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Nirvikalpa posted:That makes sense, thanks. But would you have any suggestions on how I could show my knowledge and skills on my resume/cover letter so that I would make it to the interview stage? I know GPA doesn't matter much (but I've heard it's very important for a lot of consulting management jobs) but what about my lack of experience? If you do not have any experience, from anywhere, related to the job posting then it could be more difficult. But you might have done some volunteering where you researched and presented things so you can spin things like that and talk yourself up to a reasonable level. Also gather and format nicely any schoolwork which you could show as a portfolio. Think of any work or school work in which you identified a problem and tried to solve it through research and translate it into more business like format even if you have to keep it somewhat general. I got into consulting right after military with no masters and a barely passing gpa, but my experience was directly related to my first role.
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Sep 8, 2021 01:32
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the good news is now is the best time to apply for consulting jobs as demand is very, very high. the bad news is that any strat/management joint is going to bin your fresh-out-of-undergrad resume if your GPA starts with a number less than 3, so you should probably look elsewhere
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Sep 8, 2021 16:41
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Sub-3.0 covers a pretty wide range. Are we talking 2.97? 2.5? 2.03?
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Sep 8, 2021 17:13
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ultrafilter posted:Sub-3.0 covers a pretty wide range. Are we talking 2.97? 2.5? 2.03? I would say between 2.5 and 2.9. I'm not sure yet. I'm retaking a failed class. But I heard that having below a 3.0 doesn't matter anywhere. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:the good news is now is the best time to apply for consulting jobs as demand is very, very high. Ah that's too bad. I actually failed a bunch of classes years ago and have done rather well since then, but I also failed a bunch of classes Spring 2020 when COVID hit. Is there anything else I could do?
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Sep 8, 2021 17:47
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work with your school to give you incompletes on your transcript for the spring 2020 COVID stuff would be my only advice but like - part of the reason that consulting firms do this is because they want people who can tough it out when things suck. the point of consultants (for clients) is that they take on a bunch of bullshit you don't want to/can't deal with in the day-to-day, and that means that the level of tolerance for absolute stupid moron tier poo poo has to be extremely high. i empathize that COVID was hard and it's reasonable to have failed classes during it for various reasons but this is not an industry based on reasonableness. its an industry based on grinding every ounce of effort out of people on stuff they don't like to do and don't care about. i don't think it sounds like a good fit for you.
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Sep 8, 2021 18:20
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:work with your school to give you incompletes on your transcript for the spring 2020 COVID stuff would be my only advice That's fair. I also think it has to do with the classes I took? Like if I was an easier major I think I might have passed them? Or not. Anyways is there anything else I could do?
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Sep 8, 2021 18:24
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:the good news is now is the best time to apply for consulting jobs as demand is very, very high. I've been in conversations where we're seriously suggesting hiring people with no degree. Standards right now are extremely no bueno. Even so, yeah this seems dubious. I do know a guy who had like a 2.6 from waterloo engineering who got in though, and that was in normal times. Showing up to recruiting events and really standing out, or creating personal connections through other means can bypass some of the standard hiring rules.
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Sep 8, 2021 18:37
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Nirvikalpa posted:I would say between 2.5 and 2.9. I'm not sure yet. I'm retaking a failed class. But I heard that having below a 3.0 doesn't matter anywhere. This is not true right out of school. GPA will matter because otherwise people are pretty homogenous. Once you get a couple years of experience under your belt it doesn't matter anymore. So either get your GPA higher or do stuff to make yourself stand out more from someone who took the same classes but had a 3.2 GPA.
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Sep 8, 2021 19:06
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if you work on your technical skills a lot you could probably slot in to more of a backoffice or analytics role somewhere, since that is much more dependent on hard skills and less on dubious poo poo like "Executive Presence"
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Sep 8, 2021 19:23
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Let me rephrase my question. Is there something I could feasibly do *right now* with the technical skills I've learned from economics? Or are the only jobs I'm qualified for the ones that require a generic bachelors degree?
