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> When I studied Engineering, however, I didn't see much of this culture. When I studied engineering I saw almost the same culture. Firms were looking for the

by yardie 7y ago

> When I studied Engineering, however, I didn't see much of this culture. When I studied engineering I saw almost the same culture. Firms were looking for the same students with similar GPAs and sadly I was not one of them. I distinctly remember going to the campus job fair and having my resume repeatedly being put into the "maybe" pile. My academic work wasn't amazing but my extracurriculars were a few engineering project competitions. But the recruiters never looked past the GPA requirements. I would say IT and CS is far more democratic. I've met far more software engineers who don't have a traditional CS background but managed to hustle their way in somehow.

mattnewton 7y ago
When I was recruiting interns for CS at Apple, a good project trumped just about any GPA north of 1.0 If I could see you solve problems with code in a got repo with history, and you can solve a problem live for me on a laptop or whiteboard, I don’t need to approximate your ability through coursework because I have more directly measured it. This gets fuzzier for non-entry level qualities, but they don’t really teach those in schools anyways. I always tell people in school to lean heavily into their projects.
- sharadov 7y ago
  That's exactly what I would do, trumps grades any day.
TrackerFF 7y ago
My academic background from Engineering was in Electrical Engineering, so very much a "traditional" background, i.e where most firms hiring were rather old and stodgy, compared to modern high-tech SV companies. The reputable firms usually had a more or less firm cut-off around 3.0, while smaller firms were more lenient. Most reputable finance and consulting firms wouldn't even look at your CV unless you had a 3.5 I think CS firms are more forgiving, and care less about credentialism. Obviously you'll have some, but if you're a kick-ass developer with a portfolio to show, most companies are willing to take a look. I think a lot of firms understand that they're missing out on excellent non-traditional hires, because HR and old hiring practices have been gatekeeping them away. Microsoft was the first big tech firm I ever spoke with, and interviewed for, and they said that as long as you had taken at least one class in data structures, you were welcome to the interview - didn't mater if you had studied history or CS.
- yardie 7y ago
  That is reassuring coming from Microsoft. It sets a benchmark that other F500s can use. I didn’t have what it took to be a MechE. I did use my extracurricular activities to get into web dev. Starting with flash, action script and JavaScript. Of all my friends who graduated as engineers half are in IT or software engineering at this point. There traditional engineering careers were awe fully short for the amount of effort put in.
- trashcan 7y ago
  When I spoke to Microsoft (circa 2004), they said I needed a bachelor's degree from a respected college like UW, or relevant job experience to even apply. I was attending a community college at the time so I volunteered to work at a tech company for free, and ended up making that a career. Maybe things have changed but I was very disappointed. (If academic performance is relevant I had a GPA equivalent of 4.0 or 3.6 depending on how it was measured, about a 96% average across my classes)

by yardie 7y ago

mattnewton 7y ago

When I was recruiting interns for CS at Apple, a good project trumped just about any GPA north of 1.0 If I could see you solve problems with code in a got repo with history, and you can solve a problem live for me on a laptop or whiteboard, I don’t need to approximate your ability through coursework because I have more directly measured it. This gets fuzzier for non-entry level qualities, but they don’t really teach those in schools anyways. I always tell people in school to lean heavily into their projects.

sharadov 7y ago
That's exactly what I would do, trumps grades any day.

TrackerFF 7y ago

My academic background from Engineering was in Electrical Engineering, so very much a "traditional" background, i.e where most firms hiring were rather old and stodgy, compared to modern high-tech SV companies. The reputable firms usually had a more or less firm cut-off around 3.0, while smaller firms were more lenient. Most reputable finance and consulting firms wouldn't even look at your CV unless you had a 3.5 I think CS firms are more forgiving, and care less about credentialism. Obviously you'll have some, but if you're a kick-ass developer with a portfolio to show, most companies are willing to take a look. I think a lot of firms understand that they're missing out on excellent non-traditional hires, because HR and old hiring practices have been gatekeeping them away. Microsoft was the first big tech firm I ever spoke with, and interviewed for, and they said that as long as you had taken at least one class in data structures, you were welcome to the interview - didn't mater if you had studied history or CS.

yardie 7y ago
That is reassuring coming from Microsoft. It sets a benchmark that other F500s can use. I didn’t have what it took to be a MechE. I did use my extracurricular activities to get into web dev. Starting with flash, action script and JavaScript. Of all my friends who graduated as engineers half are in IT or software engineering at this point. There traditional engineering careers were awe fully short for the amount of effort put in.
trashcan 7y ago
When I spoke to Microsoft (circa 2004), they said I needed a bachelor's degree from a respected college like UW, or relevant job experience to even apply. I was attending a community college at the time so I volunteered to work at a tech company for free, and ended up making that a career. Maybe things have changed but I was very disappointed. (If academic performance is relevant I had a GPA equivalent of 4.0 or 3.6 depending on how it was measured, about a 96% average across my classes)