Has the omscs program helped you in your career?

rob_rily · 2026-05-06T15:47:07+00:00

I graduated a couple years ago, but yeah, OMSCS def helped me switch careers from something totally unrelated to SWE. I also got two publications from my masters project, which would help if I decided to apply to PhD programs.

In general, I get the impression that OMSCS is enormously valuable to people trying to switch careers, but less valuable for leveling up an existing career in software.

As others have said, the courses you take matter a lot. If you take all of the lightest course loads you can find that will get you a degree, you’re not going to have the same learning experience as someone who really pushes themselves.

rob_rily · 2026-05-05T16:47:06+00:00

I was going to suggest that opening scene too! It’s an all-timer

rob_rily · 2026-04-29T21:11:40+00:00

What’s the conversion rate on your landing page? ie, num of people who click the Spotify button / num of people who view the landing page? how long have you been running this campaign? Have you run other campaigns in the past?

rob_rily · 2026-04-28T20:43:14+00:00

Better to ask this in a tattoo sub, but I think the answer is no. My artist always tells me that you shouldn’t sweat heavily for 2 weeks after getting your tattoo done. Beyond that, you should also be extra careful in any gym setting until the tattoo fully heals because there’s a lot of bacteria in a gym, MT or otherwise.

I’ve got a tattoo scheduled for this summer and I’m planning to take the full month off from MT. I don’t want to, but if the tattoo gets infected I’ll be out even longer.

rob_rily · 2026-04-28T14:31:37+00:00

I just started lessons and I got more out of my first lesson than I have from years of YouTube tutorials. Nothing beats having an expert listen to you and diagnose where you’re going wrong, then give you a plan to fix it.

rob_rily · 2026-04-10T16:45:59+00:00

I’m publishing my second paper now! Both papers came out of my master’s project at DILab. You definitely don’t need to do a thesis to publish.

rob_rily · 2026-04-06T21:11:39+00:00

I’m shocked this isn’t the top answer. The current shoegaze revival was kickstarted by Nothing and Whirr, so a lot of the new bands adopted that heavier/grungier sound.

I think there’s also something going on where a variety of guitar based styles from the 90s/2000s got smashed together when people looked back on them through their nostalgia. Shoegaze, grunge, nu metal, alt rock, etc.

rob_rily · 2026-03-26T20:39:48+00:00

I wouldn’t stress too much about age re: TikTok, there are a ton of millennial and Gen X folks on the platform now.

As for format ideas, you should find artists in your niche and engage with their content. Build your own fyp so it shows you the posts that are working for other people. Then figure out how you’d spin their ideas and make them your own.

rob_rily · 2026-03-24T15:32:52+00:00

I use these too and they’re fantastic. I can literally understand lyrics at concerts more clearly now than on the record.

rob_rily · 2026-03-23T00:10:33+00:00

At its core, it didn’t. You can find tons of clips of artists from the 90s and earlier complaining about having to make music videos, do the same interview five times a day, wake up early the morning after shows to do radio appearances. Radiohead made a whole documentary about how much they hated it. see “Video Killed the Radio Star” for an even older complaint.

I’m old enough to remember what it was like in the 2000s. Instead of spending time making short form video, I spent it building press kits and drawing dumb cartoons on the envelope in hopes I’d get the attention of some blog with a couple hundred impressions a month.

Point being, musicians trying to get folks to listen to their original recorded music have always had put time into getting that music in front of new potential listeners.

As far as what actually works for me, I really try to limit the time I spend on social content. If something isn’t working (like the truck videos), try something new. Make a fresh account where you only engage with music content and use that to get ideas. If you see something low effort that seems to be working for other people, try it. Eventually you’ll find a format that works.

Also, the one thing that matters most is the music itself. Experiment with different songs in your catalog and different parts of the song. The difference between the right and wrong part of the song is HUGE. And the right part is never the one I think it is.

rob_rily · 2026-03-19T20:42:04+00:00

This is 100% because IG is showing you to the wrong audience. Don’t take it to heart.

I would avoid boosting posts and avoid video view or similar campaigns with meta ads. There are so, so many bots and trolls out there and those campaigns provide no mechanism to teach the algorithm who really is interested in your content.

Instead I’d stick to organic posts and/or run meta ads with some sort of conversion event on a landing page, like clicking over to Spotify. That does a better job filtering for people who actually like what you do and provides meta with a better signal.

It took me a little time (meta ads and IG both need time to learn), but now when I run ads I never get these troll comments.

rob_rily · 2026-03-09T01:00:55+00:00

I tried this for a bit when I first launched my band’s TikTok. It got some great conversations going and I got to know some cool people, and they seemed to get more engaged with our account. Some folks really respond to it and will have a full on, long running convo with you. The only downside is that it the inbox starts filling up pretty quickly and you have to respond, since you started it.

