Ask HN: What other career choices can one do with CS degree?

39 点作者 scalatohaskell将近 8 年前

I am really distasted with programming, after multitde of jobs, and multitude of contracts, I am hating my life. My work especially. I've programmed a lot since young age (12-13?), and I love functional programming. Sadly, there I'm not good enough to take some proper Haskell positions (since they are usually taken by great CS PhDs etc.), and thus I'm often stuck with OOP messes. Where I'm usually "superstar" (sorry for shitty expression) in team. And that's very tiring...I'd love to have something of my own, but I can't find motivation to do it when I know the probability of it succeeding. I consulted some friends with their startups, and know enormous amount of effort they put it, and I haven't seen single one do well.I had done quite some opensource work, which was pretty fulfilling (mostly contributing to established projects), but it sadly doesn't pay bills.I was thinking of swapping careers. I have CS degree (that means decent math, ability to think etc...). What other careers are there, where I could utilize some of that knowledge, and not feel so burned out?btw I have around 7years of professional programming experience...btw2: I lift regularly weights, I am healthy, so work isn't all life. I also tried meditation for over a month, while it wasn't bad, it didn't help me "cure" my frustration.

19 条评论

ThrustVectoring将近 8 年前

As an employee-level programmer, you're generally not going to find meaningful work. You're going to get handed messes, and in exchange for a paycheck you hand back slightly less chaotic messes that do some more stuff.Switching jobs probably isn't going to fill the frustration you feel. The vast majority of jobs aren't meaningful. The ones that are don't pay particularly well or have other quality of life issues - school teachers aren't well paid, healthcare providers require vast amounts of training and work insane hours, and the overwhelming majority of artists don't make it.The solution is to have work be the thing you do for forty hours a week that pays for the meaningful things you do in your life. Go home after eight hours. If you have a partner and kids, spend time with them. If you don't, consider getting them. Make some art in your spare time, or build side projects that have meaning for you. Go dancing. Make music. Write a blog. Write angry rants about how your work is meaningless. It really doesn't matter much.There's no shame in quietly building a happy little life for yourself. You just don't hear about it too often because those folks are out being quietly happy.

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mabbo将近 8 年前

There's so much! I'm actually just now transitioning from a developer role to a non-developer role.For me, I'm moving to a role doing on-site installations of software that I used to be a developer for. Travel all over, decent pay, get to go on-site (at Amazon warehouses), and it requires technical skill without being a real coding job. This is perfect for me.The key is two things: first, stop looking down at non-dev jobs. They aren't less, they aren't unworthy. Lots of devs I've met have a strange tendency to think that way.Second, figure out what motivates you. Think about what parts of your job you've loved, and what made them so great. I doubt it was the part where you wrote some lines of code. Think more higher level- what specifically about that thing you were doing was it that made you want to get to work early and stay late to finish it? The customers? The team? The business goals?Once you know that, go looking for a job that has those things instead.(And hey, that team I mention I'm joining might be hiring still if constant travel and early mornings in the industrial end of town is up your alley :D )

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sputknick将近 8 年前

You sound like a great candidate for a Product Manager position. ITs about the management of software systems, versus the code. You could be the person that prevents those "OOP messes" from happening in the first place. I've been out of college for 15 years, and I sometimes go years without writing code (I've recently gotten back into it, not because I'm required to, but because I want to). Its more about interfacing with executives, and users, and you have to deal with budgets, and conflicting requirements, and limited resources, so it's no walk in the park, but it is a different set of headaches from what you are dealing with now. Even if it's only for a few months/years, I think you are at the point in your career where it makes sense to diversify. When people ask why you are looking for a different role, you don't have to be negative, you can turn it into a positive: "I want to try something new, I want to get a higher level view of how software is created".

joeclark77将近 8 年前

How about picking a company that does something you'd love to be involved in -- building rockets, brewing artisan beer, raising cattle on the western prairie, etc. -- and go become their one-man IT department. I guarantee there's a lot of great small companies out there that need help but can't find it. The work may be a mix of the menial and the interesting, everything from fixing printers to analyzing data in the ERP, but/and you get to be a part of something that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning. Whatever that may be.

