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TL;DR: Is spending a year immediately after college learning MOOCs to discover what niche to specialize in computing a generally good idea?Hi guys,A little background. I am about to graduate from a university in 3 months with a Computer Science degree and am already experiencing pains trying to decide what to do next. I generally did well in all the disciplines, from Operating Systems to Security to AI and so on. But since you don't delve deeply into any topics while at university, I am left confused in what I would actually like to specialize in later on.Currently, I work for my university developing their app, and have good skills in front-end in general. However, there seems to be a lot more interesting niches out there such as data science, robotics, embedded programming.But before I make full jump into any of these new areas, I would like to test them all out and get a better feeling of what I might like doing best for the next decade or so.Do you think spending a year learning from MOOCs, creating own personal projects is a good idea? Or would it perhaps be better to find work immediately, or find some really good internships? The problem with finding work is that with my current skills I am not confident I would be able to get the job in the niche I might want to try out. This is essentially what the year would be spent on, researching different niches, trying out some personal projects and then pursuing the needed skills to get a job in the niche that really catches my interest.Any input is highly appreciated! How did you find your own niche to specialize in? How would you go about jobs hunting or getting relevant experience in this situation?

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JoachimSchipper大约 9 年前

If you want to work in the commercial world, get a job - you have a lot of (practical) skills to develop, and people will wonder why you needed another year of coursework before starting work. Consider aiming for a job at a company that's good at an interesting niche, and note that new grads can get hired into many niches. There is such a thing as a junior data scientist, junior security expert, ...! (And there's also such a thing as a web developer working at a robotics company - such a web developer could easily dip a toe into robotics.)It's not necessarily a bad idea to play around with MOOCs to take a look at other skills while working at your job, but if a university course wasn't enough to make up your mind a MOOC won't be either.(In general, a thesis or internship is a good way to look deeply into a specific niche. But if you're three months from graduating, I don't think that advice will help you...)

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brudgers大约 9 年前

{Random advice from the internet}More schooling will teach more of the sort of things that are taught in school. A job will teach the sort of things that are taught on a job.If the priority is learning more of the things that are taught in school, get a graduate degree. There is nothing to keep a person from spending time on MOOC's while working. A lot of people do.Work is not like school, most new grads will learn a lot really fast because the learning is by doing alongside other people with more experience in a culture with a great deal of institutional experience in the thing that is being done.To put it another way, if there's some really interesting MOOC, take it now.Good luck.

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kliao大约 9 年前

Why not ask professors at your university for opportunities on campus to do research in the fields you're interested in? This would be infinitely better than only doing MOOCs on your own (which you can also do on the side) because you are 1) receiving guidance from professors and/or grad students, 2) possibly getting paid, 3) have something concrete to put on your resume.The thing with doing MOOCs on your own is it seems easy to get lazy and end up wasting a lot of time with nothing to show on your resume.

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runT1ME大约 9 年前

Here's what you do. Find a couple companies you want to work for. Find folks who work there on twitter/irc/github.Email them and say "I'd love to work at your company in a year, what can I do to prepare".They'll tell you. You do want to get a job, be it contracting or something, so you have some professional experience.But the main thing is you learn what you need to learn, you figure out if you need some github contributions, moocs, read a books, etc.

Ask HN: Is spending a year learning from MOOCs a good plan?

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Ask HN: Is spending a year learning from MOOCs a good plan?

4 条评论