On resume stuff, one way to make a pretty resume is to format it using LaTeX. If you don’t know LaTeX, you can find templates online and modify them (e.g. here).
Re: solving interview problems, I got a lot better at it when I started saying everything I was thinking out loud… I’d have a friendly conversation with my interviewer and just keep saying intelligent things until the problem was solved. (My impression is that it’s generally OK to go on tangents as long as they’re intelligent tangents. Typically you’re going to see multiple avenues of attack for any given problem, and if you intelligently explain your way down one avenue, you can probably get points for that time spent during the interview even if it turns out to be the wrong approach.) I do part-time work as a tutor and I’m pretty good at explaining stuff, so maybe this advice works unusually well for me. But I suspect that “brain freezes” are a huge cause of programming interview underperformance, so if you think you’re good at coding but you don’t interview well, you probably are actually good and you just need to find a way to solve your performance anxiety.
I suspect that writing bug-free code and fixing bugs without the usual tools like print statements are skills that most programmers don’t practice (since they’re not typically necessary), but that you totally can practice and get better at. Cracking the Coding Interview has good instructions on doing this; the Quixey Challenge is also interesting. I actually started making a list of all the sorts of bugs I seem to make and cycling through my list before testing my code, and paying attention to what kind of mental activity I needed to induce (in sort of a meditative way) in order to best write bug-free code/search for bugs.
Apparently infosec is so hot right now that White Hat Security is hiring people with no programming experience who seem like logical thinkers and training them on the job. (I can probably put you in contact with someone who works there and got hired with no programming experience if you send me a PM.)
You can claim tax deduction for up to 50% of your wages. That means if you make a lot of money in one year, even if you donate most of it, you’ll be able to reduce your taxable income by a maximum of 50%. The rest goes over to the next year.
I’m confused. Do I want to strategically spread my income out over multiple years, or does it not matter?
you might be able to make something like 10% annually with some risk.
My vague intuition is that this is really optimistic, especially in the current economic climate.
In fact, you should be surprised if your offers from public companies have a higher EV than offers from startups.
Some companies will tell you their offer is not negotiable. That’s not true.
Was pretty much true in the experience of one friend of mine. Ironically, he’s a bit of a salary negotiation guru, but was busy when he was interviewing at companies a few years ago and ended up taking an offer that he didn’t negotiate up much.
I suspect that writing bug-free code and fixing bugs without the usual tools like print statements are skills that most programmers don’t practice (since they’re not typically necessary), but that you totally can practice and get better at.
It may be under-practised because debugging takes too much time. Writing near bugfree code is the only way to get something done in a short timeframe.
Yes, nothing comes for free, of course… but it seems to me that with careful coding one can massively decrease bug rate while spending only little extra time. Debuggers make bug finding much easier but not so much faster. Coding carefully also feels very difficult out of proportion how slower it is.
My (perhaps out-of-date) experience is that lots of recruitment agents, companies etc seem to expect CVs to be in Microsoft Word format, and so providing only a PDF may be an inconvenience to them.
Recruitment agents often want to be able to pass your resume around to companies while preventing the company from contacting you directly. They can do that by editing out your contact information, but they can only do that if your resume is in a format that they know how to edit, such as Word. That’s why many of them don’t like PDF—they can’t easily edit it.
At TrikeApps our job ads say “Choose an appropriate file format for your resume – we’ll draw conclusions about you from the tools you use”. Anyone who expects us to prefer a proprietary file format over LaTeX or PDF is probably applying to the wrong place :)
I’m confused. Do I want to strategically spread my income out over multiple years, or does it not matter?
No, I’m just trying to maximize the money I donate. If somehow I could donate it all right now, then I would. Like I mentioned, donating money now creates more value, so in that sense it’s easier.
On resume stuff, one way to make a pretty resume is to format it using LaTeX. If you don’t know LaTeX, you can find templates online and modify them (e.g. here).
Here’s a checklist for considering job offers.
Re: solving interview problems, I got a lot better at it when I started saying everything I was thinking out loud… I’d have a friendly conversation with my interviewer and just keep saying intelligent things until the problem was solved. (My impression is that it’s generally OK to go on tangents as long as they’re intelligent tangents. Typically you’re going to see multiple avenues of attack for any given problem, and if you intelligently explain your way down one avenue, you can probably get points for that time spent during the interview even if it turns out to be the wrong approach.) I do part-time work as a tutor and I’m pretty good at explaining stuff, so maybe this advice works unusually well for me. But I suspect that “brain freezes” are a huge cause of programming interview underperformance, so if you think you’re good at coding but you don’t interview well, you probably are actually good and you just need to find a way to solve your performance anxiety.
I suspect that writing bug-free code and fixing bugs without the usual tools like print statements are skills that most programmers don’t practice (since they’re not typically necessary), but that you totally can practice and get better at. Cracking the Coding Interview has good instructions on doing this; the Quixey Challenge is also interesting. I actually started making a list of all the sorts of bugs I seem to make and cycling through my list before testing my code, and paying attention to what kind of mental activity I needed to induce (in sort of a meditative way) in order to best write bug-free code/search for bugs.
Apparently infosec is so hot right now that White Hat Security is hiring people with no programming experience who seem like logical thinkers and training them on the job. (I can probably put you in contact with someone who works there and got hired with no programming experience if you send me a PM.)
I’m confused. Do I want to strategically spread my income out over multiple years, or does it not matter?
My vague intuition is that this is really optimistic, especially in the current economic climate.
This guy argues otherwise.
Was pretty much true in the experience of one friend of mine. Ironically, he’s a bit of a salary negotiation guru, but was busy when he was interviewing at companies a few years ago and ended up taking an offer that he didn’t negotiate up much.
It may be under-practised because debugging takes too much time. Writing near bugfree code is the only way to get something done in a short timeframe.
My experience is that writing bug-free code typically takes up additional time in other ways.
Yes, nothing comes for free, of course… but it seems to me that with careful coding one can massively decrease bug rate while spending only little extra time. Debuggers make bug finding much easier but not so much faster. Coding carefully also feels very difficult out of proportion how slower it is.
My (perhaps out-of-date) experience is that lots of recruitment agents, companies etc seem to expect CVs to be in Microsoft Word format, and so providing only a PDF may be an inconvenience to them.
Recruitment agents often want to be able to pass your resume around to companies while preventing the company from contacting you directly. They can do that by editing out your contact information, but they can only do that if your resume is in a format that they know how to edit, such as Word. That’s why many of them don’t like PDF—they can’t easily edit it.
Conversely, there are some niche places that look very favorably upon LaTeX CVs. It’s important to know the culture.
At TrikeApps our job ads say “Choose an appropriate file format for your resume – we’ll draw conclusions about you from the tools you use”. Anyone who expects us to prefer a proprietary file format over LaTeX or PDF is probably applying to the wrong place :)
An online HTML/JS CV resonated well for me. This was mostly the case with startups without specialized recruiters.
No, I’m just trying to maximize the money I donate. If somehow I could donate it all right now, then I would. Like I mentioned, donating money now creates more value, so in that sense it’s easier.