Data engineer Eric Miguel and legacy software developer Mason Ginter in Morrill Hall on March 5.
As the spring semester nears its end, many seniors are preparing to make the transition from university life to the professional world, while other students are just beginning their journey and seeking direction for their academic and career paths.
For computer science majors, the “Bytes of Wisdom: An SCSU Alumni Panel” offered an opportunity to gain advice from recent graduates who were once in their shoes.
“There’s only so much you can learn from classes,” Eric Miguel, a data engineer said. “We’re pretty new, so there’s a lot that we can share.”
Miguel along with Mason Ginter, a legacy software developer, were the panelists at the event hosted by the Computer Science Club on March 5. Students had the chance to hear firsthand about the challenges of entering the workforce and get insight from those who recently navigated the transition from college to a career.
Many students expressed their anxiety about the workload they will face once they land a job. Miguel helped ease that, by expressing that it is all about balance.
“There have been days where I just go in and do screen docking station setups and a lot of communication with different stakeholders,” Miguel said. “So, it’s not all coding. There’s a lot of coordination, emails, messaging.”
Panelists also shared advice on things they wish they had done while in college. Both Miguel and Ginter highlighted the value of internships and said that they would have benefited from gaining more hands-on experience.
“An internship or two would have helped me so well when I was applying for jobs just because I had no real prior work experience in tech,” Miguel said.
Ginter, who transferred to the university from Gateway Community College with only three semesters left before graduation, said applying for internships crossed his mind far too late.
“I definitely would have and should have done that before, to get more experience, to be more marketable and kind of get a better idea of things,” Ginter said.
Ginter also said that internships are another pathway to getting a job once students turn their tassels.
“Internships help with networking in general,” Ginter said. “If you’ve interned at a company, it’s a lot easier to get hired back at that company full-time.”
Once in the workforce, panelists said factors such as AI, artificial intelligence and programming languages come into effect.
Miguel said that he advises students to utilize AI as an additional tool rather than a clutch.
“If you can only ride a bike with training wheels, can you ride a bike?” Miguel said. “If you can only code with ChatGPT over your shoulder, can you code?”
He emphasized that while AI is a valuable tool, it is crucial to maintain foundational coding skills. This is especially important when learning or rewriting code, as new programming languages like Python, JavaScript and Go continue to evolve.
Miguel said that even though an open-source software library, known as Pandas, is considered to be outdated, it is still utilized.
“I will say on that, like a lot of when you are a new developer, you may think, oh, this system is really old, like, let me just rewrite this newer. Don’t do that,” Miguel said. “It causes problems for a lot of people, because anything you rewrite, someone has to review, someone has to test.”
Both Miguel and Ginter hope that each attendee walks away with knowledge to help jumpstart their careers and gain a competitive edge.
“We felt like it was a good idea to share some insight,” Miguel said. “It’s a lot more real when advice comes from someone in your position not so long ago.”
