Please Help Me Find Career Ideas in Computer Science

October 7, 2007 3:38 PM

Hi, I’m looking for career path advice in the Computer Science field, and asking my current professors and co-workers hasn’t been of much help.

At the end of this year I’ll graduate from college with majors in Computer Science and Political Science. I had picked theses more on what it is I like to study and knew I could get a degree in more then getting a particular job in mind, and as such I have put myself in a nasty position. I need to find a career path that I’ll like but don’t know what’s really out there.

I’m leaning more to Computer Science. I am currently doing Software Quality Assurance, and find it enjoyable. I like the fact that I look for the problems where visibly there are none; but this seems to be a just a job, and one that doesn’t necessarily have great stability at most companies nor put me on a career path to go anywhere except what I’m doing now. I’m looking for Ideas, hopefully to put me on a path to a real career with room to grow and with stability, but I’m not really sure of what is out there.

I really don’t get many interesting or varied suggestions from co-workers at my software quality assurance job, and talking with several of my current professors doesn’t seem to give me any career ideas that seem exciting either.

I’m not going to list the suggestions unless people ask, because honestly, I don’t want to stop anyone from selling any idea to me. You might have some insight from doing this for a long time that the people around me wouldn’t have, or some resource that doesn’t just tell me that the career exists, in fact I’m hoping that is the case.

Please be as detailed as you can as to what your career suggestion is, and what it can lead too. If you can’t talk from personal experience then a website or any other source with a detailed description would be a great help. I really appreciate it. Thanks!

posted by JustAGuy to work & money (15 comments total)

Lots of techie people are needed in the bioinformatics field. If you're interested in the life sciences at all, you can get to work on some really fulfilling projects. (doing cancer research is more meaningful to me than shipping yet another accounting package).
posted by chrisamiller at 3:47 PM on October 7, 2007

The previous question on QA jobs is interesting reading.
posted by smackfu at 3:53 PM on October 7, 2007

QA positions at high tech engineering companies are commonly a stairstep towards moving into a design position. I've seen that happen lots of times.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:19 PM on October 7, 2007

Just off the top of my head, if you are currently doing QA, have you considered looking at software testing? With the increase in outsourced programming these days, there is an increased demand for testers in the originating country to ensure the software that comes back works right.

Also, before you say it, there are definitely career paths for software testers. Yes, you start as a testing monkey, but then you move up to test designer, test manager and from there to possibly project manager etc... Testers are despised by the programming types (because they break their software), but management usually likes them fine!
posted by ranglin at 4:22 PM on October 7, 2007

You could look at being a "test engineer" or the equivalent. It's like a combination of developer and QA tester. Good companies usually have people to develop in-house automated testing frameworks, injectors, etc. It requires a good understanding of the business model and applications to be tested.

The career path for QA varies greatly by organization; some have a really good culture where the best QA people rise and lead testing teams / departments, while some treat all QA people interchangeably. I'd suggest you look at companies where the bottom line is negatively affected by bugs (finance for example), as in my experience they tend to take QA very seriously.
posted by true at 4:31 PM on October 7, 2007

I know nothing about computers, but the guys in my company (large, inpersonal, international) who are in security aren't getting outsources or offshored.

Just sayin'.
posted by IndigoJones at 4:54 PM on October 7, 2007

outsourced or offshored.
posted by IndigoJones at 4:55 PM on October 7, 2007

Thanks for all the great, and quick responses to my post, I really appreciate it. Smackfu, thank you for the link.

A little bit of a clarification, I currently have the title of “Test Engineer”, due to most of my superiors being promoted up. Right now I develop test plans for SQA, and write short testing applications for SQA and the “Hardware Reliability Department”. Sorry for the lack of clarity on that.

It does seem like from your suggestions that the field has a bit more stability then I had originally thought. Anything else in the testing fields is good, but also to anyone else who reads this, don’t be afraid to also suggest any ideas outside of testing, I’m really looking for as many ideas as possible, even the ones that are really out.
posted by JustAGuy at 5:15 PM on October 7, 2007

QA positions are usually the first to get outsourced or offshored, but they also give you a great deal of visibility into the company's product line.

You also like Poly Sci, so you need to go to grad school. The good news is that you can keep doing QA jobs to pay the rent as you continue your studies.

Since both Poly Sci and QA involve understanding how complex machines work (and break), they should be good complimentary majors.

