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Interesting Computer Science Jobs?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Jan 02, 2009 04:47 PM
from the do-something-you-love dept.
from the do-something-you-love dept.
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?"
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Help Organize an Open Source Project (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
--
the elephant in the room: How to Make Money with Open Source? [slideshare.net]
Re:Help Organize an Open Source Project (Score:5, Funny)
Oh great, set him up for an eventual meeting with the Bobs!
Well-well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
Parent
Re:Help Organize an Open Source Project (Score:4, Informative)
Actually it's quite common for people with an proper CS degree ( the theoretical kind ) to not want to code. While I do it for a living right now it is definitely not my plan to keep doing that for the rest of my life.
Personally I'm probably going to look into teaching, did a bit during my studies and it was quite fun and rewarding.
Parent
Re:Help Organize an Open Source Project (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're spending 8 hours a day coding, you're doing it wrong. Hell, if you're spending 8 hours a day doing the any one thing, you're doing it wrong. Coding is exactly one, somewhat valuable part of software development. To implement an effective solution requires that you:
IMHO, effective design is the most valuable part of software development, but all of the steps above are important. Coding is just one of those steps. Also, I didn't really mention soliciting feedback (aka code reviews), though on a good team, that would be a part of the last step.
If you've got a CS degree and all you're doing is coding, you wasted about 2-3 years of your life on a four-year degree you didn't need. All you needed was an associate's degree from DeVry and you could be coding. Write software instead. It's much more interesting.
The most important way to "write software" instead of "write code" is to choose a good employer and a good team. Unfortunately, I have no simple advice for how to do that. But don't be satisfied with the first place that offers you a job. If your job seems like a crap job, it probably is. Keep looking until you find a company and a team where you feel valuable.
Parent
Re:Open Source? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Development Isn't Just "Writing Code All Day" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
you can say the same about business analyst jobs - understand the customer's problem, design a solution (preferably one that dosn't require large rewrites) and understand how to get the solution in that doesn't screw the existing system. It can be a lot harder than cutting code!
I think the OP would prefer a job in test, he likes helping people out and a good tester is just that - someone who helps development make better code by pointing out the errors and problems with their code. He;d also get some intera
One additional language you might consider... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
With the current state of the industry and the world economy, have you considered taking Chinese?
Alternatively, he could learn Spanish so he could talk with coworkers at his McJob. Some even require it now.
Estoy trabajando en mi español
Entry-level-ish positions (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Entry-level-ish positions (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
I might be biased, and not the best expert, but... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:I might be biased, and not the best expert, but (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:I might be biased, and not the best expert, but (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Not a lot of options (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Not a lot of options (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Why are you getting a CS degree? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
exactly (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Repeat repeat repeat (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Mod parent up (Score:3, Informative)
I repeat myself, when I'm distressed ... (Score:3)
CS is no more about computers than astronomy is about Telescopes.
You forgot a couple:
CS is the hole in the doughnut.
CS is the whole doughnut.
CS is Dijkstra yelling "surf's up!" to submariners.
Re:Repeat repeat repeat (Score:5, Insightful)
I absolutely hate it when slashdotters trot out this line every time a computer science post appears. 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. 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.
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. It doesn't do justice to those in the field and it misinforms those who don't understand what the field is all about.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a computer scientist and don't care to be one.)
Parent
Dijkstra is correct (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Repeat repeat repeat (Score:4, Insightful)
computers are the reason CS exists in the first place so yes, it is about computers.
Telescopes are the reason astronomy exists too. Without telescopes, astronomy is just star-gazing and making up names for constellations. You can not be a good astronomer without a detailed understanding of how telescopes work (the kind of distortions you get from reflectors / refractors, and so on). You need a detailed understanding of optics. Telescopes, however, are not the object of study, merely the tool.
Exactly the same is true of computer science and computers.
Parent
Why are you a CS major? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Don't mix your dreams with your career (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Life in a cage (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Life in a cage (Score:4, Interesting)
And my advice to the next-youngest generation is this: Do something you like.... but think for a moment before you do something you really love, because having to do it for your job every day is going to make you a little more leery of it, especially if the Thing You Love isn't really good at making money (like many of the creative fields) and you have to work longer and harder and get yourself more stressed. I know that coding for fun isn't half as fun as it used to be anymore, at least for me. Fortunately, I have a strict 40 hour work week (! and in Silicon Valley at that) and I still have adequate time for doing thing that I love.
