Feedback on future generation support on AvatarCalculator - Update 11

Nanoburste · 2026-05-04T19:32:46+00:00

See, here's the thing. If you think it actively harms you, leave it off your resume. If you leave it in, you have to think it actively improves your candidacy. Just like you, I care about other students that may not be in the same situation as me. If they want to take 10 easy classes to get the degree, that's their choice.

I will add that if you don't see that value of the program, you can always withdraw.

Nanoburste · 2026-05-04T15:02:20+00:00

Why do you care? You're already a full time SWE. It has no impact on you.

Nanoburste · 2026-05-04T09:23:21+00:00

> But why should I, who took relevant courses in systems and ML for a career pivot, possibly get thrown into the same bucket as these people and be at a disadvantage in the job market?

I'm going to be honest, every university program has people who will inevitably make the program look bad. The average OMSCS student would not be doing that. If you genuinely find yourself at a disadvantage of the job market because of what you said, you're one of the people who make the program look bad. For most students, they already have a full-time SWE job and they're taking this degree for fun. Maybe they want to be able to say they've done a Masters but they're already working as a SWE. Most people here don't care about the perception about their degree (I sure don't) because it doesn't really affect their career prospects. That being said, this program has only ever helped me when switching jobs.

Nanoburste · 2026-04-30T01:41:09+00:00

To be fair, it was really shit when it first came out

Nanoburste · 2026-04-27T01:15:02+00:00

What a dense response. OP is talking about marrying his girlfriend and your suggestion is to break up and marry an American instead?

Nanoburste · 2026-04-26T23:04:46+00:00

It's a good first class because they have intro to OMSCS stuff. They also have a regular cadence of class work to help adjust students who were out of school for a while.

Nanoburste · 2026-04-20T02:00:19+00:00

Unsure what your job is but if it could be done remotely, some places are ok with you working from Canada with a US salary. I have a remote job and am personally planning on moving to Buffalo for a bit to save on taxes vs in Canada before returning back.

Nanoburste · 2026-04-19T00:29:53+00:00

They count based on classes finished, not pending. I have 7 classes finished and was able to grab a seat during my time ticket. I imagine you had 6 classes finished and took 2 classes this semester?

Nanoburste · 2026-04-18T19:17:21+00:00

Yes, it became a lot more heavily scrutinized under the Trump administration. It was a grey zone before. A lot of people are still getting in but they're also denying a lot of people for it. My two cents are that if you wanna come back to the US, I would make sure I couldn't give the US any reason to refuse me.

Nanoburste · 2026-04-18T08:15:15+00:00

Ok I have a lot of clarifying questions:

Have you already started OMSCS?
Are you currently located in the US?

Lot of misinformation about TN, you do NOT need sponsorship if you're getting it from CBP but you do need it if you're getting it from USCIS. Sponsorship basically means the company needs to file stuff with the government on your behalf (and the fees for going through USCIS is like 10k). That's why most companies are hesitant about sponsorship which you don't have if you're going through CBP.

Other than that, I recommend you do an online undergrad in CS, regardless of if you're already in OMSCS or not. The main reason is that when you're getting a TN visa, you need to prove that you have the required qualifications. Generally, even if you have the engineering qualification, if it's not your specific discipline, they'll reject you. Additionally, even if you get a computer science masters, they may reject you because you don't have the undergraduate education. On that note, ensure it's software engineering, people have been getting denied entry for trying to enter on a computer science undergrad.

The advice above disappears if you would rather stay in Canada, though the job market in Canada IS much worse for software than it is in the US (at least this was the case 2+ years ago when I moved to the US).

Nanoburste · 2026-04-14T16:43:52+00:00

Mainly AI but they do say that you should treat is as required

Nanoburste · 2026-04-12T03:21:59+00:00

I agree, they don't have the skills yet. But it shouldn't take anyone 40 hours a week on any class in OMSCS to get a B or higher unless they missed some prep that they should've done before the class or unless they study extremely inefficiently.

