Need a reality check: CS-related

[sadguy]

Originally Posted by sinkingfeeling

Need to be realistic

If I am not wrong, Ben Leong already said tech industry in SG oversaturated . Not to mention cheaper better faster

Just accept your lot in life

Thank you for sharing this! I'll be taking great consideration of that fact before further proceeding with any decisions.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

See how much u like to gamble. Overseas uni not that useful if it's not ivy league or top tier schools.

Best option u go local and try switch major to computer science right after first year.

I will be attempting that to the best of my ability if I were to go with the local path. Cost savings will be huge and definitely a life saver. Thanks for the feedback!

Originally Posted by gurlInTech

Yea its possible that market forces might drive the average salary down due to the surge in number of people pursuing tech. Ben Leong also said that the best will still be paid really well. To reach there takes a lot of effort and some luck bah. You can read his article https://www.techinasia.com/talk/engineers-strike

Everyone has their own set of problems and worries, and my biggest worry is that I might lose my job someday

Thank you for sharing the article! Just had a good read and it does make sense. High ROI would've definintely been a great reason to pursue my studies overseas but that might just have to put all of that hold on. Reality is cruel

You definitely seem to be doing well in the industry so I doubt you will haha

[sadguy]

Originally Posted by gurlInTech

Yea its possible that market forces might drive the average salary down due to the surge in number of people pursuing tech. Ben Leong also said that the best will still be paid really well. To reach there takes a lot of effort and some luck bah. You can read his article https://www.techinasia.com/talk/engineers-strike

Everyone has their own set of problems and worries, and my biggest worry is that I might lose my job someday

Would it be alright if I contact you directly regarding ComSci and its industry? Got some burning questions :')

[sadguy]

Originally Posted by gurlInTech

Yea its possible that market forces might drive the average salary down due to the surge in number of people pursuing tech. Ben Leong also said that the best will still be paid really well. To reach there takes a lot of effort and some luck bah. You can read his article https://www.techinasia.com/talk/engineers-strike

Everyone has their own set of problems and worries, and my biggest worry is that I might lose my job someday

Left you visitor messages too! Not sure why I'm not getting notis for them

Originally Posted by sadguy

Dear Members,

I'm in desperate need of a reality check and some life advice. Currently, I'm intending to pursue a Computer Science degree in UNSW, which will cost a fortune. My Father's monthly income is in the low ten-thousands and my mum has no income, but I'll be requiring a study loan of 100k+ to be studying overseas to cover my 140k school fees, and more for misc.

A little background of myself:
- 21
- Unable to enter local CS degrees with my average A level results due to co-curricular priorities back then, big mistake on my part
- Experience in C, Python for about a year+ (self-taught while in NS)

I'm someone whose extremely passionate about CS and is constantly learning and programming on a daily basis. I'm currently waiting to matriculate locally in InfoSys. Bottomline is, I'm not getting any support from my parents as they feel that any local degree is fine and it's unecessary to pursue my dream of Computer Science. They feel that its too big a bet and that 'CS Prospects are not guranteed', and that if I want to go overseas I'll have to bear the full cost of it.

As a young adult myself, I can't disagree with that as I have no actual experience in the working world, and probably don't understand the value of money as much as the working adults on this forum.

To the people working in CS-fields: Is the ROI on my CS degree worth taking this loan to pursue my studies? I see varying salaries from 3-7k starting. I would need years to pay off this debt and its interest.

Any other life advice/salary-related advice that may help overcome my situation would be appreciated.

Hi

21 is a young age after ORD, you can always try out SIT, SUTD, SUSS or even SIM studying UOW, i heard there's a choice to study your final year in Australia and this will lower your expenses too.

TBH, tech company don care about your degree from where as long as you have the passion and passes the tech interview

Lastly if you die die have to go to Australia, did u consider applying other Aus uni?

The tech uni in Aus are quite good and a little lower cost too. To name a few, QUT, UTS, RMIT..

UNSW is not known for it's IT degree... if ranking does play a part, you might just wanna consider the GO8 unis.....


My 2cts as I spent 10 years in Australia after ORD. Studied engineering in TP got 1.5 years advance standing

Hi

21 is a young age after ORD, you can always try out SIT, SUTD, SUSS or even SIM studying UOW, i heard there's a choice to study your final year in Australia and this will lower your expenses too.

TBH, tech company don care about your degree from where as long as you have the passion and passes the tech interview

Lastly if you die die have to go to Australia, did u consider applying other Aus uni?

The tech uni in Aus are quite good and a little lower cost too. To name a few, QUT, UTS, RMIT..

UNSW is not known for it's IT degree... if ranking does play a part, you might just wanna consider the GO8 unis.....


My 2cts as I spent 10 years in Australia after ORD. Studied engineering in TP got 1.5 years advance standing

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Hi

21 is a young age after ORD, you can always try out SIT, SUTD, SUSS or even SIM studying UOW, i heard there's a choice to study your final year in Australia and this will lower your expenses too.

TBH, tech company don care about your degree from where as long as you have the passion and passes the tech interview

Lastly if you die die have to go to Australia, did u consider applying other Aus uni?

The tech uni in Aus are quite good and a little lower cost too. To name a few, QUT, UTS, RMIT..

UNSW is not known for it's IT degree... if ranking does play a part, you might just wanna consider the GO8 unis.....


