What's the money like?

GarIT

Does anyone have a rough idea on what salary I should be looking for as I've no clue?

I've a 1st in a BSc Software Engineering from Maynooth University. 7 months experience as a c# developer with a trading firm and a year part time (1 day per week) experience as a Java and C# developer at a small local company. As well as 8 years experience in Tech Support.

beauf

moycullen14 wrote: »

It isn't about documentation, it's about communication - proper two-way, conversation. Face-to-face conversations can save time and be much better than email ping-pong.

I find the opposite that people are more likely to check the accuracy of what they write in an email, keep to the point. But don't in a face to face meeting or a phone call. In fact phone calls and face to face is often used as a means of avoiding a paper trail in some places.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

jester77 wrote: »

Also testing is very important, Roboelectric, espresso and mockito are something you need a deep understanding of. Kotlin is a nice to have, lots of organisations are migrating parts of their code base over to kotlin at the moment. This is something you should start getting familiar with.

i'm familiar with none of that! i've never written a unit test in my life and don't want to! the life of a oneman hustler is so different to a company i'd guess. i've to get MVPs out the gate ASAP and move on if it doesn't work. i rarely keep up with new stuff if old stuff works, i was very late moving from Eclipse to Android Studio.

dazberry wrote: »

A lot of companies seem to think it's okay to just ignore applicants if you don't make the cut for whatever reason - even trying to get feedback via an agency can sometimes be tricky. Personally I think it's the height of ignorance.

ah i understand it, they can't be wasting their time replying to hundreds of applicants. i wouldn't if i was them. and i'm pretty sure they get 100s of applicants from across Europe. we think there's not many jobs in Ireland compared to the US but there seems to be nothing at all in Spain, Italy, not to mention Eastern Europe.

moycullen14 wrote: »

When I read posts like this I think 'We have a developer shortage, really?'

THIS was my main reason for my post. it's a bullshít narrtive that's become perceived wisdom. how many times have you heard 'we need our kids studying STEM for all these dev jobs' in a media interview from some pleb who has no idea of the market? how many kids are in computer science expecting to easily get a dev job after graduation? and i mean a real dev job, not some testing or support job with one of the MNCs. the US is miles ahead of Europe for number of dev jobs

punk_one82

georgiecasey wrote: »

i'm familiar with none of that! i've never written a unit test in my life and don't want to! the life of a oneman hustler is so different to a company i'd guess. i've to get MVPs out the gate ASAP and move on if it doesn't work. i rarely keep up with new stuff if old stuff works, i was very late moving from Eclipse to Android Studio.

Why do you expect to be hired as a professional developer when you make statements like that? You may have had success as an Android developer in the past and you may very well be good at what you do, but unit testing is and should be a requirement for most software dev jobs. Companies require their software to be of a certain standard. Unit testing is a way of making sure (for the most part) that the software does as it is intended to do. In the age of Agile projects and TDD then you should be upskilling in unit testing best practices and tools. I certainly don't see why a company would invite an indie dev without a degree in CS and with a desire to never unit test any of their code for an interview over CS grads who should have learned that unit testing is a very good thing.

I can't agree with your statement that your projects are moving too fast to unit test. Having pair programmed with some excellent developers recently, watching their approach to TDD was fascinating, and it certainly did not take them much longer to write their application code while writing unit tests and they had a very high confidence in the code that they wrote functioning as expected.

If you get to a face to face interview and you give that response to unit testing then I've no doubt you'll be down the list in terms of who they want to hire. I don't mean to criticise you here, but I think you should rethink your approach to testing your code, if not for the benefit of your own projects, but for your potential suitability to potential employers as skills like Git and TDD are very high up the list of desired skills.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

lol i knew i'd get blowback on that. these just my personal opinions but of course i'd never say that if i ever got to an interview! if i ever got an actual interview, i'd brush up some company stuff. unit tests, finally find out what agile and scrum is, all that crap. i don't think it'd take me long to get up to speed. i'm well aware developing in a company or even with other people is a lot different to some lad on his own, and i'd have to change up my ways to whatever the company dictates.

i firmly believe there's no hard rules in programming. people say you HAVE to unit test, you CAN'T deploy to production, never use goto: but i've broken all these rules when the situation suited it.

i've been using source control and Git for years, i think it's indispensable even when it's one person as every team is at least two people, you now and you in 6 months. but i once came across a guy that refused to learn source control and just zipped up all his code and emailed it over. it annoyed the fcúk but he's entitled to do what he likes. don't think any companies would be employing him either though!

punk_one82

georgiecasey wrote: »

lol i knew i'd get blowback on that. these just my personal opinions but of course i'd never say that if i ever got to an interview! if i ever got an actual interview, i'd brush up some company stuff. unit tests, finally find out what agile and scrum is, all that crap. i don't think it'd take me long to get up to speed. i'm well aware developing in a company or even with other people is a lot different to some lad on his own, and i'd have to change up my ways to whatever the company dictates.

i firmly believe there's no hard rules in programming. people say you HAVE to unit test, you CAN'T deploy to production, never use goto: but i've broken all these rules when the situation suited it.

i've been using source control and Git for years, i think it's indispensable even when it's one person as every team is at least two people, you now and you in 6 months. but i once came across a guy that refused to learn source control and just zipped up all his code and emailed it over. it annoyed the fcúk but he's entitled to do what he likes. don't think any companies would be employing him either though!

