Should You Take Double Degree Or A Minor?

For those of you who have not done yet with your education, this might be a good time for you to consider taking another degree (double degree) or add a minor that related to your major. These degrees might sound like a waste of time and money, yet it could be the only thing that makes you get a job. It makes you unique from other people – stands out among people who have similar area of studies as you. Right now, I am working on my minor degree on Decision Science; some of you might wonder what that is and how it is related to Information System which is my major. Decision Science is a study in which we learn about when, what, and how our decision will give us the optimal result. Many people call Decision Science as Supply Chain Management which is pretty similar. However, I believe that Decision Science is a more complete package because in Decision Science we not only learn about how to manage inventory, yet we also have to learn about the decision tree and other stuffs that do not related to inventory cycle. Next, what is the connection between Decision Science and Information System? Well, this is the tough part because it is more of my own personal opinion and preferences. I am planning to work as a database manager who will manage and organize the data that being collected from other subsystem into one database. My goal is to work in a subsystem that will manage the inventory cycle of company and be able to convert it into a data that will be stored in the company database. So, it means that I will create a database in which I will be able to put together all the data needed to be able to predict and plan when is the best time to restock an item or not, sound interesting isn’t it?

Other than my own dream job, I believe that by earning a minor degree will make me more competitive in the market and be able to get a better job than those people who only got a “standard” bachelor degree. Some people might argue that these extra degrees are useless, because once you get your master degree people will never even bother looking at your bachelor degree anymore. Well, yes that is true, but I always believe that master degree is only useful after you have enough working experiences and in some university, there is a requirement in which demand you to have at least one or two working experiences before going to a graduate school.  I found an article that explains why you need to take time off before you are going to a graduate school in which one of the reason is to get work experience first (Should You Take Time Off Before Applying to Graduate School? By Tara Kuther, Ph. D). This website explains why you need sometimes off before you should apply to a graduate school. One of the reasons that they discuss is looking for work experiences first before attending to a graduate school in order to know your field better – to be able to see and experience how to implement those theories and concepts that we have learnt. Well, of course every single person will have their own thought and way of thinking, yet I always believe that by moving one step further than your competitor will never hurt you.

SAP and Is It Worth the Price?

So, I have been thinking lately about what kind of job I am going to do after I graduate from my university. I never really had any ideas of what kind of job I would do later on. I always feel that I am doing this day by day without even thinking what would my future looks like and how my study can lead me to become a bigger person. By writing this post, I want to share what my major has to offer and how promising it is in current economy. Well, first of all, information system is a very broad thing to be explained precisely, however, the general idea of information system is to organize a group of raw data in order to be processed or "executed," so that it will be useful and meaningful for common people. I always believe that my major would guarantee me a job after I graduate from university because of how "broad" and how important my discipline is, however, that might not be the case these days due to the fact that we are having a financial crisis in United States (which I hope will end soon). Nowadays there are a lot of companies that prefer to hire a Computer Science graduate than an Information System graduate since they feel that Computer Science graduate is the complete package, they can do the language, maintaining IT department, and database should not be a big deal for them to handle.

However, we there is this program that will make us Information System graduate has a more promising future than those Computer Science graduates. This software is SAP which stands for Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing. It was created by a company in Mannheim, Germany, the company states that "it is the world's largest inter-enterprise software company and the world's fourth-largest independent software supplier, overall." This software basically works as a database in which all the information and process of the organization being stored together, so that it would be much easier for the user to process all the data they needed. This program requires you to take additional courses in order to get the certificate, however, keep in mind that these courses are not easy and could be easily be one of the hardest courses you ever taken. So, what is the reward of taking all these hard courses? Well, people with SAP certificate have a higher overall salary than a "normal" Information System graduate. Based on Dhoho blog, the base salary for SAP analyst salary is anywhere between $125,000 to $150,000 per project. Dhoho blog also has some brief descriptions about the SAP certificate and how useful they are. On the other hand, based on Top 10 Jobs in Information Technology  article by Rachel Zupek, the “general” Information System major only falls around $75,000 per year. Looking at those data makes me more motivated to achieve my certificate for the SAP in San Francisco State University before I graduate. I am hoping that I will have better chance of getting a job in my discipline as a SAP analyst or manager with the certificate in my hand. In the end, getting a job requires good luck as well, so for those of you who are trying to get a job, I wish you luck and I hope this blog will help expand your knowledge about Information System. Below is a YouTube video that explains about SAP in a great detail, I hope you guys enjoy it.

