<p>If someone with a CS degree wanted to go into a field outside of computer science, what else would they be qualified to do and why? Also, does this happen often? Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.</p>
<p>Well, not much directly, but you still have a lot of options.</p>
<p>First, with a CS degree you can certainly do CS work in a variety of industries. You are not tied to working for Microsoft or Adobe or some software house, you can work in just about any manufacturing company because just about every such company writes some code in support of their products. Likewise, there are also lots of research groups that use dedicated programmers to model and simulate concepts and systems that the programmers themselves do not have to understand.</p>
<p>Second, there are a lot of fields that require a technical degree without requiring you to work in that specific field. Program management, technical sales, field engineering, these are all things you can get into with just a technical BS, and there are of course many more options if you are willing to get a grad degree.</p>
<p>But if you are asking if your CS degree can get you a job as a nuclear engineer, or golf course manager, or chef, well, the answer is the same as it is for just about every degree out there: No.</p>
<p>The problem with most CS degrees is that they have a lack of physical sciences in their curriculum. This is fine if you want to be a pure software engineer or if you want to go to graduate school in CS. However, there are a lot of positions where you are doing applications programming and having a solid grounding in physical sciences or engineering is a big plus. Most Engineering and Physics curricula include a significant amount of programming these days and that can be coupled with a Masters in CS to make a very strong combination with flexibility in employment.</p>