How is your career going?

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Thu Feb 13, 2020 10:11 pm

Zarathud wrote: ↑Thu Feb 13, 2020 10:06 pm
Smoove_B wrote:The Chicago Health Department was on the cutting edge of Public Health Infomatics back in 2011, right after the ACA powered up and data was "set free".
We have huge public health costs to bring under control, and the supply of University of Chicago nerds to help crunch data.

When I worked for Rush North Shore, the director of nursing informatics was an RN. She was such a pain in the ass that at one point, our interim CIO forbade her from talking to me (or any of my staff) directly. After we were acquired, the director from Northshore University was also an RN. I gave her a tour of our hospital and she was positively giddy for the opportunity to connect with other RNs....her role had her cooped up in their IT facility and she never had a chance to engage with front line clinical staff. Which seems odd, considering the value of what they do.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Fri Feb 14, 2020 1:08 pm

Out of the dozen applications I've sent, I've gotten maybe... four or five rejections. Some are quick to tell you that you're probably not a good fit. Though they generally will read your LinkedIn profile just to be sure. Others... who knows what their process is. Yes, this is a gripe.

I know I am also limiting myself to something I can easily commute to... Something within 10 miles. But I really don't want to go too far.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Fri Feb 14, 2020 1:46 pm

a 33% response rate isn't bad...even if the responses are negative. Keep in mind there will always be a percentage of listings that are only out there because corporate policy dictates that an opening must be publicly listed x-number of days. These jobs may not really exist; the preferred candidate could very well already be in hand and their response is what hey consider to be a nice way to say "sorry for wasting your time. It's actually worse if the requirements insist they go through with actual interviews.

It's been repeated here many times before...spamming your resume out there is not an efficient nor effective use of your time.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:01 pm

I know, I am relatively conservative in only applying for the jobs I think I have a decent chance of getting, but it's also discouraging to find jobs on LinkedIn that already has 20-30, even 50-100 applicants.

pr0ner · Post by **pr0ner** » Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:52 pm

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:01 pm I know, I am relatively conservative in only applying for the jobs I think I have a decent chance of getting, but it's also discouraging to find jobs on LinkedIn that already has 20-30, even 50-100 applicants.

I've applied for promotions where I work that get close to 100 applicants. If your resume and qualifications are good enough, the number of applicants shouldn't discourage you.

stessier · Post by **stessier** » Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:57 pm

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Thu Feb 13, 2020 10:03 pm Data scientists are basically analysts with new titles after formal studies, but also with some storytelling. I think right now I'm trying to absorb the modeling constraints and how to pick different models, which data points have strong correlations we can track, and so on. One can recite what's SD, what's mean and median, and other statistics, but what they actually MEAN to the data is something else.

Just out of curiosity, as I'm working toward a data scientist path, if you can do it, why are you looking at truck driving/delivery jobs? Is there any reason you can't move to other parts of the country? People who can do this are some of the most in-demand around right now.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Fri Feb 14, 2020 3:36 pm

stessier wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:57 pm Just out of curiosity, as I'm working toward a data scientist path, if you can do it, why are you looking at truck driving/delivery jobs? Is there any reason you can't move to other parts of the country? People who can do this are some of the most in-demand around right now.

To be completely honest, I've never really lived "alone", ever. It's always with a member of my extended family. Yes, I'm almost 50 and I'm still a homeboy. *sigh*

The driving job was just something I thought I *can* do. I did delivery driver for a year and a half and I knew I *could* do that. Not specifically looking for those jobs, actually, it was pretty much I applied for first when I first lost the job.

The data science and IT support certificate are, again, what I knew or knew I can do. The certificates are cheap: $39 or $49, if I can finish in a month.

Data Science is just a certificate, it doesn't guarantee a job. For that, I pretty much need a degree. *sigh*

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Applied for 5 more, got 2 more rejections back.

I think the problem I have is my work experience doesn't reflect my knowledge. That's why I need certifications. I guess next I have to get A+ or Security+...

