So with the BTech you did, which career path were you landed yourself in. Personally with the math I think I will be able to handle it, even though I don't know what it entails
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BTech Vs BSC
- Thread starter Mwera
- Start date
How possible then
How possible then is to get good job after completing my degree at age 34....
That info can be found here: Link
What is it you want to do? What career path are you looking at following?
I do work for FAANG company so I guess I'm supposed to also be in the industry that holds the top people.
But as I said, I've only ever met one guy that I thought was god like in his intellect.
There are a number of our employees that hold masters and so on.
They just don't advertise it per-se and I also don't care because it doesn't make a difference.
The principle engineers and so on in our company are developing stuff that universities wish they could publish papers on.
Maybe in the US their universities are better but locally our universities aren't even close to doing anything that comes close in terms of quality.
I've gone over a few masters projects and the quality of their demo was dismal compared to what our internal process is.
For me to build something internally I need to have lots of data, lots of detail and it is widely critiqued.
In university the guy has his supervisor give some thoughts and then he cobbles together a demo.
Ultimately universities do follow a similar process but feedback essentially comes in the form of papers published based on other papers.
The turn around is much longer and there is a lot of emotion involved in publishing to spare people's feelings.
I guess TL;DR I'm super biased toward putting very little stock in "CS research".
For physics, mathematics and so on I have no insight into their industries so I have no comment.
Cloud Networking or software development
You are entitled to your opinion as am I, if you put your opinion out there, expect that some people will disagree with you. It is my personal experience yes, but, as a chapter lead, I also did many, many interviews with candidates from many countries - including South Africa. I can tell you that the university they went to was not at all considered relevant, rather whether they could pass the interviews and the associated technical tests.
Heh - if you said that in the Bay Area, you would have the whole room cracking up. There are a few common sayings such as "Not everyone at Google is Jeff Dean" or the more pejorative "Even Google has janitors", etc.
I do agree that in SA there is some dubious postgraduate research. There are a lot of research projects passing as "Computer Science", that would fall under "Information Systems" or even "Social Science" elsewhere in the world. There are still many very good proper CS graduates, but the odds are that they're not going to stick around - the best from my years as a postgrad and staff are all overseas now.
In the rest of the world, the people doing most of the core innovation in industry have research backgrounds, read, write and review papers regularly, and appreciate that they're typically only ahead of academia in the narrow vector in which their industry dominates.
Lol - you've clearly never been through a review process. It's brutal.
Cloud Networking or Machine Learning or Software development
BSc would definitely be better than BEngTech.
BEngTech includes a lot of electronics stuff. Like light current electronic engineering stuff.
I did NDip and BTech and am a Software Developer. The electronics stuff is just wasted time. Focus on Comp Sci/Info Sys modules and you'll be happier.
AlphaBravo
Expert Member
B.Sc or B.Eng provides more depth and insight that B.Tech or Diploma. This in depth learning then provides a better foundation for your working career, which is where the real world learning starts. My humble opinion as an engineer that employs various interns.
Johnatan56
Honorary Master
Software, second mostly MS house now, previous company was small enough that I wore many hats, was a solutions architect, a software dev, and a sql dev.
This company I am a lot more focused on just software dev, with a specialization in certain security stuff, and performance optimizations regarding it.
Doesn't really matter if BSc or Btech, could have ended up in the same place, all places I've worked at I was only Btech and everyone else BSc hons or masters. That more has to do with me enjoying the field a lot and playing with a lot of things that comes off well in interviews and allows me to promoted easily for early stages, expecting no promotion here though for another year or two as next step up in this company is a lot more involved.
I disagree with this if you want to head into IoT. Again, where you're looking to go is the question, and both BSc and advanced diploma will allow you to pivot if you want to shift focus, depending on your personal drive.
OP did say Cloud/ML/Software Dev. In BEngTech, you will only do an intro to ML as part of a whole other module. ie, you won't be doing much of it.
Also, why spend the time to do a qualification not completely suited to where you want to go and "pivot" later?
While at university I had to attend many "masters defences". It was a joke.
We both clearly have very differing opinions on this, so I don't see a point debating about it.
But definitely in my company not many people are publishing.
In fact publishing requires all kinds of approvals and if it is related to your work or something the company is working on I doubt you'll get that approval.
Not to mention that the pressure is huge, so if you have the time to be publishing papers you must clearly need more work. (again in context of my work)
Maybe in your company people are spending their time on that stuff.
Different companies, different behaviours.
That fact that you would even compare that to a double blind peer review process is pretty telling.
The whole point of debating is to change opinions, isn’t it?
Jeff Dean has published hundreds of papers in the last 23 years. He must really need more work… Sheesh.
I get that it’s the farthest concern you have for your job, which I do not doubt. Many, in fact, typically the majority of functions are not involved in that level of research, however, this is also why your opinion is so very uniformed.
