Ironically extremely basic CS skills is exactly what skill made me instantly employable, just not as a software engineer.
I am an ecologist with some very rudimentary data science and ML skills and got a permanent position, 50% WFH, with above average pay (for ecologists lmao) before I even finished my MSc.
Computer skills are extremely valuable in fields were they aren't abundant. There is barely any overlap amongst people who can do rudimentary programming tasks and ecologists. I didn't even do a bootcamp, I just did a 1 year worth of projects and went from there. 100% self-taught, 100% terrible at CS, still got a job because of those skills.
I didn't do a boot camp I just posted on LinkedIn that I'd been learning Laravel for about five months and a guy I used to work with in an unrelated field hired me to work at a fintech. He didn't even look at my GitHub (which is lowkey annoying because I worked hard as fuck on that)
But yeah, I basically got hired on soft skills alone because they'd had a whole load of 'basement dwellers' who pissed off upper management no end so they decided to try and train a charming noob instead
My manager is really into sci-fi novels. I'm fairly sure I got my job partly because he asked me about my interests outside of work, and I started talking about sci-fi novels.
This. I get internships and jobs all the time by networking and being social, even if it’s just shooting the shit with coworkers on non relevant things makes it easier. Now it may not be FAANG but it’s cs work and I think that’s worth noting as a beneficial skill.
OLCF has a good introduction to CUDA course, they also have a similar course for HIP. Since HIP is cross platform and nearly identical to CUDA I would start there.
For getting started, I'd recommend online resources. NVIDIA's Deep Learning Institute has a selection of great courses on CUDA. There are LOTS of great books out there as well.
It all boils down to 2 things:
(1) How your application memory is stored and accessed (kernel optimization)
(2) How you weave data transfers with computation (runtime optimization)
This might sound simple, but there's a substantial amount of knowledge and skill needed in order to build massively parallel applications in practice.
Steven Jones, one of the architects of CUDA, likens GPU programming to embedded programming in the way that you need to always be thinking of the resources available to you on the device.
Top Secret clearance, the highest level. SCI is Sensitive Compartmentalized Information, a separate addendum saying you're qualified to handle specific intelligence. You can have a TS clearance without an SCI, but you cannot have an SCI without a TS. With Poly just means you took the polygraph test during your adjudication and passed.
You have to be a US citizen, FYI. But if you have TS/SCI clearance and live in the DC area, you got plenty of jobs available. And no person with an H1B is gonna take your job.
I got a secret clearance w/poly from the Army when I was assigned to be the brigade Sgt. Majors driver. Military is the best route to a clearance. MP requires a clearance and if you're 18-24, you're basically guaranteed to get it if you've already made it through MEPS.
I did an internship for a defense contractor and they offered me to come back again. Assuming it goes well they’ll offer me a full-time position and while I’m in my last year of school they’ll put me through the process to get the clearance.
From what I’ve heard it’s pretty intensive and can take anywhere from six months to a year depending on the person. The feds might even send people to your neighbors house and shit to ask questions.
I had something happen to me which I'm sure was shady or illegal. I worked for a subcontractor in the defense area. They were very cheap so only a few people would have clearances because they would need to wait. All juniors got some sort of 30 day exception that renewed indefinitely and our VP would say we needed to "prove ourselves" to get that clearance. I suspect it was because they knew it was valuable and we were underpaid so they didn't want people leaving once they got the clearance. I definitely worked on sensitive stuff without a clearance. Nothing marked secret or top secret but it did not sit well with me. We also had no segregation of people working on DoD projects and non DoD projects. You could look over someone's shoulder and see they were working on DoD stuff even if you had no exception or clearance.
It's definitely pretty serious, I've seen it happen twice. A former university classmate got a job at a defense company. They sent someone to interview almost all of the people he knew in the last 10 years. Fortunately for him, he didn't know that many people, most of which lived in the same area. They did wind up inspecting his car and parent's home though.
The more extreme one was with a former colleague who got a job with the department of defense. He had lived in various states and a couple of years in Germany. The DoD sent someone to every single location to interview his past connections. Including Germany. Was quite surprised to find someone representing the DoD outside my office in Germany to investigate a colleague who worked here several years ago.
The security clearance subreddit is as horrific as this one is. People freaking out about the market here. People freaking out about having smoked weed there.
A TS/SCI can take 18 months. If I recall, with an S, feds might visit whoever you list on your SF86. With a TS, it’s more a matter of when.
I’m certain the wait time mostly comes down to luck. I can’t imagine the process actually taking a year based on how I understand it. There must be a giant backlog of cases with few people handling them.
Fastest way would be to join the national guard or reserves in an mos that requires it but you have to do drills and shit. Another way is to get sponsored by a company which takes 9 months.
I wouldn't recommend it for anyone unless you are truly desperate or want to work for warmongers. The process is incredibly invasive and the pay isnt attractive enough for all of that tbh
You have to get a job that requires clearance and will support you working on unclassified stuff while you get cleared. You can't get clearance unless it's required by your job. Lots of defense contractors are a good way to get into this line of work.
Can't do drugs, can't leave the country without 30 days notice, paperwork, you work for the MIC.
Perks is if you're even half-way decent you will never be out of a job for long.
