How To MAXIMIZE College As A Software Engineer

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what is up it is Monday something Monday December 16th um just leaving the office it says an accident and only 43 minutes to get home one of these things is not true um my throat's still a little messed up so I apologize we got a topic today from a commenter and it says I'm about to go back to college for computer science after about 6 years is there any advice you'd give to someone like myself on how to maximize the two years I have left I don't know what the two years I have left part means um like two years of going back to college maybe um spe specifically on ways to better your chances of getting internships and jobs and overall advice thanks for the great insights so I think that's a cool one um this will be as usual a stream of Consciousness

on different ideas um we'll remind folks that if you have questions you want answered leave them in the comments I we'll try my best and um if you have something that's like more you know more detailed or you want to be anonymous when it's read out um just send me a message look for Dev leader on social media uh I'll read through messages on whatever platform happy to do that um I've had people write in emails and stuff which is super cool um offered a ton of detail and it makes it way easier for me to give you less generic advice the more detail you provide so this one for example this question is a little bit generic um which is fine but I feel like it's still helpful to give some general advice for folks so with that said um I think something that's

interesting about this question right so they're going back to college I should double check I'm driving I shouldn't do that now I think my this is how short my uh my memory is apparently I think this person is saying they're in the industry already for software development and going back to college for it and maybe not maybe they're in industry and going back so regardless I think that there's something interesting here that I don't know like I don't have like uh quantitative data to prove this but anecdotally I feel like a lot of software developers that go through College University what have you are and you'll hear me talk about this all the time but are very focused on like technical things right and it makes sense like software development is a very technical field well like I'm going to go learn about these Frameworks

these Technologies like for me I went to school for computer engineering I'm going to learn about how computers work I'm going to learn about the circuitry I'm going to learn all these technical things and the entire like experience ends up being hyperfocused on technical things and I think for a lot of people they don't question it it just makes sense right you're going to go be an engineer you're basically talking to computers the rest your life why wouldn't you want that and it's because it's not true you're not going to be talking to computers the rest of your life I hate being sick um so something that I would recommend to this person that's going back right is like on top of just the I mean first of all congrats for going to school for trying to you know better yourself and going through learning

process and stuff that's awesome um I want to Pivot away from just this like pure technical Focus because I think the schools do a really good job of just doing that for you like I don't need to say by the way pay attention in your programming classes because guess what you're probably doing that um what I do want to say is I want to highlight these other opportunities that come up so for example if you're working in group projects and stuff like that like try to try not to be like oh man like I got a group project this is going to suck I have to work with so and so from class who's going to be the person up pulling their weight I hate doing this stuff but like I want to remind you that in real life unless you're going to be uh

like an independent developer you're going to be building software and teams okay so try to think about the fact that like it's a good opportunity to practice building things in teams and it might I don't like I don't know a good way to explain this but I even know for myself like when I was in university I've explained this before actually and maybe I mean if you're new here or I've only said it once you might not have heard it but University for me my class was the same roughly the same people for five years straight and um it seemed like people were split between being very good at math or very good at programming some people were just Geniuses and they were good at both but it seemed like people were pretty split and what would happen in the programming projects like the group

projects was that I I can remember having uh like friends and classmates right that were like hey like I'm good at the math stuff so like I'm going to go get a head start on the math assignments we have because they were you know word problems and stuff like I'm going to get a head start on that you guys handle the programming completely unrel ated classes but what happened was that we would end up like doing the programming assignments basically in isolation and then we would teach the other people how to go do them and then they would teach us how to do the math which isn't totally like terrible in terms of like some of these you know soft skills and stuff but I think there's a missed opportunity here which is what I want to call out sorry someone's trying to move over

lanes and there's not space so we got to make the space um this is missed opportunity to practice actually building this stuff in a team and I think that that's a really cool opportunity that in hindsight like I don't know maybe maybe I still would have done it the same way where it's like we got so much work we might as well optimize across things across subjects but maybe maybe the constraints are different for you maybe um you don't have like stupid math classes plus physics and circuits and stuff you just like everything's software development related maybe or maybe it's a you know a reasonable workload and if that's the case and you can try to balance building the actual software across the group I think that can be a really cool thing to try to pay attention to and not like just be like

oh crap it's another group project right so I kind of regret not actually doing that and practicing it I feel like in hindsight it probably wasn't that big of a deal for me because I don't think I have I mean I I manage teams now I don't think that that's been a sticking point for me but I'm saying this because I suspect that for a ton of people this would have been really good prac practice to actually try doing early okay so that's one thing that I'd like to call out um let's see on like I have a couple thoughts here and I want to make sure that I I don't just jump to the obvious one for me but and they wanted to ask about internships and stuff like that um I think there's probably a really interesting opportunity here for leveraging llms more

