Tell me about being an Engineer!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Tell me about being an Engineer!

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Necc0 posted:

This is true. If anyone has any questions about computer science/engineering feel free to ask.

I'm a CS Junior interested in how hard it is to get an internship at a decent company. Right now my GPA is ~3.3, by next semester when I apply it should be 3.6 or 3.7 (retaking a couple classes right now, I was a lazy freshman and basically failed everything). My CS-related work experience consists of having been a TA for the intro programming course for 3 semesters and a research assistant doing stuff on verification and validation of multi-threaded code for ~2 semesters, which sounds cool, but I was only a freshman/sophomore during that time and I only had a surface-level understanding of threads, so I was doing grunt work really.

When I write it out like that, it seems like I should have a good chance, I'm just worried because it seems like in every CS class I take, every other guy already knows all the concepts the class covers and has a part-time real job coding for an actual company, e.g. "Oh yeah CGI? Yeah I've did some Perl scripting on the side for [some company] a couple of years ago, neat stuff, these days my job involves databases though."

# ¿ Oct 8, 2009 06:45

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 07:26

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

BeefofAges posted:

That's because the nerds in your CS classes are insecure jerks who brag about stuff without actually knowing what they're talking about. Chill out, you're in really good shape. Just go to career fairs and such and chat up some recruiters. You'll find an internship in no time as long as you're friendly and confident.

Thanks for the reassurance, I do think I have better social skills than most of the guys in my major. There are some people who I will just stare at and think, "I wonder if he realizes why he's permanently single?" I've come very close to telling some students in the class that I TA to go home and take a shower.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2009 07:08

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

BeefofAges posted:

Speaking of tutoring intro to programming classes, that's a really good thing to have on your resume. I guarantee you that you'll get asked about that in interviews, so be ready to explain about how it's strengthened your grasp on the fundamentals of computer science and so on.

Good idea, this is a much better thing to say than my real reason: "It pays well for an on-campus job and half the time I'm getting paid to do homework."

# ¿ Oct 8, 2009 07:26

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Dangbe posted:

I recently graduated from a University with a bachelors in philosophy. I am very happy I went through with this degree, however, I am discovering that my career plan (software development) is not really the path I want to pursue. I have attained the position and after working for a couple years I want something more, also something that pays better and is more interesting. I love the problem solving part of it but I don't like the 40-50 hrs/week of computer screen staring involved.

CS and EE pay basically identically for people who just graduated, so I wouldn't be so sure that EE will pay better than software development.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2009 07:00

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

I think homework has a place in college depending on the subject matter. I'm a CS major and I don't think I would understand most of the core CS concepts nearly as well if I hadn't had to implement them in code.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2010 01:22

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Safe and Secure! posted:

God, a 3.0 is considered good for an engineering major? Is that similar for people who want to get software engineering jobs after school?

Cutoffs are usually 3.0 or 3.2 for the places I've seen. Those are just minimums, though, it's probably better if you're like 3.5+.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2010 05:54

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flux_core posted:

This always fascinated me. It's like CS is the 'econ degree' of the tech industry; you learn the basics of how to later learn advanced poo poo, but if you don't get it on your own you're basically someone with a piece of paper that says "train me on the job".

Is Software Engineering any better at making people who understand how to code and program well and truly understand what is going on?

How well CS degrees prepare you for the 'real world' depends heavily on the school. At mine there's a pretty good balance between theoretical and practical (to the extent that Software Engineering might be a more accurate title, but I digress). You learn all the basic algorithm, data structure, comp theory stuff, but then you have to actually code up what you learn in a project in every class but one (In comp theory it depends on the prof). Since there's a core of 10 CS classes (including a class purely on software design and testing) + 5 or 6 CS electives, just about everyone here who makes it seems to be a relatively competent coder.

But like I said it differs heavily on the school. My boss at my internship did a CS degree at a liberal arts school and his entire major was 8 classes (versus the ~16 CS classes plus the six or seven supporting classes required in math, physics, etc. at mine).

