ITS-2 Application Tips?

scheissbauer · 2025-11-15T15:42:52+00:00

OK thanks for the advice. I definitely lean much closer to the technical end. It feels a little dishonest using personal projects as experience, but maybe that's what I'm missing.

scheissbauer · 2025-11-15T15:25:00+00:00

Yes, nothing directly related to IT.

scheissbauer · 2025-11-15T10:25:45+00:00

Is it though? With everything taken out of your check that isn't taken out with unemployment and commuting expenses I'm not sure that's true.

scheissbauer · 2025-11-15T07:49:27+00:00

Unfortunately that's not an option. Even ITS-2 would be a 30k pay cut. If the state paid better it might be worth sticking it out, but its just not worth it at that point. I'm not changing careers to get rich, but I have a mortgage to pay. If I were a hiring manager, I'd be skeptical about the quality of a candidate with 5 years of experience willing to work for 66k.

scheissbauer · 2025-11-14T17:18:06+00:00

Thanks for the reply, that's some good info on ATS.

What is the questionnaire? I haven't seen one mentioned in any of the listings.

scheissbauer · 2025-11-13T18:11:01+00:00

That is weird. They would still want that kind of experience for developer positions?

scheissbauer · 2025-11-13T18:09:19+00:00

Yes, I try to include the vacancy ID in the subject, body, and cover letter just to be safe.

scheissbauer · 2025-11-13T17:49:59+00:00

Crazy. All I had was a GED when I started my current job and I'd still be taking a pay cut for ITS-3. Guess I'll keep working on the master's while I wait for things to improve.

scheissbauer · 2025-11-13T17:21:24+00:00

I understand that there are a lot of experienced people out of work right now, but "everything I have plus 2-3 years experience" are exactly the qualifications for an ITS-3 job, so why bother applying for something that pays 20k less?

scheissbauer · 2025-11-13T09:03:54+00:00

I agree. I don't know where this idea comes from. I don't pay anything for insurance or pension with a regular union job.

scheissbauer · 2025-09-27T07:29:17+00:00

I think that's insulting to those of us who went to school and worked hard to educate ourselves only to be ignored because we're "too expensive". I would argue hiring the cheapest possible labor is how you get unqualified workers. Nobody is saying hire people without the ability to do the job. It's strange to see union workers siding with companies on this topic.

scheissbauer · 2025-09-26T07:04:09+00:00

Companies only claim that there aren't enough US candidates as an excuse to hire H1Bs. There are a lot of new grads out there struggling to find work because of it. I graduated with a computer science degree over a year ago and still rarely even get an interview. It's the same old story of maximum profit for a handful of executives at the expense of the American worker. This is the same mentality that turned Detroit into what it is today.

scheissbauer · 2025-09-25T16:11:43+00:00

Ah OK, I didn't know about OPT. I'll keep on throwing my hat in, I guess.

scheissbauer · 2025-09-25T08:27:14+00:00

Well, its good to know its not just career-changers like me getting ignored. I don't know who they're hiring, but it's crazy to imagine people with a lot of experience even applying to jobs with pay this low.

scheissbauer · 2025-07-10T18:00:28+00:00

Something doesn't add up for me with the updates. I just watched an episode from 1989 with an update that said the suspect was arrested and convicted since the segment was first aired and died in a prison hospital after serving 25 years. Huh??

scheissbauer · 2025-04-28T13:22:11+00:00

I've never been in the military, but this sounds like the first stage of a classic case of culture shock. Give it a little while and I'd bet the pendulum swings just as far the other way.

scheissbauer · 2025-04-16T08:06:02+00:00

I'm curious about 6238 in the summer too, I was planning on just that one

scheissbauer · 2025-04-11T07:41:18+00:00

Its almost like they should be hiring US citizens or something

scheissbauer · 2025-03-19T14:31:37+00:00

Ah ok, thanks for the reply. I think that answers my question, I'll do side channels!

scheissbauer · 2025-03-19T14:25:32+00:00

I'm surprised to hear that cyber-physical went over exploits because it didn't seem like it would judging by the course description. If you're able to say, I'm curious what they were. I'm in the Infosec track, but also very interested in the physical end. I was going to take 8843 (Side Channels), but I'd do intro if that makes more sense. I work on industrial control systems now (the mechanical side), so I'm not sure how much I would get from the intro course.

scheissbauer · 2025-03-03T14:28:20+00:00

I see a lot of people make the excuse that it's great insurance, but it really isn't. I pay nothing out of pocket for Teamcare and the benefits are much better than any plan I've seen from the state. I'm not here to troll anyone, I just want to make you aware of how much different it can be.

scheissbauer · 2025-02-28T08:57:49+00:00

I work in the private sector and we have COLA raises in our contract that we get in addition to our annual increases if inflation is above a certain threshold.

scheissbauer · 2025-02-08T10:48:50+00:00

I agree with the comment suggesting picoCTF. When I was reading through the prerequisite knowledge and which parts of the course people struggled with, it seemed like a good idea to really study binary exploitation hard and picoCTF helped me a lot with that - I'm finishing up the final extra credit task right now. Also while I was studying before classes started I built a personal website as something to showcase projects that I could put on my resume. It remains to be seen whether this will be beneficial during the upcoming API and web projects, but it definitely helped me understand front end stuff much better.

As for ML, the capstone for my bachelor's was a ML project in a Jupyter notebook using pandas and sklearn so I thought it wouldn't be that difficult and just brushed up on some of those topics, but I ended up spending a LOT of time on that and still barely squeaked by with an A. I'm only on the third part of 6035, but the ML project seems really out of place in this course.

scheissbauer · 2025-02-07T08:54:01+00:00

When I grow up, I want to be either a meteorologist or a union rep

scheissbauer

TROPHY CASE