What the heck was that?! Roughly one year ago back in summer 2017, I finished my university degree in computer science, and I did not get what I was expected to get. Your parents and peers might tell you that it is essential to get a degree to be able to get a (better) job with a good salary. Let me tell you they are not wrong but not quite right either. In this blog post, I am going to share all my experience I gained during my four years at the university.
Background story
I want to give you some background information about what I did before I started my degree and what kind of degree I went for any why.
I’ve done an apprenticeship as a software developer between 2006 and 2010. For all the American readers: An apprenticeship is a formal education where you visit a school for one to two days a week and work in a company on the other days. So it is a full-time job with part-time school and a low salary. The deal is simple: The company you work for educates you for around four years as a software developer, but you do not earn as much money as an educated person.
Anyway, I did it and worked for another two years at another company before I started my university degree. So I had six years of experience as a software developer before I even started my degree program.
The desired degree program
Back in 2013, I decided to go to Lucerne’s University of Applied Sciences and Arts and study computer science. Why did I do that? I expected the same that everyone tells you. You will learn a lot about computers and software engineering that you do not know yet and it will help your career. It will help you to get the job you want and to make more money. To be honest, the money part was not relevant to me at the time.
Back then I just wanted to be able to work with better people in exciting projects. I wanted to be involved in the cool stuff and not just moving text boxes around drag and drop forms in the WinForms visual editor.
They will force you to do things you don’t like
It is true that you will be going to learn a lot if you join a degree program, but it is also true that you will have to do a lot for that degree that helps absolutely zero in progressing in your career. The thing is that you have to show them that you got the basics even though you might have already real-world experience and got paid several years for doing exactly what they want to teach you from the ground up.
On the other hand, it is interesting that they force you to do some work you would not do if you did not have to do it.
So let’s imagine you want to improve in your software engineering capabilities. Honestly, you don’t care about project management and system engineering. But you will have to do work related to these areas as well.
Otherwise, you won’t get your degree. It helps you to understand people having another background. Working with peers from different technical areas is a lot easier for me now that I know what’s important for them and why they care about things a software engineer does not.
So it is critical to understand that not everything they force you to do is useless or will even harm your progress.
You need to have the right mindset to get through modules you dislike.
Learning
It is not about the exams, but about the projects
Yes, you will have to write exams at the end of each semester, and you have to pass them. You need to score a certain amount of points to get to the next semester. Somehow they want to measure you and judge you.
But let’s be honest here. Studying well for exams does not make you a better programmer. It is just a formal aspect of your studies. Nothing more. It is very important to recognize and fully understand that as soon as possible. Otherwise, you will miss a great opportunity to make progress.
One thing that helps you making progress is working with other students on different projects. And let’s be honest here as well. You will have to work with students you don’t like in projects that don’t make sense to you or seem unnecessary to you in the first place. Heck, you will even have to work with technologies like programming languages you dislike or even hate. It’s the truth.
Working on those projects gives you the fundamentals needed to succeed in the real world. Honestly, do you think project managers are always happy if you tell them you need another week? Or do you think you as a software developer can choose which technologies they want to use in their company’s projects? If you did, your pretty wrong.
Learning
Making friends and networking
No, you do not need to be friends with anyone, and you should not treat people as if they were your career coaches either. What I can tell you is that if you study hard for about three to four years, you will start making some real friends.
I have a group of friends from my university years which is about ten people. We regularly meet each other and share valuable advice about companies, career, education and other business and career-related topics.
Furthermore, I just came back from our second trip. We went to Dublin for an entire week, and we mainly were found in the pubs having a great time.
Why do I tell you this in this article? It is precious to have friends in many different companies. It is even more helpful if they are all located around your home. Let’s imagine you want to switch jobs and you are looking for a new opportunity.
Don’t you think that I will have an excellent chance to be directly recommended to a friends manager if I wanted to? Sure, you have to be capable of your work, but your friends (your network of professionals) can help you open the doors.
Learning
Filtering the information flood
Who does not have any unread emails in the inbox, several missed calls on their phone, 20+ unread Whatsapp messages, etc. We live in a busy world.
Everyone (including me) wants to share information and tries to take some of your time. In university, you will have to run through very much content within a relatively short time. It forces you to be quicker. It forces you to quickly understand which information is helpful, which is very important and what you can ignore and never think about it again.
This ability to filter the information flood has helped me to stay on top of everything in my day job for years now. I also think that my personal life is much simpler since I do the critical stuff very efficient and by filtering the information flood I also make sure that I work on the things that really need to be done.
Learning
Final thoughts
Would I do it again? Yes, I would do it again! But I would do it for the right reason. I wish I had known the things I wrote down above before I started.
The one thing that I believe is that experience you gain while studying is very valuable to your career because it is not tightened to a specific company. Sure, I worked eight years for the same employer who allowed me to gain deep insight into several projects and products but this experience is gone as soon as I left the door for the last time.
I am not saying though that all of my experience is gone, but there is a fair portion that is tightened to the company.
Maybe those tips are helpful for your individual studies, or maybe you can give more advise for future students? Or perhaps you completely disagree with me? Let me know about it in the comments section.