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Sep 8, 2021 20:55
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Nirvikalpa posted:Let me rephrase my question. Is there something I could feasibly do *right now* with the technical skills I've learned from economics? Or are the only jobs I'm qualified for the ones that require a generic bachelors degree? Various "analyst" jobs and stuff adjacent to data science might be up your alley. A little bit of data manipulation and programming knowledge can go a long way, and to some extent can be self-taught on the job. Something like Stata can be good to know, but honestly just being a whiz at Excel, Tableau, and basic SQL probably qualifies you for a ton of entry-mid level stuff. All things you can self-study to a basic competency relatively easily. I'm an econ major as well. It's been over 10 years now but I started out as a marketing data analyst at a digital marketing agency. I did a lot of kind of grunt work reporting and data research stuff, nothing that complicated but it was real experience. For a first job it was pretty good. My direction was rather quickly toward pure software development, but business analysts of many flavors are common and increasingly under the (very broad) umbrella of data science and analytics. It's a good step into a lot of business-y office jobs, or into technical specialties.
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Sep 8, 2021 21:05
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I started off doing survey / market research analytics and instrument design with an econ degree. That tends to pay less well but is quite in demand.
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Sep 8, 2021 21:14
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<x> analyst with x being almost anything. Marketing, HR, data, operations. There's free versions of a lot of tools too. So you could do some little portfolio projects. Analyze the titanic guest list, fantasy football, whatever you like. Nice way to offset the gpa and stand out a little. Edit: also work the student angle to network. Low pressure "I'm a student and thinking about a career in your field" stuff gets more hits than you would think. Xguard86 fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Sep 8, 2021 |
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Sep 8, 2021 23:06
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There are free and low cost resources to learn SQL, Tableau, advanced Excel, Visio, Python, R, etc all of which are in very high demand for well paying low to mid level positions. I have 10 years of experience and I still need time to learn some of these so I can chose where I want to go next. If you can prove you have basic proficiency in these it would help offset bad gpa.
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Sep 8, 2021 23:19
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Hi, I'm a high school junior. Recently I have gotten a real inspiration and passion to try and become a Game Designer. I've been looking into schools and portfolio ideas for the past month or two. Is this dream just a dumb child's fantasy, or do you think it is a reasonable career to aim for? I have a GPA of 3.8 (I don't know if that really effects much). I personally think my artwork is of pretty good tier(?). I am by no means an *outstanding* student, but I try my honest best. Basically in short I just want an answer plain and simple: is this a stupid thing to reach for? 
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Sep 9, 2021 03:02
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rainmstr posted:Hi, Let me preface this by saying if you were 30 years old and asking this, the answer would almost 100% be "don't do it." Here are my reasons: - Turning a hobby into a career sometimes makes you lose passion for your hobby. If you do this 40 hours a week, will you hate it? How much time do you spend doing it now? - Everybody thinks game design is cool, therefore game design is a field that is wildly underpaid. Just know that going in. You are probably not going to get rich ever doing this. Is that something you care about? - You really have to be the tits to go pro in this field. I don't think "good tier" cuts it. Hopefully you're being modest. I don't know how far modest goes in this field. If I were you, and I wanted to break into the field, I'd learn some coding to go along with the graphic design. I would spend the entirety of my junior year making some sort of demo game - ideally a live phone app or similar. If you don't have anything else on your resume, you need something like that. OR, I would shoot for an entirely different career and work on game design as a side project. To be brutally honest, if you've just been "looking into portfolio ideas" for two whole months without producing anything, then no, game design is probably not your field. If you're serious about this, produce something.
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Sep 9, 2021 04:58
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much like any creative field, painting, writing, music comp, whatever, the first step to becoming a game designer is design a game. do that and you will figure out real quickly whether this is for you. there are many game designers on these here forums, from big corp AAA title level shot callers to cogs in the machine to one man bands, and there have been threads on game dev so if you poke around you might find some people with specific domain expertise to talk to.
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Sep 9, 2021 14:00
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Just going to nth learn some programming. Even if thats not what you want to do, it's going to be important. If you find putting classes together to form a backend than sends data to a frontend that shows the user something to be boring and rage-inducing, well, game design will do that too. The benefit of going this way is that if you do love programming you have a fallback of tons of very high paying, not physically taxing jobs that you can also do. So go, learn Python, create some terrible things and see what you think. There's a good chance it could be life changing even if it never touches a game. Pursue game design on a pathway that also means you learn a bunch of super useful skills (that are useful even if you don't go into software at all). If you mean board game/card game design then.....jesus kid. Just. Jesus. God help you, because you're already dead.
