About Leigh Ishikawa Expertise I can answer questions about certifications, technical skills, and realistic job opportunities.
Experience My speciality is QA, but I have been involved in development, release engineering, configuration management, technical publication as well as human factors aspects of software development. I've done some offshore management in UK, and recruting non-residents in USA, but I am not expert in off-shore recruting efforts.
NOTE: College/Highschool student are always welcomed to ask questions!
Expert: Leigh Ishikawa Date: 10/9/2007 Subject: Careers with people
Question I just finished getting my BS in Computer Science and I'm currently getting my Master's in Computer Science. While I have enjoyed learning the technical side of things, for the last year and this year so far, I've been working with people and have enjoyed that immensely. I've realized that what I love is helping people (for example, I worked one year as a writing tutor for other undergraduates and this year I'm a peer advisor for engineering undergraduates).
My question is, are there any jobs out there in which I can utilize my CS degree but basically spend the day helping people? Or even just a job where I interact with people mainly, instead of programming? I know there are many non-programming jobs out there but I haven't heard of any where I really get to help people, other than teaching about computers which I'm not very interested in.
Do you have any advice? Thanks so much.
Answer Hi Kyle,
First of all, I am happy to see you are thinking out of the box. You should talk to your friends and tell them to do the same. College is a place where one gets a chance to meet people from all kinds of backgrounds and share their experiences and broaden their scope.
Well, helping people is a broad topic. But let's start with basics. In general, jobs that are fun, and rewarding pay poorly, while jobs that people hate pay well. So first realize that fun jobs are most likely going to have low salary. If your living standards are high and you have high student loans, you need to consider this. A 30k salary may sound great at first because it looks like you make 2k+ a month. But when you cut out state, federal, and in some cases local taxes, take out social security, and so forth, soon that 30k job looks like a 15k job. So rule of the thumb is take what ever salary you have and cut it in half. Now, take the remainder and start putting away towards future in 401k. If your company matches, you MUST put money in to take advantage. It's a free money. Does anyone ever say "I'll pass up on 6% of my salary!"?. Watch Suze Orman show and watch carefully about the basics of finance as she talks about lots of basic finances.
With that in mind, your question on what kinds of jobs can be approached in two ways.
First, what kinds of jobs WITHIN the software field can you take that you can help people?
Second, what kinds of jobs, where you can help people, can UTILIZE your CS degree?
And I would recommend that you carefully think about it in these two ways. Because first is very limiting.
In the IT industry, the people who interact with customers the most are support and SEs (Sales Engineers). In either case, they are both tough fields. Support gets hit with pressure to 'close calls'. In some cases, support engineers will close calls rapidly, knowing they haven't solved the problem, and push things through. While at the same time management is comparing the cost against people who live in the shacks off the streets of India. For SEs, the problem is a lot of customer interaction, pressure to get things done, and often a lot of traveling. Some people enjoy the jet-set lifestyle, while many get tired of it after some time. There's also another field called User Interface. Where you design/update user interfaces. This field is often called 'Human Factors'. Where people are brought in and observed to see how efficient their interfaces are.
So those are some of the jobs you can find within the software industry you will interact with people. But I don't think that's what you want.
The latter is where you are probably more interested. But you need to first determine what aspects of CS you enjoy. And without that, I can't really answer this question. (Feel free to tell me more). Such as "I like to code user interfaces a lot", "I am strong in math and enjoy working on complex logics", or "I don't really care for CS, it's only a tool". Write down what you like. But keep in mind that this is going to be something that you will be doing 40+ hours a week for a very long time.
Additionally, utilize your career center to help you figure out what types of jobs are good for you. A lot of universities offers 'Myers-Briggs test' to identify your personality and try to figure out what types of jobs will fit you well. (There are free ones on the internet, if you search for it) I don't believe in all of it, but it will give you another angle to figure out what type of personality you have.
So the bottom line is as follows:
1. Identify what types of jobs outside of the CS field you will like to do.
2. Identify what aspects of CS you enjoy
3. Take the two results and look at them and see if there's a field that will satisfy your needs.
Feel free to get back to me with a list, and I maybe able to help you narrow down the list, or identify other occupations you have not thought of.
