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?"

Comments

Program Manager

[MarkPNeyer]

You could get a job as a Program Manager or similar position. They do more design work than actual programming. Those positions pay about the same as programming positions.

Re:Program Manager

[History's Coming To]

In that vein, what about computer forensics? It takes a good in-depth knowledge of hardware/software to preserve data sufficiently to be used in court, and it's something a bit 'different', which is always good in a job.

Depends

[sjbe]

What else besides Computer Science do you know something about? Your degree is only limiting if it is the only experience you actually have. If you have some real world experience then do whatever you know how to do.

Nothing wrong with support jobs

[sirwired]

I do enterprise level tech support for a tech company you most certainly have heard of, supporting $M+ installations of computer storage. I've done this for just under a decade, and make pretty excellent money doing it. My salary right out of school was in line with the students that did take dev jobs.

Before graduating, my experience was identical to yours, doing PC work, a little bit of web work here and there, etc.

Except for a couple of scripts here and there, I have not written a line of "real" code since day one.

I was actually pretty decent at programming, but didn't enjoy it. (I was a CompE, not a CompSci.)

I am pretty concerned that it is July and you don't have a job yet. The "college hiring cycle" is kinda over... That means you may be stuck with true entry-level jobs, instead of the "college hire" jobs, which in my company anyway, are a bit different. (An entry-level support tech is going to be working the call center, while a college-hire tech is going to be working in Level 2 or 3, right off the bat (with a whole lot of OJT, of course.))

SirWired

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Entry level QA

[raddan]

Unless you're Donald Knuth, QA is essential-- no doubt. But it's not very exciting, at least when a project's programmers consider your work to be a bug reporting service. I think that's why the CS drek lands there. If QA people regularly had a hand in design, then I think the field would be quite different.

Re:Geek Squad

[mike_c999]

Got to agree with these last two posts... there's nothing wrong with helpdesk/IT/sysadmin/network admin jobs at all for someone with a computer science degree.

After I completed my CS degree I started in helpdesk/user training. Fixing most problems before the more senior guys get to them lead on to a sysadmin job in the same company. I've now recently switched to a job as a network admin for the same university I studied at and couldn't be happier.

Over this time I've had 5 satisfying years of work, used/setup/fixed more deferent technologies than you want to hear about. And all on salaries that I've been more than happy with.

Oh and I do program. But for a hobby not for my job.

Just my 2c

Re:Geek Squad

[SnapShot]

You know, a friend and I were just talking about how work had pretty much destroyed the creative joy we used to get out of coding. I can certainly see the attraction to an IT/sysadmin/network admin career with coding (open source, of course) as a hobby.