UWF Career Fair - SPAWAR

Firstly, in order for CS graduates to get a job after UWF, they tend to go with internships like any other school. However, unlike top schools in the nation, like Yale, Harvard, Caltech, MIT, and Stanford, our internship oppty's are a bit lacking.

The only actual co-op/internship program for CS students is SPAWAR - Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center. However, the pay is quite well for the area. The pay can be in the upwards of $68,000 USD after finishing a M.S. in Computer Science (and that's entry-level).
($68,000 USD was actually the average, from a USAJOBS site, quoting it can range from $57,000 USD - $87,000 USD)

The pay scale is, in effect, due to the payscale on most GS-type jobs. I cannot say anything, in terms of, what they actually do there, but in the Pensacola area, $68,000 USD is at least $141,000 in the Bay Area. Sad to say, but that's more than most entry-level positions, even at Google, or is it?

The payscale for the rest of Pensacola, FL is quite embarrassing. Although the $68,000 USD is quite massive for a small-town area, where you can get a 3-br/2-bath for only $850.00/month, the average pay, excluding SPAWAR, is essentially $38,000 for BS-holders and $55,000 for MS-holders.

A friend and a former-classmate from M.S. CS courses, told me that he makes only $54,000 USD with 8 yrs of experience in software engineering within the Pensacola, FL area.

Let's not even go with international students, namely students that are coming from India. Some might even say that UWF professors discriminates on their abilities... ouch! I'm in no position to pose any derogatory/flaming statements, but maybe that should be looked into... ^_^

But the fact is that SPAWAR is contracted with the gov't, and therefore, international students in the Pensacola, FL area cannot even get into a high paying job, if graduating from UWF... let's leave that discussion for another day...

But how is a CS graduate supposed to land a job at the high-tech big-name companies like Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Intel, Xerox, HP, or even Amazon.com? Is the only way to get in to be through a person? Or are CS graduates from UWF encouraged to not even apply.

It has been said that even the graduate advisor from the UWF CS dept encourages students NOT to do a thesis, and just travel the project route. This has actually caused a dilemma and anxiety with a UWF graduate finding a decent job even related to CS. The CS graduate even persuades other students to do a thesis, rather than the project route.
(This is due to the fact that all the employers in the Pensacola, FL area are looking for thesis-route CS graduates... but how are the students supposed to know? What's even ridiculously funnier is the fact that UWF has contracts and meets with these employers regularly, and still the advice is given to the CS graduates to not follow the thesis-route.)

A blog, I recently read, actually stated that if you are trying to get into Microsoft or Amazon.com within the Seattle-WA area, you'd better have an "in" because you sure as hell won't get through the "send your resume by email and see what happens" door. Let's talk more on that in the next blog...