Since I have no Thursday classes and today is a UNC holiday, I am in the mist of a four day weekend, hence the reason for not having posted in the past 48 hours. Hugh McColl spoke to my investment banking class Wednesday afternoon. The CEO of McColl Partners talked about how he found “a loophole” in 1981 that allowed NCNB to expand outside of North Carolina and by the time he retired in 2001 he had oversaw more than 1000 acquisition and NCNB was operating under the name Bank of America. One student asked how he judged whether a person could be trusted and he said he assumes that everyone he meets can be trusted unless that someone demonstrates otherwise.
We had a happy hour at He’s Not Here last night with free beer for Kenan-Flagler students. With the warm weather and a full moon, the night was almost perfect. Among the crowd from Kenan-Flagler that turned out, I spotted the real estate professor. It just happened that earlier this week I had a conversation where I wondered out loud why we almost never see professors come drink with us. I also ran into a couple of non-Kenan-Flagler folks whom I have not seen in a while. At around 1, people began scattering for Lucy’s while I went to I (heart) New York Pizza with a much smaller crowd.
With the disappointing news I received on Monday and McCoy pointing out on Wednesday that Money Magazine had named my old occupation as the best job in America, I was beginning to wonder why I left my old life to come to business school. Last night was a good reminder that business school is about more than just taking classes and getting an internship.
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8 comments:
dude, your job was software qa engineer. that is not the same as software engineer.
yea. we went through all of this on im a few days ago. a software engineer develops software while a software qa engineer test software. there IS a difference (which should be reflected on your resume ;). what is it that you claim to have done at aol when you interview exactly? :)
Let me explain the reason(s) for the disconnect. At many companies, including the one where I worked prior to AOL, both developers as well as testers are given the same job title of software engineer. When I worked at AOL, even though my job title was Software QA Engineer, I have always thought of myself as Software Engineer.
As for what I say during job interviews, I always make it a point to tell the interviewer I was a tester and not a developer.
That is not the case at many companies. In *most* (i think your prior company is like the only exception), they are separate jobs titles.
To the average layman who is sitting across the table from me during an interview, it doesn't matter whether I was a developer or tester, whether the letters "QA" are in my job title, the only thing that matters is I did not do finance prior to business school and therefore I am at a disadvantage compared to other applicants who did?
What the average layman thinks doesn't matter. I'm not arguing this in terms of your interviews. My simple, basic argument is
a) your job title was not software engineer, it was software qa engineer. two letters or not, that was what your official job title was. It was what my official job title was before i *changed jobs* to become a software engineer. The fact that AOL views it as two different positions, in different groups with different managers, sometimes in completely different organizations (even when we're working on the same product) definitely indicates that there is a distinction between the two.
b) in my experience, i have *never* heard software qa engineer referred to as software engineer. The job title software engineer in every instance that i have used it, heard it, searched for it, indicated (typically) a background in computer science, and primarily concerned programming.
c) when money magazine listed software engineer as the best job in america (which i find laughable) it was not listing the job that you previously had.
that is all sir
All excellent points. Maybe I will go update my resume now and add the letters "QA" onto the job title. Doing so will probably bump the remaining text onto the next line and push my resume onto a second page. But hey ... since America Online renamed itself to AOL LCC, I can update that field as well and maybe the additional space saved will make up for it. ;)
man...you know, first there was the jacket...then you went and shaved your head....then we had this whole software engineer debate....i swear, if you start going to a tanning salon to get darker - im going to get *really* worried that someones trying to be a little bit too much like RealMcCoyAtWork :)
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