On Wednesday 28 May 2008 04:25:47 Marion Go wrote: > Guys, what are the job opportunities available for us ComSci graduates?
don't use that as the measure of which course to take. there are always job opportunities for both nurses and compsci, AS LONG AS YOU'RE GOOD. the IS-HE-GOOD requirement is more important for compsci (or, rather, software development or other IT work) because the skills and kinds of intelligence required are less common in people. nursing also requires a minimum level of intelligence, but the *kind* of intelligence it takes is more common in the population. if you take computer science and plan to have a career in IT (development, analysis, management, or some sort of clerical work that involves computers) then you need to *like* IT, problem solving, logic problems. do you? if you don't, or if you don't know, did you take a programming course (you should have, after all, you were in for 2 years). did you at least pass? did you do better than pass? did you enjoy the class? did you write any programs for fun (not assigned in class) and enjoyed the experience? if you can't answer yes to at least one of those, two yes answers probably means that you *might* (not certain, not even probably, but you *might*) do OK in IT. 3 yes answers make it probable that you'll do OK. more than three, that you'll do well. if you notice, my standards are pretty high. but that's because i've interviewed enough compsci people (had enough brains to graduate from compsci, or went to a school that didn't challenge them enough, or didn't fail enough dumbasses) who could not program a for-loop, let alone one of my relatively simple interview-level programs. now, those standards are for software developers. the standards for, e.g., business analysts, testers, web designers etc are lower (in fact, for web designers, they're completely different). the job market for business analysts is very good, IF YOU'RE ANY GOOD. it's smaller than the market for developers (in the philippines, anyway), but that's because there are more people qualified to be BAs than there are qualified to be developers. the market for testers is even smaller than for BAs (not because they're not needed, but because in the philippines, jobs of lower level people are subsumed into your job, so if you're a developer, you do some BA, if you're a BA you do a lot of testing, so only very large companies with explicit testing budgets have actual dedicated testers on staff. it's important to choose a field that you'll be happy in, not just one where you'll make a lot of money. it's particularly important to choose correctly if you're considering IT or development. if you're not good at IT or development, it's possible to find a job (because the market is so tight, employers are desperate to hire). but if you're going to be one of those duds who just fill a chair and either don't do good work or actively do bad work that needs to be fixed by the better developers on the team, well, at some point you're going to know you're the dud and you're going to be sad. in the meantime, everyone else will know you're a dud and be pissed off. don't go there. in my own hiring, if a developer candidate has an IQ of less than 120, i won't even interview. you might test that first (iqtest.com has inflated numbers, subtract 10, tickle.com is more accurate, but take both). find some logic puzzles (those that require only logic, no algorithms/data structures knowledge needed). some general purpose (but not too hard ones) used to be available in reader's digest. not sure if those are still there, but there should be a lot online. run through those. if you can solve intermediate/difficult ones, you will do well in IT (but not necessarily in development, that's still a maybe, although you might do OK in development). if you *enjoyed* solving the problems, then you'll probably do well in development. if you don't enjoy solving those problems or if your IQ isn't above 120 (or, let's be generous, set the threshold at 115, but frankly, 115 IQ developers are commonly duds) then don't go into development. you might still be OK doing business analysis. for that, i might set my IQ bar at 115 and require enjoyment and success solving those logic puzzles. > What are the possible jobs I can land when I finish the course? software developer, web developer, business analyst. the weaker grads who have some artistic sense can do web design. but there are a lot of people doing web design, there's a lot of competition. and some of that competition are on this list, and they're good. there's not much tester work in the philippines. if you immigrate you can do tester work, but that's not as highly paid as BA or developer. > Naay mga companies dsinhi sa Cagayan nga usually ga-hire ug mga ComSci > graduates? if you see above, you'll understand why i think this is the wrong question. one very important pointer to success is the ability to ask the right question. > I was thinking of majoring in IT instead of Software Engineering, is that a > good choice? maybe, see above. tiger -- Gerald Timothy Quimpo [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bopolissimus*blogspot*com http://monotrematica*blogspot*com Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it? -- Brian Kernighan _________________________________________________ Kagay-Anon Linux Users' Group (KLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (http://cdo.linux.org.ph) Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
