Non-Programming Jobs For a Computer Science Major? 936
An anonymous reader writes "I recently graduated from a 'major' university in America with a BS degree in Computer Science. I unfortunately must admit that I am not very skilled with programming. I finished with the degree, and I've spent much of my college career working a job doing technical support (fixing laptops, troubleshooting Windows problems, etc). What jobs can I get with a computer science degree that are NOT mainly programming jobs? A little programming wouldn't be bad, but none would be preferred. And what kind of salaries do these jobs typically fetch?"
Go back to school. Get an MBA. (Score:1, Insightful)
Mouth breathing PHB's will throw gobs of money at you because you have both a technical and a business degree.
What do you WANT to do? (Score:4, Insightful)
Would you like fries with that? (Score:1, Insightful)
Tech Support? (Score:2, Insightful)
How do you graduate with a CS degree, and not know how to program? What kind of CS program are they running at this 'major' university?
Tech support? Your experience is TECH SUPPORT?!?!?
Maybe if you work hard you'll make assistant tech support manager some day.
Your best bet at this point is to either beef up your scripting skills, networking skills (or both) and jump over to system administration where a degree is almost ancillary. Entry level positions typically start in a NOC, and go up from there.
Lawyer (Score:5, Insightful)
If your grades were decent, consider law school. People who are successful there aren't only good BSers, but have a strong sense of logic, generally something you possess if you're into programming or math.
Of course, if your grades in programming weren't that good, don't let that stop you. The practice of law is overrated. :-)
Re:Accenture... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Program Manager (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, because all we *really* need is a CS guy who can't program running our software engineering projects. I hear Microsoft does that a lot.
A BS degree in computer science indeed.
What exactly is it you don't like? (Score:3, Insightful)
What comes to mind for me, however, is that if you have a problem with programming after going through 4 years of computer science education, maybe it's not the programming in X, Y, or Z language that you don't like, but the whole idea of thinking in processes, algorithms, computational theory, etc. If you don't like coding in C++ you may still enjoy a job in CS... but if you don't like coding in C++ because you don't like thinking about and designing processes and algorithms then maybe computer science as a field isn't for you. Not every CS job will involve writing the boring "phone book" applications you did in school... but every CS job will involve the theory behind those applications, at some level of abstraction.
Re:Accenture... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a former Accenture employee I can tell you that this is 100% true, but a few years at Accenture right out of college sure looks good on your resume.
You Won't Get Very Far (Score:5, Insightful)
A little programming wouldn't be bad, but none would be preferred.
If you want to succeed in IT, you NEED programming. You may not be building enterprise-level programs - but when comes to pushing updates, creating a simple Intranet, building or troubleshooting a compiled/interpreted application or just plain keeping yourself sane*, having a programming background goes a very long way.
Perhaps IT is not a best fit for you.
*For some of us, it may be too late. :D
Database Administrator (Score:2, Insightful)
Database Administration. Good money. Lots of positions. Just hope you like Oracle....
Re:Program Manager (Score:4, Insightful)
better than letting them code.
Re:Entry level QA (Score:5, Insightful)
Just wish people quit pushing the ones that can't hack in CS to QA. I work for a software company as a developer, but so wish the QA people aren't just CS rejects. They need to be good at what they do and good QA people are hard to find. There can be a lot of scripting and programming in QA in the right environment and not just script monkeys that runs what they are told. QA really is a calling.
Re:Tech Support? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tech Support? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you like networking, I personally find that field to be both fun and challenging. Perhaps it would be a good fit.
THANK YOU! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sarcasm...off. I mean this:
Thank you for admitting that programming isn't your thing. Thank you for not subjecting your fellow programmers to years and years of bad code, grumpy job performance, and being a drag on other coders' lives. Thank you for letting our managers hire people who want to do this job, instead of those just killing time.
I'm sure you're a fine person, but thank you for not working here as one of my developers. You are too honest for management or sales, but I'm sure you'll find something good to do.
