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currently working on masters in software engineering. Will be taking an Database/SQL class this semester.
Should have made a push into IT after graduation.
Chose to teach due to family situation. Needed the money. Jobs were readily available.
I considered financial engineering. Masters programs where a bit out of my price range.
You still might be able to get into a financial engineering gig. The employers look at a variety of graduate programs, but modeling and math skills are heavily emphasized and desired. It's definitely worth it. The median salary is about $150K.
Anyway, you can get to your desired salary. My brother majored in MIS and math and he's making somewhere close to $100K. His first job was with a brokerage firm and now he's doing consulting work for an IT firm.
You still might be able to get into a financial engineering gig. The employers look at a variety of graduate programs, but modeling and math skills are heavily emphasized and desired. It's definitely worth it. The median salary is about $150K.
Anyway, you can get to your desired salary. My brother majored in MIS and math and he's making somewhere close to $100K. His first job was with a brokerage firm and now he's doing consulting work for an IT firm.
I currently work for a firm that is trying to "staff up" our ranks of full time EXPERIENCED programmers that would ne proficient in creating / maintaining code written in Java, Ruby, and/or C+. We have a dedicated "internal recruiter" as well as a number of external firms that send us candidates.
Since mid-May over 250 resumes have made it past the "initial phone screen" (out of about 5x) which is basically a somewhat subjective evaluation that typically is at least 10 minute but rarely more 30 where the recruiters evaluate the skills / intuition / honesty of candidates. A handful of candidates without actual "paid experience" have made it to the next round where one or more of our "programming managers" ask the candidate to demonstrate the kinds of approach to code review / problem finding / solutions design that experience has shown to be necessary.
I have personally participated in the next round or panel interviews that evaluate the potential for candidates to be productive / be a good fit. We've made offers to FIVE people. Three accepted other offers. You do the math. Really nobody wants to keep qualified people "out", we would all be very happy to have full time employees that are more consistently available than "contract" programmers or "offshore resources" but the winnowing process has shown us that there are not a whole bunch of people with real skills / decent work habits available. Some of the worst "candidates" have been the folks with "masters degrees" and no real world experience -- just about no academic setting gives students exposure to typical code that "evolves" over time and has different standards for documentation / readability. In the real world LOTS of compromises and shortcuts are made. Programmers often take less than perfect requirements from business analysts and iterate through a few use cases before the end user community is satisfied. Our "programming mangers" know that they won't have time to "walk through" this kind of code with some new hire that expects a perfect "road map" nor are they eager to pair someone without expereince with even the most "gentle" / efficent sr. programmer and impact the productivity of the team.
To be sure some of our experienced people do have MS degrees in CS , most earned them as much for personal achievement as anything and all of them did so after having some kind of programming experience. It is very different kind of thing for even not partcularly "technical" people like recruiters to quickly screen people that earned these degrees while developing the traits for success in a setting very differnce than school...
I would also STRONGLY recomend the value of using the LOCAL network of alumni from the school where you are taking classes in NY/NJ as I know our recruiters and programming staff are MUCH more skeptical of folks from schools outside our region. Additinaly they have found the "for profit" type online schools to be especially difficult to recommend as too many people that have only that kind of education do very very poorly in the panel interview that is essential to how we get things done. If you can work even a year / eighteen months in NY/NJ it will be far more likely that you will have exposure to the kinds of things that would make hiring in Chicago or elsewhere less of a risk.
It definitely is hardest to get that first gig, but once you have real world experience if you're good things take care of themselves. Assuming you have decent skills, getting to $100k just takes ambition and the desire to get there, getting above about $130k takes extra planning and strategy unless you're so extraordinarily talented that people just notice and throw money at you, but once you get a first job, you should be at or above what you'd be at in teaching in 3-5 years depending on your own ambition (if you're willing to change employers to get the money), the general marketplace and what kind of other factors are important to you (lifestyle, benefits, industry, etc.).
