Hello all,
My name is Richard Doherty. I graduated from Oregon State University back in 2019 with a degree in industrial engineering and a minor in computer science. I first discovered computer science from my roommate back in my junior year of college. While we lived together, he was working with a friend on a portfolio project for an e-commerce/exchange application for college textbooks in Swift. At the same time, we had also began binge watching the show “Mr. Robot”. Watching my roommate and his friend work on their project as well as watching the dramatized life of a hacker on Mr. Robot piqued my interest in computer science and software engineering. Since I was in my junior year of the industrial engineering program with elective credits to fill for my major, I decided to use those electives to get a minor in computer science. Plus, I figured with the way that all industries are moving with technology, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to learn the basics of computer programming.
Since taking my first computer science class, CS 161, I knew that I had chosen the wrong major but I also knew I was too far along in my degree to consider shelling out more time and money to change. But ever since I graduated, I knew that I would be back to complete my CS degree and find work as a software engineer.
It has been almost five years since I graduated and since then I have been working as a project manager for Oregon Precision Manufacturing, a company that specializes in the manufacturing of sheet metal parts. I began the Oregon State CS post-baccalaureate program in Fall 2022 and, due to transfer credits from my minor, I will be graduating after Fall 2023. I am interested in all things related to backend software engineering. I find it fascinating to look under the hood of how data is stored, processed, and moved around in modern software applications. As far as a future career, I am keeping my options open, but I do hope I can fall into some aspect of backend engineering. I do hope that my career path will take me outside of Oregon, as I have lived here my entire life and would love to see what the rest of the country and possibly even the world has to offer.
I look forward to working with you all as I complete my CS journey at Oregon State.
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