Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What's The Best Job For This Recent CS Grad?
One year away from graduating with a CS degree, an anonymous reader wants some insights from the Slashdot community:
[My] curriculum is rather broad, ranging from systems programming on a Raspberry Pi to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, C, Java, JPA, Python, Go, Node.js, software design patterns, basic network stuff (mostly Cisco) and various database technologies... I'm working already part-time as a system administrator for two small companies, but don't want to stay there forever because it's basically a dead-end position. Enjoying the job, though... With these skills under my belt, what career path should I pursue?
There's different positions as well as different fields, and the submission explains simply that "I'm looking for satisfying and rewarding work," adding that "pay is not that important." So leave your suggestions in the comments. What's the best job for this recent CS grad?
There's different positions as well as different fields, and the submission explains simply that "I'm looking for satisfying and rewarding work," adding that "pay is not that important." So leave your suggestions in the comments. What's the best job for this recent CS grad?
Lets be real here. Coming out of CS, you have two paths:
1: Developer. You have to find a niche, or try to fight for the crumbs that the hordes of offshore dev houses and H-1B contracting firms leave behind. I've been in many companies, and the people that are hired are people working for peanuts -- $40k/year or so. Room for growth? Not much.
The real world will go against all the CS principles you have been taught. The real world tells you that once you get your code to compile and pass unit tests, you put in a pull request and it goes into production. If QA kicks it back, you do the absolute minimum to fix it, because marketing is demanding features, and management doesn't give a rat's ass about security, code base integrity, or even commenting your work. Your peers will be contractors hired for cheap and people off the boat, who use the language barrier and will not hesitate to stab you in the back at the first chance, if it gets them a chance to get one of their buds your job.
2: IT person. Well, again, you fight the legions of H-1Bs moving in lock-step. You -might- get a chance to make it, but you have to relearn everything every 3-6 months. Don't know Kubernates or Terraform? You are a fossil. Don't know the difference between LightSail and EC2? Might as well say you have never touched a computer keyboard. If you mention basic IT concepts like uptime, RPO/RTO, you get laughed at, because most companies are in the cloud, and to them, someone else handles all that with a magic wand. Same with things like Amazon Lambda, which are gaining so much popularity. Companies love that stuff, because it means they don't have to have any system admins or OS guys. All they need are some devops types and a network admin so the internal workstations can connect to Amazon's servers.
So, CS is a pretty shit major. However, there are two way to actually make it useful:
1: Go law and get your J. D.. There is no such thing as an unemployer lawyer, and there is a niche for law++ CS folks. That is compliance. EVERY company needs a compliance officer that can turn legal mumbo-jumbo into Windows GPOs and explain to an auditor with paperwork how things are covered. Every company.
2: Do a stint in the military, with it WRITTEN on your DD4 that you will get cleared to TS/SCI. Take some martial arts so you are physically ready for boot camp, raise your right hand, do your four, and when you get your DD-214, as long as you keep that clearance active, you are set for life. As it stands now, you can't do classified+ work with H-1Bs or offshore it, which means there is a steady stream of job openings. Hell, in my neck of the woods (and I live in a flyover state), being able to spell "AD", but possessing a TS/SCI clearance means a $100,000 year job -starting out-.
3: Try to do a hipster startup. Good luck with that, as VCs only will enter if you give them an immediate, profitable exit strategy. Plus, the VCs will only grab control, fire your asses, and then call Tata or Agillion to have everything offshored anyway.
tl;dr, CS is a waste of a major unless you go law or combine it with something else. It is like textiles and meat packing -- almost everything offshored to the lowest bidder.