E-Voting for Election Day? Why Not?

As you guys know yesterday was the Election Day and it was an intense fight between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney. However, it turns out that Mr. Obama won yesterday election and will lead our country for four more years (Yay!). Even though I am not from United States and do not have the ability to vote, yet I do feel that Mr. Obama would be better choice for us. Obviously, I am here not to talk about my political stance, but instead there was one innovation from the Election Day that amazed me a little bit. They started to use E-Vote (Electric voting) to collect all of our votes which is very cool for me. This is actually my first time experiencing the Election Day here in United States, so I have no idea whether they already used electric vote or not last time. However, I do know that in my country (Indonesia), there is not such a thing, we still do it in a traditional way which use a sheet of paper that has a picture of the president we are voting for. It is amazing to see how fast the technology has grown, I wonder how Election Day would look like 24 year from now, and it must be really awesome. Prior to vote, the voters will receive a barcode in which they will need to swipe it to the computer which has the E-vote software in it. After that you will choose the candidate that you want to vote and then hand sign it at the very end. This software will only allow one vote each voter so that he or she will not be able to vote twice using different computers.  For those of you who wants to know more about how E-Vote works in a more detailed article you can read Internet-based and open source: How e-voting works around the globe article by Cyrus Farivar. It has a very detailed explanation about the history of this system and how it actually works.

Sadly though, every innovation must have pros and cons and yes, E-Vote has its own flaws as well, many people argue that the votes could be hacked or manipulated by someone that has the authorization to check the vote (Could e-Voting Machines in Election 2012 be Hacked? Yes. By Mark Clayton) which would be a very serious issue if there was anything like that on the Election Day. Furthermore, many experts believe that software bugs or malicious software can be another issue (Clayton), this software bugs will be able to get inside the system and alter the result of the vote which will become a major loss for the losing candidate and his or her supporter.

At this point, you guys might wonder what I am trying to say on this post. Well, as you guys already know, I am majoring in Information System and this should be a very interesting innovation for me, because it really giving my discipline more options in term of work-field. Like what I've told you guys above, we are anticipating that there might be a major flaw that need to be worked on and this is a good for Information System and Information Technology discipline because now the presidential office should hire someone that could work on the database to make it much more secure and solid. There should be a way that will prevent those votes to be hacked or even seen by anyone in the office.

There was another issue on this event which is the voting lines. There are many complains about how long the lines are, people talk about it on their Twitter, Facebook, or maybe blogs. There is an article in ABC News that talks about this issue," People in states like Florida and Ohio waited up to seven hours. In other states, there were shorter, though still-frustrating two-to three-hour waits. Some experts place the blame on high turnout, but many will tell you the culprit is technology -- failed and faulty e-voting machines." This lines show how people are aware of the possibility of faulty e-voting machines and this is a very great opportunity for those IT people to get a new job. I believe that with a better database and preparation system this issue should be able to be fixed.

Yet, with all those flaws that the system has, I still believe that E-Vote should be maintained and improved further, because technology is our future and I believe that E-Voting will change people perspective about the Election Day. I can recall seeing my parents avoiding the Election Day due to the fact that the process takes almost their whole day and I remember how my dad always babbling about how long it takes for us to know the result. E-Vote can be the solution for all the inefficiency; therefore, I believe that if we can figure out how to reduce the waiting line to the minimal limit and use a solid and advanced security system, there should be no reason for us not to like this innovation. Image if we have the capability to minimize all the Election Process to only five or ten minutes and by the end of the day we will be able to know the final result of the vote, it would be fantastic and I believe that it would increase the number of participants who use their right to vote.

Education path for Information System Descipline

I have been writing about Information System related topics for my blog posts and I hope by now some of you might find this discipline interesting or at least planning to get to know this study more than before. In this blog post, I would like to talk about what classes I took for my Associate Degree and what I am taking or planning to take in order to get my Bachelor degree in Information System.

