Computer Science Canada

Tell me about your job

Author:  deathbow2134 [ Sat May 08, 2010 9:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Tell me about your job

Hi! I'm trying to deicde what I want to do after highschool, so your answers would greatly be appreciated. Very Happy

So I'd like you to answer these questions:

1.) Describe your current job / job title.
2.) What do you like most about your job?
3.) What do you dislike most about your job?
4.) Overall, do you enjoy your job?
5.) What kind of education do you have? From what university?
6.) Any tips for people looking to enter your profession?

Thank you a bunch for your time! Very Happy

Author:  unoho [ Sat May 08, 2010 9:42 pm ]
Post subject:  RE:Tell me about your job

i work at McDonald's right now (part-time) which is alright but i hate one of my managers. she keeps on bitching about stuff all the time.

i like the fact that i get half price food and flexibility of work schedule.

i don't like unloading heavy stuff from a truck. (it's part of my job as well).

i enjoy my job when i see some of my friends are working along with me and as long as that manager doesn't work, it's all good.

overall if you are planning to get a job at mcdonalds, don't work as a full-timer because it's just not worth it.

Author:  TheGuardian001 [ Sat May 08, 2010 10:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tell me about your job

I think most of the people here are still in high school/university. Many of us don't actually have careers at this point.

Author:  btiffin [ Sun May 09, 2010 10:22 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tell me about your job

1) Self employed computer programming contractor; 22 years (with another 6 years or so of being an employee while getting to 'old guy')

2) Love programming

3) Project Management; not the principle, just the sad state of implementations

4) Absolutely

5) A little bit of post secondary, Waterloo co-op

6) Learn assembler and know how machine code works.

Cheers

Author:  Tony [ Sun May 09, 2010 2:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tell me about your job

1.) Describe your current job / job title.
Last co-op -- Software Development Engineer at Amazon.com

2.) What do you like most about your job?
Challenging problems, learning new technologies.

3.) What do you dislike most about your job?
At a large corporation with a lot of code, a lot of things tend to go wrong. Business decisions are made to simply not fix certain parts (limited resources, prioritizing work, etc.)

4.) Overall, do you enjoy your job?
It's frustrating to run into problems that you think should not have been there, but overall I typically enjoy what I do.

5.) What kind of education do you have? From what university?
Still doing CS co-op at Waterloo.

6.) Any tips for people looking to enter your profession?
Do what you are passionate about -- that is something that you are good at and will excel with. If you are really good at what you do, someone will give you money to continue doing what you would have been doing anyway.

Author:  jbking [ Mon May 10, 2010 9:14 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tell me about your job

1. Web Developer is the title. My job consists of working in a few different areas: 1) Projects - My last one was a big content management system integration that took nearly 2 years to finish as we had to customize parts of it. 2) Support tickets - Something isn't working and I need to see what has gone wrong to cause something to break that was working previously. In previous positions I helped build websites or web applications.

2. I like that I have the freedom to choose what I do and that what I do does have a major impact on the company. I'm part of the backbone of the company in some ways. I get to make some magic happen.

3. That my work can get frustrating at times since a bug isn't necessarily easily fixed or that requirements can change enough that I feel like I'm running in circles at times. As an example of the latter, consider hanging up a picture where someone tells you the picture has to move a little to the left, right, left, right, etc. about a hundred times. Wouldn't that frustrate most people? I'm also not a big fan of how my family doesn't understand what I do, but this is what I get after growing up in a small town where people aren't big fans of technology.

4. Yes, but I have been doing this now for a dozen years and when I was in university, this is when the big Web boom started as I graduated in '97. As the web has matured, so have I.

5. My degree is a Double Honor's Bachelor of Mathematics with majors in Computer Science and Combinatorics & Optimization from the University of Waterloo. I also completed the requirements for a Pure Math minor and took an advanced grad course in Asymptotic Enumeration during my academic years.

6. The big tip is to know what you like to do. Do you like to solve problems? Do you like to build systems? Do you like working with logic and handling ambiguity from users?

