California Generic Job Application: Fill & Download for Free

Pretty broad question. Instead of properly organizing my thoughts and writing a little book on this topic(!!), I'll just type out whatever pops into my head, and hope its somehow helpful to you.Some background: I have lived in Germany (did my Masters in Munich followed by a job for one year near Frankfurt), Switzerland (did my PhD in Zurich), Austria (did an internship in Vienna), UK (did a postdoc stint in London), and now in the US for the last six months. Over the years, for studies, job applications/offers I have spent a lot of time thinking about similar things. After my recent job search, I was seriously confused between Berlin, Hatford (near London), Seattle, Ann Arbor, Silicon Valley, and Norway (a faculty position!) and ended up doing a lot of research and surveying.No place is the best w.r.t. to all of these factors. US, generally speaking, has a much more dynamic work environment: less red tape and no concept of work life balance. I am sure that in a work environment, one will learn more in the US - even if simply because one will work 1.5 times as much as in Europe. As a side note, one also officially gets almost half as many vacations yearly (US: 10-15 days, Europe: 25 days or more). Also American high tech centers have this cowboy mentality that results in disrupting the status quo. Europeans just don’t have that in their DNA. Somehow even the highly educated German professor who has spent a decade at MIT or Stanford is very traditional. Breaking tradition is just not their thing. On the immigration front also, US is certainly better than Switzerland, but not better than Germany or UK. It takes twelve years to get Swiss nationality if you have been on certain visa types, and the Swiss bureaucratic machinery goes out of its way to stop foreigners from becoming nationals. We had a seminar organized by some student body at ETH, inviting some lawyers, and the student/postdoc/employee questions were eye opening. So add a lot of fighting and spending money on lawyers even after spending 12 years. Germany is more welcoming, you get the 'blue card' as soon as you have a permanent job which pays at the middle class level and in total 6-8 years to become national. In UK, you become permanent resident in 5 years and national in another year. You can get US nationality in 5 years once you have permanent residence. PR atleast for PhD holders takes around 1.5 years via the EB-1b route. One negative thing about US nationality is that, US citizens have to pay federal taxes even if they are earning and living abroad. So if you become a US citizen, and then decide to move to Australia, you will have to pay taxes to both US and Australian governments.On the other hand, w.r.t. quality of life in Central Europe is superior unless you get very rich in the US. Switzerland far outclasses anywhere else. Germany is also pretty good: health care, free high quality primary/secondary/university education, cleaner, much better infrastructure in every way, social security net. If you like culture, you can be in a different country to spend your weekends; there are so many rich cultures as little as three hours drive from you. You will find lakes, mountains, places of great historical importance, amazing variety of cuisines at a few hours distance. Except for California, these things are missing in the US, as I am told. With respect to quality of life, UK is a bit behind Germany or Switzerland, still better than US in general.For job prospects, Switzerland is not very good as it has a small job market. But those who get a job have an amazing quality of life. Banks and other financial institutions hire a lot of CS grads though, and somehow a lot of Indians end up there (without actually studying there). Taxes are perhaps the lowest in world. Everything is expensive but salaries are also very high. Germany is very good w.r.t. job prospects, but for most of them you need to know how to speak German. A lot of multinational companies still take non-German speakers, but you have to be among the best in your field. UK has a smaller tech job market and the salaries there are chronically depressed, but I don’t know about other fields there. Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, and London are pretty expensive but also have the greatest number of jobs. Berlin has a great job market and is cheap. In my experience, salaries are usually in accordance with living expenses. Different regions in the US vary a lot both w.r.t. salaries and living expenses. Silicon Valley is insanely expensive. Entry level engineers even at the likes of Google and Apple would have a hard time surviving if they have a non-working spouse and 1-2 kids. Other areas are relatively cheaper, but salaries are lesser and opportunities are far fewer. From what I have heard from generic EE/CS engineers in SV, you really need to be well connected to get a job, or get a new job if you get laid off. Even some of my friends who are well settled, are constantly afraid of being laid off. This is a problem that’s not present in Europe, because of stricter regulations on employers.

