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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?"
n/t
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.
My blog
$2.13/hr
Yeah, like your average slashdot geek knows about penetration... /sarcasm
Accenture is always looking for fresh faced graduates who can't actually do anything.
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
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.
with a BS
Looks like you'd be perfect for management.
You don't say whether or not you even want to use the degree ... are you interested in CS at all? If you are, there are plenty of IT jobs sans programming ... Sys Admins typically start out well enough and need to do some scripting, but not generally too much programming (where scripting = perl and programming = java, for example). Do what makes you happy, or you'll end up a crusty old man better armed than your local militias ...
Yes, anonymous was probably the right way to go with that submission on this site ;)
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.
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. :-)
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
Well, you could take the specification from the customer, to the programmers.
If you've got people skill that is.
If you did good in english, you could write documentation.
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
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.
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.
Get off my lawn.
Without knowing how to program?? You need to know the code better than the guy who wrote it, by definition, to recognize holes in the code.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Given enough hydrogen, just about anything is possible.
I mean, if Frank Gehry doesn't know how to weld or install a toilet, fuck his buildings, man. Architecture degree my ass.
If you can't do it, teach it.