Now if we can only get other CS majors who shouldn't be programming out of the trenches, life might improve.
Re:Program Manager (Score:1, Insightful)
In the world I live in, you are pretty useless. So tech support, build monkey or "fix it" guy around the office might be best for you.
Software development and making retail or corporate products is serious business. There are people that have been doing this for a long time, and the last thing we need is someone who hasn't been in the trenches in any oversight position. Those with faint hearts need not also apply.
You may be able to find some lame job in a corporate structure that will keep you fed.
most computer jobs have no programming (Score:4, Insightful)
Although programming is the visible face of computers, most jobs using them have little/no programming requirements.
Do you have people skills? Can you attend meetings all day without retching? If so, consider management. I don't care if my manger can code his way out of a paper bag as long as he can keep me out of meetings. He does have to know enough to kinda keep up in the technical discussions, but that is about it.
But my advice to you is to get out of the computer field. It doesn't appear to be where your interest lies. Find something else that you like doing and aim for the computer end of that industry. It may be too late for you to become a doctor, but hospitals have huge support staffs and working with already written medical software might be more rewarding for you. Or perhaps you can get teaching license and help run a high school program.
Be creative. There are lots of related fields where your skills might get you a job that you like. You might be surprised at what you can find and can talk your way into. Heaven knows that over the years I've seen countless EEs who end up with software jobs, and are often poorly suited for them.
- doug
PS: I intentionally left marketing off the list. If you need to stop and bounce an idea off of slashdot, you don't have what it takes for marketing. And you are a better person for it.
Re:Program Manager (Score:2, Insightful)
This is not a good thing...
The important question is what are *you* good at and what do *you* enjoy, we can't answer that question for you. Do our suggestions have to be within the realm of computers? There are lots of things to do that require just any college degree. I think you're in the same position as basically any college graduate that isn't in a technical field...
Re:Waiter at Denny's (Score:5, Insightful)
The person asking the question tells us about skills he lacks more than skills he has. Makes it awfully hard to make a useful suggestion.
The little offered is that he's done some tech support. If that's your strong suite, then the answer for a newly-minted college grad from Comp Sci is...
tech support.
Then again, if you don't really like that work you should just go find something completely different to do. A solid technical degree has appeal to employers even when it has nothing to do with the job.
Hmmm... if you're just starting out then go find a job (any job!) related to what you really want to do. Worry less about the money or benefits. Fresh out of college you just want a foot in the door of the career you really want even if there are long hours and little pay. After three years in the workforce potential employers care EVERYTHING about your experience and NOTHING about your degree.
Re:Accenture... (Score:5, Insightful)
Accenture is a good place to start out of college, they baby you, but it can teach you how to work in the corp world. Although, I know of people who are complete failures in life/work that have been there for years and years and can't get fired for some reason. It's the place to be if you want to learn how this world works these days with off shoring, project management at an enterprise level, etc.
Accenture's projects range from $10-$1000 Million, yeah that's billion. So you have a chance to work on some huge projects.
The other good part is, if you are bored, you can bounce around to do other things.
Re:Program Manager (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a Computer Science degree, not a "Programming degree". You are aware that Programming is but a small part of Computer Science, at least in any decent university?
"Hur, hur, if you can't code, go and be a tester." (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm disgusted by the number of suggestions that this guy go into testing. I'm especially disgusted at the ones who are telling him to go into test so that he can work his way into a development position later.
Software is the only engineering field where the engineers who do quality assurance (prevention of defects and design of quality control processes) work are treated like the people who do the quality control grunt work (the actual running of tests). If the computer industry ever intends to routinely get software that doesn't suck right out of the box without figuring out how to clone Linus Torvalds, it had better start taking defect prevention and detection seriously and that starts with not treating it as a only as a dumping ground for CS rejects.
Re:Geek Squad (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, but pretty accurate.
A CS major who can't (and doesn't like to) program? I don't want him pretending to be a programmer. I don't want him blindly leading a group of programmers. There's not much left aside from IT and help-desk jobs.
