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Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

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Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#141

Post by Mr_P »

> Which advice did/would have helped you landing your first job after university?

Take a few advanced, specialized CS classes by your 3rd year. These often have large end-of-semester projects that can be fairly open ended.

These final projects are a great way differentiate yourself from the thousands of other CS grads looking for jobs.

Sure, you could get an 'A' in class by doing the bare minimum for a project. Alternatively, you could go beyond course requirements and have something to show off for potential employers, even if just another resume item to use as a conversation-starter. If you're doing the project anyway, going an extra 10% over the top is relatively easy, especially compared to trying to land a meaningful contribution to an open-source project or building a separate portfolio project from scratch.

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#143

Post by DavidVoid »

wojciii wrote: post #137

I landed my first job because I knew someone from uni who got work at this company first. Networking is everything for me and I suck at doing it. Later jobs I got because of what I knew and could do. I have a CS degree. While young and unattached you can spent time on learning a lot and becoming a better sw developer. Do this now before wifey (assuming male gender) and children will take a considerable amount of your…

> Do this now before wifey (assuming male gender) and children will take a considerable amount of your time.

*(assuming male gender and heterosexual and wanting to have kids)

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#144

Post by gopalv »

Mr_P wrote: post #141

> Which advice did/would have helped you landing your first job after university? Take a few advanced, specialized CS classes by your 3rd year. These often have large end-of-semester projects that can be fairly open ended. These final projects are a great way differentiate yourself from the thousands of other CS grads looking for jobs. Sure, you could get an 'A' in class by doing the bare minimum for a project. Alter…

> These final projects are a great way differentiate yourself from the thousands of other CS grads looking for jobs.

The bigger firms recruit for raw numbers and then reassign roles. So this might not mean the difference between being hired and not in some of the bigger companies, but on what you're actually pushed towards at the end of the placement cycle.

The technical talent of a new grad is rarely used to explore the deep end of a complicated problem, but instead is full of work that takes time rather than thought. So the last year or so of your course is the last chance for the next 3+ years to work on a complex problem which you are obviously not qualified to work on.

The bare point is that nobody hires you to run a hilly marathon, but will give you tasks that are mile-times instead & expect you to sprint through them. And these are expected even with the best managers, who expect you to grow out of that phase at some point (as frustrating as it is going to be for you).

So the project is going to be the most useful thing for someone to pick you over someone else when dealing with a problem somewhere in the same region of CS.

The thing I did to "get hired" was learn J2EE, but what actually guided the next problem someone threw at me was because I did a bunch of compiler/byte-code junk as an undergrad which ended up being career defining for the next six years.

If I was in a class in today's world, I might do the same with a neural network or some computational genetics.

Not because it is directly tied to getting hired, but very relevant on whether a manager/tech-lead throws a similar problem at you soon. And possibly you'll get to work with the best people who do that for a living.

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#145

Post by literallycancer »

Whatever you do, don't get lowballed. Plan ahead so you can retire at 30. If you aren't able to get offers from multiple companies so you can negotiate properly, start your own company (unless you have dependents already, in which case you are fucked).

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#146

Post by awillen »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #131

A few useful phrases to memorize: When someone asks for information, rather than try to answer immediately, or rush to research, ask, "When do you need that by?" Even if they tell you it's urgent, it causes them to consider. "Sure, I'd be glad to. Just let my boss know you need me." If they hem and haw, be suspicious. "What budget is that coming out of?" Other useful tidbits: Politics is a euphemism for, someone's eg…

PM here: I agree completely. A lot of PMs aren't great with phrasing requests, and they come off sounding way more urgent than they are. I used to be guilty of this, and I thought it was great how responsive the engineers were until a manager told me I was disrupting their schedules with all of my urgent requests. We solved that one pretty quickly by agreeing I'd specify the timeline for eng requests, and for things that were big and urgent, I'd check with team lead/manager before asking. If any of those engineers had asked me how urgent things were, we wouldn't have run into that problem (which is not to say it's their fault - it was my job to give that context - just to say that an inexperienced PM won't mind you asking about timing/urgency at all and you may save him issues down the line).

