Ask Slashdot: CS Grads Taking IT Jobs? 520
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?"
Re:CS is part of IT (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:CS is part of IT (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Erm... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have an instinct that something is going to be bad for your career and/or life, it's probably true. Even more so if it's something you find fundamentally dull. However, from a resume perspective it's better to be doing something than nothing since it's better to have experience than none. Cash in you pocket is nice.
You might find yourself at an interview in three years time and the interviewer asks, "Why did you take a job doing X when you wanted to do Y?"
That's a pretty dumb question considering where things are today with the economy. Try to answer it politely. :)
Finally, you've been pretty vague about what IT means to you. If it means anything involving user support, desktop support, administration or telesales, avoid it. These are the IT equivalents of a McJob and put you at the wrong end of a stressful firing range. If the job-spec reads like a bunch of happy-clappy management buzzwords, avoid that too.
Re:CS is part of IT (Score:4, Insightful)
In the US it's mixed. Some people, like the OP, mistakenly call all areas IT. Most people frown on that classification. You say "I work in IT" I assume you're a sys admin, a helpdesk guy, or a phone support person. I do not assume you do programming. It's a separate field.
Here's an example of it causing confusion- the US is losing IT jobs. You can see all sorts of people worried about the loss of IT jobs. Programming jobs? The unemployment rate is actually negative- there's more jobs than coders.
Let's turn this around- other than the physical tools (which lets face it, every job in the world uses now) what do IT and programming have in common? Absolutely nothing. So conflating the two isn't useful.
Re:Erm... (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re:CS is part of IT (Score:4, Insightful)
.. what do IT and programming have in common? Absolutely nothing. So conflating the two isn't useful.
They are both about information technology.
Re:CS is part of IT (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it isn't. CS is programming. IT is the maintenance of computer systems.
Seems to me like that term is defined differently in various (international) job makets. We don't even have the term CS here. If you have a technical job that involves programming, systems administation, networking, etc you fall under IT. Doesn't matter if you're writing software for scientific purposes, or if you're configuring routers, you're IT here.
As for the question asked by the original poster:
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?
It depends on what you'll be doing. If you're going to be spending your days doing menial tasks below your level of education and skill set, it'll have an effect on your later career. My degree has never been important to my employers other than the paycheck of my first job. After the initial job it's more likely potential employers are interested in what you've been doing: what kind of projects, what kind of tasks you performed in those projects. Anything beyond that point is the interview and negotiating. However, there are still companies that look at your degree, but the further away you get from your graduation date the less important that becomes.
So will it have an impact on your further career? YES. Probably a more profound one than the degree you have.
How? That depends on what you're going to do. To give an example, I started out as a unix sysadmin for a consultancy firm with the odd job of programming various things in between (going from simple things like websites, to software to manage telco infrastructure, to writing a driver for a certain type of industrial lasers running linux). Now I do mostly C++ and java programming in the research sector and my background in being a sysadmin has helped me optimize hard- and software for use in an HPC environment. I doubt I would be where I am today if I hadn't taken the sysadmin job way back.
Having said that : if you pick a job you like doing and find interesting (if the jobmarket allows for that), it'll go a long a way to your personal happiness, which in turn indirectly improves your job performance, which opens new opportunities. Don't be afraid to change jobs if a good opportunity arises, but don't do so on a whim. And for the love of all that's good, don't stop learning and applying new things, even if they're not directly related to your field of expertise.
Re:CS is part of IT (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds like you are an elitist... For most development work out there it is boring and lame. so have fun in your ivory tower.
Re:CS is part of IT (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:CS is part of IT (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I know that if I go to the "IT" section of most job sites I see everything from "senior software engineer" to "windows support monkey", so he's mostly right. For that matter acting like all admins are dumb janitors and all programmer from genius engineers is pretty typical fresh from college arrogance. I make as much as a senior developer and have a masters in CS. I'd do dev work (I'm quite capable of it), but I would have to take huge pay cut to go from senior Unix administrator to junior or even mid-level developer.
Re:Erm... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Tier II/III (Score:4, Insightful)
"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?"
As a CS-grad who has also done IT (and by that I think you mean "IT Support" as opposed to "IT/Enterprise Computing/Software Development"), if you get a gig in IT, make sure that it is a tier II or tier III type - the type dealing with actual server/dba/network configuration, administration and troubleshooting. Having that type of first-hand knowledge will prove valuable for most CS-work that you do down the road (too many CS grads down know how to root cause (or even account for) server/network-related problems when they develop enterprise/distributed systems (with hilarious consequences.)
On the other hand, a tier I type of IT support job is the type that gets calls from people requesting help with their PC-integrated cup holder, and you'll be eating a bullet in no time.
Having said that, and also from my own first hand experience, you run the risk of getting pigeonhole into the "IT-can-admin,IT-can't-program" stereotype. Make sure that when you do IT work, you do programming (a lot). Use Python, Groovy or Ruby or Haskell or Lua for your administrative shell scripts as opposed to simply shell scripts + perl. Sounds a little bit overkill, but you *need* this, to both keep your practice, and also to put it in your resume (to demonstrate that you have been programming.) BTW, if you do this, make sure to take one language and stick to it - nothing worse for a poor employer to find itself with a bestiary of admin scripts written in 4-5 different languages. In a nutshell, pursue your programming practice on the job in an ethical, professional way that benefits both you and your employer.
Also, while you do IT, keep your eyes on what's going on out there in terms of software development. Things change very quickly and you can find yourself obsolete rather fast if you are not proactive with your career development.
OTH, if you end up liking it, why not, specially if you get a chance to do paid overtime. If you do this, though, be ready to have your cell on with you at all times, getting level 2 or 3 calls from Bangalore, Buenos Aires or Panang at 3am :P
Re:CS is part of IT (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US it's mixed. Some people, like the OP, mistakenly call all areas IT. Most people frown on that classification. You say "I work in IT" I assume you're a sys admin, a helpdesk guy, or a phone support person. I do not assume you do programming. It's a separate field.
Here's an example of it causing confusion- the US is losing IT jobs. You can see all sorts of people worried about the loss of IT jobs. Programming jobs? The unemployment rate is actually negative- there's more jobs than coders.
Let's turn this around- other than the physical tools (which lets face it, every job in the world uses now) what do IT and programming have in common? Absolutely nothing. So conflating the two isn't useful.
Over here in the UK, saying you work in IT means you do something vaguely to do with computers. It is a very general term that encompasses a whole boatload of professions. Just had a quick poll in our office and everyone thinks IT is a really large definition that does not say a lot about what you actually do. So the only thing we all agree on is that we all work in IT, despite this including my department manager, his PA, a couple of software developers, a system admin and support guy.
Generally if people want any further details about what I do, I actually tell them: I write software. It takes three words (two if you discount the 'I') and makes it abundantly clear what I do. If they want any further details then I tell them I am a technical lead who works on a web based learning management system but that would only mean something to people who work in a fairly similar field.
To be honest though, this is a ridiculous argument about a label. Labels are never very descriptive and there is always room for some confusion when you use them. Short descriptions are often far more useful and usually take the same amount of words (ie - compare "I am a web developer" with "I work in IT").
I also really hate using acronyms since they are often used as way to make something less clear to certain technical people. For this reason I try and and avoid getting in the habit of using them. I often now have to talk to people who are not as familiar with them as me. Some people are very reticent to hold up a conversation if they feel they are the only person who does not understand even if it very important that they do. Using plain and simple language often solves this.