Re:Accenture... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's reputation and consistency. Accenture has decades of clout due to it's AA roots. They can walk into almost any industry, walk up to a business, tell the CEO: yeah we're done that. Not only have we done that, but we all these documents to follow to ensure it works.
I think that's why a lot of consulting firms can't make it to the big's. They don't have the decades of experience to throw around.
CEO's care about the delivery, and not many other firms have the track record that Accenture has. Same goes for the other big 4 consulting firms.
Re:Tech Support? (Score:3, Insightful)
He didn't say he didn't know how to program, only that he wasn't that good at it. There are plenty of bad programmers out there who are content to churn out bad code. It would be nice if more of them acknowledged their shortcomings and looked for something they were better suited for.
I couldn't agree more. It seems most CS departments teach "get the program to do this" rather than "write the code like this." My school, widely respected for CS, didn't ever teach programming design. Almost anyone can with a brain and a book can write a program. It takes real intelligence to get and use proper programming design methods.
Re:Program Manager (Score:3, Insightful)
And advanced degree would be the way to go. CS types have unusually high success rates in Law, for example.
Re:How about (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There are lots of possibilities (Score:5, Insightful)
Computer science has to do with research into computing, algorithms, etc. Programming, for the most part, is related to software engineering (though some programming also involves computer science). Most of the other jobs you mentioned have nothing to do with either one though.
The simple fact that a job is involved, to some degree or other, with computers, does not mean it has anything to do with computer science. In fact, more often than not, computer science is done with a pencil and paper. Software engineering is typically done with a computer, but primarily to run a text editor or (possibly) something like a UML editor.
Let me give one small example: from a viewpoint of computer science, graphics cards really only come in two varieties: those that you can program, and those that you can ignore. From a viewpoint of software engineering, there's more difference between cards, but it's expressed primarily in terms of the shader model the card implements. If you care much about things like how fast of RAM it has, chances are that neither computer science nor software engineering has much to do with that interest (which isn't to say that a computer scientist can't also enjoy playing a game now and again -- just that he knows the difference between the two).
The OP should really sit back and think about what he wants to do. The simple fact that he hasn't done much, or been taught much about, programming shouldn't be a major handicap if he honestly has a desire and aptitude for doing so.
It's a bit belated, of course, but if he doesn't want to program, he should sit back and think about 1) what he's good at, and 2) what he enjoys. He should then try to come up with jobs that are at least somewhere close to the intersection between the two.
Until or unless he does that, he's pretty much setting himself up for misery, failure, or most likely both. Most people have a hard time enjoying being bad at something for very long, and most people have a hard time caring enough to do things well if they don't enjoy it to at least some degree.
Re:Program Manager (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed.
I'd imagine that a CS degree teaches you algorithms, theoretical CS (e.g. complexity, graph theory etc.), graphics (once again, algorithms, physics, etc.) and assorted things. Even networking would be more about routing algorithms and packet handling etc.
All the "hands on" parts of CS usually fall under other categories -- for example, networking hands on is more ECE, systems engineering could fall under industrial/electrical/electronics & communication/computer engineering, but not necessarily computer science.
An ideal CS degree would be very close to a very applied math degree, because of the similarities between the two subjects. You can teach someone who's strong with fundamentals a programming language quite easily (even a monkey can program); however teaching someone critical thinking skills, good design skills and designing appropriate algorithms and the like is very, very hard.
IMHO, that is what a CS degree should do. A little programming is fine, but I'd be loath to respect any CS degree that focussed on programming. Anyone can be a programmer - hell, even physicists program. A computer scientist is not the same thing as a programmer, and that's the way it should be.
Re:That all depends on you (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't expect to be good for much (Score:3, Insightful)
Civil Engineers choose their major with the idea that they are going to build bridges when they graduate, but its a decade or more before anybody entrusts them with that. What they do when they get out is more like figuring out how many gallons of paint it will take to paint the traffic lines on the bridge.