so to give you an example for for myself in University the programming courses were the easy ones for me I was in the um in the dichotomy right when I talk about the dichotomy in my class like I was not good at math I was really good at math in like high school got like 95s and everything without trying and then I went to University and I was barely passing stuff so like not a good time um but Ma or but you know programming was has always been very straight St forward to me I don't know why it just it it clicks really well um and I think that I like I had to I had to learn how I learn if that makes sense and it took a long time for me to learn how I learn and I wish that if I had

access to llms I think there could have been this really cool opportunity to be like I'm stuck on this like have chat GPT or whatever you use explain it and different ways to you because you might have some of the information your Prof gave you and you're like it's just not clicking and instead of feeling like you're stuck and you hate school and you don't want to learn about something anymore like why not just ask it to explain it to you in a different way right you could even say hey I'm a university student here's a topic it was explain to me like this blah blah blah doesn't seem to make sense could you explain it to me in alternative way man there's a lot of space to get to the the fast lane this never happens I just went across all the lanes just

like that and every day I do this drive it's like the dumbest thing to go switch one lane and it still says it's like red line for for some accident but like it's only 30 minutes to get home it's crazy so I think leaning into llms for alternate learning perspective could be huge um and I say this as someone like when I tell my story about why I went to University it's because um I wanted to be a professional engineer professional engineer in Ontario Canada you need to go through an accredited program there's a bunch of requirements for it like to this day I'm still not a professional engineer by Canadian standards or Ontario standards at least and so I went through all this and I remember being like I don't like it here and it's because I felt like I felt like there was

it was like drinking out of a fire hose for information but then all that mattered was that I had to go do well on my exams and I learned throughout University that that meant as stupid as this is going to sound that meant that I didn't have to learn anything I just had to practice for my exams and I could move on so I didn't enjoy the learning process because I didn't understand how I learned effectively and then I had to teach myself basically just do well on exams and that's what's going to be what carries you so especially if you have um more Project based grades and stuff like I mean you might have a way different experience than me but I I feel like if I had access to llms I could have I could have found ways to try learning the material

and not resented going through school that's probably how I would frame that um okay I want to shift ears a little bit to talk about um internships how to make sure you're like taking advantage of your time in you University not being sick would be great um so a couple things come to mind so for for myself definitely biased here because I was in a it's called a co-op program so I had in like I could not graduate unless I went through internships and they were every other semester so I had uh six internships or uh basically two full working years of uh experience from internships before graduating and the University of waterl provides like this experience right so it's not a shoe in you still have to go apply to jobs but they they have like a an internal portal where all the basically

if there's companies that are interested in in recruiting they'll go Post in the portals there the students go apply um submit the resume interview so they still have to go do all the work and get the job but it feels like you're not competing against the entire world which I think is really important so definitely a huge benefit to going to a school that has some type of support for that it may not look the exact same but it's not uncommon for schools to have something like Partnerships with different companies to be able to provide like a Channel of interns um so if you're in a situation where you're thinking about going back to school that might be something you might want to look at like hey does a school have a co-op program with internship support um for this individual that wrote the question

I don't know if that's even a thing uh and if it's not what I also want to remind people is that that doesn't mean that it's not possible okay there are lots of companies that have internship programs there are tons of them um which is a good reminder for me I have to I have an intern that's going to be starting and um I have to like the project's already defined and stuff but I had to go like move the definition of it somewhere else and I didn't do that today so I have to do that tonight remind me I don't want to forget so like we have interns I've had a bunch of interns at Microsoft in the four and a half years I've been here when I worked at Magnet forensics before Microsoft I had interns the entire time that I was at

M or magnet forensics I was there for eight years it wasn't just summer interns we'd have them all the time there are companies that really love having interns so please if you are in a position where you're like oh man my school doesn't have like an internship program like it's not facilitated don't give up on it please go look for companies that offer internships some people will say because I see this online all all the time some people and I've talked about this in one of the earlier videos but there's a belief that you shouldn't work for free and don't get me wrong I don't like the idea okay so I don't like the idea of working for free because I mean you're offering some type of value right and then people will say well you know that's companies taking advantage of people which I

