Don't care what your title reads. Show me the money. Then, we'll see how senior you are.
How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
181–190 of 332 posts
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#182There 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.
> someone who can bill $300 an hour
god.. that hurts. I've worked 10 years in the industry, have rescued code bases and currently am lead engineer and cto of a startup. I've tried doing some moonlighting but people balk when I quote them $80/hr.
I really need a better network. plus my soft skills are terrible.
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
My family was so poor, I got into college for free. Talk about unprivileged.
But you had the privilege if uncommon intelligence and test taking ability. Not all privilege is money.
You're going to have to pick one between
>>> So I went to the best school I could afford. Many folks are in this boat. It's not for a lack of trying or intelligence - it's for a lack of privilege.
and
> But you had the privilege [o]f uncommon intelligence and test taking ability. Not all privilege is money.
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
At Apple, they do that for you when you leave!
Can you explain what this means?
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not a choice to apply yourself and get into a good school? I mean seriously, given how hot the US software market is, there’s no excuse. And FWIW, I come from a poor immigrant background. My family was on welfare. I got free lunch at school. The American dream come true. Sorry that not everyone can hack it in life.
Exactly my point, folks with privilege like yourself don't even understand what privilege they have and have taken advantage of their whole life. I did (apply myself). I did work my ass off to get into, and out of, (good) engineering school and pay for it also. It simply wasn't an option for me to go to an expensive private or out of state school with a price tag of a couple hundred thousand dollars. So I went to the…
Please stop using that word. It sucks the life from you because you think it excuses you from self analyzing why you aren't happy where you are. Life is not fair if you are a human, cat, squirrel or mouse. We are born into a specific set of conditions...look around and move but please stop using the word privilege. Everyone and everything is different.
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#186This whole tale could have been me in Europe, 17 years ago.
I was desperately looking for a job, and these consulting firms are a dime a dozen. So there I went, fresh off uni, interview with a medium sized consulting firm from Mexico.
First day, one of the managers bragged about putting half dozen engineers in a motel, at walking distance from the customer offices, three per room, only things they did were work, eat and sleep, for six straight months.
Knowing no better and in dire need of money, I took the job.
Six months in, and after several weeks working 60 hours, I quit the day after I had a heat stroke because they moved us in a new office space with no windows or A/C.
I learnt afterwards that they were charging the customer 4x the rate they were paying me. Of course, they had "sold" me as a "senior developer".
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not a choice to apply yourself and get into a good school? I mean seriously, given how hot the US software market is, there’s no excuse. And FWIW, I come from a poor immigrant background. My family was on welfare. I got free lunch at school. The American dream come true. Sorry that not everyone can hack it in life.
Exactly my point, folks with privilege like yourself don't even understand what privilege they have and have taken advantage of their whole life. I did (apply myself). I did work my ass off to get into, and out of, (good) engineering school and pay for it also. It simply wasn't an option for me to go to an expensive private or out of state school with a price tag of a couple hundred thousand dollars. So I went to the…
I went to a public in-state school with poor parents. Full need-based financial aid in school. I made 6 figures out of school and currently make the big numbers you claim are impossibly rare.
You claim that not everyone is intelligent enough to make it into these schools in another post but we know from science that even just changing the way you study can improve performance by half a standard deviation [1]. So maybe you just didn't work as hard as the competition? Maybe you didn't look at all the aspects of _how_ you work and do some self-reflection about working more efficiently?
Don't blame intelligence when your own decisions have much more impact on overall performance than 10-20 points of IQ do. Why do you think Asians comprise 50% of school populations where affirmative action is banned? Hint: it's not because of superior intelligence, but work ethic.
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might not be rare to you but you have to realize that there are 6+ billion people on this planet. It's fucking rare.
No duh, but a city of a million people is a pretty fucking big city. It’s not that rare.
On a planetary scale, I wouldn't actually consider that 'pretty fucking big'. For comparison (metro areas, figures from Wikipedia):
San Francisco: 4.7 million
Berlin: 6.1 million
London: 14.3 million
NYC: 20.1 million
Shenzhen: 23.3 million
Tokyo: 37.5 million
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, indeed. I'm technically the CTO of the startup I'm helping to found. And even though I'm 37, I haven't been in tech long enough to feel like I've earned that title, so my LinkedIn says Chief Software Architect (I made it up).
"It's interesting, these titles," Musk said. "You know that there's actually only three titles that actually mean anything for a corporation? It's president, secretary, and treasurer. And technically they can be the same person. And all these other titles are just basically made up. So CEO is a made-up title, CFO is a made-up title. General counsel, a made-up title. They don't mean anything." https://www.youtube.com/…
I thought General Counsel means you have a JD?
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
So imposter syndrome is justified sometimes is what you're saying?
To quote a meme: “You all can’t have impostor syndrome, some of you gotta just be bad at your jobs”
I once heard it put this way, “If you’re absolutely certain that you have impostor syndrome, then you probably don’t have impostor syndrome.”