FSW WORLDWIDE

[GandiBaat]

And it keeps on getting better!
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/25/investing/debt-default-goldman-sachs-markets/index.html

If US govt defaults on the debt then economies are done for.

 

[GandiBaat]

I will likely move back to GCC countries, where I was born and have lived my whole life.

Thats not a bad idea at all. Infact its very good. I will say leave IT and do a MBA or something if finances permit. Do your internship in GCC and get a job there. May be do a MBA part time while keeping your job? It will take longer but that way you will be spending time here as PR and that will count for citizenship.

 

[Deleted member 1083629]

Masters: 2 years + 100k = internship + first job. Let's say immediately after (but that's being very charitable. people still take several months to land fulltime positions after their degree if it's not in the same company as the internship).

Bootcamp: 6 months + 25k = first job in under 6 months.

Those are insane prices. Where did you find them? UWaterloo costs 3K per semester for PR. If it's a course-based masters, then 3 semesters = 10K. Probably a little higher now but nowhere near 100K. Bootcamps are the same. Brainstation costs roughly 14K (all CAD).

In a way, I agree with @GandiBaat . There is a difference between a code monkey (or how I like to call them "Stackoverflow copy-paster") and a software engineer. The major difference is fundamentals. However, those are not something that one cannot pick up when he/she starts working. Books + YT + Udemy/Coursera will all give enough exposure. The worst case scenario after 2-3 years in the industry, one can take a look at Georgia Tech Online Masters. 7K USD and those classes are more than enough to learn the fundamentals.

 

[Deleted member 1083629]

And it keeps on getting better!
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/25/investing/debt-default-goldman-sachs-markets/index.html

If US govt defaults on the debt then economies are done for.

US gov has never defaulted on the debt in the history. They just increase the ceiling every time.

 

[Deleted member 1006777]

Those are insane prices. Where did you find them? UWaterloo costs 3K per semester for PR. If it's a course-based masters, then 3 semesters = 10K. Probably a little higher now but nowhere near 100K. Bootcamps are the same. Brainstation costs roughly 14K (all CAD).

In a way, I agree with @GandiBaat . There is a difference between a code monkey (or how I like to call them "Stackoverflow copy-paster") and a software engineer. The major difference is fundamentals. However, those are not something that one cannot pick up when he/she starts working. Books + YT + Udemy/Coursera will all give enough exposure. The worst case scenario after 2-3 years in the industry, one can take a look at Georgia Tech Online Masters. 7K USD and those classes are more than enough to learn the fundamentals.

oh my bad, I missed the part where they were already a PR. I was using international student tuition lol.

Regardless, you can 100% pick up fundamentals on the job. It's a matter of whether you want to, and whether there is incentive to. I always see people who did formal coursework try to justify their degree. Literally everything you need to know is online for free or on Coursera. There's a lot of gatekeeping from trad SWEs, and it's pretty funny to be honest.

 

[Deleted member 1083629]

oh my bad, I missed the part where they were already a PR. I was using international student tuition lol.

Regardless, you can 100% pick up fundamentals on the job. It's a matter of whether you want to, and whether there is incentive to. I always see people who did formal coursework try to justify their degree. Literally everything you need to know is online for free or on Coursera. There's a lot of gatekeeping from trad SWEs, and it's pretty funny to be honest.

Agree. The only thing I see missing from many self-learnt software engineers is that once they get a job, they stop developing. Continuously studying (especially fundamentals which are not that much fun compared to building something) requires self discipline. At school, information is fed in a structured way. In real world, one has to find that information. Again, I learnt more from self studying than I ever learn in any school. Heck, even at school, the only way I learnt was reading a book (assigned to me), googling things I don't get, doing hwk, doing old exams beforehand. Doing the same right now, except I replaced hwk and old exams with real use cases.

 

[Seekerofita2019]

Hello, Hope to get response from experienced ones pls ..I want to know the lock in date of work experience after AOR? For example if someone's 1 year work experience in last 5 year for which he is claiming points got expire after AOR will it effect the outcome or everything including work experience also get lock after AOR? kindly reply.. TIA

 

[pinemaple]

Agree. The only thing I see missing from many self-learnt software engineers is that once they get a job, they stop developing. Continuously studying (especially fundamentals which are not that much fun compared to building something) requires self discipline. At school, information is fed in a structured way. In real world, one has to find that information. Again, I learnt more from self studying than I ever learn in any school. Heck, even at school, the only way I learnt was reading a book (assigned to me), googling things I don't get, doing hwk, doing old exams beforehand. Doing the same right now, except I replaced hwk and old exams with real use cases.

How and what do you recommend studying? I might be one of those self-taught SWEs who stopped studying after finding work.

 

[Deleted member 1083629]

How and what do you recommend studying? I might be one of those self-taught SWEs who stopped studying after finding work.

