Crack the code, get a job: Campus DevCon at UST

Back in the day, you went to college, you graduated, then you got a job. But over the years, the amount of time, money, and education required before qualifying for an entry-level job have all increased. Nowadays you need a master’s degree, or prior work experience. How can you come up with that if you can barely get through four years at the university?
 

In 2012, global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company surveyed youth education providers and employers across 9 countries around the world. “75 million young people are unemployed…yet only 43% of employers report there are enough qualified entry-level candidates.”
 

Fortunately students today are getting lots of help from private companies, professional organizations, and even the government. One of those helpful organizations is Developers Connect (DevCon) Philippines.

Campus DevCon
 

DevCon is a non-profit organization that promotes Pinoy IT talent. Through contests, workshops, lectures, and hackathons they gather students, educators, professionals and enthusiasts to talk and learn anything related to all sorts of programming and development.

One such activity is the Campus DevCon, held at colleges and universities around the country. The most recent one was held in the University of Santo Tomas’ College of Architecture, where students from UST and nearby universities were treated to an afternoon of talks by industry experts.

Participants came from University of the East, Polytechnic University of the Philippines-Manila and UST’s college of Engineering. The event was sponsored by SMART Developers Network.
 

Advice for the job-seeker
 

From Freelancer.com, “the world’s largest outsourcing marketplace,” came Country Manager Jorge “Jojy” Azurin. He talked about the growth of the Philippine economy, and the role of today’s students in tomorrow’s country. 
 

“By 2050, we will be the 16th largest economy in the world, by virtue of our population. That’s 35 years from now. By that time you will be in your fifties, you’re probably retiring. You’re probably a CEO or a political leader. In 35 years, you’ll be running the economy, you’ll be running this country.” A big part of that economy will be dependent on technology. So why not become a tech entrepreneur?
 

Azurin suggests students start out by working freelance long before they graduate from college. “Student freelancers use their earnings to pay for their tuition, help their parents and siblings, even buy their own iPhone.” Students can get jobs through sites like freelancer.com. If you can design a t-shirt logo, edit a video or write a report before you graduate, Azurin thinks you should go for it. And it helps that Freelancer.com jobs pay in US dollars.
 

Freelancer.com has 7.8 million members around the world, 300,000 of which are Filipinos all over the country. Over 40% of the members are aged 24 and below, mostly college students and fresh graduates. Over 4,000 jobs are posted daily, from writing to drawing up floor plans, programming and design. Jobs come mostly from North America, Europe, and Australia, and are outsourced to Eastern Europe and to Asian countries like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Philippines. Even countries like Spain and Greece are on the receiving end of jobs, because of their struggling economies. Developing countries like India and the Philippines are outsourcing too, “7% of the jobs are coming from the Philippines.” 
 

Students who are technologically-inclined can easily get projects from similar outsourcing sites. “Coding, PHP, article writing, data encoding, app development,” Azurin enumerated the projects commonly posted on their site.
 

Jobstreet.com Top 10 Highest Paying Jobs in the Philippines
 

Czarinna Cucueco of Jobstreet.com talked about the difference between a job and a career, and just how much experience can affect your take-home pay.
 

IT graduates may not expect to be among the top ten highest-paid professionals when they start work, but they quickly shoot up the ladder. Junior executives—those with 1 to 4 years of work experience-in the IT industry are the third highest-paid, with an average salary of Php 32,873. With more than 5 years of experience, “IT Analysts are among the highest paid supervisors. Software Analysts can get paid as much as P90,000, Database Administrators can earn up to P58,000, while Hardware IT could get up to P56,000.”
 

At the managerial level, three places in the top ten list are held by IT positions. General IT managers are at number 9, at Php 67,509. QA managers earn an average of Php 107,205 and the top spot is held by those in Technical Support, at Php 115,000.
 

The future of programmers
 

Other speakers talked about the programmer experience. Terence Ponce is a Ruby on Rails developer at Aelogica, also DevCon’s VP for Programs and a graduate of UST, talked about the ideal mindset of a programmer. He focused on the importance of patience and humility.

“Tao lang tayo. We need to accept our limitations. Gusto mo’ng maging programmer or developer, pero kailangan mo pa mag-aral,” he said.
 

WebGeek Philippines’ Michael Marin gave a talk titled “Not So Sure,” sharing his own experiences as a student at the nearby Far Eastern University. He proved that mistakes and failures are not obstacles, but stepping stones.

“I failed a lot of exams. I took analytic geometry three times, because I couldn’t find the significance of finding the area of a rectangle…but when you make a mistake, it’s a learning experience.” Marin is now part of WebGeek’s management team and an enthusiastic and engaging speaker. 
 

Marin also reminded students that their college degree should not hinder them from the work they really want to do. “Kung gusto mo mag-events, sige lang, kahit BS-IT ka.”

One such example was another speaker at Campus DevCon, Robert “Bob” DC Reyes.
 

A pilot by profession, Reyes is a Philippine Mozilla Representative. As a Mozilla Rep, he has the opportunity to test Mozilla products before they become publicly available. Users of the popular browser Firefox can download the latest version, v.22, but Reyes is already testing v.24.

At the lecture, Reyes was sporting the Keon6, a developer preview device featuring the new Firefox mobile OS. 
 

Reyes also invited the students to become Mozilla Reps as well. “The Mozilla Reps program aims to empower and support volunteer Mozillians who want to become official representatives of Mozilla in their region/locale. The program provides a simple framework and a specific set of tools to help Mozillians to organize and/or attend events, recruit and mentor new contributors, document and share activities, and support their local communities better.”

The first female Mozilla Rep in Asia, Faye Tandog, is a graduate of UST. 
 

Java Code Challenge
 

The final part of the program was the code challenge. Participating teams of three students each were presented with ten Java problems, which they had to solve within the time limit. Presented and moderated by DevCon’s VP for Technology, Bryan Bibat, the problems were logic challenges like determining which day a car was banned from the streets under the MMDA number coding scheme, given a license plate number. The problems presented were similar top questions that appear in technical job interviews, thus preparing the participants for the inevitable job hunt.
 

The winning team was comprised of UST students John Daniel Regino, Junvic Valdez, and Jezreel Zamora. They were awarded Php 3,000 for the team, Freelancer.com t-shirts, Jobstreet notebooks, and lanyards from Mozilla and DevCon.

Hopefully, they’ll also be speakers at Campus DevCon events one day. — VC, GMA News