Explore Computer Science Careers, Benefits of CDN, and Everyday Wonders of Technology

Things to know if youre going into Computer Science Gwen Nicodemus

Content Delivery Networks (CDN) Computers in your everyday life If you ve ever played a video game or watched a movie online, you ve used a CDN. CDN 1. You make a request to a content provider. Content provider 2. The content provider says Okay, you re in Texas and your ISP is so and so. I m sending you to this CDN to get the content. The content provider then redirects your player/browser/whatever to a URL going to the CDN. 3. The CDN says Okay, you re in Texas. Go to this server and get your data. 4. That server then delivers data to your player/browser/whatever Server close to you 5. Here you go My Movie Benefits of using a CDN include getting your content faster and not overwhelming the content provider.

Other wonders of computers Computers in your everyday life If I m away from home, and I think my ferrets might be too cold or too hot, I can change the settings on the thermostat. If I want to know how often people are opening the fridge door and how long they stare at the food hoping for an epiphany, I can find that information on my phone. Cars, phones, computers, and houses can be accessed/authorized using biometrics. Think of all the code and learning that went into facial recognition software and fingerprint matching. Look at the fur in Monsters, Inc. Hey Google / Hey Siri / Hey Alexa

Who should consider CS careers? People who like to think logically People who like math CS careers People who like to program People who like to eat and pay their bills People who dye their hair blue

Different CS careers Thirty years ago: Software engineering, firmware programming, system administration, tech support, teaching CS careers Today: Software testing, quality assurance, data science, data analyst, data engineering, database administrators, network architects, network and traffic planning, cyber security engineers, program managers, product managers, scrum masters, web designers, web programmers, user interface engineers, user interface designers, solutions engineers, customer solutions engineers, sales people, operations engineers, site reliability engineers, mobile app developers, game designers, game programmers, sound engineers, content delivery engineers,

Social stuff and your personality To get the perfect CS job for you: Pick a job that works with your personality. (Do you like many, short problems or a few, long-term problems? Do you prefer to work mostly with people doing the same type of work as you, or do you like to work with people doing different kinds of jobs? How often do you want to interact with others?) CS careers Is the job 100% remote, 100% in the office, or a hybrid of some sort? Note: I have yet to meet anyone doing any kind of computer job that spends less than eight hours a week in meetings.

Regarding gender I ve noticed fewer issues regarding gender as I have aged. Pay attention during interviews to make sure the people you work with align with your values CS careers Women are severely underrepresented in CS jobs. In my department, about 6% of the technical jobs are filled by women. Glassdoor

How to prepare today Take Algebra. This is usually the first logic class that people take, and that s what you need to cement into your brain. Logic. Also, the order of operations is a good thing to learn too. How to get those jobs Take an object oriented programming language class - or at least go play with http://scratch.mit.edu Take English classes, technical writing classes, and business writing classes Learn to speak Create your own website and start your portfolio of projects. Re-engage that love for learning that all toddlers have Learn to talk on the telephone - practice by calling a grandmother Learn how to troubleshoot

Establish your nerd creds How to get those jobs Build a mod for your favorite game. Learn unix. (In my experience, Unix/Linux jobs pay more than Widows jobs.) Look at publicly available data sets, find a question, and answer it with the data. Publish your results on GitHub. Write a little program on your website in JavaScript Build a website in flask/Django/

Different levels of education If you are an adult, know unix, can write a tiny shell script, and know the difference between their, there, and they re, many jobs are possible. Those jobs don t have much in the way of career advancement, but they have health insurance, PTO, and will pay for part of your college. How to get those jobs I have a niece who went through the Google UX coursera specialization and works in that field. Most jobs want to see a CS degree. Many will accept years of experience instead. (See a chicken and egg thing there?)

About math Every CS degree curricula I ve ever seen requires students to take Calculus. How to get those jobs Few CS jobs actually use a lot of math. For most jobs you need to be able to do/understand some basics like order of operations, averages, means, percentages, percentiles, and standard deviations. Data Science jobs, however, use Calculus, statistics, and higher maths.

Teams When I was a kid, people had an image of sticking software guys in a room, throwing boxes of pizza in occasionally, and having amazing software come out eventually. The work That is not the case today. The projects are too big. Everyone works on a team. The trick is finding a team that you mesh with. Teams these days tend to use established processes in their work. (Look up Agile)

Software engineering sprint Sprint review - max 2 hours Sprint retrospective - max 2 hours Sprint planning - max 4 hours Daily stand up / Daily scrum max 15 mins Backlog refinement Other meetings as needed Daily stand up / Daily scrum max 15 mins Other meetings as needed Daily stand up / Daily scrum max 15 mins Other meetings as needed Daily stand up / Daily scrum max 15 mins Other meetings as needed Daily stand up / Daily scrum max 15 mins Backlog refinement Other meetings as needed Daily stand up / Daily scrum max 15 mins Other meetings as needed Daily stand up / Daily scrum max 15 mins Other meetings as needed Daily stand up / Daily scrum max 15 mins Other meetings as needed Daily stand up / Daily scrum max 15 mins Other meetings as needed The work Daily Scrum - What did you do yesterday? What are you going to do today? Is anything blocking your progress? Do you need to talk anything over with someone? Sprint retrospective - What worked in the last sprint? What did not work in the last sprint? How does everyone feel? - This is for the engineering team. Sprint planning - Review the backlog, decide what items to prioritize, assign work, Sprint review - Show off your work and demonstrate the product, gather feedback - The review includes stakeholders other than the engineering team. Backlog refinement - clarify details, establish deliverables, prioritize tasks in the backlog

Cost vs. benefit Scope Potential return on investment Resources Time

Solutions engineer Solutions engineers can be pre or post sales. Solutions engineers take a company s product and set it up, configure it, and integrate it with whatever the customer needs. Daily: The work Scan email, chats, phone messages, and whatever method your customers use to find out if they need anything. Determine what tasks you need to do and how you ll fit them into your meeting schedule for the day. Work those tasks If you have spare time, work on your pet projects that will help other solutions engineers, tech support, or customers. (Coding projects, dashboards, data analysis, )

Links http://lumen.com https://www.lumen.com/en-us/edge-computing/cdn.html Resources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_things https://opensource.com/article/17/5/30-best-practices-software- development-and-testing https://quanticdev.com/articles/software-design-patterns/ https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/typical-sprint-play-play