Issue

[DriXnaK]

So, I've been at my new job now for over 7 months. I've had the opportunity to work with a ton of different things: C#, MVC 3, HTML 5, Photoshop, JQuery, Python, SQL, SSRS, IReports(This program sucks btw), and now n-tier CSLA framework. It's not just the code that I've had access to either, I'm the one designing a lot of the stuff as far as the front end goes. For the back end I've had the opportunity to learn from somebody who is amazingly good so I'm very thankful for that, especially since I was the only other programmer so he had a lot of time to work with me.

It's been great to be able to learn all these things so fast since I've been 1 of only 2 programmers up till now, but once there's nothing left to learn, the pay is obviously not even close to up to par with where my skills are and what I've done for them. Then there's the issue of the fact that what our business does isn't exactly exciting. Given the history of this company, I expect my raise to be laughable at the one year mark, so I'm really leaning towards jumping ship once I have my 1 year of experience completed.

I would really love to work for a company that does research and stuff like that. Pharmaceutical companies for example, or a company that researches new chemicals and compounds...really just anything that has some sort of meaning to the work. So I have 2 questions:

1. Will only staying a year hurt me, or should it be ok to go look for another company? How much should I expect as compensation with the skill set I mentioned earlier?

2. Any advice on what I can do to make myself more attractive as a candidate to some of the research and development type of companies?

Thanks.

[loinburger]

I worked as a 1-year contractor for several years, and it never hurt my chances at getting hired as another 1-year contractor. Eventually I had enough experience that I was able to get a job as a full-timer without much difficulty (my boss was concerned that I was over-educated, but the company had a 3-month probationary period so that didn't prevent me from getting hired)

For R&D it really helps to have a Master's at least

[DriXnaK]

Masters in computer science I assume?

[loinburger]

Or computer engineering, they were very similar at the university I attended (computer engineering had more of a focus on software engineering, computer science was more theoretical)

[DriXnaK]

Unfortunately I only have an IT degree and a marketing degree. It's more than enough to do business applications, but I had toyed with the idea of getting a computer science/engineering degree for the future a while back before everyone shot me down.

[loinburger]

I've got an All But Dissertation, but that's not a very useful degree - unfortunately it's very difficult to know at the start of a PhD program if you're going to be able to complete it (in my case some dude in Germany published on my dissertation topic the year before I was going to defend, and that really ****ed me over). I worked at the air force research lab for awhile, and a Master's was really all they expected.

[loinburger]

Unfortunately I only have an IT degree and a marketing degree. It's more than enough to do business applications, but I had toyed with the idea of getting a computer science/engineering degree for the future a while back before everyone shot me down.

The university I attended for grad work required you to pass an exam to enter the graduate program, but it didn't have any requirements for what your bachelor's / associate's was in (your bachelor's could be in basket-weaving for all they cared, so long as you could pass the entrance exam). Also, all of the grad courses were after 5 pm, for those who were working while getting their Master's.

[DriXnaK]

So if I wanted to go the R&D route, I'd really need a B.S. in CS along with a masters? How did you like working there? What made you leave?

[DriXnaK]

The university I attended for grad work required you to pass an exam to enter the graduate program, but it didn't have any requirements for what your bachelor's / associate's was in (your bachelor's could be in basket-weaving for all they cared, so long as you could pass the entrance exam). Also, all of the grad courses were after 5 pm, for those who were working while getting their Master's.

Hmmmm...that would be awesome if I could go for a masters in that area without needing the B.S. first. I'm going to have to look into that.

[loinburger]

You wouldn't need the BS, just the MS - it's sort of like how your high school GPA ceases to matter once you get your BS, likewise the subject of your BS ceases to matter once you get your MS (assuming you have a decent GPA).

I left the air force research laboratory because it was government bull**** - they were changing my job from "do research on whatever you feel like and report back after a year" to "manage these contractors who are doing boring ****." Bear in mind that government is not like industry (unless you're in industry that's contracting for government) - industry wants to make a profit and so if you're doing something good they probably won't sack you or shift your focus, whereas government wants to suck up to whoever the new general is. (We went through three generals in the four years I worked for the air force.) I was a contractor for several years after that, which meant "you have a year to write this program;" my current job is long-term, which means "you've got a master's degree, so we'll give the difficult programs to you," which is just fine with me.

[loinburger]

This book is awesome if you're going to be looking into an MS - I used it (in its various editions) in 2002 (senior year), 2004 (last year of my master's program), and 2006 (near the end, ha ha, of my phd program). This is an awesome operating systems book if your MS qualifying exam focuses heavily on operating systems, and this is an awesome computer architectures book if the exam focuses on architectures. The latter two books are the ones I read for my phd qualifying exam.

[DriXnaK]

Well maybe short term I'll jump ship, get myself up to an acceptable level of income and then work on a masters so I can go do what I really want to do which is R&D. I work for a freight 3PL right now so really anything is going to be an improvement in the "I wish my job had meaning" department.

On a side note, in your R&D days how much did you utilize high level math for your assignments? I have no issue with it, but as I said a while back, I'd probably need to take some courses to get up to speed in that area since my highest is only calculus.

[DriXnaK]

This book is awesome if you're going to be looking into an MS - I used it (in its various editions) in 2002 (senior year), 2004 (last year of my master's program), and 2006 (near the end, ha ha, of my phd program). This is an awesome operating systems book if your MS qualifying exam focuses heavily on operating systems, and this is an awesome computer architectures book if the exam focuses on architectures. The latter two books are the ones I read for my phd qualifying exam.

OMG THANK YOU! I've been looking for books to read lately now that I'm no longer focusing on learning syntax so much. I will definitely read these.

[loinburger]

I used a lot of high level math, but it was all self-taught - it was all graph theory and things like that, none of which I learned as an undergraduate. I never used calculus, trig, or differential equations. (I was working on compilers, specifically memory management, and graph theory is very important for analyzing the heap. I have a friend who is working on a computer science PhD that uses a lot of statistics and no graph theory; I know ****all about statistics. It's really a question of what you're studying, but the bottom line is that you don't need any prior knowledge of math, but you do need to be able to pick up a new math subject relatively quickly.)

[Asher]

This book is awesome if you're going to be looking into an MS - I used it (in its various editions) in 2002 (senior year), 2004 (last year of my master's program), and 2006 (near the end, ha ha, of my phd program).

This was one of the required textbooks in 2nd year.