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Fri Feb 14, 2020 4:28 pm

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 3:36 pm For that, I pretty much need a degree. *sigh*

Not at all, you just need enough aptitude to do a given job. I would suggest going the temp agency route while you obtain those certs you mention. Certs might help, but I'd never hire anyone who could show me nothing else. I worked once with a paper CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional). Dude never actually touched a switch or router in his life, while I, cert-free, configure hundreds of him. While my primary role at this client was elsewhere, I was able to step in, help the guy out, and not let it be an embarrassment to my employer.

You might find yourself in simple assignments -- often companies are just looking for someone who can follow instructions and not be actively afraid of tech. This will help build your tech resume so when you do have the paper in hand and go looking for permanent gigs, you have some experience to back it up. And it likely pays better than the truck driving numbers you posted earlier.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Fri Feb 14, 2020 4:49 pm

Yeah, I've been looking at "entry-level" tech support positions. But being in San Francisco, there's a ton of competition here, even for entry level stuff.

At this rate, I'll go move servers for Amazon.

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Just "finished' Course 6 of 9 in the Data Science Professional Certificate thing, except for final exam, which needs to be graded.

Time to go to dinner. Will do Course 7 later tonight. That's Data Visualization with Python.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Fri Feb 14, 2020 10:49 pm

I still think you should try the temp/contractor route. I've had several points in my career where that was the best option. My IT career started 32 years ago with a job offered by the father of a friend I connected with at my 10 year high school reunion. Prior to that I was doing payroll tax accounting, sheet metal drafting, and restaurant management (incidentally, while at the restaurant gig I tried to get into truck driving for a bread company. The hours were kind of shitty, starting at 2 am, but the salary was double what I was making at the restaurant).

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Sat Feb 15, 2020 3:23 am

Got the certificate for Course 6 of 9, and 2 more rejection letters, but applied for 4 more. Basically just get my foot in the door, transition into more prominent IT role later. Heck, even if it's not really an IT role per se... but EVERY company needs IT eventually, right?

(Oh the other hand, I thought they sorta promised me at the driver job that I'd be first in line to get a desk job, but I was basically pigeon-holed into a driver role with no way out)

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Started on Course 7 of 9, finished part 1 of 3. The most frustrating thing is those Jupyter Notebooks keeps choking up. I'm wondering if they are misconfigured, as they happen during all times of the day.

EDIT: Finished part 2 of 3. I think found the problem that caused the notebook to choke. Moving onto part 3 of 3 after lunch. This course is mainly about different types of plots available in the graphic functions within Python libraries used by scientists.

Also seems to have cured the notebook choking out with 502 Gateway. Seems they saved the wrong credentials in my login cookies. Logging out and back in seems to have solved it.

For the heck of it, I also bought the "textbook" for this course. It's not required, but a decent read, actually, only $15 for Kindle versions for a data science textbook. Does go over more details and variations. Should be done with course by end of day.

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EDIT2: Finally finished the final assignment. ARGH. Took me 3-4 hours, should have taken at most 1. Forgot some of the basics, like forgot to specific "inplace=True" to actually modify the data, as I was left there scratching my head... WHY isn't this working? And the explanations given on some of the lab earlier were paper-thin. I ended up figuring out half of it myself, like what parameter to key on to make a choropleth map (color intensity). Turns out, you had to actually open the JSON file and read it off of there. That was never explained in the video!

The peer grading is also kinda funny, as I saw one guy tried to pass the "sample map" (i.e. what we're supposed to aim for) as if it's his work. Hello! I can actually see the "censored" band still in the submission! I knew that's the sample, not the real thing!

Drazzil · Post by **Drazzil** » Sun Feb 16, 2020 12:20 pm

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Wed Feb 12, 2020 4:00 pm
Smoove_B wrote: ↑Wed Feb 12, 2020 3:39 pm Have you considered career-coaching Drazzil? You know how to hustle!
Not having to go anywhere and kinda burned out on games will do that to ya.

