, exceptional, indispensable nation a generous living. The economics of Oz is here to stay!

Re:economy doing well?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd agree, we relocated here to Seattle 7 months ago from Alaska.

I was surprised to land a well paid desktop support + sys admin job with a good company. All the interviews were done via phone and Skype.

What we did find "challenging" is the cost of rental houses (options are especially limited if you try and rent something from out of state with out being able to go look at it). Finding a good location for commute where I could use transit. Just bought a house in Puyallup some 35 miles south of downtown Seattle where I catch the Sounder train into Seattle now, everything North and East too expensive and no rail commute.

Re:economy doing well?

[meustrus]

Cheaper than robots? The 21st century will see the end of unskilled labor from the mainstream economy

Let's have a thought experiment. Say that every year, machines replace 40,000 unskilled hours per week with 4,000 skilled hours per week maintaining the machines. The machines are equivalent to the human workers in economic output, so the revenue stays the same. Where does the money go? Should there be 1/10 as many workers working full time or the same number of workers working 1/10 of the hours? Should the skilled hours be worth 10x as much as the unskilled hours? Or should the skilled workers be paid the same or slightly better wages?

Let's say all 40,000 unskilled hours are the entire economic activity of a company. If the company continues to employ the same workers, trains them to maintain the machines, and pays them 10x the rate for 1/10 the work, everything stays exactly the same (this never happens). If the company trains 1/10 of the workers to maintain the machines, laying off the rest, and pays the maintenance 2x the rate for the same number of hours (optimistic), the company now pays 2/10 as much for the same economic activity, leaving the other 8/10 for other activities. Where will that money go? Where should it go? How much of a raise for the management is appropriate? How much of the money can they use to expand? What is the likely expansion? Does the business plan scale up or would it have to change? Does scaling up displace other businesses with other workers?

What about the laid off workers? In a small local economy, the layoffs could easily destroy an entire town. The remaining workers only need so many new clothes, new cars, new toys, and nights eating out. Even if we assume they will spend all of their money in the local economy, that's still 2/10 of the money now supporting the service industry. Restaurants and outlet stores will close, putting more people out of work in a cascade of unemployment. Can the company expand local jobs with its new profits to make up for this? Will it?

When a business becomes more efficient, what is the ideal mix of lay-offs, pay raises, and work hour reductions? How does the answer change depending on whether you are a worker for the company, the owner of the company, a service worker in the company's town, a worker in the same industry in another town, a political leader interested in the most economic progress for voters, or a political leader interested in the most economic progress for campaign donors? Is the ideal outcome maximum economic output, maximum investment in the local community, or something else?

These are questions we must think of now more than ever before. There have been gains in efficiency before, but nothing like what we will see in the 21st century. We stand at the threshold of machines replacing all unskilled work, from retail to agriculture to manufacturing to restaurants to transportation. Nearly all of our needs and desires can be met with machines, but only if we still have jobs.

Re:economy doing well?

[Anonymous Coward]

get on the bus Gus.

Slip out the back, Jack.

Make a new plan, Stan.

Don't need to be coy, Roy.

Drop off the key, Lee.

Re:economy doing well?

[lgw]

Where did all the farmer jobs go? Where did all the jobs go that were replaced by manufacturing lines? You're asking the wrong questions.

Being able to produce food easier and cheaper than ever meant more people could afford food than ever before. Being able to produce shoes, tableware, and chairs cheaper than ever meant that for the first time everyone could afford these - even shoes for children. Making stuff more efficiently always means more stuff for everyone. The money is just a handy intermediary for barter - the amount of stuff we have is simply the amount of stuff we manage to create. The more efficiently we make stuff (less labor, less power, less raw materials), the more stuff we will all have.

People made the exact same argument's you're making in the late 1800s - that everyone will be unemployed and only the rich will have these new manufactured goods (only the rich could afford those same goods when the were handcrafted, after all). Funny how it didn't work out that way. We went from most everyone working, producing X, to everyone working, producing 100X, meaning the rich no longer were the exclusive buyers of most goods.

The same thing will happen again - we'll mostly be employed providing services to one another that we simply can't afford today because our money goes elsewhere (plus the skilled trades are vastly understaffed today - everyone turned their noses up at being a welder or plumber for some reason, but those jobs pay pretty well).

Re:economy doing well?

[buddyglass]

I work for a company that makes apps for small community banks. We have about 300 apps in the Google Play store and another 450 in the Apple store (our iPad version is technically a separate app.) So it's not quite a 1-1 from app to company.

Re:economy doing well?

[datavirtue]

I think that for some time now taxation has served two purposes:

1) To burn money offsetting and providing a controlling mechanism of the money supply
2) To burden businesses and individuals into using debt as a means to organically create money

So taxes effectively become interest paid by the people to the major banks that operate out of the discount window, while the creation of debt increases the money supply and taxation acts to decreases it. The taxes go into a set of coffers (not directly) that are not counted as part of the M1 or M2 (or whatever designation now exists). Ostensibly I think this money is loaned to entities outside the US through commercial and international banks. When the money supply is not decreased you potentially rob the citizens of wealth while those loaning (controlling) the money do not assume that risk and enjoy all of the benefits (whatever those are). Now one might think that this tax money that is cleverly siphoned off acts as a currency to trade for commodities and it does, but the main purpose is to broker power. An obtuse change in function whereby it is used by the lower classes to buy commodities while the comptrollers use it to buy power. Maybe I'm crazy but this is the way I see it. This system fascinates me and I have spent a lot of time thinking about it. Perhaps this could all be a natural consequence but we as a people permit it to continue. There is a choice in how we treat our most important un-natural resource. The system of income and use taxation should really be halted and any collected taxes (sales taxes) should be used to directly pay for certain line items. As long as we agree to let the government force us into the arms of banks (income taxation) this highly inefficient system will continue bleed off wealth from the rightful owners on a periodic basis.

Re:economy doing well?

[buddyglass]

I pointed out that North Dakota was in the boom cycle. What would happen when it goes bust?

Then you move back to Silicon Valley. (Or wherever the local conditions are brightest for your particular field.)

Re:economy doing well?

[__aaclcg7560]

That's assuming an ability to move in either direction. Companies will not pay for relocation costs. If you don't have the money to move, you're so out of luck. This happened to a coworker at a video game company who accepted a promotion to move from California to Texas, got a laid off a month later, and couldn't come home because he spent everything to move there in the first place.

Re:economy doing well?

[buddyglass]

That's assuming an ability to move in either direction. Companies will not pay for relocation costs. If you don't have the money to move, you're so out of luck.

That's why you budget money for a future move and/or rent instead of buy. A 20ft U-Haul truck from Austin to SanFran is $850, plus gas. Loaded it gets 8mpg, and the trip is 1750 miles. So figure $450 for gas, for a total of $1300. Say your buddy gets an offer for $100k/year back in California. He could counter with "$95k/year + $1500 to relocate." The employer would recoup its cost within 4 months. Most would accept that counter-offer. Sucks to give up base salary, but if the alternative is "no job at all and you're stuck in Texas when you don't want to be" then it starts to look more attractive.

Re:economy doing well?

[__aaclcg7560]

If you're a video game tester getting paid $16/hr (which I was ten years ago before I got into IT), you're not going to have any money saved up and no one is going to offer you a $100K/yr job to negotiate relocation cost. This particular coworker found another job in Texas. AFAIK, he never came back to California.

Re:economy doing well?

[buddyglass]

That changes the equation somewhat, I agree. Some thoughts:

1. Moving cross-country to take a $16/hr job when you have no savings is somewhat risky, as your friend found out. How much could he have made in CA if he hadn't moved? How much did the initial move from California to Texas cost? If it cost $1000 to move one-way and he was able to earn $3/hr more (after taxes) than in CA then he would have recouped the cost of his move (round-trip) in 4 months time.
2. If he was able to earn more in Texas than in CA then I'm going to assume the job prospects for his skill set were superior in Texas. So even after he lost the initial job he was still better positioned in Texas than in CA.
3. The person making $16/hr probably doesn't need a 20ft U-Haul trailer. If he didn't have furniture (or was willing to sell and re-buy after the move) and had a reasonable car then 1750 miles / 20mpg * $2/gallon = $175. That's a much cheaper move.

