Graduated in 2017 with a major in Film Scoring. Principal instrument: french horn.
Position: Software Developer at Datacor, a small (75-person) software firm that provides all-inclusive business/product management software used by chemical companies. One of seven developers on his team, Ross spends much of his time converting old product to newer programming languages and upgrading the graphics as well as customizing features for their customers.
Overview: Ross’s father, a computer programmer, tried to get Ross into it, but Ross resisted. At Berklee, Ross focused in scoring music for video games. Many of his class projects involved making or finding a simple video game to write music for. Ross found the video game creation process really interesting and, by the end, was spending more time developing the games than he did writing the music. Ross’s father, who works at Datacor, offered Ross a decent-paying internship after gradution. Aware that it was hard to break into the video game scoring industry, and enjoying software, Ross took the internship. Several months later, as was common, Ross was hired full-time into his role.
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You can see Ross’s LinkedIn profile here.
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Choice Quotes: “I’ve always enjoyed puzzles. Music has that a little bit, especially writing, but that’s the main focus of coding. At least in front end (which I do) it’s a simple problem to deal with and you know what you want, but you have to develop a complicated answer on how to get it to work. I’ve always enjoyed having my mind engaged that way.”
“I don’t think I’d be where I am had I not gone to Berklee. No other school offers such and comprehensive video game scoring program, and I got into programming because of that little push. Then that got me into games. I definitely learned a lot about technology.”
“If music is what you enjoy most and you don’t mind it as a career, that’s fine. But if you don’t see yourself doing that, don’t force yourself to do it. You don’t have to figure it out immediately–it can take a while–but eventually you’ll find it and you can get there. It’s OK to do something different.”
“There are way more places to work in software than Amazon and Google. Every company needs at least a few software developers, for a website/app if nothing else. Getting to work at one of these other places is not that hard if you have the skill for it. I don’t have a Computer Science degree, and one of the two others hired at the same time as me also didn’t. It’s easy to get into at least if you have the skill for it.”
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