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Non-Programming Jobs For a Computer Science Major?
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?"
You can probably get QA easily enough, especially if you can write automation scripts or programs.
Pay is probably 3/4 of a programming position.
GPL Deconstructed
Testing
Project Management
Product Support
Software Sales
Systems Administration
Programming is just one part of computer science; there are needs for all of these other areas as well.
A lot of jobs you could get with any or no degree: financial services; screenwriter; salesman; etceta. If a job doesn't require a specific degree, and few do (accounting, law, medical fields, anything that requires certification), then you could probably get involved even if it's unrelated.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
You are in a unique position; us programmers can't stand to be in management, we simply cannot do our jobs there (not to mention we're slightly introverts!). If you are skilled and don't mind managing, you can bring home a decent wage. Especially if you know how to manage programmers! Good management for a development team is a sorely needed position.
Just my $0.02. Any fellow programmers want to back me up or dispute my claims?
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Where I work (large company), Program Manager is in the business and writes requirements. Project Manager is the I/T function that deals with the schedules. Program Managers need to understand the processes in the business in order to document them.
If you want to continue in a more technical vein, then System Engineering, DBA, Network Administrators, etc. all would be a good fit.
Incidentally, Project Management is the fastest way into people management around here. So if you have aspirations in that direction, go get your PMP certification (Project Management Professional). While it's "just a piece of paper", for some reason people like it.
Layne
My main problem with accenture is that they will take someone with a psychology degree, send them to a 2-3 week training camp on how to program in C, Java, whatever, and then send them to the client to rack up the billable hours.
It amazes me that companies let them get away with staffing such underqualified individuals at their expense.
Also, having dealt with such individuals, it is maddening to try to get any work out of them. The most basic computer science concepts are missing...
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. The bad part of it is you have to climb through a lot of muck to get to a Network admin level. You have to deal with a lot of people who don't understand the field and will be your boss. You will work for crap pay at first doing things that make you cringe. But you climb fast if you are smart and able to take opportunity when it presents itself. I am in the midwest, only 6 years out of college making well above 50K.
Stay away from 3rd party crap if you can, stay close to internal networking. 3rd parties aren't interested in really shaping technology, they just want to crank out a product and move on to the next paycheck. Internal IT gets to coordinate and work on the big projects and technologies. It is also far more rewarding to be part of a growing company and using your knowledge to solve issues and make business methods run smoother.
You wont use your programming as much but you will find it extraordinarily useful when talking to co-worker programmers, or writing scripts to automate a task, or just troubleshooting an error.
In summary: CS is not about coding, it is about shaping solutions via computational methods. I am not a programmer and I knew I wasnt in college, I was in your exact same situation a few years ago when I graduated and I LOVE what I do. Network administration is a blast.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?