Schooling Paths

  • Kathyleen Beveridge:
    • undergrad for Finance at Santa Clara
    • NBA at USC (not traditional timing since she waited to get her NBA)
    • studied abroad in Spain (loved it!)
  • Kris Porter:
    • UCLA for Electrical Engineering
    • masters degree from Cal State LA
      • Didn’t do well at first in computer science! He didn’t take intrest in the topic until 8 years later (never give up becuase you never know what you will find intrest in)

Careers

Kathyleen Beveridge:

  • first job = investment banker with Wells Fargo (wasn’t her thing)
  • switched to high tech industry with job at HP
  • took 6 months off
  • worked at Qualcomm
  • now works at Thermo Fisher Scientific as senior director of marketing and sales
    • ^ she works in a similar scrum process with sprints and positions (Scrum Master, Dev Ops, etc)
    • uses databases and data science to predict sales, weather (wine harvest), etc. Non-technical roles = recommending clients to buy certain things/do things

Kris Porter:

  • main job: Software engineer (SRE, DevOps, Infrastructure)
  • first job = fixed computers/other tech
  • job at start up (GPM) and worked email marketing automation (similar to DevOps)
  • job at NBC Universal (streaming media infrastructure)
  • job at Qualcomm (Dev ops job, automation)
  • job at Twitter (worked on API which requested from client and retrieve info from all users and resurface important stuff back to client)
    • Twitter Projects= New DataCenter Deployment & Migrating HomeTimeline to GraphQL

Important Tips/Skills:

  • career paths won’t always be a striaght line
  • Be adaptive
  • it’s okay if you’re not sure what your intrests are yet
  • Best technicians: listen and solve technical requirements (can explain in non-technical terms)
  • continuous learning
  • “Learn how to learn” = always be ready to learn more
  • learn multiple programming languages
  • don’t be super concerned about things you read on the news (resiliance)
  • the only risk is not learning
  • set good balance between work/hobbies and necessities

My Reflection:

  • I know I enjoy STEM classes, especially math. I also love APCSP when I can figure the problem/code out. However, sometimes I feel dicouraged to pursue opportunities or careers in computer science/tech because I find it difficult. However, after listening to Kris and Kathleen, I feel like I still am able to go into this industry.