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Sep 9, 2021 14:30
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The nice thing is that if you use your interest in game design to learn transferable skills, hard and soft, then you've got a leg up even if you change your mind later. So, go for it and have fun! Buddy of mine did this path and realized he didn't like the lifestyle but fortunately he was a great software engineer and pivoted to more normal corporate stuff. Another guy I know designs phone RPGs as a hobby from his consulting job.
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Sep 9, 2021 14:45
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Well recently I have been dabbling into a bit of code. Last month I setup my own website from a blank vps with a friends help. I know the basic fundamentals of code, I just have no idea how to visualize the code. I’ve worked with multiple of my friends involving 2d to 3d artwork & code. They have taught me alot, but I massively overthink many things I do. I just have no idea where to even start. I am not the best at explaining… I also don’t want to just start puking all my ideas into a post as I feel like I would get off topic to the thread ^^’  I just think it would be really cool to work as one. I have a few schools in mind if I do continue down this path. I also need some ideas I can fall to if the game designer thing doesn’t work out
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Sep 9, 2021 15:13
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rainmstr posted:Well recently I have been dabbling into a bit of code. Last month I setup my own website from a blank vps with a friends help. I know the basic fundamentals of code, I just have no idea how to visualize the code. I’ve worked with multiple of my friends involving 2d to 3d artwork & code. They have taught me alot, but I massively overthink many things I do. I just have no idea where to even start. I am not the best at explaining… I also don’t want to just start puking all my ideas into a post as I feel like I would get off topic to the thread ^^’ DON'T go to any "Game Design" school though. These are usually not accredited and almost universally crappy. What you've started doing is great! And these are normal learning curve things to go through. My suggestion would be to pick up a language and not really focusing on gaming yet. I suggested Python, it's really purpose built to get you focusing on code and logic and not so much on syntax. From there learning Unity isn't too bad but if you try to jump there now the "I am trying to visualize how things connect" will become a dark pit. If you play with this in your spare time, you're kinda smart, you can have a real game in just a few months. For university, I'd suggest just a straight comp-sci degree with a focus on computer graphics if that's also your thing. Like I said, the game design schools will, at best, equip you for a QA job which is further from game design than working at a bank is.
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Sep 9, 2021 15:23
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Guinness posted:Various "analyst" jobs and stuff adjacent to data science might be up your alley. A little bit of data manipulation and programming knowledge can go a long way, and to some extent can be self-taught on the job. Something like Stata can be good to know, but honestly just being a whiz at Excel, Tableau, and basic SQL probably qualifies you for a ton of entry-mid level stuff. All things you can self-study to a basic competency relatively easily. What would being a "whiz" at those things entail? Do companies want to see a portfolio or do a technical interview before hiring?
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Sep 9, 2021 18:45
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Re: making stuff Just do what you can do. Pretty much every successful creator says the path is making garbage that is less garbage each time until you get to something good. Nirvikalpa posted:What would being a "whiz" at those things entail? Do companies want to see a portfolio or do a technical interview before hiring? There's some data analyst courses out there. Coursera and what not. Even if you don't want to do the class, the syllabuses help figure out what to know. Tbh most jobs like that actually have a much lower bar than all the stuff you -could- learn. Often, advanced knowledge is more the difference between 50 hour weeks and 20 hours versus qualifying for the job.
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Sep 9, 2021 19:46
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the biggest thing regarding being a decent analyst isn't your hard skills it's knowing how to deploy them provided you have the hard skills you should try to get a decent read on industry problems and challenges for your target employer and reference some of them in your cover letter. this can be a little naive, that's fine - you're just showing that you can do homework without being told to do it. yes, this is work. yes, you will need to write cover letters with a 2.x.
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Sep 9, 2021 21:25
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Need some career advice. I've been a data analyst at a tech firm for five years (did some consulting/marketing work before that). I do a lot of SQL, data analysis and dashboarding. In the past two years I've also been dabbling in other stuff, such as co-writing PRDs with product managers and driving some process changes across the company to solve business problems. My ultimate goal is to become a product manager or technical program manager. Currently, I have two offers on the table: 1. Program manager at a FAANG company (TC = x) 2. Senior data analyst at a non-FAANG big tech firm (TC = 1.35x) I'm more keen on the program role as it feels like it's gonna bring me closer to the goal of PM/TPM -- certainly I think the role plus the FAANG pedigree will open more doors for me. The analyst role pays substantially more. But many data analysts end up as data scientists, and I really have no interest in moving down that path, despite having taken some relevant courses. The compensation gap doesn't seem possible to bridge right now -- the terms are as they are. I'm split and would be happy to take any inputs on this. Thanks!
