Trying to get a new job

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#2310834 4-Sep-2019 23:22

I thought NZ had a shortage of workers, and that is why immigration is so high and housing in short supply, as we need to bring in people to do the jobs.

kingdragonfly

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#2310848 5-Sep-2019 07:17

The expectations for some workers is getting ridiculously high, such as "must have 5+ years with cloud technologies AWS/Azure"

I had an interview regarding a senior developer position.

"Differences between an abstract class and interfaces"

"Three parts of a unit test. Should a unit test test the underlying hardware, such as databases?"

"'Partition' has two completely different purposes in SQL server. What are they? (Answer: TSQL aggregate windowing, and data sharding)

"What is a slowly changing dimension?"

Extremely in-depth question about SQL injection, and security in general.

Common encryption techniques for SQL data: (Answer: data-at-rest, encrypted backups, in-flight)

Detailed questions about SSIS / API / REST / Angular /React.

And on and on...

Never did ask the salary.

gzt

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#2311066 5-Sep-2019 12:06

We are slightly off topic. In many circumstances interviewees are not really expected to get all of those exact. Questions are sometimes used as depth and breadth gages.

quickymart

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#2312592 8-Sep-2019 06:17

A mate suggested looking into learning (and moving in the direction) of AWS. I don't know much about it (cloud-based storage, as I understand) but he's pointed me in the direction of a website that has a few free starter courses to teach the basics. I think it might be worth pursuing - anyone able to give me a few pointers? What's a starting-out role in that area, and what would the pay be like?

kingdragonfly

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#2312607 8-Sep-2019 08:22

Dude you got to stop obsessing with immediate pay. "Get-rich-overnight" schemes will just have unrealistic expectations.

You need to look at the long game.

Your questions should be "what do I need to do now to get a good salary in 10 years?"

Even a junior positions require several years experience.

If you have no commercial experience, expect a lot less.

The "easiest" way to start is learning how to create web pages. I say "easy" but it's definitely not; expect at least 6 months at 3 hours a day studying before you start to feel at least a little comfortable.

Your family time will definitely have to take back seat for a good number of months, perhaps two years. It's the sacrifices made to get a good salary.

AWS is popular, but the market seems to have enough talent.

Microsoft Azure seems to be needing talent, in particular web developers.

I'd suggest learning HTML then ASP.Core as a good start.

I can't recommend anything for HTML, since I learned it a long time ago. Here's a good ebook on ASP.Net

Pro ASP.NET Core MVC 2

"Now in its 7th edition, the best selling book on MVC is updated for ASP.NET Core MVC 2. It contains detailed explanations of the Core MVC functionality which enables developers to produce leaner, cloud optimized and mobile-ready applications for the .NET platform. This book puts ASP.NET Core MVC into context and dives deep into the tools and techniques required to build modern, cloud optimized extensible web applications. "

A junior developer with 3 years commercial experience starts at $70,000 outside of Auckland.

quickymart

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#2312623 8-Sep-2019 09:09

Oh I wasn't meaning get-rich-quick :) but yes I see what you mean and thanks for the suggestions - 10 years time is probably a reasonable timeframe ahead to be looking at. Unfortunately as I'm the sole caregiver for my boys a lot of the time, 3 hours a day is just time I simply do not have available to study, never mind do much else.

I guess I'm just looking for a new direction to go in. We went through Seek and he showed me a fair few roles going related to AWS (not just looking at pay) but other things appealed, like flexible working hours. Plus it can't hurt to add another string to the bow.

I went to (what was) Computer Power Training in 1999 and did a little bit of web design as part of my course there, but I found it didn't really excite me too much :(

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kingdragonfly

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#2312697 8-Sep-2019 10:23

You might consider a job in the health industry.

Security orderly in a hospital is pretty easy job to get, though it's not very fun: lots of heavy lifting and dealing with unhappy people.

quickymart

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#2313328 8-Sep-2019 23:04

Not really a path I'd want to take unfortunately. Yes, I would still like a new job, but I'm also hoping beggars can still be choosers - and I'm not really built for heaving lifting either.

