I need career advice. Degree in Computer Enginerring?

Man....your really reaching for straws here.

Im very well employed, and make a great salary.
99% of techies would kill to have my job, especially
in this market. Most my tech buddies cant find
jobs or contracts these days.
The exceptional ones, however, can always find jobs.

Pass your interview? Ha! You would have to be
the one convincing ME to hire on with a fat salary
and bonuses.
I havent had to interview since my early
twenties. People have always hired me away from
companies ive worked for. Track record...plain and simple.
Has nothing to do with my degree.

Why in the world anyone would want to join
a group who believes in a piece of paper over
real world experience and a track record is beyond me.

Seems if anyone needs good luck, its you guys.

Yes you have to study somewhere to pick up the skills
and knowledge. But it isn't college or from PHD's.
Pay attention... the industry leads the colleges.
Thats where you get it.

How many traders became successful because of
the crap they got from books versus real life experience?
Which was more valuable? Give me a break.



peace

axeman




Quote from CalTrader:



LOL:
How do you make more than you or your buddy ? Skills plus knowledge - that means study somewhere with somebody that knows a thing or two. Some of us are still making money precisely because we perhaps know a bit more than people who didn't take the time to become experts ....

Sounds like you need a job: just drop me a private mail with your resume ... If you think you have the balls to try to pass my interview then I encourage you to try to to pass our tests ..
More...
 
Quote from CalTrader:



It is not a fad: You can get online and do a video conference across the world. If my labor force can be conferenced at the drop of a hat and manged remotely using the same management techniques and quality processes that are used here in the states, and has the same - or in some cases better - engineering skills - then the only other factor to consider is price. Here there is no comparison. China, India, Russia, and other countries are far cheaper in most cases than performing the work in the states.

End of story.

Commodity skillsets in IT and software engineering etc are finished. If you want to stay in software or IT you had better occupy a unique market niche that can command premium pricing and that has a barrier to entry for your potential competitors.
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You're right, it's not a fad.

However, my particular niche over the past two years with my client (fortune 50) has been fixing projects mangled by ill-planned outsourcing. I'm not talking about just fixing the code either, although there can be a lot of that. (Is there a Mumbai Institute of VB mediocrity or what?). Theres' also a lot of fixing the process, esp. codebase maintenance.

The big gap in the business world right now (wrt IT) is requirements specification. Outsourcing is very hard to get right, even for companies experienced with it.

Anyway, I've focused on being a bridge between IT and the business itself, and it has remained lucrative.

Then again, if I were still in college, I wouldn't even think of joining the industry. The above skills, and a non-CSci degree have kept me from getting the axe more than once.
 
Quote from swtrader:



The above is absolutely true

I would say that a degree is almost always necessary. I never saw anyone interviewed that did not have a degree in *something*

That said, I dont think it is really necessary - axeman is abosolutely correct that everything worthwhile is learned on the job. I think that degrees are really a cultural thing, and a CYA for the hiring manager. Once you have had your first job, your experience is all that matters for any non-management job.
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Don't confuse the techniques with disciplines. You can always learn the techniques in the field, but the discipline from years of training is hardly a hack of high school kids.

Software engineering is not just writing program, it's so much more than that!:p
 
I strongly agree with 99.9999% of everything axe has said.

FWIW, the best programmers I have ever met never once sat on a programming course. One is a Phd in math (Mike) and is the best coder I have ever seen. The other is a school dropout and even Mike thinks he is the best coder he has ever seen.

However, once you leave the world of the commercial type product and start to get into nitty gritty systems programming (i.e., Operating Systems, garbage collectors, compilers, Partial Evaluators, etc, etc) it REALLY helps to have a degree in CS.

Trust me, having a degree is not a bad thing, especially if the degree is in a real hairy part of CS/EE

nitro
 
Quote from svsv:



Don't confuse the techniques with disciplines. You can always learn the techniques in the field, but the discipline from years of training is hardly a hack of high school kids.

Software engineering is not just writing program, it's so much more than that!:p
More...
This is true, however, in my experience, this stuff is a help more for the less talented in the team than the extreme talent.

I worked for a software firm where there were a lot of superstars. I can tell you that not once did the super talent ever need any of this crap - they always had hundreds of thousands of code all in their head, in command at any time. Not only that, they understood the nuances of code that had to run on 8 different operating systems.

