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Non-Traditional Career Routes?
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?
I did undergrad in engineering physics, PhD in astrophysics, then found out that pursuing a professorship is a difficult proposition.
So I switched gears entirely and took up quantitative finance, and I'm now working on a trading desk doing modeling and risk management.
Kind of an unusual route, but that's the advantage of physics - it gives you a broad background in math and problem-solving that you can apply to lots of different fields.
Other people in my engineering physics class have gone on to do aerospace engineering, law, business school, programming, architecture, and lots of other stuff.
So: do physics. It's fun, suitably geeky, and it opens lots of doors for the future.
All opinions expressed herein are not my own; I haven't had free will since last year when aliens ate my brain.
No college/univerity, but been architecting Investment Bank trading systems for the last few years - and yes, we are making money...
Pick something fun to study at university (or "major in" if you're in America), then pick something that pays well when you graduate. Don't ever expect your degree to be relevant to your job. FWIW, we routinely hire engineering/science grads over CS for both s/w development and junior trading jobs.
"Business majors" generally end up working for HR...
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Park ranger in Yellowstone park, maybe!
No more late night calls, beeps or "gotta fix the server ASAP!" Emails. No more lost sleep, hurried meetings or pissed off customers...
"Please don't feed the bears." :-D
The only common thread through these last twelve years has been a good attitude and a commitment to learn. I look for those qualities in everyone I hire. My staff includes ex-grade school teachers and philosophy majors, and all are doing well!
Helevius
I don't see much correlation between degrees and people's careers in the real world.
Most of the really hot-shot computer folks I know have degrees in English, or psychology. Just because that was interesting to them, and then they wound up working in computers.
Myself, i went to art school and have a degree in fine arts. Not useful for computers, but I don't think many poeple "learn" computers in college anyways. I was doing illustration and comic books, then wound up doing a lot of computer graphics (because it pays well) and now here i am working for NASA doing research for medical uses of technology. Each career step was perfectly logical for the choices and opportunities I had available.
This next year I'll be going to Kenya, Brazil, and possibly Afghanistan for work, and there's no way anyone could have pictured this career path back when i was in my first painting class debating what kind of canvas to use.
Don't sweat your major, study what interests you, and get a degree in anything. Having 4 years of focused work is all that a degree means. You're going to learn everything on the job that you need to know -- from your peers, and books in your own time.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I got my BS in Mechanical Engineering, but now I do modelling & simulation work. I enjoy it alot because I have to use my knowledge of computers, physics and engineering. A few degree programs in modelling & simulation are starting to pop up around the country.
Roughly, your education is what you study. The work you're paid to do you get to do by convincing someone you can do it (and then continuing to be able to do it) - it can have little to do with your degree or what you spent time studying. The fact that your field of study has little to do with what you might find yourself working on later is difficult for students to envision. Most haven't worked full-time for any length of time before. Counselors and curriculum planners leave you feeling that all these educational paths are really there to take you somewhere specific. Not!
It's very important to get a degree, any degree, but if your degree is in CS or Math or Heuristics or even (something non technical like) music it will mean little difference to someone who hires you to build a network, create an application, or run a server farm.
The biggest correlations between field-of-study and job lie in academics and professions like law and medicine and other obvious routes that have defined academic prereqs.
My advice: study what you enjoy studying and get any degree(s) until it's no longer fun. When it's time to find work look for something you feel is fun to work on. If the two don't match you'll figure out how to make it happen, because it's fun and you want to.
Simplistic, but true. But Whaddo I know?
Enjoy.
DB
This is not uncommon. I received my Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering and practiced for a few years after graduating. I was miserable -- bored out of my mind. I had experience in a few programming languages and *NIX, so I applied for programming jobs. A telecom company gave me a chance in QA where I honed my skills while working. Now, I'm an embedded SE with a major defense contractor, happier and doing far better than I was as an ME. The college I went to only had the traditional four disciplines of engineering -- CivE, ChemE, ME, and EE -- but that didn't stop grads from finding and getting CS/CE jobs. Most were EEs, but some where from each of the other three. In fact, most said that their having a degree other than CS/CE got them a little more attention and made them more marketable. So, I say "go for it" to anyone wanting to make a change, even if you don't have a formal computer and/or engineering education. There are lots of employers willing to give you a chance if you market yourself hard enough.
Unfortunately it's the _employers_ out there putting emphasis on a "major" in "Using Microsoft Word Version 6 Build 388.49", and not accepting anyone without an _exact_ match.
Even _with_ extensive personal contacts and 10 years of experience doing things very similar to what employers want, plus a computer science degree, they aren't interested. Rather they want the certification course and degree program of the hour.
Colleges and universities are in league with the HR departments. Need to break the cycle at _both_ ends. Oh, and the software/hardware companies that sell expensive certifications are in league with all of the above. I wouldn't mind the certifications scam if they actually seemed to serve the greater good, but of course it's not valid to expect philanthropy from corporations. Hail to the almighty dollar.
There's been a distinct cultural shift against accepting intelligence and a proven background learning new technologies quickly, and towards only accepting specific training, as if the people hiring have never encountered anyone who learned "by the seat of the pants". Most likely because they themselves learned through some kind of coursework.
When I graduated from high school in '96, I *knew* I was going to be a physicist.
That lasted three weeks. Tops.
Suddenly I knew I wanted to do computer design in a big way. I wanted more than anything to created 3d special effects - primarily animation - for the movies. But what to do about college? Well, I decided that I could handle the artistic and technical side by myself, what I really needed was grounding in cinema. Cinematography, editing, lighting, etc. So, I switched from a physics major to a cinema/media studies major -- with which I graduated in 2000.
But that's not the end. About a year and a half before I graduated, I got fed up with my campus job (doing tech support for a university business group) and decided to look for a real job -- off campus. But what?
See, the 3d design eventually led to me working some in photoshop, and I loved photoshop. I knew I couldn't get a job doing 3d at my current experience level, but anything with photoshop would be terrific. And then it occured to me -- I could make web pages! I got my first job by lying about being able to write HTML, and showing my 3d work as 'design'.
This job occupied more and more of my time, and eventually I knew that there was no longer a future in the movies for me -- I was too hooked on the net. But it was too late to change my major again.
Eventually my web design led to Flash animation, which suddenly hit home for me. It combined computer-based design, my first love, with animation, my second love, and web design, my third love. It also encapsulates scripting, which is my newest love.
And suddenly my degree in Cinema/Media Studies from the University of Chicago WASN'T A WASTE! I was able to focus my education in cinema, and adapt it to flash animations. The result is, I get comments all the time, that my animations play more like movies.
The moral of the story is, do what you love. If you love more than one thing -- figure out a way to combine them. If you become unhappy with it, don't be afraid to evolve, but keep your past because you can always learn from it.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'