HenryChanDegree & Year Graduated

B.S., Computer Science 2004

How did you become interested in your field?

Loved it after taking my 1st programming class, and honestly I was sold after sitting in super nice cars driven by my friend’s Bay Area engineer friend (before the dot com burst).

What do you do for a living now? What do you enjoy most about your current career position?

Desktop Virtualization Engineer in the RTP, NC office of Credit Suisse. I work in the field of Cloud Computing (Virtualization Engineering with Citrix Design & Architecture) for a global enterprise. I enjoy the problem solving, scripting, coding, and designing a solution from scratch from time to time. And I liked the relaxed work schedule.

What have been the biggest challenges in your career?

When I can’t figure something out for a long time, feeling stuck and nobody else around you know or overseas colleagues not willing to help (to protect their own job security).

What is the best professional lesson you learned from the Computer Science Department?

Operating Systems and A.I. courses

What was the best class you took? Did you have a favorite Professor?

Operating Systems with Dr. Roch. Knowing OS and how a job is processed is such a key to understanding anything else in IT.

Dr. Roch and Dr. Lewis who teaches A.I.

What is your favorite memory from the time spent in the department?

When I worked for multiple professors, from being a grader and lab intern, to being a tutor for statistics and programming. Those were great experience and helped me to land a job easily.

What advice do you have for our current students?

2 parts answer:
Part 1)
Learn Networking, you will need to know it well and/or it will help you no matter what type of work you do.

Part 2)
Work. Work. Start working as early as you can. Even if there is no good choice at first, accept whatever type of reasonable work, even if you have to start working as a waiter / coffee shop / hot dog stand / bookstore / referee at first, which I did all… but you will sooner or later replace those jobs with more scientific and professional ones closer to your major eventually (admin office / grader / webmaster / lab intern / lab assistance / tutor). This is to tell a story that if you start working early in your 4-year degree, the sooner you can work your way up like me.

 

 

 

If you are an SDSU Computer Science alumni and would like to submit an alumni profile for the web site please email ajensen@mail.sdsu.edu