I think is you know there's maybe some truth to that depending on the situation but I don't like blanket statements like that what I would say though is if you've been say you're applying for internships you have the summer off from school you've been applying you're not getting anything if your goal is to be able to at the end of school say I have some working experience building real software unless you want to go create that experience for yourself my goodness sorry unless you want to go create that experience for yourself I think there's this opportunity to volunteer and that might make you cringe people might end this video right now uh I know a couple of people that I've talked to that I've met through Linkedin and they're volunteering for companies and they'll do it on weekends or whatever they're like I'm learning so

much I get to be exposed to these things and like they're totally okay with it the the difference here is like I get that on principle it feels crappy that a company is like Hey we're not going to pay these people and they're going to work for us I'm actually in one of these situations it's like a nonprofit and someone's volunteering there so it's nonprofit they're probably trying to save money however they possibly can and if people volunteer for the roles like that's great they don't have to pay them so I think the big thing here is that someone's saying like I need the work experience because I want to have it on my resume the work experience on my resume to the to whatever individual is worth having without being paid I'm not saying that's the case for everyone so don't it's very easy

to hear some random dude talking in a car on the internet and being like oh this guy's an idiot he's just you know spewing garbage I'm just telling you that for some people this is very much worth it to them and there's nothing wrong with that because what'll be very interesting is if someone's so against the idea and for some reason they're unable to get any work experience in this case let's say for the two years that you're in this person's case two years at college and you had someone else that was able to like the whole time volunteer you know uh their weekends or their evenings on some nights to go contribute to some code base one of these people has that one Stu up sorry so sort of that one oh my God now I'm laughing and it hurts one of these people

has created for themselves a lot of work experience while the other person was like well no it's not fair I didn't get paid so I'm just saying if you can find the paid internships that's so awesome please do that please try for them I think internships are so incredibly valuable I I've said this for my own schooling I didn't like any part about school except the internships every time I had to go back to school I was like why am I doing this every time I had an internship I was like oh that's why cuz I'm going to be doing this when I graduate so I thought internships were incredible because it's actually real experience so regardless of how you do it please do it try to do it I think some of the best experience you'll ever get okay so this might beg the

question well that's nice Nick but if I don't want to volunteer and I do want to apply or even if I do Vol want to volunteer how do I get selected for this stuff like how do I boost my chances this is sort of part of this person's question was like how do I get more out of my time there now I'm going to leverage two people from the University of water that reached out to me to have some phone chats and these both of these individuals were afraid they were not doing enough and when they told me the things they were doing I was like you guys are doing like an order of magnitude more than I think the average person is doing in terms of trying to set themselves up for success for a job so at schools you might have opportunities like

different clubs so like robotics Club there could be any type of club that has something to do with a software component you could go join that club and build the software for whatever the thing is look for that that's a that's an opportunity you could Jam that on a resume you're going to learn things you're going to be working with other people it's real software go do it okay that's one number two is just given that you're going to be around other people other like-minded people oh man someone's pulled over here slowing us down sucks a suck buddy um you're going to be around like-minded people and remember what I said earlier about building stuff in uh in groups like your projects you might be able to find some like-minded people that want to build stuff with you and it doesn't have to be a

business but you could try like you could go build stuff with other people so being surrounded by other people that are also going through software development courses and stuff like use that time to network I felt like when I was going through school this is one of the things I regret but I remember being like Oh man like you know it's Computer Engineering I'm just like and I'm obviously a very nerdy person I'm literally 35 years old driving home from work ranting about software engineering tell me what's more nerdy I just need to dress up as like a Dungeons and Dragons character or something right um so I remember going through school and being like Oh man like it's just it's all nerds like I don't want to be I just wanted to be a kid still but like it's ridiculous because obviously I'm a

nerd so why was I trying to like you know be like oh no I don't want to be around people from school really really stupid um it's such like a naive way to look at things but I remember thinking that and I regret not spending more time around people that are like I'm sure many people that I went to school with went on to do amazing things in their career I'm sure a chunk of them have been so so successful that they don't have to work anymore and I'm sure a chunk of them are in that position and still work and do awesome things right like I wish if I could go back that I would have surrounded myself with more of those people networked and just like try to embrace like hey like we're we're going into the workforce together like why not network

with those people like as an adult all grown up now this is something I'm doing actively now right I'm posting tons of stuff on social media I'm networking with people on LinkedIn I'm I'm going to do public speaking when I can I create courses for people I'm doing a bunch of networking as as someone who's outside of school now and I just wish that I would have taken the opportunity when I was around other people in school um just it feels like this huge missed opportunity so I definitely regret that this person is not even driving in this Lane so weird um so that's something I would recommend please don't like don't minimize the effect that you know building up a network and getting used to building a network can do for you cuz I think you'll meet tons of incredibly smart talented people in

