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yoyomama
Dec 28, 2008

foutre posted:

I'm in kind of an odd spot, and I'd like some direction.

I'm 22 years old, and have taken the last 3 years off from school to work (left after my freshman year) and figure out my life.

Since then, I've done the following (in order, such as it is):

--Worked as a counselor at a queer rights non-profit
--Worked as a children's museum arts coordinator.
--Took 2 semesters of classes, back-to-back, at 2 different colleges (1 at each).
--Started a non-profit, that fell short in the first funding round but was a good learning experience.
--Worked as a product manager/developer/etc. for an early stage start-up (this one was much more successful)

In the fall I'm going to return to school, and will likely major in Sociology or Gender Studies, with at least a minor in CS. I enjoy the former more, but I like the opportunities the latter affords and find programming pretty interesting.

For now though, I have the rest of the year until September free, living in DC.

I ended up really enjoying two threads within my time off -- the product management/development/research at the start-ups, and the research/statistics work that I did on queer rights/sociological stuff in my classes.

I'm currently in the process of applying for short-term positions, but I'm having two problems:

1) I'm not sure how to sell myself.

I do have a high gpa, and all the schools I attended are very prestigious, but my coursework consists mostly of things like "Random Grad School Anthro class" and "Intensive Humanities Seminar X", which don't really translate into quantifiable skills as well as I would like. Also, although the first three jobs aren't particularly impressive, I did quite well at the last one with very little experience (when my role got filled when I left, it was by an MBA candidate with a mid six figure salary -- which made me feel kind of bad about my practically non-existent salary but I digress). The problem is, although the start-up has gone through a first funding round, I'm still under an NDA so I can't do anything more than be very vague about my role, and I can't get list them as a reference.

Also, I know I should tailor my resume to the job posting, and have some good experience, but I'm not sure how to do that without making it look like I have huge gaps.

One last advantage is that I don't really need much in the way of a salary (very low expenses and a good bit of savings), but I'm not sure how to use that to get a foot in the door without seeming like I don't have much faith in my abilities. And honestly, I'd rather get as much as I can given I'm still going to have to pay for 2 or 3 years of undergrad.

In terms of disadvantages: I don't have a degree, I'm well off the recruiting cycle and am asking for a very weird time-frame and I have a very disparate job history. I'm sure there's more I'm missing.

2) I'm not really sure where to apply. I find the idea of working for somewhere like Bridgespan or FSG really appealing, but I don't know A) what experience right now would help and B) where I could actually get an offer. Should I just cold-email people, state what I'm willing to do, and pray?

Right now, I'm doing elance with my brother mostly as a way to gain skills and taking classes in the data science track on Coursera. I know that it will get a lot easier to get jobs and whatnot when I return to school, but I really want to take advantage of this period and do something useful.

As you can probably tell from this confused wall of text, I basically have no idea what the gently caress. If there's anything I left out or that would be good for me to get a handle on please let me know as well.

Not sure how helpful you may find this, but with your CS skills and interest in Soc/non-profit issues, you may try looking out for Hackathons targeted towards developing tech solutions for social issues. It wouldn't pay (unless you were in one where you won a prize), but it would be a project to work on, and a networking opportunity at the least.

If you're interested in research/stats, maybe try to find a research assistant position at the school you're going to next year (or any other school). Even if it's only volunteer, you could put it on your resume, esp when you apply for future research positions. Find some grad student working on their research and say "I want to help you with the tedious bs that you don't have time to do" and go from there. And if you're in DC, you could probably find some really interesting projects to work on that would be good to be associated with.

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BigBallChunkyTime
Nov 25, 2011

Kyle Schwarber: World Series hero, Beefy Lad, better than you.

Illegal Hen
edit: wrong thread.

BigBallChunkyTime fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Dec 5, 2014

diremonk
Jun 17, 2008

SuperSpiff posted:

Work in broadcast engineering here, but on the MSO side. If you're not opposed to moving, I would highly recommend considering taking a look at transferring to working either a) at a headend somewhere or b) working at a national channel. Doing facility/operations expansions is a big plus to folks and with the Comcast/TWC and AT&T/DTV mergers (possibly) on the horizon, it'd be a good time to try and sell yourself. While you may take a title reduction, I wouldn't doubt that you'd make the same/more and have more room for advancement.

