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Non-Traditional Career Routes?

Posted by Cliff on from the when-your-career-is-at-odds-with-your-training dept.

Dave Bieler asks: "With such a broad range of interests in science and technology, it was not easy for me to decide on a major in college. Currently, I am an Electrical Engineering major at Penn State, however I have considered several other majors: Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Physics. Since science and technology is booming, it may be possible to get into a career in an area other than that traditionally associated with certain majors. ex - a Physics major becoming a Computer Security specialist. I'm curious to hear about any careers that were preceded by non-traditional paths." Speaking as an Electrical Engineer who decided to drop that and go into computers, this question strikes a bit of a chord with me. Has anyone else gone to college intending to prepare for one career, only to fall into another, either by luck or design?

3 of 422 comments (clear)

  1. Here's A Great Idea by Lethyos · · Score: 5, Funny

    You could start a web-based community of geeks which sit around all day discussing nerdy topics while the cash flows in from ad banners. After it gets really big, you spend yourself doing more interesting things, occassionally breaking yourself away from your anime tenticle rape to get involved with the community by bitchsla-

    Wait a minute...

    Shit. Nevermind.

    --
    Why bother.
  2. Animal Science? by bhaputi · · Score: 2, Funny

    I am finishing my degree this semester in Animal Behavior/Neurobiology, but have been a sysadmin and/or network engineer for almost 5 years now. The degree is just paper, the real skills needed by any half-way intelligent person to succeed in a computer related field are just work ethic and ability to learn. Everything else is secondary.

  3. Re:Good Question... by JamesOfTheDesert · · Score: 4, Funny
    Well then, this calls for a book: Everything I needed to know I learned on Slashdot.

    It can explain

    • Choosing a career path
    • Why Microsoft sucks
    • Selecting an OS for music applications
    • Why Microsoft is the evil empire
    • Why we don't need any more programming langauges when Perl/Pyhton/Java/etc are perfectly OK
    • Why Microsoft is evil
    • Which open-source license is the One True License
    • Why Bill Gates is the devil
    • Where to find goat sex
    • ... and all those other things that appear on /. every month.
    Sounds like a bestseller, at least on fatbrain.com
    --

    Java is the blue pill
    Choose the red pill