Project 01

This assignment of creating a manifesto of a Computer Science student was fairly difficult due to the fact that I am not one. Our group relied heavily on the opinions of the two Computer Science students in our group. To me the overall message of the manifesto connects deeply with my feelings and thoughts. It is a call to action to not be complacent in the most comfortable road and to always try and stretch your barriers and excel in whatever field you study, sport you play or activity you participate in. While I do not completely understand the sentiment expressed against going the safe route and doing tech consulting with a Computer Science degree there is a similar trend in the business school. Most of the accounting majors all try to get jobs with the Big Four accounting firms. These are very safe jobs to get that have a set trajectory, they are good jobs but are not challenging to get.  Many of the accounting majors could stretch their limits and try and get a job in banking or private equity and it would be much more challenging and rewarding.

For the portrait, I would say I do not really identify with the portrait. It depicts many of the stereotypes that go along with the Computer Science major.  However, I identify with being Catholic and the personal hygiene portions of the portrait. These are different from the stereotypes that apply to the business. The business school has stereotypes like being preppy, trying to be “frat”, being arrogant or superior and others along those lines. Overall, I don’t think I identify with stereotypes from either school I see myself more as a moderate just “normal” guy who goes to school at Notre Dame.

I think stereotypes have a very strong impact on how you perceive the world and how the world perceives you. Often stereotypes are the first impression created when being introduced to someone or hearing about someone. This can be both positive and negative depending entirely on the nature of the stereotype. I think the existence of manifestos and portraits have their place and can be helpful in the right setting so long as they are not someone’s only source of information on a group of people. If people use the portraits to create a baseline impression of a group of people, I think that is ok as long as they end up meeting lots of people from the group to eventually form their own opinion.

Reading 02

As a Finance major, I feel my perspective on the overall interview process will be much different than the rest of the CS majors in the class. I have had internships the previous three summers and am currently still applying and interviewing for jobs. The interview process has varied from year to year on exactly what is expected of me. My first two internships did not really require a traditional interview. I simply sent an email to the companies with my resume attached asking if they had any internship opportunities and they got back to me fairly quickly just asking specifics on when I could start and other logistics. Essentially those first two internships I got without interviews. For my internship process junior year it was a lot more intensive. I applied to consulting and big bank jobs and had through interview processes. For consulting it always was a behavioral interview where they tried to feel out who you were as a person and then there was a case study where you had to come up with a business solution. The cases all have similar frameworks to solve and are essentially used to test problem solving skills. On the banking side of the interviews where I eventually got an internship offer some of the interviewers were standoffish and rude. They would grill me about what was going on in the market, ask technical financial questions and then would follow up with the standard behavioral questions.

What surprised me most about the overall interview process was how important networking and first impressions are in securing a job in the financial industry. There are some of my friends who I am more qualified than received offers at banks were I did because they networked harder and more efficiently than I did. I also agree with the point made in the article from Wired where it sums up the awkward factor of interviews because you’re having an intimate conversation with someone you just met, and as a candidate you are in a very vulnerable position.

In order to prepare for interviews I always create a list of stories and projects that I have gone through and can use to answer multiple behavioral questions. Then depending on the job I am applying for I do case interview preparation, study the accounting fundamentals and valuation fundamentals and brush up on my knowledge of the market and general sentiment about the economy.

Overall, I think the interview process can be harsh and embarrassing but it is a necessary evil for companies to get the best talent. In the Google article, McDowell said that companies have an attitude where it is better to reject a good candidate than hire a bad one because of risk aversion. This makes a lot of sense to me because for example if a bank hires someone underqualified on accident this could end up costing them millions of dollars if the employee makes a mistake. Therefore, while it can be frustrating to know you didn’t get a job you felt you were qualified for you can’t take it personally and just have to keep applying and putting your best foot forward for the next interview trusting in your ability.

Reading 01

Before completing these readings my general idea of a hacker was someone who uses computers to manipulate and illegally access information or other sensitive computer items. Typically, they are the dirty computer nerd, social recluse who would stand out compared to non-hackers in society. I assumed they had bad intentions and therefore seen as dangerous and a threat to cyber security. All these assumptions and preconceived notions were generated from my viewing of movies and hearing about horrible hackers on the news. However, after completing the readings my thoughts on hackers has definitely changed. In the reading Hackers and Painters, the author draws a comparison on how hackers are more similar to artists than other professions.  The first thing that he did nicely was define what exactly a hacker is because this has been a fairly vague term that could mean many different things.  A hacker is someone who is trying to write interesting software, and computers are just the medium of expression. According to him what both hackers and painters have in common is that they are both makers. Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things. Essentially, hackers are computer scientists who use computers to create programs and solve problems.

