A question I have been asked every time in recruiter screen is that, why is there only your master’s education on your resume? What’s your previous education experience?
I earned my bachelor’s degree and first master’s degree in Tsinghua University, majoring in Energy and Power Engineering. To be honest, I was originally a phd candidate in Tsinghua, but then I quit my phd and ended up with a master’s degree, rested for a year, came to the States to switch my career to IT & Software.
Then recruiters would always ask me, why did you make that choice? You know, Tsinghua University has great reputation in China and Tsinghua graduates usually do not worry about finding a decent job. Why did I give up a doctor’s degree when I was quite close to it and began from scratch, why did I enter the IT industry?
Let me share my story and my answer with you. I didn’t tell the story in my answer, because switching career path was a result due to complex causes. When I was in high school, I took part in many Olympic Contests, including Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Based on my competition awards I got an opportunity to be admitted to Tsinghua prior to Gaokao. But this admission required 2 rounds of selection, a written test and a many-to-one interview. I came from a small town and a very normal family (I mean, not wealthy and knowledgeable at all), I had zero experience about what an interview would be like. So I paid 2000 yuan to join an interview training held by Tsinghua students. When I had the 1-on-1 mock with a senior student, I proudly self-stated that I got Olympic gold medals and other medals (province scope) in multiple disciplines. The senior smiled and said, “Oh, which discipline? Olympiad in Informatics? I didn’t know how to reply to him, I was really confused at that moment because I had never heard about the term “Informatics”. What was that? I felt like I was a frog in the well. (That was because I came from an undeveloped province where the OI was dedicated to kids of government officials and millionaires. ) I ranked as the No.2 in the written test and the second last in interview, not qualified to went to the department I applied for. Finally I entered Tsinghua with my Gaokao grades, but when choosing the department, I intentionally avoided the ones that required students to dive deep into computer science.
So during my undergrad and grad life (8 years), I seldom coded. I didn’t have a personal laptop until the second semester in university. I decided to switch to computer science, not because I was fascinated by code and algorithms. It was just because I got tired of my phd thesis project, researching and reading literature published decades ago, spending all the time repeating non-innovative experiments, only to study about a tiny part (backfeed valve? I already forgot the name, it feeds the uncombusted coal powder back to the furnance) of the huge monster, the circulating fluidized bed for coal combustion and electricity production. I didn’t even know why I had to study this topic (it was assigned to me by my superviser). I used mathematical deduction/inference and physic experiments to estimate the apparent viscosity of gas-solid two-phase flow (the mix flow of air and coal powder), for making clear the fluid mechanics inside the valve, but after a long time I asked why not just simulated it? Apparent viscosity is a pesudo concept that it’s unnecessary to know its value! We can just simulate the turbulence in CFD or whatever software (maybe with high-performance computing, a term I learned after switching into computer science), instead of the outmoded techniques. I was tired of doing mathematical inference and reading literature for years and years but could not see any realistic outcome. I could not see my influence in a roaring fluidized bed, as high as a 6-floor building.
During COVID-19 lockdown, I was at home and just randomly learned a little Java and python. Printing “Hello World” immediately after writing and running my code made me feel better. I would not say I fell in love with coding, no, far from that, but I got a sense of making impact. My work had immediate feedback, it run in front of my eyes, it was not an illusory research about an “advanced” topic. I was eager to get my hands dirty and built something, made something happen. So I came to the US and studied computer science with nearly zero foundations and actually zero experience. I was not sure about what I wanted tbh, I just wanna gave it a go and saw where I could reach.
But I couldn’t tell recruiters about this story. Below was my answer:
I divided the evolving process of an industry into 4 stages: exploring, just monetizing, exploding (fast growing), and platform(ripe). My previous career, combusting coal to produce electricity, has been in the platform stage. It’s recommended to use non-fossil fuels instead of coals, oils nowadays. But I wanna take part in a more promising industry, with faster pace, so that I can keep learning something new on the path. I believe the IT industry has what I want, and SDE is a perfect entry point for someone who switches their careers like me.
I didn’t know if recruiters were pleased with this answer, because, IT, especially software engineering, has been called a sinking boat (at least not a blue ocean anymore) in the AI era. I also didn’t know if this reason was convincing enough.