My DD received her generous offer at the beginning of her Senior year because of her summer internship. I do believe there would have been other offers as well. She has had recruiters calling her but it is a great job offer, doing something she enjoys and makes her Senior year a lot less stressful.
It’s not about the school. It’s one thing to go through a cs degree and just take the classes, do the projects, etc. It’s another to do all that and learn the separate skill of doing tech interviews. There are a lot of technically talented kids at my school who cannot for the life of them get it together enough to put together a proper technical resume and pass a technical interview. And so those people don’t make it to the top cs companies that everybody thinks of when they think cs.
@CourtneyThurston is correct. My DD had to do multiple phone technical interviews, sometimes back to back, to get her internships. After you pass that hurdle, you have to wait for project matching which my DD was passed over twice for. She did read the book Cracking the Technical Interview and it did help, at least with your knowledge of the process and a lot of helpful hints.
Wait till your son gets over 45 and laid off with a computer science degree.
Everybody gets laid off at some point. My DH, 3X in the last 5 years but has been able to find work within a short period of time even though he is in his late 50’s as an EE. I’ve been laid off as an accountant. My neighbors in marketing - laid off multiple times but had much harder time finding new jobs. It is not like it was, employees seem to be very disposable. You have to keep your skills up and keep networking.
Interesting thread.
I don’t think you understand how the H1-B program is supposed to work.
H-1B’s (and pretty much all visa programs) require that the H-1B recipient be paid the prevailing wage for that occupation in that area, or the actual wage paid by the employer to workers with similar skills and qualifications, whichever is higher. If you are replacing a current employee or hiring a new employee with an H-1B visa holder at half the salary you are paying for similar employees, you are almost certainly violating the law.
In addition, using an H-1B worker cannot adversely affect the working conditions of workers similarly employed. If you are dumping hundreds of employees to replace them with H-1B employees, I think maybe that adversely affects those employees.
Companies get around the expense and paperwork of directly hiring H-1Bs by hiring other companies to bring in replacement workers, many of which are compromised almost entirely of H-1Bs, and are some of the most abusive (google “h1b benching” for example), racist, sexist companies around. How is it possible that 90% of a company’s workforce in the U.S. is single, young male Indians who are here on H-1B’s? There is so much fraud and abuse.
But the gov’t is not interested in enforcing the law for some reason. I wonder why…
Eliminating subcontracting and outsourcing companies (Tata, Wipro, IBM, Infosys, etc.) from H-1B visas would solve the problem described in #205 while leaving plenty of H-1B visas for high end talent that currently has difficulty being hired directly because the subcontracting and outsourcing companies are currently hogging most of the visas.
Note the pay levels for the subcontracting and outsourcing companies versus those who hire directly for their own work: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx
I’m late to the discussion, but I’ll add my own experience in recruiting IT people is that a degree (or certification) is far from an indicator that the individual will be more than minimally competent. I saw many, many applicants who had completed the fairly rigorous MCSE (Microsoft) certification program who were clueless when presented with a real-world problem like a down server.
Candidates who hacked together complex home networks in their spare time always outperformed those who had passed the tests but didn’t find the technology interesting outside of business hours. Many individuals are lured into tech education by the promise of high salaries, but without a deep interest in the work they are unlikely to be successful.
I’m sure just about every CompSci student who gets through Stanford, CMU, or MIT actually does know a lot - they had to be pretty motivated just to get in the door. They won’t be unemployed. But, there are many other programs that aren’t as selective about whom they admit and that turn out graduates who have no great love for or understanding of the technology they studied.
According to a few HS friends who run computer technology departments and done hiring for them, their experiences with MCSE certification holders was that they were so clueless when given a “live test” of tech issues such as a desktop that won’t boot up, screwed up network, etc that they tended to be very wary of them.
Especially after they took the exams for MCSE certification themselves to see how rigorous it was and felt it was very lacking in that regard.
Their assessment: someone who is good at prepping through multiple prep books and taking multiple choice/standardized exams could easily pass the exam with high marks without ever actually touching an actual Microsoft Windows system. In short, their firsthand experiences with the MCSE certification program caused them to be further disillusioned as to its rigor.
Could not agree more. In this thread and others I have stated our most impactful question is “What programming do you do in your free time”.
Back when I was in programming those who hacked stuff together in their basements were usually the worst programmers - couldn’t follow the rules - wrote code that might have worked but couldn’t be maintained - don’t know if this is still true today. Not a fan of those quickie certificate programs - a good Computer degree should teach you the skills and techniques to do stuff correctly and be successful.
Re: Passion and outside projects
The difference between what @kiddie and @Roger_Dooley is often if they also have proper training (usually a CS degree) where they can learn proper paradigms, conventions, and general design and then apply them to their outside projects.
Additionally, the word “hacked” has a very negative connotation today, usually used to describe what kiddie mentioned.
Basically, good design and external passion for technologies are independent, and while passion and interest is a good differentiator, good design is a base prerequisite.
Have not been on this site for a few weeks, so just catching up.
I would like to add that entrepreneurship does not require the skill itself, just the idea and ability to execute building it. I successfully created and sold two tech companies and never set a foot in any computer science class anywhere and cannot write a program or create software if you paid me. However, I knew how to hire people who could and how to manage them.
