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I went back for my masters in CS after being a civil engineer for two years and learning cs my free time. These articles panning formal education don't fully g

by prions 7y ago

I went back for my masters in CS after being a civil engineer for two years and learning cs my free time. These articles panning formal education don't fully grasp how difficult it is to get your foot in the door as a non-cs person whose also working full time. I also wanted to do something more technical than just web dev, which most career changers seem to land up in. Being a grad student opened a lot of doors into more technical roles in companies that are _only_ reserved for grad students. Grad school is expensive, but I went in with a solid plan. I mitigated some of this by going to an in-state school with a good CS program and commuting to class. I was very focused in my course choices and was a 4.0 student, which unlocked even more opportunities. I was able to land two good internships (one in embedded development and one in machine learning) and used that experience to springboard into a high paying role in NYC. I have no problems living alone in the city, paying my loans, and still saving a significant amount of money per paycheck. This is completely anecdotal but what I'm arguing is that grad school can be a good idea if you have a solid plan of how to get the most out of your education. The people I see who haven't gotten their money's worth came into school and just drifted through while assuming that opportunities would come to them just by virtue of being a grad student.

geodel 7y ago
Well it is not news that it would work out fine for 1% motivated/extraordinary/well-off people. It's the rest who need more caution and be realistic about their prospects.
roymurdock 7y ago
What kind of role are you in now? I'm curious as I work with a lot of embedded devs but see that most of the salary money is flowing towards AI (very unclear what many of these roles actually are) and its less sexy but more concrete counterpart of cloud devops
- prions 7y ago
  The embedded work was just for an internship at Nokia/Bell Labs. I work at the place where I did my second internship; started doing ML engineering then pivoted to more data engineering work. You're right about embedded though. Most telecom hardware is a race to the bottom and there were a lot of layoffs at Nokia when I was there.
  - roymurdock 7y ago
    Yea thanks for the reply. Glad everything worked out for you, sounds like you had a solid plan from the get go and executed well
    - prions 7y ago
      Thanks! It was risky quitting to go to school full time but having professional work experience helped a lot to manage myself.
      - roymurdock 7y ago
        I'm actually considering doing something similar...would love to have a quick chat if you have time, my email is murdock.roy@gmail.com - thanks.
iscrewyou 7y ago
I’m a CE too and almost done with my PE. I want to stay engaged with learning after I’m done. And CS is definitely something I want to do afterwards but don’t really want to pursue a Master’s or any schooling. Can you recommend any CS books you loved? Anything iOS related would be great but I’ll take any recommendations from a fellow CE.
- prions 7y ago
  One of my favorites when I was a CE and looking for interesting usecases for my job was Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. I was able to automate and speed up lot of slow, manual processes like signing and stamping shop drawings.
  - iscrewyou 7y ago
    Ok thanks! I’ll get the book and go through it. Funnily enough, the only CS course I took in college was Python. I am familiar with the language but I’ve only made very simple scripts that are barely 20 lines of code. Looks like it’s a good road to go down to get better at things.
- murphy214 7y ago
  CE here with only FE (only 25) I taught myself programming in my free time as I work for a state DOT with a decent amount of free time. One of the cool things about CS (specifically data engineering/science) is it sort of is / will be permeating every technical field so you can sort of combine the two. If your asking about the order I learned things I got pretty good with python for 2 years, tinkered with web stuff intermittently, then started programming in go and that is easily my favorite. I always always focused on geospatial programming which is at least tangentially related to CE. The cool thing is you can start to see problems and build stuff to fix it in your free time, for example, this is something I built that gives mile points out in the field locally (no service needed), when normally a $800+ DMI is used to the same thing at a much hackier level. TL:DR; Depending on what your wanting, I don't think you need to go to school to get competent at CS (although I'm sure I lack some fundamentals), just sort of hack on problems that interest you. Also I have had job offers for software / data engineering positions so I am employable in the field as well I guess.
JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
If you have strong computer science fundamentals, you are not limited to just web development. You might start there, but it certainly isn't the be-all and end-all.
overkill28 7y ago
From the article: > Master’s degrees in fields like computer engineering, education, English, history and math seem to have fewer outlier programs and lower borrowing amounts over all. It’s the less mainstream programs, where vague promises of a lucrative career are easier to make, that seem to encourage irrationally large debt.

by prions 7y ago

geodel 7y ago

Well it is not news that it would work out fine for 1% motivated/extraordinary/well-off people. It's the rest who need more caution and be realistic about their prospects.

roymurdock 7y ago

What kind of role are you in now? I'm curious as I work with a lot of embedded devs but see that most of the salary money is flowing towards AI (very unclear what many of these roles actually are) and its less sexy but more concrete counterpart of cloud devops

prions 7y ago
The embedded work was just for an internship at Nokia/Bell Labs. I work at the place where I did my second internship; started doing ML engineering then pivoted to more data engineering work. You're right about embedded though. Most telecom hardware is a race to the bottom and there were a lot of layoffs at Nokia when I was there.
- roymurdock 7y ago
  Yea thanks for the reply. Glad everything worked out for you, sounds like you had a solid plan from the get go and executed well
  - prions 7y ago
    Thanks! It was risky quitting to go to school full time but having professional work experience helped a lot to manage myself.
    - roymurdock 7y ago
      I'm actually considering doing something similar...would love to have a quick chat if you have time, my email is murdock.roy@gmail.com - thanks.

iscrewyou 7y ago

I’m a CE too and almost done with my PE. I want to stay engaged with learning after I’m done. And CS is definitely something I want to do afterwards but don’t really want to pursue a Master’s or any schooling. Can you recommend any CS books you loved? Anything iOS related would be great but I’ll take any recommendations from a fellow CE.

prions 7y ago
One of my favorites when I was a CE and looking for interesting usecases for my job was Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. I was able to automate and speed up lot of slow, manual processes like signing and stamping shop drawings.
- iscrewyou 7y ago
  Ok thanks! I’ll get the book and go through it. Funnily enough, the only CS course I took in college was Python. I am familiar with the language but I’ve only made very simple scripts that are barely 20 lines of code. Looks like it’s a good road to go down to get better at things.
murphy214 7y ago
CE here with only FE (only 25) I taught myself programming in my free time as I work for a state DOT with a decent amount of free time. One of the cool things about CS (specifically data engineering/science) is it sort of is / will be permeating every technical field so you can sort of combine the two. If your asking about the order I learned things I got pretty good with python for 2 years, tinkered with web stuff intermittently, then started programming in go and that is easily my favorite. I always always focused on geospatial programming which is at least tangentially related to CE. The cool thing is you can start to see problems and build stuff to fix it in your free time, for example, this is something I built that gives mile points out in the field locally (no service needed), when normally a $800+ DMI is used to the same thing at a much hackier level. TL:DR; Depending on what your wanting, I don't think you need to go to school to get competent at CS (although I'm sure I lack some fundamentals), just sort of hack on problems that interest you. Also I have had job offers for software / data engineering positions so I am employable in the field as well I guess.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

If you have strong computer science fundamentals, you are not limited to just web development. You might start there, but it certainly isn't the be-all and end-all.

overkill28 7y ago

From the article: > Master’s degrees in fields like computer engineering, education, English, history and math seem to have fewer outlier programs and lower borrowing amounts over all. It’s the less mainstream programs, where vague promises of a lucrative career are easier to make, that seem to encourage irrationally large debt.