People coming out of a CS program aren't good for much right away. There are exceptions of course. Developing software is like music; anybody can do it if they apply themselves, and after a while with the right coaching and effort they can become passable. But then you've got Mozart, who was composing at age 5. If you were Mozart, you'd probably know it. The fact that you say you aren't good at programming only means you're more self-aware than others. Very few people coming out of school are good, although very few people know how not-good they are. It takes a year or two of seasoning to get up to speed.
I'd suggest you don't worry about what you are good and not good at yet. You don't really know at this point. You should look into things you think you aren't good at -- you might surprise yourself.
I'd look for a good employer. One doing interesting things, with happy employees. Then learn the kinds of things on the job your employer needs. You didn't think you were done learning did you?
Re:Depends (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you want to do? It would have been much better for you to have tackled that question before pursuing your degree, or at least before your final two years. Talk to your college's career services office and ask them to put you through the ringer--personality type assessments, vocational interest surveys, personal preference assessments--anything they can provide to help you wrap your head around the central question: not what do you want to be when you grow up (though that might be easy for some to answer), but what job will you find meaningful on a daily basis. Find that job that you will either love, or at least tolerate without repeated depressive episodes, and you will be well on your way to finding an employer who will be glad to have you join the team.
Re:please, don't try sysadmin (Score:4, Insightful)
In my experience, programmers tend to not be paranoid or methodical enough for sysadmin work. They also get frustrated too fast when faced with weird problems involving software they have no experience with or view into. (It helps a bit to point out to them that debuggers/tracers are not just for finding bugs, and they can be used on other people's software too, including closed-source vendor software).
I've seen a LOT of "we'll just try this out", with no voice in the back of their mind screaming at them "THAT IS A PRODUCTION SYSTEM YOU FLAMING IDIOT DO YOU EVEN HAVE THE CODE AND DATA BACKED UP YET OMFG!!!!" to help them pause and reconsider exactly how bad the situation can become if "just try this out" doesn't actually work. This seems to come from being used to just working in development environments that they can break and/or restructure all they want with essentially no impact to other people, or their (own personal) income/employment status.
Finally, they seem to be used to working on a single codebase at a time, with an essentially static operating platform - they don't generally have a visceral sense of multisystem interactions, or multisystems management issues, patching, platform versioning problems, and so on, because they tend to just not deal with those types of issues daily.
There's more, but that's generally the highlights of what I've personally seen. The most important part is that they tend to lack a seriously well-developed (and experienced...sigh...) sense of paranoia. Fear of horrendous production outages combined with a healthy skepticism of software's actual ability to function correctly until proven to do so (including patches...*sigh*) is, in my experience, the bedrock that a really good sysadmin stands on.
Re:Program Manager (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't call it a "small" part, not at the BS level.
You're going to be taking a class about about computer architecture, have a class on databases, a couple of classes on algorhythms and complexity, and about ten classes that involve a ton of programming...Even my advanced networking class had a full 5 programming assignments; build a proxy server, build a chat server, build a web spider, etc. The rest of it is physics and calculus.
Saying that CS is more than programming is true. Saying that it is mostly not programming is untrue.
Re:Program Manager (Score:3, Insightful)
"This is a refreshing antidote to the common arrogant assumption in the CS crowd that only they should be allowed to develop software."
It doesn't contradict that though, does it?
We can now refine it to "only us and not even all of us".
Who else do you suggest?
Re:Entry level QA (Score:1, Insightful)
With all due respect, you fit well into the QC world, not the QA world. QA means stopping bugs from being coded in in the first place and that takes people who can work with the developers at their level and that means being able to program as well or better than a developer. Moreover, a non-programer tester is also not able to find the areas in the code that are hard to reach from black box testing, let alone test them.
If you work in a place that only does QC, your work is noble but doomed. You can find the majority of the bugs in a release and pat yourself on the back for your heroic effort but realize that you're stuck heroically searching for bugs for every release forever because there's no one to make your developers learn from their mistakes and code less bugs.
