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College Majors and your profession

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i majored in computer science and have been doing software engineering since I got out of school the past 7 years.
 
mariok2006 said:
I wouldn't mind doing it for a change of pace and work on my interpersonal skills a bit more. I'm sure they pay won't be as good since I have ZERO professional experience in finance, but I guess you gotta start somewhere.
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yeah, the pay is not good STARTING out...but you will probably make more after about 5 years if you are good. That said, it would not hurt doing it because if you work for an engineering place and you have business side experience, you will do very well.
 
mariok2006 said:
That's pretty cool, how'd you do that?

Degree: Mechanical Engineering
Occupation: Mechanical Engineer
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Most of the engineers in my field are encouraged to get an MBA and get some business and finance experience. It's a much better match than being stuck in econ from the ground up. You just think differently.
 
Gibson486 said:
I hate sharepoint. How can you deal with that stuff? Maybe it was how the previous IT dept implemented it, but man, using it was such a hassle.
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Some days, I'm not a big fan either and I am still determined to move into more of a PM role. Still, Sharepoint is one of the hottest areas in IT now and you can make huge sums of money as a Sharepoint Architect.

If implemented properly, it does introduce additional steps to uploading/editing documents, but you do get a payback in the form of version history, lack of save conflicts, retention policy, etc. When we started replacing file shares here, we did have users complain about it requiring a couple of additional steps. Our response was: "We understand, but legal and our president are behind this project so get used to it."
 
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gorcorps said:
Most of the engineers in my field are encouraged to get an MBA and get some business and finance experience. It's a much better match than being stuck in econ from the ground up. You just think differently.
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Yep, that's my plan in the next couple of years. I've always wondered if there's such a thing as too EARLY for an MBA? At the school I'll be going to, most people have 6+ years of professional experience before they enroll. I've got about half of that, and none of it is management.
 
mariok2006 said:
Yep, that's my plan in the next couple of years. I've always wondered if there's such a thing as too EARLY for an MBA? At the school I'll be going to, most people have 6+ years of professional experience before they enroll. I've got about half of that, and none of it is management.
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Sorry, haven't followed all your posts so you may have mentioned this, but I'll offer a piece of advice -- don't pay for an MBA. Make your employer pay for it.
 
jlee1 said:
CHA CHING lol how are the working conditions?
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This seems like you're trying to imply they're crappy?!? Where I work it's good.

It's a consulting firm, so on occasion I work a 16 hour day, but I almost always leave the office right at 5:00. All they care about is hitting billable hour targets and client deadlines. I know some of the other big consulting firms work their junior staff a lot harder, I guess I just got lucky (and I'm not really junior staff anymore).

It does provide a nice living for someone my age (26), and the job prospects are pretty secure. Not quite CHA CHING though. 🙂

The only thing that sucks are the exams. Thankfully I only have one big one left.
 
actuarial said:
This seems like you're trying to imply they're crappy?!? Where I work it's good.

It's a consulting firm, so on occasion I work a 16 hour day, but I almost always leave the office right at 5:00. All they care about is hitting billable hour targets and client deadlines. I know some of the other big consulting firms work their junior staff a lot harder, I guess I just got lucky (and I'm not really junior staff anymore).

It does provide a nice living for someone my age (26), and the job prospects are pretty secure. Not quite CHA CHING though. 🙂

The only thing that sucks are the exams. Thankfully I only have one big one left.
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I used to work in consulting. The billable thing is not for everyone. Unfortunately, I never got passed Junior Engineer because I could never hit utilization. It was something like 85% and they use vacation time towards your percentage too. I was always around the mid to high 70's. That and you are always competing for work with your co-workers. I would take work away from people and I felt horrible. Then there were times you know people were hiding work.
 
Degree: Nuclear engineering.
Job: Nuclear licensing engineer. I work with all kind of engineering disciplines though.
 
actuarial said:
This seems like you're trying to imply they're crappy?!? Where I work it's good.

It's a consulting firm, so on occasion I work a 16 hour day, but I almost always leave the office right at 5:00. All they care about is hitting billable hour targets and client deadlines. I know some of the other big consulting firms work their junior staff a lot harder, I guess I just got lucky (and I'm not really junior staff anymore).

It does provide a nice living for someone my age (26), and the job prospects are pretty secure. Not quite CHA CHING though. 🙂

The only thing that sucks are the exams. Thankfully I only have one big one left.
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I wasn't implying anything except the money part. I was just wondering how the working conditions were because I heard some stuff about the study which sounded pretty difficult.
 
Gibson486 said:
I used to work in consulting. The billable thing is not for everyone. Unfortunately, I never got passed Junior Engineer because I could never hit utilization. It was something like 85% and they use vacation time towards your percentage too. I was always around the mid to high 70's. That and you are always competing for work with your co-workers. I would take work away from people and I felt horrible. Then there were times you know people were hiding work.
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It's not nearly that competitive where I am. Since a large portion of our business is annually recurring, you have your 10-15 clients that you service and you do your positions work on those clients.

Other stuff fills in the gaps. Our targets work out to about 90%, based on 7 hour days and only the days we're in the office (not including standard vacation).
 
jlee1 said:
I wasn't implying anything except the money part. I was just wondering how the working conditions were because I heard some stuff about the study which sounded pretty difficult.
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The study is really hard. I can't think of many people that didn't fail at least one exam. The pass rates aren't very good (they're posted online each sitting), and you're starting with a generally well educated and intelligent pool of exam takers. I failed an exam that only sported a mid 40s pass rate, and it was one of the last exams (the people writing are experienced and had already passed most of the exams). The good thing is you usually get paid time off to study, typically around 4 days per exam hour length.

If you're interest, on the SOA's website they outline the entire education system.
 
University: History and Political Science double major
College post grad: Journalism - New Media

Job: car detailer. Volunteer sports camera/director for a local cable station. Economy's tough. Saw a good job in Alberta looking for junior directors though. Might try my hand at that.
 
Major: Mechanical engineering technology

Profession: Sheetmetal design, aluminum extrusion design, electrical schematic design and circuit layout, microcontroller programming, and a bit of graphic design.
So it's kind of a mix. 🙂
 
IndyColtsFan said:
Some days, I'm not a big fan either and I am still determined to move into more of a PM role. Still, Sharepoint is one of the hottest areas in IT now and you can make huge sums of money as a Sharepoint Architect.

If implemented properly, it does introduce additional steps to uploading/editing documents, but you do get a payback in the form of version history, lack of save conflicts, retention policy, etc. When we started replacing file shares here, we did have users complain about it requiring a couple of additional steps. Our response was: "We understand, but legal and our president are behind this project so get used to it."
Click to expand...

A few steps is a gross understatement. Srsly, I wonder what a good sharepoint project looks like.
 
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