Touch typing (typing without looking at the keyboard) is an essential skill. Here is an intro video. Placement test. My current stats: 50 words per minute at 90% accuracy. Diary of a person learning to touch type.
As with any skill in life, the key is regular daily practice. "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard"
For an industrial engineer to be useful, the company employing her must have sufficient size to make use of statistical optimization. A common misconception among freshman ind. eng. students is that they will quickly become managers, even CEOs. In reality management requires 5+ years of experience and becoming a CEO requires a strong network.
While most managers think they are competent, even if they are not industrial engineers, no manager thinks they are good computer engineers if they have not graduated from computer engineering. This bias is against industrial engineers who compete for management jobs.
If your undergraduate is in computer engineering you can get quickly through the door and start contributing to the bottom line. If you have management inclination, opportunities will come up. But for you to take advantage of those opportunities, you first have to be let in. As a computer engineer your chance is much higher than an industrial engineer.
General motivation and computer science information:
Programming:
A couple of years ago, a senior computer engineering student from Middle East Technical University asked for help with her term project. The project was building an auction server with multiple clients with the C language on Linux. It was relatively easy for me but quite difficult for her because she had not have much guidance in project work. The computer engineering department's method was to "throw them into the sea and let them learn to swim by themselves"(!) And you are expected to do that while you are taking 4 other courses.
As an engineer with 25 years of experience, I saw that computer engineering students have gaps in the following areas:
