Career Paths with as CS Degree?

College Majors Math/Computer Science Majors
1

What kinds of career paths can one go down with a CS degree? I always hear things like “oh there’s so many jobs available” or “the market is always growing” and other things like that, but it confuses me a little. I understand there’s things like making your own startup to try to make the next Facebook, being a software engineer, or being a quantitative analyst, but everything overall is a little confusing. What exactly does “software engineer” and such entail? Do you have any experiences with choosing a specialization or career path for CS that relate to this?

Any response is much appreciated, thanks!

2

Some options and descriptions:

Web Developer - Make websites for companies. Can be for a specific company, for a company that contracts to other companies, or can be a contractor. Can also be internal websites and many services that businesses use such as HR software, banking, etc.

Software Engineer - Can include web development but also includes standalone desktop software, mobile applications, etc.

Network Admin / IT Work - Typically manages technical setups for companies, is usually seen as IT not CS, but can be done with a CS degree.

Data Scientist - Usually more mathy but basically takes all the data from applications, websites, etc, and uses it to make models, predictions, and analysis for use in business decisions and beyond

AI Experts - This goes by many names but basically are people who work on algorithms which learn based on you or automate tasks. Self-driving cars, the Netflix recommendation system, Spotify daily playlists, how Facebook shows you ads, and more all use elements of AI. It’s a very hot field but takes a lot of knowledge to work with beyond usually just a bachelors degree in CS.

QA (Quality Assurance) Engineer - Someone who debugs programs, usually seen as a lower level position and is becoming less common. A CS degree is a bit overkill but allows for a fuller understanding of where bugs can occur.

This list is by no means exhaustive. Generally, there is so much growth because all companies are finding they need more and more tech to be competitive or even simply function in today’s world. Typically, someone with a CS degree will be using data and programming to create some sort of system that runs on a computer of some sort that powers some feature for some company, whether it be a local business or Apple.

If you really want to understand why CS is growing so much, think about how many CS majors have touched code that powers things you use daily. Social media, advertisements on every website, every website you use, apps like Venmo, your computer’s operating system, every iOS/Android update, the payment system that the shops you go to use, the promotional emails you get from your favorite brands, and the list just goes on. The ubiquity of tech is the reason for the CS boom we are currently in, and the seeming permanence of it is the reason that few still see it as a bubble that will pop to nothing. How much that bubble will deflate and when is another question.

3

Those with knowledge of CS (particularly in operating systems, networks, databases, and security) tend to be stronger at the technical aspects of IT jobs than most IT people. But much of IT work is more “business” than technical, and IT majors in colleges tend to be less technical programs run out of business departments (and they may be out of their league when defending their systems against crackers, hence the frequent high profile cracks).

QA testing can involve substantial automation and understanding of computer programs from both a developer and user point of view, so a strong technical background is desirable here in organizations that value that.

4

At the places I’ve worked, they like the QA people not to be extremely technical, though they should be technical enough to know how to use automated testing programs. The more technical QA people are, the more they’re going to want to figure out and fix the problems themselves. The idea is that they’re supposed to have knowledge similar to the end users, not the programmers.

I have a CS degree. As for specialties, I spent most of my career specializing in computer graphics. Examples of things I worked on would be graphics for commercial flight simulators, 2D-3D modeling and visualization, computer mapping for GIS, and boring old GUIs. I’ve also had jobs where I didn’t write a line of code for over a year.

5

There are lots of thing a CS grad can do, but the majority of people I know do programming aka writing code.If you’re really good at it there will always be a job for you. If I was starting out today I would specialize in security, specifically automated threat detection. Don’t see that going away anytime soon

6

I’m a CS and math double major, graduating in the spring. The job I’ve accepted will entail me doing cryptology, computer/network security, and high-performance computing, among other things. I’ll probably also end up doing a lot of data analysis at some point. I knew I was really into crypto, and got interested in computer security in college, and decided to look for something where I could do both. I did a software development and a math research internship in consecutive summers where I’ll be working, and discovered the first summer that I really did not want to be a software developer, so that helped me clarify what I wanted to do more.

There’s lots of paths available!

7

Cybersecurity and cryptography has a huge demand and it’s growing rapidly. You can also think outside the box with things like video game designs and being a paid, ethical hacker (part of cybersecurity). There are also cyber forensics specialists if you are detail-oriented.

8

This may be for another thread but what would one suggest to a CS major who has no formal work experience in the field, doesn’t know exactly yet what they want to do In the field, but wants to start getting work experience under their belt. Starting UF this summer as a junior. Are on campus CS a good place to start? They have experience with self learning (has taught himself coding as much as he can online) and summer camps and have basic classes in programming languages C++ and Java and calculus 1 and 2 and physics under their belt so far.