21–30 of 332 posts
We also had very cheap company housing, and a lot of other perks.
I know people who got hired as Staff Engineers fresh from coding bootcamp.
I know a few people who have gone this route and now have very successful careers. Getting a job as a new grad is hard as it is, and if you are on a visa you barely have a month or two before you must obtain sponsorship or pack up and leave the country. "Consultancies" like this one give you a buffer, beef up your resume with fake experience and give you interview training, with the end goal of getting you a permanen…
There is no standard whatsoever for the adjective "Senior" when applied to engineers: Sometimes it means, "Able to work without someone looking over their shoulder at all times." Sometimes it means, "Able to lead and mentor others." And sometimes it means, "Has organizational skills above and beyond engineering skills, able to lead cross-team initiatives and deal with all the human/organization issues around the engi…
Sometimes it means “someone who can bill $300 an hour” with no relation to actual ability. I was a “senior” three years out of college and I had no clue what in the world I was doing. Come to think of it after 20 years I kinda still feel that way.
There is no standard whatsoever for the adjective "Senior" when applied to engineers: Sometimes it means, "Able to work without someone looking over their shoulder at all times." Sometimes it means, "Able to lead and mentor others." And sometimes it means, "Has organizational skills above and beyond engineering skills, able to lead cross-team initiatives and deal with all the human/organization issues around the engi…
In the context of 'IT Consulting Companies,' which the blog post is about, it means that clients are paying a higher billable rate than for more 'junior' staff.
Those who focused on just coding were billed out for less than those who spent time in meetings and writing words.
I know a few people who have gone this route and now have very successful careers. Getting a job as a new grad is hard as it is, and if you are on a visa you barely have a month or two before you must obtain sponsorship or pack up and leave the country. "Consultancies" like this one give you a buffer, beef up your resume with fake experience and give you interview training, with the end goal of getting you a permanen…
While I'm not at all surprised that foreign students could easily get sucked into this kind of scheme what really surprises me is that an American CS grad would not have much better options, especially with all the hype about "lack of workers".
This reads like a human trafficking story, picking up cheap fresh grads and exploiting them to work way below market wages and making sure they can’t leave.
I know a few people who have gone this route and now have very successful careers. Getting a job as a new grad is hard as it is, and if you are on a visa you barely have a month or two before you must obtain sponsorship or pack up and leave the country. "Consultancies" like this one give you a buffer, beef up your resume with fake experience and give you interview training, with the end goal of getting you a permanen…
While I'm not at all surprised that foreign students could easily get sucked into this kind of scheme what really surprises me is that an American CS grad would not have much better options, especially with all the hype about "lack of workers".
There is no standard whatsoever for the adjective "Senior" when applied to engineers: Sometimes it means, "Able to work without someone looking over their shoulder at all times." Sometimes it means, "Able to lead and mentor others." And sometimes it means, "Has organizational skills above and beyond engineering skills, able to lead cross-team initiatives and deal with all the human/organization issues around the engi…
If you look around Indeed, Senior Engineer is basically equal to 5 years experience.
I've been involved in hiring decisions on teams I've been part of for a long time now. Blatant plagiarism, obvious embellishments and more subtle BS is literally part of the game unfortunately. This is particularly prevalent when dealing with (almost) any consultancy, large and small. I will not specifically call out names, but the some of the largest and most well known consultancies do this as a matter of practice…
>It's sad, but honestly the prevalence of these practices (and perhaps growth of them?) only makes the genuine among us more valuable. I wish this were the case, but I don't think it's true. On the one hand, real, proven experts do get called in to fix these phonies' messes. On the other, often these people succeed often enough that it devalues our labor as a whole. Finally, if employers cannot determine real experts…
However, that point you make about the 'proven experts' getting called in is where my original (and perhaps overly broad) comment came from. If you can align yourself with the industry as one of those fixers, and then actually deliver on that promise, there is immense value to capture. If you can carefully build a small team of people that can do this regularly, there is even more value to capture and share with people who actually deserve it.