Career Advice

Can we have a general career advice thread? Talk about your job, ask questions about careers or majors you're interested in, etc.

I'm not sure what career I really want to pursue. I started programming in middle school as a hobby, and though I never really got all that serious about it, I always assumed that programming would be my career path. Then I did a 2 year degree in Software Development, and the closer I get to having a programming job, the more I think I'd HATE programming as a career. It seems like the workplace culture most programming jobs has is not what I was hoping for. I feel like the influx of shit like Big Bang Theory, The Great Indoors, and IT Crowd have ruined programming as a career forever. Is it as soul-crushing as I expect? I was thinking of switching to some kind of engineering, maybe Computer Engineering, instead of continuing with a 4 year in CompSci. What kind of work can I realistically expect with a CE degree? Is it going to be any better? I'm in the US, by the way. Working IT for now and it's alright I guess since it's mostly a hands-on job instead of a call center.

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Do not go into debt for any reason. Do not play the Jew's game. Never give a penny of usury to anybody. If you have debt it's like being on fucking FIRE. You don't just ignore it. You put it out with extreme urgency.

Comsci, compeng, electrical eng are good courses. Just remember that while you are there, your primary focus is to NETWORK. Yes, you'll need to learn, and you should aim to be the top of your class, but make sure that you are on a first name basis with all your profs. Those professors will often get industry contacts asking them to "send your smart students to us", and you want to be included. Another thing that helps, is that if you fuck up a test or assignment, and the prof knows you're better than that, they'll be lenient. I once recall a professor angrily shouting after me that my midterm was trash, and that I really ought to know better. "Take this home and do it properly." Not many students get that luxury, and it was only because we spent a lot of time chatting during office hours.

us millenials need to stop subscribing to the progressive
marxism where you have to search endlessly for a good job.

Holy shit this is terrible advice.
1. Profs don't give a shit once you are outside the pay for my time phase. hence totally shitty networking targets
2. They are PAID to pass you. They have to jump through hoops to fail anyone. lmao you are sucking their dicks for shit the guy asleep in back gets for "free".
3. If you are a top student they love you anyway because it makes them look good. Unless you somehow piss them off they will never cut off their own nose, particularly as career cowards.
4. Their job is to get you a degree NOT a job. If you get a job that's something they brag about to get a raise otherwise no big deal there's always the next class.

Nah mate, networking is the entire point of college. Not just with your professors, but classmates. People hire those who they know, trust and those recommended by said criteria. That's just the way the world works. Ignore the advice at your peril, but don't expect to land sweet intern positions based on meritocracy alone.

Yeah this is what I've learned from my 2 year. Only problem is that I'm planning on moving to the other side of the country once I'm done with my 4 year, so I'm not sure how helpful those connections will be for me.


Basically what said. I used to believe meritocracy was a thing that existed before actually trying to enter the workforce. I have witnessed firsthand time and time again that this simply isn't true, and that getting a good job is almost entirely up to knowing the right people.

Remember: it's not how much money you make, but how long and hard you work. And also how much money you make boss.

It fields are like being the janitor except you have to be smart. The big bang theory meme doesn't stretch to make you one of the cool guys, it's just making you the butt of the jokes. Expect it to be quoted at you the same way teenage boys quote family guy at each other constantly.

What are you looking for in a job OP? What are your top 3 priorities? What interests you Zig Forums wise?

The missing advice on this thread is you want to be an open source rock star while you apply for a job. Get involved in projects you can help with and build a reputation for quality work. If you can do something cool in open source and get your name on a few websites discussing it then you just massively increased your chance of being hired.

Profs are people too and surprise surprise, they do nice things for people they like

t. someone who got promised a 70k job final year of uni despite having shit marks

You're gonna go far kiddo

This post is giving me horrible deja vu.

In order of importance:
1. Good work/life balance
2. Independent work (this IT job is the only non-retail job I've had, so maybe this is the norm for actual career jobs, but having little to no supervision and just being left to do my job is very comfy)
3. Good pay

Ideally, I'd like a job that I can work remotely with decent pay so I could travel and not be tied down to one location, but I know that's not something very easy to land and it would restrict me to just programming pretty much. Realistically, I'd be happy settling for a 4/10 schedule.

Working in robotics would be cool. I'm not really sure, though. I used to think I'd be interested in robotics AI programming, but that seems to have become a meme field, so maybe hardware side stuff. Either designing, or actually building stuff. I honestly have no idea.

wew


I take life advice based on anecdotes too that's why I'm a millionaire bitcoin miner.

