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Interesting Computer Science Jobs?
mattskent writes "I'm currently a junior in college working towards my Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. As such, I'm starting to look pretty seriously at jobs in the IT/Computer Science field. I've spent plenty of time working entry-level IT jobs doing various kinds of help desk type work, and so most of the exposure I've had to the field is related to support of other people's computers. I enjoy helping other people out, but I'd rather not be plugging things in and restarting computers the rest of my life. Although the possibility is growing on me, I don't think I would particularly love to write code all day for a living either. What are some interesting jobs that you've had or heard of that I could look into fresh out of college with a Computer Science degree?"
Let's see. You'll get a CS degree but don't feel like writing code for a living. That's a tough one.
Are you a "people" person? All those introverted geeks need to talk to each other, make decisions and agree on stuff. Something that they (on average) do very poorly. You would have a career in product marketing, since you understand the geeks and can talk to them.
If that makes sense to you, then short-term, your best bet is to join an open source project and volunteer to *organize* stuff. Not code, but organize. You'd be amazed how badly needed it is for most projects.
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the elephant in the room: How to Make Money with Open Source?
If you're any good, you'll spend a lot more time understanding problems, designing solutions and finding good techniques for factoring code. If you do nothing but "write code all day", you're a shitty developer.
With the current state of the industry and the world economy, have you considered taking Chinese? It might be useful since so many jobs are being outsourced to that region of the world.
Rather than tech support, there are other non-coding IT jobs out there.
A lot of these could be junior-level in a big enough organization, or in a company where you're a junior consultant sort of person. Usually you work up to that type of position by doing helpdesk first, so it looks like you're ready to move on to something similar.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
Get a double major or minor in biology. People who can handle bioinformatics or the computer side of structural biology are in really high demand. Not saying it's moreso than other fields, but I do know you can write your own paycheck with that crossover.
I also don't know if you'd find that interesting. I do, and knowing that your job is working towards the cure for cancer or whatever the goal is I think makes some of the more menial tasks more interesting, but that's just me.
If you're not looking to add a major or minor, you can still likely get into that field and learn whatever you would need on the job about bio. They're that desperate.
If you don't want to code, then you're in the wrong degree program. There's really only 3 entry level jobs for CS people- programming, testing, and system administration. All 3 of those require at least some coding (the first being all coding). Testing breaks down into low paid monkey work and SDET positions where you're expected to code almost as much as a programmer. There's various types of management and liason type jobs that require a technical background, but without at least a few years experience you aren't qualified for them. If you really hate coding, your options are really sys admin or a quick change of majors.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Most people go for CS degrees because they want to work in IT, or write code.
You may want to take a step back, figure out what you *do* want to do with the rest of your life, and switch majors.
Gonna save some people some time here
CS is no more about computers than astronomy is about Telescopes.
There are many accomplished IT admins who use their CS knowledge on a daily basis, I am one of them.
CS is not Coding.
CS is more about Math.
If you want to stay pure CS you need to find R&D departments or go for your PHD.
CS is a great degree but isn't going to get you far when getting a job because most managers don't understand its purpose.
Find out what you love doing and do it, chances are, CS prepared you to do that thing.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
I enjoy helping other people out, but I'd rather not be plugging things in and restarting computers the rest of my life.
As a junior-level CS major, do you really think that's what CS grads typically do?
Although the possibility is growing on me, I don't think I would particularly love to write code all day for a living either.
Then why are you majoring in CS?
I'll tell you what, no matter what job you are working, it's still going to be a job. I like my job, I get to figure stuff out, I try new technologies all the time, but at the end of the day I am still doing it because I need to pay the bills (eat, rent, etc). There's always going to be an element of misery (dealing with coworkers, getting up in the morning when I'd rather sit at home and play Smash Brothers, debugging......that's a big one. Can't finish your code without debugging it).
Working isn't about 'fun' or 'entertainment' or 'what I want to do.' If you really want to work, then something is strange about you. Working is about surviving in a cold hard miserable world, it's about being self-sufficient, it's about producing something of value. Those all feel good, but you aren't working to have fun (even though work can be fun sometimes!), you are working to survive.
Don't confuse work with your dreams.........what do you REALLY want to do? Only in rare people is it something you can make money doing. Do you want to help starving children in Africa? Be a beach bum? Travel the world? Live the life of an eternal frat boy? Get married and live a quiet life? Whatever it is, focus on that, and your job will help you with it. Otherwise, if you make your job your life, it will just weigh you down and make you miserable. Work sucks, but you can still be happy. Life sucks, but you can still have fun.