No. All of the FAANG companies and similar publish a lot. There is also a lot of research done that doesn’t get published externally.
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Hey you
I finished a BSc Comp Sci at age 34 after a previous degree and career in HR. Have been working for a few years now as a full-stack engineer and I'm having to fend off recruiters with a stick
I'm very happy and grateful to have a 'good job'. It's not just very possible, but once the ball gets rolling it's quite easy.I started at University of Pretoria but then finished at UNISA. I stayed in touch with friends from UP and both schools use the same textbooks for almost all of the curriculum. A university like UP will make you do a bit more practical work, but neither will teach you what you need to actually enter the workplace and hit the ground running. You're going to have a lot to learn and most of that learning you will do by yourself, sitting at your PC and creating software - not while studying textbooks or doing homework/assignments.
Then you land your first developer gig after which time you're going to learn 300% faster because you'll be learning from more experienced people and studying others' codebases. Don't sweat being a bit older. Your previous experience will find ways to creep in and you'll find you can contribute to projects in some creative ways, which I'm sure other's will appreciate.
As for ML, no undergraduate degree is going to make you a ML expert. A BSc will give you some theoretical basics but that's enough to get started.
The most basic difference between the BSc and BTech is that a Bachelor of Technology (BTech) course focuses on the technical and more practical aspects of things around us, whereas a Bachelor of Science (BSc) is a pure science degree, which implies that it is more theoretical in approach.
I finished a BSc Comp Sci at age 34 after a previous degree and career in HR. Have been working for a few years now as a full-stack engineer and I'm having to fend off recruiters with a stick
I started at University of Pretoria but then finished at UNISA. I stayed in touch with friends from UP and both schools use the same textbooks for almost all of the curriculum. A university like UP will make you do a bit more practical work, but neither will teach you what you need to actually enter the workplace and hit the ground running. You're going to have a lot to learn and most of that learning you will do by yourself, sitting at your PC and creating software - not while studying textbooks or doing homework/assignments.
Then you land your first developer gig after which time you're going to learn 300% faster because you'll be learning from more experienced people and studying others' codebases. Don't sweat being a bit older. Your previous experience will find ways to creep in and you'll find you can contribute to projects in some creative ways, which I'm sure other's will appreciate.
As for ML, no undergraduate degree is going to make you a ML expert. A BSc will give you some theoretical basics but that's enough to get started.
Thanks.So you say there is a possibility of get employed at 34 with a degree in Computer Science.I finished a BSc Comp Sci at age 34 after a previous degree and career in HR. Have been working for a few years now as a full-stack engineer and I'm having to fend off recruiters with a stick
I started at University of Pretoria but then finished at UNISA. I stayed in touch with friends from UP and both schools use the same textbooks for almost all of the curriculum. A university like UP will make you do a bit more practical work, but neither will teach you what you need to actually enter the workplace and hit the ground running. You're going to have a lot to learn and most of that learning you will do by yourself, sitting at your PC and creating software - not while studying textbooks or doing homework/assignments.
Then you land your first developer gig after which time you're going to learn 300% faster because you'll be learning from more experienced people and studying others' codebases. Don't sweat being a bit older. Your previous experience will find ways to creep in and you'll find you can contribute to projects in some creative ways, which I'm sure other's will appreciate.
As for ML, no undergraduate degree is going to make you a ML expert. A BSc will give you some theoretical basics but that's enough to get started.
Thanks. So there is a possibility not getting employment at 34 for your first job in development. You give me Hope... In terms of career path I am still brainstorming.I finished a BSc Comp Sci at age 34 after a previous degree and career in HR. Have been working for a few years now as a full-stack engineer and I'm having to fend off recruiters with a stick
I started at University of Pretoria but then finished at UNISA. I stayed in touch with friends from UP and both schools use the same textbooks for almost all of the curriculum. A university like UP will make you do a bit more practical work, but neither will teach you what you need to actually enter the workplace and hit the ground running. You're going to have a lot to learn and most of that learning you will do by yourself, sitting at your PC and creating software - not while studying textbooks or doing homework/assignments.
Then you land your first developer gig after which time you're going to learn 300% faster because you'll be learning from more experienced people and studying others' codebases. Don't sweat being a bit older. Your previous experience will find ways to creep in and you'll find you can contribute to projects in some creative ways, which I'm sure other's will appreciate.
As for ML, no undergraduate degree is going to make you a ML expert. A BSc will give you some theoretical basics but that's enough to get started.
There is definitely hope
If I am hiring a junior (as let’s be honest that is what you will be), I am looking for aptitude/attitude.
If I saw someone switching careers I would have a lot of time for them. I think you should make it front and centre of your CV
If I am hiring a junior (as let’s be honest that is what you will be), I am looking for aptitude/attitude.
If I saw someone switching careers I would have a lot of time for them. I think you should make it front and centre of your CV