In A Spot, All Advice Appreciated

LegacyUser

Hello All,
I'm not quite sure if this falls under a "personal issue" or a "work issue", per se, but felt it was more of the former than the latter overall.

I'm a mature student, I returned to college in my mid-twenties and will be graduating next year with what is gearing up to be a 1st in BSc Computer Science. I love computers and technology overall, however I've come through this course now and have realised that it has prepared me for a career in Software Engineering...and I don't want to be a Software Engineer!

I'm not the type who can sit quietly at a computer typing code all day, every day. I need to be interacting with people, sharing ideas, helping people, etc. I'm too people and contact orientated to sit in isolation creating programs for someone else.

The issue there is that I'm finding it difficult to think of an area that will suit me, challenge me and reward me in equal measures.

I've quite a bit of work experience in a range of things from retail customer service and sales(although I 100% do not want to be involved in sales again) to actual hands on development experience so I've quite a lot to offer, I think, when combined with the degree. I'm interested in technology, finance/banking but most of all I absolutely do not want to end up sitting quietly all day in front of a computer but that's where this degree seems to be headed...! Even jobs that CS grads often go into, such as credit risk analysis, appear to be of the type described (sitting alone and in silence most of the time).

As one can probably tell, I'm more than a little confused as to what to do. Final year is rapidly approaching, it will pass rapidly and then I'll be ready to start my career...but I'm just very confused and quite worried as to where that career will start and which direction it will go in.

Thanks for reading. All advice is appreciated and would especially be interested to hear from others who've done CS and haven't went into development afterwards.

LegacyUser

CareerChoiceProblemo wrote: »

Hello All,
I'm not quite sure if this falls under a "personal issue" or a "work issue", per se, but felt it was more of the former than the latter overall.

I'm a mature student, I returned to college in my mid-twenties and will be graduating next year with what is gearing up to be a 1st in BSc Computer Science. I love computers and technology overall, however I've come through this course now and have realised that it has prepared me for a career in Software Engineering...and I don't want to be a Software Engineer!

I'm not the type who can sit quietly at a computer typing code all day, every day. I need to be interacting with people, sharing ideas, helping people, etc. I'm too people and contact orientated to sit in isolation creating programs for someone else.

The issue there is that I'm finding it difficult to think of an area that will suit me, challenge me and reward me in equal measures.

I've quite a bit of work experience in a range of things from retail customer service and sales(although I 100% do not want to be involved in sales again) to actual hands on development experience so I've quite a lot to offer, I think, when combined with the degree. I'm interested in technology, finance/banking but most of all I absolutely do not want to end up sitting quietly all day in front of a computer but that's where this degree seems to be headed...! Even jobs that CS grads often go into, such as credit risk analysis, appear to be of the type described (sitting alone and in silence most of the time).

As one can probably tell, I'm more than a little confused as to what to do. Final year is rapidly approaching, it will pass rapidly and then I'll be ready to start my career...but I'm just very confused and quite worried as to where that career will start and which direction it will go in.

Thanks for reading. All advice is appreciated and would especially be interested to hear from others who've done CS and haven't went into development afterwards.

I'm studying computer science at the moment and from my take on things, you have more choice than you can even imagine. You are qualified to do much simpler things than just program all day unenthusiastically or more complicated things if that is your wish. You don't like coding, but what else did your course involve? If you like pursuing hardware, you could pursue it. Equally, if you want to just write help documentation for software (lots of communication needed there) then go after that. You could also go after more "IT" style jobs. Unless your course was language after language then you have a broader choice of careers than basically anyone in the country right now.

Sleepy

Very few professional developers spend all day, every day in front of a PC. Most will be involved in requirements gathering, solution design, product presentation, training more junior team members, etc.

The smaller the company you work with, the more non-coding responsibilities you'll have.

I'd advise having a go at the job before dismissing it. If you're on-track for a first, you're clearly good at it, it pays relatively well and you can branch off into a whole multi-tude of different areas: I know developers that have gone on to be product managers, project managers, implementation consultants, sales people, CTO's, CEO's, etc.

The position you start off in at any company will rarely be the one you'll leave it from.

Nailz

Hello there,

I may have a solution to your problem, it requires a long period of time dedicated to this particular idea, a year or more to be exact, but it might just do the trick. It all depends on whether you're prepared to extend your stay at college for that period of time. My thinking comes from me being a student of Bachelor of Science in Business Information Systems at NUIG, a terrific course which combines computer science and IS concepts with business principles.

As you said in your OP, you are more interested in helping people, communicating between each other and sharing ideas. Well, the direct follow-on programme from my own course at masters level is called Master of Science in Information Systems Management and it involves combining the knowledge you've already obtained through Computer Science with business components such as those you've listed through Management, Project Management and the Agile Techniques of Software Developement (which is a largely 'people orientated' inverse to the traditional techniques used in software developement, hopefully suiting your needs, plus it is now more widely used in industry than the old fashioned method). Plus the skill set you'll aquire from doing such a Masters will be detailed and extensive, increasing your job prospects vastly in the direction you appear to want it; meaning a more people based approach to software developement.

That's one option anyway, after all though, it is up to you what you do with you college/career spectrum. Hope you found this helpful.

Boskowski

Not that much of an issue.

I'm a software engineer myself for a good few years and there are all sorts of jobs in the industry. First of all a 'coding degree' helps but is not compulsory. I have a lot of people coding that have degrees in other disciplines and then there is 'coding degrees' doing different stuff altogether.

Apart form that, just looking at my current environment...

You could become a system analyst which is the guy taking the requirements from the customer and translates it into system and functional requirements. A lot of interaction there with customers, programmers, project managers you name it

You could become an IT project manager. All you do there is sit in meetings all day long hassling people when they have their stuff done. Again loads of interaction.

You could become a support engineer, again loads of customer interaction.

The list is endless.

IT is not all about endless hours of coding, quite the opposite actually. The bigger the company the less actual coding and more yakking is done. Don't worry, you'll fit in somewhere.

LegacyUser

@Sleepy: Thanks for the advice. I actually took a year out and worked in development for a rather small company and ended up counting down the minutes until I got out of there. The management were utterly clueless and were driving the company into the ground. I'd consider a start-up simply given the opportunity to make money if it should go well, but I don't think I could ever work for a small company again.

@Nailz: Thanks for the advice and for the suggestion with regards to the course. At the moment, due to the experience I've had as a mature student, I won't be doing any more full time college, however if a company were to sponsor a part time masters while working for them I would most certainly be interested. I've noted the course title for future reference regardless.

@Boskowski: Thanks for the advice, the analyst area looks particularly interesting and I'll look into it further as it sounds like it'd suit me very well. Or IT project manager...! Anything that moves me towards board level as opposed to going down the route of a senior developer/systems architect, as from my own experience with them, though they're renumerated very well they're unbelievably under valued for the work they do.

Thanks for the input guys, it's great food for thought.

estar

hi there business analyst would suit you.