Studying CS after banking?
Graduated from a semitarget in business, worked at a BB afterwards, and now at a fairly sizeable PE fund.
What I've realized though is that my interest really lies in tech. Unfortunately never got the opportunity to exit to a tech PE fund (all my deals at the BB were focused on another sector), so am in more of a generalist role.
Are there any programs that allow you to learn CS (with a degree) despite not having any undergrad background in CS? Took a couple of math courses but focused mainly on stats.
Would be looking to exit to a startup.
Not trying to be cheeky, but a real question. Are you sure you need a degree? If you are already in PE and have connections with a tech PE fund, a few courses on the side may actually get you where you need to go. However, if you are dying for a degree and you go to a tech fund, you will probably make better connections with people in the CS academic world, and will be able to get yourself introduced to a number of programs.
You may find one of two things: if you want to go to a tech startup, you should go while you get chance and not delay with a degree Or, you may find you want a joint CS/MBA degree which would be very hot property recruiting wise. Except you might already be in that position, because of your role at a tech PE firm.
To be honest, despite the ostensible connections with tech funds / startups, my experience has shown that startups are very keen on having CS or Engineering majors, which is what sparked my interest in the first place. I'm also focused very much on energy deals, which is the result of being in M&A with an MD that liked me but unfortunately focused on energy.
Also, I like the idea of taking courses on the side but the problem is I'm in the east coast so Stanford / Berkley aren't options for me, which is why I figured I might as well take some time off and move to the west coast to study CS and hopefully land a gig in the field afterwards.
Being in the Bay Area, I can tell you that its definitely tech heaven, and the CS programs are wonderful. But I wonder about taking time off and creating a whole new network for you. That's the thing. It's going to be possible to jump into a CS program if you have great grades, motivation, and some familiarity with faculty,alums, and the program, but you would have to do some networking with people who are involved with the school to make sure you have a competitive shot.
Berkeley and Stanford aren't the only CS schools in the universe, last time I checked, though :-)
When you say you want to work at a start up, what role are you looking to take on at the start up?
A computer science degree, at least a bachelors will be teaching you how to program. Learning algorithms and stuff like that. A masters degree program will be expanding even more so on that going in to specific sectors like security, or game development, etc. If you don't plan on doing anything like that, I can't see how a CS degree would really be useful if you're not going to be doing any of the development.
I know the traditional path is a product manager role, but to be transparent, my desire to pursue a CS degree has more to do with the network, environment, and exposure to startups in the bay area as opposed to the CS knowledge.
I also really wanted to pursue a CS degree after high school in undergrad but in hindsight, the allure of being in finance crept up and led me to pursue the traditional investment banking path.
In a bit of a difficult position and I know I need to think through things more, but anything you guys would suggest for someone in my shoes?
Don't they have networking events that you can attend? I always see networking events out here in NYC for finance events that you pay X amount of dollars to attend that includes a panel of industry higher ups, some q&a, etc. that I could only imagine would be more tech related in the bay area? I'd say spending the money on attending the networking events would probably have a better ROI than spending money on college courses if your main thing you want to get out of it is networking.
I've spent some time in the Silicon Valley startup scene at a startup and my thoughts on this is that you should only go to getting a CS degree if you want to partake in an role that requires it. Both at my company and others as well, numerous investment bankers/PE guys have been hired for roles in Biz Dev, Finance, and Operations, and on the rare occasion PM functions. It may be a bit harder to break into a super small startup, since at that stage they're more focused on building a product - but it's a good way to break in to the industry as a whole.
If you're looking to get into a more technically sound role (i.e, Engineer, PM) and willing to relocate, rather than getting a degree, I'd actually enroll in one of those coding camps in SF/Mtn View/Palo Alto such as App Acadamy, Dev BootCamp, Coding Dojo, etc. These camps are built to place people into technical jobs (so more practical - less technical theory), and the better camps have a pretty extensive network that places people into pretty cool startups. That being said, I'd do some due diligence before choosing - there's been some troubles with some of the camps recently.
Can't speak to the tech scenes outside of the Bay, but if your goal is to simply network I think it's really just getting yourself out there at various events and reaching out to strangers. People in the industry are generally super receptive and more than willing to help. Feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions.
MIT and Stanford have dual degrees with CS that you might look into. You could go to bschool and target tech funds too.
It's impressive that you want to pursue CS after banking- I was an econ student in undergrad and only took a couple classes in computer science but it was a ton of work. Very creative but time-consuming. One has to think in a certain structured way to write code and get it to compile (you probably know this already).
Without an undergrad in a related field, it'll be tough to be admitted (and complete) a master's in CS. I think the best place to start is pick a language. C++ is the most common but a lot of people begin with C or Java or Python these days. Take a class on Coursera and work through the assignments. I took Tim Roughgarden's algorithms class on Coursera last year, and did fairly well on the quizzes and exams (mostly a math class). The really tough part was working on the programming projects. I wasn't sufficiently motivated to get them done (I made the excuse to myself that I was busy at my job, but really, it was a lack of focus and hard work on my part).
See if you have a knack for CS. If you really like this stuff, then go for it. Take more Coursera classes and work on independent programming projects. My understanding is that the Valley is based on what you know- so if you know these languages well and have a portfolio of projects you don't necessarily need a computer science/EE degree.
How about those 8 week courses that teach you programming?
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