Killever's blog

Career Advice !!! Brainstorming
By Killever, 10 years ago, In English

HI All ,
First I'm not seeking for a job I say that (just to avoid misunderstanding of whole entry wrong)
I graduated from computer science about 3 years ago and I worked about 1.5 year ,I'm solving a lot of problems and participating on various online judges from long period I didn't make a good training because of work time.
My work now is really interesting but I didn't have any clear plan for myself for next few years.
I'm not so good to work at large companies but also I'm not very bad to work on most of Egyptian companies that any normal graduate doesn't have any problem solving skills work on it.
I like problem solving & I hope to find a good position that know the value of having such skills but here in Egypt it's hard to find such places.
I applied for a lot of companies that I hope to work on it or at least make intership but no response.
What I have to do ?
Is I have to continue in a specific field like ML , NLP ,Computer Vision and make master ,... but I didn't like research or at least I didn't try it & I didn't find myself in academic part.
Companies like google or facebook take most of candidates from ICPC contest which I'm not eligible for it because of age.
Taking part in online contests like GCJ or TCO or FB hacker-cup ... maybe I will Qualify but it need a very good training for next phases and it's very very hard.
Can we make brainstorming and discuss all available options ?

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10 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it -8 Vote: I do not like it

Taking part in online contests like GCJ or TCO or FB hacker-cup ... maybe I will Qualify but it need a very good training for next phases and it's very very hard

once you advance to GCJ Round 2, you will receive invitation to interview. Google recruters are very good miners :)

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    10 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it

    Google is a quite large company so being hunted from there does not automatically imply you are going to get quite interesting job. They have tons of positions about supporting the stuff they bought from other companies (because they have tons of such stuff) and so one can easily end up here doing the same dull "integration" between parts of AdWords (which were written earlier by different companies in nasty different ways) — though, of course, for better salary :)

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    10 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +11 Vote: I do not like it

    Are you sure? I am top 3000 this year, but no invitation yet :(

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10 years ago, # |
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I like problem solving & I hope to find a good position that know the value of having such skills but here in Egypt it's hard to find such places.

Do not blame your country on this :)

It is just the same anywhere. 95% in programming industry is about adding new forms to apps, new buttons to forms and new columns to databases. It is quite similar in Egypt, India, China, Russia, EU and US.

However there are few percents of companies which work with more curious projects.

Is I have to continue in a specific field like ML , NLP ,Computer Vision and make master ,... but I didn't like research or at least I didn't try it & I didn't find myself in academic part.

Not exactly this. There are many opportunities, but you need to learn a bit of many topics and get more experience to see these opportunities.

For example have you seen MemSQL StartCup — it is organized by people who are creating new database. They apply their problem-solving skills and many other. Though probably they work at level bit exceeding your and mine current level. Nevertheless you can start studying databases and trying to participate in their development since many are open-source. For example MapDB is nice, easy to understand and full of bugs so you can contribute to it easily :D

Besides databases there are other funny data-processing tools like archivers, cryptography tools, complicated protocols etc. Working on all of them is rather creative and addictive business.

With standard industrial projects you can still find curious problems about architecture of back-end, especially when the projects are about complicated and vast data. Being a software architect is also very interesting job because usually such person is not necessary where architecture is obvious and no difficult problems arose.

We mentioned large data sets — and here is the branch of BigData and its many applications, most of them about web intelligence, realtime ads auctions, user sentiments etc.

These are tightly bound to Machine Learning, often they work hand-in-hand. It is another quite interesting branch.

There is a nice field of game development — and it have sub-branches — either small games and client-side, or development of server-side for large online games.

Great amount of adrenaline you can achieve from writing trading bots — there are companies specialized in this thing. It is also about machine learning and some specific knowledge.

There is BioInformatics also. It is great to know that you are working on the cutting-edge of the science... well, probably you personally will not be at this cutting-edge — you may only write some tools for your colleagues, but it would nevertheless feel great :)

So concluding — we only need touch more fields or branches. I can recommend you to try several CS-related courses at Coursera. Very soon here will start new classes on Cryptography, programming in finances, Bioinformatics — and somewhat later on games design, theory, BigData and Machine Learning.

This may give you some insight...

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10 years ago, # |
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but I didn't like research or at least I didn't try it & I didn't find myself in academic part.

How do you know you do not like research if you haven't even tried it?

Surprisingly, very few people successful in programming competitions apply for graduate school. In my opinion, this is exactly where you need your problem solving skiils, precise formal reasoning and abilities to think correctly and quickly. And, in some cases, if you managed to get into a university which pays you for just being a graduate student (this is, I believe very common in EU/US), this is where you will have plenty of time to continue doing programming competitions and learning cool stuff that interests you, and only you, not your boss:)

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    10 years ago, # ^ |
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    I said that because of some friends of mine told me research in our country is just making a lot of searches on Google and write it in a good document :)
    so I didn't like that and didn't try it :D and when I was in faculty I hate projects like that and I didn't like to study I just study interested things for me like Algorithms so for example if I tried to make master degree I will forced to study uninterested topics for me and I hate that.
    maybe I will try to take some interested topics in coursera and try to find a place that work in that area :)
    Thanks for your reply :)

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      10 years ago, # ^ |
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      I dare say again — do not blame your country!

      Nowadays the internet contains so much info that real discoveries could be made even by "making a lot of searches from google" :)

      I know you meant that some researches are not really worthy — but remember the famous "British Scientists" who do not hesitate to publish most trolling researches. For example Plain white T-shirt makes men more attractive - they even did not use Google for this research!

      And note, these researchers are not from Egypt!

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10 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +14 Vote: I do not like it

Come on man! Just stop crying about your country, take some money that you've earned on your job and go to other country — some in EU or the United States. These countries have plenty of opportunities to find interesting job.

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