I'm in if you are!

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Sun Feb 16, 2020 2:13 pm

I dunno, what do you need help on?

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Just got my 7th course certificate. Two more courses and I'll have my "Data Science Specialist" certificate from IBM/Coursera. That hopefully should take no more than 2-4 days. That leaves a LOT of days before the final course in "IT Automation with Python" becomes available (on March 16th)

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Took Jeff_V's advice and applied for a couple shorter-term contract positions. Also, decided to diversify and also put up profiles on Glassdoor and Ziprecruiter in addition to LinkedIn. I can see some jobs are double or triple listed. Tried not to apply to those that already rejected me.

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Started on Course 8 of 9 in the Data Science certificate. Already finished Sections 2 out of 7. It's 2:30 AM and I'll figure out the rest tomorrow.

EDIT: Finished Section/Lesson 4 out of 6. (7 is fluff) Should finish course 8 on 18th or 19th. And hopefully, I get an offer or two for tech jobs.

EDIT2: Finished Course 8, except for the grade on the final project. I think I'll take the rest of the day off, and start on Course 9 (capstone project) tomorrow.

Not a single reply on the job front. *sigh*

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Wed Feb 19, 2020 7:28 pm

Started on Course 9 of 9, and got 2 more rejection notices. *sigh* Apparently I'm not even qualified to do game tech support, according to these folks...

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Thu Feb 20, 2020 7:02 am

Finished 60%, i.e. all the "assignments". The last two parts are the final "capstone project", and I'm trying to get my head around how to frame a question that can be answered by querying Foursquare for a ton of venue data. I'll have to sleep on that.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Thu Feb 20, 2020 12:44 pm

Stat breakdowns for ZIP code, day of week, hour of day?

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Thu Feb 20, 2020 3:22 pm

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 12:44 pm Stat breakdowns for ZIP code, day of week, hour of day?

Interesting idea. Should a hypothetical "dinner only restaurant" start offering lunch as well?

But can you query time-based data from Foursquare? Like what's hot at noon vs what's hot at dinner? It seems Foursquare doesn't save historical data, so you have to query the data over a period of time yourself and do a trend analysis.

My first idea was getting the right neighborhood for a particular type of restaurant, but it seems there is no "standard" definition of neighborhoods in San Francisco.

EDIT: Turns out, there are semi-official sources, like healthysf.com (run by city government, so it's official enough)

I have an idea now. Find the restaurant types in each neighborhood. Food category

Spoiler:

using venue search.

Then do top 5 or top 10 for each neighborhood, and see how the distribution goes.

Maybe a breakdown of types of Chinese food by neighborhood... hmmm... That would sort of identify the other subsidiary Chinatowns. Right? That's assuming that as Chinese population in a neighborhood grew, they would seek out other types of Chinese food, instead of "generic" Chinese food.

I mean, in Chinatown you have like 3-4 restaurants per block. But in the outer areas of SF you can't see a Chinese restaurant for several blocks.

Interesting idea. I'll have to do some exploratory data visualization to see how that pans out. This is good planning.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Fri Feb 21, 2020 7:00 am

Applied to 3 more, got 2 more rejection notices.

Changed the project to be about locating the best neighborhood for bubble tea shop. Seems to be more mine-able with Foursquare's data.

The project itself will probably take 2 days, hopefully less. It would involve a lot of copy and paste from older projects as a lot of the analysis would be similar, but not exactly the same.

EDIT: It's taking a bit longer than I thought. But I can be finished in 24 hours. Basically, I divided San Francisco into grid and checked how many Chinese restaurants are in each area, then use that as a correlation variable to predict is there a market for boba tea in this area. Took me a while to massage the code into place. Some of the syntax in python is driving me nuts.

I had previously gone down the wrong way. I tried to analyze the existing boba shops and see if there are patterns on where they are. I guess I could have turned that in, but somehow, it just didn't feel like enough. So I'm taking an extra day or two to really add on to it. I can save that work for sort of bonus analysis.