Re:Geek Squad (Score:5, Insightful)
There's not much left aside from IT and help-desk jobs.
And what is wrong w/ IT and Hemp Desk type jobs? Ok, personally, I avoid Help desk work, but I consciously chose IT over programming because I didn't want to work in a cube interacting w/ a computer all day any more than I wanted to be an actuary working in a cube interacting w/ a computer all day (Double major, Math & Comp Sci). And since he's already held jobs in tech support, it should be easy to get hired.
Of course, I leverage my programming skills a LOT writing scripts, etc. and could probably out program a lot of the developers I work with, but thats not a strict job requirement. Figure out what you are good at, and what you enjoy doing, then go after that job. Nothing wrong w/ a CS major selling insurance.
Re:Geek Squad (Score:4, Insightful)
Sysadmin's and network admin's in the house!
seriously, I have always concentrated on networking, which ends up requiring system admin and hardware troubleshooting. Steer towards companies who use IT and don't sell IT.
Re:Program Manager (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because all we *really* need is a CS guy who can't program running our software engineering projects.
They'll have a better understanding of what's going on than a MBA person, and you won't be pulling a good programmer away from programming. What's not to like?
Re:Geek Squad (Score:1, Insightful)
Sure. Go networking. I'm not organized enough to be a programmer, and did well enough at unix admin, but have excelled at networking. The CS background is actually very useful, and exposure to programming helps understand what applications are trying to do (not to mention being able to crack out useful, small Perl scripts). Plus, you're a lot less likely to get outsourced to India.
Re:Entry level QA (Score:4, Insightful)
Just wish people quit pushing the ones that can't hack in CS to QA. I work for a software company as a developer, but so wish the QA people aren't just CS rejects. They need to be good at what they do and good QA people are hard to find. There can be a lot of scripting and programming in QA in the right environment and not just script monkeys that runs what they are told. QA really is a calling.
That's exactly why I chose it in 1995. I graduated in '93 with a CS degree... went to work at Motorola... entry level build engineer/release management. Maintained shell scripts, did software builds, etc. After a year was given the choice of paths - join the dev team or join the test team. I chose the test team, it's just what I'm better at. And I've met as many bad programmers as I have bad testers over the years.
And for the record people, QA is not testing - that's QC. Yeah, I know everyone calls it QA, but it's not correct. And even worse, you don't "QA something"... ugh. I've done my share of testing, test planning, requirements analysis, inspections, etc. I've now gotten into test management, and don't regret my initial choice. Programmers can make more, especially if they're good at a language in demand. But I can test anything. (system level testing, not looking at code and writing unit tests) I don't need to know the latest HOT language to be able to test things. I feel it's more flexible and I can get into other areas of software development if I choose to (I have dabbled in project management over the years)
It's a big big software development world out there, don't pigeon-hole CS people as programmers. Learn that there is a LOT more to software development than just programming. You WANT your testers, managers, and requirements people to have CS degrees. IMO, everyone needs to be more versed in the entire SDLC, it makes for a more well-rounded team.
Re:Geek Squad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Program Manager (Score:2, Insightful)
If he had studied Bridge Building, got his degree and yet considered himself a poor engineer, would we want this person to be in charge of the good engineers ?
I don't think so.
The important thing is he studied CS for a reason. He needs to find that reason, research the opportunities and find the one that fits.
That said, if he did what a lot of tards do, and went into CS "for the money", then he should bow his head and stroll back to the burger joint. CS doesn't pay much anymore, so if you don't love it, *AND* you're underpaid, you need to GTFO.
Re:Program Manager (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that he recognizes limitations and is honest about them would make him an excellent manager.
Re:Program Manager (Score:4, Insightful)
The belief that you have to have the skills of the people you manage is a misguided one. It is enough to simply understand those skills.
I assure you, the CEO of The Gap does not know how to sew blue jeans. He probably doesn't even know how to do the CFO's job.
