Wesley
For those who went into the field of Computer Science, what jobs did you find yourself gravitating towards?
I find that there's so much opportunity when it comes to the field of Computer Science. There's a variety of different jobs that you can get, from being a software developer to a systems security administrator. I personally enjoy the programming side of Computer Science, so I believe becoming a software developer would be more of my forte. #technology #computer-software
5 answers
Anita Balaraman
Anita’s Answer
Your answer is great Anita, thanks so much for sharing your expertise! At this moment there are more than 800 unanswered questions so I wanted to encourage you to keep going! So many students will benefit tremendously from hearing from you. Keep up the great work!
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COACH
Leon Heckman
Leon’s Answer
I have worked in Information Technology (IT) positions for over 40 years and I was never on a software development team but I developed a lot of code. Many of the IT positions require writing software to support the software development team. Also, I was not restricted to the languages or applications that I needed to use like on the software development team (Java, C, C++, SQL, Python).
The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) starts with the software development team then moves to integration development, integration test, user acceptance testing, staging, and finally production. Each of these important steps can accept the changes or send the code back to the development team. Different computer languages and applications are used at each of these stages.
At one time I worked on a Configuration Management team that is responsible for ensuring all of the code and other assets created by the SDLC team members are stored in a secure configuration management system (CMS) accessed with certain privileges . Intermediate changes are stored in the system as well as the final changes.
There are more IT positions today then I can count and every day industry comes up with a new position.
Leon recommends the following next steps:
Gary Hart
Gary’s Answer
I would say the next steps greatly depend on your personal interests. While many of us enjoy the challenges of the mind and problem solving, my experience was to sit down and I asked myself "what do you want to do"?
If you are an extrovert, you can easily use your degree with success in pre-sales activities (prototypes, modeling, data mining, etc.) or explore working with teams on architectures and designs (will take time to become proficient). If an introvert, you may explore options around macro-issues societal issues such as healthcare, data security/privacy, or solving problems that can have an impact on persons you may never meet. If motivated by wealth, there are a multitude of interesting paths, and again, depend on the individuals personal drivers.
My suggestion is spend time contemplating what is your interest, and once defined, ask yourself if you want to make lasting impact or pursue monetary gain. Either path is yours and I do wish you luck.
Gary recommends the following next steps:
Seth Edgar
Seth’s Answer
While I loved programming, I knew there were always people who were better at it than I was, and who were more passionate about it too. I chose to instead focus on secure coding, and securing what others built, as I found that much more interesting and something I was much more passionate about. Plus, it combined all the skills I was learning, not just focusing on one specific space.
Andrew Strain
Andrew’s Answer
Healthcare and banking for me. Back end type of work.