Thanks for the advice. I'm not opposed to taking a title reduction, I just would like to move towards a position that is more long term planning big picture kind of thing. I'm not opposed to moving anyplace, in fact I really do need to leave where I'm at for semi-health reasons. I'm just to the north of Los Angeles so moving there would be cool. But I do have two former co-workers at ESPN so maybe I'll put a word in their ear.

It would be nice to get back to working with professionals. The two guys I work with now think saying oval office is acceptable and do stupid poo poo with the county vehicles and equipment that just rubs me the wrong way.

ChaiCalico
May 23, 2008

Looking for some advice about my current situation and possible job prospects.

I've been at this company for 10 years now, and my salary has gone up by about 8k in that time. I'm now just above 50k pre tax.

The company provides very specialized software and server hosting/maintenance for a certain industry. My job has over the last years pretty much become testing one service of ours ahead of time to make sure its going to run smoothly before the real deal (client upgrading systems).

With this software being specialized there really isn't anywhere I feel I can go with the experience I've gained so far. I've gotten good at multitasking, escalating support cases, managing my own workload (very little management involvement which is fine), and overworking myself.

Looking at glass door it seems that a lot of people have problems with their internal promotion policies and building any kind of career unless you get into management.


I haven't moved on yet due to a wonderful 5 year on going fight with depression which had me convinced this was the best I can do. And i no longer believe that to be true.

My first real job was software QA at a security company, I loved this job. My main tasks included setting up *nix/windows systems with specific software configurations so that they were vulnerable to exploits that our security scanner would then detect.

I learned a lot and was constantly working on something new week to week. It might have been the same basic task, setting up a system to be vulnerable, however when you go from 1 day learning a bit of vbscript to write detection modules to the next day setting up a SGI box with IRIX (probably the hardest thing I did there as I was ~19 and had never worked with unix that old).

My current job I've done basic stuff with vsphere (just mounting images and sending an email when I see performance stats are odd etc), and one time long ago I learned the basics of active directory. That's about as technical as my job gets and I've worked on the same 2 products for years now.

The current company has support roles that I might look into, and they seem to promote a lot more often, however the idea of starting somewhere new on an actual career path is really exciting.

So right now i'm building savings up and working on my lpic cert using vmware player and centos. Also planning on getting my GED this year.

I'm not really sure what kind of job's I should be looking at based on my skillset and interests. I did a bit of programming (C/Python/Perl/PHP) in high school but am not fond of it as the sole focus of a job. Writing scripts is no problem.

ChaiCalico fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Dec 8, 2014

JIZZ DENOUEMENT
Oct 3, 2012

STRIKE!
No

JIZZ DENOUEMENT fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Dec 23, 2019

simplefish
Mar 28, 2011

So long, and thanks for all the fish gallbladdΣrs!


How about civil engineering companies? My local one would be Arup, but I'm sure you can find more like them

Cast_No_Shadow
Jun 8, 2010

The Republic of Luna Equestria is a huge, socially progressive nation, notable for its punitive income tax rates. Its compassionate, cynical population of 714m are ruled with an iron fist by the dictatorship government, which ensures that no-one outside the party gets too rich.

One bit of advice I have to add to this thread is the value of good mentors.

It has made a huge difference to me in a really short amount of time. Both in helping me gain clarity and confidence in what I want to do and where I want to go and in figuring out how to get there and opening networking doors.

Really for anyone serious about their career a good mentor is absolutely priceless.

JIZZ DENOUEMENT
Oct 3, 2012

STRIKE!

simplefish posted:

How about civil engineering companies? My local one would be Arup, but I'm sure you can find more like them

Yeah at this point I've been looking at Architecture & Engineering Firms, I'll keep on the lookout

Shadowhand00
Jan 23, 2006

Golden Bear is ever watching; day by day he prowls, and when he hears the tread of lowly Stanfurd red,from his Lair he fiercely growls.
Toilet Rascal
A bit of advice needed, especially for those people who have jumped from FTE status to contractor status. I currently make around $95k a year + benefits. There're a few potential offers through recruiting companies that pay $75-$80 an hour for the same work that I'm already doing. I live in the Bay Area right now. Outside of having to pay for insurance, not getting IRA matching, and no free money from choosing an HSA, are there any other potential gotchas in this situation? If I jump back to becoming a FTE again in the future, will this affect my overall career path by being a year-to-year contractor?