Re:economy doing well?

[__aaclcg7560]

Being a video game tester sucks all around. The payscale ten years ago -- and it probably haven't changed since then -- was $10 to $16 per hour. Management always told us that we could work at Taco Bell down the street if we didn't like our pay. One coworker looked into it, quit his job to work as Taco Bell because he made more money, and management shut up about Taco Bell. Too many video game testers buy video game-related crap that they don't need.

Re:economy doing well?

[cheesybagel]

Funny that you talk about Oz because it is all an allegory about the different kinds of currency. You have the greenback Emerald City where the Wizard of Oz lives, the golden Yellow Brick Road, and the silver Magic Slippers. Which somehow got turned into ruby in the movie.

Re:economy doing well?

[buddyglass]

Yes. I imagine the skill set for low-level video game testers is pretty minimal, and they have a built-in advantage because so many (IMO foolish) people are disproportionately interested in "video game testing" compared to other things they could be doing with their time. I live in Austin, by the way. You can easily get $10 at many high-end fast food places (e.g. Rudy's BBQ). You can undoubtedly make more than $16/hr if you can successfully transition from "video game tester" to "QA Engineer" and get out of the gaming industry. But you'd have to be more than a random-button-pusher. Writing test plans, QA automation, etc.

Re:economy doing well?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of those apps are simply re-branded versions of some core you wrote?

Re:economy doing well?

[buddyglass]

How many of those apps are simply re-branded versions of some core you wrote?

All of them. The company couldn't exist if we had to code up a unique app for every customer. My point is that the fact of there being "lots of apps in the store" doesn't mean the number of app "producers" is correspondingly large. I thought I made that clear when I said, "it's not quite a 1-1 from app to company".

Re:economy doing well?

[Hognoxious]

Where do you live? Here in the Seattle area

Wild guess: somewhere that isn't the Seattle area?

I've got a 98% chance of being right.

Re:economy doing well?

[meustrus]

Times are different now. Before the 20th century, goods were expensive and time was cheap. If you've ever had or heard of old world home-cooked food, you know that a lot of it was very labor-intensive but mostly made of grains or broths, often padded full of vegetables. Basically, the sort of thing that rural people had easy access to. They found it hard to afford lots of meat, but they had plenty of spare time to fill and could afford to have a place to live. Where is our money going now? Most of it is paid in rent or mortgage on our homes. So our increasing production has made a great big difference: more people can't afford a place to live, but at least those homeless people have cheap access to everything else they need

We live in a society where the very ambitious have the motivation to create new service industries, like the whole startup thing going on in Silicon Valley. But people without that ambition - the people who have always lived by contributing to existing power structures like their families or their local communities - are at the mercy of a shrinking job market. I am making the argument that now times are different than in the 1800s. A society can only come up with new service jobs for its people so quickly. We should be looking at reducing the work week for the same pay in order to maintain enough jobs for the less ambitious. Otherwise we are looking at a very costly welfare problem. We've already got bottom-rung employers like Wal-Mart and McDonald's expecting their workers to work full-time and also take government welfare just to survive.

Re:economy doing well?

[cthulhu11]

How many of those buildings are Amazon? I see a lot more contracts being offered than jobs.

Bleh

[Anonymous Coward]

For a company that's all about jobs, Dice seems to give pretty terrible advice. This article was fine (by virtue of not saying anything that even the newest job hunter shouldn't already know.. surprised they didn't mention arriving on time and not dressing like a slob..).

This article however was painful to read: http://news.dice.com/2014/12/3...

Like, if I could personify an article, this would be one that I'd want to punch in the face.

Re:Bleh

[Anonymous Coward]

Like, if I could personify an article, this would be one that I'd want to punch in the face.

Using the word "personify" is incorrect usage.

( perhaps English is not your first language, but if it is you need to work on it )

What you should have said is :

  "if you could anthropomorphize an article"

And if you could do that, the article would be a gay nigger who needed to be shot
with a flamethrower until he was well done. Am I right ? You know I am !

Re:Bleh

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing wrong with using "personify" in this sense. It's entry #1 in Merriam-Webster

"to conceive of or represent as a person or as having human qualities or powers"

"Anthropomorphize" is incorrect in this case. Saying the article has a face to punch would be anthropomorphizing it.

Maybe you should do your homework before criticizing others' usage.

Re:Bleh

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing wrong with using "personify" in this sense. It's entry #1 in Merriam-Webster

"to conceive of or represent as a person or as having human qualities or powers"

"Anthropomorphize" is incorrect in this case. Saying the article has a face to punch would be anthropomorphizing it.

Maybe you should do your homework before criticizing others' usage.

maybe you should respond to the part about the gay nigger. ignoring him just cause he's a nigger would be racist and thats bad.

Re:Bleh

[Anonymous Coward]

This article however was painful to read

I took a look. It certainly won't help me as a young person and I can't exactly judge whether appearing "dated" is really that awful. Judging by how much the author thinks so, however, I can at least draw the meaningful conclusion that somebody sure thinks the industry is agist as shit.

Also, what the HELL is the keyboard in the image? Who has a trash can button on their keyboard, let alone a "down-right arrow" key?

Not sure why this is an anonymous discussion but considering some of phrases being batted around I think I'll oblige.

Best advice I heard, and followed

[Anonymous Coward]

Get the hell out of the tech industry. I went back to school, got my PharmD and couldn't be happier.

Better money too.

Re:Best advice I heard, and followed

[lgw]

Get the hell out of the tech industry. I went back to school, got my PharmD and couldn't be happier.

Won't you be surprised when the pharmacy robots displace you. Better to learn to program those robots, if you can!

Re:Best advice I heard, and followed

[slazzy]

Robots might replace pharmacy technicians someday, but we'll always need pharmacists, let alone PharmDs.

Re:Best advice I heard, and followed

[Anonymous Coward]

Robots might replace pharmacy technicians someday, but we'll always need pharmacists, let alone PharmDs.

Let me introduce Watson, our new Pharmacist and his assistant Siri.

Re:Best advice I heard, and followed

[ranton]

Robots might replace pharmacy technicians someday, but we'll always need pharmacists, let alone PharmDs.

I worked as a software developer in the pharmaceutical industry, and I assure you that PharmDs are just as in danger of being automated as pharmacy techs. Perhaps even more so because of their higher pay. Every seminar I sat through where our customers talked about their successes with our software measured success in number of jobs reduced (usually through attrition, not firing, but the net result is the same). One key metric of success was being able to get the same amount of work done with more pharmacy techs instead of PharmDs, thus reducing overall wages.

PharmD jobs are almost the poster child for a high wage career that can be more easily replaced by automation than most low wage work. It is a career that requires very highly skilled workers because of the vast amount of knowledge they need to have. That is exactly the type of work that the new wave of AI is being designed to do. Like another poster already mentioned, Watson really is going to displace a good percentage of your industry's jobs.

Re:Best advice I heard, and followed

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything pharma can be automated to the point of being done remotely on another planet and shipped / controlled by Amazon drone-carriers. Basically, there's absolutely nothing magically going on in a pharmacy that can't be automated. A machine will even be more precise than people in describing gotchas and EULAs.

Sadly, my wife worked in a pharmacy and the constant pressure to eliminate workers overloaded her. Again, this won't happen to a beautiful machine!

It's gotten so far pharmacies can't keep up by just selling medicine, but have to sell everything else but medicine. At this point, it's only regulations keeping those jobs alive.

Next step is: Cashiers

You can be sure 1000% profit increases to the 0.0001% will trickle down someday... Keep buying the cheapest stuff that pollutes the most and see.

Re:Best advice I heard, and followed

[Anonymous Coward]

We definitely have some interesting times ahead. Many people believe that all this labor automation will produce a world in which all of everybody's needs can be met by the labors of a very small few, and because of this nobody will be able to find work, and the whole economy will come tumbling down.

Capitalists have been holding firm on the position that this sort of change produces new kinds of work. We shall see if that holds true or not.