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#147

Post by Benjammer »

bonyt wrote: post #140
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #131

A few useful phrases to memorize: When someone asks for information, rather than try to answer immediately, or rush to research, ask, "When do you need that by?" Even if they tell you it's urgent, it causes them to consider. "Sure, I'd be glad to. Just let my boss know you need me." If they hem and haw, be suspicious. "What budget is that coming out of?" Other useful tidbits: Politics is a euphemism for, someone's eg…

> Most people are naturally good; the one's who aren't work hard to position themselves in a position handling communications. So be careful to route communications as directly as allowed, and regularly check what's incoming. I'm really curious what you mean by this, "a position handling communications"?

Most people aren't bad actors. Some people are. Almost all bad actors know that they are bad actors, it's not a matter of ignorance or stupidity. The easiest tool of bad actors is manipulating communication. Lying, changing expectations, telling different people different parts/sides of the whole story, weaseling out of responsibility, brown-nosing, etc. A lot of bad actors will strive to put themselves in "lead" type of roles where they don't actually have the responsibility of direct reports, but where they can get their fingers into the communication channels for their team. Then, they use that position to get their fingers into the communication channels of other teams as well. They keep doing this and moving farther away from actually having to produce anything themselves. The manipulative communication becomes their entire output and job function, so they optimize it over time and get really good at it.

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#148

Post by nlawalker »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #131

A few useful phrases to memorize: When someone asks for information, rather than try to answer immediately, or rush to research, ask, "When do you need that by?" Even if they tell you it's urgent, it causes them to consider. "Sure, I'd be glad to. Just let my boss know you need me." If they hem and haw, be suspicious. "What budget is that coming out of?" Other useful tidbits: Politics is a euphemism for, someone's eg…

In the same vein as these - when someone asks if something can be achieved, unless the answer is "No, because the physical laws of our universe prevent it," then the answer is "Yes, with the following assumptions, caveats and tradeoffs..."

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#149

Post by Benjammer »

DonHopkins wrote: post #139
KineticLensman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 5) Work friends are NOT friends. I have made some extremely good friends through work, including the individual who, outside my family, is the person who I still see that I have known the longest in my life (we started our new jobs at the same company on the same day, approx 35 years ago). The mistake is when your colleagues become your only friends. Changing jobs can see you lose your entire 'support network'. Alw…

That's a good point. Here's an important corollary: Don't shit where you eat. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/don%27t_shit_where_you_eat That is, avoid getting into romantic relationships with people at work. And for God's sake don't think of work as a cruising ground for members of the appropriate sex(es). Sure, there's a chance both of you might simultaneously be two of the lucky ones for whom everything always goes…

> two of the lucky ones

I honestly think there's a huge amount of survivor bias in this mindset. I'm in my thirties and I know more married couples who met at work than those who didn't meet at work. And the ones who didn't meet at work met at school. Even had two senior managers at my first job break up their marriages (both with kids) to get together. As far as I know they got married and are still happily together.

I think you just hear a lot more of the wild stories of the ones that go wrong.

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#150

Post by dehrmann »

KineticLensman wrote: post #76
noir_lord wrote: post #56

> And whats your best tip for life in general? 1) Take copious notes (in whatever format works for you). 2) Confirm managers decisions with a recap email (especially when you disagree with them). 3) Understand that while you may not like politics (I don't) knowing how the game is played allows you to mostly stay out of it. 4) Work time is work time, learn to be productive and then go home and switch off . 5) Work fri…

> 5) Work friends are NOT friends. I have made some extremely good friends through work, including the individual who, outside my family, is the person who I still see that I have known the longest in my life (we started our new jobs at the same company on the same day, approx 35 years ago). The mistake is when your colleagues become your only friends. Changing jobs can see you lose your entire 'support network'. Alw…

A place I worked with an office of ~120 had at least 5 couples who met there eventually get married, and there are definitely friend groups among people who worked there.

So I'd say it depends; just go into it knowing making the friends isn't the same as when you're in school.

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