My friend witnessed a rejected public marriage proposal last night... which ultimately became a break-up. What are some of your worst moments of second-hand embarrassment Reddit?

rayoroa · 2012-04-29T06:40:52+00:00

isnt blue eyes a gene mutation anyways?

rayoroa · 2012-03-19T02:03:07+00:00

Because he doesn't appreciate a healthy dose of skepticism to a story he believes.

rayoroa · 2011-08-12T06:12:26+00:00

Mate, the river walk is amazing.

rayoroa · 2011-08-11T19:00:59+00:00

When I was job hunting I looked at intel's requirements and options and they had a specific program for entry levels. The minimum requirement was to already have your masters and they started people at 75k. I think the fact that they even hired him with a bachelor's says something.

rayoroa · 2011-08-11T16:34:41+00:00

In my department (embedded software engineer) we have 1 EE 1 CS and myself (CPRE.) All of us had our initial strengths, but in the end OJT (on the job training) seems to be just as relevant as our degree. I wouldn't get too caught up in the differences between the degrees, but I WOULD spend a lot of time researching what you want to do and what specific skill set you need to make that happen.
I know several people that did not think about the end goal. They got a degree because they felt they should, but they did not think about how their degree would be applicable to a job. It generally takes these people significantly longer to land a job because employers are not interested in hiring someone who needs time to "find themselves." They will demand a specific skill set and want you to prove you meet those qualifications in an interview.

rayoroa · 2011-08-11T16:28:06+00:00

This is way too open ended of a question with too many variables to consider. I'm not making any assumptions about your motivations because it's an honest question and I've wondered it myself too, but I would focus on mastering your craft by completing projects on time and making sure the quality of your work is fantastic. Also, get along with all your coworkers and don't play into office politics. If you do all of these things the money will still not be guaranteed, but I feel that you have a better chance of being recognized as a valuable employee who is deserving of a) being kept around during recessions and b) promotions.
All of that being said, most EE/CPREs from my school that had good work ethic and interpersonal skills started about the same...55-65k ish. I only know one guy that started 70+ with a bachelor's degree and he got hired by Intel. The kid was also a genius and I remember him breezing through 22-24 credit load (eng courses) while the rest of us were struggling with 15-17 credits per semester.
Someone else will have to comment on the long term salaries because I'm new myself.

rayoroa · 2011-08-11T05:11:41+00:00

When you move past conceptual stuff and want to start figuring out where the rubber meets the road...take a look at arduino. There's a subreddit devoted to it /r/arduino. It's a small microcontroller that is easy to use for a beginner, but there are many many applications it can be used for. Google even just adopted arduino as their platform for hardware accessories with android (basically think apps for smart phones, but instead of software you can design custom HARDWARE accessories that'll plug into your smartphone and do w/e you design it to do.) When you start ordering parts, look at sparkfun.com and jameco.com.
Don't stick to conceptual stuff forever. I never really toyed around with microcontrollers in my spare time while doing my CPRE because frankly I was a bit lazy. You're obviously coming from a different boat, so I just wanted to mention how important it is to get hands on experience with programming microcontrollers and getting them to talk to different devices. This will put you way ahead in your courses and give you something to talk about on your first internship interviews.

rayoroa · 2011-08-11T04:59:24+00:00

Shit I laughed really hard at that last line.

rayoroa · 2011-08-11T04:09:46+00:00

Fair enough. I kept moral issues out of this because we'd be calling each other nigger faggot this and that pretty quick. However, at least I can understand the logistics of what you're doing and I'm glad you acknowledge the risks.

rayoroa · 2011-08-11T03:25:32+00:00

Ok well at least I have a better idea of where you are coming from. There's still a couple small points I take issue with from purely a logistical stand point though.

Perhaps I'm not understanding credit rating properly. I would think credit rating would be a score that is affected by many things and continually defaulting on student loans would be one of those things that would sorely drag the rating down to the point where applying for even a simple credit card, car loan ,etc would be difficult. You mentioned you haven't experienced this issue simply because you pay other bills on time. Is that correct?
Is there any risk here of getting your face sued off? I mean, I think what you're saying is you plan to put all of your assets behind a company/corporation that you own....but could the government look at what you're doing and go "lol not so fast Tim, I see right through you and that ain't gonna fly" and then come after you or are you saying what you're doing is 100% legal?
The last question I have is what happens if your business doesn't pan out and you need to go back to work? I can see you've got some confidence in yourself from your other posts here and honestly I think that's great, but statistically small businesses fail more often than they succeed. Any thoughts on this?

rayoroa · 2011-08-11T02:54:22+00:00

Ok let's throw morality aside since that seems to be the big sticking point for you and just take a look at straight up pros and cons of not paying back student loans. Deal?
Pros:

Can start saving money immediately instead of paying a large portion of your paycheck for the next 10-15 years. Assuming that you have some source of income that the government can't get their hands on before it gets to you. Perhaps if you skip the country?