MrKatharsis
Nov 29, 2003

feel the bern
You also won't get paid time off which was the real splash of cold water for me when I switched. If that's OK with you, go for it. More money rules.

I don't know what career field you're in but in IT I haven't seen a prejudice against contractors. Half of my team worked for the same contacting company before they were hired on.

asur
Dec 28, 2012
You have to pay both sides of FICA and no vacation, holidays, or sick leave would be big ones. May not apply to every job or be relavent, but your job may provide insurance other than health, such as disability, life or accident.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

by Fluffdaddy
E: This was turning into a wall of text so I just broke it up a bit.

Situation
I think I need some help unfucking my career. I've been thinking about it recently and had several directions in mind where to take things next, but this week my former bosses unexpectedly asked me to consider a position in their team. Do I take it? Obviously that's for me to decide, but I'd appreciate some comments or ideas I didn't consider.

In short, I work at an enterprise software company and for our marketing ops I've been doing data mining as well as necessary ETL stuff, plus some coding in SQL, C# and Perl. Some of the work was fun and I liked that I had both businessy and technical stuff to do. But recently, there's been less sensible direction, there are constant budget cuts/freezes, I had two people moved from my team before they could be even integrated, and there's little room for advancement that I can see. Just being in ops is starting to get to me too.

Offer
So now I suddenly get this offer, which I'd say is 90% mine if I want it. It's basically a Business Analyst job, with BPM, Six Sigma and all the other typical crap.
+ Higher salary grade (so +10-15% maybe)
+ Some new useful skills/buzzwords to learn
+ A bit of travel to meet new people in the field
- Still in ops, still same org
- Will probably need to start with a project I already thought was retarded
-/+ Would need to stick around a bit, but could use the time to finish my degree

So far, when considering jobs, one of the main concerns has been whether it would help me get where I want to be eventually, and I think so far this allowed me to keep a lot of possibilities open. But now there's not only a question of how it fits with my long-term ideas, but also short-term options - there were internal jobs I have and almost applied for already, and a fellowship a friend of mine suggested.

Long-term
In the longer term, I'd probably want a re-alignment along these lines:
1) Management/strategic consulting.
This would mean getting out entirely, as we don't do this type of consulting. But from everything I've seen, I think I'd prefer this, and my skillset could be pretty valuable. I don't know anyone in the field.
2) Software Development
Researchy position probably wouldn't happen without a CS PhD but a C++ or KDB+/Q job in a financial shop is not out of the question if I leverage my experience with data crunching and programming.
There are some in-house positions I applied for already and some more I was considering.
3) Sales.
I'm not a traditional extroverted salesman but I do have some experience from retail banking where I did decently without much prior experience in the field. I think I could do well here as I'm familiar with our marketing and sales process, our products, and have a technical background.
There's a training program for account executives scheduled for spring that I am considering applying for.

Tl;dr:
Should I take an almost guaranteed position which is marginally better, could provide useful skills, but will delay more significant career changes?

ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


mobby_6kl posted:

-/+ Would need to stick around a bit, but could use the time to finish my degree

I'm assuming that you're talking about a bachelor's degree here. For every other career path you're discussing, having a degree is either a significant advantage or effectively necessary. It's going to make such a huge difference in your job search that finishing it really should be your top priority.

Raimundus
Apr 26, 2008

BARF! I THOUGHT I WOULD LIKE SMELLING DOG BUTTS BUT I GUESS I WAS WRONG!
The company I work for offers a TAP for certain college majors. Because I've been working for them through a staffing agency up until now, I haven't been able to investigate the specifics of this program.

Right now, there's one thing in particular that I'm interested in knowing: How long do employers typically expect you to stay with the company after you graduate? Can anyone give me an example?

Raimundus fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Dec 15, 2014

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

by Fluffdaddy

ultrafilter posted:

I'm assuming that you're talking about a bachelor's degree here. For every other career path you're discussing, having a degree is either a significant advantage or effectively necessary. It's going to make such a huge difference in your job search that finishing it really should be your top priority.

Yeah I effectively dropped out just a few credits short of completing it and due to various reasons never managed to go back. So now I'm thinking to take this position as my current role no longer helps me long-term anyway, complete the degree, and jump ship. Makes sense?

asur
Dec 28, 2012

Raimundus posted:

The company I work for offers a TAP for certain college majors. Because I've been working for them through a staffing agency up until now, I haven't been able to investigate the specifics of this program.