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Phew! Data Science Specialization certificate is mine!

What class shall I take next that don't cost an arm and a leg?

I was thinking an AWS (Amazon Web Services) and/or Google Cloud engineer course, and maybe a customer service course.

Maybe Cyber Security too.

Argh, two 3 more rejection notices. I guess I just can't compete with those young guns. *sigh*

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 3:35 am

I decided to go for the cybersecurity certificate, mainly because I already know something about it and I can rush it.

Some of these lessons just cracks me up.

For example, this was one of the videos we're getting a quiz on. Yes, it's only 1 minute long.

And the question was:

What tool did Xavier say was crucial to his work as a SOC analyst?

If you look at the transcript above, you'll notice the transcript says [INAUDIBLE]

Great question, guys. Great questions.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 6:01 am

Four courses in this certificate, just finished 3/4 of the first one. I do know about 60-70% of it. It's mainly the terminologies, like what's an event, an alert, and an incident?

The "fun" part is I've already knew quite a bit of this from general knowledge and I have some refresher from the Google IT Support training before, as well as from Python Automation. But this is just the first course. I'm sure it gets tougher.

In the meanwhile, I think I'll have to get A+ and Security+ to be employable. Nobody is just gonna "believe" me that I know my ****.

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 8:41 am

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 3:35 am I decided to go for the cybersecurity certificate, mainly because I already know something about it and I can rush it.

Some of these lessons just cracks me up.

For example, this was one of the videos we're getting a quiz on. Yes, it's only 1 minute long.

And the question was:

What tool did Xavier say was crucial to his work as a SOC analyst?

If you look at the transcript above, you'll notice the transcript says [INAUDIBLE]

Great question, guys. Great questions.

LOL - is this an IBM course?!? They mention at least one IBM tool (Resilient) and my guess the answer was QRadar. QRadar!?! It's just a crummy commercial!

Ralph-Wiggum · Post by **Ralph-Wiggum** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 1:26 pm

This is the last week of my current postdoc job in St. Louis. Next week I'll be packing up the car and moving to Charleston, SC for a real (i.e. non-academic) job. It's a full time research position, which is pretty sweet, but I'm a bit scared of the 9 - 5, have to accrue time off, etc. aspects of the job that I haven't dealt with for the last 12 years...

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 1:29 pm

I've been a Daywalker for ~14 years and I'm not sure I could go back to a M-F grind at this point. I feel your stress there, no doubt. Good luck.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 5:04 pm

malchior wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 8:41 am LOL - is this an IBM course?!? They mention at least one IBM tool (Resilient) and my guess the answer was QRadar. QRadar!?! It's just a crummy commercial!

Yeah, it's IBM Cybersecurity course. The answer is actually SIEM, which is a technology, not a specific tool. I know, I know. The wording on these questions are horrible. They also have a lecturer who pronounce "policy" as "poh-lee-sigh". It's a struggle to get through the lectures.

To be fair, the choices are: SIEM / packet sniffers / firewalls / intrusion detection software. But they aren't really mentioned in the screenshot. It's practically guess until you got it right.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 7:40 pm

Finished Course 1 of 4. I'd say I already know HALF of the stuff, so it's a matter of picking up the rest. Not sure if I can finish within the 7-day window, but I don't mind giving Coursera $39 for this "IT Fundamentals for Cybersecurity" certificate.

Got another two rejections back. Once was at least kind enough to customize the message instead of "we will not be moving forward" generic bull****.

Got an interview request, but it's for a regular customer service role, NO IT at all. I can live off of it, but it wouldn't be fun. I'm not sure if I even want to respond to it.

No movement on like half-dozen of the tech support jobs I've applied for earlier.

I have two more jobs I'm looking at, one's more like technician/mechanic though it's somewhat high-tech, and the other customer service. They are pretty close, but I'm not sure I'd be happy with them. Still, a man's gotta eat...

