Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: CS Grads Taking IT Jobs?
An anonymous reader writes "I'm a soon-to-be Master's graduate from a public university majoring in computer science — with all that CS entails. Of course, it's come time to start job hunting, and while there are a few actual CS-type jobs around, I've noticed that a few IT jobs would be substantially more convenient for me personally. But this leads me to the question (assuming they would hire me, of course) — would having IT experience hurt my job prospects down the road? Would future employers see that and be less likely to hire me — or pigeon-hole me into IT?"
No, it isn't. CS is programming. IT is the maintenance of computer systems. That's like saying the guy who fixes your car and the guy who designs the engine are in the same field. They aren't.
While an IT worker may do some light programming in his job, the average IT worker is not a programmer, and does not have the skill set to be one. You do a disservice to yourself and the understanding of the industry by continuing to perpetuate this mistake. The two fields are totally separate, and conflating the two only causes confusion.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
That's like saying the guy who fixes your car and the guy who designs the engine are in the same field. They aren't.
They both work in the car industry. Why would you want to pretend otherwise? If you want to get more specific than that (and you often will) then they have different jobs within that industry just like a programmer and a systems admin have different jobs within the IT industry.
Nurses, surgeons, dentists and hospital administrators all work in healthcare. That doesn't mean their skills are interchangeable (your average surgeon wouldn't be a great nurse) but that applies to different roles in most areas.
That's not entirely true. There are definitely those out there who will hold past experience against you.
If you don't believe this you should try the following experiment: Major in CS, work tech support at a call center during your last year, realize that the job market sucks and continue working tech support while looking for a "real job". After you've spent a year getting rejected for lack of experience you are very likely to instead get rejected because you aren't "quite right" for the job (or if they're a bit more honest they'll tell you outright that they're looking for developers, not tech support monkeys. And yes, I've been on the receiving end of that one a few times).
An interesting twist here is that employers seem to be unable to understand that there is no career path at most call centers, if you start out in 1st line tech support you'll be lucky to be able to move to 2nd line within three or four years (2nd line tends to be quite cushy compared to 1st line), team lead positions are mostly assigned to 2nd line techs based on seniority (at least from my experience and from what I've heard from others working at other call centers) and only become available when a new team is created or an old team lead moves to a new job. In short, you're likely to be stuck in 1st line tech support telling people to power cycle their DSL modems until you quit or get laid off/fired, regardless of what you are actually capable of. But in the eyes of some guy hiring developers it looks suspicious that the applicant he's got in front of him worked at a call center for almost two years and never moved out of 1st line tech support.
Oh btw, I haven't actually done tech support for a few years now, these days I'm a developer, but the mental scarring lasts a lifetime...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
In the OP's case, you'd be looking at a candidate that is a qualified engineer and actually understands the practicalities of cars.
I worked in IT, then as a programmer, then back to IT. One thing that blew my mind is that most of the best and brightest among the "engineers" (before I arrived) could barely turn their own workstations on. Being good at both made me more valuable than anyone. A good understanding of theories and best practices, with a healthy dose of actually being able to do shit, is every project managers dream.
In short, having an IT Admin job won't hurt him. Unpaid student loans will.
You are making hardly any sense. CS is *the* degree you go for if you want to work in IT. The only "CS" jobs that exists are academic ones.
That's what some people think, but it is completely incorrect. There is NO degree for working in IT (ok, there's a few systems adminstration degrees at a few universities now... pretty cool). This attitide, I believe, is what caused the bottom to drop out of entry level IT positions about 10 years ago. In 2001, a crappy Windows administrator position could start at $65K/yr... by 2004 it was part-time $12/hr. You can't really do computer science without the foundations givin in academia. But anyone with a knack for trouble-shooting that likes working with computers can work in information technology, and with experience, get really very good at it, no degree (or social skills) necessary. A lot of what IT is is simply familiarity with the specific systems with which one is working. You don't learn that in CS, and what you learn in CS will only be useful in the abstract in such a specific environment.
There are indeed real computer science jobs out there, but they are integrated into other disciplines. Just a couple that come to mind... in the field of Bioinformatics, and in the field of Meteorology —weather modelling (and, well... any complex computer modelling, fluid dynamics, cosmology, aeronautics... even marketing analytics).
It seems that only real computer scientists know that computer science really has nothing at all to do with what we think of as modern computers. Its really mathematics. You'd be far more correct to think of computer scientists as specialized mathemeticians than as some glorified high-level computer repair techician. Actually, if you think of a computer scientist as a glorified computer repair techician, you are utterly and completely mistaken, and you are insulting both the bone fide computer scientist and the genuine computer technician. These 2 disciplines have nothing to do with each other.
The Admin and the Engineer
That's not entirely true. There are definitely those out there who will hold past experience against you.
Fools live on every corner. If they're doing the hiring, I've found it to my benefit to go somewhere else. Because at the end of the day, your co-workers were hired by the same person and if he's an idiot, chances are so are the ones he hired.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)