My journey from Liberal Arts student to Engineer at a major tech firm.
Published: 2020-05-13 17:13:00

Two years ago I shook the hand of my universities president and accepted a diploma. I was 21 years old, accepted a job at a major tech company months before, and ready to start an independent life. In the next few weeks I would buy a car, move into my first apartment, and fly halfway across the country for training before settling in to a rather cushy 9 to 5. This is probably a fairly standard timeline for a graduate with a STEM degree. However, during this entire process, one thing became quite clear. I was, for the most part, alone. Alone in sense that when compared almost all of my peers, who too had accepted a job months ago, were graduating that may, buying cars, and moving into apartments, I was one of the few with a liberal arts degree.

##My Background
When I was in my senior year of highschool, knowing I would attend college, I applied to only one school. Saint John's University, in Collegeville Minnesota is an all-men (though has a close partnership with the College of Saint Benedict, an all-women school just down the road) Liberal Arts School, tucked into 3,500 acres of woods, lakes, and prairies, in central Minnesota. It was established in 1857 by the Benedictine Monks of Saint John's Abbey, who still share the campus, and take a great part in education and formation of the students there. I choose this school for a couple of reasons. It had my preferred major, Computer Science. It was close to my home town, though the only other school I was considering, the University of Wisconsin, wasn't ruled out due to distance as much as class size. The deciding factor was the opportunity to join the Cross Country and Track teams. At this point I wasn't considering the prestige of the school, career outlooks, or research opportunities. 

##Education
From my understanding the curriculum at Saint John's is much like that of any school. The required classes for the computer science major are:
* CSCI 150 (or CSCI130 or CSCI140) (Introduction to the Science of Computing)
* CSCI 160 (Problem Solving, Programming and Computers)
* CSCI 200 (Abstraction, Data Structures and Large Software Systems)
* CSCI 230 (Software Development)
* CSCI 239 (Discrete Computational Structures)
* CSCI 310 (Computer Organization)
* CSCI 338 (Algorithm Design and Analysis)
* CSCI 339 (Theoretical Foundations of Computer Science)
* CSCI 369 (Ethical Issues in Computing)
* CSCI 373 (Senior Research in Computer Science)

With an additional 12 elective credits needed. Additionally, the University carries a common curriculum of liberal arts requirements. To fulfill this and graduate, all students must take:
* One course in Ethics
* One course in Gender
* One course in Intercultural learning
* One course in Experiential Learning
* One course in Natural Sciences
* One course in Social Sciences
* Two Courses in Humanities
* Four Credits in Fine Arts
* One Course in Mathematics
* Two courses in Theology
* And satisfy a Global Language Proficiency requirement

##Interning
Between my junior and senior year I knew I wanted an internship. One that would hopefully lead to a full time job offer after I graduated, and one that certainly allowed me to live apart from my parents for the summer. I looked for opportunities at both the national and local scale.

Nationally I applied to, arguably, the two largest and most prestigious software companies in the world. At one I had an in, a relation who was kind enough to submit my resume on her behalf. This put me in a pool of "employee submitted applications". I know because that's the label that was attached to the position the application portal said I was applying for. At the other company, I simply cold submitted the same application and resume to their online application form. I did not hear back for some time on either of these leads. Finally, the company in which I was placed in the employee submitted pile allowed me to take an online assessment. 

For those unaware of the process, this is a coding challenge, in which you are given some time, say 2 hours. They present a problem on the screen and you are asked to code a solution in your chosen language. Along the way you can run your solution against test cases, some hidden and some shown, to validate your solution. This way you know in real time how well you're doing.

I remember walking back from the library after taking this first assessment, knowing all the test cases passed and I had probably half the allotted time left on the clock when I submitted. I was still nervous, thinking maybe there was a more efficient way of doing things that they were looking for. There was never a doubt in my mind, however, that anyone with the education I had received up to that point, would have failed in producing a function that passed all the test cases.

A week or so later, I heard back, with a request that I take another assessment in the same fashion. Same story, all test cases passed, nothing too worrisome.

At the same time I knew I needed a backup plan, so I attended the Minnesota Private Colleges Career Fair. This is exactly what it sounds like, where all the private colleges in the state ban together to put on a career fair at the scale that a large university might do alone, as these are typically smaller schools whose student body sizes might not garner the attention that a school with 40,000 students would. To my surprise, there were almost no company's with recognizable names here, and while at the time there were less major tech firms and startups in the twin cities than there are now, even the Fortune 500 companies who were present informed us that there were only there recruiting accounting and business majors. This was the first time I was really aware of the lack of attention and opportunities that a STEM major at a small school may face.

