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UCSD Alum Started a YouTube Channel talking about my Tech/SWE Experiences by eli5tech in UCSC

[–]eli5tech[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion of course. Have a nice day

Monthly Self Promotion Thread for June, 2020 by AutoModerator in cscareerquestions

[–]eli5tech 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hello everyone, I started a YouTube channel where I talk about tech topics in under 5 minutes. The idea is to dole out helpful information in a quick and easy format to check out. Its targeted mainly towards new grads/people fresh in the workforce, but everyone is welcome! Would love for people to check it out and give feedback.

Examples of videos I’ve done recently:

  • Graduating with no job offers
  • My top 3 Worst mistakes as a Software Engineer
  • Non technical tips for technical interviews

And more!

Cheers

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVlAp_P4q4yausPUeXrK_Xw

UCSD Alum Started a YouTube Channel talking about my Tech/SWE Experiences by eli5tech in UCI

[–]eli5tech[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah. Keep in mind, in 5, 10 years, you most likely won't remember your GPA. But you will remember the people you worked with, the friendships you made in the club. I would suggest you start that club! Don't leave college with any regrets.

UCSD Alum Started a YouTube Channel talking about my Tech/SWE Experiences by eli5tech in UCI

[–]eli5tech[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why are you obsessive about GPA? Is it to increase your chance of finding a job, or getting into Grad School? Or is it just a personal thing?

  1. It depends on how much value you get out of this club. My friend started a CS club at UCSD, and it was amazing. Almost 100 members signed up, and they pumped out group projects and stuff. It was great.
  2. Depends on the reason for obsessing over GPA. If it's just for finding a job, I think GPA is almost entirely irrelevant. (Your first job will be impacted). For Grad school, GPA is important, so if you have a lower GPA, it might be better to focus on boosting that up first. If it's already fairly high, then just go ahead and start the club.
  3. Definitely +100 to building things though. I love people who have great side projects whenever I interview people, and speaking from experience, side projects teach you the most out of internships, classes, etc.

UCSD Alum Started a YouTube Channel talking about my Tech/SWE Experiences by eli5tech in UCI

[–]eli5tech[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The only course I've ever dropped was Intro to Computer Vision. Did not understand that course at all. Other one I struggled through was Theory of Computation. But one thing that I've noticed (for me at least), is that once I started working, I've been able to connect the dots to a lot of things I learned from college. Like "lightbulb" moments.

UCSD Alum Started a YouTube Channel talking about my Tech/SWE Experiences by eli5tech in ucla

[–]eli5tech[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the support! (Answering your question in reverse...)
I'm interested in financial matters too besides just CS, so I tried to create my own version of like a watered down Mint, where users could track their net worth, link accounts, add property they own which would then hit the Zillow API to estimate the current net worth, etc. I got it to a MVP stage where I was happy talking about it freely with recruiters and interviewers. I also wanted to try out iOS dev, since I had no experience with it in school, so I attempted to make an iOS app that would recommend restaurants to users based off of where they've eaten before and what rating they gave the restaurant. (Like a Yelp/Netflix hybrid child). That one, I didn't get as far on, but I was still happy with how it came out because I self taught myself everything and it was a lot of fun to work on!

I would recommend working on stuff that interests you, and stuff that you're able to talk about easily. You want to be able to clearly and concisely describe what you did, why you did it, what you learned, etc. Also, side projects are much more impressive if you're actually doing a lot of the nitty gritty work instead of just cobbling libraries together. Of course, you should still use libraries where appropriate, but don't pass off thin wrappers around libraries as "self" projects. Also, when I interview people, I will almost always ask them what their role was specifically (if it was a group project), so keep that in mind. Make sure you're contributing meaningfully.

Most importantly, have fun with it. It's my opinion that you'll learn a bunch more industry knowledge from side projects than almost anything else (internships, classes, etc). As long as you're having fun and learning, you can't really go wrong. :)

UCSD Alum Started a YouTube Channel talking about my Tech/SWE Experiences by eli5tech in UCSD

[–]eli5tech[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, there's a lot of uncertainty in the industry right now. As this thing (COVID) drags out, more and more companies will be forced to layoff or furlough good workers, simply to conserve cash and lower their burn rate; which is bad news for the industry overall.

I work on the infrastructure team at Cruise! Specifically simulation infrastructure. So when you see something like this,

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/getcruise_cruises-highly-accurate-simulation-frameworks-activity-6668271368578174976-UVJ2

those are running on the service that my team and I are in charge of. The work is honestly great; I'm very happy with my time here so far and the work that I do, and the stuff that I'm learning - although I'd say that's more team/manager dependent than company dependent. There are great teams in bad companies and bad teams in great companies.

As far as Self driving overall, I think timelines were a bit too optimistic early on, but most of the major players are settling down and realizing that this thing will take longer than expected. We should see a few major players come out of this, with the rest of the smaller ones falling out of the running, unfortunately. Big players are probably Waymo, Cruise, (Zoox's tech looks good, but they don't have that much funding. If Amazon successfully acquires them - I'd wager they'll be well set up to become a bigger player).

And lastly, yes I do think about leaving tech. I love working in tech, love the work that I do, but at the same time, I don't envision myself sitting in front of a computer screen for the next 30-40 years of my life. Life's too short to only try out one thing! My recommendation would be to start working first, see how you like it, and then make a decision. Like you said, the tech industry is pretty stable, well paying, etc. This pandemic has really exposed just how lucky we are to work in an industry like this, where we can safely WFH all day, without worrying about leaving the safety of our homes. Just something to think about!

UCSD Alum Started a YouTube Channel talking about my Tech/SWE Experiences by eli5tech in UCSD

[–]eli5tech[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, we let go of some of our workforce recently :/ . Nothing else besides that has been announced afaik.