# ¿ Nov 13, 2010 18:39

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Safe and Secure! posted:

Computer science is weird. It's like nobody really knows what it is, so everyone thinks it's a field about programming.

This isn't really that inaccurate, I mean nearly everything you learn relates in some way to programming, often quite directly, and most CS majors become programmers (or at least have some programming in their job).

# ¿ Nov 14, 2010 05:25

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

flux_core posted:

With that analogy I'd think of CS as "wood joining science" which goes into great detail about how to develop hammers, drills, screws, nails, glues, fitting, miter saws and chalk lines, but only passingly teaches you how to actually make a drat cabinet or whatever.

I'm probably wrong though.

Most CS majors who aren't idiots will know the basics of programming well. It's the higher-level design and architecture concepts that aren't taught and come with experience.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2010 20:23

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Epicurus posted:

How bad does computer science suck job-wise compared to engineering? I'd like to get into professional programming, writing apps or working in game design, etc., and I'm working on a CS degree.

A friend of mine started a CS degree but switched to software engineering because they preferred coding to doing math. I also am all about programming rather than learning math, and am much better at it too. Should I try making the switch?

CS is a much more common degree than SE, if you do CS the title itself definitely won't hold you back from getting jobs at software companies. Now, if your school does both CS and SE, it's possible that the CS degree is extremely theory-oriented to the point where you may end up a terrible programmer, which could be a problem. That's sort of situation-dependent, though, and you could always compensate by developing your programming skills on your own. To be honest I haven't really heard much from recruiters about SE degrees as they seem to be rather uncommon, I'm definitely gonna ask Amazon and Microsoft when I go up there next month for interviews.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2010 06:40

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

AnomalousBoners posted:

A professor suggested I get a business card. I am at the end of my sophomore year of a BSME and working as a CNC machinist and engineering tech. I thought it'd be nice to add to this card what looks like laser engraving on the aluminum block that said Studying Mechanical Engineering or something to that effect. What do you think? I made this tonight in photoshop, suggestions welcome.

The text looks aliased, isn't there a way to smooth the edges? Other than that it looks fine I think.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2010 08:04

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Disclaimer: I'm a CS major.

Software development jobs abound, getting a decent job as a competent CS major seems really easy to me. At the technical career fair at my school, CS was the most commonly desired major, follow fairly closely by EE/CompE, then the rest were far behind. This may be somewhat specific to Utah though since Utah seems to have quite a number of local software places. Plus that's really just ease of getting a job, I believe a lot of the engineering places top out at (slightly) higher salaries than CS.

Which is harder will probably depend on your own aptitude. Computer Science is more abstract than engineering, usually, since it's basically a sub-field of math (or at least a lot of parts of CS are sub-fields of math).

# ¿ Jan 22, 2011 07:56

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

At my school, required classes in Computer Science cover data structures, algorithms, operating systems, programming languages, computational theory, discrete math, internet/network programming, and software design. If you go for a BS/MS, you'll usually work as a software developer. If you go for a PhD, you'll work as a researcher (there are researcher positions both in academia and within industry at big-name companies like MS or IBM).

Lots of CompE majors become software devs too, the major difference is that CompE people usually are coding stuff that's closer to the metal, stuff in lower-level languages like C that can interact with the hardware more directly than say, Java or Python. There's still a decent amount of overlap though.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Jan 22, 2011

# ¿ Jan 22, 2011 20:05

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

It's (probably) worth it!

I think it'd be better to just do one degree though and use the extra time to do non-school stuff, like co-ops, internships, part-time jobs, research, or personal projects. Also doing just one degree would probably make it easier to get good grades.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2011 03:21

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Martin Random: It's always nice (not to mention somewhat rare) to see an engineer who can write really well, I hope you leverage that skill somehow in whatever field you go into.

Oh and if you like irony, you could go into software engineering and write law programs that extinguish the ranks of your prior profession!