Re:Best advice I heard, and followed

[lgw]

We definitely have some interesting times ahead. Many people believe that all this labor automation will produce a world in which all of everybody's needs can be met by the labors of a very small few, and because of this nobody will be able to find work, and the whole economy will come tumbling down.

Capitalists have been holding firm on the position that this sort of change produces new kinds of work. We shall see if that holds true or not.

When people wrote this in 1884, it was valid speculation, since we hadn't see tech revolutions play out. Now we have. Now we know it's full of shit. Over and over we see that making stuff easier and cheaper means that more people have that stuff, and meanwhile we're all at work making stuff only the rich could previously buy (but now everyone can, because the other stuff is so cheap now).

Wow, no

[phantomfive]

others that could actually stand you in good stead, including using the Bureau of Labor Statistics to judge the median salary for a position before negotiating with HR.

Wow, no, do not do that, the BLS statistics are LOW for huge sections of the United States. Remember, these are the numbers used to pay H1 visas, and they include jobs that aren't necessarily what you would think of when you think of a programmer (like the guy at my brother's company who gets paid $40k to write SQL queries, and not necessarily efficient ones. That's all he can do).

Secondly, when you are negotiating salary, always ask above the median (and that's assuming the median is correct). You can go lower later, but it's hard to negotiate higher than what you initially ask for.

Re:Wow, no

[phantomfive]

Yeah, here are the BLS statistics for median software developer: $93,000 per year.
For web developer it's worse, $62,000 per year.

Compare that one to this data, which puts software engineer at $130,000 median.

If you've been a programmer for a while, you should be making a lot more than that. Every recruiter that contacts me, I tell them first thing (after hello) that I'm not interested in anything under $170k. A lot of them go away immediately, but that's ok, I'm not interested in them.

Re:Wow, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Both measures are bad taken as point statistics. You need to see/use the distribution for any constructive interpretation. Your other problem is that you don't understand the data the BLS uses. It covers the entire nation, not just niche cities/areas like silicon valley. It includes the guys working on industrial machinery, etc. not just whiz-bang iphone BS.

Re: Wow, no

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nothing. I won't get out of bed for less than $250K. Just not worth it.

Re: Wow, no

[phantomfive]

That's nothing. I won't get out of bed for less than $250K. Just not worth it.

Yeah. That's the right attitude. Let the recruiters know what we are worth.

Re: Wow, no

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet your Mom says you're smart, if you ever head upstairs.

Re: Wow, no

[TheRaven64]

Good thing laptops and WiFi work in bed.

Re: Wow, no

[asylumx]

I can see the resume now:

Work history:
2003 - Present
Didn't get out of bed because nobody would pay me enough.

Ya... I'd hire 'em... </sarcasm>

Re:Wow, no

[Anonymous Coward]

From time to time I go on job interviews for positions I have no intention of getting. When they offer way below the line, I counter it by demanding way above the line.

The look on their faces is worth it.

Re: Wow, no

[Havokmon]

That's nothing. I won't get out of bed for less than $250K. Just not worth it.

Yeah. That's the right attitude. Let the recruiters know what we are worth.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, but I do the same thing, ESPECIALLY for recruiters - they do NOT have your best interests in mind. IMHO, when I talk to a recruiter, it's only because it's a position of interest. It seems to me recruiters tend to treat the prospect like they're applying to anything that passes in front of them.

Of course, you have to be PC about it: "I just want you to know, I'd prefer not to waste anyone's time - and while this job sounds like something that's right up my alley, if the job doesn't pay 'x', I'm just not interested."

Even if it doesn't get back to the employer, the recruiter is aware.

Re: Wow, no

[phantomfive]

Yeah. It saves everyone's time, and if all of us do it, then it'll raise all our salaries. It's kind of like a union action, but without paying union dues.

Re:Wow, no

[buddyglass]

I usually take my current salary and ask for $5-10k more. If another employer is arguing I should quick my current gig then they should be willing to present a better value proposition. If they're not going to pay me more then they need to convince me that their job is "better" in some other way than what I'm doing now. Of course, I always claim I'm super-happy where I am (even if I'm not), so generally their value proposition is going to involve more compensation.

As a sanity check you can go to salary.com and plug in your degree, years experience, job description (in as much detail as possible; they usually have different "grades" of each one, e.g. "Software Engineer I", "Software Engineer II", etc.), and geographic area. It then spits out 25th, 50th and 75th percentile values.

Re:Wow, no

[buddyglass]

Err, "quit my current gig" not "quick".

Re:Wow, no

[phantomfive]

Yeap, just be aware that salaries are going up, so you might be worth more than that.

Re:Wow, no

[buddyglass]

Interestingly, my current employer is the first one I've ever had that gave me significant raises. Everywhere else I've worked I got cost-of-living-increase at most, and sometimes not even that. So, essentially, the only time I got a raise is when I switched jobs. With the current employer, though, I've gotten raises in the 6-9% range for the past two years. I guess they didn't get the memo. That, or they realize their work environment is frustrating enough that they have to overpay people to keep them from leaving.

Re:Wow, no

[phantomfive]

Interestingly, my current employer is the first one I've ever had that gave me significant raises.

Nice. I've heard of such companies. Everywhere I've worked, I've either had to quit or threaten to quit to get a raise.

Re:Wow, no

[buddyglass]

I've never threatened to quit somewhere and then stayed. For that matter, I've only ever left one job willingly (the place I was at before this current one). All the other job changes have been due to layoffs or the company going under. So the graph of my salary over time is very "stair-step" in appearance. Periods of relative flatness for 2-3 years followed by sudden jumps.

Re: Wow, no

[meustrus]

It's kind of like a union action, but without paying union dues.

And without supporting any of the supposed evil for which a lot of people seem to think unions are responsible. Unless you think being paid more for your work is evil.

Re: Wow, no

[phantomfive]

I'm pretty sure I don't need yet another power structure over me

Re:Wow, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Landed my job a few months after graduation, worked there for half a year, then yearly reviews came around, I got a 4% raise. The next year I got no raise because company wide freeze from the recession/depression, but I got a bonus equal to 4%, the next year I got a 14% raise. We haven't had our 2014 reviews yet, but I still got a 7% raise as a "base raise" to hold me over until the real raises go out. Averaging 7% per year for a decade, same employer.

Re:Wow, no

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to start doing this. Great idea!

Re:Wow, no

[buddyglass]

So your current salary is approximately 2x what you started at 10 years ago (i.e. 1.07^10)? Nice. I'm 15.5 years into my career since graduating with a M.S. If my salary 15 years ago is what I think it was (am having trouble remembering) then I'm averaging only 5%/year. It's possible that the yearly increase is steeper during the first 10 years than in the next 10. Then again, maybe I'm just consoling myself. :)

Re: Wow, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, at least he's not burnt out.

Re:economy doing well? NIGGER RICH!

[Anonymous Coward]

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Getter by better if you have skills...

[aaarrrgggh]

The only people we hire now have relevant experience and skills in our very specific field, and experience commensurate for the position we are posting. We have sadly given up on new graduates; they are too flakey, having never held an actual job before, and needing substantial training to get to a point where they can generate revenue... and leave. Now is a great time for people that graduated around 2010, found a job in their field at terrible pay, and are now ready for an actual career.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[jfz]

Can you give me an idea about which industry or company you work for? I would rather not devote a significant portion of my life in trying to appease bigoted idiots. Thanks.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it must be a troll.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Anrego]

Personally I don't see anything specifically wrong here.

There's a reason experience costs more: it's valuable. If a company can afford to exclusively hire experienced people it's probably not a terrible idea.

Hiring new grads is a cost savings measure, and as was said, it usually comes with the expected downsides of hiring someone who's never held an actual dev job before. Employers weight the pros and cons and proceed accordingly.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, bigoted against what... inexperience?

Most people fresh out of university do suck for precisely the reason given: they haven't had the requisite experience to not suck. This is probably the reason most companies directly tie experience to salary.

Most companies have a mixture of new grads and experienced people. Some companies hire exclusively from university and produce shitty low cost work. Others exclusively hire people with lots of experience and produce high quality but expensive work.

