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! |
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
- Getting Pushed Out of My Comfort Zone
- The Gathering
- Metrics and the challenges of new teams
- Foundations of Software Engineering – Presentation...
- My Grad School Adventure Begins!
- Study groups, Reflections on the first half of the...
- Start of Year Two
- Year 1 Retrospection: What I Learned, What I Need ...
- Aaak! I’m the Team Leader!
- Architecture and cross-team communication
Do you know if people who completed this course got better pay prospects later ? How do you justify the expensive tuition ?
Hi Kp,
Both of my co-workers received their Masters in SE here and one of them is a manager and the other is a lead now. This is not to say that the same thing will happen to you, because being promoted/getting a higher salary depends on your company, job performance, and many other factors. I think receiving a masters will make you a more valuable employer and will lead to advancement. As for pay, my company has a pretty good tuition reimbursement policy. If I had to pay 100% out of pocket, then I would really have to think about whether what I get out of the program will be worth the amount I paid. I guess pay wasn't such a big deal for me because I only have to pay about 1/5th out of pocket. I can further talk to you about this, but don't want to leave a long comment. Email me at truc.nguyen@sv.cmu.edu if you would like to hear more from my perspective.
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Could you please tell me in brief as to what made you choose this campus and this particular program. I would also like to know about what kp asked earlier.
Thank you
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