# ¿ Mar 2, 2011 03:07

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TheOmegaWalrus posted:

When I graduate, it's good to know that small talk will immediately disqualify me for a position.

e: \/ \/ You automatically dismissed a guy right off the bat for asking a pretty normal question.

It's a normal question if you've just met someone who works for the company and you're just curious. It's not a normal question if you're trying to get a job with said company. A more normal small talk question might be, "I understand that you guys do X, what do you feel gives you an advantage over other companies that do X?"

# ¿ May 20, 2011 21:09

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ole_bjorne posted:

And, BTW, you know the old personnel wisdom - "salary is not a motivation factor, it is de-motivation factor", which is again confirmed by your example.

Funny thing is, is that this also is true of money & life in general: being filthy rich won't automatically make you happy, but being filthy poor can sure make you sad.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2011 22:30

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Thoguh posted:

Assuming he isn't a troll, hopefully he at least had the presence of mind to delete it out of the "sent" folder.

Aren't companies required to automatically backup all in- and out-bound company email?

# ¿ Sep 23, 2011 23:21

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mitztronic posted:

Required by whom?

The government? I thought it was a legal requirement for companies to store all of their internal communication, in case it becomes relevant in a case later.

edit: After doing some googling, it appears that there's isn't really a law requiring companies to store internal communication for X amount of time, BUT court orders can require companies to give up all of their internal communication that relates to a case, so they're effectively required to store it. Maybe someone else in this thread knows more about this than I do.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Sep 24, 2011

# ¿ Sep 24, 2011 02:33

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movax posted:

She said yes, but I guess this makes me a sexist pig and part of the problem scaring women away from engineering

But she's a recruiter, not an engineer, right? Also I don't see how asking someone out that you met in a work-related way is sexist.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2012 16:51

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Weinertron posted:

Is a BME BS likely to be as useless for getting into MS EE or MS CS programs as the Nuclear Eng guy asking a page ago? I walked into a Software Developer position after graduating last year because I had direct experience in imaging and most of my internships involved considerable amounts of development, but now a bunch of my friends are graduating this year with nothing lined up and a deep desire to be a EE instead.

If you want to stay in development, I wouldn't bother with the MS CS. CS degrees as a path to development are mainly for scoring your first serious gig. The more experience you have working as a software developer, the less anyone cares what your degree was in. Plus it's not like your degree was in something fluffy, I have a hard time imagining someone in HR going, "Oh I'm sorry, biomedical engineering? WHAT A CHUMP *tosses resume into trash*"

# ¿ May 23, 2013 19:44

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Weinertron posted:

Thanks to both of you. I'm happy staying in software, so I'll just keep on trucking at my job and work to expose myself to as many technologies as possible.

Based on the difficulties that friends have had getting a job, I'm pretty sure that scenario with HR chucking BME resumes is true.

Sorry I wasn't clear, I was specifically referring to you, presumably after having a few years of professional software development experience. At that point nobody will care that you have merely a biomedical engineering degree.

Now it IS a good idea to continue your professional software development...development. Luckily there are roughly a hojillion free online resources for this. Udacity, Coursera, Codecademy, EdX etc. Doing some of that + working on side projects = much job opportunity forever (or at least for the forseeable future).

# ¿ May 23, 2013 20:20

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Pollyanna posted:

That's exactly what I've been experiencing. Lots of people ditch my application because my degree is either considered too irrelevant or too low-level. I've applied for biotech, software, mech eng, biomaterials, etc. jobs and I always get rejected for either not being a CS major or not having a PHD and 5 years experience under my belt. A BME BS is not very useful at all for getting hired.

I meant after you have a bunch of years of professional software development experience, nobody will frown on your degree for dev jobs at that point.

# ¿ May 31, 2013 04:05

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

bjobjoli posted:

Hey guys.

Would you all mind looking at my resume and telling me your impressions?

I have been applying for MechE, ChemE, and EnvE jobs for about six months now, and I feel that the discrepancy between my official degree title and experience is putting companies off. I have had one interview, and that's about it, so I'm starting to think maybe I should leave the biofuels stuff off my resume and try to seem more like an environmental engineer.