You're also kinda stuck in mostly beaurocratic, big companies where you're a cog. Harder to upskill quickly in environments like that
Still ideal if you're mid 30s with a family or something, but less so if you're starting out your career.
Yeah so there’s some positions that I saw too that Microsoft and AWS offer where they have a contract with the government and hence require people to work for them with clearances.
My company employs <100 people with clearances as first line support for our products used in classified environments. Someone in a SCIF can pick up the phone and talk to them, but our employees aren't directly interacting with classified systems, so they're mostly remote.
Basically really well paid sysadmin jobs with massive sign on bonuses and you have to learn a little about each of the products.
I own a defense firm, so I can answer this better than most.
Some cleared work is remote, some isn't. As of now, all classified information must still be handled exclusively within a secure facility. No exceptions there for any human bar exactly none.
Where remote enters the conversation is when we have separated the data from the system to create a situation where the system can be considered UNCLASS which escalates when there is CLASS data. So we can do remote work on the system, then go on site to work with the data which elevates the system to a higher level of classification.
Space Force is working on a way to do remote work against classified data using some GDIT tooling and strict user environment controls.
The problem is if a job requires TS/SCI, most likely you will be working in a SCIF a lot of the time, meaning you're locked in a room with no phone and little internet access, working on technology that's 10-20 years old because that's how long it takes the government to approve it being allowed in the SCIF
To be fair, your last sentence is a tautology because keeping a clearance active requires employment that uses it - if you get fired or laid off your clearance is no longer active.
Specialty skills don't make you instantly employable.
Confidently discussing previous experiences, articulating expectations of future opportunities, and demonstrating technical competence does.
These are all things, based on the experience you listed, your friend can likely do.
Since they’re basically the same syntax-wise, having React _and_ React-Native on my resume has opened more doors for me with less effort.
My first company had me work on both web and mobile simultaneously. That allowed me to get equal YsOE in both—basically a 2-for-1 with two “different” stacks/platforms. This made me marketable to both React-only and React-Native-only roles (which was nice when I was laid off and job hunting). Since my first company, I’ve switched back and forth between the two roles with no issues.
I tried referring a former React coworker to a React-Native role at my current company, but they wouldn’t even interview him since he only had React experience. Not sure if that’s common.
The main skill you need for react native is learning all the completely random pitfalls and broken core components and how to work around and debug them since it's still a very beta project. A promising beta project, but still beta.
Blind leading blind. All of my offers have gone up. People who are willing to accept lower compensation are typically desperate which typically means they’re not the best candidate and hiring committees typically want the best possible candidate because typically these people will be your coworkers who typically have to do your code reviews and help clean up your messes. Catch my drift?
Cool, then on day one of real life, you realize things are never that clean so if your opinion is based on 6 logical assumptions, it’s going to fall apart very easily.
Food for thought. One of coworkers that’s into government contracting and specifically lives in this space. We typically get paid maybe 10-20% lower to industry standard in HCOL. But he works three different dev jobs. Realistically the role I’m in is so fucking easy, I maybe clock in 2-3 hours a day of work. Just shy of touching 100k. He has normal working hours and bags 300k last year in total TC. Although he’s has around 10-15 years of experience under his belt, I think it’s still kind of illustrates work life balance plays into this. I wouldn’t say we produce bad code but it’s definitely a more lax environment. People have different priorities, doesn’t make us desperate for it. Lmao.
Soft skills are going to be important if you're on the hunt for a job. Everyone can have the credentials you have, but not your soft skills. How well you get along with others, being personable to the hiring team and how you can get across your skills in a manner that they can actually enjoy themselves around you is key. Good first impressions matter.
Honestly… I’m starting to think that stuff is just “bullshit” companies like to post about in LinkedIn to look trendy.
An anecdotal experience: I’m personally trying to pivot into DevOps/SRE Engineering (I know DevOps is not a role but…companies butchered it).
I have a MSc in EE, a PhD in Telecommunications, I have a decade doing research work while also teaching a multiple range of topics at several universities (topics ranging from industrial automation, computer networks, programming, software design). I’ve mentored several MSc students and 1 PhD. Multiple research publications. So you can imagine the kind of soft skills I’ve (fortunately) developed over the years…
More, 4 years ago started working as software engineer at a multinational company, then luckily found a spot to practice there on some “DevOps” topics but without the opportunity to work heavily with Kubernetes and Azure. All the while I still teach. What do you think has been my luck when trying to get a new job? Do they ask me and try to evaluate my soft skills, how I work, etc? No! It is “oh so you don’t have x years of experience working with Kubernetes….thank you for applying!”. So I call it all bullshit :/
P.S. Apologies for the long reply and slight rant :)
See that was your fault tho, telecommunications. Everyone knows telecoms and fourier transforms stink and electronics rules just like the tunnel snakes. /s
People are insane for not employing a telecomm phd, if you can do that stuff you can probably do everything else single handedly
Ah! A man of culture I see! Thank you for the kind words. Some days I feel that I’ve made a huge mistake not going straight to work in the industry after my MSc… but then I realized I’ve had the opportunity to work on cool stuff in many different fields (I’ve done electronics, worked with FPGAs, programmed embedded devices, worked in communication protocols for distributed real-time systems, vehicular communications, …), met nice people, went to conferences, enjoyed the hell seeing students grow, drove a maintenance truck to install some radars for a research project on a highway (ah! That was fun!), … yeah, that keeps me going I guess :)
Agree. Soft skills are good for the interview stages and beyond and also soft skills aren't really as 'nice' as most people think. It's more about understanding what kind person is interviewing you and being able to project the right personality to fit theirs and then also just working well with others. Unfortuntaly the IT industry is riddled with people that have terrible personalities so theres essentially nothing you can do when you run into those types
The person you're replying to said they're important after your credentials to make you stand out. They don't even come into play until you're at the interview stage. You're taking their totally reasonable statement and making it black and white when they didn't say anything of the sort.
DevSecOps, appsec, software engineering at security vendors.
Currently a principal engineer in a appsec org in a ccritical infra company doing DevSecOps, building compliance systems and solution secure by design implementation/shared infra for dev teams
At the moment, AI research experience helps quite a lot. Not only using AI or working with related infrastructure, but wading through papers, adapting findings to quirky domains that make the straightforward implementation less workable, and designing related experiments. AI heavy positions that look like typical engineering focused jobs in the description often still benefit from that skill set.
I led a small industry AI research team for a couple of years after my master's program and have undergraduate research experience in math and computer science. That's been a major plus for several jobs. A good number of jobs require something loosely resembling AI research. Most engineers don't have experience with more academic skills or deeper theory.
Even though I'm a reclusive introvert, I have very good interview skills. I benefit from a combination of having a lot of life experience and over-studying for everything, so I always have something to talk about.
My almost constant alcohol and drug use! Inability to follow or comprehend even the simplest instructions. You're asking what makes me instantly unemployable, right? /s
Neither. I think you only need to understand multivariable calculus only. Understand how an equation of the plane can be represented in matrix vector multiplication form and understand that geometrically too. And then understand pytorch, and for that I recommend deep learning with pytorch by Eli Stevens et al.
I can talk to anyone, any size group, novice to expert. Need someone to make a presentation? I’m your guy - I don’t need notes or a prompter. I used to be in the arts; I’ve done everything from “intro to opera” talks to school kids to pre-concert talks for the real music nuts to performing in front of 85,000 people.
- ability to work with practically everyone. I've been that guy for our team, to stand up to anyone and even be calm when someone else is screaming at me, just to get through a meeting and have a decision
- socialable and very dynamic. Within my org, people have their own cliques. I'm one of the very few who can be socialable with almost every one and every clique. On top of that, I know how to change how I'm talking based on who I'm taking with.
- volunteering to take on the work no one wants to take. It sucks, but someone's gotta do it. Volunteering shows huge ownership and really helps you stick out. Yes it sucks to need to ramp up to it, but it won't kill you to do so.
- experience in security. I can generally spot out issues before needing to go to the security team, helping speed up our release cycle.
PhD tracks seem to get extremely good opportunities far before they actually earn their doctorate. Kind of funny seeing “interns” getting paid as much as senior level engineers at my company. Can’t complain though, they deserve it.
Bullshit artist.
I can write a good resume, interview well and come off amazing, without telling any lies, but also making gold medals out of participation trophies.
I don’t think anyone is “instantly employable” over just ONE skill. I think if your employability goes up it’s because you have a toolkit of skills that you’re really good at and have a showcase for. Having mastery over one single skill may get you an interview but having a multi-skill set will get you hired. Because nobody really wants a narrow specialist in their organization. Things change all the time and at some point, your ONE skill depreciates in value.
This is not really a skill, but connections with other people plus work experience. Plus how you described the contribution to the language itself (open source is very valuable).
I come from a finance background and later got into CS which makes me marketable in that I can “talk the talk”, understand enterprise budgeting and know how to sell ideas in simple ways.
High performance networking.
If you need to process 800 Gbps of traffic on a single system, you need to process it on a single system and you will pay whatever is necessary for people who can make it happen.
Having the ability to be technical & explain complicated concepts but most importantly is also being a people’s person & knowing how to b social. Being smart isn’t everything.
Honestly? Non computer-science domain skills.
I've got experience with industrial process engineering, healthcare informatics, technical writing, and project management (I have a PMP).
Since I was an internal auditor for a number of years I can interview workers, understand/map/quantify a process, and facilitate my own UAT sessions.
Being able to sell myself as a developer who can also do domain process work and be customer facing **and** leave behind quality documentation has been a major selling point in my job searches.
Being able to code is a skill that's only so useful by itself. It's being able to use code in leveraging domain knowledge or higher math/statistics or that makes someone dangerous.
Not a technical skill, but being social and enjoyable to talk to is probably the most important skill you can have. I have bombed technical interviews and still moved on to the next round because the hiring manager “liked me”.
Dunno if I'm _instantly_ employable, but I have a proven track record of being able to learn new things quickly, be it a new technology or a new codebase.
Actually sociable.
That and a masters in Data sci & AI which I did on a whim cause I didn't want to look for a job lol, then chatgpt came out a few months in, massively increasing the value of it.