If you want a QA career, then you should (1) seek out government contractors that can't outsource (defense contractors, etc.) and (2) learn Mandarin and an Indian dialect so that you can lead the offshoring effort rather than get run over by it.
posted by b1tr0t at 5:34 PM on October 7, 2007

As others have said, QA can be a great starting point for a career. But you have to be eager to learn and eager to climb up the corporate ladder.

Otherwise, go on to grad school and study until your career opportunities are less generic.
posted by b1tr0t at 5:36 PM on October 7, 2007

One thing I have noticed is that in some companies, QA is culturally distinct from engineers (looked down upon, not invited to parties, etc). That can create problems with actually being effective. So, if you have a good working relationship with the people who are doing the original work, both you and the company will be more productive and happier. So, if you can reach that, QA seems to be a perfectly stable satisfying job, for the people I work with. I work for a game company, and about half of the QA staff has gone on to do game-design things, and about half has been happy to stay on QA. I think that's about standard, at least for games.
posted by JZig at 6:18 PM on October 7, 2007

Have you considered a Ph.D in Computer Science? If you found some of the coursework truly interesting, then the research and work required for a Ph.D. might be enjoyable. And during that time I would think you will meet more people in the field and have a better idea of the opportunities available to you.
posted by kajj at 6:58 PM on October 7, 2007

With computers, many tasks, including quality assurance and routine, low-level programming, are either outsourced, or exist as routine jobs without a lot of potential for advancement. Do not go into those unless you want a relatively dull, unstable career. You should be aware that the because computers are so pervasive in business, the field offers plenty of jobs but also plenty of dead ends. It's easy to get a job doing IT for pretty much any corporation, but in 90% of these companies, IT is just an enabler for their business, not core to their company, and if you work there you'll be stuck. While you can have a stable, safe job there, you're really not going to get anywhere or make a difference in the world.

Those areas in computer science that offer the greatest potential are those that require the most creativity, hardest work, and appetite for risk. These include software engineering, where you are responsible for architecting, designing, and impelementing new software, the Internet industry, where you can develop new online services and websites, or consulting, where you use computers to design and develop business solutions for companies who are your clients. All of these fields require a degree of creativity, business skills, interpersonal skills and insight that go above and beyond the actual content of computer science courses. You need to develop these skills in addition to your knowledge of computer science. Additionally, you need to start at a top company in its field, that's growing, and work on projects that are key to their business. Work at Google, Apple, or a small software company or a startup, rather than in the IT department of a non-computer business.

Unlike most other fields, computer science offers exceptional opportunities to create projects and businesses of your own, whether it's creating a new web app or service, writing an online game, or contributing to an open source project. It's one of the only fields in which the raw materials for creativity and invention are absolutely 100% free and limited only by your skill and hard work. You should take advantage of this and create sonething that will enhance your resume.

I hope this helps get you started on the right track. For additional career advice, I strongly recommend the Pmarca Guide to Career Planning.
posted by lsemel at 7:50 PM on October 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'm a QA Engineer at a large internet software company, and have worked at several other companies doing QA as well. During my work here, as well as when I was interviewing at some other companies, something became apparent: companies look at QA one of two ways.

First, they can look at it as a cost center. It costs them money and produces nothing directly, so short-sighted companies, executives, and managers will try to make their cutbacks here first, assuming they invested in it at all to begin with. The other kind are the companies who take a more long-term view, and recognize that even though QA's product is less visible that development's, it's every bit as important. Developers and QA do not think alike, and that is QA's main asset.

Someone in the QA thread linked above said that good developers are hard to find, but good QA are almost impossible to find - this is absolutely true. My team has been looking for 2-3 QAEs for a very long time now, and have not been able to find anyone qualified.

You seem concerned that QA is a dead-end career choice. This can be true or false, depending entirely on where you end up working. The only way to know is to figure out how the company in question thinks about QA, and decide if it's something you want to stick with.
posted by DoomGerbil at 9:19 PM on October 7, 2007

A suggested area to look into (mainly because I think it's awesome)-- embedded device programming. Instead of software running on a PC, it'll be inside some other object (cellphone, car, mp3 player, camera, f-18 radar jammer) running real time operating systems. A corrolary to this is that all of these device creators need someone to do testing, whether they call them QA or Integration and Test Engineers or whatever.
posted by garlic at 3:31 PM on October 8, 2007