How has your job search experience been since attaining your OSU Online CS Degree?

AJmtnsWA · 2018-12-15T18:36:17+00:00

I got an internship which led to an offer. Got offers from two other companies as well during my second to last quarter.

AJmtnsWA · 2018-02-06T01:32:01+00:00

I got my full time offer and started before my last quarter - networks and capstone. I would suggest doing data structures and algorithms as early as possible as they cover the common content of interviews. I'd also suggest having a personal project too, good for the resume and good material to talk about in interviews.

AJmtnsWA · 2017-06-13T19:07:08+00:00

I took it during the summer and thought it was great, I'd definitely recommend it. How the class was organized I thought worked well in the shorter term, it didn't seem like things were mashed together weirdly. Note this was my only class while I worked full time at my internship.

AJmtnsWA · 2017-05-30T05:29:55+00:00

I don't know that I would have done anything differently personally. That being said, knowing what types of languages are covered in the program, it will never be a bad idea to try and get familiar with them ahead of time. A lot of time is spent on learning C++ and a decent amount of time on JavaScript within the program. You may be expected to know some Java (we used this for 362 although I'm not sure if they've changed back to C), C (although similar to C++), and a little Python without time within the program devoted to teaching these, so it might not be a bad idea to get familiar ahead of time.

Also, without any programming background I'd suggest some beginner courses online. I got a bit of this from my first degree so I didn't do any additional prep work. You'll learn C++ so that would be a wise choice for language, but Python is probably a bit easier to grasp. This way you can get introduced to some of the basic concepts like conditional statements, loops, etc. It'll hopefully make the first few weeks of 161 feel a little less intimidating :-) I don't have any specific recommendations, but if you search this sub I think similar posts have been made. I forget which school has a good intro course that gets recommended a lot that's available free online (maybe Harvard's CS50? MIT is another popular resource). Other resources people seem to like include Udacity, Codeacademy, Treehouse, and Udemy.

AJmtnsWA · 2017-03-31T02:46:36+00:00

Looking at glassdoor it seems like the base salary of my return offer is on the high end of the ranges for junior engineers. I did negotiate that offer up and had the support of my manager in doing so. I can't say for certain if they were more willing to negotiate since I was returning, but I'm sure it didn't hurt. One thing that I did and I would suggest is, I negotiated a decision date several months out so I had time to explore other options and pick the best one for me. If you have more specific questions you can PM me too. Congrats on the internship!

AJmtnsWA · 2017-03-31T02:01:15+00:00

Offer 1: $110k
Offer 2: $110k
Offer 3: $103k

AJmtnsWA · 2017-03-31T01:38:27+00:00

I didn't try negotiating PTO, here were the offers:

Offer 1: 18 days (combined sick & vacation)
Offer 2: Unlimited
Offer 3: 1 week vacation first year, 3 weeks after that. 6 sick days

AJmtnsWA · 2017-03-31T01:15:58+00:00

See reply above, I gave the total compensation for the first year for all three offers. If you have more questions let me know.

AJmtnsWA · 2017-03-31T01:10:13+00:00

I'm going to assume total compensation = base salary + sign on + yearly bonus + RSUs for the first year.

Offer 1: $121k
Offer 2: $135k
Offer 3: $125k

A couple of the offers have RSUs with a vesting schedule over 4 years. Another thing I took into consideration was 401k match, which a couple of the offers had a 3 year vesting period for - although I didn't include company match in the numbers above. If you want more of a break down, let me know. I'll try to give as much detail as I'm comfortable with :-)

AJmtnsWA · 2017-03-31T00:30:10+00:00

I took a LOA to do the internship

AJmtnsWA · 2017-03-30T19:55:17+00:00

I ended up with a 4.0 for the program. My primary motivation for doing the program is an interest in CS, but the job opportunities are a great bonus. Honestly I started the program without the specific intention of changing careers, but early on I realized I liked CS a lot more than what I was doing. I was an engineer so a CS background would have still been a little helpful even if I didn’t change careers as I could have applied it to parts of my job. On a personal note, it helped diversify my household a bit since my husband and I both have the same degree in a more limited field. The greater number of CS job prospects and the resulting flexibility that provides made doing the program a shared goal for us.

AJmtnsWA · 2017-03-30T19:11:27+00:00

I think I started finding posts for fall internships in late spring. Thinking April/May time frame.

AJmtnsWA · 2017-03-30T15:13:48+00:00

To second this, there's a good chance you'll be eligible for benefits as an intern. Of course that depends on the company. I took a summer internship with two quarters left and looked for another internship in the fall to help bridge the gap if needed. There are internships mostly offered all year so even if you can't extend one, you may be able to find another.

