Ask HN: So, Who's Graduating From School This Spring? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: So, Who's Graduating From School This Spring?

6 pointssamratjp11 comments

Fellow HN'ers,

Anyone graduating this Spring? What are your plans?

(Extra credit if you can explain in a tweetable, digestable size :-)

BS in Mechanical Engineering here, with 10 days to graduation. Then I'm going to trying out everything: applying for jobs, trying to get a research assistantship for grad school (hopefully RoMeLa), starting freelancing, and working on a web app which will hopefully be startup material. Let's just see what sticks.

I have 2 semesters left, but I'm in the same boat as you. Mechanical Engineering undergraduate, looking at a graduate program, already doing occasional freelance development, and a strong CS background even though I opted against that as a degree.

Is this common? I haven't run into anyone in my department that is doing something similar, and often get asked why I did not simply get a CS degree.

I get asked the same all the time, and my standard answer is that I would hate CS if I had to take classes in it, doing tedious homework problems in C++.

I don't think it's too common, though I did get surprised once by a classmate of mine turning out to be a freelance website designer.

By the way, how do you get clients besides friends/family? Having a good portfolio is an obvious way, but have yet to build that up for myself.

Network! Be sure to check out your college's alum networking nights, join a professional organization. It's amazing how much you can uncover by just taking a second to talk someone at a networking event.

I've found that a creative business card, dressing nicely, and a good smile can do wonders (but of course, as long as you have the chops to back your talk, go forth and conquer :-)

That is my exactly response as well. Mechanical Engineering really interests me, and usually what I say is this: "If I can get an ME undergrad/masters degree AND self-teach myself CS/programming (effectively getting a "CS" degree) on the side and handle client work, etc. that should be twice as impressive."

Recently, I read an article here on HN which proclaimed that the best use of CS/IT knowledge is in non-CS positions. Use it as your secret weapon; use it to gain an advantage in your everyday life. Now, most ME majors nowadays have some rudimentary functional programming experience but I'm hoping that sentiment will still hold true.

As far as client work goes, all my development work is through the Facebook Platform (apps and whatnot) so I've built up a reputation on their developer forums and can pretty easily secure work based solely on that. I think the main hurdle with web development is that nearly everyone has a website these days. You might consider checking out some of your local companies and seeing which have poor websites and going from there. Otherwise, try to become a well known and reputable member somewhere online.

About to leave University (BSc Software Engineering. 3 exams left, all this month).

I have a job secured in the security field and have a personal wiki full of projects that I want to do on the side. One of which is in the planning stages as I type this.

Looking forward to see what the next 12 months hold.

I'm graduating with a BA in Economics.

Plans: I'll be writing software... like I have for the past 2 years ;)

BS in CS. Graduated about a week ago from UF. Going to work for a bookstore.

Graduating in June. Perl developer for an ecommerce company in London.

Graduating in June from high school. Going into computer science.

working on enterprise web applications

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