Ask Prof Ben

Hi Prof Ben,

I am an Engineering (not Computer engineering but start with C also) student in one of the local universities slated to graduate this year.
I have agreed to take on a scholarship/sponsorship with a certain company for 2 years while I was interning at a consultancy firm.
However, recently I realized that job prospects, pay and work life balance in the industry is not ideal compared to others.
I also do not see myself being in the industry in the long run and building a career out of it.
As such, I am reconsidering my scholarship/sponsorship and looking into jumping out of the industry and possibly moving into the tech industry.
I am also considering taking up bootcamp such as the ones by General Assembly and taking some other online coding courses.

What advice or what should I learn as a start as an Engineering student like me who wish to jump into the tech industry despite not having a relevant degree?

Not sure what to do after graduation (Mid-career switch?) Hi Prof Ben, I am an Engineering (not Computer engineering but start with C also) student in one of the local universities slated to graduate this year. I have agreed to take on a scholarship/sponsorship with a certain company for 2 years while I was interning at a consultancy firm. However, recentl...

Dear Prof Ben,

You've mentioned in CS5229 that postgrads shouldn't care too much about grades. To what extent do they not matter? Will a B affect our chances of pursuing a PhD? I've seen conflicting takes that research and letters of recommendation are more important than the letter grade, but others say that getting a B in postgrad is equivalent to a certificate of disaster.

Postgrad Blues Dear Prof Ben, You've mentioned in CS5229 that postgrads shouldn't care too much about grades. To what extent do they not matter? Will a B affect our chances of pursuing a PhD? I've seen conflicting takes that research and letters of recommendation are more important than the letter grade, but other...

Hi Prof Ben,

I graduated from an unrelated field 6 years ago with a 3rd class honors but had been working as a software developer for 5 years.

I felt that I had enough savings for me to finally pursue further studies overseas but my undergrad GPA keep haunting me.

I am confident with my basics eg.
1) computer engineering since I worked with low level stuff like assembly and reverse engineering
2) DS&A. I do reasonably well on codeforces. Leetcode is for kids.
3) System design also no problem since I do that at work.
4) Coding polygot. TBH, I consider this trivial at this point.

I had taken CS1010X some years ago when it started but didn't complete due to not seeing a point.

Is there any cheaper and faster way to help with my grad admissions? I don't want superficial cash cows like ISS or diplomas. Best is I can just register the same exams as full time students and get some official recognition. Anything like that or similar? Thanks

Help needed to embellish low gpa grad applications Hi Prof Ben, I graduated from an unrelated field 6 years ago with a 3rd class honors but had been working as a software developer for 5 years. I felt that I had enough savings for me to finally pursue further studies overseas but my undergrad GPA keep haunting me. I am confident with my basics eg. 1...

Dear Proffy Ben,

I'm 33M and I'm earning a relatively high salary as a systems consultant (~$25K a month base salary w/ big bonuses). I am also a commercial real estate investor who hit the en bloc jackpot two times. I'm doing real estate mainly for passive income when I retire.

I would just like your perspective on what I should do to make my life more "meaningful."

I am an only child. I lost my mom to breast cancer at an early age (P2). My dad became a really quiet man since my mom passed. My upbringing made me very comfortable as a recluse. Since I came back to Singapore after graduating from Imperial several years ago, I have lived alone. Not gonna lie, I enjoy my lifestyle. I enjoy the silence and the freedom.

Recently I read one of your comments about life not being very "meaningful" if one dedicates his entire life to work. This got me thinking about retirement, and how I would spend 20-30 years of retirement with a lot of money and not many hobbies.

I tried being in a relationship. She was great but I realized that I'm just very uncomfortable around people. I'm very uncomfortable having people in my personal space—my apartment. At some point I had to break it off with her because it wasn't fair for her that I am irrationally frustrated whenever she comes over. It was a relationship that would never have been sustainable unless I change.

Now at 30, with most of my time being sold to my company, I have pretty much given up on trying to change things about myself, because I suffer so much whenever I do.

What can I expect at 50 (the age I plan to retire) if I don't have anyone to love?

Making my life more meaningful Dear Proffy Ben, I'm 33M and I'm earning a relatively high salary as a systems consultant (~$25K a month base salary w/ big bonuses). I am also a commercial real estate investor who hit the en bloc jackpot two times. I'm doing real estate mainly for passive income when I retire. I would just like yo...