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Started Course 2 of 4, finished part 1 of 4. Should finished the course by end of tomorrow. It's basically knowledge quiz. First part was quizzing stuff like ITIL, and it's all trivia **** like what does this process go in the ITIL process? IMHO, it doesn't do anything good as a cybersecurity specialist except knowing that one should develop a full plan before trying to implement it.

EDIT: Just Course 2 of 4, finished part 2 of 4. Some of this stuff is really arbitrary and depends on terminology if anything. The final quiz, I was able to figure out the answers without watching any of the videos... except one. "Name one the three control type?" And it's like... what the **** are they talking about? Turns out, somewhere in the lecture, like here... he actually did talk about controls... gun control. No, really.

I swear, the transcript is accurate. That's really what he said. Does anyone actually proofread this ****?

Paingod · Post by **Paingod** » Wed Feb 26, 2020 10:31 am

IT People of the Hive Mind...

I have a phone interview tomorrow with someone leading a software delivery team for a large but respected national company. The position I'd be interviewing for is as a Delivery Manager, running the team and potentially coordinating multiple projects. This kind of came out of the blue for me as I had submitted a resume to this company for a standard IT Manager position and was turned down for that, but immediately got a call (the next day) saying the person running this other team wanted to talk with me.

Now, there's very little in my resume covering leading programmers. My best was acting as a project manager to create a new core application for a business. I worked with staff to create requirements, and sat with a developer to try and make those a reality. It was an interesting process, but is not the core of what I've done for over a decade.

I'm completely unfamiliar with Agile development and am spending today reading up on it, having delayed my phone interview by a day. I'm still putting all the pieces together, but it looks like my natural inclinations in my last program development project were about half Agile and the other half looks like learned skill in project management, which I lack.

I did a little research on the person who wants to talk with me and can see why they might want to. They themselves went from HR to Business Analyst to Scrum Master with no formal IT training and have been doing that now for close to 5 years... so it doesn't look like something that requires a programmer's brain to achieve - just the will and skill to follow the path.

What kinds of tips, thoughts, or warnings would you provide to someone who is a solid "Generalist" in IT across the board and may be looking at leading an Agile programming team? If your insight is "OMFG, RUN!" I'd be curious why as well.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Wed Feb 26, 2020 3:55 pm

A software delivery manager coordinates and manages the software development process for specific software projects. The manager operates within a software development environment in software companies or virtually any type of company with software development resources. Project planning, scheduling and performance are part of the responsibilities. Managing a team of developers or managing specific projects with different teams may be required. Technical requirements will vary depending on the type of software produced, ranging from web-based development to database and application design.

So it's basically a managerial role, project management, herding cats, and all that.

if they want to talk to you, they obviously see something they liked in your resume. All that Agile, SCRUM, etc. can be picked up later, IMHO. You just need to take some classes and get that certification.

So the question is... do you prefer to code... or lead people?

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Wed Feb 26, 2020 4:16 pm

Just had a lunch with my team celebrating my 30th anniversary with my company. Which happened back in August.

Octavious · Post by **Octavious** » Wed Feb 26, 2020 4:21 pm

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Wed Feb 26, 2020 3:55 pm
A software delivery manager coordinates and manages the software development process for specific software projects. The manager operates within a software development environment in software companies or virtually any type of company with software development resources. Project planning, scheduling and performance are part of the responsibilities. Managing a team of developers or managing specific projects with different teams may be required. Technical requirements will vary depending on the type of software produced, ranging from web-based development to database and application design.
So it's basically a managerial role, project management, herding cats, and all that.

if they want to talk to you, they obviously see something they liked in your resume. All that Agile, SCRUM, etc. can be picked up later, IMHO. You just need to take some classes and get that certification.

So the question is... do you prefer to code... or lead people?

This is exactly what my job is. I call it professional babysitting.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Wed Feb 26, 2020 4:24 pm

hentzau wrote: ↑Wed Feb 26, 2020 4:16 pm Just had a lunch with my team celebrating my 30th anniversary with my company. Which happened back in August.