But the stuff you're labelling as "all that crap" that you'll brush up on when you get an interview while complaining about not getting interviews is the stuff companies deem as basic requirements for candidates they'll consider interviewing. Getting up to speed on what agile, scrum and TDD are is not the same as practicing them in your own development and believing in their value.
Using TDD as a way to write code is not as straightforward as reading about it before an interview and then just doing it. There's a mindset that takes practice to get into the habit of, and it takes even longer to get good at. Companies want to hire people who believe in best practices, not people who couldn't be arsed with best practices unless it means they'll get hired. That attitude suggests they're not really committed to developing quality code that they can stand behind.

You're right, some independent dev you worked with has every right to zip his code up and do whatever he wants with but that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Just as you're free to not unit test your own code but that attitude doesn't sit well with potential employers. Thats' the point I'm trying to make. Do you host your code on Github or similar? If you do and you have that URL on your cv, then it will definitely be beneficial for you to have unit tests too.

jester77

georgiecasey wrote: »

lol i knew i'd get blowback on that. these just my personal opinions but of course i'd never say that if i ever got to an interview! if i ever got an actual interview, i'd brush up some company stuff. unit tests, finally find out what agile and scrum is, all that crap. i don't think it'd take me long to get up to speed. i'm well aware developing in a company or even with other people is a lot different to some lad on his own, and i'd have to change up my ways to whatever the company dictates.

i firmly believe there's no hard rules in programming. people say you HAVE to unit test, you CAN'T deploy to production, never use goto: but i've broken all these rules when the situation suited it.

i've been using source control and Git for years, i think it's indispensable even when it's one person as every team is at least two people, you now and you in 6 months. but i once came across a guy that refused to learn source control and just zipped up all his code and emailed it over. it annoyed the fcúk but he's entitled to do what he likes. don't think any companies would be employing him either though!

With an attitude like that, even if you were to get invited to an interview, then you are not going to get very far. How are you masking the lack of test experience on your CV? This is probably why you are not hearing anything back.

And even if you try to bluff it, you will still have to do a coding challenge of some sort and you will quickly be found out. All that crap is at the core of how software is developed professionally. You won't survive in a professional environment without it.

14ned

kevthegaff wrote: »

Have a computer science degree with a masters in software engineering which I completed ten yrs ago. I never went into the workforce as I set up a business (irrelevant of qualifications). Am I too long out of the game? And at what wage would I expect with some more re qualification starting off?

As a professional remote working contractor, I've noticed that potential clients tend to discount experience older than two years when deciding on whether to approach you for a contract. So, basically you are only worth at full rate the niche skills which you've worked the past two years, and anything past that is worth less.

I've no idea if that applies to permanent job roles, but I can certainly attest from experience before I started my consulting firm that being more than four years out of commercial programming employment is a death sentence to getting past the recruiters and HR. Even if you do find any employment, it will be at a junior programmer pay rate, at least initially until you prove you are worth more.

I'd duplicate the other advice that you should strongly consider moving to any location globally which will employ you just to get your CV fresh again. Once it's fresh, you can return.

Niall

irishdude11

georgiecasey wrote: »

lol i knew i'd get blowback on that. these just my personal opinions but of course i'd never say that if i ever got to an interview! if i ever got an actual interview, i'd brush up some company stuff. unit tests, finally find out what agile and scrum is, all that crap. i don't think it'd take me long to get up to speed. i'm well aware developing in a company or even with other people is a lot different to some lad on his own, and i'd have to change up my ways to whatever the company dictates.

i firmly believe there's no hard rules in programming. people say you HAVE to unit test, you CAN'T deploy to production, never use goto: but i've broken all these rules when the situation suited it.

Yes but you were working on your own one man small scale project where you would have a detailed understanding of all the code in the project, as you wrote it yourself.

When it comes to an enterprise level project with several people working simultaneously on a sprawling, complicated, code base that has been developed over years you 100% HAVE to unit test and you 100% CAN'T deploy to production. There's probably been millions invested into the code once you sum up the man hours spent on it and if you start deploying to production without testing and inevitably your customers start having catastrophic problems with your product, well then you've killed the value of your multi-million dollar investment.

But I do agree with you that it is overkill in general to unit test your own one-man projects. Spend a day or two working through some simple unit test tutorials so you have a full understanding of how unit testing works, that's all you need. That's more than enough to be able to get you through an interview situation.

The_B_Man

GarIT wrote: »

Does anyone have a rough idea on what salary I should be looking for as I've no clue?

I've a 1st in a BSc Software Engineering from Maynooth University. 7 months experience as a c# developer with a trading firm and a year part time (1 day per week) experience as a Java and C# developer at a small local company. As well as 8 years experience in Tech Support.

€33k

cronos

I'm curious does anyone have a list of Dublin based companies doing software dev that are actually nice to work for. Have good working culture, flexi start in the mornings... that kind of thing. I'd love to get a list of companies that people like to work for in Dublin City Center.

I'm already aware of glassdoor and the pages on Stack Overflow. Just interested in the opinions of people here.

srsly78

Pretty much all of them are like that in my experience. Stress levels also depend on the individual. If a place is really toxic then just find another job.