why don't you do some research on post grad studies and talk to post grad students--you goto UCI, there should be a ton of students there to talk to--hell talk to your TAs. there has to be programs out there where you can just specialize. if you truly want to specialize then a PHd may be for you. but I think it can't hurt to ask. and if you're too shy to ask, I'll assume there are message boards or Quora where you can easily ask a broad range of graduate questions to current and former students in those programs.

I don't want to edit too much so I'll double post, sorry, but basically if I could retain this life as a professional student, which has been really cushy, that would be incredible.

PhDs especially in engineering/sciences typically pay for tuition plus a small stipend. Obviously you have to do research. It may fit in your work 1 day a week at your old job plan on top of your PhD program. I'm not sure if you want to stay at UCI nor if you're allowed to in the same program (sometimes that isn't allowed--it wasn't allowed in my major in my school).

welp, guess the PHD option's already out:

"Each student must complete at least 47 units of course work with an average GPA of at least 3.5 for Ph.D." - from my school's ICS graduate studies requirements.

makes sense why for my upper grad/lower grad mixed course, my professor said he curves grad students to A's and B's. With a 3.5 required gpa, a B is an F. lol.

yea upon further research I'd be like 45 before I finished a PhD, assuming I even could. Master's degree is the most appealing. I don't think I'll live super long; I can't wait that many years.

oT: awesome post, had me laughing.

Just from talking to everyone I know whose done grad school, its sounds ****ing awful, and many of them are career students, and even then they sound miserable.

Omg this. The rest of us aren't working jobs because they're a fun way to spend time; we're doing them because we don't have trust funds, don't want to live in severely Christian old woman's apartments, and have people that depend on us so that they don't starve to death.

Line up the best paying grown up job you can, do well at it, make professional connections with non-underage coworkers, and find satisfaction from the good work that you do. You won't know what you're good at or what you find professionally interesting until you're working in the field anyway.

Don't! You will so hate yourself.

I can only support everyone, who says " graduate !". But you didn't really think of dropping out? Or? That would be super incredibly dumb!

honestly, your decisions are super easy. ship out resumes and get a dev job. if you hate it, just quit and go back to school for math or whatever you are interested in.

also, you can always return to the boat but honestly you should proly quit that job just for your mental health. though, it seems being outdoors and active is good for you and if you holed up playing video games that could be worse.

regardless, I think you may be surprised how much you like a dev job.

J,

It makes sense from your life story that the education you would have at this point is inch deep and mile wide. But nothing stops you from independently going a mile deep. You like algorithms, learn more algorithms. You like computability theory, learn more computability theory. There's great resources out there be it books or online courses. I found just reading the Intro to Algorithms by Cormen/etc a lot of fun! As was A Course in Combinatorics by van Lint.

The good news is that there are also plenty of places where employers value general nerdery about algorithms/speed/etc. While it's true that many many many small companies do not care about these things at all (because why would computation speed optimizations matter for most dumb SaaS products?) there are plenty of companies (basically anyone doing anything at scale) where these concerns are real. It turns out the biggest tech employers in the world actually employ many top CS theorists for exactly this reason. You don't have to be a lifelong academic to study these things. You can get paid to do it. Not all jobs have to just be plugging away at things you don't care about for money.

This is very true. However, if you think of clever ways to make their products faster without harming maintainability, that's a nice way to differentiate yourself from your co-workers, if you should end up in a dev-oriented job.

Point is, even in those jobs, you can do some of that sort of thing that you like.

no joke i came close to quitting today, it happens almost weekly. the nazi kid started making fun of me in the work group chat for the kate/cuckold stuff (which he's been warned about before by my boss, but my boss just issues warnings for things and never follows up so I don't even go to him anymore unless it's really, really serious). I just don't want to potentially go into summer with no job and no income because that could get uncomfortable fast.

there's other captain jobs but the only boats I'm really comfortable driving are the ones I work on and they drive much differently than most boats.

i think I'm auto-didactic enough to do this. my therapist mentioned grad school today without me even saying anything about it, and she thinks a master's program in the future might not be a bad idea for me, if I pursued a college professor route at a community college. she thought a PhD was within grasp for me but I really disagree. I did a lot of reading last night and I don't think i could do it even if I wanted to. I do think I might really enjoy a career in education but it would be scary having a master's degree and no real work experience so I'd rather get the work experience first and see if I like that. I'm told by the people I've tutored that I'm a really good teacher.

My last final is tomorrow, then I'm going to work on my resume/cover letter and send it to larry (he generously offered) and my uncle, and other than that I've thought of a few personal programming projects I can involve myself with during spring break. I might try to look for an open source project I can contribute to.

if not, another good idea was attending local hackathons. I also reached out to an old college professor who kept a list of internships and contacts and asked if she had any leads on a job or if she needed help tutoring. No response yet but we've kept in enough contact over the last few years and she really liked me, so unless her email changed I'm sure she'll come up with something for me.