I did start a (free) online course about AWS tonight and it looks kinda interesting, so I think I'll pursue that a little further and see what happens. Gotta start somewhere, right. They did mention there are something like 1.7 million vacancies for cloud staff worldwide right now - yikes.

kingdragonfly

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#2313362 9-Sep-2019 07:48

It might be easier to get these skills up to an advanced level. Often asked for

Microsoft Excel (in particular macros / C#)

Microsoft PowerBI

Powershell

Office 365

quickymart

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#2313870 9-Sep-2019 23:09

That's some good tips, thanks very much.

LeatheryHawkeye

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#2325550 26-Sep-2019 20:16

quickymart:

A mate suggested looking into learning (and moving in the direction) of AWS. I don't know much about it (cloud-based storage, as I understand) but he's pointed me in the direction of a website that has a few free starter courses to teach the basics. I think it might be worth pursuing - anyone able to give me a few pointers? What's a starting-out role in that area, and what would the pay be like?

Try Udemy and Udacity for more practical training. They're usually not free but very good and cheap (think ~$15 a course). Useful for AWS, Azure, Cloud and similar. EdX and Coursera also do free and cheap courses - these are usually more tertiary-centric like a university, think undergrad papers, or specific tertiary topics such as political science, IT strategy and the like.

Datacamp do data science courses - business intelligence and the like. I did a good kubernetes (docker) course with them.

I see people suggest Azure and Office 365. Personally, if I was interested in contract project-work migrating to these platforms, they probably pay well. I don't think there is a shortage of engineers in permy positions though and thus it isn't really that well paid (certainly not for Office support, perhaps if you architecting on Azure - but then you have to use Microsoft and (a) it's pretty average OS, lagging in IT direction, and (b) everyone trains in it and thus the rates are poor)

If I was looking at it long-term permanent roles, with good pay prospects, I would suggest something like business intelligence, AWS, Linux, and SAP. OpenSAP is the SAP training site. It's still fairly rudimentary as it's quite immature, and it assumes you know about BI and Data Warehousing, but once familiar you could specialise.

I hope that helps! Start training in something you enjoy, then try and move sideways in your role to get exposure. Unless the position exists and you can replace the person, or create a position, be prepared to move companies.

You're asking the right questions, you want a career and want to progress so go out and do it mate!

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LeatheryHawkeye

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#2325552 26-Sep-2019 20:19

quickymart:

A mate suggested looking into learning (and moving in the direction) of AWS. I don't know much about it (cloud-based storage, as I understand) but he's pointed me in the direction of a website that has a few free starter courses to teach the basics. I think it might be worth pursuing - anyone able to give me a few pointers? What's a starting-out role in that area, and what would the pay be like?

p.s. AWS is a good move. It's not super popular in NZ just yet, but it is the largest cloud provider and is opening up at least one NZ data centre shortly.

p.p.s AWS is a lot lot more than cloud-based storage. that's one service of about 50

quickymart

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#2325566 26-Sep-2019 20:44

Thanks for the tips. Yes happy to move companies, I just want to make sure I'd move into something I enjoy. Cheers :)

K8Toledo

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#2335271 11-Oct-2019 00:40

quickymart:

Most of my working career (over 20 years), I've been in Telecommunications (majority of it answering phones). I'm looking around for something else at the moment. I have a fair amount of experience - in Customer Service, Helpdesk, Service Desk, Provisioning, etc. I've had small incremental pay increases over the years but am looking for something that pays $60k or more as I'm still trying to save for a house (as per the other thread I started) but also to afford the cost of living. I would do Service Desk again if it paid enough.

However, despite applying for over 20 jobs on Seek (this is since around the start of April), I've had very few responses. Several rejections, a couple of interview offers (one role was too far away and the other had issues with me getting to work on public transport). That notwithstanding, am I aiming too high with my pay scale? I'm not asking to be paid millions, just a bit more than I'm making now. I'm a hard, dedicated, reliable worker...but I imagine a lot of other people are too. Is it just a bad time of year to be looking for a job?

If I worked in HR & your CV was laying on my desk with that same post as the cover letter - you'd be my first interview.

I don't suppose you live near Hamilton?

quickymart

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#2335605 11-Oct-2019 15:03

Unfortunately not, sorry :( did you have something going?

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