So tonight I decided to attend the local meetup group for their mishmash of coding languages group.  I learned some things, including that meetup groups are not generally amenable to newbies, and that socialization is something a lot of people need to work on, as well as speaking skills.  One thing that I did find really valuable is hanging out afterwards and talking with one of the developers who had been in the business for a few years, I found a few things out:

1.  Know what you’re worth.
2.  Find the niche that you want to do and go for it, CS is pretty broad so you can choose just about anything you want.
3.  Companies will try and throw flash things at you, IDEs, perks, whatever, they may still try to utilize you as much as possible, so be aware of what that might look like both in terms of work environment and management.