Right now, there's one thing in particular that I'm interested in knowing: How long do employers typically expect you to stay with the company after you graduate? Can anyone give me an example?

I believe my employer has a requirement that you stay a year or you have to pay them back. I'm not quite sure what happens if they fire or lay you off.

Man_of_Teflon
Aug 15, 2003

Looking for some career advice regarding going back to school for a Master's degree. Here's the situation:

I graduated with a B.S. in Criminal Investigation in 2007. After a few years working odd jobs, I managed to land a federal position with SSA adjusting benefits in 2010. It pays really well given my history of pizza delivery (almost $60k salary now), but it's not the most stimulating job.

I'd love to get a federal 1801 or 1811 series investigative job. Right now, I can only apply for these at grade 7, which they are rarely posted at. (I've applied for plenty, gotten referred a few times, never heard back)

They show up a lot more at grade 9, where you need specialized experience--or a master's degree. So, I'm thinking of getting a Master's degree, likely in Criminal Justice, most likely online.

First off, I know that Criminal Justice degrees are often looked down upon, but it seems like this would be a pretty decent situation for one, right?

And about the online part, I'm wary of crappy online degrees (and hesitant about how well I would learn) but it does seem like a few well-regarded schools are offering online options for their Criminal Justice Master's programs. Is getting an online degree like this crazy?

It looks like these schools would cost around $25-30k for a degree when all is said and done:

University of Cincinnati
Michigan State University
Florida State University
Boston University (Metropolitan College?)
UMass Lowell

Does anyone happen to have any experience with online programs at these schools?

I'm in Chicago, so I could also theoretically get a Master's in person at either UIC or Loyola, but that would be both more expensive and would probably require me to go part-time at my job (which I could do). They also don't seem as well regarded as some of the above schools that offer the degrees online. Any thoughts on why it might or might not be better to attend grad school in person? If it makes a difference, I'm only a couple hours away from UC and MSU on the online school list, so I could theoretically visit advisors or whatnot without too much trouble.

ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


mobby_6kl posted:

Yeah I effectively dropped out just a few credits short of completing it and due to various reasons never managed to go back. So now I'm thinking to take this position as my current role no longer helps me long-term anyway, complete the degree, and jump ship. Makes sense?

That sounds like a reasonable plan. If you're getting tuition assistance from your employer, you may be under some obligation to stick around for some time or pay it back, though, so look into that.

Xandu
Feb 19, 2006


It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.

Man_of_Teflon posted:

Looking for some career advice regarding going back to school for a Master's degree. Here's the situation:

I graduated with a B.S. in Criminal Investigation in 2007. After a few years working odd jobs, I managed to land a federal position with SSA adjusting benefits in 2010. It pays really well given my history of pizza delivery (almost $60k salary now), but it's not the most stimulating job.

I'd love to get a federal 1801 or 1811 series investigative job. Right now, I can only apply for these at grade 7, which they are rarely posted at. (I've applied for plenty, gotten referred a few times, never heard back)

They show up a lot more at grade 9, where you need specialized experience--or a master's degree. So, I'm thinking of getting a Master's degree, likely in Criminal Justice, most likely online.

First off, I know that Criminal Justice degrees are often looked down upon, but it seems like this would be a pretty decent situation for one, right?

And about the online part, I'm wary of crappy online degrees (and hesitant about how well I would learn) but it does seem like a few well-regarded schools are offering online options for their Criminal Justice Master's programs. Is getting an online degree like this crazy?


You should post in the federal jobs thread. I'll say this: if you just need to meet the requirement of a master's degree to apply for a job, then an online degree from a legitimate (i.e.: non-profit) school will get your resume seen. But it probably won't look that competitive to a lot federal law enforcement agencies without other relevant experience.

Man_of_Teflon
Aug 15, 2003

Xandu posted:

You should post in the federal jobs thread. I'll say this: if you just need to meet the requirement of a master's degree to apply for a job, then an online degree from a legitimate (i.e.: non-profit) school will get your resume seen. But it probably won't look that competitive to a lot federal law enforcement agencies without other relevant experience.

I was debating between this and the grad school thread in SAL but that's a good idea, duh.