My 2cts as I spent 10 years in Australia after ORD. Studied engineering in TP got 1.5 years advance standing

Real Tech company don't really care about your degree. They trust their interview and technical test more than they trust your degree. However degree is important to get the interview though, otherwise a good github portfolio is equally as good. GLHF

Note that only top tier/above average CS professional are well paid. The rest are averagely paid as other people in the different industry. Singapore tech scene is mostly sales tech (thats why is see abundance of BA/SA/PM role but little software engineer role). For hardcore coding/software engineering better to look for other country like israel/US/UK or china

First off, the education is just a means for you to get your foot through the resuming screening

Of course make sure your GPA or school doesn't suck too bad so it looks like a red flag. Obviously SIM ain't gonna cut it if you are looking to go into Apple, Google etc.

Probably u can be considered as QA but fat hope for SWE.

In fact some local tech firms like Shopee have accelerated interview processes for ppl that are local grads that are first class from CS. Just a 1 round process. These engineers after grad easily make more than 100k a year.

So if anyone tells u that education doesn't matter, they are lying

Then the 2nd step is to practice coding questions. I recommend "Cracking the coding interview" book

master your basic time complexity analysis, and Algo and data structures (trees graphs queues arrays linkedlists)

Make sure u know DFS, BFS, Kadanes algorithm, sliding window, various sorting algos like merge sort (just all these basics to name a few)

Also step up your DP (dynamic programming) skills, you can start with simple Fibonacci/grid travellers problem to understand DP concepts

If you master these well you can make big bucks.

source: 2 YOE engineer working as L4 in Google SG. I make around 8k a month (160k per year with stocks and bonus)

[sadguy]

I've definitely heard the notion of "Skills > Degree", and that having one is jsut used as a stepping stone to snagging an interview, thank you guys for confirming that. I'm actually currently matriculating in SUTD and looking to get into ISTD, which I hear is a CS pillar but more of a "jack-of-all-trades" teaching style e.g. no possible mods to get a more in-depth education on algos.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

First off, the education is just a means for you to get your foot through the resuming screening

Of course make sure your GPA or school doesn't suck too bad so it looks like a red flag. Obviously SIM ain't gonna cut it if you are looking to go into Apple, Google etc.

Probably u can be considered as QA but fat hope for SWE.

In fact some local tech firms like Shopee have accelerated interview processes for ppl that are local grads that are first class from CS. Just a 1 round process. These engineers after grad easily make more than 100k a year.

So if anyone tells u that education doesn't matter, they are lying

Then the 2nd step is to practice coding questions. I recommend "Cracking the coding interview" book

master your basic time complexity analysis, and Algo and data structures (trees graphs queues arrays linkedlists)

Make sure u know DFS, BFS, Kadanes algorithm, sliding window, various sorting algos like merge sort (just all these basics to name a few)

Also step up your DP (dynamic programming) skills, you can start with simple Fibonacci/grid travellers problem to understand DP concepts

If you master these well you can make big bucks.

source: 2 YOE engineer working as L4 in Google SG. I make around 8k a month (160k per year with stocks and bonus)

Thank you for going into the specifics of what I should take note. Knowing what you said, will be doing my best to bump up my GPA while I'm in university in hopes of achieving that level of prowess. Do you have any clue what the market for Quant Traders are like in SG? Because it doesn't seem to really exist(following various searches on Google), and seems to be very big FI focused, particularly in the US.

[sadguy]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Hi

21 is a young age after ORD, you can always try out SIT, SUTD, SUSS or even SIM studying UOW, i heard there's a choice to study your final year in Australia and this will lower your expenses too.

TBH, tech company don care about your degree from where as long as you have the passion and passes the tech interview

Lastly if you die die have to go to Australia, did u consider applying other Aus uni?

The tech uni in Aus are quite good and a little lower cost too. To name a few, QUT, UTS, RMIT..

UNSW is not known for it's IT degree... if ranking does play a part, you might just wanna consider the GO8 unis.....


My 2cts as I spent 10 years in Australia after ORD. Studied engineering in TP got 1.5 years advance standing

Why did you choose to live in Australia? Do you feel like engineering has better prospects there?

And on a side note,isn't UNSW GO8 as well? I've read about RMIT being very specialised in tech/engineering, basically the 'SUTD' of Aussie.

Originally Posted by sadguy

I've definitely heard the notion of "Skills > Degree", and that having one is jsut used as a stepping stone to snagging an interview, thank you guys for confirming that. I'm actually currently matriculating in SUTD and looking to get into ISTD, which I hear is a CS pillar but more of a "jack-of-all-trades" teaching style e.g. no possible mods to get a more in-depth education on algos.



Thank you for going into the specifics of what I should take note. Knowing what you said, will be doing my best to bump up my GPA while I'm in university in hopes of achieving that level of prowess. Do you have any clue what the market for Quant Traders are like in SG? Because it doesn't seem to really exist(following various searches on Google), and seems to be very big FI focused, particularly in the US.

If you mean developers in trading firms, they make a lot more than Facebook, Google at the start. But maybe even harder to get in.

However they dont hire a lot, maybe 1-2 people a year only for fresh grads

You can easily make 10k+ a month (with bonueses) joining these firms as fresh grad

Some of these firms include: Grasshoper, Jane Street, DRW, Jump Trading