There's a whole slew of tips and tricks and someone could publish a book on them. I'll go over some of the ones I've been using recently. NB: I have lots of tips not included in here, leave a comment if you want a tip about "something specific".Also: my editor of choice is vim for everything and I do use a customized python-mode plugin. (Google is your friend).Use cModules where possible to speed up your life. The obvious example is the followingtry:  import cPickle as pickle except ImportError:  import pickle cPickle is often up to 3 orders of magnitude faster than pickle and this is a natural fallback.Use generators if you don't need to modify the list at all. Generators are made using yield statements and take up less memory / overhead. Both are iterable.Use set for intersections.Unpack multiple variables, or throw away variables you don't want (this works in Python 3)first, *_, last = range(100) Reverse a list: a[::-1]How to zip over a list of lists. Sometimes, you have a format where you want to transpose row and columns, but you can't for some reason. You can unpack your items likefor list1Item, list2Item, ... in zip(*listOfLists)Flatten anything! list(itertools.chain.from_iterable(complicatedListStructure))Now for some of the bigger picture code. Let's say you want to extend a function, like in matplotlib with some extra functionality. The easiest way to do this would be something like:import matplotlib.pyplot as pl  def custom_scatter(fig, ax, x, y, *args, **kwargs):  # do something special with x, y  custom_var = kwargs.get('custom_var', defaultValue)  kwargs['inject_kwarg'] = injectedValue  ax.scatter(x, y, *args, **kwargs) which is very nice. It's clean, friendly, and allows you to be "DRY" and re-use a lot of code without a lot of issues.Another big picture tip is the use of meta-classes. This is usually a common problem when you start writing packages and you want people to inject functionality without breaking code. There's a way to do this by allowing them to define classes that extend your own custom package classes which will automatically inject dependencies.Imagine, continuing on the whole plotting paradigm, you want to build a way to inject different kinds of plots into a global loop you've set up to go over various datasets and pre-format them. All you care is that your plot algorithm defines the right structure, and will get called when loop is ready to plot stuff. Here's the metaclassclass Plottable(type):  # we use __init__ rather than __new__ here because we want to  # modify attributes of the class *after* they have been created  def __init__(cls, name, bases, dct):  if not hasattr(cls, 'registry'):  # this is the base class. Create an empty registry  cls.registry = {}  else:  if cls.registerMe:  # this is a derived class. Add cls to the registry  interface_id = name.lower()  cls.registry[interface_id] = cls   super(Plottable, cls).__init__(name, bases, dct)   class CaliforniaDataAnalysis(object):  __metaclass__ = Plottable  registerMe = False   @classmethod  def draw(cls, event):  raise NotImplementedError("{}.draw() should be implemented".format(cls.__name__)) Then, I can inject new algorithms simply by defining the class, no need to initialize it or mess around with the global loop code.import matplotlib.pyplot as pl  class PopulationByRegion(CaliforniaDataAnalysis):  registerMe = True  @classmethod  def draw(cls, event):  pl.scatter(event['population']/caliPopulation, event['zipCode'])  pl.title("California's population normalized by total state population")  pl.close()  class PopulationByYear(CaliforniaDataAnalysis):  registerMe = True  @classmethod  def draw(cls, event):  pl.hist2d(event['population'], event['year'])  pl.title("Correlation of Florida's population by year")  pl.close() and the global loop code simply looks likeanalysis = {'california': CaliforniaDataAnalysis, 'florida': FloridaDataAnalysis, ...} for state in ['california','florida','georgia',...]:  data = import_data("{}.json".format(state))  analysis[state].errors = []  for algorithm in analysis[state].registry:  try:  algorithm.draw(data)  except:  analysis[state].errors.append('{} received an error: {}'.format(algorithm.__name__, Page on sys.info()[1])) and cares nothing about each of the plotting functionality involved, only that they have the right structure. It's a little convoluted, but this is how you might generically write a registry for classes. There are a lot more applications for this, such as in the realm of writing a "worker class" to process jobs off a Queue, for example.

Thanks for he A2A Niharika :)Gone are the days when having foreign experience was enough to get you a plum job in India automatically.There is a lot of competition for jobs in India and companies are focused on hiring the best. Typically, generalists, such as sales managers or those with generic software skills, will find it more difficult to find jobs in India. On the other hand, individuals who have specialized skills can expect smoother sailing.If you haven’t lived in India for a while, it is a good idea to come here for a few weeks to see what the ground reality is. Annual holidays can’t tell you what it’s like to live here.You will find many differences in the professional life here. Work culture is a bit different – processes exist but processes are not the be all and end all. Ask yourself if you can handle this.On the personal front, you need to figure out whether you can live here. While most Indian cities offer the best of apartment complexes, schools and hospitals, often the families and children of Indians who have lived abroad find they can’t adjust to life in India. Do that reality check.An easy way to start your job search is by uploading your resume on job Web sites: Naukri.com, Monsterindia.com, Shine.com and TimesJobs.com. You can look for available positions on these sites, while recruiters can look for you through them. (India.Wsj.com has a content tie-up with Naukri.)Mid- to senior-level managers can consider signing up for executive search firms like Korn/Ferry and ABC Consultants Pvt. Ltd. Mr. Khanna of Korn/Ferry suggests sending your resume to the partner in India who heads the sector you’re applying for.You should also apply to companies directly when possible; most companies nowadays have a Careers section on their Web site. However, this tool may not be effective for all Indian companies because sometimes online application forms don’t accept foreign telephone numbers.Finally, look out for India career fairs being organized in or near your city. Last fall, for instance, Shine.com, a job portal of HT Media, brought several Indian employers to New Jersey and California to meet with job-seekers. (HT Media owns Mint newspaper which has a content sharing tie-up with The Wall Street Journal.) Look out for such fairs in Africa.Use networking & social media sites: LinkedIn.com and Twitter.com to find the right people in your sector to reach out to.For general jobs where the competition is high, don’t expect to earn the same amount that you do in a foreign country. You need to evaluate compensation in relation to the cost of living in the country.One of your best bets would be to try to come to India to a multinational company. Most leading global companies have offices in India and many others are looking to set up business here.If that’s not possible, or if you need to relocate within a short time period, you could consider moving to India with a credible organization and then moving on to your ideal job after some time.Job Opportunities for NRI's willing to relocate to IndiaCareer Journal: How NRIs Can Find Jobs in IndiaHow should NRI's and returning expats find jobs in INDIA?India Inc may double NRI hiring this year - The Economic Times