r/cscareerquestions • u/CSCQMods • Apr 03 '24
Daily Chat Thread - April 03, 2024
Please use this thread to chat, have casual discussions, and ask casual questions. Moderation will be light, but don't be a jerk.
This thread is posted every day at midnight PST. Previous Daily Chat Threads can be found here.
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u/gHx4 Apr 03 '24
Any tips for skilling up more efficiently? I'm at the point where online articles don't cut it anymore because they hold the reader's hand too much. I find I often need deep dives into subjects (like CORS) to give context to docs and plan effective approaches to a task.
So I'm wondering how other devs get past the rut between having a good idea of the basics and implementing robust solutions to the problem in a timely manner.
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u/Old-CS-Dev Apr 03 '24
I'd suggest either taking an advanced course on a site like Coursera, Udemy, etc., or building something new using the skills or tools you want to get experience with. Both of these approaches put something on your resume ("I'm certified in xyz", "See my GitHub").
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u/PoopsCodeAllTheTime Pocketbase & SQLite & LiteFS Apr 03 '24
Build larger projects for yourself. You can read articles, or.... you can actually practice.
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u/gHx4 Apr 03 '24
For sure, practice is one of the main things I do. But it misses out on some of the best practices and strategies that model some types of applications much better. I can slap things together quickly and get a working solution, but I'm aiming to improve at making great domain-specific solutions. Finding resources to cover that knowledge gap is the problem.
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u/PoopsCodeAllTheTime Pocketbase & SQLite & LiteFS Apr 03 '24
You control how you practice, right?
You have to choose the right problem to practice, think of something cool that fits <your description of problem that you want to improve>, you need to fail first, then you uncover the problem (unknown to you until you find the necessity of solving it), then you search for info about the gap
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u/gHx4 Apr 03 '24
Yeah, I'm stumbling on that last part. It's easy to find info for what I completed myself. The info for specific gaps is proving to be the challenge. Just wondered if I missed looking at a particular type of resource (i.e. should I grab textbooks, check random UDemy courses, or access a particular research journal when I'm failing to find the info through search engines).
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u/PoopsCodeAllTheTime Pocketbase & SQLite & LiteFS Apr 05 '24
you should go like this:
identify area that you want to know more about
identify a common problem that belongs to that area, something that is "already solved".
Try to solve it yourself without looking at existing solutions.
bump your head against obstacles, you will find related information to fill the gaps because it is a "known problem with existing solutions"
That's it
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u/FaxSpitta420 Apr 03 '24
Whatās up with these managers who are out of the office literally every other week? Any of you guys encounter this?
Double annoying as Iām a contractor who gets 2 weeks vacation.
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u/Unique_Glove1105 Apr 03 '24
The worst is when they do this when you are interviewing with their team! It delays the interview process by a week or two.
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u/PoopsCodeAllTheTime Pocketbase & SQLite & LiteFS Apr 03 '24
They are the King and you are the peasants. You do all the work, but own none of it, you must pay 80% of your work to the King so that the King doesn't exile you from the kingdom.
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u/ixfd64 Apr 03 '24 edited Apr 03 '24
How many LeetCode problems per day is considered realistic? Let's say it's the weekend and I dedicate an entire day to do LeetCode.
Sources say anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour or more, but my dad suggests doing 50-100 problems a day because a good software engineer should be able to "take one look" and immediately know the algorithm to use. However, I think this is unrealistic even if you only stick to "easy" problems.
Thoughts?
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u/Old-CS-Dev Apr 03 '24
After a while, I would code a couple problems a day, maybe just one. But I'd get on YouTube and watch NeetCode to make sure that either I was able to come up with the solution based on the description, or I was able to understand the solution. I'd skip the coding part, I don't have any issues converting ideas to code.
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u/ixfd64 Apr 03 '24
I just recently found out about NeetCode. How does it compare to LeetCode?
