...for which the icon is MOST apropos
May. 21st, 2020 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chhotiiI really should get an M.S. in C.S. Some great majority of job listings for which knowing the Java programming language is relevant list "bachelor's or master's in computer science or related technical field" as a hard requirement. It used to be that one could get a job as an autodidactic computer programmer, but that seems to be much much harder now. I probably do know about as much computer science as the average person with a B.S. in C.S. actually retains. But, I guess quite a few companies got burnt employing people who spectacularly did not know at all what they were doing, and re-invented the bubble sort or thought that their home-grown rot13-like algorithm was a clever new form of cryptography, d'oh. So, now it's getting to be that one needs to be officially certified as clueful.
If an M.S.C.S. is the key to getting a software development job, then it pays for itself in a year. Tuition is like $50,000. I'm told that software development jobs typically start at $120,000 around here (although, I don't know if that has softened up with the economic downturn); that's about $60,000 more than I need to live for a year, even with some amount of take-out food, and about $100,000 more than I can imagine earning in various Plan B scenarios (retail at Home Depot? sell recycled denim bags on etsy? part-time census taker? special education aide?)
Now I'm looking at programs to apply to, and writing a list of things that have to be done to apply. Things that are most irksome and that depend on other people's schedule constraints have to go at the top of the list. The GRE is highly irksome, and there's a schedule for that; but that's not required for admission at all programs, so perhaps I can get away with punting that.
What has to be done is getting some number of recommendation letters. Probably 3. The most likely-looking program that doesn't require the GRE requires 3 recommendation letters.
One from my most recent boss, obviously.
But, who else? I went to college about a zillion years ago. I don't even want to know how many of my geophysics professors are either demented or dead at this point. (About 20 years ago I was walking by the Haynes Convention Center, and there was a geology conference, and I ran into a gaggle of my advisors from Brown; one if them didn't remember me at all.) More recently I did a lot of coursework at Harvard Extension and a bit at BU, but that's stretching 20 years back. Many of the courses where big lecture format, and I had more interaction with the teaching fellows, who would doubtless be even harder to track down. How many professors would be recent enough to be findable and be capable of remembering me at all with prompting? Hmm.
Then there's previous bosses, back in the mists of time... I worked at my most recent job for a ridiculous, embarrassingly long time. Before that was Sandstorm. I think that JBVB thought I was quite smart; let's see if he's gracious enough to not be grumpy and to write a favorable letter, and whether he can recall what his favorable impression of me was based on. I haven't been able to track down my employer prior to Sandstorm... that's getting really far back in time... and the one before that was my ex-husband, which is all kinds of fraught in all kinds of directions. Before going into business with my ex, I did have that first computer programming job; I learned the C programming language on that job, and actually didn't know what I was doing at that time, so no, they would not be able to recommend me.
Other people I've worked with more recently, perhaps? Because of the nature of the work I've been doing, some of my colleagues worked primarily with brain scientists; so, in spite of being smart, I was one of the least smart people they worked with. Others perhaps didn't realize that commercial software requires a whole team of UI designers, QA testers, DevOps engineers, etc. to be as slick as it is, and that what I gave them was a relatively impressive product of one programmer's part-time effort.
If an M.S.C.S. is the key to getting a software development job, then it pays for itself in a year. Tuition is like $50,000. I'm told that software development jobs typically start at $120,000 around here (although, I don't know if that has softened up with the economic downturn); that's about $60,000 more than I need to live for a year, even with some amount of take-out food, and about $100,000 more than I can imagine earning in various Plan B scenarios (retail at Home Depot? sell recycled denim bags on etsy? part-time census taker? special education aide?)
Now I'm looking at programs to apply to, and writing a list of things that have to be done to apply. Things that are most irksome and that depend on other people's schedule constraints have to go at the top of the list. The GRE is highly irksome, and there's a schedule for that; but that's not required for admission at all programs, so perhaps I can get away with punting that.
What has to be done is getting some number of recommendation letters. Probably 3. The most likely-looking program that doesn't require the GRE requires 3 recommendation letters.
One from my most recent boss, obviously.
But, who else? I went to college about a zillion years ago. I don't even want to know how many of my geophysics professors are either demented or dead at this point. (About 20 years ago I was walking by the Haynes Convention Center, and there was a geology conference, and I ran into a gaggle of my advisors from Brown; one if them didn't remember me at all.) More recently I did a lot of coursework at Harvard Extension and a bit at BU, but that's stretching 20 years back. Many of the courses where big lecture format, and I had more interaction with the teaching fellows, who would doubtless be even harder to track down. How many professors would be recent enough to be findable and be capable of remembering me at all with prompting? Hmm.
Then there's previous bosses, back in the mists of time... I worked at my most recent job for a ridiculous, embarrassingly long time. Before that was Sandstorm. I think that JBVB thought I was quite smart; let's see if he's gracious enough to not be grumpy and to write a favorable letter, and whether he can recall what his favorable impression of me was based on. I haven't been able to track down my employer prior to Sandstorm... that's getting really far back in time... and the one before that was my ex-husband, which is all kinds of fraught in all kinds of directions. Before going into business with my ex, I did have that first computer programming job; I learned the C programming language on that job, and actually didn't know what I was doing at that time, so no, they would not be able to recommend me.
Other people I've worked with more recently, perhaps? Because of the nature of the work I've been doing, some of my colleagues worked primarily with brain scientists; so, in spite of being smart, I was one of the least smart people they worked with. Others perhaps didn't realize that commercial software requires a whole team of UI designers, QA testers, DevOps engineers, etc. to be as slick as it is, and that what I gave them was a relatively impressive product of one programmer's part-time effort.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-21 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-22 09:46 am (UTC)