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rb808将近 8 年前

> thus I'm often stuck with OOP messes. Where I'm usually "superstar" (sorry for shitty expression) in team.Maybe this is your problem. You should try not to be the team hero. Stick to your little part of the app, do a good job and go home early. If the rest of the team is screwing up - it isn't your job to fix.

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morgante将近 8 年前

You might want to consider shooting for financial independence (see <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/</a>).It might be a few years of grinding it out as a developer, but if you focus on it then it could come pretty quickly.Having a large cushion of savings makes it much easier to find fulfilling work. You can experiment with a startup if you want (and not worry so much about it failing). You can try a lower-pay but high-impact career. You can travel.I'm nowhere near FI myself, but even the savings I do have made me feel much more free.Otherwise, look into adjacent careers. Product management, sales engineering, and engineering management are all potential tracks to try.

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romanovcode将近 8 年前

Technical product owner is the only one I can think of.You could also be technical lead/CTO, however since you are big fan of functional programming you will more likely push your preferences onto other workers and they will hate you.

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thehardsphere将近 8 年前

You keep saying in comments all over the place that you think you're not smart enough to pursue some of the other alternatives people are suggesting.I think you need to get over that feeling somehow. You're obviously too smart to do the work you're doing, because you're unhappy with it and it sounds like you're not being challenged enough. Other people around you also say things indicating that you are smart. Yet you seem to doubt your own smartness. What's going on there?

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jeddawson将近 8 年前

Just do something you love! It really doesn't matter what degree you have or what your skill set is at the start. Passion to accomplish something or contextual enjoyment will carry you through the low points. I have multiple acquaintances that range for very to barely successful that have trusted their gut and listened to their passion. They're all happy.I should note that I'm not talking about founding something based on your passion. One of my friends works at a bike shop and absolutely loves it. He's had to adjust his living situation and lifestyle to match his income, but the result is a happier human.This certainly doesn't help you figure out a specific career, but my point is that the possibilities are endless just trust your gut feelings!

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runT1ME将近 8 年前

So, there are Scala teams doing functional programming. Have you worked for them and ended up not happy? It seems that it would be much easier to get good enough to join the team you want and appreciates you than to switch careers. Are you in the US?

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haskellandchill将近 8 年前

We have very similar backgrounds and situations. I have a few slogans I follow:Pain is a tower, climb it. Wanting things is easy. Understanding is a luxury.I expect to suffer but you may find a path without the darkness :)

hkmurakami将近 8 年前

There are a small number of pure open source corporate positions out there (RedHat, formerly at ATT Labs, etc.) that you might shoot for.

probably_wrong将近 8 年前

You could become one of those "great CS PhDs". Salaries in Academia are usually lower, but the work can be more rewarding.

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45h34jh53k4j将近 8 年前

I realise that infosec is a component of CS, but it is different enough to day-to-day programming that you might find it interesting. Have you considered application security or related fields?If you have years of development experience helping younger developers learn how to write secure code is a worthwhile endeavour.Frustrations, I dont think you can detach that from CS!

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spectrum1234将近 8 年前

Consider other types of engineering. Given you have a CS degree maybe try to slide into EE.As someone coming from the business world and getting into tech I gotta say its hard to take any non CS or engineering roles seriously. They just aren't of the same calibre.

eru将近 8 年前

Shoot me an email (address is in my profile), if you want help with getting a Haskell or OCaml job. I've managed to do 3 out of 4 jobs so far in either language. (And the odd one out was for Google.)I don't have a degree even.

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PaulFB将近 8 年前

work on getting better at Haskell, and on making it more sucessful so there are more jobs using Haskell. See Edward Kmett's talks on failing at understanding Haskell 5 or 6 times (years). See Neil Mitchell's talk of drive-bye contributing to Haskell.

SirLJ将近 8 年前

Check quantitative stock market trading, it is great location independent life style business and you don't have to spend one single cent on the market before developing working trading system, so the barrier for entry is pretty low...

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lmuench将近 8 年前

Have you tried Elixir?

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