American Grads Are "Unemployable"...

[CnCGOD]

At my work I am not sure the rules but the strongest implied one is just wear a shirt and long pants beyond that its up to you. And this is a 15B a year company with 50k employees. We don't have any customer facing however so that could be a factor.

[TheCutlery]

Originally Posted by CnCGOD

At my work I am not sure the rules but the strongest implied one is just wear a shirt and long pants beyond that its up to you. And this is a 15B a year company with 50k employees. We don't have any customer facing however so that could be a factor.

Aye, that's a factor. Dress code does not apply to warehouse employees.

[CnCGOD]

Yeah this is an office filled with 250 Software Engineers ... don't assume anything

[Tangurena]

Originally Posted by whatsamattau

I'm back in college to get a degree in electrical engineering. Now I'm F'd with that too?! *throws hands in air*

or are you guys talking about CS in general?

I second the advice to get your EIT/FE while you are still in school - and then get your PE as soon as you can. I got my EIT about a decade after leaving school, and it was brutal. I never took my PE and have also not been able to get back into engineering (my first bachelors is also in electrical engineering). I'm currently a programmer, but I don't see it being a viable career for the next 20+ years before I retire (I'm 48).

If you wait too long, starting in 2015, you'll need a masters degree to take the PE exam.

If you want to stay employed as an EE until you get sick of it, retire or die, then pick either power (boring as hell, but requires a PE) or RF (mad voodoo causes brain damage, doesn't need a PE due to "industrial exemption").

Is IT work true engineering or just plumbing? : Bruce F. Webster which points to this /. thread:
Slashdot Comments | Why the Widening Gender Gap In Computer Science?

[Zippygoose]

I finally got the chance to read through this whole thread and there's a lot of great advice in here.

To reiterate what a lot of people have said, it is the people who work hard and have the motivation to get to where they want to be that have the best chance of success. Like many others, I went to school with a lot of people who just did the coursework and skated by. The key is having a real passion for whatever it is you want to do and do anything and everything in your power to get to that point.

One vital peice to me that hasn't been discussed yet is the willingness to start at the bottom. I think a lot of grads, especially in the software development world where I come from, have far too high expectations of what they should be doing.

The first time my job involved looking at a computer screen it was at a Hollywood Video when I was 17. After my first year of CS undergrad I got an "internship" for the summer doing data entry because I had shown "work ethic" by working at Hollywood Video for over a year. After 2 months of painstakingly entering data from a printout to an excel spreadsheet, I convinced my boss to let me try my hand at exporting data out of their SQL database into my spreadsheets to speed things along.

The next year I got to come back to that same company creating stored procedures that pulled sales data for the marketing department. After 3 summers of internships there a very large insurance company thought my resume looked good enough for an internship right after I graduated working with their marketing and sales databases and building a web front-end for some business intelligence needs. That web experience got me a job building web applications for a very very large software company. Now, 9 years after Hollywood Video, that same company pays obscene amounts of money for me to tell them how to integrate Silverlight with CRM and Sharepoint systems in the enterprise.

The point of that long rambling story of my professional life is that it all starts with some sacrifice. Yes you are going to have to do shit work that you don't want to do, but if you really are passionate about whatever the hell it is you love doing, you have a much better chance of getting there in the end than the guy who does the bare minimum and expects to be making 80k/yr right out of school in a dev role. You have to start somewhere and if you are confident in your skills and ability then there shouldn't be any doubt that you'll move up from the bottom in no time at all.

Now let's all hug.

[whatsamattau]

Originally Posted by Tangurena

I second the advice to get your EIT/FE while you are still in school - and then get your PE as soon as you can. I got my EIT about a decade after leaving school, and it was brutal. I never took my PE and have also not been able to get back into engineering (my first bachelors is also in electrical engineering). I'm currently a programmer, but I don't see it being a viable career for the next 20+ years before I retire (I'm 48).

If you wait too long, starting in 2015, you'll need a masters degree to take the PE exam.

If you want to stay employed as an EE until you get sick of it, retire or die, then pick either power (boring as hell, but requires a PE) or RF (mad voodoo causes brain damage, doesn't need a PE due to "industrial exemption").

Is IT work true engineering or just plumbing? : Bruce F. Webster which points to this /. thread:
Slashdot Comments | Why the Widening Gender Gap In Computer Science?

Thanks for the advice. I am leaning towards power right now. Systems and controls has peaked my interest as well.

[Sithro]

I'm training to be a Cisco IT guy, with training in Windows server as well.

Not my first choice of a job, but it beats the fuck out of most other things.

[Northerner]

Hey, Cisco is a great gig if you can get your employer to pay for your certs and such. It is pretty dry and all and might be somewhat over-saturated these days but I know two quite happy Cisco drones.

[IronKeeb]

Gotta know how to make coffee and staple papers before you can be telling other people to do it for you. Also, the biggest thing I realized with any type of responbility roles on a college campus, nothing gets done if you don't put any work into it. You can't expect to have the power of getting things done if you're not doing the hard work. Studying? Yea you can get by not doing that and still come out reasonably well, but making something substantial? Not a chance.

