Other than Cal Poly, what CSU’s are good for landing a job at a company like google or Microsoft?
Is SJSU good since its close to Silicon Valley?
I assume as a CS major:
Any school, as long as you make the most of your time in college and have actually retained enough to be able to pass technical interviews.
Practically speaking, SJSU has a big advantage being so close to so many tech companies. It’s pretty difficult to get into the CS major though, so keep that in mind if you’re considering it.
Not sure why people are so enamoured with a select few IT companies. There are so many places out there that offer interesting work, and money, for CS.
Thank you all for the help
Yeah, the best advice is to forget about all these big name companies like google, facebook, all the silicon valley companies. You focus on those, you’ll never get a job. What is important is that you build a portfolio while in college, make things, do projects, put time into it or dont do it at all. Find internships doing anything in the IT industry whether it’s programming or not. You’re competing with dozens of thousands of other computer science students who want do the same thing as you do, its a very extremely competitive field. Once you’re out of college, don’t be suprised if you start at a basic IT help desk for a small or large corporation. Once you get your foot in the door within a company and get experience in IT, you’ll be opening up so many more jobs that involve what you want to do; Whether that is software development or networking or whatever. You’re doing excellent if you get a job out of college and make anything over 40K a year starting; you can live alone with that salary.
IT is a small part of what a surprise ft ware engineer might do.
But basically, I tell some of our new hires they own only two things: a name, and a reputation. Build those things - be skilled, courteous, prompt, absolutely honest (never ever bluff in a d sign review) and in general work really hard to be an engineer who makes money for the company and be the kind of person others want to work with, and you’ll likely go where you want and want to be where you go.
All those companies hire from small schools and big ones. So the best school is one where you can really learn the basics of your profession.
For example, I’m certain at least one big software company must be looking to replace their autocorrect staff. “surprise ft” my shiny metal ______.
My son is a junior and a CS major at Berkeley. He desperately wanted a summer internship at Google, interviewed three times, one was a face to face, but still didn’t get an offer. He got plenty of offers from other companies and is working for a well established Silicon Valley firm, housing provided, breakfast and lunch provided at work, public transportation stipend (no Google type bus, alas), fantastic salary and is still a little disgruntled. The highest salaries though, are paid by start ups, they have the hardest time getting interns. It’s the opposite of what I would have expected, I would have thought students would be more interested in new and cutting edge rather than old and established companies.
The graphic @Gumbymom provided is interesting. Apple still recruits heavily at Cal Poly SLO, quite a few of my sons friends who are CS majors at Cal Poly SLO got summer internships there. Two of his friends in EE took their entire junior year off to work at Apple’s one year internship.
If you’re making that low of a salary in Silicon Valley in a software-related job, you are being severely underpaid. I’m a fresh grad with no previous industry experience whatsoever, and I’m making well over double that figure. Imagine someone with more experience!
With regards to IT helpdesk, I don’t honestly know because I don’t know any CS majors that wound up doing that . We’ve all wound up in software development, at least immediately out of college. I know that their salaries aren’t as high as developers (generally, and at least initially), but I’d be surprised if they were as low as 40k in Silicon Valley.
Since you were asking about CSU’s, it’s interesting that three of them are in the top 14 schools in the Payscale survey: Cal Poly SLO, San Jose State and CSU East Bay
The high pay is no doubt due to proximity to Silicon Valley. $40K per year might be fine in the Midwest, in Silicon Valley you couldn’t even rent a shared studio for that.
http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-majors/computer-science
The universities we visited last year in AL, IL, IN, MI, and OH (Midwest and south) all reported average starting salaries for CS majors in the 65-75k range. I think you’ll see some at forty, but that probably means either a really low GPA or a quite often a conscientious decision to join a nonprofit or take a turn as a 2nd Lieutenant.
[edit: I don’t do hiring where I work, but believe 55-75 average to start is typical in industry, in that part of the country where food is grown without irrigation.]
I don’t know if IT helpdesk is even for the lower end either - I think these days most of those end up in QA and the like.
Agreed on the pay though - I’ll be making more than that at an internship and I’m not even halfway out of college. I would say the more common lower limit is probably 50K or so.
@Yomama12 “and is still a little disgruntled”. Why is he still disgruntled with that kind of internship salary and benefits? What benefits does Google give more than that to interns? Are these Google interns really doing more interesting work that other established firms?
Trying to wrap my mind around this CS nerd obsession with Google, Facebook, and MS. Entry level IT is entry level IT, it’s not like they are going to be jamming with Mark Z or anything.
The obsession with GAFAM seems to be pretty heavy on these forums.
Also, IT is not the same as CS. IT generally refers to the less technical management of computers, rather than design and development of computers and software.
Right, I was generalizing with the term IT. I work in CS, I know the job.
It may be just another brand name thing, but I’m trying to understand why working at these huge tech houses is more appealing than the thousands of other application dev jobs out there in the financial services, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, or smaller (more unknown software vendors) etc… world. Its not like an entry level developer at Google is going to be working on the next Google earth out of the gate. Is it the snacks, LOL?
@suzyQ7 I would say he was “disgruntled” because he and his friends do seem to have the attitude that working for the large companies carries more prestige. I guess like working for IBM, back when I went to school! Now that he has been at his company a few weeks he is really likes the work and is enjoying living with other interns from different schools.
In my question I did not directly say Google, I said companies LIKE Microsoft and google so take this CS nerd obsession thing somewhere else.(not starting an argument, just pointing it out).