I agree that the fun part of entrepreneurship is only the customer can fire you - been there a couple times. The really fun of it is bouncing back big time with an even better product that pulls the customers back in.
Experience trounces new talent every day of the week, assuming one is comparing ROI using the same production processes and methods. However, given different, read as new, production processes/methods, newer talent can easily have the edge and experience becomes less relevant.
Google/Facebook both prefer new grads and people under 27 if you are 40 you are ancient!! Both companies prefer
H1 visa employment to get cheap Indian/Chinese engineers to do the work fast and cheap with no worry of families and obligations.
Half life is what 2.5 years for computer programming right now? Still pays well, but for how long? Who knows?
This is some of the more ridiculous advice on here. Mandarin is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn. Russian is slightly easier, but still takes many years to become fluent. While the top Chinese and Russian universities are very good, I doubt they’re giving away many of the slots to international students, especially Americans.
The irony is American give up American spots to international students all the time 
or immigrants being in Texas we get flare ups on the news from time to time. I think both are very wrong!!
In the case of some international universities in China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, it’s comparatively easier to gain admission as an international student/overseas Chinese/Korean/Japanese than it is as a domestic born. However, there may be some serious adjustment difficulties due to language, differences in K-12 preparation, and possibly onerous obligations/duties for some.
One good example of this was a HS classmate from my year who ended up at #1 National Taiwan U as an engineering major. He admitted that even though his national college entrance exam scores were good for engineering, they wouldn’t have been high enough for NTU had he been a domestic student.
He also recounted that if he had not gone to our STEM-centered public magnet, he’d have been academically overwhelmed because the vast majority of students in his engineering program were well-ahead of most advanced/college prep US high school graduates because the ROC educational system introduces some advanced math subjects at a much earlier stage of education for college-track students AND specialization of areas even among most college prep students* start in high school (STEM or humanities/social sciences/arts tracks).
One major minus to taking this path…especially for male overseas Chinese or South Korean students who didn’t emigrate out of S. Korea before around 6 years of age or their parents failed to file paperwork to renounce South Korean citizenship before reaching the age of ~16** even if one has obtained US citizenship is the possibility of being liable for mandatory military service in the ROC(Taiwan)*** or South Korea after staying over a certain period/upon arrival respectively.
Also, if one is from a Russian immigrant family, Russia still has mandatory military service obligations and considering the deadly brutalizing hazing endemic within the Russian armed forces dating back to the Brezhnev years, probably wouldn’t want to risk it.
Ironically, while Mainland China does have mandatory military service, it’s for domestic students only so that’s one issue international students…including overseas Chinese won’t have to worry about. And even for the domestic students, the vast majority won’t ever be called up due to the large pool of available people of military age and I’m not sure Mainland universities still mandate military drills/training for incoming domestic first year students like they did when I did my study abroad there in the late '90s.
- One exception is if one attends an American international high school.
** One Korean-American colleague who spent the vast majority of his life in the US, attended mostly US K-12 schools, and can barely utter basic Korean can’t go to South Korea or territories under its jurisdiction as he emigrated after the age of 6 and his parents didn’t realize they needed to file paperwork to renounce his original South Korean citizenship before 16 even if he obtained US citizenship.
If he does, he risks being arrested upon arrival by South Korean authorities and being obligated to serve out his mandatory military service as any other South Korean citizen under South Korean law. Even renouncing his South Korean citizenship at this point won’t work as if he/his parents failed to file paperwork to renounce that citizenship after he turned ~16, he can only renounce it AFTER fulfilling his mandatory military service obligations.
*** If I lived and worked/attended school in the ROC(Taiwan) for more than a few months straight I would be liable to be called up to serve the mandatory military service obligation. Incidentally, my HS classmate did end up getting called up and served his 2 years sometime in the late '90s/early '00s after graduating from NTU.
Context is everything - given the thread is about hiring and getting a job by american students, the problematic issue is you are an American citizen.
As per the current trade agreements, one major stipulation to be advantageous to a US company is the hire is not an american citizen. This automatically allows for no payroll taxes, no Obamacare enrollment and associated costs, and no 401K or pension obligations. All the aforementioned would have to be given to an american citizen; therefore, from a foreign school, any american company would more quickly hire the native classmate of the american student before the american.
I attended a conference where the the newest “impending” trade pact, TTP, was being explained and how best for companies to take advantage of its provisions. In addition to not having to pay for the above mentioned in the second paragraph for a foreign worker, an american company, if it is in partnership with a foreign company need not hire american workers at all - at a huge, huge savings to costs.
For example, if my company is building X in the US and my partner is a foreign company who is a member of TTP, it would then be legal for my company to import 100% foreign workers for the project and never hire one american. In some cases, depending on the project (some defense related projects and few others dealing with security-based IP) need to have certain representative american hires, but overall, the TTP essentially puts wages into parity arose all TTP trading partners. - meaning a substantial drop in US wages.
Now wages in the US will not drop per say per individual, but there would be fewer available jobs in that sector for US hires to get and many people would become underemployed (taking job in a lower paying sector) or become unemployed. This, the aggregate US payroll would drop.
So factoring the foreign degree approach, the foreign degree may be easier to get and cheaper to achieve, but unless you give up your american citizenship, not sure what advantage it gives the student because it more advantageous and much cheaper to hire the non-ciitzen classmate.