Are there ANY COMPUTER SCIENCE related jobs out there?

[ElTorrente]

Computer Science, huh.... what exactly does that do for you?

Jobs in the computer industry are all about what you know, and who you know - NOT what school you went to, what GPA you got, or even IF you went to school.

Believe me, I work in the computer industry myself- as an animator for a very large hardware/software company. EVERYONE I work with was given the job by someone else they knew. EVERYONE in my department did random, odd jobs before landing our present jobs.

For instance, my current boss was a short-order cook at Dennys, I used to deliver pizzas before this, others were: roofer, construction, another pizza guy, financial planner, Starbucks dude, and on and on... NOW- we make video games for a living, and get paid very well with nice salaries.

Someone who downloads a cracked copy of a program and learns it well on their own will land a job right away in the industry. A 4.0 in college? Who cares- lets see what you can do.. how about a demo-reel.. THAT is how it is in my profession. Same with programmers and IT guys.

NOONE cares how you did in college, or even IF you went to college.

 

[fs5]

Originally posted by: ElTorrente
Someone who downloads a cracked copy of a program and learns it well on their own will land a job right away in the industry. A 4.0 in college? Who cares- lets see what you can do.. how about a demo-reel.. THAT is how it is in my profession. Same with programmers and IT guys.

well put, having a portfolio of your work goes a long way. EVEN if it's stuff you did in college, putting it together in a presentable way is good thing to have.

 

[illusion88]

Pizza is gooooooood
Too bad places dont deliever so late.

Did you ever deliever this late?

 

[ElTorrente]

Originally posted by: illusion88
Pizza is gooooooood
Too bad places dont deliever so late.

Did you ever deliever this late?

Why yes, I did. We used to stay open until 11:00pm on Weeknights, and midnight on the weekends.

 

1. Get the fvck out of CA

 

[MAME]

Originally posted by: remagavon

Originally posted by: MAME

Originally posted by: chambersc

Originally posted by: MAME

Originally posted by: remagavon
There are plenty of CS jobs, you just have to have a decent GPA out of college and you should have done some co-op through your college. Most every college offers some type of co-op as long as you're a dedicated student. Virtually everyone that complains about the lack of tech jobs screwed off in school and has a sub 3.0gpa, and never tried to excel in anything beyond homework (i.e. internships).

my gpa was a 3.4, nothing great but I didn't screw around.

honestly, there wasn't much in the ways of internships in my area. I didn't have a long enough break between classes to make it to an internship at a standard 9-5 company

honestly, go talk to the department that deals with internships and co-ops. they have a whole department with offices that help students JUST like you.

who this works is usually you'll do your normal schooling in the fall/spring semester(s) and then intern throughout the summer. that way you a) get your schooling in and b) get your internship experience (most if not all internships give you SOME college credit and a nice paycheck for your time).

we don't have a department like that really. Some tech companies talk to our CS chair, that's about it for CS related stuff. And it's 550 miles away, so they aren't even applicable to me

Are you getting an online degree? That might severely limit your opportunities

no, I got my degree and moved back to San Diego

 

[Thug Esquire]

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Precisely. <insert BS from kids who didn't do an internship because they "had a job" and don't realize that most internships are PAID and pay WAY better than retail>

Most internships aren't paid, douchebag.

 

[ViciouS]

everyone is hiring computer programers.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: ElTorrente
Computer Science, huh.... what exactly does that do for you?

Jobs in the computer industry are all about what you know, and who you know - NOT what school you went to, what GPA you got, or even IF you went to school.

NOONE cares how you did in college, or even IF you went to college.

That might be true for the game company you work at, possibly even other game companies, but it is wrong for software development almost everywhere else.

GPA matters, co-ops/internships matter, and a name school can give you an edge (but a state school is fine too). Once you have a year or two of development / programming experience _then_ they stop mattering.

Unfortunately there is the catch-22 of needing the experience before anyone wants you.

Our company hired another developer last year, but like many other companies we only were looking for a developer with experience in the tools we use (Visual C++, MFC, Win32).

Larger companies are set up to hire a certain number of green programmers and put the time into training them to usefulness, but small companies like ours just can't afford the time and lost productivity to teach them. It's cheaper to the company to pay an extra $20-30K a year to not take away time from the existing developers and to have the new person being productive weeks sooner (and being much more productive than a fresh grad for a long time because of their experience).