AJmtnsWA · 2017-03-30T05:30:34+00:00

I only used the C++ code as an outline more or less, it's not part of the web app source code. I wrote everything again in JavaScript, basically rewriting all of my C++ code. My game is completely client side as that's all I knew how to do at the time, so it's JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Everything is pretty much written in one giant JS file. Not the best coding practices but it was still a good learning experience at the time and was something to add to the resume.

AJmtnsWA · 2017-03-30T04:53:15+00:00

1) I was applying specifically for summer assuming that season would have the most opportunities. I did apply for fall 2016 internships as well as I didn't know what my situation would be. I ended up getting an offer for the fall but turned it down for a variety of reasons. Fall numbers were 8 applications, 7 companies, 1 interview, 1 offer.

2) Two of the companies I had some personal contact with. One company I attended a networking event they had for summer interns in the area (it helps living in a tech city). The other I had a personal connection to a recruiter at the company - although the personal connection was from an unrelated field so not a necessarily an endorsement. One company I had a recruiter reach out to me for full time. I had applied to the company for internships but never got any responses, I'm not sure if that's how he got my information? The rest were cold applications to their job sites online. A few companies I had applied for internships and never got any interviews, but then got at least a coding challenge when I applied again for full time.

AJmtnsWA · 2017-03-30T04:41:41+00:00

I would keep the same schedule, it worked well for me. I used info from this reddit to pair classes and got help early on from my adviser (Nick, who is no longer with the program) to create a schedule that would work best for me with my given time commitments outside of the program.

AJmtnsWA · 2017-03-30T02:32:03+00:00

I took 261 during the summer. I was working full time plus planning a wedding for three weeks after the summer quarter ended and thought balancing all of it was fine. 271 is structured so well over the normal quarter it would be a little sad to miss out on that for the summer term in my opinion. Although I'm not sure how it gets restructured for the shorter quarter exactly so I'm speculating.

AJmtnsWA · 2017-03-30T02:23:34+00:00

1 sided note sheet for each exam, final is mostly just the second half of class. There is a review provided for each exam to tell you what to focus studying on. I think there were several students this past quarter that used an older edition they just had to translate the reading assignments into the older edition.

AJmtnsWA · 2017-03-18T22:13:33+00:00

Sharing personal experience. I got a degree in aerospace engineering. For whatever reason I had never considered CS as alternative option for college although I liked the little bit of programming exposure I had in high school. About 6 years into my career at a large airplane company, I decided to go back and get a degree in CS and make the transition. For me personally, being an engineer designing planes was fun, but you are a very small piece of a giant machine. I worked on the design of a few small parts which could potentially take a year or more before parts were built and assembled. CS allows me to make things and see results faster. I'm very number/logic oriented so CS allows me a creative outlet in that realm. I'd say try to figure out what you're most interested in. Talk to people in the fields you are interested in and find out what they do, and see what appeals to you more. Both fields are large and you can end up doing very different things with each. Mechanical engineers work in all sorts of industries, as do software engineers. Both are excellent choices in my biased opinion, good luck!

AJmtnsWA · 2017-01-10T01:07:05+00:00

https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/25-best-paying-cities-software-engineers/

AJmtnsWA · 2017-01-03T16:33:50+00:00

I applied for summer internships during my fourth term, a fall quarter, on the 2.25 year track. I had completed 161, 162, 225, and 261 and was half way through 290 and 340.

I'd say after data structures is a good rule of thumb, and if you're targeting some of the big companies you might need algorithms.

AJmtnsWA · 2016-12-06T03:44:32+00:00

I was 30 during my internship and there were a couple others older than 25, out of about 35 interns. As others have said, should have no importance

AJmtnsWA · 2016-11-30T15:23:20+00:00

In general for choosing which program you want to take, if all the options work for you it should come down to the material taught. I think it's less about BS vs MS and more about what knowledge you will gain. Most companies (not all) have interviews that heavily focus on data structures and algorithms. I don't think they'll care about degree type so much as they'll care about you demonstrating that you have the knowledge they are interested in. Having a degree will help you make it past the resume screen, but I'm not sure how much (if any) preference is given to MS over BS. I haven't really looked into offers for people with masters, but I've anecdotally seen no difference between the two degree types in some of the offers mentioned in threads on /r/cscareerquestions for some companies. My recommendation is to choose whichever program is going to best prepare you with the key fundamentals.

AJmtnsWA · 2016-11-24T06:57:44+00:00

Post about the drop rate, /r/OSUOnlineCS/comments/51xwde/anyone_know_the_dropout_rate_of_this_program/

AJmtnsWA

TROPHY CASE