There is no problem in a business model built on having a team of experienced people working on projects where the client is willing to pay for that experience and more then there is a problem with having a team of inexperience people working on projects where the client is looking for a low cost "mostly works" solution.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[jfz]

The OP made general and offensive statements about "new grads". Now go make your straw-man & obligatory economist argument to someone who gives a shit.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[m00sh]

The only people we hire now have relevant experience and skills in our very specific field, and experience commensurate for the position we are posting. We have sadly given up on new graduates; they are too flakey, having never held an actual job before, and needing substantial training to get to a point where they can generate revenue... and leave. Now is a great time for people that graduated around 2010, found a job in their field at terrible pay, and are now ready for an actual career.

This is not true.

I know recruiters and they love hiring new graduates. New graduates need jobs, experienced engineers already have jobs.

Training does not take long at all. Revenue generation isn't a factor since there is not even a way to measure how someone directly generated revenue when hundreds of people work on a single product.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is it offensive to assume that someone without experience is inexperienced. If you hire some 20 year old fresh out of university, it's no great stretch to assume they have limited experience working on a real software project for real customers.

At best it's a gamble. Some turn out ok, some fail hard. I've never met one who jumped right into the role, on average I would say it takes about 6 months for someone out of university, even someone with strong technical skills from outside projects, to become not useless in the environment I work in (vs people with 5 to 10 years experience in similar jobs who just jump right in and get started). We still hire a mixture of new grads because they are a lot more available and much cheaper.

I doubt you'll find many companies who hire straight from university to capitalize on their youthful outlook. It's a cost management strategy.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[jfz]

> Since when is it offensive to assume that someone without experience is inexperienced.
That isn't the assertion. He's asserting that if your a new grad, you're without experience and that you're "flaky" (whatever the hell that means, and that is a huge stretch for a fucking 4 year BS university graduate). There are tons of new grads that have experience. He is engaging in bigotry and stereotyping here. This isn't an economist argument against hiring people without experience. It's nasty and likely self-serving labeling and rhetoric.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[theshowmecanuck]

So you are saying you only hire people from India because they have all the skills you want on their resume? And you say this will save you money? If not, where do you get these people with specific skills? Out of thin air?

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know recruiters and they love hiring new graduates.

Recruiters do not work with the people they hire nor does it cost them anything when the people they hire revolving-door through to a second company.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to assume the software industry.

It's a pretty universal sentiment. People are usually considered mostly useless and possibly unreliable until they've got a few years actual working experience (experience in personal projects is a good thing, experience in open source projects is better (assuming multiple people involved), but nothing compares to actual paid experience).

Hiring right out of university is a huge bet. Some people turn out to be completely useless. You really don't know what you are going to get until someone has actually worked for at least 2 years. Many employers are willing to go for it because more experience means higher salary expectations and less willingness to go along with overly broad NCAs. Other employers want people with a few years so they have a better idea of what they are getting.

The place I work requires 5 years minimum for engineering positions. We work on tight deadlines in an industry that doesn't tolerate too many surprises, and untested university students just don't factor into the equation for us. We tried the co-op thing a few years ago, and even heavily subsidized it wasn't worth it. The cost of dealing with them probably put us in the negative even if they were free.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Shados]

It depends on the field though. The issue with new grads as devs, is that in big tech hubs, the average developer stays at a company around 1 (SF, Seattle) to 2 (Boston, not sure where NYC stands, haven't seen statistics on it) years.

So you get your new grad, you train them....and then they're gone. Offering more benefits or money doesn't help, because they're often leaving for some startup with their friends and aren't even going to get paid because they're "founders" (heck, if you paid them more they'd find they have enough money to quit for a startup sooner).

You have very little time to train someone when you expect them to leave in 12-24 months.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

The tech industry is mostly experience driven. There are plenty of people that are new grads, and many that are not grads at all that all have LOTS of experience. One has nothing to do with the other.

I have been in the tech industry for 30 years, I have no degree, and I can do circles around any grad or non-grad, because I have real experiance.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Anrego]

whatever the hell that means, and that is a huge stretch for a fucking 4 year BS university graduate

I for one have met plenty of graduates with not just a lack technical skills but a general absence of common sense and work ethic which made it baffling how they ever graduated.

He's asserting that if your a new grad, you're without experience

There are tons of new grads that have experience.

Some people go back to school, sure, but when people refer to "new grads" they arn't usually talking someone in their 40s with several years experience in some other career. Not many grads have actual paid experience. Some might have co-op experience of experience contributing to open source projects or their own pet projects, and while this is certainly good, to me it really doesn't compare to the office environment.

and that you're "flaky"

Ok, you've got something here. To me flaky generally refers to bad personal skills and general unreliability. I don't really equate it with experience. That someone coming out of university will end up being flaky is a definite risk, but by no means a universal.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[jfz]

In my experience, some employers smokescreen. The complaint for "lack of experience" is often an excuse to provide plausible deniability for rejecting someone when they threaten your position or may show you incompetent, or the new hire doesn't fit your tractible office-political or cargo-cult agenda. Sentiment is one thing, and yes there is risk and economic motives, but it's another to make general statements about all new grads as if we're all part of the collective group of flaky inferiors. That bigoted attitude that he feels necessary to demonstrate on /. for no reason (other than the motive of course, to take a shit on others in a pathetic attempt protect their own position) still pisses me off.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[jfz]

You're not going to stop new people from coming up and presenting better ideas or showing you incompetent, by spreading bigotry and misinformation on /. You'll only create animosity and motive them even more to prove you wrong. But I suspect you will never show this opinion in real life, and give them the opportunity, those you'll just say don't have experience in a skill-set with a two week ramp-up. Pathetic.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your huge ego is hilarious. You sound like an arrogant child with very little real-world experience. You throw around a lot of insults for an incompetent person.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Anrego]

There's no great conspiracy to suppress knowledge. Old grey beards arn't sitting around saying "better not hire any of them kids outa university, they'll start throwing executable UML and agile around and I'll be out of work!"

It's just basic economics and risk / cost management at work. More experience is less risk but more money. Employers decide where in that spectrum they want to fall. Works this way in just about every industry from construction to prostitution.

Did you recently graduate and couldn't find a job or something? You sound like someone who's pissed about the lack of entry level positions and are turning it into some larger social issue. If you're happily employed and actually feel that university graduates are being unfairly discriminated against in the job market based on experience, then I've really got nothing. Our views on reality are incompatible.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[jfz]

I was on the job market for a little over 3 months in the southern US a few years ago. As part of rejecting me, it was often an excuse to claim that I had no experience in what were utter trivialities and translatable skill-sets. I once was even rejected for a technical reason not covered in the job description or asked during the interview. I got my BS CS earlier in this decade, and I've done mostly contract work, as I have over 2 years professional experience in multiple languages inclusive of a successful internship, though I've been in and out of industry to do other things.

The hiring "standard" is selectively applied based on successfully not proving the interviewer wrong (even tactfully), not being honest, and not appearing as a threat. Often people in the interview chain were tech school, or self-taught pedantic types, and they especially don't like theorists or those that can run circles around algorithm, logic, and design questions. These kind of interviews happened to me several times before I finally learned the disgusting practice of dumbing myself down, not showing off, and playing nice with those people. My success rate in interviews as a result improved, and I've been working FT as a respected Software Engineer for awhile. I don't think it's a conspiracy. It's just selfish, political, and fear driven behavior. Though by physical appearance, I am not young. I started my BS degree at 28, and I am generally professional & polite, but when I see harmful generalizations like that spewed about new grads, I'm going to speak up and I'm not going to be nice about it. New grads have enough shit to deal with already.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Pascoea]

Often people in the interview chain were tech school, or self-taught pedantic types, and they especially don't like theorists or those that can run circles around algorithm, logic, and design questions. These kind of interviews happened to me several times before I finally learned the disgusting practice of dumbing myself down, not showing off, and playing nice with those people

Or, maybe, experienced established professionals don't appreciate punk know-it-all showoffs coming into an interview with the goal of proving how much smarter than everybody else they are? With the attitude that you expressed in your post I wouldn't hire you either. Not for a programming position, or a janitor. Nobody likes working with a pompous asshole.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[buddyglass]

Our experience has been hit-or-miss with new grads. Of course, with an absurdly low sample-size, so not really something one can draw general conclusions from. Three have more-or-less worked out. Decent junior-level devs. Two were absolutely terrible. Of course, my employer has such a terrible interview process that we end up hiring people who probably wouldn't be hired elsewhere. I think the trick with new grads is to just be extra-picky.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[buddyglass]

Generally the recruiter doesn't get paid if the candidate doesn't last at least 6 months. If they foist someone absolutely terrible on you and that person is released within 6 months the recruiter loses his payday. That said, after the 6 month period they could care less if you leave.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[jfz]

It couldn't be that those pompous assholes are not trying to be pompous at all, and are actually just human beings attempting to demonstrate relevant value and what they can bring to your organization could it? It couldn't possibly be that what they have to say is directly relevant to your development efforts could it?