I heard back about my second assessment, and was told they would move forward with me. This was exciting. I was asked to fill out some forms regarding where I would like to spend the summer interning. It felt like we were getting close to the end. The next step was a technical interview over video chat. It did not go well. The problem wasn't challenging as much as I just wasn't on top of my game. I was drawing blanks, was nervous, and probably panicked a bit. This was my first actual technical interview. After time ran out and we hung up I knew I wouldn't be offered the position. Instantly I did an online assessment for a company from the career fair, owned by a Saint John's Alumnus, where I eventually was hired for the summer.

##Career Search
During my senior year, I decided I probably wanted to start a career in the Minneapolis area. It was close to family, to friends, and I was probably still a bit discouraged from my experience last semester. I knew many of the smaller, local, businesses wouldn't start their applicant searches for positions opening in May/June until after the new year. Therefore, I thought I could relax during the Fall semester and focus on my senior research, "Alternative Data in a Financial Analysis". During this process, I received a forwarded email from the Computer Science department chair at Saint John's. He often did this with emails with opportunities for students. This one happened to be for a scholarship for an artificial intelligence conference in Boston. Thinking it would go nicely with my research project, I applied. Apparently, this conference was sponsored by a large tech company, because along the way I was required to also apply there. This was all facilitated through a 3rd party website that promises to get STEM majors jobs at top companies, so I didn't really know how. much to trust anything. I just wanted to go to Boston.

Over a month had probably passed, and I all but forgotten about my application for the conference or any company. Then one day I get an email asking me to complete an online assessment - exactly like the ones I did last semester for an internship. I thought "why not?", maybe wanting to fuel my ego a bit, telling myself "I still go it" after passing. I did one, then another, and then much like the previous process, I was asked to do some web-chat interviews. "Okay" I thought to myself, "here's where I messed up last time" thinking this would be good practice for the Spring when I start applying for real.

I did these, and again, some time passed an I all but forgot about it all. Then one Tuesday morning, I get an email asking if I can fly to San Francisco, and be there next Monday morning. I half panicked because it was such little time, but it was December and I was in Minnesota, so a short vacation to anywhere, especially California, was welcome.

In San Fransisco, I really felt out of place. I had to constantly explain what Saint John's University was and that it was not the one in New York. When I asked the other candidates where they went to school, I received some startling surprises: UC Berkley, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, with about half of these other candidates in Masters programs. I was both humbled and proud (can one be both?) to come from a small school that most people haven't heard of, and hold my own against students from the top schools in the country, if not the world. All the time thinking any CS student back in Collegeville Minnesota could easily be in this same room.

After three days in San Fransisco, I was put on a red-eye back to Minnesota, where I was greeted by a blizzard. After sleeping through one call, I received the second one saying I was going to be offered a position in Minnesota. I called my mom and told her instantly.

##What I've learned.

No-one I work with is particularly more capable than the people I went to school with. A lot of them can't talking about Asian Philosophy, or Race and Ethnicity in US Literature (both classes I took and enjoyed), but they know a lot about topics I'm ignorant in as well. However - when I see the wall covered in pennants from the alma maters of the people I work with, I notice an absence of almost all the small schools I ran cross country and track against. All the other small schools in Minnesota.

I'll come to learn that tech companies have white lists of Universities where managers are allowed to recruit from. These are a couple schools in any geographical region that have been vetted, and the strategy is to hit them as hard as one can in a recruiting trip, saving time and money.

However, where does that leave the rest of us? I was fortunate, I found a back door. But even I was met with skepticism when I started. I wasn't hired by my first manager, like many of my peers were, I was assigned to him. He couldn't have hired me. He couldn't have hired anyone I went to school with. He wouldn't have been allowed to.

This is just my story, and overall it's a happy one. I enjoy the work I do, I'm good at it, and I've been given to opportunity to progress. However, I wonder about my peers, who have STEM degrees and didn't get as lucky as I did. What about those who aren't told to apply to some conference, or don't have a relative who works at a silicon valley juggernaut? Are we going to limit who gets to work on some of the most interesting and innovative technologies? Are we going to leave behind some of the greatest minds because they don't have the right schools on their resumes?

I was told once to apply for a new job every once in a while, to keep interviewing skills sharp, and keep your personal value in check. I did this recently, making it to the final round of interviews at the same company I was looking for an internship at 3 years ago. I sat in a room after 2 online assessments and did 4 in person interviews in a trendy office building in Minneapolis. I was only given the opportunity because a corporate recruiter saw the company I worked for on LinkedIn, and reached out. As I fielded technical question after technical question, I could have been any CS grad from Harvard or UC Berkley. This is the type of job they interviewed for. But I graduated from Saint John's, and I'm not going to let anyone hold that against me.