J,

Hackathons are a great idea.

Its a lot harder to get your masters once you start working. You get used to making money and the thought of 2 years with no income is daunting. You could get your masters while you work but speaking from personal experience, it really sucks. You will not have time for personal relationships or any real time off.

If you want to get a Masters, get it now. Masters in CS or Comp Engineering without work experience is very common.

I am on the side that thinks there is nothing wrong with punching nazis in the face. This is absolutely deserving.



he likely never gets laid and thats why hes giving you sht tho. still eff him.

+1. try one for sure. if you enjoy, you will likely find a dev job amenable.

PhD is not about smarts or doing anything revolutionary. It is about ability to finish a long and frustrating project and about the ability to plan and organize your work without much help. You totally can do it. If it will be fun for you is another question.

+1 to hackathrons being a good idea. I did once 3 days camp organized from CCC https://www.ccc.de/ here. You must have some kind of similar organization in USA.

Just got a call from the place that never emailed me back, he wants to extend me an offer. He said it’s a different role from what they originally had in mind but will still be technical.

I go in thursday to find out. I hope it’s good because odds are damn near 100% i’m going to take it.

Congratulations!

Don't forget, it's o.k. to take a day or two to consider the details of the offer (including understanding the new role). Take notes, go home and reflect on it. Just because someone makes you an offer doesn't mean you're obligated to take it, especially with this potential switcheroo.

Unless it's so obviously a great thing for you that you're excited and want to start tomorrow, of course.

Don't let them **** you with some low level ****.

Don't mean to harsh your buzz but I've been ****ed just like that more than once.

"we've filled that position, but we think you're a great fit for this dead end horse **** job!"

They’re a company of maybe 20 people. I don’t think there are any positions like that. I got the sense that it was just a different area of the software stack, not a lower position.

If it is, i’m almost certainly going to be able to distinguish myself quickly.

If not, **** them ill just leave. My chick kind of ruined it for me already by acting super pissy and negative about how I dealt with it - they called me and left a VM, she asked why i wasnt calling back immediately and i said “because im on a snowboard trip, they didnt email me for 4 weeks so **** them they can wait a few hours or a day.”

This really infuriated her for some reason and now the trip’s basically ruined but i caved in and called back right away. Seeing the hiring manager on thursday.

Honestly if the pay is even slightly north of what I make now I’m not hesitating to take it. Larry’s been helping me with my resume and it’s glaringly obvious I need more **** on there.

Totally appropriate to decide how long to wait before calling back based on the content of the voicemail the person leaves. Totally fine to want to wait a few hours, especially if you are in fact on a vacation where it would be appropriate to not be constantly attached to your phone. Your GF probably just wants you to "act like you're a grown up and actually care about whether you have a job and a plan for the future" or some ****, but she's also kind of simultaneously wrong.

Also nothing wrong with taking the job if you like what is offered. That doesn't mean you should stop sending out resumes and going on interviews.

I care, calling back just wasnt a huge priority, because i knew that if at this point they were calling, they’d made their decision and my calling back time frame made little difference. And yea im on vacation.

If i accept i should keep interviewing? I understand why but i’m really not likely to.

I believe that you care.

I was just attempting to provide explanation for why a woman who might want to be in a serious relationship with you might (from what I believe I've read about your relationship and life) react in a way that seems disproportionately upset to your actions.

I also agree that you should be concerned with the simple act of generating a work history as a professional developer. But that doesn't mean you should settle. It sounded like there was a fair amount of opportunity where you are, and that you'd gone on very few interviews and believed you performed fairly poorly in those interviews. It's therefor unlikely that this job offer (which you're talking about basically snap accepting regardless of what it is or what it pays) is the best offer available to you if you do in fact put in more work. So put in more work.

See what's actually out there because you might actually be happier if you have a job that is above the median expectation job for you in your situation. Personally my experience has been that there are a distribution of jobs available for each person at any given time and that frequently what stops the person from getting one that's a couple standard deviations better than another is lack of effort exploring and generating options.

I dont think you should keep interviewing if you've accepted. You can keep interviewing in the "decision period" before your acceptance.

Its also ok to let other places that you've interviewed at but haven't gotten an offer at know that you've gotten an offer.

Perhaps my last post wasnt clear.

I am saying if you have interviewed at A, B, C, D. Only A gave you offer, its ok to immediately tell B,C,D if you havent heard back from them that you got an offer at A and whether they can expedite their decision.