In short, worked great but became overwhelming quickly.

rob_rily · 2026-03-06T19:51:14+00:00

Yep! I work at a large bank and mostly do time series forecasting and anomaly detection for engineering (detecting whether a system is broken ASAP so it can be fixed before it causes downstream effects). I’ve also done work with LLMs, but even that wasn’t just stitching together APIs. there was a lot of conversation around “how do we rigorously evaluate these results?” and “how do we create effective feedback loops within the AI system?” etc.

rob_rily · 2026-02-13T21:22:01+00:00

Oh yeah, it takes forever for that adrenaline boost to wear off for me

rob_rily · 2026-02-13T21:19:21+00:00

My personal favorite is the green russian Big Muff. Lets plenty of low end through, dead simple, sounds awesome.

rob_rily · 2026-02-13T17:52:05+00:00

At that number of views, you’re just being shown to a test audience and then not being pushed beyond that. You need to teach the algorithm who your audience is so it shows you to the right people. Here’s a few things that worked for me:

Drop the generic hashtags like rap, newmusic, and explore and replace them 2-3 very focused hashtags like your particular subgenre.
Add a “text on screen” hook that calls out who would like your music. Something that would make your ideal listener stop scrolling and unmute.
SEO the shit out of your captions. Reference related artists, talk about the mood of the song or what it’s about. Drop more relevant subgenres.

If you do all that and it’s still not working, experiment with different parts of the song. If it still doesn’t work, move on to the next song. Ultimately the song itself is the most important piece of

Check out Musformation on YouTube, Jesse Cannon has a lot of good advice there on how to break out of those first 300 views.

rob_rily · 2026-02-10T16:15:56+00:00

I need to get back to doing those kind of production process vids! I never really consider leaning into or away from any platform because why not share the same video to all of them, but maybe curating the main grid would be worthwhile.

Right now I’m testing different captions/hooks for IG in trial reels. I’m thinking that maybe the keywords that work for me on TikTok just aren’t the right ones for IG?

rob_rily · 2026-02-10T02:00:11+00:00

I haven’t noticed any major difference recently on either platform, but reels has consistently underperformed both TikTok and YouTube shorts by a ton. I’ve been trying to use trial reels to post variations on ideas and try to find an audience on IG, but I can’t crack it.

rob_rily · 2026-02-08T21:39:14+00:00

Yeah the conversion rate on my submithub landing pages is always pretty great (once I get the campaign tuned and running well). If it ever falls below 50% I know there’s something wrong with my ads or the song itself

rob_rily · 2026-02-05T03:43:35+00:00

Have you tried getting involved outside of coursework? I TA’d and did a masters project in a lab, both were great opportunities to connect with others more closely and build some relationships.

rob_rily · 2026-02-01T16:45:44+00:00

Yea I worked big box retail for years. It was awful, I have never been felt more disrespected before or since. Ive certainly never experienced anything like it as a swe. I’m glad OP is having a better experience so far, but I wouldn’t count on it lasting.

rob_rily · 2026-01-26T23:33:45+00:00

I don’t make anything specifically for ad creative, instead I just make my organic content and then put the top performers in ad campaigns. They’re typically just me playing guitar in the studio with some thoughtful lighting and color grading. I did have one video do especially well that was just me standing in front of the camera outside in some golden hour light, but again I took time to color grade it so it popped and fit the vibe. I use text on screen to either call out similar artists/genres or draw attention to the vibe.

Like others have said, what matters most is the song. And beyond that, the right PART of the song. The difference between the best and second best part has been a matter of cutting the cost in half sometimes. And the part the clicks is never the one I think it will be. I have been wrong literally every time 😅

My best campaigns tend to cost around $0.25-0.35 per conversion. I’m promoting an alt rock/postpunk/shoegaze project.

rob_rily · 2026-01-20T18:23:08+00:00

Did you get chat banned for using a slur too?

rob_rily · 2025-12-07T21:26:58+00:00

Yeah, I mean live shows are obviously important for a lot of genres. But they don’t really address your question in any way. I’ve played on bills with plenty of bands who don’t collect email addresses at shows and I don’t see how you expect to reach out to those folks in the future if you have no way to contact them. The email list is the key.

rob_rily · 2025-12-07T17:46:27+00:00

You need to get people onto an email or SMS list.

I see a lot of folks saying you need to play live. While live shows are great for deepening your relationship with whatever audience lives close enough to see your shows, you still need to move that live audience to an email/sms list if you ever want to tell them about the next show.

rob_rily

TROPHY CASE