That, and as far as employability in and around the computer world: internships, internships, internships. :)
Parent
i know what you DONT want to do.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Writing code all day (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Wrong Major? (Score:3, Interesting)
Research (Score:4, Informative)
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.
The company is more important than the job (Score:3, Insightful)
don't worry, you won't write code all day (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Worry if you won't write code most of the day (Score:3, Informative)
As a professional developer with a little over a decade of commercial experience, I can assure you that the jobs where you have to write TPS reports, attend constant meetings, write reports about attending meetings, attend meetings about reports, and occasionally meetings about meetings or reports about reports are toxic worthless environments. About 5 years ago now this trendy thing called "Agile" happened to the software development world as a way to put a bullet in crap like this.
One of four things is g
Business Analysis/Project Management? (Score:3, Informative)
I just recently finished a long co-op assignment doing business analysis, and if you are not one that likes to do a lot of coding, but likes organizing big technical projects and talking with many different areas of a business, then this might be a good route to consider.
I personally did not like it because I'm the type that likes helping out in what I do best and love most: getting "down 'n dirty." I've also dealt with a lot of people who only understood technology and computing from a surface-level standpoint, which is often just right for a business analyst (not too technical to sour the project setup, but not too business-oriented to be lost in the way of things).
Good luck!
CS degree but don't want to work with computers (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Systems Design? (Score:3)
If you're really good at desktop support and have any experience or are a fast learner, a Jr. system administrator role is a good choice too; managing mail servers; SANS, etc... other more traditional operations/IT gigs. You'll have minimal programming generally other than some scripting which you'll do mostly out of trying to minimize repeatitive tasks.
The biggest thing is that there is no right-or-wrong answer, and you're not married to it forever. I started in desktop/helpdesk to may my way though school, then went to system administration and quickly realized I don't like getting screammed at when poorly written IBM software we purchased doesn't give us 100% uptime on aging hardware with poorly written integration by hack programmers. I've always liked programming and had done enough "on the side" to land a programming gig and am much happier though my code isn't landing spacecraft or anything. Whatever you do, don't settle for something you're not happy with; and if you find a really good working situation (stable, good boss, good co-workers, not too bad of a commute) think long and hard before jumping ship for an extra 10K a year.
Computer Science is dead, become a lawyer (Score:3, Insightful)
I have been writing software since the 1970s, and there isn't much left in the field for "work." There may be "research," into things but the average "job" is tedium.
"Computer Science" as it were, is nothing more than a craftsman tool belt. There is no "science" left. It is all the fashion of end-user application. Web sites, social networks, e-commerce, etc. No one in the field is producing great work (and making great money) any more.
I've been interviewing candidates for the last 15 years and "computer science" is a joke. The universities are teaching a trade, not a science. Kids barely understand the mathematical basics of how a hash table works. Don't even get me started on twos-compliment arithmetic or how to evaluate algorithms.
Sure, the desktop processors and environments do a lot for you, but maybe you'll want to do something interesting some day with different types of devices like PICs.
In the end, you'll have to learn about something else, like banking, medicine, civil engineering, accounting or some such to be able to write software for those fields, but since those fields currenly pay better, why not go there first?
Re: (Score:3)
Your info is wrong. CS majors make more money than any other 4-year degree.
Also--2's compliment? You must be joking. They don't emphasize knowing how to solder or replace vacuum tubes today, either.
Also, Computer Science is a misnomer. Since the 1970s, 99% of these scientists were really just software engineers. They weren't developing novel new algorithms, just putting together code to help business do its thing.
Computer Science - Love Code or Leave it (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
The visual effects industry (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
The Definition of Computer Science. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Go for a MBA (Score:3, Insightful)
Weather is good (Score:3, Informative)
Something I considered in my youth... (Score:3, Interesting)
... was a job with NOAA. They're usually looking for young college grads with science degrees. It's considered a branch of the US government and is organized like the military, so the pay probably isn't that great, but the benefits should be good and there are plenty of travel and learning opportunities.
I regret not looking into it further, but by the time I had finished my degree I was married with kids and couldn't just go away for weeks or months at a time.
You can find out more here: http://www.careers.noaa.gov/ [noaa.gov]
CS vs IT (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Given the current business climate... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Positions (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:Whatever you do... (Score:4, Funny)
It can still be fun though. [youtube.com]
Parent