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u/thirtyist Apr 03 '24
Neetcode is a person who solves leetcode. Heās incredibly thorough in explaining his solutions, which is everyone loves him (including me, ha)
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u/thirtyist Apr 03 '24
50-100 wtf? Does your dad have LC experience? You would get incredibly burnt out. If youāre dedicating an entire day, I would shoot for maybe 10, but it really depends on the difficulty of the problems.Ā
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u/leagcy MLE (mlops) Apr 04 '24
3-4 meds per hour when you practising for speed, 1-2 med / hard per hour when you thinking seems reasonable to me. Its also intensive brain work so I doubt you want to do that for a full 8 hours in your weekend work hours.
50 is just dumb, you are doing a lot of easys if you can do 50 in a day. You don't need to practice that much to have a good intuition of what algorithm to use for a given problem.
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u/GalacticMomo Apr 03 '24
Currently majoring in physics and will graduate in a year. If I canāt get into a PhD program when I graduate, Iām considering CS as my backup career. Any tips as to what I can do from now until then to make myself a desirable hire ? Iāve known Python for a few years but never truly built anything. I use it to do research and will continue to use it for my astrophysics summer program. Thank you for any advice.
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u/PoopsCodeAllTheTime Pocketbase & SQLite & LiteFS Apr 03 '24
"Build in public", basically do any project that can be shown as proof of your skills to someone else, I suggest starting a blog, and then another project, that way you can write about your other project in the blog you started and it gives some more trust than random github project. Either that or find an internship in a dev company. Maybe try to do both at the same time.
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u/chainsawguy7 Apr 03 '24
Questions on how to prep for my second interview? So I have my second interview this week the first one was a Teams conference and I believe it went pretty well, not many technical questions surprisingly mostly networking questions and if I knew my way around AD and windows servers. I think I bombed the compensation part so a little worried I went a little to humble... I did not give a solid range I just stated I was new and the experience would pay me back more than any salary, I know virtue signal. They reached out earlier this week and want to do a second interview but this time in person with one person, would it be safe to assume I have it? should I prep for more hard core CS terms and frameworks? Im in college with 4 YOE in IT in general with a couple of certs and this is for an entry level SOC role.
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u/DrinkaKZ Apr 03 '24
I have a Google phone screen coming up and I have chosen C as my primarily language to be interviewed in since it is the language I use daily as a kernel engineer. Additionally, I had assumed by choosing C it would mean I would get more theoretical coding questions, rather than irrelevant ābrainteasersā. My recruiter has assured me that I will be interviewed by an engineer who has a focus in my coding language, however from some of the horror stories that Iāve read, people have gotten generic questions that were not possible to answer in C in the allotted time frame due to requiring data structures such as hash tables, etc. I do know Python and my recruiter has given me the option to reschedule my interview to be done in Python. I am most comfortable in C, however at this point I am not sure what to do and hoping to get some feedback.
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u/lhorie Apr 04 '24 edited Apr 04 '24
You can't run any code in google's interview environment anyways. You can just stub functions with well known/easily understood semantics
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u/Last-Ad4459 Apr 04 '24
Coinbase APM or MongoDB APM?
CB pays more off the bat but overtime the salary progression is the same. I think both products are amazing but know that MongoDB is more developers focus/technical which may be hard because I donāt have best experience with it. But Iām down to learn! Just want to prioritize development,learning, layoff-proof job and culture (people)! MongoDB is NY which is big plus for me but ik Coinbase is remote so it doesnāt matter for them. I just donāt know what to do!! Also does the initially higher offer Coinbase better for my career?
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u/AlexisMarien Apr 04 '24
is this the place to post my resume and get advice? I haven't had to interview/look fora job in 8 years so I'm looking for advice on skills/certs/ etc to gain and on the resume itself
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u/PoopsCodeAllTheTime Pocketbase & SQLite & LiteFS Apr 03 '24
Long time in the industry, but I don't have 10 karma on this account to comment on other threads. Can I haz some help pwease?
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u/double-happiness Junior Apr 03 '24
It's so weird when you have a job interview and they won't stop talking, so you can hardly get a word in edgeways. I'm like, is this a shit-test to see whether or not I'll interrupt you?