Are you a woman?

Your list reads like a child who wants to have everything and sacrifice nothing. If you want good pay you work your ass off which destroys 1. Unless you own your own company you always have someone above you which fucks up 2. It's fine when you're some chump stacking shelves but no one is going to give you good pay to jerk off in a cubical all day.

Well congrats, you're fucked. Those jobs are ultra limited and ultra competitive. Your work life balance becomes "Get fucked life" if you want one of those jobs.

You sound like a 19 year old girl who's sucked lots of dick and then things she's going to design the next space shuttle. You need to get a realistic perspective on the IT field and learn if you even want to be a part of it.


Networking is the entire point of college if you're in a competitive field like IT. There's nothing college can teach you that you can't learn at home using the internet. The reason you do it at college is to network and skip the job interviews.

Which is why pay is at the bottom of my list and work/life balance is at the top.

Not really. I have literally zero supervision whatsoever at my current IT support job at a hospital. I'll see my boss once every few days in passing and most of the interaction is just

If you're working on a project that you have personal interest in, no. If you're highly skilled, highly paid and an entire development team depends on you, no.

If you're like 99.9% of other code monkeys who just poke and prod, yes. It fucking sucks.

If you weren't retarded and listened ot others' anecdotes and invested early in bitcoin you would be a billionaire.

Instead you're a pathetic faggot on a chan shitposting for attention.

i get paid to scratch around in emacs on linux all day coding c++

I work at a tech company and have conducted about 50 technical interviews.

My overall advice is get a degree in CS, or at least take CS classes. If you already are doing a CS degree, consider a masters degree.

Be proactive in searching for jobs, e.g. reach out to professors, other contacts, and apply to jobs cold.

Be positive in interviews. Generally you should avoid negative statements, don't badmouth former professors or employers, focus on the positive. Study for interviews. Tech interviews, like all things, are a skill that can be learnt. I got so good before my own interviews that I had seen the majority of questions I was asked before.


A degree gets better results for less effort than being an open source "rockstar". One way to think about it is that if you want a good job, you have to somewhat tailor your efforts to job searching. Simply doing things you enjoy (coding) is inefficient.


I got my job after an internship that was partly thanks to a recommendation from a professor. The professor reached out to me because he wanted to use my project as an example of a good project. I then asked to meet up to discuss career advice, and that ended up with him giving me a recommendation for an internship.

You don't have to ask for anything unreasonable or unfair, but sometimes it's helpful to take the initiative.


Tech companies provide all 3, depending on how you define independent work. Certainly I don't have a manager breathing down my neck, but few people just go off on their own for months and do their thing: you have to work closely with other people and their schedules.


Hard to know what you mean here but real programming is somehwere between the nerd ideal of the "real hardcore programmer" and the SJW cliam that programming is mostly soft skills.

A typical nerd will learn soft skills on the jobs (which is a good thing in life) and this will greatly enhance their career. Some of these soft skills might be considered "soul crushing" e.g. I have to look after big internal clients and keep them happy. But when I see them passionately advocating my library, it's worth it. In my life it's been very positive to "win" against other people not just based on my technical skills but also my tenacity and communication skills.

Is a master's degree really worth it? I feel like that's kind of past the threshold where the degree would be worth the extra debt.

Yeah, that sounds good. What I meant by independent work was basically anything that's not my past retail jobs where the manager would watch me like a hawk through the security cameras and bitch at me if she decided I wasn't walking fast enough.

No masters degree is the sweet spot. One thing you have to understand about debt is that while it's stressful to be in debt, the benefits of the degree last a lifetime. Every time you switch jobs people will look at your resume. And even within a company higher up people often known your educational background, e.g. my manager's manger referred to my PhD field a few times.

I've only ever worked in a tech company where this never happens. Even at regular companies, my impression is only very bad programming jobs are like this. Most aren't.

What's your opinion on a Computer Engineering degree? Apparently it involves a good bit of programming as well as hardware. If I'm an indecisive bitch, would it be a good idea?

Don't do this, network at places like trade shows and find out who the hiring managers are and don't ask for a job straight out, ask what they want first and get them talking about their needs.
You shouldn't even be applying online, all those apps get reviewed by HR mouth breathers. The only type of person that would tell ypou to apply to a job cold is an HR drone trying to make their worthless field seem valuable.

