
The Cost of Waterloo Software Engineering - psobot
http://blog.petersobot.com/the-cost-of-waterloo-software-engineering
======
why-el
I can testify that this (systematically alternating between school and work
throughout your undergraduate studies) makes you a better engineer. I learned
about it when I moved to Germany, and it shows in some of my colleagues who
chose to do it.

This is not an option in a lot of countries, including my own (Morocco). The
closest thing to this system that I did was to convince my computer science
department to let me take a long pause from school (January to September) and
move to Brazil where I found a good tech company that paid me for my
ridiculously long internship. I came back with a very clear idea of my
strengths and weaknesses when working on large and critical software systems,
and I designed my last semester around these new insights.

Granted, most people achieve similar goals through traditional internships
routes, but it helps to be able to see you work live on beyond summer and be
able to identify medium term regressions, follow on on other use cases, and
account for the fact that other people will be taking up the torch soon.

------
1971genocide
I find HN fetish with UoW to be interesting , which has been my data point to
be very skeptical about believing everything I read here.

1) UoW has a really low requirement for entry, of my class many students went
to study at UoW most of them had average to below average grade, compared to
Oxbridge UoW has a joke of an entry requirement, I later learned they have a
very high dropout rate after first year - which explains things, but I think
is disingenuous to their students. School should be a place of learning not a
lab for natural selection.

2) I drew a spreadsheet for Unis across the global all from singapore,UK,US
and Canada. Any engineer graduating with an average GPA working full time for
1 year and having done internships in uni will have earned more money than
what this links shows.

3) The strong internship requirement means students who cannot find one within
four months of joining uni is likely to fail his semester even if he is
academically gifted. My UoW friend failed a year due to this stupid
requirement, in most other universities it will not be an end to your stay if
you fail to get a job within the first 4 months.

4) UoW has really bad reputation in the academical world and ppl doing basic
research ( look up UoW ranking )

5) Their fees are only competitive if you are from canada, they are much more
expensive for international students compared to elite universities in the UK.

6) Universities historically should have weak ties with industries. The reason
for this is independence. I know for a fact that UoW has strong ties with
microsoft in the past and used to push .NET stuff on their students ! how do
you expect a university to be intellectually honest if they are attached to a
corporation ?

I could add more but I am running out of time.

~~~
potatolicious
> _" 3) The strong internship requirement means students who cannot find one
> within four months of joining uni is likely to fail his semester even if he
> is academically gifted."_

This is unequivocally false. You seem to be very confused about how UW co-op
works.

Firstly, since you seem to be going at this from a CS academic angle - CS
students are not required to join co-op, and can get a traditional 4-year CS
degree without finding a single internship, ever.

Only engineering disciplines are required to join co-op, and for good reason -
traditional engineering (mechanical, electrical, chemical, etc) have academia
and industry practically fused at the hips. An engineering education without
industry experience frankly doesn't make sense.

More than that though, a UW co-op student has 6 internship semesters in their
degree program, out of which the student must be employed for 5 of them. This
means all students get a "freebie" if they don't have an internship - whether
voluntarily or involuntarily.

There is no scenario under which a student will fail "within four months of
joining uni" \- absolute worst case scenario they spend their freebie term.

For CS students the absolutes worst case if you are unable to find internships
repeatedly is leaving the co-op program, and losing nothing academically.

> _" My UoW friend failed a year due to this stupid requirement, in most other
> universities it will not be an end to your stay if you fail to get a job
> within the first 4 months."_

I suspect there's more to your friend's story than you know. At UW it is most
certainly _not_ the end of your stay if you fail to get a job for your 1A term
in Stream 4/4S (i.e., within the first 4 months).

~~~
1971genocide
My friend is studying mechatronics in waterloo. In the link and also my friend
told me that they attach university credit for your co-op. My friend wasn't
able to gain employment within 4 months of joining uni and also failed to gain
one in the next semester ( even though he did relatively well on his exams ).
So he didn't have enough credit to move on to the next year. The fact they
attach such an arbitrary requirement to your academics is what causes me
concern.

~~~
ska
My experience hiring from Waterloo co-op is that it is both well run and
supports even the most junior students well.

The systems design and mechatronics programs there are very strong. Given that
your friend was in a competitive engineering program aimed at putting
graduates into good industrial positions, the inability to find a position in
two terms is probably a good sign they needed to re-evaluate if they were in
the right program for them.

There is nothing arbitrary about this, and they communicate it quite well. It
sounds like the system was working as designed, although I understand how this
could have been a rough time for your friend. Then again, that's one of the
things college is for, and it's hardly a unique situation.

~~~
potatolicious
Agree in general - though I'd stop short of questioning if the person needs to
re-evaluate whether or not they should be in the program.

A _lot_ of high school students come into university with no job-finding
skills, which are going to be critical to their future success. Job-finding,
interview, and general industry skills are hard won through experience.

Like failing a course, failing to demonstrate rudimentary job skills should
hold you back until you can gain these skills. For some people this takes
longer than others (1A + 1B unemployment at Waterloo is somewhat rare), but
repeatedly being unemployed is not necessarily a sign that someone doesn't
belong entirely.

Knowing little about his friend, my first reaction is that maybe he should've
stuck it out. Waterloo is a tremendous place to gain job skills - there is no
more fertile ground to test resumes and interview skills at volume than it - I
personally had over 70 interviews under my belt by the time I left that
school.

~~~
1971genocide
I agree with you. It wasn't that we were lazy, there were literally no
opportunities to gain employment in high school for us. For example in my case
I landed an internship within one month of joining University even though I
was far away from silicon valley, they only used my academics and I turned out
to be really good for them. Same cannot be said for canada where its a lot
more competitive. I learnt a lot without having to take any risks as my uni
life was independent of my proffesional life.