Nice to see your JIT efforts are paying off.

Octavious · Post by **Octavious** » Wed Feb 26, 2020 4:26 pm

Octavious wrote: ↑Wed Feb 26, 2020 4:21 pm
Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Wed Feb 26, 2020 3:55 pm
A software delivery manager coordinates and manages the software development process for specific software projects. The manager operates within a software development environment in software companies or virtually any type of company with software development resources. Project planning, scheduling and performance are part of the responsibilities. Managing a team of developers or managing specific projects with different teams may be required. Technical requirements will vary depending on the type of software produced, ranging from web-based development to database and application design.
So it's basically a managerial role, project management, herding cats, and all that.

if they want to talk to you, they obviously see something they liked in your resume. All that Agile, SCRUM, etc. can be picked up later, IMHO. You just need to take some classes and get that certification.

So the question is... do you prefer to code... or lead people?
This is exactly what my job is. I call it professional babysitting.

And to add something slightly useful. I wouldn't get hung up on the Agile part. It's just a different methodolgy on how to deploy releases. My company follows the holy shit this is important fix it now method.

. Which is probably right dab in between Agile and waterfall.

For what I do pretty much follows what the job description does... Generally 99.% of the job is making sure people don't fuck up as you own it if they do.

-----
Project and Scope Proposed
Document the requirements and make sure the client is good with it
Make sure development can meet those requirements and get estimates on the cost
pass that information onto the client
Create a SOW if applicable (For me it usually is billable work)
Timeline (Project Plan) created with all the tasks needed
PP has the dates you would start and all the delivery dates for various environments QA,UAT and Prod in most cases...
Make sure people make those dates...
Profit...

The method would impact how and when you would do release cycles and your interaction with the client. So again I don't think Agile is a big deal...

I personally also have to manage the deviations that are created by our testing and the client testing in multiple environments. That's probably the only really time consuming thing aside from documentation... For me that's 43 countries that can log issues. And let me tell you some of those countries can be cranky pants.

Honestly it's not a hard job except for when people do things wrong or just don't do them at all. Which is where the babysitting comes in.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Thu Feb 27, 2020 5:15 am

Hah, just finished course 3 of 4 in IBM IT Fundamentals for Cybersecurity. I have 48 72 hours to finish course 4, making this certificate FREE!

Two more rejections, but I'm improving my cover letter pitch. (At least, I hope so)

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Thu Feb 27, 2020 6:13 am

Octavious wrote: ↑Wed Feb 26, 2020 4:26 pm And to add something slightly useful. I wouldn't get hung up on the Agile part. It's just a different methodolgy on how to deploy releases. My company follows the holy shit this is important fix it now method. . Which is probably right dab in between Agile and waterfall.

Yeah, there's a lot of overlap among Six Sigma, Agile, Lean, and SCRUM, not to mention waterfall, kanban, kaizen, PMP... too many funky names.

Paingod · Post by **Paingod** » Thu Feb 27, 2020 8:06 am

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Wed Feb 26, 2020 3:55 pmSo the question is... do you prefer to code... or lead people?

Seeing as I'm taking classes towards a Business Leadership and not a programming degree...

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Wed Feb 26, 2020 3:55 pmThis is exactly what my job is. I call it professional babysitting.

The last time I was paid to be a professional babysitter, I worked as a Corrections Officer at the county jail. I quit after 6 months. Are programmers any more well behaved than inmates?

Octavious wrote: ↑Wed Feb 26, 2020 4:26 pmAnd to add something slightly useful. I wouldn't get hung up on the Agile part. It's just a different methodolgy on how to deploy releases. My company follows the holy shit this is important fix it now method. . Which is probably right dab in between Agile and waterfall.

For what I do pretty much follows what the job description does... Generally 99.% of the job is making sure people don't fuck up as you own it if they do.