I'm a bit biased since I work in software, but my impression is the vast majority of jobs are in software. So if you are going to end up as a programmer, why not just study software? Of course some hardware knowledge is useful, but you can pick that up in a CS degree.


Let me put it this way: if you have some other avenue, of course use it. But when you've run out of leads, there's no harm in online applications.

wow not even one upboat on this underb8d post

This user must be an HR flunky, even though he works at as tech company.
Find out what makes MONEY for a company on your own. People will blow smoke up your ass EVEN fucking hiring managers, but when push comes to shove you're job prospects come down to whether you make money for who you work for or not.
And think long term, just because going into a field can make you a lot of money now, doesn't mean it will continue to do so in the future.

concise, quality code that doesn't suck. i guess i'll just be homeless

Because I hate programming and would love to jump ship to hardware if there is ever a reliable possibility.

There is, its a complete waste of time, its a totally bullshit hedge maze.
If you don't know any hiring managers go on /bahoment/ and learn how to cyber stalk them. Not even kidding.

this is hard to answer but let's see here

1) fitness (intellectual and physical)
2) leisure (read: doing non career-advancement related things)
3) status (social, primarily - not sure other forms of status really matter. I'm not as vapid as this implies, as it's all relative - I don't mind my social status being the beer and brats guy down the street)

the sad part is they're all kind of conflicting

tell me about the prospects of a math degree undergrad with a decently active github plox

I already said I have done 50 technical interviews. HR don't do technical interviews, programmers do.

You don't need to think about what makes money for a company, doing your job (programming) well is enough. If that didn't make money for the company, they wouldn't hire you to do it.


Then do computer engineering or maybe electrical engineering. Note that nowadays CS includes a lot of hardware related fields e.g. robotics.


Maybe, I never applied to a tech jobs cold (but have done so for other jobs). Based on limited knowledge (I don't see internal references in most cases) I do think that applying online is worth it.


Good. List your CS courses in your resume so people can see you didn't just do math. List your main github work in your resume. Apply to jobs online or better, try to network (e.g. got to meetups and similar events)

math fag here, thx. will do

how do you find an answer to this without diving down 1k+ rabbit holes?

i like money and solving challenging problems, fwiw

anons this guy is an idiot wageslave straight up cuck. don't listen to him.

it's all about the money. properly invested, the compounding interest on the tens of thousands of dollars cost of a masters far outweighs the value of increased salary over the years, and opportunity cost of getting the degree.

Surely having a job makes me more qualified to give a career advice?

Your reasoning is flawed because the increase in salary starts immediately and can also be invested.

He's some advice:
DON'T GO TO UNI
IT'S A SCAM
Spend your time working on your LinkedIn and GitHub yes I know it's shit, suck it up, going to networking events, figure out how to be personable and crap. Learn OOP, TDD, Clean Architecture, REST, SOLID, CRUD and a crap ton of programming languages, from Assembly all the way up to Ruby.

>Not investing it in actual businesses no I'm not talking about the stock market because that's a pyramid scheme nowadays
Retard

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This saying is the real scam and I almost fell for it. Going to uni was the best decision I've ever made. It improved my life in literally every aspect, both professionally and socially.

What is this autistic shit you people keep spouting. Can you give me one specific example of what you are even referring to and one you have been to and gotten a job out of? Uni IS that networking event. It's literally just a 4 year long networking event.

Have you actually started your career or are you some teenaged kid living with your parents while thinking you know better than them?

How's the debt?

You're not networking if it's the same people every day.

I'm both faggot.

Gone within 3 years of graduation.

Good thing you get multiple classes and also, you know, the countless, constant visits to the campus from local companies and events held by major fortune 500 companies if your school is worth a shit.

Oh, so a dumbass kid. Opinion discarded.

So you can be what, like 28, not owning any property, doing the exact same thing you could have been doing at 19 if you're lucky enough.

You know you get that stuff in high school and when you actually get a job nowadays right?

t. buttmad brainlet who couldn't get a scholarship.

You dive down them til you find one you like.


The Rock stat comment isn't about getting hired to be the chump at the bottom. It's to have someone worth keeping around when heads start to roll. Tech jobs are super unstable due to the way the industry is flooded with people and out sourcing. If you're some open source rock star then they're more likely to keep you around than ship your job off to a guy shitting in the street.