[eVasiege]

Originally Posted by Etoille

Even people in the hard sciences spend more time learning theory than application in undergrad. The liberal arts crowd is even worse. They basically graduate with a degree in gen ed (high school II) with a few concentrations in some areas, most of which isn't directly applicable to real world issues.

Initially I was in a top business program, planning on doing IT, and decided to switch to political science. I saw international relations in particular as a chance to actually learn something rather than read power-points and spit it back on tests three times every semester. Unfortunately in either situation you don't learn anything applicable regardless. Other than theory and basic accounting abilities, my friend who has a 4.0 after three years in the business program knows less, and might have an easier time getting an offer than me, even though I am more knowledgeable than him in regards to actual application (computers, management, etc). If it weren't for the fact I were learning Chinese, I would be kicking myself.

Liberal Arts majors can just as attractive, if not more, than business/hard science majors right out the gate with the right toolsets. My brother was a social science/Spanish major and his first job out college paid around 45k. My only issue is lack of experience. I virtually have zero experience doing anything.

[chaos]

Originally Posted by Sithro

I'm training to be a Cisco IT guy, with training in Windows server as well.

Not my first choice of a job, but it beats the fuck out of most other things.

Don't pass up the opportunity for options. Don't make yourself the "Cisco guy". I learned the hard way, when the contract I was on disappeared and there was no one hiring "Cisco guys" right then, if I wasn't able to bullshit them that I knew some AD I wouldn't have gotten hired on my current job. Options are good. I find myself expanding my expertise out more than I do focusing on my Cisco certs now, which is good but takes me away from my original goal of getting my CCIE. It's more important to have many, many options and really understand the way the IT business works. Yes, that includes shit like ITIL and Lean Six Sigma, unfortunately.

[Sithro]

Originally Posted by chaos

Don't pass up the opportunity for options. Don't make yourself the "Cisco guy". I learned the hard way, when the contract I was on disappeared and there was no one hiring "Cisco guys" right then, if I wasn't able to bullshit them that I knew some AD I wouldn't have gotten hired on my current job. Options are good. I find myself expanding my expertise out more than I do focusing on my Cisco certs now, which is good but takes me away from my original goal of getting my CCIE. It's more important to have many, many options and really understand the way the IT business works. Yes, that includes shit like ITIL and Lean Six Sigma, unfortunately.

Yeah, that's what my uncle and my teacher have been telling me. Rather than being good at one thing, it's good to be flexible.

The great thing about the little tech college that I'm going to is that it focuses on both Cisco and Microsoft. So while I've had experience in configuring wireless APs, routers, and switches (FUCK STP, I still don't understand this shit), I also have experience in Windows Server and such.

I want to eventually learn how to mess with the less mainstream operating systems like Unix/Linux. Then maybe other things that can come in handy.

[Frax]

I'm just going to say up front here, I'm one of the guys who doesn't have a college degree. I'm not bragging at all in the next few sentences, I'm just explaining work how I see it:

I try to work hard, I try to learn as much as I can on each new project, and I'm willing to put in the time required to get the job done. Combine that with the fact that I have a natural aptitude for IT systems work and I'm a valuable asset to any team. It's not something you can really explain to someone, other than some people 'get it' and some 'do not get it' when it comes to IT/system administration/System Operations.

I work with a lot of people who simply "do not get it". Most of them are happy to just get a paycheck and sit around gathering flies in their mouth all day. My manager and the senior management know that I blow these people away in technical skill, general work ethic,and in overall competence. I have received a promotion to the highest level system engineer and a pair of great reviews that have propelled me from the layoff list to someone who now helps the new management decide who to put on the layoff list.

Anyone who works in (and in IT especially) knows that there is just a difference between people who get things done and those who are constantly making excuses for not getting things done. That difference is not a college degree.

PS: Unix/Linux are more mainstream than you can imagine; IT smart companies DO NOT run mission critical stuff on windows operating systems if they can help it. I am typing this on a windows box right now, but I'm still a firm believer in that *nix should rule the world and that MS should stick to household level applications.

[Vinen]

Originally Posted by Frax

PS: Unix/Linux are more mainstream than you can imagine; IT smart companies DO NOT run mission critical stuff on windows operating systems if they can help it. I am typing this on a windows box right now, but I'm still a firm believer in that *nix should rule the world and that MS should stick to household level applications.

Shouldn't you be posting on Slashdot right now instead of here?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

I agree with you I just don't feel the need to add the point to a completely irrelevant thread. That is what slashtards do. That side is like the Fox News / New York Times of the Linux World.

[Frax]

Originally Posted by Vinen

Shouldn't you be posting on Slashdot right now instead of here?

No because I don't make that stuff my life. I do it at work, I dabble a bit at home. I have better things to do!

also slashdot is kinda like an unfiltered Barrens chat with buzzwords.