Thanks for illustrating my point. I predicted your exact post long before I even wrote mine. And there are still people that do listen to what pompous assholes are actually talking about and are actually saying. Those listeners don't rush to judgement, and rather understand that it's just showing talent during a fucking interview. This is funny since I'm usually a humble, polite and a nice person in real life, but I will attack and defeat anyone that engages in the generalizations and bigotry like the OP above, IRL or otherwise, especially when they try to hold there own position through fear, lies and slander.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am generally professional & polite, but when I see harmful generalizations like that spewed about new grads, I'm going to speak up and I'm not going to be nice about it.

Two whole years of experience? Wow! You sound just like the guy I worked with at my last job that thought he deserved a SSE title just because he knew a little bit of the Win32 API, even though he had just a hair under two years of experience, was an arrogant prick to work with, and was *always* getting stuff bounced back to him from QA. You don't even have enough time on the job to know what you don't know, particularly when speaking about working with newbies. I'm guessing the main reason it took so long to find work is that you come across in interviews as big of an asshole as you have here.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[NormalVisual]

It couldn't be that those pompous assholes are not trying to be pompous at all, and are actually just human beings attempting to demonstrate relevant value and what they can bring to your organization could it?

It could be, but part of what experience brings is knowing how to deal with people in this environment. I don't know you, and can't say anything regarding what you know or don't know, but it's easy to try too hard and to come across as being a prima donna even if that wasn't the intent. Interviews aren't just about technical skills - they're also about evaluating how well the candidate will integrate with the team and the company in general. Perceived arrogance turns a lot of people off, recruiters included.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[meustrus]

The attitudes toward fresh graduates are a larger social issue, and I think that the OP gets right to the heart of it:

needing substantial training to get to a point where they can generate revenue... and leave.

This is not just a statement about new CS grads. This is a statement about everybody in every industry. And it's not the employee's fault. There has been a huge cultural shift in the last 100 years. Our grandparents could take well-paying factory jobs and work them for 40 years without ever jumping ship, then rest on a pension. That option simply is not available anymore; the closest we can get is having tenure as a teacher, and our society even has that concept under assault. Where is the social value of loyalty? Neither loyalty towards the employer nor loyalty towards the employee have been fashionable for a long time, and it shows.

There are two sides, of course. Job hunters need to be prepared to spend several years at least in any given position. They also need to be empowered to find a culture that fits them, and they need to be prepared to fit themselves into a corporate culture if that culture is at least constructive. But employers need to invest more in the employees, not just in training but in overall career advancement and in making the work itself feel more rewarding. What makes your workplace exciting? Why should your new hire want to stay? Do you give your new hires raises commensurate with the new experience you've given them, now that a competitor could come along and offer to pay them what they are now worth? And just as importantly, when you hire based on experience, are you hiring somebody whose experience is 6 months being trained by a competitor?

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

I got my BS CS earlier in this decade

"this decade" would imply you got your BS sometime after 2010. So you have, at most, about 4 years of industry experience?

I have over 2 years professional experience in multiple languages inclusive of a successful internship

If you're counting your "successful internship" as part of your 2 years of industry experience, then you're pretty damned inexperienced.

though I've been in and out of industry to do other things.

And if you've been bouncing in and out of the industry for the 4 years since your graduation, such that you've only accrued 2 years of relevant experience, that suggests you are in the "unreliable / flaky / unlikely to stick around long enough to make training you worthwhile" category.

The hiring "standard" is selectively applied based on successfully not proving the interviewer wrong (even tactfully), not being honest, and not appearing as a threat.

No, the standard is evenly applied in using legitimate technical objections to keep know-it-all assholes off the team. Sure, you're probably technically qualified to be on the team... but when you come in and start talking about "running circles" around the people with experience, you're automatically going to sound like a narcissistic prima donna (read: asshole) that nobody wants to work with. That's why they find a technical detail they can use to reject you and find someone who... ISN'T an asshole.

Here's the best job-hunting tip you'll ever get: Stop assuming you're smarter than everybody you interview with - you're almost certainly not.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

I will attack and defeat anyone that engages in the generalizations and bigotry like the OP above

Your view of interviews and human interactions as a "battle" to be won is exactly why you're rightly viewed as a pompous asshole.

You're not concerned with demonstrating "relevant value," you're concerned with making everybody tell you you're the smartest motherfucker to ever walk through the interview room door. Lose the 'tude, and you'll do much better with finding jobs.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[jfz]

In my experience, taking the initiative to spend a little unforced time to go politely beyond the question at the white-board, and demonstrate a deeper understanding, after answering the question, is not being pompous or arrogant. This is the exact activity that has got me in trouble.

If you were the interviewer, conveniently labeling your candidates like that, tells me that you're not capable of working with others if you don't want to be shown wrong, or if you perceive a terrifying disparity in skill-set of your entry level candidate, in relation to yourself. http://48laws-of-power.blogspo...

The cases of this I can cite are all dev supervisor to dev interviewee. At one point I was even told this was was going on, and they were trying to put me in a different group out from under that supervisor to avoid the problem. Ultimately, there is no amount of experience that can teach how to prepare for this slandering due to someones inferiority complex. It just happens in my experience, as even a _really_ good answer can trigger it.

I've learned to avoid those companies when that happens, and I've happily moved on. In so doing I've been vindicated about who I am, and sometimes even made them unfortunately upset when they followed up with another opportunity, after their absurd politically driven rejection.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

More experience is less risk but more money. Employers decide where in that spectrum they want to fall. Works this way in just about every industry from construction to prostitution.

Hum, just to point out a slight flaw in your argument. Typically "less experienced" prostitutes cost more money than one that has been around the block so to speak... Fresh meat rarely goes on sale...

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[jfz]

I was referring the OP's pointless, abundantly self-serving, and total generalization of new grads as flaky and inexperienced. Not to generalizations about myself beyond the context of this discussion and events I've described, of which I could honestly care less what you _think_.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Pascoea]

Often people in the interview chain were tech school, or self-taught pedantic types, and they especially don't like theorists or those that can run circles around algorithm, logic, and design questions. These kind of interviews happened to me several times before I finally learned the disgusting practice of dumbing myself down, not showing off, and playing nice with those people

In my experience, taking the initiative to spend a little unforced time to go politely beyond the question at the white-board, and demonstrate a deeper understanding, after answering the question, is not being pompous or arrogant. This is the exact activity that has got me in trouble.

Can you see how you could possibly come across as arrogant? Those two statements are both yours, and they both say essentially the same thing. Attitude 1 gets shown the door, attitude 2 probably gets a second interview.

My only other thought... You have incredibly valid points, most people don't like being told they are dumb. If you are asked to dissect some code, it was most likely written by one of the interviewers and they are probably particularly proud of it. (they aren't going to display some crap they hacked together 5 years ago) Showing them intricate ways to improve it, even if they are completely valid, isn't going to earn you brownie points. Prove that you understand the concept, debug their intentional fuck-up, answer whatever the question is, and move on. Wait till you get hired to prove what an idiot the guy who wrote it is.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[jfz]

> Those two statements are both yours, and they both say essentially the same thing. Attitude 1 gets shown the door, attitude 2 probably gets a second interview.

