Knock off the childish fucking gatekeeping and go back to reddit. It’s what the wider industry uses.

python is usually the next step up in admin land

python is a pretty standard install on linux systems since so many things like you’re talking about use it

You missed one:

• To let others at least have some insight into what you’re doing so you can take a freakin’ vacation every once in a while

Don’t take issue with the platform. Take issue with companies that are so fanatical with “we’re a microsoft/java/javascript/esperanto shop!” that they’d cram it into medical devices and nuclear reactor controls before doing some sort of sober domain analysis.

Everything has its own set of problems.

Like others said: sql, sql, sql. The syntax is probably easier than excel, but a lot of people stink at it because they don’t want to invest in the spatial reasoning required to make it work magic, and that opens doors to easy opportunity.

If you can get into a position like reporting or data quality, and be “that person” that fixes a dreaded slow query to make it run in milliseconds instead of minutes, then you’ll get your proverbial blank check to go where you want. Those queries exist in just about every business.

Take a look around for “sql portfolio projects” for more complete stuff that goes beyond tutorials.

tldr is great. I can’t stand --help output that drones on like Proust.

Technical videos have helped me perfect my pronunciation of “umm” and “uhh.”

Stats was from a friend’s roommate who also did work for them, and the other two were random job boards. Med schools are prime because they like to guard their research money and can have their own full IT department with dev, networking, desktop support, etc.

I did research computation for the statistics department, engineering school and medical school. The pay stunk but I got a fac & staff parking permit out of it. And the projects were extremely exciting.

Thought I might follow up since I had an interview today - I never stop interviewing - and was asked about duration. My off-the-cuff response was “if a company invests in its employees, offers growth and promotes internally, then I will work for a place longer. If it does not and only offers a dead-end role with no appreciable growth, then I will look for that opportunity elsewhere.”

throw yourself to the wolves

embrace the wolves

18 months is the Holmes limit at Bank of America and Wells Fargo - they terminate you and let you know when you start that it’s going to happen. It’s normal in fintech. But don’t change without a funded and secured offer.

From a historical standpoint, there is also the bad blood of ActiveX, Flash, Silverlight and early Java applets that still leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths. It has a slightly steeper uphill battle to fight.

Generally the most supported language on the tool/platform you want to target is the best one. Like SQL on databases, JS/ES in browsers, python in data science related stuff, etc. If multiple are heavily supported then just pick the one that’s the most comfortable.

It won’t fly. Not when a popular red meat election year topic is breaking google up and one such year is just around the corner.

It’s worth doing it. There’s a LOT of ground to cover beyond lambda, ec2 and s3 and they pretty much hand you a bunch of best-fit cookie cutter solutions as part of the training. There’s a number of recommended paid training courses but the official courses are free and can at least lay foundational knowledge.

I can think of surgeon examples but I’ve never heard of Recruiters Without Borders. Unless it’s just CapGemini

Fintech is easy to deal with in this regard.

“do you have code samples you can share?”

“would you be happy if an employee interviewed elsewhere and used your codebase for work samples?”

I have a dedicated work shirt only worn while at work

This is a good one that often goes unspoken. It enforces role play.

It’s a lot easier than I initially thought: just write down a high-level, abstract sentence fragment of what needs to be done. Get it off your chest and put it in ink (or pixels?). Then ask yourself: how can I split this into two parts? Rinse and repeat.

The initial limiter for me was anxiety and fear about it. Once I got into the habit, the limiter was avoiding hyperfocus and micromanaging myself in the project plan. I try not to break things down beyond 1-2 hour tasks.