What font is this? I like it.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2013 13:44

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

an skeleton posted:

Well, thanks to this thread and the fact that a BME at my school would take an additional 4 years I am now a Computer Science major, which with my schools "Fast Track" program I can probably have a bachelor's + masters in 3.

Just a heads up, a master's in CS may not be worth it. Reaction in industry is quite varied; some consider it worth a few years' work experience, some don't care, some (often in the startup world) actually prefer a bachelor's over a master's. My brother did a fast track master's and later said he regretted it because it wasn't really worth the hassle.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2013 20:11

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

an skeleton posted:

It's just an option that's available, I may not do it, but thanks.

I'm actually thinking of eventually doing one myself anyway, because

a) I like learning in new areas in the kind of structured way that college gives you,
b) I'll get an ego boost from having a graduate degree,
c) there'll be a networking advantage from going to a top-tier school (I would probably only get a master's if I got into such a school, which is apparently easier than it sounds since the really tough competition is for getting into PhD programs, not terminal master's programs, which tend to be cash cows),
d) there are some areas where having a graduate degree does help, like government jobs, certain companies, immigration (I'd like to live overseas someday), and general resume-boosting to the clueless (I want to do CS tutoring as a part-time job eventually).

But yeah it's definitely not a no-brainer decision, possibly even moreso than other engineering fields.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2013 20:52

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Boris Galerkin posted:

This might sound really dense and I hope it's not offensive, but why do you/software engineers call yourselves software engineers and not programmer?

It's just become the standard. Usually the difference in job title is that programmers aren't expected to be able to do much, if any design, and aren't expected to be as self-directed. Basically the bar for competency is higher for 'engineers'. And in practice, most engineers have a CS degree or something related (like Math or EE).

Although in casual conversation, software engineer, software developer, programmer, and coder are all basically interchangeable to me.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2013 19:00

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Shear Modulus posted:

I think what he means is either making contributions to an open-source project (this is easy now, just spend a few hours at a time fixing some bugs in a random project's Github repo)

This is, in fact, not easy at all. In fact, unless they're VERY simple bugs or the project is tiny, contributing to open-source projects is a fairly advanced task.

edit: The thing about everyone advocating for newbies to contribute to OS projects is that people are confusing lack of structural barriers with an overall lack of barriers. Just because you don't need some official title or to pass a test to contribute code to an OS project doesn't mean it's easy. Unless you're already a skilled programmer in the same problem/language/framework space of the OS project you're targeting, the implicit technical barrier of "needs to come to grips with large pre-existing codebase with minimal/no handholding" is actually quite high.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Nov 18, 2013

# ¿ Nov 18, 2013 20:41

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

It sounds like what you're talking about might fall under Engineering Technology degrees: http://www.abet.org/engineering-vs-engineering-technology/

# ¿ May 5, 2014 20:55

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Hollis Brown posted:

I'm starting a job in about 2 months and their benefits states that "the Company will match 50% of your contributions, up to 8%." To me this doesn't really specify if the max is 8% contrib, 4% match or 16% contrib with 8% match. It is immediately vested though. I'm guessing it is actually 8/4 but I haven't contacted the office yet.

Sounds to me like it's 8% contribution, 4% match.

quote:

How far should one go for "free" matched money? 16% seems like a lot.

The true BFC answer is that you should be maxing out your 401k every year. I do this now, although it helps that my company does 50% match up to the maximum allowed contribution (17.5k this year?).

# ¿ May 26, 2014 22:04

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Senor P. posted:

I might be mistaken but I think the 17.5k is the limit to contributions you can make as an employee.

The limit of you and your employer is a different value.

Yeah, sorry my wording was ambiguous.

# ¿ May 27, 2014 04:48

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 07:26

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

edit: and as mentioned previously, you probably want this thread over in Cavern of COBOL.

ONE OF US. ONE OF US.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2014 02:49

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Tell me about being an Engineer!