Well good for you. Your expectations coming out of college are vastly different than mine were if you've already turned down an 80k job. Still, good luck.

Yassss SpaceX!

Thanks Vrael love you too


Totally agreed. Would be a good SD (lite discussion, w/e) topic.


Just got a phone interview scheduled after doing their online pre-screen

Can post up results as they come. OP WILL DELIVER

This will be a super depressing thread if you don't get an offer from them.

i no rite

I am amazed that you can get a job in the field without the corresponding degree.

When they ask for your qualifications what are you supposed to show them?

Power to you in any case. If they are starved for employees it sounds like you have a really good chance.

In CS you pretty much just have to show that you can make things. Degrees are secondary because even some people with degrees can't program.

imo most people with degrees can't write good code or solve hard problems.

@Oh_Man, I showed them this, and this, and some other things found on my website, like this thing. If we look at the job description I match every single word, except extensive networking experience (which is a preference, not requirement).

In many CS areas experience trumps all (for recent grads especially in the form of internships/side projects, which I have copious amounts of). Many tech companies also like employee referrals, and I may have gotten one of these as well.

Now if I wanted a job at some huge tech company there's no way I'd get in without a degree and no full-time experience. That's a loss on their part of poor and old-fashioned recruiting. However, once I've been in industry I can go pretty much anywhere and nobody will really care about the degree. The degree is almost only for landing that first job, and not much after.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 11 2015, 8:12 pm by CecilSunkure.

Cecil do you have a resume template you made yours out of? It looks really good and I could use it.

Nope no template. I just used MS word and clicked on buttons until I liked how it looked. It took a long time.

Phone screen done. Was pretty awkward. Very difficult to communicate answers to tech questions to recruiter who copies them down to give to an engineer. Must be a pretty coarse culling technique. Answered all questions easily, but was still awkward.

Also had to verify that I don't have degree, but didn't have a chance to talk about why. I have a feeling this will have been the most difficult part of the interview for me. We'll see what happens next.

Edit:
Here's an example. I was asked "What does const do in C++". The answer is: give compiler errors when used inconsistently. That's all it does. Now I'm not sure if this was the answer they are looking for, and I can't clarify because this recruiter doesn't know what the question is looking for. If I try to clarify the recruiter just reads back the question. Maybe they wanted to know about what possible uses of const are, or the philosophy behind it, or any number of things. I wasn't sure.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 12 2015, 12:36 am by CecilSunkure.

Now we wait...

Phone call with recruiter in the morning. It's probably about logistics or clarifying my degree situation, since she said I don't need to prepare anything.

Awkward indeed. But I'd guess they know their format and as long as it makes sense what you answer they don't hold it against you when the answer deviated from their expectation. Just avoid giving smart-ass answers like "nothing", even if the outcome is indeed inconsequential there's always "something" you can describe. (Just saying, because your answer seems to come close to it.) Bonus points if you can describe why that "something" effects to "nothing".
Tbh it even sounds like the kind of questions where they evaluate how you deal with imprecise questions or too little information in a stressful situation. The interviewer insisting on giving no further info seems to indicate that. You definitely don't judge a programmer by knowing the const keyword.

Those considerations aside I guess you couldn't go wrong with the official definition.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 12 2015, 6:57 am by NudeRaider.

We've had a few times at work where a reviewer for a piece of code says "you should make this const". So you attempt to do it, and the whole thing is like a virus, and you'd end up having to change 50+ functions just to satisfy their wishes.

As a result, const is pretty rarely used in our code-base.

Yep didn't go through. Knocked out by the awkward phone screen. Pretty sad.

The feedback was "we wanted more depth in the answers". You know I actually asked if that's what they wanted and didn't get a reply.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 12 2015, 5:40 pm by CecilSunkure.

Keep in mind you can apply for a place more than once, if you really wanted to get into SpaceX then just apply again in a month's time.

I was told not to apply for a year.

There's also the good old "well fuck them then" to fall back on. Keep trying, getting a job is almost more of a numbers game than it is about any actual skill or anything.

It's difficult to be too excited and descriptive during an interview about the questions they ask (so long as you're not at Magic: the Gathering awkward levels).

Every one of my phone interviews has been pretty awkward.