Re:There are lots of possibilities (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I agree (Score:1, Insightful)
You're probably kidding but yes, fuck Gehry buildings. They're ugly and they're not well built. His idea of good design is to crumple a piece of aluminum and then build a building that looks like that. Function should always come first.
Re:Geek Squad (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you crazy. There are a ton of opportunities for people with technical aptitude, and the abstraction and logical problem solving ability a CS program teaches you.
I am now in Customer Relationship Management marketing, where we do database marketing, customer behavior modeling, segmentation etc.
We desperately need people who know there way around large data warehouses, can hack some basic SQL and code, and can figure out how to get the data that is locked up by IT into a format that we can use to drive meaningful customer experiences.
I imagine there are plenty of other professions where the ability to manipulate data, and drive business objectives based on it, is a highly demanded skill and can be highly rewarded financially.
CS != programming. In fact I would discourage any CS students from going into IT. IT is dead, its just the 21st century equivalent of paper pushing. Most IT shops are big bloated bureaucracies. They totally kill creativity. Go into the buisness side and actually have an impact and some influence.
Re:Program Manager (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Program Manager (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone can be a programmer - hell, even physicists program.
Physicists not only can write software - but, they have the mathematical and physics background to boot. Without the aid of good physicists, I doubt there would be very many realistic games out there - most are based on rather sophisticated physics and algorithms conceived of by, none other, physicists.
I transitioned away from being a rocket scientist a long time ago - but, the knowledge I acquired as one has made me one hell of a systems engineer and programmer.
RD
Re:Lots of opportunities... (Score:4, Insightful)
However, all of these jobs require good communications skills--the ability to write well and communicate clearly. I hope you didn't skip those courses--the liberal arts candidates often have an advantage in those skills.
Depending on the university you went to, your grades and presentation skills, starting salaries could be in $30 to $40's for most of those positions. Another alternative would be to pursue a professional degree like an MBA or JD.
Re:Program Manager (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO, that is what a CS degree should do. A little programming is fine, but I'd be loath to respect any CS degree that focussed on programming.
What elitist crap.
The small state school I got my CompSci degree from made us write a set of programs to demonstrate every algorithm they taught us. And that "programming degree has served me and my family very well over the years.
Re:Program Manager (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Geek Squad (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
A non programmer who majored in CS? Why?
Do you like computers and their applications to business? MIS degree
Electrical components? electrical engineering degree
computer hardware? computer engineering degree
maybe you like money? law or medicine
an easy piece of paper? anything liberal arts
No offense, but why the hell did you pick CS if you don't enjoy programming? That's kindof like majoring in psychology when you hate dealing with or analyzing people.
Re:Geek Squad (Score:5, Insightful)
We are all operating in areas that are subsets of CS. As a network admin I get to use a lot of cool technologies and watch them come together to do what I need. You use your CS knowledge a lot in an abstract sense.
I lol'd @ this description of subsets of CS. Programmers, skilled in computer science, wrote a bunch of cool technologies that come together to do what people need, and you as a network admin get to watch (apt-get install cool-technology).
I've always loved server/network administration and security (more so than programming), but I don't really buy your romanticism of it. All the useful tools in the admin arsenal have been created by very talented programmers and engineers.
Admins have a lot of hard work to do like anyone else, but really, there's no pretending it's on the same level as the work that was put out to create all those admin tools (including the operating system itself).
Of course, that's not the bulk of programming jobs; there is plenty of demand for programmers who will never get to do anything particularly interesting for their company.
Re:Program Manager (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, I'll byte to. I did my degree in theoretical CS (automata, power of formalisms, complexity, etc.). Great topics. But that can get you a research job. If you want to design, do DBA, or manage programmers, you're going to have a hell of a time if you can't actually program. You really need to have felt the difficulties of building a large scale system before you can be successful at it, and preferably more than once.