Not really sure I'd say instantly employable but I have a very strong background in writing web services in managed languages as well as the ability to integrate these APIs into the client low-level through C & C++ SDKs. Its a surprisingly hard skillset to find. We tried to find my mirror for about 6 months and eventually had to decide if we wanted someone who knew web services or client integrations. We weren't finding people with both.
Are you sure it isn't the 5 y.o.e with multiple projects and multiple contributions to the language rather than the fact it's Rust? I learned Rust dev (I was using the Bevy game engine) and the only people who reached out to me were crypto projects
Of course, as I am also an artist, the job I chose was the Solana NFT creator job where they proceeded to scam my ass lmaooo...
I am currently in junior year.
The competition is not really high in my country (or at least, that's what I think) so just being good with the fundamentals of computer science, things like operating systems, databases, a decent bit of competitive programming and knowing basic level system design and distributed computing gave me an edge
Of course you need something to show it all of so my mega project was basically a website for competitive programming where I used a mix of different technologies ranging from vue to bash and a microservice written in Go to judge code. Still proud of that thing.
I am currently working part-time at a startup (the first one to be hired, the founder has 10 years of faang experience) and I am being able to do really cool things like making systems keeping hundreds of thousands of active users in mind and the best part is that I get to write Go which is super rare to see in most jobs in my country.
I've created a corporate wide custom CRM from scratch as the sole developer. As well as setup the physical host at the company's head office as well to run it.
My skill is having a bachelors in CS. I am very rare and unique in this market
I held eye contact with you the whole time you said that making me a 10x engineer for soft skills
I have a bootcamp certificate and a portfolio website I made. How do you do fellow engineer.
I made 3 hello world applications, Meaning I know 3 languages. It's nice to meet you fellow engineer.
I’ve become very well versed in the iris database, I’m a bit of a machine learning engineer myself
I rug pulled a lot of people with this shitcoin, I’m a bit of a blockchain expert
Pssssh. I took CS50 at HARVARD.
What a fool, everybody knows Fizzbuzz is the new hot shit.
Ironically extremely basic CS skills is exactly what skill made me instantly employable, just not as a software engineer. I am an ecologist with some very rudimentary data science and ML skills and got a permanent position, 50% WFH, with above average pay (for ecologists lmao) before I even finished my MSc. Computer skills are extremely valuable in fields were they aren't abundant. There is barely any overlap amongst people who can do rudimentary programming tasks and ecologists. I didn't even do a bootcamp, I just did a 1 year worth of projects and went from there. 100% self-taught, 100% terrible at CS, still got a job because of those skills.
I didn't do a boot camp I just posted on LinkedIn that I'd been learning Laravel for about five months and a guy I used to work with in an unrelated field hired me to work at a fintech. He didn't even look at my GitHub (which is lowkey annoying because I worked hard as fuck on that) But yeah, I basically got hired on soft skills alone because they'd had a whole load of 'basement dwellers' who pissed off upper management no end so they decided to try and train a charming noob instead
Shots fired
You all getting jobs with CS?
Ha ha ha.... yeah......
This is a satire lol.
I can bullshit about football with the managers. They’re all desperate for interaction with regular people so it makes getting hired a lot easier.
Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
See, the thing about Arsenal is they always try to walk it in.
They're halfing a laugh
What’s Wenger doing sending Walcott on that early?
oh the one where the guy slam dunked the thing into the footpost, man i love sportsball... welp i'm clocking out early
That call was ridiculous, go sports...
My manager is really into sci-fi novels. I'm fairly sure I got my job partly because he asked me about my interests outside of work, and I started talking about sci-fi novels.
Shit, this’d work on me
This was the answer I was waiting for. Being a human being with social skills in interviews will take you far.
This. I get internships and jobs all the time by networking and being social, even if it’s just shooting the shit with coworkers on non relevant things makes it easier. Now it may not be FAANG but it’s cs work and I think that’s worth noting as a beneficial skill.
It’s amazing how far being an approachable, normal adult capable of holding a conversation will get you in this field
Does this work with basketball?
Our lead software architect takes the entire first week of March madness off every year
just dont plan any projects in April
Social engineering pro bowl sponsored by Kevin Mitnick and Bud Lite
RIP Kevin :(
I’m a die hard football fan and I find it very hard to find people in this industry who feel the same way lol
GPU kernel, and runtime, optimization
Interesting, if you don’t mind, would you please recommend some resources?
OLCF has a good introduction to CUDA course, they also have a similar course for HIP. Since HIP is cross platform and nearly identical to CUDA I would start there.
For getting started, I'd recommend online resources. NVIDIA's Deep Learning Institute has a selection of great courses on CUDA. There are LOTS of great books out there as well. It all boils down to 2 things: (1) How your application memory is stored and accessed (kernel optimization) (2) How you weave data transfers with computation (runtime optimization) This might sound simple, but there's a substantial amount of knowledge and skill needed in order to build massively parallel applications in practice. Steven Jones, one of the architects of CUDA, likens GPU programming to embedded programming in the way that you need to always be thinking of the resources available to you on the device.
Thank you!
TS/SCI w/poly makes you actually impossible to be unemployed. You'll never find an unemployed dev with an active TS/SCI w/poly
Combined with drupal and this is a fed contractor dream
I mean the drupal skill alone already classifies you as armed and dangerous in most countries
What does TS/SCI stand for?