That's my advice. YMMV
Qxe4
..and that is IT technician at a call center. at least the company i work for, i am solely responsible for keeping 500 pc's, all associated switches and servers etc up and running - and i am surrounded by people with double digit iq's - or to put it another way, i'm astonished that i havent brought my kalashnikov to work yet. almost anything is less stressful than dealing with hundereds of idiots that cant figure out that a mouse wont work if it isnt plugged in, or elderly hillbilly management from oklahoma that thinks thousands of dollars worth of equipment grows on electric trees, and that months of work can be done in 2 days. i hope they fuckin fire me. at least then ill be able to look for another job and still have a govt check to pay rent while i do so.
I just got my BS in CS in May and have been writing code all day for the last 4 months. It's really not bad (at least where I work) and it's nowhere near as difficult as doing real CS. CS homework is hard, but implementing business rules after you already "get" CS is no problem.
One thing to keep in mind when job hunting is that recruiters don't know what they're looking for in a developer. They ask for all kinds of scary qualifications that don't mean shit. Bluff your way through a phone screening and keep in mind that 9 out of 10 people they're interviewing can't write a simple factorial function, let alone do it recursively.
If you've never used a relational database before, learn about those. It's not difficult, but you need to know about it because you will use it.
During my junior year of my computer science degree, I picked up a job working for some chemistry professors at my university. We've worked on everything from new drug discovery algorithms, force field simulations, and smart statistical analysis methods. This kind of work developed software that can wind up in the hands of every pharmaceutical company on the planet, make huge breakthroughs with hydrogen fuel cells, and math code that can play the stock market. I am the world expert on linear algebra based recursive partitioning algorithms for predicting the tight binding properties of compounds to the 2c9 enzyme. This all was an incredible exercise in everything from software design to calculus to organic chemistry. As the only computer scientist in a group of chemists and mathematicians, I was the expert in my field which gave me a lot of freedom in how I went about my work.
There is a surplus of jobs on your own campus, and it's well worth it to stick around for a few months after graduation to do some amazing work and get some great references. Best of all, if your work is viable and marketable, you may form a start-up company out of it.
My CS degree has proven itself useful more for the math and science background than for the programming. Sure, there's a lot of code punching involved, but setting up the problem to write programs for have all involved understanding what it is I'm supposed to do. When you end up working regularly with various types of scientists and engineers, your job is more that of a digital blacksmith, to hear what someone wants and to design the tool that will do what they need ... and then either hammer it out, or look over what they've done and hammer it into a more efficient and accurate piece of software.
Employers do NOT want mechanical code-punchers. If you want to get a good CS degree, you need to be able to either comprehend complex problems and figure out solutions for them with the assistance of engineers who HAVE the problems, or you need to be good at designing programs and understanding the design of projects you get tapped for. Code becomes where the rubber meets the road, but it's a smaller part of the whole picture.
As a professional developer with about a decade of commercial experience, I can assure you that you won't be writing code all day in many jobs. You'll spend at least half your time writing TPS report coversheets, attending meetings, writing reports about attending meetings, attending meetings about reports, and occasionally meetings about meetings or reports about reports. Figuring out how to answer the latest hare-brained question from the suits with the shitty data to hand (abortions of SQL and/or one-off hacks with a scripting language go here) takes up another twenty-five percent of your time. Twenty percent to thinking about lunch, eye-balling the hot MOTAS in Accounting or HR, sneaking in the side entrance so Lumbergh doesn't see you, and you're looking at five percent of your time going to real actual coding/work.
You may think I'm pulling your leg, and you also probably laugh rather than cry when you read Dilbert. Don't worry, by the time you graduate you'll probably be old enough to legally drink and that really helps take the edge off.
Hope that helps! :D
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Working isn't about 'fun' or 'entertainment' or 'what I want to do.'
It isn't? It sure is for me. At least "What I want to do". Sometimes it's not fun or entertainment but those are very different things. Anything else is putting yourself in a cage 50 hours a week, a cage for which you have the key but few people chose to leave.
I don't even think it's all that rare or hard to be able to do "what you want to do". The hard part is figuring out what that is... but if you think you know that should be at the TOP of the list of things to look for in a job.
Also consider that thinking that companies are the only source of jobs, is a great way to limit your options and your own potential. Leave nothing out including the prospect of starting your own company.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Exactly. If you really enjoy computing, but have found the industry isn't what the hobby was, and you're a people person (which it sounds like you are), then you might enjoy a different application of your skills, like teaching IT (or even teaching math). But for god's sake, get out of the subject altogether, if it doesn't interest you. Sometimes it's hard enough to enjoy when you have a passion for it.
Although we don't need any more of them, the answer to your question is the Project Manager path to IT management.
You would add a PMP certification and for fast track an MBA, then talk enough Java buzzwords to get by. Being able to prototype Windows screens with VB or C#, lay out web pages, and SQL query databases like your problem log will make you a star.