You're right: a computer scientist is not a programmer. Instead, he (or rarer: she) should be way above a programmer, but should none the less understand programming and the ridiculous problems that arise in real life programming. Otherwise you're just a side-line theoretic.
About monkeys programming: I think you'll find that their mental skills are not really apt. And teaching fundamentals is not the same as experience. You don't know portability until you've hit your head a few times, to name just one practical example. To write efficient programs, expandable architectures, etc., that's also you can only appreciate after having done it a few times. Simple example: there's no point in implementing the most efficient search algorithm if you're only going to sort 20 data points or so. You have to know when your design is good enough. As someone whom I hold in high esteem said: the perfect is the enemy of the good.
Re:Program Manager (Score:4, Insightful)
A good design should be independent of implementation constraints.
It's a guiding principle, but nowhere near attainable in the real world. Are you going to design the same with 1960 hardware as with 2000?
If an architect finds that his developers cannot do something, or if his tools cannot accomplish something, he should be be looking at finding new developers and new tools.
I wouldn't trust an architect that doesn't get his hands dirty as far as I could throw him. If developers and tools are having trouble with an architect's design, there's a good chance that there's something wrong with the design. If an architect can't demonstrate his design ideas in practice, he needs to go.
I'd go further to say that having the reality check is a bad thing - and is one of the culprits of poor design, and poor practices.
And in the real world, people build prototypes and learn as they go along. You can't anticipate everything. Feedback is essential. Your ideas are outdated, unpracticed, and naively idealistic.
Re:Program Manager (Score:4, Insightful)
What's not to like?
Folks who are bad at programming generally don't understand basic concepts (after all, programming isn't difficult for anyone who understands what's going). You're right about them being more well rounded in CS domain than MBA though.
Re:I agree (Score:3, Insightful)
Brutalism isn't function first, it's function only. It's perfectly possible to put function first but still come up with something beautiful.
Also, if a residential building is "completely unsuited for actual human occupation" then it's not actually functional at all, which is pretty far away from putting function first.
Re:Geek Squad (Score:4, Insightful)
And all the useful tools in
And all the useful tools in
So I mean, you can go down that road if you want, but it doesn't end with programmers looking smart.
Re:Geek Squad (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Geek Squad (Score:1, Insightful)
I've always loved server/network administration and security (more so than programming), but I don't really buy your romanticism of it. All the useful tools in the admin arsenal have been created by very talented programmers and engineers.
No doubt. Not to knock the programmers and engineers who build the tools we use. Being Slashdot, I'll make a bad analogy:
One set of Talented Programmers & Engineers, TPE's, built the wings. Another, the engines. A third, the fuselage. And on and on. We admins are the guys who put the thing together when half the components don't fit right and are missing pieces then have to fly it cross country while convincing passengers its perfectly safe and taking the blame for the A/C not working because it assumes the humidity will be between 20% and 80%.
Admins have a lot of hard work to do like anyone else, but really, there's no pretending it's on the same level as the work that was put out to create all those admin tools (including the operating system itself).
Get a grip. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants, in a giant web of self support. You didn't etch the silicon, write the compiler, etc. You use the internet to help program? Wouldn't be around without Admins. I've had to explain to "genius" programmers how to mount an NFS share, chastise them when they failed to account for zero values, seem them disable key reliability mechanisms to add a minor update, etc. so really, I'm not impressed with you idiots in the general. If you didn't have a non-programmer guiding your efforts you would turn out buggy code that did nothing useful.
Honestly the fact you feel you are somehow special reveals how little you know, you sound like a script kiddie trying to impress the grown ups
Re:There are lots of possibilities (Score:3, Insightful)
Note that said "what you want to do", not "what kind of job you want to do."
The fact is that to an extent you're right: first of all, despite "take your child to work" days, and such, most recent graduates (high school or college) have no clue of what a real job is like. Furthermore, I doubt it's really possible for them to have a really good idea -- you can't have a good idea of what it's like to have the same job for 20 years when you haven't been alive for 20 years, and things like school have changed quite a bit during that time, you can't remember the first few years of your life well at all, etc.