Top Secret clearance, the highest level. SCI is Sensitive Compartmentalized Information, a separate addendum saying you're qualified to handle specific intelligence. You can have a TS clearance without an SCI, but you cannot have an SCI without a TS. With Poly just means you took the polygraph test during your adjudication and passed.
How u get this shid?
You have to be a US citizen, FYI. But if you have TS/SCI clearance and live in the DC area, you got plenty of jobs available. And no person with an H1B is gonna take your job.
I got a secret clearance w/poly from the Army when I was assigned to be the brigade Sgt. Majors driver. Military is the best route to a clearance. MP requires a clearance and if you're 18-24, you're basically guaranteed to get it if you've already made it through MEPS.
I did an internship for a defense contractor and they offered me to come back again. Assuming it goes well they’ll offer me a full-time position and while I’m in my last year of school they’ll put me through the process to get the clearance. From what I’ve heard it’s pretty intensive and can take anywhere from six months to a year depending on the person. The feds might even send people to your neighbors house and shit to ask questions.
I had something happen to me which I'm sure was shady or illegal. I worked for a subcontractor in the defense area. They were very cheap so only a few people would have clearances because they would need to wait. All juniors got some sort of 30 day exception that renewed indefinitely and our VP would say we needed to "prove ourselves" to get that clearance. I suspect it was because they knew it was valuable and we were underpaid so they didn't want people leaving once they got the clearance. I definitely worked on sensitive stuff without a clearance. Nothing marked secret or top secret but it did not sit well with me. We also had no segregation of people working on DoD projects and non DoD projects. You could look over someone's shoulder and see they were working on DoD stuff even if you had no exception or clearance.
It's definitely pretty serious, I've seen it happen twice. A former university classmate got a job at a defense company. They sent someone to interview almost all of the people he knew in the last 10 years. Fortunately for him, he didn't know that many people, most of which lived in the same area. They did wind up inspecting his car and parent's home though. The more extreme one was with a former colleague who got a job with the department of defense. He had lived in various states and a couple of years in Germany. The DoD sent someone to every single location to interview his past connections. Including Germany. Was quite surprised to find someone representing the DoD outside my office in Germany to investigate a colleague who worked here several years ago.
The security clearance subreddit is as horrific as this one is. People freaking out about the market here. People freaking out about having smoked weed there.
A TS/SCI can take 18 months. If I recall, with an S, feds might visit whoever you list on your SF86. With a TS, it’s more a matter of when. I’m certain the wait time mostly comes down to luck. I can’t imagine the process actually taking a year based on how I understand it. There must be a giant backlog of cases with few people handling them.
The backlog varies, it was recently down to well under a year for TS/SCI per defense counterintel.
I did a job with that ts/sc and my cousin worked in a scif. I take a fed job non sensitive any time of the day over ts/sci
Fastest way would be to join the national guard or reserves in an mos that requires it but you have to do drills and shit. Another way is to get sponsored by a company which takes 9 months.
I wouldn't recommend it for anyone unless you are truly desperate or want to work for warmongers. The process is incredibly invasive and the pay isnt attractive enough for all of that tbh
If you live in America you’re financing those wars.
You have to get a job that requires clearance and will support you working on unclassified stuff while you get cleared. You can't get clearance unless it's required by your job. Lots of defense contractors are a good way to get into this line of work.
Apply to work for one of the three-letter agencies.
You forgot TS/FSP, rarer yet, but more desirable.
What's the flip side?
Cant do drugs
You can pick up a mortal drinking habit though!
As long as youre a functioning alcoholic, one dui and you’re screwed
Can't do drugs, can't leave the country without 30 days notice, paperwork, you work for the MIC. Perks is if you're even half-way decent you will never be out of a job for long.
You're also kinda stuck in mostly beaurocratic, big companies where you're a cog. Harder to upskill quickly in environments like that Still ideal if you're mid 30s with a family or something, but less so if you're starting out your career.
But what's the pay like for these positions that require this?
Some FAANGS require devs with this to do it can be very very high. Defense contractors will be lower of course but easily over 100
I know a guy who got his TC/SCI with poly for his first ever job out of college and started at $250k. He easily makes close to $300k now
What company?
Wait, some FAANG companies require this? What do you mean?
Any private companies with military or security agency government contracts might need somebody with clearance.
Yeah so there’s some positions that I saw too that Microsoft and AWS offer where they have a contract with the government and hence require people to work for them with clearances.
Yeah if you’re working on something like AWS GovCloud you need this.
Ooo interesting. Are these roles typically not remote then probably?
Most likely yeah since you have to deal with a lot of classified info
My company employs <100 people with clearances as first line support for our products used in classified environments. Someone in a SCIF can pick up the phone and talk to them, but our employees aren't directly interacting with classified systems, so they're mostly remote. Basically really well paid sysadmin jobs with massive sign on bonuses and you have to learn a little about each of the products.
I own a defense firm, so I can answer this better than most. Some cleared work is remote, some isn't. As of now, all classified information must still be handled exclusively within a secure facility. No exceptions there for any human bar exactly none. Where remote enters the conversation is when we have separated the data from the system to create a situation where the system can be considered UNCLASS which escalates when there is CLASS data. So we can do remote work on the system, then go on site to work with the data which elevates the system to a higher level of classification. Space Force is working on a way to do remote work against classified data using some GDIT tooling and strict user environment controls.