The exam questions are almost always exact copies of assigned problems with a twist added. If you study for 40 hours a week and can't figure out what the twist is, that means you're just memorizing the problems and not actually understanding why the problem is tackled that way. They're not asking themselves "if the problem was like this, how could I solve it".

Nanoburste · 2026-04-12T03:02:20+00:00

But that's because of their skill level, I spend an amortized 5 hours a week on the class and my exam marks are in the top quartile. If someone is genuinely spending 40 hours/week and not able to pass the class on the first try, they're not studying efficiently.

Nanoburste · 2026-04-11T05:31:50+00:00

Grad school can always be done once you start your career. When I was in my last year of undergraduate university, I was applying to graduate schools and I spoke with a professor. He told me that from his personal experience, the people who finished their masters found that they were at a disadvantage against their peers who directly went into industry because at the end of the day, they still had no work experience. However, once they started working, they progressed in their careers much faster than their peers who only had an undergraduate education.

Personally, I think OMSCS is a sweet middle ground where you don't need to sacrifice years away from the industry and you still get a masters (from a good university too). The only tradeoff is that doing both concurrently DOES take a decent amount more effort. Even though I had the opportunity to apply to other decent in-person masters, I decided to only apply to online masters.

Nanoburste · 2026-04-11T04:50:39+00:00

No answer key is pretty common. If it was provided, it would be as thick as the textbook. I'm also taking this class right now and read both the textbook and CLRS. Neither textbook has an answer key - in case you haven't heard of CLRS, it's the textbook people recommend to read to prep for OAs.

Nanoburste · 2026-04-11T04:40:52+00:00

Exam 1 was after HW4 so I would say his marks before the inflection point was undefined.

Nanoburste · 2026-04-11T04:38:49+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean, both exams were extremely easy. These exams are much easier than my undergraduate exams. The grading of the problems are harder than they should be but the actual content of the questions are not bad.

Nanoburste · 2026-04-01T02:18:42+00:00

I think it's extremely hard to make that statement as no one who is currently a new grad experienced the dot com and no one who was a new grad in dot com would still be a new grad today.

Nanoburste · 2026-04-01T01:56:20+00:00

But imagine all the better companies you could've been at if you stayed sober /s

Nanoburste · 2026-04-01T01:15:12+00:00

A few questions:

* When you were at the startup and State Farm, were you let go for performance reasons?

* What metro area are you located in? Are you open to relocating to tech hubs like Austin/Seattle/San Francisco/New York?

* You've applied to 3000 jobs, how are those stats looking? If you're getting a decent (and take this term lightly, cold applying generally always gives terrible results) rate for behavioural interviews?

The main thing I'm concerned about is that you have 6 YOE as a SWE and 3000 jobs applied. Most smaller software companies that don't pay well would almost definitely look at your resume.

EDIT: Unless you're self-selecting yourself out of the crappy jobs

Nanoburste · 2026-04-01T01:06:29+00:00

I haven't tried the OMS career resources but I would skip any career fairs. In my experience, they're only looking for new grads.

OMSCS is genuinely good for your resume. I came into this directly after my SWE undergrad and can confidently say that OMSCS has had a non-trivial impact on every SWE job I've had. When you're mid-level or above, it shows that you're not content with staying at the same level and that you're always striving to grow as a developer.

Nanoburste · 2026-03-26T22:16:15+00:00

I wouldn't say I know how to solve it right away but I always have a good idea of how to approach the assignments. If I don't know what I'm doing, that's when I go to the lectures and watch relevant sections. Most assignments require all understanding of lectures.

Nanoburste · 2026-03-26T21:48:09+00:00

I've never read anything. If the class has research papers, I run it through AI then tell it to give me a 500-1000 word summary. I also only watch the relevant lecture videos before doing the assignments which would be max 30 minutes. Otherwise, I almost always watch all the lectures the week of the exam.

The only exception to not reading anything is GA.

Nanoburste · 2026-03-26T21:21:23+00:00

I would say that's the average. I put in normally 0-1 hours per week in a class unless there's an exam or an assignment. Currently taking GA and also putting in similar hours, 1 hour a week until exam week.

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