Tbf if you get a scholarship you're alright and you might as well go to uni despite the other disadvantages

spotted the nigger/jew/spic/roastie.

Just how delusional are you, kid?

What fucking high-school did you go to? Because I sure as hell didn't.

Which is the end goal...

Have fun learning about reality when mommy and daddy stops paying for you.

How much did you borrow, and how much was your tuition. Also what was the APR on your debt and what was your salary.
Most people I know didn't get north of 70k on their first job out of college but could easily have 50k or more in debt. I know paying off your student debt in 3 years isn't impossible, but whenever I press for details I always get SOMETHING that isn't normal circumstances.

Fine, apply online, a let your resume get rejected by HR personnel that need help turning their computer on. No skin off my back kid.
Uh...I joined an industry club and went to one of their hosted events and met a hiring manager and got a job. That's were they RECRUIT people dingle berry.
Did I ever say DON'T network at Uni you fucking dumb ass. Also people that don't go to Uni can't network there. Network at both places if you have the time.
Goddamn it, you need to met a hiring manager IN PERSON. Holy shit what's so fucking hard to understand. If you're fucking professor can do that for you GREAT! But what I've seen is that professors just pass along resumes and rarely arrange FACE TO FACE meetings with hiring managers.
PROJECTION

This idiot is probably swimming in debt and borrowed all the equity in his home using Home Equity Lines Of Credit and will be homeless when the next resession/depression hits.
Student debt is bad, why is there so many class cucks in here saying otherwise.

You'd be surprised just how insular most big companies are and how much they (over)value your reputation and achievements within the company vs outside. Because of this, it's less work to rise through the ranks than have a really impressive open source portfolio that gets you hired at a high level. And someone who is a big shot in open source is respected less than someone who has been at the company 10 years and has a good reputation.

can you list a few employable rabbit holes?

Nice joke, OP.

Same, until I dropped out of college 7 years ago. I am too socially crippled to go to college, or to go anywhere else, really. The whole thing is a joke anyway.

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the fuck you say about me, bitch? i never said necessarily put it in the stock market, although that is one option. i make no less than 50% returns in stocks the last 3 years running. with 8k you can get an fha loan for a 200k house. rent it out or do the live in landlord thing and rent extra rooms with minimal living expenses. and your tenants will pay your mortgage, taxes, insurance, and operating costs. while you sit back and get wealthy.

What kind of time machine have you invented?

But my primary reason for going to uni was so that I would have more time to spend with friends and have fun. Uni is the most fun you will ever have in your life, and it is when you will share the greatest memories with friends in your entire life. Literally why would you just throw that away?

a masters you will usually have a bachelors already.

getting hired to the 1st job with no degree is more difficult but is still doable if you have the portfolio or connections.

if any hardworking and skilled anons are seeking work and can prove they can write clean, working code, send me your professional resume
[email protected]

my employer is hiring and i want more referrment money to invest!


you fucked up idiot troll do not send me your resume fuck you!

What the fuck are you talking about? A masters degree takes 1 year.

if you do 4+1 masters maybe. most take 2 years full time, in which case you're paying for it in full. some take 16 months similarly you'll pay in full.

way to dox yourself [email protected] I'll make sure not to tell your boss you're hanging out on 8ch while linking the media blitz after gamegate about everyone here being a pedo.

funny i dont give fucks im healthier, white, write better code, make more money, more kids, hot bitch, and my penis is biggest. you will always live in my shadow. get fucked poorfag.

Might want to learn not to fuck with the internet.

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They probably were all mudshits posting anyways.

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Funnily enough, when fullchan /v/ turned on flags for a day it turned out the guy posting the forced mutt meme was from some 90% black country in the Caribbean.

ada.ac.uk/

Which is often alot harder than you seem to think.

Considering I'll have enough money to buy a decent house in London at age 21 at most I think I will.

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I meant without a mortgage btw, because mortgages are yet another Jewish trick

>Considering I'll have enough money to buy a decent house in London at age 21
Why would you _ever_ do that?

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literally why???????

Which is what I'm telling you...

Sure buddy.

question about coding: Is system firmware compiled in assembly? Has anyone besides libreboot, made an open-source BIOS that is capable of adapting wi-fi hardware+software from either a desktop or laptop?

First of all, assembly doesn't get compiled. It gets assembled. Second of all, that's not the BIOS' jobs.

sry for retarded grammar, drunk

Because all the tech jobs and lainanons are in London

If you knew flags were on you would vpn to one like that to post it.