I have an undergraduate in sociology but have made my career exclusively in technology based on technology work I did while I was an undergraduate and my ability to talk my way into my first couple of jobs and then prove I could actually do the work. I've been relatively ambitious enough of the time that I make good money, but to get to the next level I've got to decide whether I want to stay in technology or do something entirely different. If I stay in tech, I'll have to decide whether to pursue management or consulting to boost my income further, as I really have no interest in going into the math-heavy programming positions that end up paying significantly more than I earn now. I like math and am good at it, but doing advanced math also takes a lot out of me so doing advanced math as part of my career has never been something I really considered and at this point I'd have more catchup than I really feel up to. If I do something entirely different, I'd have to accept a different lifestyle at least for a while during the transition. At this point I could easily take a $25k salary cut and be ok, but it would still be kind of annoying. I expect to make a decision within the next two years and in that time I'll basically be paying off some debt, seeing whether I can get to the next level internally where I'm at, boning up a few skills that have gotten rusty, researching non-tech opportunities and basically just setting myself up to be able to make a choice to cut my income significantly if I really decide I want to, or be set to take the sorts of ambitious risks necessary to accelerate my tech career.
Pretty solid advice. As I recall your have some rather well regarded credentials too...
Quote:
Originally Posted by emathias
It definitely is hardest to get that first gig, but once you have real world experience if you're good things take care of themselves. Assuming you have decent skills, getting to $100k just takes ambition and the desire to get there, getting above about $130k takes extra planning and strategy unless you're so extraordinarily talented that people just notice and throw money at you, but once you get a first job, you should be at or above what you'd be at in teaching in 3-5 years depending on your own ambition (if you're willing to change employers to get the money), the general marketplace and what kind of other factors are important to you (lifestyle, benefits, industry, etc.).
I have an undergraduate in sociology but have made my career exclusively in technology based on technology work I did while I was an undergraduate and my ability to talk my way into my first couple of jobs and then prove I could actually do the work. I've been relatively ambitious enough of the time that I make good money, but to get to the next level I've got to decide whether I want to stay in technology or do something entirely different. If I stay in tech, I'll have to decide whether to pursue management or consulting to boost my income further, as I really have no interest in going into the math-heavy programming positions that end up paying significantly more than I earn now. I like math and am good at it, but doing advanced math also takes a lot out of me so doing advanced math as part of my career has never been something I really considered and at this point I'd have more catchup than I really feel up to. If I do something entirely different, I'd have to accept a different lifestyle at least for a while during the transition. At this point I could easily take a $25k salary cut and be ok, but it would still be kind of annoying. I expect to make a decision within the next two years and in that time I'll basically be paying off some debt, seeing whether I can get to the next level internally where I'm at, boning up a few skills that have gotten rusty, researching non-tech opportunities and basically just setting myself up to be able to make a choice to cut my income significantly if I really decide I want to, or be set to take the sorts of ambitious risks necessary to accelerate my tech career.
As I recall you've mentioned before that you have boosted your academic credability by completed a sequence at a well respected University. Want to share that to help the OP understand more of your "path to success"?
I currently work for a firm that is trying to "staff up" our ranks of full time EXPERIENCED programmers that would ne proficient in creating / maintaining code written in Java, Ruby, and/or C+. We have a dedicated "internal recruiter" as well as a number of external firms that send us candidates.
Since mid-May over 250 resumes have made it past the "initial phone screen" (out of about 5x) which is basically a somewhat subjective evaluation that typically is at least 10 minute but rarely more 30 where the recruiters evaluate the skills / intuition / honesty of candidates. A handful of candidates without actual "paid experience" have made it to the next round where one or more of our "programming managers" ask the candidate to demonstrate the kinds of approach to code review / problem finding / solutions design that experience has shown to be necessary.