 

[remagavon]

Originally posted by: Thug Esquire

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Precisely. <insert BS from kids who didn't do an internship because they "had a job" and don't realize that most internships are PAID and pay WAY better than retail>

Most internships aren't paid, douchebag.

I've never seen an unpaid Computer Science internship/co-op. Many places use the term interchangeably although that's somewhat incorrect. Places local to me pay as high as 17.50/hr and they specifically state they're looking for college students. It gives them a good opportunity to reach out to the community and find some young workers who they can then make a job offer to based on their performance, that the employer already has a picture of first hand.

 

[Tea Bag]

Without experience, good luck. I got lucky cause I didn't intern but I had connections at my current place of employement. If not, honestly - I'd probably still be stocking groceries right now. Oh, and internships from my fellow ComSci students were PAID. Three different places in town.

 

[ArmchairAthlete]

Originally posted by: EmperorIQ

Originally posted by: MAME

Originally posted by: remagavon
There are plenty of CS jobs, you just have to have a decent GPA out of college and you should have done some co-op through your college. Most every college offers some type of co-op as long as you're a dedicated student. Virtually everyone that complains about the lack of tech jobs screwed off in school and has a sub 3.0gpa, and never tried to excel in anything beyond homework (i.e. internships).

my gpa was a 3.4, nothing great but I didn't screw around.

honestly, there wasn't much in the ways of internships in my area. I didn't have a long enough break between classes to make it to an internship at a standard 9-5 company

this is what worries me, here are some of my stats, can some of you guys tell me if i have good chance in finding a job?

- cumulative GPA: 2.91 (screwed around 1st and 2nd year)
- Upper division GPA 3.3+
- very active officer of 3 engineering clubs on campus (organizing info session, social events for engineers, design webpages, build parts of content management for engineer alumni advisory board)
- worked as a web developer for 2 years (creating databases, writing many content management pages, performed cost analysis of projects, sort of IT work)
- done research on financial applications, using beowulf clusters to parallelize algorithms
- doing research on robots, programming/building directional antennas which will eventually be used for field testing

I'm really hoping that this will get me in, and I do understand that my first 2 years of screwing around will screw me =(

Probably depends on what school... IF the alumni are in high level positions in many places they always like to hire people from their school.

Well, try to sound enthusiastic in the interviews and have cool projects to talk about.

Jobs in the computer industry are all about what you know, and who you know - NOT what school you went to, what GPA you got, or even IF you went to school.

That's only sorta true... like I was saying, if alumni from YOUR SCHOOL are in charge of hiring/interviewing, and most likely they like their school, the fact that you went to the same school is an advantage. "Hey, he must know his stuff because he went to school XYZ too". GPA matters some too.

Internships/coop I think are always paid from what you can get here. And very nice too. Plus as someone said they tend to offer you a job once you graduate unless you were pretty crappy.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

I work at General Atomics, GA-ESI to be exact, as an intern right now. They are hiring like crazy so i'm sure you can find something there. I think the reason you might have it tough is because your from a no-name college, even though it may have a good CS program, most companies see Sonoma St. and automatically think less of you as a candidate.

 

[skim milk]

Originally posted by: MAME

I can't get experience without a job, I can't get a job without experience :|

qft

 

[Sketcher]

Originally posted by: Thug Esquire

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Precisely. <insert BS from kids who didn't do an internship because they "had a job" and don't realize that most internships are PAID and pay WAY better than retail>

Most internships aren't paid, douchebag.

Ours are.

 

[BCYL]

Originally posted by: EmperorIQ

Originally posted by: MAME

Originally posted by: remagavon
There are plenty of CS jobs, you just have to have a decent GPA out of college and you should have done some co-op through your college. Most every college offers some type of co-op as long as you're a dedicated student. Virtually everyone that complains about the lack of tech jobs screwed off in school and has a sub 3.0gpa, and never tried to excel in anything beyond homework (i.e. internships).

my gpa was a 3.4, nothing great but I didn't screw around.

honestly, there wasn't much in the ways of internships in my area. I didn't have a long enough break between classes to make it to an internship at a standard 9-5 company

this is what worries me, here are some of my stats, can some of you guys tell me if i have good chance in finding a job?

