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As a college student looking for a job, a lot of this is quite worrying. I don't really know where to start as a junior developer and I have seen quite a bit of

As a college student looking for a job, a lot of this is quite worrying. I don't really know where to start as a junior developer and I have seen quite a bit of this mentality that "we are looking for the best". Does anyone know how, from our corner, filter out companies that will do crazy stuff like make you barf up 30 sort algorithms? And more importantly for my case, does anyone know where to look for companies that are willing to work around a college student's schedule? The cards seem to be stacked against us in this one.

shados 10y ago
Its a candidate's markets. A few companies can afford to only hire top notch candidates. You've heard of them, and that's why. If you only try to apply for places you've heard of as being the best of the best, well, it will be harder because everyone is doing the same. There's hundreds, thousands of companies who aren't the best, and aren't looking for the best either. Work there, get your experience up, jump around every few years (so you can eventually get a feel as to WHY those companies aren't the best), and you'll be good enough to go anywhere you want. Or you can try to play the SV game, learn the 30 sort algorithms and learn how to speak "Big SaaS Company" speak right after college and skip that. I personally wasn't good enough for that out of college, so I did it the hard way, and now I'm where I wanted to be all along. It took 10 years, but ::shrugs::, I made it.
- gravypod 10y ago
  How do you get a list of the names we haven't head of?
  - perlgeek 10y ago
    You go to a job market website, search for software developer jobs, and discard all the names you've heard of.
  - AtheistOfFail 10y ago
    True story... I've seen a lot of small places that are so desperate because noone wants to work for an insurance company or some other industry that needs software but isn't a "software industry"
    - coredog64 10y ago
      If it's not the software industry, then you're working in a cost center, not a profit center. That's not a fun position to be in.
      - AtheistOfFail 10y ago
        yes. But for a first job, it's better than being unemployment.
    - flukus 10y ago
      A lot of the time they are desperate because the code is so bad they can't get anyone with half a brain willing to put up with it. And they don't have the corporate culture willing to fix it.
  - shados 10y ago
    Makes friends. Build a network. Ask your friends. Teachers work too.
  - epmatsw 10y ago
    Hired.com, AngelList, talk to a recruiter. If you've got a CS degree from a decent school, it won't take long to get interviews.
perlgeek 10y ago
> Does anyone know how, from our corner, filter out companies that will do crazy stuff like make you barf up 30 sort algorithms? There's no reliable way. You just apply to some more jobs, and some of the companies will be the crazy kind, other's won't. > And more importantly for my case, does anyone know where to look for companies that are willing to work around a college student's schedule? Look for medium to large companies, those often have some things they want done, but aren't really urgent. I work for an ISP and IT outsourcing company, and we have low-priority projects like updating the internally used blog to a newer wordpress version, install some plugins to get some extra functionality, write a bit of customization code and themes. These are things where we're glad when we can offload them to a part-time developer, and we don't care up if they show up in the morning or in the afternoon. > The cards seem to be stacked against us in this one. Don't give up. If you can get some personal connections, finding a job won't be too hard. Go to some local meetups, like your local python/perl/ruby/java/.NET/whatever monthly gathering, and see if you can get talking to some folks. Going to meetups in your free time already puts you in the upper 10% in the perception of most people :-)
AlexCoventry 10y ago
If those are important concerns for you, just ask about their hiring / scheduling policies up front, before you invest too much time into them. But also, try a few technical interviews. You might find they're not so bad, if you have the right background. I've been on both sides of the table in technical interviews, and on the hiring side I was working with an ex-Googler and our process was heavily influenced by Google practices. All the interviews I've done, on both sides, have been concerned with technical communication and the ability to develop a workable solution with a few hints, not with regurgitation of specific algorithms.
user5994461 10y ago
> Does anyone know how, from our corner, filter out companies that will do crazy stuff like make you barf up 30 sort algorithms? All "good" tech companies. All the startups, no matter whether they are early stage or already raised 100M. All the big established tech companies (Google, Microsoft...). To put it bluntly. ALL the cool places you know and want to work for. They are out of your league :D If you want to start elsewhere. Look for old school NON tech companies. Things like insurance-health-government-defense. They've got real work to do, sometimes more interesting than the Google-Facebook-Mhatever. But they don't have the culture and they have easy interviews.
jerkstate 10y ago
Don't worry so much about the "we're looking for the best" - as the author of this article points out, it's just an ego trip on the part of the interviewers. Everybody wants to think they're the top 10% but the truth is, half of all software developers are below average. Most interviewers (and candidates) don't really know what they are looking for or where they will fit in, so the process is pretty random. Just cover your bases (i.e. study for your interviews, have a referenceable public body of work, and work on your people skills) and interview a lot, you'll be fine. Remember that the reason all of these blog posts you're reading exists is because the authors are growing their referenceable public body of work to the same end, not necessarily because they're trying to help you.
GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
>As a college student looking for a job, a lot of this is quite worrying. I don't really know where to start as a junior developer and I have seen quite a bit of this mentality that "we are looking for the best". Does anyone know how, from our corner, filter out companies that will do crazy stuff like make you barf up 30 sort algorithms? Don't sell yourself short. As a fresh college graduate, you have a totally clean slate. All companies, even the big 4, will give you a fair evaluation (or, at least in theory, try to) based on what you've been devoting your full time to studying for the last four years. I assure you that it becomes much, much harder to study anything or do much alter your career trajectory once you start working full time. Yes, you can find companies with easy interviews but, as user5994461 and others have pointed out, they tend to be somewhat mediocre, to put it charitably, in environment and pay. Do you really want to deliberately aim for mediocrity before your career has even started?