Like what I have said in some of my posts, I started my study in City College of San Francisco majoring in Computer Information Science. I needed to take two Computer Science classes in which I could choose between three programming language which are C++, Java, or Visual Basic. Of course I have no right to force you guys to choose which language you should pick, but I believe before you take Java and Visual Basic you need to master C++ first. I believe that C++ is the basic of all languages, so that if you know how to work with C++, you should be able to learn other languages easily. I took Introduction to C++ which is CS 110A in City College and I took Intermediate level C++ which is CS 110B. These two classes are the foundation to my programming knowledge and I feel that it does not really necessary for Information System major to take the Advance level of C++ which is the CS 110C class, obviously because software programming is not the main focus in Information System. Furthermore, I also took Introduction to Information System (CS 101), this class teaches us all the basic things you should know about computer systems such as what is Gigabyte, Megabyte, and ASCII code, etc. Personally, I feel that this class is not that useful for those of you who have basic knowledge of computer and networking, sadly though this class is a requirement for those who want to transfer to CSU/UC. Other than those computer related classes, another required courses that I had to take was Microeconomics (ECON 3), Macroeconomics (ECON 1), Financial Accounting (ACCT 1), Managerial Accounting (ACCT 3), Statistics (ECON 5), Mathematics for Business (MATH 75), English classes, and elective general education courses. I cannot tell you much about these classes because I did not enjoy all those classes myself, one advice though, really spend your time studying ECON 5 and ACCT 1 because it will be very useful for you later on when you transfer to University. For those of you that currently studying in City College of San Francisco and planning to transfer to San Francisco State University majoring in Business Administration, Assist.org will really help you out.

After I got my Associate degree I transferred to San Francisco State University which I took Information System 350, Business 360, Marketing 431, and Decision Science 412. Many people believe that ISYS 350 is one of the hardest classes for Information System major because it covers a lot of stuffs related to programming language such as Java and C#. I believe that this difficulty happens due to fact that many people do not have a strong background on programming language when they get into their University. So that, I really encourage you guys to take some basic classes about programming language. Throughout summer I took Information System 363 and International Business 330. Well, ISYS 363 should be an easy class for those of you who have some experiences with Microsoft Excel and Access. However, for those of you who do not have any experiences before, this class could be challenging for you since you need to do A LOT of stuffs related to Microsoft Excel and Access. So, you might want to learn some basic knowledge about Excel and Access before taking this class in order to give you a head start, but I believe that you guys will have a fun time with this class since it is the basic of our discipline. On the other hand though, do not ever take IBUS 330 on summer, I repeat DO NOT. This class is hard enough on long semester due to how much time you need to spend for this class. It requires you to watch 90 minutes videos and you need to stop at some point of the video to take notes which will take A LOT of your time, so you guys better not take this class with other hard classes such as DS 412 and Finance 350. This semester I am taking English 414, Finance 350, Management 405, Information System 463, and Information System 464. I cannot tell you guys much yet about these classes because I have not done with them yet, but I will put it down later on when I am done with these classes. I am not sure yet which classes I will take next semester, but I need to finish up my Segment III General Education as soon as possible in order being able to graduate. For those of you who curios of the degree road-map of this major, you can see Degree Roadmap in Business Administration – Information System. This link has a complete guideline on which classes you should take and when the best time for you to take them is.

Well, of course people in Information System could work at any place they want because almost every company would need Information System on their system. For me, my dream is to work at a car dealership working on their database because like what I've told you guys many times my real passion is on automobiles or working on something related to car. My advice for you guys that want to the same education path as mine is that you need to realize what Information System really is – what will you guys do on the future and what kind of studies you need to take in order to accomplish your dream. I learn from my mistake in which I believe that because I love gaming and computer stuffs, Information System would be fun things for me to do, but later on I realize that my thought was wrong. Nevertheless though I still enjoy my major, yet it is not as easy as I thought it would be, I believe that Information System is one of the hardest branches in Business. You guys should check out the YouTube video that I provided, this video gives you guys those advises that you guys need in order to be able to succeed in this discipline.

General Education Is It Worth It?

Have you guys ever wondered about how our classes in high school or college would be useful for our future life? Is there one particular class that you feel wasted your time? If you ever felt that, I am on the same boat as you. As many of you guys have known, in our high school or college there is something called general education which serves a purpose to make our knowledge more broad and aware of our surrounding and know a little bit about anything other than our discipline. Indeed it is a good thing to learn and get to know other subjects, but is it going to be something useful for our future life? For me, it is debatable.