- cumulative GPA: 2.91 (screwed around 1st and 2nd year)
- Upper division GPA 3.3+
- very active officer of 3 engineering clubs on campus (organizing info session, social events for engineers, design webpages, build parts of content management for engineer alumni advisory board)
- worked as a web developer for 2 years (creating databases, writing many content management pages, performed cost analysis of projects, sort of IT work)
- done research on financial applications, using beowulf clusters to parallelize algorithms
- doing research on robots, programming/building directional antennas which will eventually be used for field testing

I'm really hoping that this will get me in, and I do understand that my first 2 years of screwing around will screw me =(

You may have to start out in a smaller company, since a lot of larger companies have a hard requirement on GPAs (both overall and major GPA)... I know the company I work for, they won't even consider you unless you have an overall of at least 3.2

 

[sao123]

State civil service usually has entry level jobs.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

Originally posted by: ElTorrente
Computer Science, huh.... what exactly does that do for you?

Jobs in the computer industry are all about what you know, and who you know - NOT what school you went to, what GPA you got, or even IF you went to school.

Believe me, I work in the computer industry myself- as an animator for a very large hardware/software company. EVERYONE I work with was given the job by someone else they knew. EVERYONE in my department did random, odd jobs before landing our present jobs.

For instance, my current boss was a short-order cook at Dennys, I used to deliver pizzas before this, others were: roofer, construction, another pizza guy, financial planner, Starbucks dude, and on and on... NOW- we make video games for a living, and get paid very well with nice salaries.

Someone who downloads a cracked copy of a program and learns it well on their own will land a job right away in the industry. A 4.0 in college? Who cares- lets see what you can do.. how about a demo-reel.. THAT is how it is in my profession. Same with programmers and IT guys.

NOONE cares how you did in college, or even IF you went to college.

you are flat out wrong

 

[Scarpozzi]

There are 4 IT jobs where I work. Chattanooga, TN. Very rare for us to have more than 1 at a time.

 

[dr150]

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
Move to India.

Or China.

 

[chambersc]

Originally posted by: Thug Esquire

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Precisely. <insert BS from kids who didn't do an internship because they "had a job" and don't realize that most internships are PAID and pay WAY better than retail>

Most internships aren't paid, douchebag.

you need to look up on internships more than just crappy ones like "howard stern" or the like. the theory behind PAID internships is because they want to offer jobs to students that will be in their career field so they can get experience and a paycheck. to keep the kids from working like slaves for a check to pay their bills (rent, utilities, loans, etc), the business owners would much rather you work for them and get exp. in your field then slaving for walmart and then coming to intern for them. simple economics really.

 

[Thug Esquire]

Originally posted by: chambersc

Originally posted by: Thug Esquire

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Precisely. <insert BS from kids who didn't do an internship because they "had a job" and don't realize that most internships are PAID and pay WAY better than retail>

Most internships aren't paid, douchebag.

you need to look up on internships more than just crappy ones like "howard stern" or the like. the theory behind PAID internships is because they want to offer jobs to students that will be in their career field so they can get experience and a paycheck. to keep the kids from working like slaves for a check to pay their bills (rent, utilities, loans, etc), the business owners would much rather you work for them and get exp. in your field then slaving for walmart and then coming to intern for them. simple economics really.

Right, that's logical and all, but most film internships are unpaid IMO.

 

[Udel]

Computer science, with a business or networking concentration and your golden. Even otherwise, if you have the qualifications your going to get a decent job.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Did you intern anywhere? No? Oops.

You're what, a freshman in college? wtf do you know about how easy it is to find a job? I had two summer internships, I worked for my school's IT department on a web-based application that I sold them, I had a 3.9 GPA in my major classes, and it still took me a long time to get a good job. When there's more people than jobs, companies will take the guy who's been working for two years OUT of college over the recent college grad any day of the week.

(It depends a LOT on timing and where you live)

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: chambersc
you need to look up on internships more than just crappy ones like "howard stern" or the like. the theory behind PAID internships is because they want to offer jobs to students that will be in their career field so they can get experience and a paycheck. to keep the kids from working like slaves for a check to pay their bills (rent, utilities, loans, etc), the business owners would much rather you work for them and get exp. in your field then slaving for walmart and then coming to intern for them. simple economics really.

From the business's perspective, I think they see interns as just cheap labor. Unless you work for them after college, they don't care if you get experience in your field.