shados 10y ago

Its a candidate's markets. A few companies can afford to only hire top notch candidates. You've heard of them, and that's why. If you only try to apply for places you've heard of as being the best of the best, well, it will be harder because everyone is doing the same. There's hundreds, thousands of companies who aren't the best, and aren't looking for the best either. Work there, get your experience up, jump around every few years (so you can eventually get a feel as to WHY those companies aren't the best), and you'll be good enough to go anywhere you want. Or you can try to play the SV game, learn the 30 sort algorithms and learn how to speak "Big SaaS Company" speak right after college and skip that. I personally wasn't good enough for that out of college, so I did it the hard way, and now I'm where I wanted to be all along. It took 10 years, but ::shrugs::, I made it.

gravypod 10y ago
How do you get a list of the names we haven't head of?
- perlgeek 10y ago
  You go to a job market website, search for software developer jobs, and discard all the names you've heard of.
- AtheistOfFail 10y ago
  True story... I've seen a lot of small places that are so desperate because noone wants to work for an insurance company or some other industry that needs software but isn't a "software industry"
  - coredog64 10y ago
    If it's not the software industry, then you're working in a cost center, not a profit center. That's not a fun position to be in.
    - AtheistOfFail 10y ago
      yes. But for a first job, it's better than being unemployment.
  - flukus 10y ago
    A lot of the time they are desperate because the code is so bad they can't get anyone with half a brain willing to put up with it. And they don't have the corporate culture willing to fix it.
- shados 10y ago
  Makes friends. Build a network. Ask your friends. Teachers work too.
- epmatsw 10y ago
  Hired.com, AngelList, talk to a recruiter. If you've got a CS degree from a decent school, it won't take long to get interviews.

perlgeek 10y ago

> Does anyone know how, from our corner, filter out companies that will do crazy stuff like make you barf up 30 sort algorithms? There's no reliable way. You just apply to some more jobs, and some of the companies will be the crazy kind, other's won't. > And more importantly for my case, does anyone know where to look for companies that are willing to work around a college student's schedule? Look for medium to large companies, those often have some things they want done, but aren't really urgent. I work for an ISP and IT outsourcing company, and we have low-priority projects like updating the internally used blog to a newer wordpress version, install some plugins to get some extra functionality, write a bit of customization code and themes. These are things where we're glad when we can offload them to a part-time developer, and we don't care up if they show up in the morning or in the afternoon. > The cards seem to be stacked against us in this one. Don't give up. If you can get some personal connections, finding a job won't be too hard. Go to some local meetups, like your local python/perl/ruby/java/.NET/whatever monthly gathering, and see if you can get talking to some folks. Going to meetups in your free time already puts you in the upper 10% in the perception of most people :-)

AlexCoventry 10y ago

If those are important concerns for you, just ask about their hiring / scheduling policies up front, before you invest too much time into them. But also, try a few technical interviews. You might find they're not so bad, if you have the right background. I've been on both sides of the table in technical interviews, and on the hiring side I was working with an ex-Googler and our process was heavily influenced by Google practices. All the interviews I've done, on both sides, have been concerned with technical communication and the ability to develop a workable solution with a few hints, not with regurgitation of specific algorithms.

user5994461 10y ago

> Does anyone know how, from our corner, filter out companies that will do crazy stuff like make you barf up 30 sort algorithms? All "good" tech companies. All the startups, no matter whether they are early stage or already raised 100M. All the big established tech companies (Google, Microsoft...). To put it bluntly. ALL the cool places you know and want to work for. They are out of your league :D If you want to start elsewhere. Look for old school NON tech companies. Things like insurance-health-government-defense. They've got real work to do, sometimes more interesting than the Google-Facebook-Mhatever. But they don't have the culture and they have easy interviews.

jerkstate 10y ago

Don't worry so much about the "we're looking for the best" - as the author of this article points out, it's just an ego trip on the part of the interviewers. Everybody wants to think they're the top 10% but the truth is, half of all software developers are below average. Most interviewers (and candidates) don't really know what they are looking for or where they will fit in, so the process is pretty random. Just cover your bases (i.e. study for your interviews, have a referenceable public body of work, and work on your people skills) and interview a lot, you'll be fine. Remember that the reason all of these blog posts you're reading exists is because the authors are growing their referenceable public body of work to the same end, not necessarily because they're trying to help you.

GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago

>As a college student looking for a job, a lot of this is quite worrying. I don't really know where to start as a junior developer and I have seen quite a bit of this mentality that "we are looking for the best". Does anyone know how, from our corner, filter out companies that will do crazy stuff like make you barf up 30 sort algorithms? Don't sell yourself short. As a fresh college graduate, you have a totally clean slate. All companies, even the big 4, will give you a fair evaluation (or, at least in theory, try to) based on what you've been devoting your full time to studying for the last four years. I assure you that it becomes much, much harder to study anything or do much alter your career trajectory once you start working full time. Yes, you can find companies with easy interviews but, as user5994461 and others have pointed out, they tend to be somewhat mediocre, to put it charitably, in environment and pay. Do you really want to deliberately aim for mediocrity before your career has even started?