Hi Prof Ben. Im a S'porean studying overseas (and just so people wont spew comments that i cmi in SG, im in the top uni in one of the countries in Asia), specializing in smart city convergence. I am interested to do my PhD in NUS, perhaps in Digital Twin. Is there any thesis mentor that you can recommend? Thank u!!

https://www.whispers.sg/c/askprofben/posts/813

Dear prof ben, i have a group mate that does help in group work like coding. But he gets very defensive when we give feedbacks about the code that was written (which part doesnt seem correct, how to improve etc.) but he would just say ‘how about you write the code yourself’ and gets very aggressive. When we pointed out a major flaw, he said that he didn know since no one told him. We have had 3 group project meetings and he refused to attend to any which is why he is missing out on important details. He now hates me because i told him that if he doesnt want to accept feedbacks and just wants to be aggressive then his messages will be ignored. I have put in so much effort to get this project done (literally 60% of the project is done by me and i have 4 other group mates, i am ok with the few freeloaders as long as they dont cause problems and want to start a fight every single time we have a discussion) but my main concern is since it is nearing the end of the semester, we would have to complete the peer review soon. I am just afraid that he would give me a negative review just because he hates me. What should i do?

Inflexible and uncooperative group mate Dear prof ben, i have a group mate that does help in group work like coding. But he gets very defensive when we give feedbacks about the code that was written (which part doesnt seem correct, how to improve etc.) but he would just say ‘how about you write the code yourself’ and gets very aggress...

Dear prof ben,

I have a pretty decent grade(2nd upper) from comp sci. However i am bonded for 4 years to the govt doing unrelated stuffs. After 4 years i dont think my cert will be relevant anymore and i will be stuck with no choice but to stick to the govt job.

I am thinking of breaking the bond. Amount can be up to 200k+ but can be paid with installment. Is it worth it ? Would really like to seek your advise.

https://www.whispers.sg/c/askprofben/posts/752

Welcome to the official "Ask Prof Ben" page where you can ask Prof Ben any questions and selected questions will be posted!

Prof Ben is a busy man so only questions worth answering will get a reply. Ask away!

I saw Prof Ben's post on the CS intake's IGP and I'm sad to see this happen to a field that I love.

It shows that our JC kids are still wired or encouraged, presumably by peer and family pressure, to think of things in terms of averages rather than tails. This creates an effect where a lot of dispassionate students go into {law, medicine, CS} merely as a reflex to the average pay of {law, medicine, CS} grads. It's hard to believe that many people actually innately enjoy CS.

For starters, this pollutes the candidate pool for us employers. Kind of like how I generally find a much higher quality pool of applicants filling a Rust/OCaml position than a JavaScript/Python role.

More importantly, my experience is that there's a much larger tail dependence between passion and income than between undergraduate degree and income. If you're a straight A student, the conditional expectation of your income is much higher when you pick what you love!

Are you a good writer, with 1-2 rudimentary CS electives, some Figma skills and an architecture degree (BCC/C intake)? A top tier UI/UX writer or product designer role will get you a much higher pay than an average CS grad will realize in his or her career.

Do you have an experimental physics background (BCC/D intake) with good patience for data munging? The starting salary at Jane Street/Citadel is US$400-500k, which comes ahead of the starting salary for whatever the fad du jour is for CS jobs (Bytedance, Shopee, FAANG).

Do you have good social skills and a chemical engineering degree (BBB/B intake)? The annual revenue and payout at Vitol are US$140B and US$2.9B respectively for a staff of 1,300~, i.e. the mean employee takes home US$2.2M, which dwarves the total comp of a L8 engineer at Google.

I also speak from personal experience.

One of my life's greatest regrets and formative experiences was picking H2 chemistry over H2 computing - because everyone was doing it - same reason a lot of you are going into CS. I liked to code; wrote my first IRC client when I was 5. But I gave in to peer pressure and was miserable. (Not to mention that the computing kids had classes in an A/C'ed room while chemistry tutorials were in some humid s***hole.)

So when it came round to my second chance, and I had straight A's out of A levels, I went with my heart and majored in physics (BCC/D intake). And it had no bearing on my income: by the time I was 28 I was already headhunted for jobs in the US$750k-1.2M range. If anything, for jobs past the US$500k income mark, the mathematical skills I picked up from physics were an order of magnitude more valuable than my programming skills.

Don't be miserable. Pick what you love and be very good at it.