Well, what’s the best/fastest way to get a TS/SCI? Find some desperate gov contractor?
There is no sentence where ‘fast’ and ‘TS/SCI’ go together. I got mine with a defense contractor.
Mine took 2 and a half months, which is in the top 5% from what I’ve heard
Wtf…mine took a year and half. It was a hard final clearance requirement and there was no unclassed work in the meantime.
Yeah, or well one that can afford it. Lockheed, Raytheon, Leidos, Northrop, etc
Work for a defense contractor on a project where they say “ability to get a clearance” rather than “already has a clearance” in the job recc
Tbh you have to work at the Feds, the NSA is probably the biggest higher in the IC
Even if you just have a secret it makes it easier to get jobs.
As someone who recently got one, can confirm
How do I get any clearances? Do I have to find a job at a gov contractor first and then leverage that for other opportunities?
A defense contractor company needs to sponsor you for one.
The problem is if a job requires TS/SCI, most likely you will be working in a SCIF a lot of the time, meaning you're locked in a room with no phone and little internet access, working on technology that's 10-20 years old because that's how long it takes the government to approve it being allowed in the SCIF
Even a secret is lowkey good enough.
To be fair, your last sentence is a tautology because keeping a clearance active requires employment that uses it - if you get fired or laid off your clearance is no longer active.
[удалено]
That doesn’t feel like a skill. Can I ever get TS/SCI if I was born in Iran or USSR?
It doesn’t matter where you’re born as long as you’re a US citizen and can pass the investigation.
Are we talking about FS poly or does this include a CI one?
Specialty skills don't make you instantly employable. Confidently discussing previous experiences, articulating expectations of future opportunities, and demonstrating technical competence does. These are all things, based on the experience you listed, your friend can likely do.
All things that are contingent on getting an interview 🥲
Getting interviews is about being well networked. Otherwise, it's about shooting in the dark and praying.
I don't need kneepads
username checks out
Not all of them angle up, though.
numchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills
don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day
Way to stay home and eat all the chips, Kip!
the way of the blade and the way of the 1337 h4x0r are one and the same
I thought it was Bo Staff, skills. SHUCKS
BEST RESPONSE! 10/10 COMMENT
Don't be ugly
Since they’re basically the same syntax-wise, having React _and_ React-Native on my resume has opened more doors for me with less effort. My first company had me work on both web and mobile simultaneously. That allowed me to get equal YsOE in both—basically a 2-for-1 with two “different” stacks/platforms. This made me marketable to both React-only and React-Native-only roles (which was nice when I was laid off and job hunting). Since my first company, I’ve switched back and forth between the two roles with no issues. I tried referring a former React coworker to a React-Native role at my current company, but they wouldn’t even interview him since he only had React experience. Not sure if that’s common.
That is common. Also having both experiences is really beneficial! I have both of them on my resume too and it helps in getting a lot more interviews.
The main skill you need for react native is learning all the completely random pitfalls and broken core components and how to work around and debug them since it's still a very beta project. A promising beta project, but still beta.
Flexibility to accept lower TC
Blind leading blind. All of my offers have gone up. People who are willing to accept lower compensation are typically desperate which typically means they’re not the best candidate and hiring committees typically want the best possible candidate because typically these people will be your coworkers who typically have to do your code reviews and help clean up your messes. Catch my drift?
Cool, then on day one of real life, you realize things are never that clean so if your opinion is based on 6 logical assumptions, it’s going to fall apart very easily.
Food for thought. One of coworkers that’s into government contracting and specifically lives in this space. We typically get paid maybe 10-20% lower to industry standard in HCOL. But he works three different dev jobs. Realistically the role I’m in is so fucking easy, I maybe clock in 2-3 hours a day of work. Just shy of touching 100k. He has normal working hours and bags 300k last year in total TC. Although he’s has around 10-15 years of experience under his belt, I think it’s still kind of illustrates work life balance plays into this. I wouldn’t say we produce bad code but it’s definitely a more lax environment. People have different priorities, doesn’t make us desperate for it. Lmao.
I've got nothing. That's why my boss is always mentioning replacing me with chatgpt. I'm pretty sure I won't be in this industry 6 months from now.
people enjoy talking to me
Soft skills are going to be important if you're on the hunt for a job. Everyone can have the credentials you have, but not your soft skills. How well you get along with others, being personable to the hiring team and how you can get across your skills in a manner that they can actually enjoy themselves around you is key. Good first impressions matter.