school um the project thing I was talking about like building stuff with other people this could be another thing that you're using on a resume like hey I worked with a few people and we wanted to go build literally anything you want and being able to demonstrate that you were building stuff in teams of people I think is a is something that does stand out right everyone else says that they built a a do app they built a calculator they built a Blog and you get to say we built a pick anything you want and we did it as a team we focused on these things like that stands out that's different so I think that's a pretty cool thing that you can highlight talked about clubs um I'm trying to think what else these guys were doing hackathons so yet and I don't I

don't think you have to necessarily be at a college University for this but I I remember being did we do it yeah we we kind of did um I actually organized it wasn't a hackathon and it wasn't just for it wasn't just computers um but there was like a an engineering competition I helped organize one year um which is a lot of fun but that was just sort of like General engineering but there's hackathons right like when I was at Magnet forensics we used to sponsor and um so we'd go and we'd stay with the you know the the participants that were hacking up their stuff and we'd go consult them and yeah it was cool um and again you might be like oh that's just for nerds um I don't know like maybe that's a good takeaway from this is like that's something I

regret is being being like those are the Nerds I'm not but like I don't know man those people are going out there they're putting in the effort they're building cool stuff I'm sure they're not going to regret that they're building tons of awesome experiences probably not going to regret that so I don't know uh if you're if you're listening to this and like that's kind of resonating with you and you're like yeah I don't want to be around people like that I don't know um I I would I would urge you to maybe think differently because I regret kind of uh thinking that way it's like a hard thing to say too because like I don't know I I don't think that I don't feel like it was an active thought process where I was like this thing says it's off too it's crazy stop

um I don't think it was an active thought process where I was like nerds don't want to be around them but I think it was more subconscious so so talking through this and having this realization that it's like I kind of avoided people that's that feels bad to say so um don't don't repeat my mistake like I said I I'm very confident that many of them went on to be wildly successful and I don't just mean like wildly successful because they made tons of money but I mean like they probably got to work super cool roles huge companies interesting companies um you know I know people well I won't go into the details um I do know that people have had some really awesome experiences and I've had times where I'm like man like like I'm very jealous of them which isn't good so isn't

it ironic that those people that I'm like jealous of how well their careers have gone where I'm like oh man like you know I could have asked them to go hack together some stuff for fun and here I was being like nah like I'm cooler so silly um so don't do that I would say what's another good takeaway here um I don't know if anyone else has a different experience with this but I'll share mine uh your marks are only useful for anything that's School related that's it that's it um I have never in my life as a hiring manager I have never looked at someone's marks in school um as an like for hiring interns I was always curious like because they give us the marks it was like you know maybe their marks are crap were they at least like trying in their

programming classes because I get not everyone has the same interest right like I was I ended up being very bad at math I couldn't imagine going for a job interview and someone being like oh why is your Calculus Mark low and then me being like uh because I like to program and not do calculus so I spend all my time programming not doing calculus and then being like nope not good for this job um it's silly so like I have never used marks for anything ever so it I don't know like I I think a lot of people put a lot of focus on them but it's it's not going to dictate anything outside of um outside of school so if you can keep your marks up that's going to help you with um scholarships and stuff hell yeah like do that make sense but

if you're like if your entire life just becomes about making that number go up for your grades it's kind of like you're I feel like you're optimizing the wrong thing so um I don't know if that's a surprise for some people like for example if you were to come interview at Microsoft I'm not going to get a list list of your marks and then go oh they got 95% in physics like I guess we should hire them it's just not a thing so um I would say try to do your best in school if there's motivation for scholarships and stuff absolutely that's great if the internship programs are offering up the grades to employers that might be something where you want to be able to demonstrate but I'm giving you my inside scoop that when I was hiring into I never cared um it just

it just didn't matter to me but you know your mileage may vary hope this person hits the breakes or else we're dead good yeah overall I don't know some people are like hey you know College University is you don't need that these days I think everyone's different I think if you are motivated to go to college or university have that experience awesome I think it's great I wouldn't go back and change what I did if I had to repeat I would this is just my experience I would go back to the University of watero because had an awesome Co-op program I would do it I would get my two years of work experience hell yeah but that's been my experience so I hope that was kind of helpful definitely try for internships definitely use the opportunity to try building things along the way participate in

activities that are extracurricular that are related to software because I think there's tons of opportunity for that and it's it just feels silly to ignore it and remember the nerdy people are going to be the ones that probably are going to go build those experiences right for themselves so um don't shy away from that I hope that was helpful thanks for watching and reminder uh submit your questions below or send them in a message and we will chat soon take care