Now we know you're a nigger hired by affirmative action

Keep telling yourself that you bleached pajeet

I'm studying maths/IT at my university and I'm on the dean's list. I have two pathways I can go down:
1. Develop my own game engine and become an expert in graphics programming. I'll either go on to do a master's in this or try and get a job somewhere in the field. It seems like there aren't many jobs for this though and they don't pay well BUT I'll be able to focus on working on my own project. I've already invested time into developing an engine and I'm enjoying this so far.
2. Study security and get a job in the field. I'm unfamiliar with how security actually works as a career and how I could work in my own projects. Careers are plenty and they pay very well.

The primary concern is that I FUCKING DESPISE PEOPLE. I hate being around people and listening to their retardation.
With option 1, I am forced to work around other people but can focus on my own project BUT in order for this project to be successful I'll most likely have to interact with a community.
With option 2, I can be misanthropic through my career and become Independent, knowing how best to fuck with people and live more of a double life

Honestly, I feel like most of this board is just larping children.

third position: write malware for estonian gangs an get a slav waifu. highly recommend.

Well, that's the thing.

If I can make a hit engine and get funding or licensed it out or make a hit game then I can amass enough wealth to live a solitary life BUT I think there's not a great chance of that.
If I study security then I can potentially make money from anti-social activities and live a solitary life BUT there's significant risk.

I don't want to live in society. I don't want to go to jail. I don't want to fail and end up another miserable wageslave.

You can't compete with Unreal or Unity. You just don't have the resources to do it and that's what you need to do.

If you're into the IT career you're going to end up a miserable wage slave. Your best hope of just being left alone is getting into some kind of networking admin position and making sure the system doesn't fuck up. You turn up to be on call in case there is an emergency but other wise do very little work. Engineers have similar positions where the job is to be the emergency plan but you have to turn up for your shifts and be on call at any point in time just in case.

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I used to feel very disconnected from other people, though I wouldn't say I despised them. One question that changed my thinking was: what is the probability that I was born fundamentally different from almost everyone else? Especially given that the qualities that I thought made me very different (high intelligence, social awkwardness, social anxiety and others) are not individually that uncommon.

Obviously I'm not you and I don't know how you think. But in my life it's been useful to conclude that I'm, by definition, unlikely to be very far from the average person by any measure.

You're not high intelligence. If you were you wouldn't have social anxiety. You just think you're smart because everyone else is dumber than you that you meet in every day situations. Big fish, tiny pond.

Social anxiety isn't exactly uncommon among higher IQ types - partially because many of those types are on the autism spectrum.

is completely wrong, I did a PhD at a good school and even then I was considered relatively smart.

Incorrect. Social anxiety is a liberal mental health problem for people who are not smart enough to understand no one else gives a flying fuck about you or what you do.


Proving my point again. You think having paper work makes you intelligent. Any one with intelligence would laugh in your face. Your idea of intelligence in no way lines up with real intelligence. It does line up with being a parrot who repeats what he's told to get a pat on the back.

Back to /r/im14andthisisdeep, edgelord.

well, none of that matters, because at the end of the day you are still a poo nigger and no one wants you near them.

Going to uni for CS was probably the worst mistake I ever made because unless you go to a top tier institution it is a total fucking waste of time. I went to a decent school and graduated with a 3.9 but GPA is worthless in the job market, if you are at a shit school too there is no point even trying for a high GPA because your resume will go in the trash. A 2.0 from MIT beats a 4.0 from a shitty state school every single time. Unless you can get in to somewhere good I recommend getting a part time job and grinding projects on github and networking like fucking crazy. Even if you have to do basic webshit it beats getting a CS degree at a shit school because you will have professional experience and you will have a better chance at transitioning to better roles.

Another piece of advice for students is to build some projects in a team setting that are deployed online. List these projects as professional experience because your useless app online that makes no money and that costs $5/month to host is still more of a solid business than moviepass.

University isn't a scam though, college is. I say this as someone who won't go to either. University has taken up the mantle of college, while college has devolved into babysitting for childheaded buffoons.

Nice pseudoscience, got literally anything to back that up?

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Raven's ass is probably so wet and tight.

go to >>>/biz/
either you endure wageslavery or you become the dominion or maybe the kike

Social anxiety is pseudoscience so I ask you the same question.