It's also true that if what you really enjoy is something like "hanging out at the beach", it's pretty hard to come up with a paying job doing anything very similar. At the same time, I think most teenagers do enjoy doing at least a few things that could reasonably translate into jobs.
I'd also note that the days of most people getting a job straight out of school, and then staying there until they retire are mostly a bit of history. I wouldn't worry a lot about the fact that you're not sure you're picking out the perfect job right off the bat -- chances are you'll move along to something else before a terribly long time anyway (maybe voluntarily, maybe not).
As such, the first job (or two) is mostly a matter of getting into the work place enough to get a lot better idea of the kinds of things you're good at and enjoy. Mostly before you get that first job you're hoping to find something close enough that you'll at least end up around somebody else who does things you might fit well with.
For those who are uncertain about things, my other bit of advice is to try to find a job at a relatively new, small company. A large corporation will usually have fairly specific job descriptions, and expect you to follow them quite closely. At a small company with relatively little organization, you can often do a lot of what you want as long as what you're doing is (or at least should be) useful. It's often pretty easy to try your hand at a fair number of different kinds of things, and (in a lot of cases) more or less create a niche for yourself doing the ones you're best at/enjoy the most.
Re:Geek Squad (Score:5, Insightful)
Your attitude is very common with programmers - I'm surprised to hear it from someone saying they love server/network admin etc. more -, and it's one of the reasons why programmers usually make exceedingly bad network admins / sysadmins / operations engineers.
Far too many programmers tends to think they do all the cool stuff, and everyone else are just useless fluff (witness the flood of "wow, Google sounds like heaven since the project managers don't get much say" posts to an earlier article), and that lack of understanding means that a lot of programmers have no clue what (often trivial things) they can do to make life simpler for everyone else, and show scarily little appreciation for the amount of work people around them do to work around the problems caused by primadonna programmers that deliver poorly documented, badly written pieces of shit and refuse to acknowledge there are problems with their code.
I write this as someone who much prefers programming - I love it - but who very often ends up picking up the pieces, because I actually also care about operational issues, cost issues, usability issues etc. which programmers seems to like to pretend doesn't exist.
One option (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can't do it, teach it.
Think beyond your degree (Score:1, Insightful)
Stop thinking so literally.
View the world as a liberal arts student. What CS skills can you translate into other arenas? What did you do in college that you can apply to business? What did you learn in those classes that you didn't realize you were learning?
Programming requires logic, problem solving, planning, time management, project management, teamwork, vision and a slew of other things.
I have a medieval history degree and a good job in healthcare. College taught me critical thinking, research, and communication skills. Graduating proved that I had dealt with deadlines, completed assignments, could work under pressure and had the persistence to finish. These are all very marketable skills.
It's all a matter of spin. "I can program in C++ but I'm not very good at it" or "In my work, I look for logical patterns and determine possible outcomes to work towards the most productive solutions."
You're only stuck in a CS/programming career if you tell yourself you are....
Re:Lots of opportunities... (Score:1, Insightful)
Every time I hear the words "sales engineer" a little piece of my soul dies. Sorry, but selling tech does not make you an engineer. Don't encourage bad diction, please.
Re:Geek Squad (Score:4, Insightful)
There is more to computers than being able to program them, and I've met a bunch of programmers that don't have a deep understanding how logic gates and such work, can't get around concepts such as cashe locality etc. They are great Phython, Java etc programmers and just trust the language/API's to do things well for them. Anyways that is my rant, I hope that some day the free market will learn that an IT guy can be of equal worth to a company as development staff. Currently where I live a starting IT guy makes about 50k and a starting developer 90k or so, and that is no where near being fair. For the most part a developer can start being productive in a couple weeks where as in a complicated environment an IT guy can take 6 months before they can do things by themselves. However, the salary's don't even out over time even though the IT guy needs more "training" (and thus is of greater value added :)) than the developer.