Advice from a systems software engineer

Precocious Llama's father spent most of his career working in R&D at HP developing systems software. This weekend, he stated that in making a hiring decision, he would expect any entry level computer scientist to have some background in the following topics:

1. Data Structures
2. Algorithms
3. Operating Systems
4. Networking/Communications (know at least one network protocol well)

He also stated that it was one thing to know theory, and another thing altogether to be able to implement code to solve a problem. He said he expected that an interviewee would have some kind of portfolio to demonstrate that the individual can be presented with a problem and successfully code and test a solution.