Part of me cringes at the idea of finding the cheapest/quickest non-profit school, but it does seem to make sense if this is all I'd be using it for. It would be nice to actually learn stuff too, of course!

posh spaz
Jul 25, 2014

Man_of_Teflon posted:

Part of me cringes at the idea of finding the cheapest/quickest non-profit school, but it does seem to make sense if this is all I'd be using it for. It would be nice to actually learn stuff too, of course!

I'm taking an accounting class through CSU Global right now, and I'm pretty impressed with the rigor. Most of my grade comes from weekly critical thinking papers. I don't remember doing any critical thinking at all in my brick-and-mortar accounting classes.

Edit: I've got a career path question of my own.

I recently got an MBA - finance. I had BA Anthropology before that. I have 10 years retail, 5 years bicycle industry, 3 years ski industry, 2 years retail management, and 6 months corporate payroll accounting experience. I'm taking classes toward my CPA right now, and I'm looking for finance/accounting work. I still have about 1-2 years before I can sit for the exam, depending on how many classes I take each semester.

As I see it, I have the following options:
1) Get a retail management job, work my way up that ladder while doing school part time for 2 years.
2) Try to find an accounting/finance job, do school part-time for 2 years.
3) Get a part-time bike/ski job, do school full-time for one year.

I've gotten interviews for accounting jobs, but my lack of experience and lack of coursework has come up. I'm definitely qualified to be an assistant manager right now, but I'd rather have an accounting job if I can land one. It seems like there are a ton more jobs for staff accountants than entry-level work or accounting assistants. My feeling is once I pass the CPA a lot more doors will open for me, but maybe I'm wrong.

Please let me know if you have an advice.

Edit 2: I got called in to a last minute interview this afternoon. I am now an assistant store manager at a ski shop, so that's good I guess. I'll keep taking my accounting classes and see what happens with this job.

posh spaz fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Dec 17, 2014

Grouco
Jan 13, 2005
I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.
Congrats on the job!

posh spaz
Jul 25, 2014

Grouco posted:

Congrats on the job!

Thanks! The pay sucks but ski season is only til May so I won't be stuck there forever. I think it will be good for my resume, and if I do a good job I can get a better ASM position that actually pays well at a different store in the company later. At least that's the plan right now.

Plus I've been going insane being unemployed and I need something to do with my days and this is better than Starbucks or something.

So all in all I'm cautiously optimistic.

ConspicuousEvil
Feb 29, 2004
Pillbug
I've posted in here before, but I think it got kind of glossed over, so I'll try again.

Looking for some "life after teaching" advice. I have a BS in mathematics and an MA in secondary education. I've been doing some kind of teaching/tutoring for about the last 8 years. Got into it out of college because I didn't really know what else to do. I have no other real job experience, but don't want to teach anymore. I've been out of the formal job market for so long I don't even know what kind of jobs I should be looking into. All I really know is that I don't want to teach.

I would appreciate any ideas y'all might have.

Panic Restaurant
Jul 19, 2006

:retrogames: :3: :retrogames:



Pork Pro
Not really sure if this is the right place for this, but I've been stuck in a rut for a while. I graduated with a BFA in Public Relations in 2010, and I feel like I've gotten nothing out of it other than a shitload of debt. I’m still stuck in the same retail job I've been doing since High School. Hell, I don’t even know why I picked Public Relations other than that I was a dumb kid and I had to pick something. That being said, the fields I have a passion for (Ornithology, Archaeology) are pretty unrealistic anyway and it’s not like I can afford to go back to school.

At this point, I’d be happy to just get out of retail and into a basic office job, or something. I’m tossing out applications to decent sounding jobs on Indeed nearly every day, and I've been taking my county’s civil service tests at every opportunity. I’m rather proud of my performance on those- I've scored 90+ on every one, but other than a couple of interviews that too has gotten me nowhere. I really think that the interviews went well, but I have to assume my lack of experience caused them to pick someone more qualified.

So I’m just kind of at a loss. Where do I go from here? I don’t really have much in the way of connections, and no experience outside that retail job. I've gotten my resume professionally spruced up, but even that doesn't seem to help. I apologize if this is kind of rambling and e/n-ish, but just wanted to get it all out there.

posh spaz
Jul 25, 2014

Panic Restaurant posted:

So I’m just kind of at a loss. Where do I go from here? I don’t really have much in the way of connections, and no experience outside that retail job.

I was basically in your shoes. I don't think what I did was the best thing to do, but maybe it's food for thought. I worked as a bike/ski mechanic through college, got a BA Anthropology, couldn't find any work, kept working as a bike mechanic. I went to work for the family business for a few years, got my MBA, and now I just got a job as a ski shop assistant manager. The guy said he had 15 applicants but he offered me the job on the phone without an interview because of my MBA and industry experience. I'm not presenting that as a success story, just my experience as someone who was in your situation a few years ago.

Panic Restaurant posted:

I've gotten my resume professionally spruced up, but even that doesn't seem to help.

This is going to be super harsh but I think you need it: you can't polish a turd. Your resume isn't the problem. The problem is you're basically a cookie cutter of the other thousands of other liberal arts grads with retail experience. Get some skills that companies want and your job prospects will improve. So as I see it, you have two options: 1) Learn how to code, go to trade school, go back to college for a more useful degree. 2) keep doing retail, work hard, do a good job, be responsible, and eventually you'll probably get a management position. Retail management actually pays well if you're in a high revenue store.

MrKatharsis
Nov 29, 2003

feel the bern

ConspicuousEvil posted:

I've posted in here before, but I think it got kind of glossed over, so I'll try again.

Looking for some "life after teaching" advice. I have a BS in mathematics

I would appreciate any ideas y'all might have.

Slow Motion will probably be fired soon. You could apply for his job (actuary). It's pretty baller.

|Ziggy|
Oct 2, 2004

posh spaz posted:

1) Learn how to code, go to trade school

I have a friend that was convinced by another friend he was in the wrong field to ever make any considerable amount of money. He quit his job, entered a 12 week coding school that taught him a few languages (I think it cost ~$14k), and within 2 weeks after that had a $50k/year job. I don't know if his experience is typical or how good he is at coding since I'm not in the industry, but if you have any talent at it, it's an option. Maybe try codeacademy to see if it's something you'd be interested in first or just use it to learn on your own since that's free online.

posh spaz
Jul 25, 2014

|Ziggy| posted:

I have a friend that was convinced by another friend he was in the wrong field to ever make any considerable amount of money. He quit his job, entered a 12 week coding school that taught him a few languages (I think it cost ~$14k), and within 2 weeks after that had a $50k/year job. I don't know if his experience is typical or how good he is at coding since I'm not in the industry, but if you have any talent at it, it's an option. Maybe try codeacademy to see if it's something you'd be interested in first or just use it to learn on your own since that's free online.

I think coding has been "a thing" long enough that the supply might be finally catching up to demand, but that's based on nothing concrete, just the number of times people say "do a coding, get a monies." I think coding + something else is really valuable. For instance, finance/accounting/business stuff + coding is a really good idea.

But as a first step, there seems to be a lot of self-directed resources on coding on the internet. I think it's a dumb idea to do something you hate because you think it'll pay well, but if you learn about and like coding, go for it.

JIZZ DENOUEMENT
Oct 3, 2012

STRIKE!
I have also heard only great things about code academy / code bootcamp.

JIZZ DENOUEMENT fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Dec 23, 2019

JIZZ DENOUEMENT
Oct 3, 2012

STRIKE!
poo poo, depending on how my job search goes in the near future, I might do it anyway.

posh spaz
Jul 25, 2014
I looked up coding bootcamps for like a minute, and boy are there a million of them. It seems like it's more common to have "Costs $20k, full refund if you don't get a job making $60k+ within 3 months of graduation." I think the X% of salary thing is less-common. They all seem to have different languages they focus on. I have no idea which would be useful, or if that doesn't matter. Still, it might be worth looking into it more if you're interested in coding.

Also, a surprising number of them are in-person only. For people who are into stuff like transcending paradigms with technology, I'm surprised there aren't more online-only options.

posh spaz fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Dec 22, 2014

JIZZ DENOUEMENT
Oct 3, 2012

STRIKE!
The in-person thing can be useful. One of these programs offered food and even the ability to crash at the school. They don't have dorms or anything, but there was one girl in my friends program that straight up slept on the couch in the academy more than five times a week. Totally kosher.