If you work, pick up anything you do at work and go down the rabbit hole trying to understand if that's the best way you can do things. For example, tests. Most companies run unit tests. Find example of those. What about load tests? How to run them and when they are appropriate? What about end-2-end tests? What about e2e tests when you have to imitate a DB?

 

[cansha]

This is also why I am researching Trades very seriously, but here is the thing and i don't want to sound pompous or pretentious, I have no plans to live in Canada after the passport. I will likely move back to GCC countries, where I was born and have lived my whole life.

I understand that but getting a passport will take atleast 4 years assuming for the first 3 years you do not travel out of Canada for longer durations.

In any case if you are sure of going back changing careers for just 4 years is not the right thing to do. Then figure out what jobs are in demand in the country you would want to move to and choose a career based on that.

 

[GandiBaat]

US gov has never defaulted on the debt in the history. They just increase the ceiling every time.

There is always a first for everything, but even the threat of this debt ceiling is making manufacturers, investors and service providers pause and hold on to their money.

 

[GandiBaat]

Regardless, you can 100% pick up fundamentals on the job. It's a matter of whether you want to, and whether there is incentive to. I always see people who did formal coursework try to justify their degree. Literally everything you need to know is online for free or on Coursera. There's a lot of gatekeeping from trad SWEs, and it's pretty funny to be honest.

I have seldom seen enough incentive for a person to pick up fundamentals on job unless it is an absolute must. A lot of us start trusting our "guts" and resort to "tinkering" -- throw some shit and see what sticks if not just simple "magic incantation" kind of engineering where you do not even bother to see why a piece of code/config works.

Tinkering is not bad, I mean thats how people learn things for the first time and thats how discoveries are made but many times an ounce of theory saves a day of work.

I remember once a person who wanted to write a regular expression to "count" and compare number of warnings because thats what his tool took as entry. This was before stackoverflow era. He tried a lot of things and in the end someone told him and regular experession are "finite" and are not really good tool for counting things. This is the classical problem you learn the first time you study automata. Its easy to find a course on regular expressions but unless you are really curious it will take you quite a bit of time before you make connection between "finite" part of "finite automata" and regular expression; that is if you were starting from scratch.

It keeps on getting better once you are past the very obvious things and step into technologies that are not really your everyday business software stuff. It becomes much easier if you know underlying theory. It helps you to reject a lot of obviously not-so-good solutions.

Thats why I tend to be a Reluctant CS Fundamentalist .

 

[GandiBaat]

How and what do you recommend studying? I might be one of those self-taught SWEs who stopped studying after finding work.

I personally did it in a two steps. During my teen years I was a typical teenage hacker. I later took up a degree from a decent university. Helped me a lot. I will recommend anyone to augment their inclination and self taught knowledge with a formal degree. Its like eating your greens.

 

[wonderbly]

@MajorGrom and @GandiBaat have already given their suggestions, and I know @wonderbly disagrees with me on this. But let me add something else to it. Maybe you really want to do a masters and have teh money to spend. You already said you have poor grades I believe. So you're not getting funded for your masters (not sure if that's even a thing in Canada, it is in the US: my masters was almost fully funded). If so, keep at it.

If you're instead doing a master's because you think it'll make it easier for you to get a job in your new field, you're probably wasting a lot of time and money to get there. Literally everything you need to know about comp sci and data science (two extremely popular and broad IT fields) is available online for free, or very cheap. You almost nailed it by saying the only way your degree helped is to get your first job. But remember the upfront cost of 75k-150k and 2 years to get that first job.

Instead, learn on your own for a year or so, and even if it takes you another year to get a job, you still saved all of your tuition money and still got the job anyway. Especially in IT, your degree typically doesn't matter at all beyond the ease in getting your first job. But you're paying in time and money for that ease.

You can even look into bootcamps. They are much much cheaper, more intensive, and a lot quicker. Here's a rough comparison:

Masters: 2 years + 100k = internship + first job. Let's say immediately after (but that's being very charitable. people still take several months to land fulltime positions after their degree if it's not in the same company as the internship).

Bootcamp: 6 months + 25k = first job in under 6 months.

So overall in this example, you save 75k and 1 whole year. Maybe this first job sucks and doesn't pay well. Guess what. You're still saving time and getting paid instead of paying and losing time. And by the time you would have graduated, you will probably be close to a promotion and get the same or more than you would out of university too..

IMO if you're looking to get into IT, a master's is almost never worth it. If you think you need the structure and accountabiilty, go for a bootcamp. and don't add it to your resume. Use what you learn there and network. I transitioned to IT from mechanical engineering by myself. It's not that hard to learn what you need to learn. Toss in a bit of luck through smart networking, and you render a master's completely useless.

In this case, I'm fully in agreement with you .

 

[Deleted member 1083629]

For those of you living in Toronto, what the heck is going on with TTC??? I saw a woman getting stabbed in the face couple of days ago. Couple of hours ago, the train stopped and driver said that on the next stop, there is a guy with knife and the driver won't be stopping.

Is this a problem in your cities as well? Or is it just Toronto being Toronto?