I have personally participated in the next round or panel interviews that evaluate the potential for candidates to be productive / be a good fit. We've made offers to FIVE people. Three accepted other offers. You do the math. Really nobody wants to keep qualified people "out", we would all be very happy to have full time employees that are more consistently available than "contract" programmers or "offshore resources" but the winnowing process has shown us that there are not a whole bunch of people with real skills / decent work habits available. Some of the worst "candidates" have been the folks with "masters degrees" and no real world experience -- just about no academic setting gives students exposure to typical code that "evolves" over time and has different standards for documentation / readability. In the real world LOTS of compromises and shortcuts are made. Programmers often take less than perfect requirements from business analysts and iterate through a few use cases before the end user community is satisfied. Our "programming mangers" know that they won't have time to "walk through" this kind of code with some new hire that expects a perfect "road map" nor are they eager to pair someone without expereince with even the most "gentle" / efficent sr. programmer and impact the productivity of the team.
To be sure some of our experienced people do have MS degrees in CS , most earned them as much for personal achievement as anything and all of them did so after having some kind of programming experience. It is very different kind of thing for even not partcularly "technical" people like recruiters to quickly screen people that earned these degrees while developing the traits for success in a setting very differnce than school...
I would also STRONGLY recomend the value of using the LOCAL network of alumni from the school where you are taking classes in NY/NJ as I know our recruiters and programming staff are MUCH more skeptical of folks from schools outside our region. Additinaly they have found the "for profit" type online schools to be especially difficult to recommend as too many people that have only that kind of education do very very poorly in the panel interview that is essential to how we get things done. If you can work even a year / eighteen months in NY/NJ it will be far more likely that you will have exposure to the kinds of things that would make hiring in Chicago or elsewhere less of a risk.
Very informative. Going to take this into deep consideration.
Assuming you are in NNJ, you probably have awesome benefits and a pension. Why would you trade that in on top of a salary decline to work in the private sector?
Assuming you are in NNJ, you probably have awesome benefits and a pension. Why would you trade that in on top of a salary decline to work in the private sector?
Quality of living and interesting work is more important to me right now.
Cost of living here is super expensive.
Much higher than in Chicago.
I don't have any family or close friends here.
No reason to stay.
Last edited by usamathman; 08-05-2014 at 10:46 AM..
As I recall you've mentioned before that you have boosted your academic credability by completed a sequence at a well respected University. Want to share that to help the OP understand more of your "path to success"?
My masters degree hasn't (yet) played much of a role in my career. I added it mostly because I wanted to be able to consider moving overseas and getting non-sponsored work visas in many countries is easier with an advanced degree. Other than the general advice below, the trait that has helped my career the most is seeing where the company employing me needs help and being willing to take on an activity or project to improve that area. Always be creating value and you'll never want for a job, at least not for long.
It was useful in seeing and learning academically about some of the more state-of-the-art technologies out there, though, and I do think it was also useful in forcing me to balance and plan my time during the years I was in school. That's always a very useful skill, as chet also pointed out. Being able to plan and balance your time, and being able to handle crunch-time stresses with grace are all skills that aren't really taught in school but are highly valued in most tech enterprises or groups.
My masters degree hasn't (yet) played much of a role in my career. I added it mostly because I wanted to be able to consider moving overseas and getting non-sponsored work visas in many countries is easier with an advanced degree. Other than the general advice below, the trait that has helped my career the most is seeing where the company employing me needs help and being willing to take on an activity or project to improve that area. Always be creating value and you'll never want for a job.
It was useful in seeing and learning academically about some of the more state-of-the-art technologies out there, though, and I do think it was also useful in forcing me to balance and plan my time during the years I was in school. That's always a very useful skill, as chet also pointed out. Being able to plan and balance your time, and being able to handle crunch-time stresses with grace are all skills that aren't really taught in school but are highly valued in most tech enterprises or groups.
Hopefully that helps the OP understand a pretty solid approach to valuing more traditional schooling.
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Pretty solid advice. As I recall your have some rather well regarded credentials too...
