A Question for Those in the Industry

[wallshot]

like I wax saying earlier, college is not really that important. Going to to MIT or CalTech is a guaranteed job/interview, anything less will help you get 1-2 more interviews than your average school. I went to a mostly engineering school, which helped bring in tech companies. Your school will only "help" on the first interview/job, which is why I mentioned the career center. I would expect OSU to bring in > 100 companies 1-2 times a year.

Everything else after your first job will be on experience and school will be secondary. I would say that you would be hard pressed to get a 2nd job with out working 2-5 years in the first one, depending upon performance. I personally got my second job after 4yrs, but would not recommend looking with in 2 yrs of starting as you should take that time to learn about the company and try to get yourself promoted to prove your potential.

I do not look at school at all and only use the company's imposed GPA limit to screen resumes. I look for leadership and experience when screen my resumes. Leadership and experience usually make job offers easy to give out. I cannot help you on leadership , but experience can only come from summer interns and co-ops. Summer interns and co-ops will also help you find out if you actually like this stuff.

I am not sure on OSU's current recruiting status, but my guess is that it is a great time to go there and you should enjoy it. Don't forget that homework is ?% of your grade, like I did, and try to keep yourself busy with fun things and learning and you'll be fine.

...In relation to keyclone, but off topic...if you have any crazy rule the world/company thoughts, I highly recommend a technical PhD as psuedo fast track, although 10-20 yrs of rock star performance is needed in tandem.

[Boylston]

Being an engineering manager, is there a point (after Xish many years of working in the industry) that which college I got the degree from becomes eclipsed by my actual experience and what companies I have worked for?

And kind of rough idea would be great (because ohio state used to suck ass but now its very selective, and unfortunately carries the older stigma to a lot of older employers as i have been told)

There is absolutely a point. It depends on the strength of your work experience as a professional, and the relative strength of your education. My undergraduate Chem Eng degree from Texas A&M (a strong school, but not amazingly top-tier) was eclipsed by my professional experience in 3-4 years. Not that it didn't count, but just that it became a minor point on my resume.

"BS Chem Eng, Texas A&M, Completed 1995" - That's it.

I do not look at school at all and only use the company's imposed GPA limit to screen resumes.

I have found a big difference in performance between students from different tiers of schools, moreso with graduate level work, but also with undergraduate engineering hires. There are exceptions to every rule, and NOTHING replaces good interviewing/screening, but I have lower expectations from students graduating from average (or worse) colleges. This is not educational snobbery, it's a lot of correlation with job performance I've seen over my career.

[Mudd]

Can't say much about the hardware side, but for software I would say where you got your degree or in which program doesn't mean all that much. Like many others have mentioned already it may help you get your foot in the door, but after a few years its all about your experience. That being said, some schools no longer have languages like C/C++ in their curriculum and I find it difficult to offer an interview to anyone who doesn't know what a pointer or memory allocation is. Of course that all depends on the type of programming you want to get into.

[Boylston]

That being said, some schools no longer have languages like C/C++ in their curriculum and I find it difficult to offer an interview to anyone who doesn't know what a pointer or memory allocation is.

FORTRAN 77 for the win!

[Schwarz]

Anyone Hiring? I am graduating in May with a Comp Sci degree and don't have anything locked down yet.

[Djarid]

This isn't relevant but I wanted to add another perspective to this discussion.

I am a senior Active Directory specialist for a very large global company so we are talking systems rather than hardware or software development.

I Joined the British Army at 16 and so skipped higher education. I retrained when I left the Army at 27 and moved into corporate IT with zero experience (resettlement training). Hard work, diligence and and eagerness to learn have provided a great base on which to build experience allowing me to climb the IT ladder To be fair to the academic process, I was a linguist in the Army and so spent several years in an intense (8hours + 3 hours homework, 5 days a week) academic environment learning Russian, Spanish and Serbo-croat.

While this is the UK, not North America, I would say that experience, both vocational and of life, can open doors even without a degree.

NB: Ironically I am considering doing a correspondence degree in mathematics but that is just for interest