

Prepping to go back to finish Bachelors, need advice on working while in school. - vagabondy

Guys, I'm planning to finish by CS degree at UCB next year. I've been working for almost 8 years since I was booted out, but I've talked to counselors there and the path back in is straightforward. I have to do two semesters of CC and then re-apply. The counselor made it seem like as long as I get a B or better avg. during those two semesters, the re-apply process is a mere formality.<p>I'm super excited to finally be able to finish my degree, and really looking forward to being a student again. I've hit a plateau in my career by not having my bachelor's. I get paid about 120k now, but I think I need the degree for the more formal hardcore stuff. I want to do data science, big data, or more hardcore stuff. I've been doing enterprise, web app, reporting type stuff that I'm really tired of. It'll also just be a personal goal.<p>I've saved up for 3-4 years and I have almost 70K in the bank (plus maxed out 401k + employer matching for the past 5 years) to fund my degree. I even hope to do a masters if any program will have me at that point.<p>Even though I have a bit of money saved up, I want to at least have some form of income while I'm in school. I'd rather not graduate with $0 to my name. So I want to know what the best thing for me to do right now to start preparing. I'm planning to move back to the bay area in Jan 2014 and start CC then, so that's my timeline. I am thinking that I either need to set up some "passive income" in the form of mobile apps maybe, or start a freelancing or consulting side gig. I think the latter is more realistic. I plan to spend my free time between now and January getting myself set up for this, so I will be learning some mobile dev.<p>(2K char limit, cont.)
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vagabondy
One problem with freelancing is it seems most of the jobs are either php or
ruby. I've been working with .NET, javascript, coffeescript, and SQL the past
few years. I'm very good with those and can do every aspect of an app. Looking
on careers.stackoverflow, and craigslist, .NET jobs seem to be pretty rare in
the bay area. What would you recommend I learn if I want to work about 20h/wk
there? Ruby? PHP? And which framework(s) (RoR, Cake, etc)?

Another option I've been toying with is using Xamarin to leverage my C# skills
to build mobile apps. This is something I'm going to probably be doing anyway.
Would I be able to get part time or consulting work doing this? Or is it too
niche? I thought I'd build a handful of apps between now and then to try to
make a little side money, and then start doing contract work with those
skills.

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shire
I'm studying computer science at the moment it definitely helps to have money
saved up so 70k sounds good enough. It's hard to do computer science and be
completely broke trust me I would know I am broke. is difficult. Sometimes I
wonder if the best thing to do is work for a few years make enough money save
up and come to it.

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vagabondy
This may seem like a 1st world problem. But I think going from a comfortable
life of making 100-120k a year to living on 70K for three years as a student
(that money has to pay for room, board, food, books, tuition, etc) will not be
that easy. I hear you on being a broke student being hard though. For part of
my time when I was still in school, I was as broke as one could possibly be,
and it was awful.

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vagabondy
Finally, how do I go about getting started as a consultant?

