Student Blogs
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.
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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.
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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.
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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. |
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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, October 31, 2007
My Grad School Adventure Begins!
My name is Sirisha Pillalamarri. Before I start, here’s a little bit of info about me. I’m a 2006 graduate from Carnegie Mellon University (the main campus in Pittsburgh). I received my degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering with a double major in Computer Science. After graduation, I started working at a company called FactSet Research Systems, Inc. They are based in Norwalk, CT, and we make software for Wall Street. It’s a great company and a fun job; however, I had been thinking about graduate school for a while. I wanted to find a program that was more practical than a typical research-based masters for my career progression. I wanted my learning to apply back to my job at FactSet, and I wanted to learn both technical and management ideas. Another requirement for me was that I wanted to keep working in Connecticut while I attending school. I found that all of my requirements converged at Carnegie Mellon’s west coast campus, where I am now enrolled as a remote student in the MS Software Engineering, Development Management program.
So it’s been nearly three months since I’ve started this program and this blog will be a document of what I find on my way!
Let me talk about orientation for a little bit. Orientation is a four day event when you will meet and develop close bonds with all the other students you’ll be working with for the next two years. We have to fly out to California (one of the two required in-person gatherings) and they “orient” us to the program and the course of study. There are a lot of team-building exercises and we get prepped for our first class. The first year of this program is entirely technical, so both the Technical and Development Management tracks are mixed together for the entire year. We are also assigned teams during orientation and we spend a lot of time together. My experience was great! I ended up arriving in Cali a day late and I was very worried of the repercussions; however, the faculty and student services staff at Carnegie Mellon West were amazing! They were so nice and got me caught up and let me settle right in. I also went out during one of the nights to San Francisco with some fellow Software Engineering students (two of whom were my team members) and it was a very fun night and a great way to learn about each other!
After orientation, I jumped right into Foundations of Software Engineering. One of my main concerns was that I would be attending this entire program remotely. How was coding together going to work? Would our meetings be productive? Would I be able to get my ideas in? How would the infrastructure hold together? I was also, obviously, concerned about the time commitment I was taking on, working full-time and attending this grad program. I wasn’t sure how I would transition from working and having my nights free to working during the day and working during my evenings as well!
Well, I can say that the transition has gone fairly smoothly. Since I am in Eastern Time, I come home and take an hour to eat dinner or so and start working on graduate school work at 9:30 PM (6 PM PST) and work till 1 or 2 am. Hey, don’t let the late nights scare you – I may go to bed later now, but I also have shifted my entire schedule - I go to work one or two hours later now but I leave later work later too.
Since we are a remote team, we try to meet everyday for at least five to ten minutes to go over what has happened the day before. Since we spend several hours on the phone, we use Skype as our primary audio software and we use Live Meeting or Himachi to share desktops while we are coding or having a meeting. So far we have not had any major issues with being a virtual team. In fact, it’s more flexible. I don’t have to drive to a certain place to have my meeting or worry about the weather conditions, etc. So to my surprise, working virtually has been quite convenient.
The main challenge (and benefit) of this program and specifically this class, is that you work very tightly with your team. We are assigned to do pair programming, we are encouraged to meet everyday, and the code has so many interdependencies that it is very hard to split up into tasks. In my undergrad experience, I was used to working on my homework or my part and then integrating it with my classmates; it’s a different story at the grad level. So much of what we do is in teams and interactive, that I really have to plan well, so my time is as productive as possible. However, what’s nice is that outside of these meetings, I usually don’t have to do much more individual work for CMU, so that’s a positive. I’ll let you know if this gets any easier as our team learns each others’ strengths better.
The way Carnegie Mellon West is setup is to put you in a real-life simulated environment. It isn’t the traditional classroom setting where you are given strict instructions, deadlines and information that is easy to access. We learn to gather information, ideas, feedback, and suggestions through constant interaction with your peers, advisor and faculty members. So get ready for that.
Anyway, this is the start of Iteration 3 (the week of vacation is over…L). I’ll keep y’all posted on what I figure out, how I do it, and what the end result will be. Keep reading for more updates!
PS: Happy Halloween!
posted by Sirisha @ 3:20 PM
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yeaaaaah!