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MS in Software Engineering, Development Management Track Blog

Wondering if a Carnegie Mellon degree is right for you? Read about our students' experiences through the MS in Software Engineering, Development Track program.

Linda is a first year part-time student in Carnegie Mellon's MS Software Engineering, Development Management track. She is a Software Developer at Electronic Arts in Redwood Shores, CA. She likes to dance and sing and her favorite videogame is The Beatles RockBand. She enjoys Indian, Japanese, Thai, Italian and Mexican food. She comes from Mexico City, and has being living in CA for the past two years.
Pras Sarkar is a second-year part-time student in the MS Software Engineering Development Management track. He works in Yahoo! Labs. His responsibilities include materializing ideas and concepts into engaging prototypes and demos, some of which ultimately mature into products that Yahoo! visitors use everyday. He is interested in emerging web technologies, social interaction over digital mediums, and creative interfaces that push the boundaries of human computer interaction.
Vineet is a Lead Developer at Boeing and a second year grad student in the part-time MS Software Engineering, Development Management program. He loves reading, playing with his daughter and pursuing the religious aspect of his life. He is an active volunteer of Vedic Cultural Center, a Seattle-based organization dedicated to promote the Vedic (ancient Indian) arts, culture, music and dance.
Truc is a second year part-time student in Carnegie Mellon's MS Software Engineering, Development Management track. She is a Software Engineer at Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale, CA. She loves food and enjoys anything related to food: going to different restaurants, cooking, watching the Food Network, and of course, eating!

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Introducing Linda Avendano

When I first came to Silicon Valley to start working for my company, I learned very quickly that even though I had the technical skills for my position, I lacked management and teamwork experience. As a programmer, I was always working alone on my code, and didn’t care about collaborating or working in partnership with my colleagues. But as soon as I got involved with the members of my team, I knew that I needed to learn more about team building and managerial skills. Carnegie Mellon’s program was the right choice for me, as it includes technical and management courses. I needed to upgrade my technical skills and, at the same time, learn how to cooperate with my peers.

When I attended an information session, and learned that most of the tasks during the program were done within a team, I made up my mind and decided to apply for this program. Learning how to collaborate in teams was one of the most appealing aspects of this program. It has always been very hard for me to team up with other people, especially if they did not come from a technical background. However, in my current job, I have to deal with as many non-technical employees as technical ones. Carnegie Mellon provides an environment to experience what it is like to act as a team, to learn about sharing, support, commitment and team success.

It has been four weeks since I started the program, and I have been working with other 3 classmates. So far my team has been doing a great job. We have a lot of support from the faculty to help us build a collaborative and supportive environment to work. This has helped me to immediately apply this knowledge to my team at work. Even though you might think that knowing how to collaborate in teams is not a key objective in the work place, it is. At CMU, you have an opportunity to gain these skills as almost 70% of the activities within the program are focused on learning how to team up with your classmates.

posted by Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley @ 11:48 AM  1 comments

Tuesday, August 25, 2009


A few of my classmates have asked me why I chose to pursue the Development Management (DM) track in the Software Engineering course. Though my choice has been based entirely on my personal opinions, I thought that sharing them might help some prospective students who are still trying to decide between the Development Management and Technical tracks.

Firstly, let me explain the structure of the two tracks. Students in both tracks have to take the same courses and are on the same teams during the entire first year. In the second year, the students in the DM track join the first-year students in the Software Management course while the Tech track students continue on with the technical track.

The major benefit of the technical track is that it allows the students to stay technical and further their technical expertise. A big pull of the Tech track is the Practicum class that students take in the second year. This class places you (and your team) in a real-life situation with a real-life company working on (hopefully) a real-life product. In my opinion, this is one of the biggest reasons to choose the Technical track, especially if you're looking to work in a company setting that is different from your current one.

In the DM track, the courses dive deeper into the issues of people and software management. The fundamental difference here is that you're going to learn how to manage people, not code. This is a big shift for most people coming from a technical background. Managing people is quite different from being able to write code and directly contribute to the completion of a project. When being a manager, you are responsible for the people you manage. Your performance is directly related to the performance of the engineers that you're managing. Therefore, this becomes a much bigger choice than just choosing between the DM track and Technical track - it is fundamentally a choice of where you see yourself in the next 5 years.