Before you know it you'll be a CIO.
rd
Coding should not be more than 30% of a job. We need people than can read specifications, turn them into requirements, design an architecture, model solutions, code, integrate, document, and debug. I am sorry, but the talented and rewarded people are the ones that can do it all. The ones that can't code and prefer to administer systems are the easiest to replace.
Where I work, we do embedded software that runs close the hardware, operates in critical environments, must work every time, run for years, and be secure. The guys I give the highest performance ratings (raises) to are the ones that can design, code, re-use code, and solve problems.
I haven't coded in 5 years and miss it, so I came up with a project for home to keep me current and have fun with. I can see not wanting to do it 8 hours a day, but any true CS geek deep down enjoys it like solving puzzles and playing games. Coding is problem solving. It should be enjoyed and done well or not at all.
I've been working in the visual effects industry since I graduated (~10 years ago). I started for a small studio writing scripts to automate common tasks. Since then I've:
- built a distributed render system on top of open source software
- written animation tools for artists
- written software for animating, simulating, and rendering fur
- learned Houdini, Maya, RenderMan and many others
- written shaders
- written many, many plugins and tools in various languages
I'm now managing a team and have discovered that it's hard to find talented software developers with a solid grounding in mathematics and computer science who have the skills to work in VFX. There are plenty of hackers who can put together a MEL script, but few who actually understand the underpinnings of the systems involved.
If working on VFX for film and TV shows sounds interesting to you, look into developing your skills as a Technical Director (or TD). The skills I look for in a TD are:
- understanding of the 3D pipeline (modeling, texturing, rigging, layout, tracking, animation, lighting, rendering, compositing)
- technical competency in the software used (Maya, Shake or Nuke, Renderman or Mental Ray)
- solid background in programming (scripting, understanding of OO design, C++ desirable, Python especially)
- solid understanding of Unix as a technical user
- ability to learn and master new technologies quickly
- ability to empathize with artists and understand their perspective as a user
- strong mathematics background is highly desirable
- experience in digital or traditional filmmaking also highly desirable
The people I've worked with in the past usually fall into one of three categories:
- have a degree in computer science (or related), minored in fine arts (or just had the interest), and then took a college program in 3D
- smart people from a completely different background who taught themselves both 3D software and programming
- artists who took a college program in 3D, who then taught themselves programming
I recommend the first option, or if you're persistent enough, teach yourself the software at home and start networking online.
If you have a masters in computer graphics, mathematics, or physics, another job open to you is that of the Shader Writer. Shader writers build either complete shading systems or components that model how light reacts with materials. These models are not usually physically accurate (although that is becoming more of an option now). Things to look into:
- BDRFs
- ambient occlusion and color bleeding
- subsurface scattering
- procedural texturing and modeling
- shader anti-aliasing
- global illumination techniques
- shading languages such as RSL, GLSL or Cg
Competent shader writers are HIGHLY sought after and very well compensated.
Check out the job postings at Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic, Sony Imageworks, Rhythm & Hues, and Dreamworks Animation for more info. Also check out the forums at cgsociety.com and odforce.net.
I hold a B.S. in Computer Science.
Computer Science is basically the science of converting mathematics and logic into a series of instructions that a computer can understand. This is known as "algorithm development". The physical embodiment of this process is programming, or "writing code".
In spite of the fact that it involves "computers", Computer Science is not about computer tech support.
If you do not enjoy algorithm development, Computer Science is not for you.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
The parent comment is crap. It's long and very specific crap, but crap none-the-less.
This may be true for one specific company, but in no way is this consistent across the board. There is *nothing* that is consistent across the board and pretending that there is is either disingenuous or just plain wrong.
As a student meteorologist, I have come to learn that meteorology involves a LOT of computer programs, more than I had assumed. There's computer modeling of all kinds, there's the maintaining of public servers, there's the supercomputers, etc. I have 3 CS graduate friends that work for the National Weather Service's radar office in Norman. They do many things with the data, including new algorithms for better analysis and filtering. If that's the government, then realize there is also a big field in the academic and private sectors relating to weather also.
On this line of thinking, any deep knowledge in a niche area can be very useful. It's usually rare to come across computer programmers who are also experts in , and as such, in the right place, they are in high demand.
Generally you'll find an expert in a given field, who needs some software to do a task, but has *NO* idea about how to write software, at all. Quite often, these people hire programmers who know basically nothing about the field, and the expert ends up designing the system and being the manager, and often the result is exactly what you'd expect to get when a non-developer designs a system.
Being the person that bridges the gap is incredibly useful. Just make sure that the field is something you have an interest in anyways.