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Sep 20, 2021 10:40
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Is x enough to lead the lifestyle you want for the next few years?
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Sep 20, 2021 13:13
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Hearken and let my woes be a cautionary tale: Left a corp job to join what was sold to me as a successful startup looking to grow but was actually the founder’s hobby business. Negotiated a multi-year fixed salary with ramping equity. 3 months in the founder said they actually didn’t want the pressure of growth, were happy keeping it as a hobby business and didn’t want to forego their income to pay my salary while we grew it to the level it could support both of us, so would I mind not being paid. I have recourse because I got the contracts done properly at the start and I wasn’t born yesterday, but be aware that people who aren’t intentionally dicks may still be terrible businesspeople who haven’t properly thought through what it means to sign what they signed with you.
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Sep 20, 2021 13:28
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ultrafilter posted:Is x enough to lead the lifestyle you want for the next few years?
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Sep 20, 2021 13:58
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Let me ask: If you've been working with product managers at your company, is there an option 3 where you jump to PM internally? Because that might actually be the fastest and most assured path. Second question: Sometimes program manager is a path to product manager and sometimes it is not. Do you know if people commonly make that move in the company any division your joining? Related to above: if you have product connections right now, don't jump and realize you're actually further away.
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Sep 20, 2021 14:10
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Beefeater1980 posted:Hearken and let my woes be a cautionary tale: Did they at least pitch how great the exposure would be from all your unpaid work?
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Sep 20, 2021 15:51
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Democratic Pirate posted:Did they at least pitch how great the exposure would be from all your unpaid work? No, but they did offer to pretend to be still paying me so I could commit mortgage fraud if I wanted, which I politely refused. It baffles me where people come up with these ideas, is there a website somewhere?
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Sep 20, 2021 15:57
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Vegetable, I don't know the ins and outs of the program/product manager career path such as how to go about being one, or whether being one leads to being another, or any of that. But I do know that I would absolutely rather take a job that I thought I would enjoy or would lead to one I would enjoy in the future over more pay in a role that was similar to a role I was trying to get out of. Especially if the one I would enjoy pays enough to keep my current standard of living. I would even take a pay cut personally. That's just my two cents, hope it helps you.
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Sep 20, 2021 17:17
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Vegetable posted:Need some career advice. I've been a data analyst at a tech firm for five years (did some consulting/marketing work before that). I do a lot of SQL, data analysis and dashboarding. In the past two years I've also been dabbling in other stuff, such as co-writing PRDs with product managers and driving some process changes across the company to solve business problems. Exactly which faang? Feel free to dm me if you want to keep it quiet.
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Sep 23, 2021 08:35
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I need some advice. I've been a stay at home dad for the last eleven years and I'm scared I'm looking down the barrel of a divorce. I'm not really sure what to do. Career wise, I was in the navy, then got out and worked technician level jobs while i went to school and got a BS in electrical engineering. At the point I graduated however, I couldn't find a job and I've been a SAHD ever since. I did have one job which was sort of gig / project based with the title "electrical engineer" but I quit due to covid and I think I burned bridges. Not sure if I could get a reference. So: Education: BSEE, state school. 11 years old Jobs: Navy, technician til 2008, school, then nothing, then that gig job. I'm located in the south SF bay area. I've seen technician / fab work level jobs advertised. I've seen a couple college graduate / entry level engineer jobs but I'm not sure I'm a strong candidate because of my age, the age of my degree, and competing against new grads in their twenties. Longer term, maybe I need to have a newer education plan? go back to school for an MSEE, some cert? LeArN tO CoDe?
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Sep 23, 2021 17:29
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Proust Malone posted:I need some advice. From a purely financial aspect, you would qualify for alimony I would assume? That would help. Also, not really the point of the thread, but I would try to work on the relationship and see if you can avoid divorce if both you and your partner actually want that. If you don’t know…maybe you need to find out. Lastly, did you see yourself as a a Stay at Home Dad forever? Knowing the right next step is usually only easy if it’s something like “I need to put food on the table so I need this a job ASAP” or “this job is what I love to do, and its more money at a better company”. Anything in between and is going to be a question of what do you *need* to do and what do you *want* to do. A helpful question, why did you take that gig job after 10 years of SAHD?