It is only when you meet someone so supremely skilled that you begin to realize that alot of "science/software engineering" is invented so that the meager talents can keep up.

nitro
 
Quote from nitro:


This is true, however, in my experience, this stuff is a help more for the less talented in the team than the extreme talent.

I worked for a software firm where there were a lot of superstars. I can tell you that not once did the super talent ever need any of this crap - they always had hundreds of thousands of code all in their head, in command at any time. Not only that, they understood the nuances of code that had to run on 8 different operating systems.

It is only when you meet someone so supremely skilled that you begin to realize that alot of "science/software engineering" is invented so that the meager talents can keep up.

nitro
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That is why people need to go to school to get their degrees in BS, MS and PhD. Most of us are not that extremly talented.:p
 
Quote from svsv:



That is why people need to go to school to get their degrees in BS, MS and PhD. Most of us are not that extremly talented.:p
More...
I agree.

But a degree does not necessarily make one a good coder. The contrapositive however is also not true, that is, having a degree hardly makes you a bad coder.

nitro
 
Quote from nitro:

I strongly agree with 99.9999% of everything axe has said.

FWIW, the best programmers I have ever met never once sat on a programming course. One is a Phd in math (Mike) and is the best coder I have ever seen. The other is a school dropout and even Mike thinks he is the best coder he has ever seen.

However, once you leave the world of the commercial type product and start to get into nitty gritty systems programming (i.e., Operating Systems, garbage collectors, compilers, Partial Evaluators, etc, etc) it REALLY helps to have a degree in CS.

Trust me, having a degree is not a bad thing, especially if the degree is in a real hairy part of CS/EE

nitro
More...

Experience does count more than simply having a degree:

However the best software designers and implementors I have worked with over the years did NOT merely have a high school diploma. To do the kinds of work we do you simply could not cut it without detailed mathematical knowledge and if all AXE has is a lot of coding experience and no theoretical knowledge to know how to design high performance algorithms then he would be sunk in our company. Maybe AXE knows the theoretical details necessary to do what we do but I bet he does not - based upon his rants.
 
Quote from axeman:

Man....your really reaching for straws here.

The exceptional ones, however, can always find jobs.

Pass your interview? Ha! You would have to be
the one convincing ME to hire on with a fat salary
and bonuses.
I havent had to interview since my early
twenties. People have always hired me away from
companies ive worked for. Track record...plain and simple.
Has nothing to do with my degree.

Why in the world anyone would want to join
a group who believes in a piece of paper over
real world experience and a track record is beyond me.

Seems if anyone needs good luck, its you guys.

Yes you have to study somewhere to pick up the skills
and knowledge. But it isn't college or from PHD's.
Pay attention... the industry leads the colleges.
Thats where you get it.

How many traders became successful because of
the crap they got from books versus real life experience?
Which was more valuable? Give me a break.

peace

axeman
More...

So you do have a degree ? Why did you bother if it simply was not necessary to get a job, or of no use in your job ?

I dont know which "industry" you are talking about, but in the industry we work in, you get paid well by having a technique or tool that someboby else does not: read patents and the legal means to enforce it. I dont have any high schoolers listed on our patents: the work came out of years of research and hard work.

If you are talking about being a coder: yes we have many of these people on staff. They dont run the company though .....

I'm glad you have a job and work for a "super techie" and the others that run your firm. If your goal is to simply be employed than it sounds like you have accomplished that ...

As far as hiring you: no we would not be interested.

Best of luck to you.
 
Quote from laziz314159:



The big gap in the business world right now (wrt IT) is requirements specification. Outsourcing is very hard to get right, even for companies experienced with it.

Anyway, I've focused on being a bridge between IT and the business itself, and it has remained lucrative.

Then again, if I were still in college, I wouldn't even think of joining the industry. The above skills, and a non-CSci degree have kept me from getting the axe more than once.
More...

Yes. These types of positions are still in demand and will be for some time. There will always need to be a liason to interface with the external contractors although as the offshores move to look more like the big US consulting firms the work in these positions will change.

There still is a lot of poor quality offshore work linked to poor specification development. ... Like I said in an earlier post the offshores know this is a weak link and they are moving towards correcting these issues.
 
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