Uh, except that the second was intended as the explanation of all the cases of not doing the first (dumbing oneself down, being political). I'm basically trying to describe the only scenario (the second) that I've been wrongly demonized and characterized over a number of times. I've just accepted that mastery in a subject will come across as having an "attitude" to some people with a nasty political or cargo-cult agenda in who they select. I know this because I've also landed a few jobs precisely because I did what some consider as having an attitude. It really comes down to the character of the interviewer in many cases. It's basically Russian roulette.

I always try to ask and figure out who they are and what their background is before starting into a particular solution, but even that of course gets attributed as being arrogant about ones own background. You just can't land on the right side of some, really. They've basically already decided, and you are there only to help them come up with a plausible reason to reject you for HR.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[jfz]

> So you have, at most, about 4 years of industry experience?

If you sum all the contracts I've done, more. But I think even a few months of job hunting is enough to draw the conclusions that I have. So I'm not sure where you're going with this.

> If you're counting your "successful internship" as part of your 2 years of industry experience, then you're pretty damned inexperienced.

Oh of course, I don't have the years of an ongoing-job-in-a-company experience. Really, please explain to me what that has to do with the points that I've raised. Though I think that even a year in the wrong company is enough to draw the points that I have. You're reaching pretty hard to show my youthful inexperience as proof of invalidity of my argument, rather than simply stating that this "doesn't reflect my experience" or some such.

> that suggests you are in the "unreliable / flaky / unlikely to stick around long enough to make training you worthwhile" category.

Yet another stupid and ridiculous generalization. Please continue, maybe you and the OP could get together, chain smoke and start a beer pounding podcast about how terrible and flaky new grads are, how they should never be hired even if they clearly prove themselves, and that you have absolute moral authority on the matter due to all those years in industry.

> No, the standard is evenly applied in using legitimate technical objections to keep know-it-all

That reasoning would work, except in my case the labelling happens _after_ already having politely and tactfully proved myself technically to the interviewer. . For no cause at all, it's basically the last excuse used when they really have nothing else left. Do you even read the threads before posting and judging me?

> That's why they find a technical detail they can use to reject you and find someone who... ISN'T an asshole.

Interesting, so I suppose that explains why I've been accepted for roles, for the exact reasons that others attribute as being an asshole with an attitude problem. Oh wait, it doesn't.

Or maybe we can just admit that there are some people that will go to any stretch to protect themselves from being shown as ignorant or wrong, no matter how politely or tactfully they are shown to be wrong (please see my other thread, I'm not going to respond to same non-sense twice).

The only thing I've learned from this is that telling someone they have an attitude problem is one of the most convenient excuses to reject them, when they've already proven themselves for the role. Pretty pathetic, but that's human nature, whatever gives you a plausible excuse to send to HR I guess.

> Here's the best job-hunting tip you'll ever get: Stop assuming you're smarter than everybody you interview with - you're almost certainly not.

Everyone? Really? Is that what you think? I don't remember having ever claimed that. Do you have a legitimate argument here? Or are you just throwing shit out there to see what sticks?

Please do keep posting, labelling, and generalizating. You're winning, and you're really doing the OP a favor. Please continue.

Re:Getter by better if you have skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

How strange, I've only heard of people GET hired whenever they display knowledge above and beyond the interviewer. That's how I've gotten every job I've ever had, was by offering real life solutions to their current problems. Every interviewer has been extremely graceful, and 100% has hired me right after that.

The best was during an online coding interview, when I requested to use vim instead of Eclipse, and proceeded to use shortcut commands to finish the task, and both of the guys were dumbfounded that such a thing could be done in vim. They started me at $5k above what I asked, as I displayed a much larger value than they initially thought.

None of that matters

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost none of this matters. Makes me wonder where they get these guys with corroded Tech Jumper Cables. We don't hire people by looking at a tonne of CVs.

We hire people who can actually do what we need, and have proven that this is so. There are a number of ways to do that, and one is through your 'network' (which is why I said 'Almost'). Another is high profile FreeSoftware / OpenSource / OpenHardware / Papers / Patents.

Or, did you mean Tech as in, web site scripting? In which case, my response is that is not Tech any more than 'MicroSoft Word User' is Tech.

2 cents of this (actual) Tech CEO...

tldr: if you have to use dice to get a job

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

tldr: if you have to use dice to get a job you're already f***ed

Re:tldr: if you have to use dice to get a job

[Anrego]

Indeed.

If any of the advice in this for lack of better word "article" was a big surprise, you haven't got a chance. This is the kind of advice people looking for a McJob need. I'm surprised they didn't mention wearing a suit if you have one and not being too obvious about your mom giving you a ride there.

Re:tldr: if you have to use dice to get a job

[Anonymous Coward]

wearing a suit if you have one

Not always a good idea. Plenty of places have a very relaxed dress code, and although you probably won't be berated by (the ghost of) Steve Jobs like in Pirates of Silicon Valley it will definitely make them think you are not one of them. It would probably be easier if a suit was acceptable everywhere, but some places only want to hire hipsters.

CMPID

[Anrego]

I'd love to know what that CMPID at the end of the URL is.

Bad enough Dice shitposts their articles here, but are they seriously throwing stuff in the links to track the success of their self posting?

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Dice = Contract Jobs

[JakFrost]

I've always been disappointed in Dice.com since it's so full of slimy recruiting firms and even slimier head-hungers offering low-paying contracts. It's so full of Indian firms that it resembles a tech call-center from India and I don't bother anymore to list my resume there since I'll be flooded with worthless contracts in cities that I have no interest in working with. These worthless recruiters don't bother reading your profile or requirements (Perm-Only, Local Area Only) and just spam e-mail and call you with keyword matching crap short-term and low-paying contracts from cities across the nation that you have no interest in working in or moving to. Half the time I can't understand their thick Indian accents either and I wouldn't bother working with them if they can't even communicate well enough with them.

Dice.com is the slums of Tech Recruiting.

Re:Dice = Contract Jobs

[antdude]

So, what are good web sites that are not like Dice.com these days then? I used to use it back in early 2000s.

Re:Dice = Contract Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, I don't think any really exist.

Employers who hire new grads tend to go straight to the universities. Past that, I suspect most decent jobs are found either through networking or by going to places and asking if they are hiring (this can be surprisingly effective, and a lot of places appreciate the initiative).

It has been awhile since I've heard about someone getting a good job by sending a resume in to some random job they saw posted somewhere. It's always "I have a friend who is working there" or "I heard they won contract X so I went down and talked to them".

Places like dice.com are, as said, shitty short term contract work. Most companies worth working for do their own HR and have enough contacts through their own employees to find good people.

Re:Dice = Contract Jobs

[__aaclcg7560]

http://www.indeed.com/

Re:Dice = Contract Jobs

[pls2917]

http://careers.stackoverflow.c... I found my current job there and it's the only place we advertise

Re:Dice = Contract Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a lot of low-pay perma-temping going on right now; there's always lots of demand for that kind of labor, and if you get into that position I would suggest you immediately continue job searching. If your employer protests, tell them as far as you know there is no job security there and that is what you are looking for is a long-term position.

Mostly these staffing companies staff for big name-brand corporations and take on the risk for those organizations of being sued.

Mostly, these companies provide extremely basic IT Services, or extremely crappy labor. I can name-names, but at one company the pay for help-desk was so low they were literally hiring people off the street with no credentialing, education, or background checking to do help-desk at a large national electric company, and giving them credentials that let them into well over 10,000 PC's. Pay was $15\hr, in a city of 9 million.

There's an extreme shortage of good IT labor right now; in systems with no major physical limitations and the only real limitation being time, it's very tempting for businesses to abuse the labor by hiring foreigners and setting things up like a manufacturing line. The problem is as you scale, you don't find ways to optimize time use, and you end up with an ever larger hunger for H1B's and ever increasing project costs to do ever simpler things until eventually the project falls apart. That labor then infects universities and colleges with bad habits and science, and you end up with an endemic shortage of good labor.

Companies are noticing this, and have begun hiring only the educated, credentialed and experienced.

Re:Dice = Contract Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

linkup.com

Re:Dice = Contract Jobs

[meustrus]

Companies are noticing this, and have begun hiring only the educated, credentialed and experienced.