On my first blog post, I already introduced myself, but let me refresh your memory in case you forgot. I was a student in City College of San Francisco for 2 years before transferring to San Francisco State University this Spring 2012.  I would talk about the courses that I took in City College because I have only taken few classes here in San Francisco State. I have taken many General Education courses in order to be able to transfer, some of them though are not very enjoyable, yet very time consuming. Many of you might have taken History classes, some of you might find it interesting, yet for me it was one of those classes that I dislike the most. I took History 1 and History 17A back then when I was still in City College. Those two History classes are the worst in my whole college life. It is not that I do not respect American History, but I felt that I need to learn everything from zero due to the fact that I did not born here. Obviously, there were many people in my class that have taken U.S History class before in which would help them a lot to understand all the materials given in the class. That class had two research papers which were eight pages long each. What made it worst was that I did not really understand the topic because I had to do research about Indian tribe in which I never really learn or have a chance to get to know their history. Like what I have said in the beginning, some people might argue that it would help me to understand American history since I am a new-comer. However, as you guys know my major is in Information System which does not have any relation to U.S History. I am not saying that other general education classes are not the same, but due to the amount of work that I had to do for my History class, I would say that it was The worst general education class that I have ever taken.

My most useful class though would be ISYS 350 that I took in here in San Francisco State. This class is one of the required major class in order for you to be able to register into a higher-ranked class (ISYS 471, ISYS 464, etc). In my opinion, this class is very useful because it covers a lot of programming languages such as C# and Java Web Design. Even though some people say that this is one of the hardest class in ISYS major, yet I feel that this class is actually interesting because we will learn how to design a website and how to make it work. Furthermore, we also will learn how to use Visual Basic in order to be able to run C# . For those of you who have basic knowledge on C++ should not have a hard time learning C# since they are very similar. However, I also believe that this class become fun and enjoyable due to the professor who taught this class. He explains everything visually and do it step by step and open to any questions that the student may have. I always feel that teacher is one of the most crucial aspect in learning effectiveness. Unorganized and boring teacher will make student to become less motivated to actually pay attention to the lecture which resulting in bad performance in the class and learn nothing.

In the end, this is my personal thought and experience. Everyone can have different opinion from me and I am not urging anyone not to take History classes, but I am discussing about how I feel that some of my previous classes and how it would affect my career.

English Literacy in our Working Environment

Do you guys ever wonder about how our English class would be useful for us later on? For me, I do not see the connection between writing essay and doing Information System works. There is no way my boss would hire me based on how good my essays are, so I always feel that writing essay is only an obligation for me as a student. However, there is also a part of me that curious whether my belief is true or not, so I asked Cameron Taslim, one of my friends who I interviewed for my previous blog. He  is currently working in IT department, so I believe I can get an idea whether learning writing and reading in college would be useful for our work-life or not.

Cameron told me that even though the writing and reading that he does at this work is not exactly the same as the teaching that we get in our English class, yet it is still helpful for us to know professional writing skill, because nobody would hire someone that cannot write in a good manner. Meaning that it has to look professional, understandable, and clear. Furthermore, he told me that the only reading he would have in his department is progress report and technical report. Progress report is a report send to the IT department for them to see how the IT system working in the office environment, is it working properly? Is there any known issue going on? On the other hand, technical report is a report send to the IT department if there is any known issue that has been spotted before. These report requires a good reading skill because you have to understand all the small details, so he assumed that reading in school should help a lot in this area. 

On the other hand, Cameron explained to me that good writing skill is a must for his department. His department is the one who wrote all the company policies and web documents. So, without good writing skill there is no way you will be able to write a professional-looking policy. He told me a story about how there was someone in his department who never took English classes seriously, and when he was asked to write the policy he really had a hard time to do it, not because he is stupid or anything like that, but he does not understand the concept of a good writing. Even though many of you guys might never even bother to read a company policy, yet it is still important to write it professionally because for those who cares about the small details these kind of things would be crucial. So, obviously that writing skill that we learnt from our school would be very useful for our job later on.

Learning this from Cameron changes my perspective about English literacy that we learn in our school. Even though I still believe that essay is not the most effective way for us to learn it, yet now I believe that we should try to absorb as many knowledge as possible about writing and reading from our school life because it might be one of the things that determine whether we would get a job or not.