If you see yourself being a manager, managing a large project, being an entrepreneur, the odds are that the DM track is the one for you. If you see yourself being a lead/senior engineer or an architect, the DM track may still be for you. Why? Let me explain.

If you decide to stay technical for the next 5 years, you can still benefit greatly by learning how to manage people. You can gain a lot of headway in your career path by learning the metrics by which your manager is going to measure you. You may also gain some insight into how your manager's manager is going to be evaluating him/her and how they are going to be evaluating the success of the team/project. This is integral to being able to navigate the organization chart and move upwards. It will also help you become a better team player and make your manager look better (which always makes you look better).

Lastly, if not for anything else, the DM track might help you increase your pay scale. Let me explain since this isn't very intuitive. Initially, turning into a manager may actually result in a pay decrease. However, the more success you have as a manager in leading teams to launch and deliver successful products will only increase your worth. Eventually as you repeat this cycle often with consistent success, you will enjoy a faster pay rate increase. Simply put, being a manager will put you in a position to take risks and reap the benefits from it. It opens the opportunities that you can take advantage of that you may not be able to as an individual contributor.

You must make this personal choice after careful reflection and evaluation of your career goals. But I hope my reasons help you choose between either option, because, at the end of the day, having a plan for either Tech or DM tracks is better than having none at all.

posted by Pras Sarkar @ 3:01 PM  5 comments

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Engineering Requirements



I am now taking my second course, Engineering Requirements. It's actually halfway through and I currently have a glorious week off. The work load for this course is about the same as the work load for my first class, Foundations. Instead of programming like the first course, this course is about gathering requirements. I've had the opportunity to learn a lot of new things that I am not exposed to at my current job, such as: requirements elicitation, use cases and scenarios, and user interviews. I have been able to also learn from my teammates who have experience with requirements elicitation at their work. Speaking of teammates, I really like my team this semester. We all get along and have a lot of fun together...even during our epic team meetings. Sometimes, I think we goof off more than get our work done, but it always works out. It's been a nice week off from school, but we still have a lot of work left for the second half of the course!

posted by Truc Nguyen @ 3:16 PM  3 comments

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Time Flies!


It has been 2 weeks since mid-term break and I am 4 weeks away from the end of my first graduate class, Foundations. I have definitely spent more time during the second half of the class. As our project deadline draws closer, everyone on my team has been putting in more hours. We meet almost everyday, whether in person or over phone. It's a good thing we all get along well or we would get sick of each other! With all the extra time I have been putting into school, I don't have much free time with work too. Despite being so busy, time has really flown by and it seems like only yesterday that I was at the welcome orientation.

posted by Truc Nguyen @ 11:43 AM  1 comments

Monday, October 13, 2008

Why I chose Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley


My name is Pras Sarkar and I work at Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, CA as a Research Engineer. My job at Yahoo! involves materializing ideas and concepts into engaging prototypes and demos, some of which ultimately mature into products that Yahoo! visitors use everyday. I'm interested in emerging web technologies, social interaction over digital mediums, and creative interfaces that push the boundaries of human computer interaction.

I'm a passionate engineer and hacker, and I'm deeply interested in the mechanics of software engineering. That is what led me to the part-time Software Engineering program at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley. I felt that the program held the right balance between theory and practice - an integral factor in my decision making process.

The program brings together part-time students from a variety of different backgrounds. In my first week alone, I met engineers from varied fields like semi-conductors, defense, manufacturing, etc. Being a web engineer working in a web company, I hardly ever get to interact with engineers from such diverse backgrounds. What I find fascinating are the conversations and collective knowledge gained from such meetings.

The format in most classes is a theoretical session followed by discussion. The theoretical sessions are always informative, but what I find most interesting are the discussions that follow. They usually revolve around past experiences on the topic of discussion - what worked for some, what didn't, pitfalls to watch out for, etc. It also emphasizes how the learnings can be applied in real-world situations where profits are the bottom line and products need to ship to real customers who pay for them. The practical knowledge sharing is what I find to be the most valuable aspect of this program.

My hunch is that these conversations will not only continue throughout the program, but will extend beyond as the students build professional and interpersonal relationships with each other. If you'd like to hear more about my experiences so far, or have any specific questions, feel free to comment or reach out to me through my personal blog at http://headphono.us. Otherwise, stay tuned for my next entry!