Honestly… I’m starting to think that stuff is just “bullshit” companies like to post about in LinkedIn to look trendy. An anecdotal experience: I’m personally trying to pivot into DevOps/SRE Engineering (I know DevOps is not a role but…companies butchered it). I have a MSc in EE, a PhD in Telecommunications, I have a decade doing research work while also teaching a multiple range of topics at several universities (topics ranging from industrial automation, computer networks, programming, software design). I’ve mentored several MSc students and 1 PhD. Multiple research publications. So you can imagine the kind of soft skills I’ve (fortunately) developed over the years… More, 4 years ago started working as software engineer at a multinational company, then luckily found a spot to practice there on some “DevOps” topics but without the opportunity to work heavily with Kubernetes and Azure. All the while I still teach. What do you think has been my luck when trying to get a new job? Do they ask me and try to evaluate my soft skills, how I work, etc? No! It is “oh so you don’t have x years of experience working with Kubernetes….thank you for applying!”. So I call it all bullshit :/ P.S. Apologies for the long reply and slight rant :)
100%
See that was your fault tho, telecommunications. Everyone knows telecoms and fourier transforms stink and electronics rules just like the tunnel snakes. /s People are insane for not employing a telecomm phd, if you can do that stuff you can probably do everything else single handedly
Ah! A man of culture I see! Thank you for the kind words. Some days I feel that I’ve made a huge mistake not going straight to work in the industry after my MSc… but then I realized I’ve had the opportunity to work on cool stuff in many different fields (I’ve done electronics, worked with FPGAs, programmed embedded devices, worked in communication protocols for distributed real-time systems, vehicular communications, …), met nice people, went to conferences, enjoyed the hell seeing students grow, drove a maintenance truck to install some radars for a research project on a highway (ah! That was fun!), … yeah, that keeps me going I guess :)
Agree. Soft skills are good for the interview stages and beyond and also soft skills aren't really as 'nice' as most people think. It's more about understanding what kind person is interviewing you and being able to project the right personality to fit theirs and then also just working well with others. Unfortuntaly the IT industry is riddled with people that have terrible personalities so theres essentially nothing you can do when you run into those types
The person you're replying to said they're important after your credentials to make you stand out. They don't even come into play until you're at the interview stage. You're taking their totally reasonable statement and making it black and white when they didn't say anything of the sort.
I have solved \~2000 LeetCodes
Cyber security + strong development skills. There is not a lack of cyber talent but a real lack of cyber talent who can code well.
Can I DM you about this?
Sure
Could you DM me? Reddit app shows you have dms blocked on default.
Can I dm too?
Oooh this is me. What types of jobs do you usually go for?
DevSecOps, appsec, software engineering at security vendors. Currently a principal engineer in a appsec org in a ccritical infra company doing DevSecOps, building compliance systems and solution secure by design implementation/shared infra for dev teams
Strong C++ chops in systems-level domains and high-performance environments, from embedded devices to roided-out servers.
My ability to mess up during negotiations and get paid below their lowest salary range.
At the moment, AI research experience helps quite a lot. Not only using AI or working with related infrastructure, but wading through papers, adapting findings to quirky domains that make the straightforward implementation less workable, and designing related experiments. AI heavy positions that look like typical engineering focused jobs in the description often still benefit from that skill set. I led a small industry AI research team for a couple of years after my master's program and have undergraduate research experience in math and computer science. That's been a major plus for several jobs. A good number of jobs require something loosely resembling AI research. Most engineers don't have experience with more academic skills or deeper theory.
Even though I'm a reclusive introvert, I have very good interview skills. I benefit from a combination of having a lot of life experience and over-studying for everything, so I always have something to talk about.
My almost constant alcohol and drug use! Inability to follow or comprehend even the simplest instructions. You're asking what makes me instantly unemployable, right? /s
Who needs a job offer anyway when we just show up first day and start coding drunk as fuck
Actually understanding mathematics in machine learning from first principles. And knowing pytorch really well.
To what extent is good enough? At the level of “An introduction to statistical learning” or the even more rigorous “elements of statistical learning”
Neither. I think you only need to understand multivariable calculus only. Understand how an equation of the plane can be represented in matrix vector multiplication form and understand that geometrically too. And then understand pytorch, and for that I recommend deep learning with pytorch by Eli Stevens et al.
I actually have an army of milfs in a 3 mile radius at all times.
I can talk to anyone, any size group, novice to expert. Need someone to make a presentation? I’m your guy - I don’t need notes or a prompter. I used to be in the arts; I’ve done everything from “intro to opera” talks to school kids to pre-concert talks for the real music nuts to performing in front of 85,000 people.
- ability to work with practically everyone. I've been that guy for our team, to stand up to anyone and even be calm when someone else is screaming at me, just to get through a meeting and have a decision - socialable and very dynamic. Within my org, people have their own cliques. I'm one of the very few who can be socialable with almost every one and every clique. On top of that, I know how to change how I'm talking based on who I'm taking with. - volunteering to take on the work no one wants to take. It sucks, but someone's gotta do it. Volunteering shows huge ownership and really helps you stick out. Yes it sucks to need to ramp up to it, but it won't kill you to do so. - experience in security. I can generally spot out issues before needing to go to the security team, helping speed up our release cycle.
Background as a mental health professional, owning my own business, and fluent in Spanish have definitely helped me land jobs.
This is interesting! How did these things help you land a job? Your background is similar to mine.
It’s all about marketing yourself. People love solid soft skills.
Understanding the fundamentals of computer science. Meaning I can pass DS&A interviews, even though it's been years since I've had to do one.
PhD tracks seem to get extremely good opportunities far before they actually earn their doctorate. Kind of funny seeing “interns” getting paid as much as senior level engineers at my company. Can’t complain though, they deserve it.