The next article I looked at was The Conscience of a Hacker, it was essentially a hacking manifesto and seemed pretty strange to me. It came off as very smug and superior towards other people. He/she is asking to stop being treated differently but then takes aggressive shots at what is assumed to be mainstream culture. Honestly, this person doesn’t seem like a hacker to me, but more of the “neck-beard” type I hear about on the internet.

In order to understand more about the characteristics of a hacker the article Portrait of J. Random Hacker provided ample information. Some of the negative characteristics that aligned with my preconized notion of hackers were that hackers have relatively little ability to identify emotionally with other people.  This may be because hackers generally aren’t much like `other people’.  Unsurprisingly, hackers also tend towards self-absorption, intellectual arrogance, and impatience with people and tasks perceived to be wasting their time. However, the positive characteristics were that hackers are very intelligent, extreme curiosity and contrary to popular belief have a very wide range of interests so long as they are intellectually stimulating. Granted this article is written by hackers and there is some bias these do seem to encompass the typical hacker.

Personally, I do not see myself as a hacker because according to the Portrait of J. Random Hacker by liking sports, dogs and business suits I do not fit the archetype. However, I do identify with the intellectual curiosity of hackers because I am always reading about new topics and trying to learn new things to broaden my intellectual horizons.

Overall, it seems like there are some strong negative connotations to being a hacker but after reading these articles it has put them in a much more positive light. The tenants of artistic creation that lie at the fundamentals of hacking are very interesting to me and represents that hackers are not nearly as one dimensional as I previously believed.

Reading 00

 

For my next reading response I shall analyze the Parable of the Talents and look into how it has meaning for me and programming in general. The overall basis of the parable is that a master gives his servants talents which were forms of currency to watch over it. He gives five talents to the first servant, two talents to the second, and one talent to the third. Two of the servants work and trade the talents to earn more while the other servant hides his talents away in fear of losing it and displeasing his master. Upon the master’s return the two servants who increased their talents were praised by the master and the one who was afraid of losing the talent was punished and cast out. The meaning of this parable extends far beyond financial investments. God has given each person a wide variety of skills, talents and abilities and he expects us to use these gifts to their fullest extent and not bottle them up or hide them away.

Personally, the Parable of the Talents has many meanings for me because I have heard of it and learned about it through my many years of Catholic education. My overall interpretation of the parable is to not sit on what talents you have been given and to instead work hard and try and make the most out of what opportunities you are given. Basically, in the money sense of talents this interprets for me to always try to make more money by investing or working more jobs and trying to not be content with what I have. Also, the parable has meaning for talents in literal abilities and skillsets. Upon reflection I realized have taken this parable to heart by picking up a programming minor my senior year of college to learn new skills and further my knowledge. I could have easily been like the servant a buried my talents that I have gained while in the business school but instead I decided to work hard and pick up another minor to create more skill for myself so I have more opportunities later in life.

Specifically, in having the talents of programming instead of keeping them for ourselves the parable seems to inspire me to teach others about them and share the skillset. Programming is a very powerful tool that has potential to drastically disrupt the way we think and live. With more people programming there is a greater opportunity for greatness to happen. Just like it was stated in the Karlie Kross video, programming is a super power that anyone can have if they are willing to put in the hard work and effort to learn.

Introduction

Hi, my name is Andrew Russell and I am a Senior Finance major in the Mendoza School of Business. I also have a Computer and Digital Technologies Minor which is why I have a small programming background. I have only been coding since the fall semester in 2015. During that semester, I took the Scripting I class and a videogame design class where I utilized C# to create some basic video games.  Outside of coding and school work I am interested in weightlifting, sports, specifically basketball and football and videogames. The side of programming that really interests me is app and videogame development. After learning about basic website creation with HTML and game creation in my classes last semester creating a mobile gaming app in my spare time would be a very cool side project for myself. For this class, I would really just like the opportunity to have an open forum to talk about and discuss the issues of the programming and computing world because it is often not talked about much in mainstream media. I would like to learn about issues that I may not even have experience with due to my basic computer science knowledge. Overall, I hope to further my understanding of programming ethics while developing and refining my viewpoint on technological issues that the world faces.

I believe that there are numerous pressing ethical and moral issues facing Computer Scientists. These include private data safety, data mining, cloud computing, correctness and functionality of programs and finally government spying. With more and more companies storing their customers’ data, data security is becoming one of the most pressing issues because according to the article on Slate computer scientists have been putting out a product that often “just” works and is not fully tested. This could be considered morally wrong because they are putting peoples’ personal data at risk. Another large moral and ethical issue has been how much access the government and companies should have to peoples’ personal data. Companies are pushing for more access to optimize their advertisements and products for their consumers but this does not give them the right to infringe on privacy.