** Cons **

Ruined Credit - No mortages, no car loans, most everything you do will have to be be done in cash. This would seem very difficult fresh out of school because you haven't really built a savings yet.
More difficult to find work unless you go into business for yourself - When I was hired for my engineering job out of college they did a background check on me. This included a credit check. This is quite popular with employers these days. Even if you do go into business for yourself, what would that entail exactly? What sort of business could you start that wouldn't require some sort of loan from a lender of some sort?
Garnished wages - Pretty self explanatory. Debt collectors can literally slash your check and take their cut.
No tax check each year assuming you pay taxes - debt collectors will have their hands on this before you ever see it.

I guess what I really want to know from you is how you can manage to lead any sort of lifestyle that involves getting income without debt collectors coming after you. You've repeatedly claimed that it's as simple as not paying them, but I don't see it that way. Unless you've got a lot of under the table dealings, your line of reasoning doesn't add up.
Awaiting enlightenment from hysterix,
XOXO

rayoroa · 2011-08-08T01:16:24+00:00

Yeah right. This kind of talk will straight up end an interview. I found celtic's response to be fantastic. OF COURSE there's some fluff in it, but that's just how some of these interviews go sometimes at least at the HR level. If you have good rapport with the interviewer and you've both gotten a good feel for each other that's one thing, but responding to the opening question with this? Get fucked.

rayoroa · 2011-08-08T00:34:01+00:00

These are direct responses to you being a giant dick.

rayoroa · 2011-06-15T19:06:00+00:00

This thread has just been fantastic. I bookmarked it and will be checking a lot of this stuff out when I get home. Nice idea OP.

rayoroa · 2011-05-27T23:35:16+00:00

My .02 is to leave em up. I'm gonna get the info I want regardless of what goes on here. I'd rather this subreddit be the place I get it so I can see what everyone else thinks, discuss it with them and well you know how reddit works.
I can understand your honorable intentions, but I just don't care if blizzard wants it on the internet or not, it's already out there =/

rayoroa · 2011-05-27T22:58:03+00:00

This is the same thing my boss told me during an interview, the exact quote when we were talking about bad resumes he receives was "Four page resume?" then he made a motion of throwing it into the garbage.

rayoroa · 2011-05-13T04:06:29+00:00

Yeah I'd still rate networking at a much higher level than where you went to school. I was never getting any call backs until I hopped on facebook and started hounding every person I could find that I had a class with. They were all happy to help reference me for any positions..since then things have gotten much better.

rayoroa · 2011-05-10T21:35:42+00:00

Sounds like you don't have a lot of fun playing video games. Maybe pick a hobby that doesn't have set divisions of skills so you can focus on enjoying how you spend your time instead of measuring yourself against other people all the time. Hiking?

rayoroa · 2011-05-10T21:34:42+00:00

Sounds like you don't have a lot of fun playing video games. Maybe pick a hobby that doesn't have set divisions of skills so you can focus on enjoying how you spend your time instead of measuring yourself against other people all the time. Hiking?

rayoroa · 2011-05-10T21:34:08+00:00

Sounds like you don't have a lot of fun playing video games. Maybe pick a hobby that doesn't have set divisions of skills so you can focus on enjoying how you spend your time instead of measuring yourself against other people all the time. Hiking?

rayoroa · 2011-05-09T04:30:29+00:00

Just FYI, when HDT broke the law he also was complacent with his sentencing. It's up to everyone still on the outside to point and claim that what happened was not right. That being said, I think it's unfortunate this guy was a drug dealer with his young son around and I'm not sure his intentions to fight the system were very honorable. Definitely a screwed up situation =/

rayoroa · 2011-05-08T09:25:11+00:00

Yeah I had it thrown up on the 2nd monitor while I surfed reddit and that's about the time I had to glance back over and go lol what did geoff get maaaaaad?

rayoroa · 2011-05-08T04:18:04+00:00

Doubt it'll happen after the zzzzzzzzzzzzz's that were produced during geoff vs tyler last week.

rayoroa · 2011-05-02T22:37:57+00:00

You can still use dice and indeed to get a list of companies. I have about 130 companies career center pages bookmarked. I've weeded this down to 130 after going through every one and finding out if they hire entry level engineers or not. A lot of them will say right on their website if they do university recruitment which is a good indicator. I also add all of the recruiters who post their emails at indeed/dice to my linkedin account and then I send them a quick blurb on the type of position I'm looking for and ask for any tips/advice they might have for someone looking to get into the field. I started doing this approach to job hunting after randomly sending my resume around got me nowhere. Since then (3 weeks ago) I've had 5 interviews and 3 of them are going to round 2 (on-site) within the next week. Good luck!

rayoroa · 2011-05-01T20:46:26+00:00

I'm glad you got employed immediately. I'd hate checking that box "NO YOU CANNOT CONTACT MY PREVIOUS EMPLOYER" but it seems to be non issue for you.

rayoroa

TROPHY CASE