I gave my first job interview today...

[Asher]

Originally posted by VetLegion
Asher, what are programmers payed in Canada anyway? What would that guy have gotten if you hired him? I work as a programmer at the moment and my current monthly salary is a secret, but I can say it's only slightly better than my last salary which was... let me calculate... ~920 US$ a month. And I write pretty serious stuff - banking software in C/C++ and Java. How much would I be payed for that in Canada?

It depends.

Of course, everyone gets paid differently depending on their experience.

But "Programmers" get paid differently than "Software Engineers", who get paid differently than "Software Architects". In ascending order.

People without a university degree start (at my company) around $40,000p.a. as Computer Programmers if they have relevant experience. University degrees give you a $60-75,000p.a. starting salary (at my company) with about 1 year of real world experience. Software Architects are software engineers with 5+ years of experience and are heading up the overall architecture of projects, and they make a lot of money...couldn't tell you exact figures yet.

Keep in mind that salaries in Canada are usually lower than their American counterparts due to lower cost of living. If/when people from our Toronto office move to the New York or Boston offices, they get the same salary but in USD.

[Asher]

Originally posted by laurentius
Asher, what type of business do you work with? Sofware obviously, but what kind of and for whom?

My company works primarily for the financial sector and governments, but is expanding into all kinds of other areas. The project I'm on is for a major US investment bank (trading system).

[CrONoS]

Originally posted by VetLegion
let me calculate... ~920 US$ a month. And I write pretty serious stuff - that in Canada?

You surely wanted to say; 920$/week?

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by rah
Those negative type questions do serve a purpose and I do use them. List three of your weaknesses? Any possible candidate that can't whip off three that appear to be weaknesses but could go either way JUST DIDN"T PREPARE enough. (I work too hard), (Sometimes I try to figure out something too long before asking for help) , or (sometimes I'm a bit too competetive)

And it's always good to make a candidate uncomfortable and see how they handle the stress. (but that animal one always bugged me)

The behavior questions are open ended enough that it allows a person to bury themselves. Good answers don't really matter, bad answers will eliminate you.

We had one guy that every time he answered a behavioral question, included something like, my boss was out to get me, by boss was out to get me, or you wouldn't believe what stupid things they had me do.
So it was obvious that he had a problem with authority figures and liked to blame things on others. A definate NO HIRE even though he answered the techincal questions adaquately. The funny thing was that when the interview was done, the guy thought he aced it, while my co interviewer and I were just trying to keep from breaking out laughing.

Behavioral questions Very effective, even in technical type interviews ("What's the hardest concept for you to understand in programming?")

Behavioral questions as rah mentioned are good also because then you can't be sued for your hiring decision as easily. They're less prone to implied bias, and really do let the candidate hang himself

[snoopy369]

Oh, and my one of my GF's labmates was interviewing for a lab tech (Immunology, they do work on T-cells and allergies) ...

First guy who interviewed:

What is a T-cell receptor?
What does a CD-4 T-cell do?
What is a cytokine?

Basically these are the equivalents of "what is a heap", "what is a class", and "what does inheritance mean" in immunology... all questions I (a retail manager with no science beyond high school) could answer.

I very nearly applied for the job right there

[Dinner]

I've honestly never sat in on a job interview. In geology typically it is only the state certified professional geologists who get to sit in judgement on others. I still have a good 8 months to go before I can take my test to get state certification. You can damn well bet I will be demanding a healthy raise after I pass it though. A Professional with a state authorized stamp is worth much more then a guy without one just as a Professional Engineer gets a nice 25% raise when he gets his state PE.

[Dinner]

The reality is my current employer low balled me a bit. I' was just on the cusp of becoming a geologist 3 but instead they paid me at the high end of a geologist 2. In 8 months, after I pass the PG examination, I will be demanding at least middling geologist 3 pay (and I honestly believe I will get it). That should be a good $10k-$15k increase. There was nearly a decade where oil, gas, and mineral prices were low so few people became geologists so there is currently a shortage of trained geologists. The current boom in hydrocarbons has only made things worse by bidding up prices. I, of course being a leftist, am not working in an extractive industry and instead am working in environmental compliance. That means I make 10%-20% less then other geologists (who work in the oil business) but I am fortunate to live in California were the environmental regulations are strict, where there is a shortage of qualified environmental professionals, and where the regulations continually get tougher. I think I am in an excellent position.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Asher
in an object-oriented programming context.

Programming with women

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by cronos_qc


You surely wanted to say; 920$/week?

He lives in Serbia.

[Spec]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


He lives in Serbia.

Why?!

Spec.

[Impaler[WrG]]

This reminds me of the Perfect Hash table I made in Data Structures class, 100 five leter words hashed to a table of size 140 and then searched for without a single collision. The goal had just been to get under 50 or so collisions, my program was the only one the teacher had ever seen manage to do it with no collisions. It worked off the fact that the word list was known so I converted the words to unique ints, sorted and divided them into smaller mor managable blocks, these are then repetedly XOR'd with sequential numbers and divided to get a block offset index. It runs each block repetedly untill it finds a combination that gives no collisions. These XOR keys are then hard coded into a simple switch statment which combines it with the words int value to get the index. It could also generate the nessaries Keys at runtime with an unkown set of words but this ofcorse took a lot longer due to all the trial and error that had to happen first.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


He lives in Serbia.

Croatia



cronos_qc, no, the figure is correct. Asher, thanks for the info.