~~~
potatolicious
> _" Same cannot be said for canada where its a lot more competitive. I learnt
> a lot without having to take any risks as my uni life was independent of my
> proffesional life."_

I disagree strongly. Literally thousands of 1A students at Waterloo get placed
every single semester, and while 1A unemployment rates are higher than any
other term, still only a minority of students cannot find a job that term.

And nearly everyone finds something by their 1B term, putting them nowhere
near at-risk from being held back.

Finding someone willing to let you intern as a kid fresh out of high school
and only a few months into university is _hard_ , but it is not insurmountably
hard. This is an opportunity, not a burden - you gain _far_ stronger job-
finding skills than you would if you already had an impressive background.

Waterloo taught me more about hustle, presentation, honesty, spin,
negotiation, and many other skills I'd never have learned had I already had
strong credentials. The experience has made me a much, much stronger
interviewee than most of the population, and has helped my career in huge
ways.

A friend of mine literally drove down highway 401 with a pile of resumes,
stopping at local factories and engineering shops to personally hand it to a
hiring manager. This is the sort of desperation - but also hustle - that most
people are never faced with, especially in our field. It is also the type of
hustle that keeps paying even after you have a long and impressive resume.

------
seren
It might be obvious to American readers, but I had not idea that University of
Waterloo mentioned here was in Canada, and not in Belgium.

~~~
recalibrator
Yes, in Ontario Canada. It's home of BlackBerry (the smartphones company) and
a hotbed for startups. Google has an office downtown in downtown Waterloo.

~~~
jacobparker
It is in downtown Kitchener; the city beside Waterloo. (That doesn't change
the semantics, here.)

(Waterloo's downtown is branded "uptown". Urg.)

------
Terr_
Dang, I was honestly expecting a Napoleonic analogy for software-design /
project-management

~~~
seren
I was also expecting some death march story. Interesting nonetheless.

------
aaronbrethorst

        After 5 long and difficult years,
        I’m extremely proud to say that
        I’m a Waterloo grad
    

Every Waterloo grad I've ever met has gone through their coop program, which
adds an extra year to their undergrad degree: [https://uwaterloo.ca/find-out-
more/co-op/how-co-op-works](https://uwaterloo.ca/find-out-more/co-op/how-co-
op-works)

~~~
ska
If I recall correctly it is required for all engineering degrees, and quite
popular in programs like CS as well.

From the hiring end, it works well. These graduates are typically very
competent.

~~~
jagger27
It makes me a little jealous as a Carleton student.

~~~
alanctgardner3
uOttawa grad here: is there any co-op option at Carleton? It wasn't very
popular at uOttawa, to the point that my employers were getting Waterloo grads
because they couldn't find anyone local. There's a lot of cool companies in
the capital (not just Shopify!), I'd recommend trying to find a position while
you're still a student.

~~~
cbhl
While not a 1:1 replacement, you could consider applying to jobs for the
summer on your own. I've met a lot of people in California from the University
of Toronto who've done so.

------
Pxtl
I went through an EE co-op in UofGuelph, another university in the area. It
was harder to get positions without the local prestige of the Waterloo brand,
but it was still a great experience that convinced me that I liked software
more than hardware.

------
neilxm
The Case for and against U Waterloo

I did my undergrad as well as my master's in Mechatronics at UWaterloo.
Thought I'd pitch in to shed some light on two of the key themes of this
conversation, Co-op and Academic research.

1\. Co-op - The Waterloo 4 month alternating Co-op program has its pros and
cons. On one hand you get the chance to go out and sample a bunch of different
kinds of jobs (if you proactively choose to do so), travel, fund your own
education without drowning in student loans and get a taste for what
engineering outside the classroom might be like. Currently with a large number
of start-ups in Waterloo a lot of Co-op students work with start-ups which,
for this forum, should undoubtedly be a good thing.

On the other hand, the obsession with co-op chips away from the culture of
learning that a University should harbor. I remember freaking out about jobs,
interviews and my resume from the 3rd week of classes in first year. It seems
to be a common theme here. You spend most of your actual time on campus,
preparing to get off campus and it creates less of an impetus to pursue deeper
learning and research. That being said, as with everything in life, you get
out of it what you put into it.

2\. Academic Research -

Most schools, In my opinion, have good pockets and bad pockets. The fact that
the model of scientific research worldwide is pretty broken is well known.
Industrial partnerships drive research because that's where the money is. At
least until we all become millionaires and donate money back to our
Universities for no-strings-attached research :D It also depends on the
professor. Some professors choose to fund themselves off government grants
that give them less money and more freedom while others choose to work with
large companies like GM on industrial research projects. You need to find the
professor that aligns with your interests. I was lucky enough to work on
robotic path planning and multi-robot cooperation without any industrial
interests breathing down my neck but that doesn't always happen of course.

The good thing about a Waterloo master's is that it is guaranteed to be fully
funded by the University and, based on merit, you can choose to do either a
course-based master's or a thesis-based master's. This is unlike American
universities because we drive our own research for the entirety of our
program. Being just a master's student I've published as a first author in
most of the major robotics conferences and journals (ICRA, IROS, JFR, TRO,
WAFR) and not many master's students in other Universities have the
opportunity to do that.

------
dkhenry
Drexel University has a similar program requiring five years to complete.
However the co-op's are for six months at a time which is infinitely more
useful to both the student and employer then more frequent shorter co-op's.

~~~
aianus
How does that work given that standard school terms are 4 months long and the
lcm of 6 and 4 is 12? You'd have to bunch up consecutive co-ops or else have
dead time to resync with the rest of the school.

Edit: fail math x2

~~~
dkhenry
At Drexel the school terms are three months. So each co-op is two terms. The
normal cycle is two three month school terms one six month co-op.