I've personally worked in a few fields like this. To give you an idea, I spent a few years building SCADA software for control systems. This meant I also spent time physically wiring up motors and sensors and such to I/O hardware, and setting up networks and then writing software to communicate with and control all this stuff.
I've also been involved with some open-source voip projects, so a lot of that programming involves talking to voip phones, which meant I had a desk full of hardware to play with, instead of just staring at a screen writing code. It may just be me, but I find a certain satisfaction when I can interact with code I've written using objects in the real world, and not just as interfaces with a screen and keyboard.
Speak before you think
I get quite a lot of money for integrating open source tools to specific client needs. It's much cheaper, and more flexible, to pay my salary to provide access to a huge range of tools than it is to specify, purchase, and implement one closed source project that turns out to be complete vaporware or where the company goes belly up and the software can no longer be supported.
It is a great joy of an open source developer's career when, during the time that a closed source company or consultant is writing their bids and release schedules and Gant charts and Powerpoint presentations, an open source developer has already found a compatible tool, tested it, modified it for local use, and put it in production. This has happened to me repeatedly throughout my career. On occasion, I've been overruled and the closed source tools used for 'business support' reasons, and on several of those occasions I've seen the closed source toolkit thrown out a year later and the entire system rebuilt from my notes.
That is an event to warm one's heart on those long, cold nights sitting in the server room repairing a mess.
It can still be fun though.
Unfortunately most Computer Science degrees these days are at least half IT. If you do not understand the following sentence then you probably did not really get an education in Computer Science:
Computer science does not require a computer.
I can't quite figure out how to reply to this without sounding snarky towards the parent, who clearly has a different view of the field than I do and who am I to say which view is right? But feel I need to say- we're NOT that desperate anymore. The boom in bioinformatics was about 10 years ago now (pause while I shudder at realization that I have been out of grad school for that long....) I work in this area, and have since leaving grad school. When I graduated in 1999, there weren't really any bioinformatics grad programs, and the field was populated by a mix of biologists learning computers, computer types learning biology, and some physicists. Now, there are plenty of grad programs churning our bioinformatics MS and even PhD graduates. The only people I know working in bioinformatics w/o some serious bio background now have either been at it for many, many years or are pretty much pure coders.
However, as one of the previous replies said- there is a career to be made by being the interface between a specialized customer set (in this case, biologists) and the software developers. I've done that quite a bit, and have managed to keep myself employed. But you need to have credibility on both sides- which means a strong bio background (an advanced degree helps) AND an understanding of how software development works (it helps if you've coded).
You could also look at project management. Lots of folks laugh at project managers, but that is usually because they've never worked with a good project manager. Once again, though, I think it helps if you've done some coding, both for credibility with the team and so that you can make reasonable estimates about how long development tasks will take, etc.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Not only is it excruciatingly condescending, it's quite wrong, even if a computer scientist was the one who originally uttered it. Computer science is very damn well about computers because there would be no computer science if you took away the computer.
It's not wrong. It's substantially correct, even if Dijkstra takes a little license by introducing a bit of hyperbole. He *didn't* say computers have no place in computer science or anything ridiculous like that. He's explaining, roughly, that actual computers are really only tools and that the concrete tools themselves do not encompass the field of computation.
Of course, that changes if your definition of "computer" is wide enough to include, say, something between its original meaning and the entire universe in which we live. And having a rather application-oriented viewpoint, I do think the concrete tools are one of the most interesting part of the field. But I also think Dijkstra's comment is extremely useful for performing perspective inversions among people who haven't understood the field is wider and deeper than the conventional set of Von Neumman architectures we've managed to make so far.
If there were no digital processors, data storage, or networks, there would be no reason to develop solutions to problems that are unique to information systems alone. No reason for someone to sit around all day dreaming up the optimal programming language for a given application. No reason for teams of graduate students to work tirelessly in search of the best human-computer interface.
As it turns out, the field is bigger than these things too: even if you eliminated every last one of these things, theoretical computation would probably remain interesting to some people, and indeed, you can find a significant amount of theoretical work done back before most of these things existed in digital form.
I'll agree that there's a great (almost overwhelming) amount of math in studying the theory of computer science, but you can't honestly say that a computer science graduate is merely just some sort of specialized mathematician and leave it at that.
As a Math grad and a programmer of 20+ years, I'd agree that CS is best served as a separate discipline drawing from mathematics, physics, chemistry, EE, and more. And yet you could in fact devote yourself entirely to studying specialized mathematics, never writing a single line of code, and still be working in computer science.
It doesn't do justice to those in the field and it misinforms those who don't understand what the field is all about.
I'd agree it's hard to do the entire field justice in a single sentence, but far from bounding it badly, this phrase invites people to look outside of preconceptions about the field and potentially see something beyond the boxes and screens on their desks.
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