Edgar Allan Pwned
Apr 4, 2011

Quoth the Raven "I love the power glove. It's so bad..."
So I have two questions, one is kind of basic, but I'm kind of stumped. One question is that I have a CS degree and am going to start looking and applying for tech jobs soon, but I am really interested in social justice/social work oriented tech, but I'm not really sure how I would go about looking for jobs like that. Are there particular keywords I could try? Also, my basic question is, do job search sites really work? Like monster.com and indeed.com do not seem very useful for me. I am not sure if I just have to spend a lot of time digging through them to work, or if they are ineffective. I have tried companies' sites, but then I run out of companies to look at. I have used google, and university webpages for this. I feel like I am being ineffective job searching but I don't know how to do better? What should my steps in job searching be? (Ideally this if for a job that leads to a career type thing, I have job searched for minimum wage stuff, but I sucked at that too and honestly I want to do better than that)

posh spaz
Jul 25, 2014

Edgar Allan Pwned posted:

One question is that I have a CS degree and am going to start looking and applying for tech jobs soon, but I am really interested in social justice/social work oriented tech, but I'm not really sure how I would go about looking for jobs like that.

There's no money in social justice. If an app doesn't very slightly improve the lives of rich white boys in San Francisco, good luck getting funding.

the worst thing is
Oct 3, 2013

by FactsAreUseless

posh spaz posted:

There's no money in social justice. If an app doesn't very slightly improve the lives of rich white boys in San Francisco, good luck getting funding.

I have an acquaintance who has gotten millions in funding for his social justice startup, it's called Amicus. https://www.amicushq.com
It's possible just unlikely. And actually come to think of it his target market is partly rich white philanthropists so you're still not wrong

yoyomama
Dec 28, 2008

Edgar Allan Pwned posted:

So I have two questions, one is kind of basic, but I'm kind of stumped. One question is that I have a CS degree and am going to start looking and applying for tech jobs soon, but I am really interested in social justice/social work oriented tech, but I'm not really sure how I would go about looking for jobs like that. Are there particular keywords I could try? Also, my basic question is, do job search sites really work? Like monster.com and indeed.com do not seem very useful for me. I am not sure if I just have to spend a lot of time digging through them to work, or if they are ineffective. I have tried companies' sites, but then I run out of companies to look at. I have used google, and university webpages for this. I feel like I am being ineffective job searching but I don't know how to do better? What should my steps in job searching be? (Ideally this if for a job that leads to a career type thing, I have job searched for minimum wage stuff, but I sucked at that too and honestly I want to do better than that)

This is possible, and is one of my focuses in changing to a ux career. Right now I'm on the research side of things, so I have an idea of what I'm trying to do.

Look on idealist for tech jobs, as well as the usual sites. Networking is probably on of the better ways to find positions like this, especially on twitter. Look up healthcare IT orgs, they tend to have a big focus on using tech to help people, doing volunteer work (and sometimes being compensated for it from them).

Also look up hackathons on specific issues you're passionate about. Transh4ck is one I looked into, and they also had a panel on a group of people who have companies geared towards using tech to help trans people.

Feel free to pm me if you have any questions.

yoyomama
Dec 28, 2008

|Ziggy| posted:

I have a friend that was convinced by another friend he was in the wrong field to ever make any considerable amount of money. He quit his job, entered a 12 week coding school that taught him a few languages (I think it cost ~$14k), and within 2 weeks after that had a $50k/year job. I don't know if his experience is typical or how good he is at coding since I'm not in the industry, but if you have any talent at it, it's an option. Maybe try codeacademy to see if it's something you'd be interested in first or just use it to learn on your own since that's free online.

Would also recommend this. I have mixed feelings about coding schools (the ones around here don't offer % of salary earned as tuition, or anything like that), but online resources are great. Also meetups are great too, I've learned a lot, and getting help from someone in person is a benefit. There are cheaper ways to learn coding that spending 10k for a several week course, but if it offers other benefits, then it's worth a shot.

That said, I know a good number of people who have done coding schools/boot camps and are either in jobs or have interviews soon after graduating.

posh spaz
Jul 25, 2014
Speaking of: http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/12/20/370954988/twelve-weeks-to-a-six-figure-job

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yoyomama
Dec 28, 2008
Another link on bootcamps: https://www.blacksintechnology.net/upcoming-bittechtalk-podcast-ep-66-dev-bootcamps/

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