Author:  md [ Mon May 10, 2010 10:19 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tell me about your job

1.) Describe your current job / job title.
Security Researcher @ CRC

2.) What do you like most about your job?
Solving interesting and unique problems

3.) What do you dislike most about your job?
Working around some technology choices and architectural choices made before I started.

4.) Overall, do you enjoy your job?
Yes.

5.) What kind of education do you have? From what university?
Finishing up Computer Engineering Technology - Computing Science @ Algonquin College

6.) Any tips for people looking to enter your profession?
Do what you enjoy, and take the time to learn what that is.

Author:  yoursecretninja [ Tue May 11, 2010 11:47 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tell me about your job

1). Describe your current job/job title.
Self-employed iPhone and web app programmer (though doing less and less web stuff everyday).

2.) What do you like most about your job?
Finding time to work on my own projects. There's something really satisfying about conceptualizing and realizing your own ideas.

3.) What do you dislike most about your job?
Definitely the unpredictable work loads. For example, a few months ago I had no projects on my plate. Just spent time working on my own projects and looking for contracts. For the past two months I have been working on contracts non-stop. Pulling sixty-hours plus per week. All of my own projects had to be put on hold until business calms down again. A trade-off between fun and money. That's the nature of self-employment it seems.

4.) Overall, do you enjoy your job?
Absolutely! I love programming, and as I mentioned, when I'm not working for a client, I'm always developing my own projects.

5.) What kind of education do you have? From what university?
I am a business grad. Worked in marketing for five years, though during that time I took some university courses in a bunch of other subject areas, including CS. Now, I'm working on my BSc in Computer Science at Brock.

6.) Any tips for people looking to enter your profession?
Well actually....
- Get your degree. I've been fortunate to find work without a CS degree from experience, but it seems like it would have been a lot easier if I had my CS degree in hand already.
- As an aside, to my first point, develop a strong portfolio. With or without a degree, a portfolio of projects you have completed will help you land work.
- In the absence of work, make your own. Times are tough. When the game company I was working for ran out of funds, I was back on the the job market. I couldn't find a decent job in my area. Thus, I just started freelancing on contract work rather than sitting around waiting for opportunities to open up.
- Embrace non-cs courses. Having a bit of background in or understanding of different subject areas is very helpful in life in general, and in your career, as it gives you a toolbox of different approaches for understanding and tackling problems.

Author:  Dan [ Wed May 12, 2010 1:30 am ]
Post subject:  RE:Tell me about your job

I am still in graduate school however as with many graduate students I do teaching assistant work for the university.


1.) Describe your current job / job title.

Graduate Teaching Assistant


2.) What do you like most about your job?

Helping with labs (when they are not early in the morning), helping students learn and learning how to teach and deal with students my self.

Only technically work 10 hours a week.


3.) What do you dislike most about your job?

Marking. To many students don't read the question correctly or try some underhanded methods at completing assignments which can be frustrating. Also it can be painful when there are 80 students in a class and the prof wants all there assignments marked ASAP.

There is also a large problem with copying and plagiarism in Computer Science programs at universities and it is never fun finding or dealing with such cases.

Dealing with students complaining about the marks you give them can also be frustrating however I have not had many cases of this partly because I give detailed feed back so it is easy for students to see why I marked things the way I did.

Office hours can also be a pain as students almost never show up but I am required to be there anyway. This does give me time to mark and do my own work tho.

The pay barely covers tuition tho it is good for 10 hours a week.


4.) Overall, do you enjoy your job?

Yes. Tho it's more of a part of grad school then it is a real job.


5.) What kind of education do you have? From what university?

HBSc in Computer Science from Lakehead University, working towards a MS in Computer Science.


6.) Any tips for people looking to enter your profession?

Graduate teaching assistantships are more part of graduate studies (although normally optional) then they are any kind of profession or job in them self. However I would recommended the experience to any grad student, even if they do not require it financially, as there is alot to learn about interacting with students as an educator, marking and teaching which will be required skills if you choose to go to continue in academia. It's also a great way to get to know potential thesis supervisors if you don't already have one.


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