Cheers,

Pras

posted by Pras Sarkar @ 3:01 PM  1 comments

Monday, September 22, 2008



My name is Vineet and I work for the Boeing Company in Seattle, Washington, as a Lead Developer. Twelve years ago, after graduating from IIT Roorkee in India, I started my career as a Chemical Engineer in the process industry. However, I soon tired of the night shifts and moved my career into the software industry. The Java boom in late 90’s gave me an easy entry into the world of IT. However I always felt my background in Chemical Engineering was hampering my career in IT. Even acquiring a number of IT certifications didn't give me any satisfaction. I wanted to pursue higher education in software. When I arrived in the United States in 2005, one of my colleagues, Andy Chow told me about MS Software Engineering program at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley. I was excited by the opportunity to participate remotely from Seattle but still be part of a working team. I applied last year and I got a chance to fulfill one of my dreams to complete my master’s degree from one of the best universities in the US.

Going back to school after working in industry for more than 12 years was a big decision for me. I was anxious how I was going to manage family, work and now school together.

But then I thought this is what I want to learn -Time management which is one of the most important attribute of successful leaders. I got myself ready for orientation scheduled during August 22- 24. Orientation started with Sylvia, the director of admissions, giving us statistics about the students enrolled for Class of 2010 and I thought to myself, “Boy, how did I get into this program with such a talented group of people?” I felt really proud and happy. It was rejuvenating to have this feeling of satisfaction with my achievement. I was amazed with the diversity of students and their past backgrounds and accomplishments. It also struck me as interesting that we had, at the oldest and youngest ranges, a 22 year old and 60 year old student in the same class.

I was introduced to my team with whom I will be working for the Fall semester. Fortunately all of us are Seattle-based so we will not have time zone problem. The next two days we had a couple of team-building exercises .With each exercise I could understand how important team-building is, something we often forget in our work environment. Team-building is considered as one of the least important tasks rather than the most critical task for overall project success.

I was also exited to know that we will be working on a Ruby on Rails project in my first semester. I was working in Java for last 12 years. Now definitely I will learn one more technology in Agile fashion.

The first week of class started as soon as I returned to Seattle. Our team had already decided on the schedule of our weekly meetings. I had been more worried about time management but, thank God I didn't have any production problems and could easily spend 20 hours on study, while most importantly I could spent exactly the same amount of time with my wife Puja and daughter Sanskriti.

posted by Vineet Agarwal @ 10:10 AM  2 comments

Monday, September 15, 2008

An Introduction to Truc


My Name is Truc Nguyen and I currently work at Lockheed Martin as a software engineer. I have been full time at LM since January 2008. I graduated from Michigan State University with a BS in Computer Engineering. While in college, I interned twice at Lockheed Martin for different business units. I also held several technical part-time jobs throughout my undergrad for the university, as well as local companies. I decided to participate in the Software Engineering masters program at Carnegie Mellon because I feel that there's so many new things out there to learn about that I'm not being exposed to at work or during undergrad. I think the program will expand my knowledge and help me grow professionally.

Admission
I decided to apply to CMU after an info session held at Lockheed Martin. Several of my co-workers have graduated from the same program and they told me it was a good program. I applied about a month before the official deadline. I must admit that the admission process took some effort. The programming diagnostic took the longest because I actually had to learn about MVC in order to complete the diagnostic. Working full time made the admission process a little harder, but it's a good way to prepare you for balancing school and work in the future. The interview portion went well. I did not feel intimidated and left the interview feeling pretty good.

Orientation
I think the orientation was a great idea. I was able to meet all my classmates and socialize with them. There were several fun team building exercises, such as building the lego castle. The best part about the orientation was that I was able to get to know my teammates for my first course, Foundations. I think this made us stronger as a team because we were able to spend time with each other before the class got underway. The food at the orientation was good too!

First Week of Class:
The first week of class went well. I was surprised by the size of the room....or maybe the amount of people that attended class. Everyone was pretty early class too. There were no real glitches for the people remoting in.

Team Experience
We are now on the third week of class and my team has met several times each week. Everything is going great with the team. We all get along pretty well and know when to have fun, but also when to get serious. I think having a little fun and joking around with each other is key to keeping the team sane when the pressure intensifies.

posted by Truc Nguyen @ 12:36 PM  7 comments

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