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Sep 23, 2021 18:04
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Crazyweasel posted:From a purely financial aspect, you would qualify for alimony I would assume? That would help. To the first point, yes I am trying to avoid divorce. I do think I would qualify for alimony or other forms of support. We made it on her one income so I don't think I'd quite be starving. I'm posting here in the career path thread to get an reasonable view about what I could or should do work wise assuming I can't work it out. I didn't really expect to be a SAHD forever but the nature of being one means the job never really quite ends, there's always more to do with the house and the kids. I took the gig job when the youngest went to kindergarten and I had an offer. It worked for me in that it was project-based so I could go to a site during the day and leave at one or so and leave to pick up the kids, then do the work at night after the kids went to bed or the next day when the kids were at school. The lure of the job was really exercising the muscles of the job/ degree I had worked really hard for. I felt the age of my degree at that point and felt like it was a now or never thing. I did homeschooling during covid, my wife is now working from home full time. The kids are now back to school full time. One thing I looked into was teaching. I went and got my basic, test-based cert and could now substitute teach. I know teachers in the district here and they are looking for STEM teachers and have need a long term sub immediately. Pay just got raised too. Other idea is getting an hourly job in the industry like a fab, refresh my education in some way, then get back on a long term career path. Other idea is pursuing a niche cert and finding a path that way? Technical writing? Sales? Construction? Code enforcement?
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Sep 23, 2021 18:41
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Proust Malone posted:I need some advice. Did you use the entirety of your GI Bill? They pay you a "living stipend" to go to college and you can take all online classes as long as just 1 is in person each semester to get the stipend, but it is based on cost of living for the zip code the college is in. If you're in San Francisco... that's uhhhh $4971 a month tax free lol Nota bene, if you left in 2008 and didn't use the whole GI Bill, it expires in about a year and a half (you can submit a letter that Covid prevented you from taking classes which might push the expiration by another year). If you have any service-related disability, such as tinnitus in your ears from working in loud air-conditioned server rooms, which as a Navy EE, you almost certainly did, you would get rated as at least 10% disabled. Which is more tax-free money for the rest of your life, and it enables you to sign up for VR&E (now called Veteran Readiness and Education, but that is a backronym, it was more commonly known as Vocational Rehab, which is like the GI Bill but even better, and will pause the GI Bill expiration for you to use it later. The Voc Rehab program is specifically made to help vets change careers after they're out and can't get jobs with their poo poo education + disabilities. It's your life but if I were you I'd notice that ringing in your ears getting louder and get thee a claim in with a VSO https://www.va.gov/disability/get-help-filing-claim/ If you pull it off and start school with nearly 5g's rolling in monthly, your wife might even put up with you a while longer. If not, you've got gently caress you money.
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Sep 23, 2021 20:53
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Christ, I wish. I enlisted then went to Annapolis for 2 years then dropped out. I got two years of college out of it, but I left enlisted service a couple months shy of the three years you need to qualify for the gi bill. Pre-9/11 too. GI bill has gotten way better since.
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Sep 23, 2021 22:01
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Proust Malone posted:I've seen technician / fab work level jobs advertised. I've seen a couple college graduate / entry level engineer jobs but I'm not sure I'm a strong candidate because of my age, the age of my degree, and competing against new grads in their twenties. FYI, you are a stronger candidate as long as your skills are good. If you can hire someone with good life experience and a background like that they usually are more appealing than a fresh-out-of-school person. I think your sinking yourself for no reason here.
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Sep 24, 2021 03:09
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Vegetable posted:My ultimate goal is to become a product manager or technical program manager. Currently, I have two offers on the table: If this is not already a Technical Program Manager role at a FAANG company it will be significantly more difficult to transition to a Product Manager role. The easiest way to become a PM is likely to do it at your current company, grind it out, and then jump ship when you're ready to leave. I have coached a good number of people into PM roles from different backgrounds; feel free to PM me with more specific info if you want some advice.
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Sep 25, 2021 08:37
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