Studied Computer Science in Africa
Retrospective
I graduated with a B.SC in Computer Science from the University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya, two years ago and looking back perhaps I should have done things differently. Not so many things are obvious when you enroll to any school and how you come out on the other end is really a function of your environment and peers. If not careful, one risks being in a comfort zone and not knowing any better.
Welcome to my retrospective on what I wish I did and what I could have done better.
YouTube Educational Content
YouTube is a popular video-sharing website that has a tonne of educational content that could have reinforced my learning especially on computing concepts that I did not quite understand from class. I did not use the platform exhaustively. Renown institutions like MIT and Stanford have channels on which one can learn a lot. Many people of goodwill have taken the initiative to share content as well. All one needs to do is search for content, watch a few videos or read a few posts and before you know it you would have internalized what seemed difficult to understand earlier.
Free Online Courses
I did not pick up new skills as much as I should have yet I had the time. A lot of free open online courses exist, check out MOOC and Class-Central that one can take advantage of. FreeCodeCamp can also help improve your coding skills.
Career Paths
You need to understand that different career paths exist, choose one and invest all your energy in your area of interest. Here is a short list of what to consider: Software Engineering, Quality Engineering, Networking, Infrastructure Management, DevOps, TechOps, Product Management, Project Management and Agile Methodologies, Security, Information Systems, etc
Specialize but spread out
If you are an aspiring software engineer, choose a toolkit and run with it. Check this guide for web development.
Hoping from one technology stack will only spread you thin. If you chose to go with the MEAN stack, MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS, NodeJS, do just that. However, consider being a T-shaped candidate as well.
Opensource Projects
Contributing to free and open-source software can help reinforce your skills, coding, writing, team-work, communication, only to mention but a few. I did not do any of this yet several guided programs exist to onboard students into the world of FOSS. A few examples include: Google Summer of Code, Facebook Open Academy, Rails Girls Summer of Code, Outreachy, Openhatch, etc FOSS projects help network and broaden ones experience and with this comes bigger opportunities.
Practice
You only play the way you practice
Having chosen your stack, aim high and hustle hard. Sign up on the following sites, code, compete and find out how you fare among developers from all over the world: leetcode, topcoder, hackerrank, codility, project euler, codechef, geek for geeks.
Prepare for Interviews
Landing your dream job at that dream company requires adequate preparation. Sean Lee talked about getting a job at Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft here. Watch it!
A couple of resources you can use for preparation before seeking an internship or towards the end of your study program are Cracking the Coding Interview book or the author’s short course, Programming Interviews Exposed, sample engineering interview and how to prepare, career cup etc. That’s just to point you in a direction but there are a lot of resources to help you in preparation. Find what works for you.
Getting Certified
Certifications demonstrate that you have training in a particular field and you can be trusted to do the job. If you can, consider getting certified in your area of interest.
Most certifications are vendor-driven. Examples include:
i) Amazon Cloud
iii) Microsoft
v) Databases
Women In Technology
A lot of effort has been directed towards ensuring women take up careers in technology. The Anita Borg foundation is one such endeavor that inspires and mentors women in technology. They organize sponsored conferences and meetups all over the world that I think every lady in technology should consider attending.
Thank you for reading! The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.