That's something of a relief. In my research yesterday (I spent a few hours reading and following link after link), Agile seems like it takes a real balancing act and I can see why companies drift away from a strict Agile methodology and into "holy shit, fix this" territory. The Wiki listed something like 14 "pitfalls" that can hamper pure Agile.

This isn't a company selling computer programs, though. They may be working on internal software, software they send to field agents, or web technologies for the company's site. I sincerely doubt they're pushing deliverables for any client but themselves. It's a company with over 10,000 employees nation-wide. Unless they're going a complete overhaul, I expect they're working constantly on tweaks, improvements, and new features to layer on existing platforms.

I talked with a relative who's a programmer and he basically said "Yeah, everyone says they follow Agile because it's the thing to do - but in practice you just do what feels right and get the job done." methodology. He was able to give me some questions that I can ask that'll help me look less like a complete ignoramus, which might help.

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Thu Feb 27, 2020 8:45 am

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 5:04 pm
malchior wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 8:41 am LOL - is this an IBM course?!? They mention at least one IBM tool (Resilient) and my guess the answer was QRadar. QRadar!?! It's just a crummy commercial!
Yeah, it's IBM Cybersecurity course. The answer is actually SIEM, which is a technology, not a specific tool. I know, I know. The wording on these questions are horrible. They also have a lecturer who pronounce "policy" as "poh-lee-sigh". It's a struggle to get through the lectures.

To be fair, the choices are: SIEM / packet sniffers / firewalls / intrusion detection software. But they aren't really mentioned in the screenshot. It's practically guess until you got it right.

LOL. If the answer was SIEM then that is not a natural way of talking about the subject matter.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Thu Feb 27, 2020 2:48 pm

malchior wrote: ↑Thu Feb 27, 2020 8:45 am LOL. If the answer was SIEM then that is not a natural way of talking about the subject matter.

Probably because he himself is an SIEM guy.

As I mentioned I'm 3/4 through the course, and I think I can blow through the rest today. They said it's a 7-day free trial. If I get the certificate before 7-day's up it's free!

Paingod · Post by **Paingod** » Thu Feb 27, 2020 4:19 pm

Paingod wrote: ↑Thu Feb 27, 2020 8:06 amIn my research yesterday...

Turns out one day of Wiki research can't make you an expert with years of experience.

I think my call with them went as well as it could have, but that simply means I'll be shocked if I get a call from them for a second interview. I just don't have the experience they're looking for. Managing small non-programming teams, sure. Doing break-neck project management and cat-wrangling? Nope.

But who actually gets that experience without someone taking a risk on them?

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Thu Feb 27, 2020 6:16 pm

Exactly. It's a standard catch 22. You can't get a job unless you get the experience. You can't get the experience unless you actually get a job.

Two more rejections. Not unexpected, At this rate, I may as well get A+, Security+, and one of those Microsoft certs.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Thu Feb 27, 2020 9:41 pm

Just a reminder, staffing companies generally don't send rejection letters, but what's on your resume today might trigger a call-back 20 years from now.

Some temp gigs go long term or permanent. I've had 2 go permanent, including my current job (going on 9 years). I had a 2 week gig go two years. Another was supposed to go a couple of weeks and went 9 months. These jobs were all with major companies, and afterward it's those companies that are listed on my resume, not the agency I worked through.

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Thu Feb 27, 2020 10:15 pm

Paingod wrote: ↑Thu Feb 27, 2020 4:19 pm
Paingod wrote: ↑Thu Feb 27, 2020 8:06 amIn my research yesterday...
Turns out one day of Wiki research can't make you an expert with years of experience.

I think my call with them went as well as it could have, but that simply means I'll be shocked if I get a call from them for a second interview. I just don't have the experience they're looking for. Managing small non-programming teams, sure. Doing break-neck project management and cat-wrangling? Nope.

But who actually gets that experience without someone taking a risk on them?

Typical path IMO would be working in a big enough environment that you could get assigned to one, mentored if need be, and not need to be hired directly to do it. It's a high risk, low reward proposition for the hiring manager to take a chance on someone who hasn't done it before.