Thanks for answering. Yes, I'm considering software development. I expect to complete my MSc (major: software engineering, minor: computer science) in sep 2014 but I have no idea what to do next. What kind of company to work for, how to plan my career, etc. Any help would be awesome.
Thanks a lot for the book recommendation. I will be reading it for sure!
Yes, I'm in one of the countries you mentioned. I also see that pattern among older friends which graduated and are now working for 3-5 years. About 30-40% of the people I knew either exited the country immediately after graduating or 2-3 years after. Some even moved via mobility programs like Erasmus and never came back. The rest remain in the cycle you mentioned and that is my fear.
Thanks a lot for your comment. It hit home. I don't have many friends or relationships, my family is really small (no siblings or cousins) and I'm far from home, and my life is centered around finishing my deggree and programming/learning new technologies. I feel I don't have anything else, so if I fail at it, I have failed in life.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It gives me some hope which is invaluable as I have very little of it right now.
I'm just finishing my MSc and I feel so lost and hopeless. I just started to evaluate my options to enter the job market. I'm not sure what is corporate life like for a software engineer in the US but in my country I'm finding out that it has more to do with requirement analysis, evaluating the best COTS (things like Microsoft NAV, SAP, TIBCO seem to be common) for the client and then configuring and deploying it.
Maybe with some ABAP in the way and in some cases some J2EE/WSDL/SOAP or C#/.NET webservices to interact with it. It looks like it's almost impossible to escape this kind of work here, the main employers are outsourcing/consulting companies like Accenture, etc.
I fear that if I go this way I will never be able to escape because I will be gaining experience in this areas and my career will be stuck in this world.
I won't be touching anything like Python, Ruby, Scala, RabbitMQ, Redis or any other technology that might be used by companies were someday I would like to work for, and do real development/engineering.
I'm sorry for my ramblings, I just feel so lost and depressed and would like to get it off of my chest before I explode, and maybe find some advice and guidance from you guys.
Thanks a lot for the book recommendation. I will be reading it for sure!