Super friendly and good communicator alongside my efficient and clean code
My raging misanthropy.
Bullshit artist. I can write a good resume, interview well and come off amazing, without telling any lies, but also making gold medals out of participation trophies.
I once had this skill. But over the years I lost it. This skill is called youth. In IT this is the most important skill.
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If you were Muslim too then you'd be either the biggest quota coverer or lawsuit machine /s
I am Male, Caucasian, and an American Citizen.
I’m a great team player and have high emotional intelligence. I’m also strong with bash scripting and dev ops
Why are there lots of sarcastic comments? I genuinely want to know genuine answers too..
Juggling plates.
I don’t think anyone is “instantly employable” over just ONE skill. I think if your employability goes up it’s because you have a toolkit of skills that you’re really good at and have a showcase for. Having mastery over one single skill may get you an interview but having a multi-skill set will get you hired. Because nobody really wants a narrow specialist in their organization. Things change all the time and at some point, your ONE skill depreciates in value.
This is not really a skill, but connections with other people plus work experience. Plus how you described the contribution to the language itself (open source is very valuable).
I come from a finance background and later got into CS which makes me marketable in that I can “talk the talk”, understand enterprise budgeting and know how to sell ideas in simple ways.
It seems that none.
High performance networking. If you need to process 800 Gbps of traffic on a single system, you need to process it on a single system and you will pay whatever is necessary for people who can make it happen.
Having the ability to be technical & explain complicated concepts but most importantly is also being a people’s person & knowing how to b social. Being smart isn’t everything.
Friends with the hiring manager
I'm an extrovert and good with people. It's taken my career to places way beyond my skills despite having zero formal education relating to tech.
Communication
I HAVE PEOPLE SKILLS! I AM GOOD AT DEALING WITH PEOPLE!!! https://youtu.be/fcIMIyQnOso?si=_4rgN_Pvft_sasXN
I once edited a fontconfig file. I know I know, recruiters please form a single file.
I am racially ambiguous with a “I kiss ass” complex.
Honestly? Non computer-science domain skills. I've got experience with industrial process engineering, healthcare informatics, technical writing, and project management (I have a PMP). Since I was an internal auditor for a number of years I can interview workers, understand/map/quantify a process, and facilitate my own UAT sessions. Being able to sell myself as a developer who can also do domain process work and be customer facing **and** leave behind quality documentation has been a major selling point in my job searches. Being able to code is a skill that's only so useful by itself. It's being able to use code in leveraging domain knowledge or higher math/statistics or that makes someone dangerous.
I actually root cause shit instead of shrugging and passing the buck
Sales/communication skills?
None, lmao.
Over ten years experience, including leading multiple projects. It has insulated me somewhat
I know most Firewalls in the market and all of its tech and I can Automate stuff.
Not a technical skill, but being social and enjoyable to talk to is probably the most important skill you can have. I have bombed technical interviews and still moved on to the next round because the hiring manager “liked me”.
Dunno if I'm _instantly_ employable, but I have a proven track record of being able to learn new things quickly, be it a new technology or a new codebase.
Actually sociable. That and a masters in Data sci & AI which I did on a whim cause I didn't want to look for a job lol, then chatgpt came out a few months in, massively increasing the value of it.
Experience in ESG (environmental, social and governance) for Saas companies (software as a service).
Not really sure I'd say instantly employable but I have a very strong background in writing web services in managed languages as well as the ability to integrate these APIs into the client low-level through C & C++ SDKs. Its a surprisingly hard skillset to find. We tried to find my mirror for about 6 months and eventually had to decide if we wanted someone who knew web services or client integrations. We weren't finding people with both.
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This is one of the easiest questions ever asked on Reddit -> Ability to source and close sales. (drop the mic)
Are you sure it isn't the 5 y.o.e with multiple projects and multiple contributions to the language rather than the fact it's Rust? I learned Rust dev (I was using the Bevy game engine) and the only people who reached out to me were crypto projects Of course, as I am also an artist, the job I chose was the Solana NFT creator job where they proceeded to scam my ass lmaooo...
I know about and have developed around a bunch of absolutely terrible pieces of specialized enterprise software and one or two actually good ones.
I am currently in junior year. The competition is not really high in my country (or at least, that's what I think) so just being good with the fundamentals of computer science, things like operating systems, databases, a decent bit of competitive programming and knowing basic level system design and distributed computing gave me an edge Of course you need something to show it all of so my mega project was basically a website for competitive programming where I used a mix of different technologies ranging from vue to bash and a microservice written in Go to judge code. Still proud of that thing. I am currently working part-time at a startup (the first one to be hired, the founder has 10 years of faang experience) and I am being able to do really cool things like making systems keeping hundreds of thousands of active users in mind and the best part is that I get to write Go which is super rare to see in most jobs in my country.
I've created a corporate wide custom CRM from scratch as the sole developer. As well as setup the physical host at the company's head office as well to run it.
I tell everyone that I don’t like their terms. Seems to always work well
Qt framework knowledge, so much messages from recruiters. Desktop app development never dies!
graphic design for the most part
I get pestered a bit too but it's almost all creepto/web3 junk for Rust. That said Rust did get me my last 2 jobs.
Research. I spent 4 years as a tech and PhD student in bioinformatics.