Which is exactly why they are pushing to hire more of those "exceptional" foreigners on H-1B visas, right?

Re:Dice = Contract Jobs

[LessThanObvious]

I've been using the job sites, because they do work however the general tendency to offer contract roles is true. Some will be contract-to-hire. Lately I get contacted by phone directly by 20+ different recruiters, mostly not with jobs that are the right fit. By the end of the process I get 2 or 3 serious prospects that I'll actually try to land. I'm pretty much done with this model. I'm not working for anyone else that doesn't have work that's worth doing. Work has to have some meaning or you have to be somewhat emotionally invested in the company's success or showing up is just a waste of time. This year I'm starting my own company and then likely going back into corporate with a much more selective outlook.

Re:Dice = Contract Jobs

[cheesybagel]

going to places and asking if they are hiring

In my experience you get an answer 1 out of every 3 times. Of those who answer 1 out of 3 will ask you for an interview. Just do not expect it to happen anytime soon. It may take months. The company may not be hiring at the time you asked for a job its as simple as that.

simply not true. New grads go begging.

[Anonymous Coward]

simply not true. New grads go begging.

College students reading this - avoid CS, and basically all STEM except the M.

You will not get a job worth the work, and you very well may not get a job at all.

Re:simply not true. New grads go begging.

[cheesybagel]

Doctors earn good pay but you delude yourself if you think they don't work insane hours to get their pay.

Painted into a corner

[jandersen]

I think the tech industry has painted itself into a corner. I had the misfortune to lose my job early in 2013 and spent almost the whole year looking before I found something; during that whole period I actually saw the same, relatively few jobs being readvertised over and over, with very little new showing up. The sector I was looking at was what you'd call 'devops', and it seemed like the companies were trying to get people with long experience in both development and system administration, but they weren't willing to pay more than what you'd pay for a middle ranking call-center operator. I can't quite imagine how anybody can imagine that being an attractive proposition to anybody with the qualifications.

So, it looks to me like a number of companies - almost all of them internet businesses - have painted themselves into a corner, where they deperately need highly qualified employees that they are never going to be able or willing to pay for.

Re:Painted into a corner

[ruir]

I am also a sysadmin with some devop background. It would be interesting to know where you are coming from. I am employed, and have been contacted regularly by people both local and abroad outlets. As for the local ones, both in Portugal and Gibraltar, I have had enough. They ask for the moon, are clueless to know what they want, do not offer any specialisation path, and worse, the pay is low, even for the current market. Ireland seems to be an interesting proposition, Germany not so much, Europe of the North has some interesting projects going on, apparently for our mother tongue Brazil too. Australia seems to always have been very backwards in technology no idea why, and the African market for our ex-colonies was very hot ten years ago, but not anymore. Asia seems to have potencial at the moment, but I really do not know the market (my wife is Asian).

Re:Painted into a corner

[ruir]

Sorry about the double reply, I noticed something in your email, and forgot to include it. About the rehashing of same jobs again and again, keep in mind there have been studies about 40% of the adverts being fake. Some are made up to increase the perceived value of the company in the market or just to dust off their portfolio of candidates just in case.

Re:Painted into a corner

[Anonymous Coward]

Most IT jobs adverts are fake. They vacuuming CVs/resumes for a potential client that might at some point have a similar position, but in the meantime they use it to sell what a great agency they are seeing as they have all these skilled people on their books.

Re:Painted into a corner

[jandersen]

Well, in 2013 I managed to get called to interviews and then subsequently being contacted about the same jobs for months afterwards by other agents, after I had been rejected. I think the interview part of it rules out the job being fake, but you're right about the fake adverts.

Re:Painted into a corner

[jandersen]

I'm in London. There seems to be a reasonable number of genuine jobs, but they simply don't have realistic expectations about what they can get for what they are willing to pay. It is grotesque, really, since they are unwilling to pay, say, more than £40K per year, but on the other hand, they have to pay significantly more for contractors - a very rough calculation says that each £10 per day you pay corresponds to £18000 per year (40 hours per week, 45 weeks per year), and I have a really hard time imagining any contractor wanting to get less than £35 per day ~ £63000 per year; in fact, it is probably more like £50 - £100 at least. I mean, how stupid is that? Just pay a decent salary, like £60000 per year, it would be cheaper AND they would get the people they need.

Re:Painted into a corner

[sandytaru]

I concur regarding mismatched expectations for skill sets and salaries. I saw a local position that I'd be a perfect match for - I'd be their purple unicorn - but they were offering $20,000 less than what I'm currently making. I could probably negotiate a $5-10K salary increase based on being such a perfect match, but $20K isn't going to happen no matter how awesome I am. So I'm not even bothering to apply.

Re:Painted into a corner

[badzilla]

It must be well over 10 years now that the Pound Sterling currency symbol gets displayed as £ angstrom units or whatever the hell it is. I wish Slashdot would get around to fixing it.

Re:Painted into a corner

[ruir]

I just write pounds whenever I need it...

Re:Painted into a corner

[ruir]

I also do not get the uk market. It used to be attractive, not anymore. I was a consultant for 5 years, and it is as you say...60K is a good salary for a salaried position. As a consultant I would not charge less than 100 per day, at least and depending on the duration of the gig. I have seen consulting positions for Bristol for 3 months, 400 pounds per day.

Re:Painted into a corner

[Anonymous Coward]

Many job offers in government and other large bureaucracies are filled internally before the job is posted. This is a "fake" offering since the candidate has been chosen.

Re:Painted into a corner

[Archtech]

"There seems to be a reasonable number of genuine jobs, but they simply don't have realistic expectations about what they can get for what they are willing to pay."

Yet another indication - if any were needed - that the "market mechanism" doesn't work, and is nothing more than a convenient excuse for paying less and demanding more. (Which, let's face it, is the essence of business).

I have never understood why managers, who really don't understand what programmers and other software experts do, nevertheless feel justified in putting a ceiling on what they can earn. It seems that they have a strange imaginary model of the world in which the things they do (if any) are infinitely more important than the things programmers do. (Just as sales is a "profit centre" while development is a "cost centre", although without it sales would have nothing to sell).

Oh well, just think of it as evolution in action.

Re:Painted into a corner

[meustrus]

You should apply anyway. That way they know how much their purple unicorn really costs, and even if they aren't willing to pay that much, maybe it will help them adjust their expectations.

Re:Painted into a corner

[mjwalshe]

for developers in London id want £400 -£500 perday maybe £350 if I was in desperate need of a job

Re:Painted into a corner

[cheesybagel]

Well it is true in a way. Without sales you cannot pay for anyone in the business. Having helped run a family business for some time I kind of get the point. The quality of the work is important but you would be surprised how many clients don't know any better and in fact how many are dumb enough to believe whatever they're told if the salesperson is impressive enough. Even if they get stiffed by that vendor they may still believe they made a good choice because, let's face it, no one likes admitting they made a mistake.

Re:Painted into a corner

[ruir]

I do not have an idea what business you where running, but there are several points to the question...while you need people with years of background and training to develop the product, often the salespeople only bring bullshit to the equation. So why should they get more money? You do not need experienced people to sell, though that helps. And you ignored on your reply the point of the unit producing the product being a cost centre.

Re:Painted into a corner

[ruir]

Exactly the point. 60k year is not pay for a consulting gig.

Re:Painted into a corner

[mjwalshe]

and around 60k is the base salary for a Tube driver

Re:Painted into a corner

[ruir]

I was just reinforcing a point where salaries and consulting gigs have a very different pay base. I have had a consulting firm who did not know I already secured a job, and that competitors where offering me much more for the same gig, offering me 4k for two months for a telecom gig in Timor Leste. I told them they were idiots in their face.

Re:Painted into a corner

[cheesybagel]

Its what happens when you do a simplified short term analysis on the cash flows inside the separate divisions in a company. In the long term having a shoddy product may impact your bottom line but you would be surprised at how gullible some people are.

You may have a great product but without good marketing and sales few will want to buy it.