I found a very interesting video on YouTube about how a mute person trying to explain that writing skill is very important for our job. (For those of you that does not understand the sign language like me, you can click "show more" on the description box. Here is the video :

Information Technology Daily Life

Have you ever wondered what your future might be like? Well, I have, and I am always curious about it. Whether it is going to be fun or is it going to be a nightmare. On my first blog post, I mentioned that Information System originally was not my first choice of major, yet I finally decided to get into this discipline because I want to have a promising future, a job that could give me top notch lifestyle.

As I only have a limited insight to the working environment, I interviewed one of my friends, Cameron Taslim, who has been working first hand at Consensus Corp for about 18 months. Cameron, like myself, is also an Indonesian. He graduated from San Jose State University with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science. You guys might wonder why I chose someone from Computer Science when I obviously have explained before that Information System and Computer Science are not the same thing. The reason why is because he is not working as a software programmer right now. He is more into the Information Technology department which handles the company networking system, both software and hardware support; his job is to purchase IT related equipments, setting projectors and meeting rooms, assisting people who have problem with their softwares, emails, building security cameras or alarms, and many more things that are related to IT.

So, what is this Consensus Corp, you might ask. Not many know about its existence, which I also did not at first, because they used to be called LetsTalk.com inc which is a popular cell phone re-seller company. Brightstar corp has just recently taken over them and is planning to change the whole system of the company – from their company name, their products, and the infrastructure itself. Previously, LetsTalk inc was a cell phone re-seller company which sells similar things like any other well-known cell phone sellers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint would sell. One thing that makes LetsTalk different from other popular cell phone sellers, however, is that LetsTalk does not offer any call services, they basically only sell cell phones but in a much cheaper price than those other sellers. Take for example, someone who wants to buy Samsung Galaxy III from Verizon, T-Mobile, or Sprint might need to pay something around $200, yet LetsTalk offers the same phone for only $70, so you would save a lot of money if you decide to buy the phone from LetsTalk. The only downpart of LetsTalk is that they do not carry Apple products. LetsTalk used to be exclusive to only online business, but after Brightstar took over them, they now have a physical place which is located in Embarcadero area in San Francisco.

Cameron lives in San Jose area, so he commutes from San Jose to San Francisco almost everyday. It is about 50 minutes drive to Embarcadero BART station, and then he would walk from there to his workplace. I asked him about how he feels about his job – whether or not he enjoys it. He told me that he enjoys his job right now, but would love to work in a software programming company since he is originally a computer-science guy. Cameron then explains that his job does not relate with anything he learned in school. When he first entered the company, he needed to learn everything from basic. He even told me that after working there for 18 months he only knows a fraction of things that he should do in his department. This is true to a lot of people. Many think that school would prepare them for the real job, but it turns out that it is not necessarily true. What would probably better prepare us for what is coming up is an internship at a company where we can get a hand on experience working at the field. I then asked about the average income one would receive working in this career; Cameron told me that because he is a newcomer, his annually salary is about $60,000 which is not bad for a starter compared to other jobs. I was curious with the advantages and disadvantages working as a full-timer compared to part-timer. Cameron said that the obvious benefit of working as a full-timer is the working hour. A full-time job would have a much more working hour than a part-time job, resulting in better income for full-timers. Also, aside from the hours, working full-time means employees will receive medical benefits that the company would provide, which is one thing to aim for when looking for a job. There is a disadvantage, however, of working full-time job – because employees are paid annually, working overtime does not mean they would get paid extra.

Next, I asked Cameron about the relationship between employees at his workplace – whether it is more of a horizontal or vertical. For those of you who do not understand what horizontal and vertical relationship is, you could click on this article, Differences Between Horizontal & Vertical Organizations by Arnold Anderson, Demand Media which would help you a lot in understanding the differences between the two. Cameron then answered that it is more a horizontal relationship due to the fact that they are a re-starting company, so that there is no real hierarchy between the managers and the staffs. In most cases, the manager would work together and help them in order to achieve the outcome they have targeted, which is good to hear since it seems to be less tension at his workplace.

Sadly, that was all I could ask him because he needed to finish up his work, however, I received a lot of useful information about the work field. Even though I have never worked here in United States before, yet Cameron's explanation gives me an idea of how real working place would be like. Right now, I feel a little anxious knowing about how our school education would not help a lot in our work life. However, that does not reduce my impatience to immediately enter the working environment.