Help me find an entry-level Math/CS job.

January 2, 2007 2:39 AM

I will be graduating with a B.A. in Math/C.S. in two years. What sort of job should I be looking for now?

I'm getting fed up with my current entry-level customer service job, and I would like to gain some experience in the field before I graduate. So now I'm looking for an entry level, part-time IT job.

This next quarter, I will be learning OOP in C++, and I am already proficient in Ada (as proficient as a I can be without any "real" experience). And adding that I have a good working knowledge of computers in general, I hope that finding a better (hopefully non-customer service) and higher paying job isn't impossible.

Since I'm going to school full time, and I need to be making a fair bit of money to pay for it, so, the extremely low paying jobs at the school, volunteering, and probably temping would not be able to both work around school and pay enough. That said, come summer time, I will definitely be hitting up sourceforge and the not-for-profits. Oh, and from what I have heard around here, rentacoder.com works best if you are fast, good and cheap (which I am not). Also consulting is out of the question for the same previous reasons, but it might be better later.

Bonus points for location-specific answers (location: between Seattle and Vancouver, but not close enough to either of them to commute).

posted by philomathoholic to work & money (8 comments total)

Your school should have some sort of intern program. Check with them.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 7:03 AM on January 2, 2007

I'll second an internship or co-op education program if your school offers it. It'll provide you with invaluable experience. Working as a temp or part time "programmer" with no real experience is going to be very, very tough. Perhaps look at entry level QA or testing jobs; they don't pay as well as programming, but can give you insight into process as a whole, and a foot in the door of a company that will have programming positions available once you know what you are doing and/or have graduated.

If you don't want to commute to the Vancouver/Burnaby/Richmond area, you're probably best to stay in the US as there really isn't much else in the Lower Mainland area above the 49th parallel.
posted by cgg at 8:39 AM on January 2, 2007

A guy that works for my dad sent resumes to a number of companies that he knew were doing work in the line of stuff he wanted to do. My dad received the resume at a time where they were run off their feet, but didn't have enough work for another full time guy. Hence, he scored himself a job a few days a week, which expanded to full time in summer, and was guaranteed once he graduated.
posted by cholly at 3:30 PM on January 2, 2007

Two more questions: When exactly do you graduate? May 08? Dec 08? And also, what specifically would you like to do after you graduate? More math-y, or more computer engineering-y?

Anyway, ideally, it would be perfect if you could get a job as close as possible to what you want to do after graduating the summer before you graduate. Two great companies in the Seattle area are Microsoft (of course) and Amazon. I'd really give a close look at Amazon-- some of their web services look really interesting-- like S3 and EC2.

You don't need a ton of experience to land one of these internships, (after all, they realize you are a college student) but you do need at least one solid programming accomplishment.

A great place to get an absolutely entry-level job that has you doing something significant is in the non-compsci (non-math and non-physics too) departments of a research university. As a summer intern in college I programmed a Hidden Markov Model analyzer for the department of molecular biophysics one year and a reconstruction pipeline for neuroimaging data the next. (this sounds way more impressive than it actually was-- a nice incidental plus) The profs were very patient in laying out clear specifications and explaining the technical aspects. The projects were also small enough in scope that they only involved me alone, or one additional person, which has many advantages.
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 6:49 PM on January 2, 2007

Oh, and for programming for researchers, you might make 10-20$ per hour (depending on what you do and the level of grant support for your position), and for MS, a bit more (especially once you factor in the provided housing).
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 6:52 PM on January 2, 2007

Grad date: Dec 08
Math-y or computer engineering-y: more towards computer engineering-y. A job that leaned more towards Tor-y or I2P-ish would be cool (something involving higher level math skills).

Good suggestions. I had forgotten to consider an internship. I shall start my job search by looking for an intern position.

I suppose that the Hidden Markov analyzer job was found by networking?
posted by philomathoholic at 11:37 PM on January 2, 2007

I will be learning OOP in C++

Hmm. Just a friendly tip; I would worry more about the 'P', and not the OO so much. If you focus too much on the 'OO', you might miss out on a lot of valuable stuff. Opinions vary on whether OO is a fad, but it certainly isnt all there is in the world of programming, either.
posted by blenderfish at 1:51 AM on January 3, 2007

Grad date: Dec 08

That is good. That gives you the summer of '08 to land the flagship career-launching internship, and over a year to prepare your resume to land it.

I suppose that the Hidden Markov analyzer job was found by networking?

Yes, but if I had emailed the PI cold, my best guess is that I would still have gotten the position. My impression of many non-compsci profs is they don't really know where to get or how to evaluate software-engineering types too well. If you were to send out cold emails to ten scientists who need programmers, I would imagine you would get a a few responses. Are you around the UW area? They do a ton of medical science research there.

A job that leaned more towards Tor-y or I2P-ish would be cool

Your best bet for working with an actual compsci prof is to take their class and do really well in it. Unlike the medical researchers, a ton of talented compsci people flow through their fingers on a daily basis. Their jobs will be a little tougher to get, and a little lower paying, but they have a little more cachet as you could be considered to be "blessed" by the compsci faculty if you are hired there.

For doing open source stuff, maybe "Summer of code" would work too.
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 11:09 AM on January 3, 2007