The Truth about CV's from India

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you worked on a project that used [insert product here] it does not make you an expert in that product OR even qualified to put it down on your CV

Over the past 3-4 years I have seen hundreds if not thousands of CV's coming out of India that contain huge amount of Bullshit if not downright lies.
Now we filter them out by asking them not overly difficult questions relating to the products they are supposed to be skilled in.
Even then some seem to slip through the net.
Many may be good on paper but totally lack initiative and problem solving skills.

Having spent 6 months this part year working in Jaipur/Mumbai and Chennai I have now a team of four recruiters working on supplying the CV's only of those who are up to the job AND (and this is really important) won't move on to another job as soon as they begin to get useful to the project.
They do this for CV Padding. Never mind the quality, feel the width.

Re:The Truth about CV's from India

[theshowmecanuck]

Instead of spending this level of effort on each recruit, why not hire someone who is bright in North America and train them. Have you ever stopped to consider that employees will be once again loyal to the company if the company demonstrates that they are loyal to them? People have very little loyalty any more precisely because the MBAs turned employees into 'human resources' to satisfy shareholders in the late 80s.

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Wall Street is NOT the economy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wall Street has been doing well because of all that Fed money that has been printed in the last few years. It has absolutely nothing to do with economic or business fundamentals. It was all bullshit money.

1. Hedge funds/billionaires being able to borrow at the Fed rate and at much higher margins than us peons (95% vs 50% for the rest of us) pumped the money into the stock markets.

2. All the money floating around was used by corporations to do stock buybacks - not because their businesses were worth investing in (contrary to the myth taught in Finance classes and spewed by corporate PR departments) but because it allowed the CEOs and billionaires to get even richer.

3. 1 & 2 were all done at our expense because it weakened the dollar - making consumer goods more expensive; while our wages haven't gone up. In the meantime, we are working longer and longer hours because in order to keep profits up, companies have been laying people off and making their current workforce work harder and longer.

A plan that was supposed to help us out and get employment back to 2007 levels has horribly failed.

Re:Wall Street is NOT the economy.

[__aaclcg7560]

In the meantime, we are working longer and longer hours because in order to keep profits up, companies have been laying people off and making their current workforce work harder and longer.

As an I.T. contractor, my contracts over the last six years has explicitly forbidden me from working overtime. I can only work 40 hours per week, Monday through Friday, during normal business hours. Which is fine with me. The contract for my current job included paid holidays and 20 paid time off (PTO) days. The perks are getting better on my end.

A plan that was supposed to help us out and get employment back to 2007 levels has horribly failed.

This isn't a normal economy. If current job growth is maintained, it would still take two years to recover to 2007.

Re:Wall Street is NOT the economy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wall Street has been doing well because of all that Fed money that has been printed in the last few years. It has absolutely nothing to do with economic or business fundamentals.

Printed money is called quantitative easing, and it's a necessary evil in the face of deflation. Yes, it helped goldman sach's bottom line.

But you are living in a hole if you think the economy isn't better. The unemployment rate has fallen dramatically, and traffic is much worse out there. Stores are packed with people. Unless you have a disease and can't remember how chilled out the economy got in 2008-2009, you could see a difference in every sector of the economy. Except maybe bankruptcy lawyers - they took a big hit when the ACA started to take effect.

Re:Wall Street is NOT the economy.

[buddyglass]

1. Hedge funds/billionaires being able to borrow at the Fed rate and at much higher margins than us peons (95% vs 50% for the rest of us) pumped the money into the stock markets.

Which I'm not sad about, since my savings is mainly in U.S. equities.

2. All the money floating around was used by corporations to do stock buybacks - not because their businesses were worth investing in (contrary to the myth taught in Finance classes and spewed by corporate PR departments) but because it allowed the CEOs and billionaires to get even richer.

And anyone else who owns stock in those companies. Like me. And I'm not even a millionaire.

3. 1 & 2 were all done at our expense because it weakened the dollar - making consumer goods more expensive; while our wages haven't gone up.

The dollar isn't especially weak. Here is a graph of its value vs. a basket of trade-weighted currencies. You'll notice it actually got significantly stronger during the recession. Here is a graph of CPI. Post-recession is has increased at about the same rate as pre-recession. I can't speak for everyone else, but my wages have gone up.

In the meantime, we are working longer and longer hours because in order to keep profits up, companies have been laying people off and making their current workforce work harder and longer.

Not working longer hours here. Here is a graph of average hours worked per week for employed persons. Seems like the current level is roughly the same as the level prior to the recession.

A plan that was supposed to help us out and get employment back to 2007 levels has horribly failed.

In 2007 U-3 unemployment ranged from 4.4% (March) to 5.0% (December). Current unemployment (November 2014) is 5.8%. The rate of decrease since peak unemployment (10.0% in October 2009) has been fairly linear at about 0.069% per month. At that rate we should once again be at "2007 levels" (i.e. 5.0%) in October 2015.

Use a salary site instead

[plopez]

There are several sites out there I use to research salaries such as glassdoor, salary.com, and payscale.com. They can give you a salary range for the company and job you are looking at. Are there any others out there you consider to be good?

Also, personally, I do not 'jump' unless there is at least a 10 pct pay increase. The stress of a new job does not make it worth it for me.

Re:economy doing well? NIGGER RICH!

[Anonymous Coward]

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Yet Another Off-Topic Reply To A Signature

[meustrus]

The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not

I see what you did there.

No Social Media Requied for Job Hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

I will bite and point out that all the people out there a few years ago that said those people without social media accounts will, in time, have a difficult time obtaining employment. Some have even opined that not having a social media or Web presence indicates the candidate may be unstable, antisocial, you name it.

It's 2015. I have never, ever even been asked about social media in any interviews and I'm in IT. To be honest here, I also don't have even one social media account or a Web presence of any sort. I likely never will. Having social media accounts anymore means little to nothing anymore in my opinion. I cannot see how my not having one would negatively impact a decision to hire me if I can do the job. Now, a Web designer or coder might want to show their portfolio or GitHub account, but as a systems administrator, I have neither or those and need neither.

So, what does everyone think about this?

Re:No Social Media Requied for Job Hunt

[cheesybagel]

I have been asked. Having a job profile in LinkedIn is a good idea. If you have code you want to distribute for free I guess GitHub is as good as a place as any other to put it in. As for something like Facebook it is actually a net drag in job terms. Especially if you spend your time there putting pictures of you getting plastered.

Re:No Social Media Requied for Job Hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

OP from above here. You have good points. Everyone I know on Facebook does what you said: they post themselves and others engaged in activities most employers would likely balk over. Anyone that I consider a friend I have regular dealings with and none of us need Facebook. I also call and text these same people on an ongoing basis.

LinkedIn has lost its edge from what I read. It's become a harvesting site for bad types and I feel uncomfortable with my CV/Resume being out there for all to see. Again, I've never had an issue with an interview. This doesn't mean I won't in future, but not hiring someone based on their NOT having an online presence unless that person is being hired for a public role is kinda ridiculous.

What's coming out in 2016?

[Hognoxious]

There's plenty of jobs out there for people with 3+ years of experience in things coming out in 2016.

78,514,484 Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nagaiah.com/home.ph...

0-2 years of experience makes you the master

[raymorris]

> I was on the job market for a little over 3 months in the southern US a few years ago.

Okay, so "a few years ago" you were looking for a job. So that's 2011-2013.

> I got my BS CS earlier in this decade ... though I've been in and out of industry to do other things.

So you got your degree in 2010-2012, meaning when you interviewed, you had close to zero years of experience actually doing anything in the field.

> can run circles around algorithm, logic, and design

You've never done anything like what we do every done, and have been doing for decades. You read a book about the system I designed, which means you can run circles around me, you think. To quote Adam Savage, "THERE'S your problem."

In your books at school, you might have read about the Morris-Pratt algorithm. You might have learned something about Apache. They may have mentioned the Linux kernel. That all prepares you to be able understand what I'm talking about when I tell you what changes I contributed to the kernel. Based on your study of what we've done, you might be able to look at the work I've done on Apache and ask intelligent questions about it. Coming at me like as a know-it-all who is going to school us is guaranteed to send you right out the door. Your type comes in thinking they know everything and you completely fuck everything up because you won't listen when those of us who built the damn thing tell you "don't do that, that'll break the production system".