Ask HN: Got a CS degree, but I’m unable to be programmer. What can I do?
Let me show you my process, we have some similarities which may be useful to you. I hope it helps.<p>I also recently graduated (master CS). But I am having strong second guesses whether CS is the right career for me. The only reason it would be the right career for me is because I love thinking in steps, which is what programming really is (procedural programming anyway). I also love debuggers (more steps!) and am full of wonder when my little step by step world gets shaken up by concurrent programming.<p>However, I don&#x27;t care that much about creating things. I created a website here and there and one or two small web apps but that&#x27;s it. I don&#x27;t care about the mechanics of programming (other than it being step by step). I don&#x27;t care about learning new semantics, or frameworks. I don&#x27;t care about MVC. And I hate it how programming changes my personality. If I program 8 hours per day, I only care about truth and don&#x27;t understand humor. Contrast that when I party all week long (did that when I was younger) and truth is still quite cool and I understand humor and can bring the laughs to other people :D Because of all of this I really am on the fence whether I should become a programmer, I could, but should I?<p>In order to find this out I am on a month long journey. The journey is slowly but surely beginning to complete. In this journey I decided that in order to formulate the best career plan I can possibly have I need information from three sources:<p>1. I need to read the profiles of all my LinkedIn connections. My LinkedIn connections show all kinds of profiles and more or less show how they got to where they are now. To me it showed what&#x27;s feasible, and I&#x27;m a bit lucky that most of my LinkedIn connections are 2 years further than I am (I studied more degrees).<p>2. Read all interesting stories on Indie Hackers. I read 39 interviews that I believed to be really valuable.<p>3. Do the career guide on 80000hours.org. This career guide made me realize a couple of things.<p>I now have a list of 46 jobs. Half of them are in things that I feel are pretty obvious choices for me. The other half are more creative (I even have deadbeat in there as the most creative &#x27;job&#x27;). I intend to write a blog post on mettamage.com about my whole journey, but for now I&#x27;ll just leave you with the 46 jobs that I found that might interest me and also the 11 or 12 (lost count) constraints that I believe to be important for getting a job. I hope that my process (scouring LinkedIn connections, Indie Hackers and 80000hours.org) will be helpful. The jobs happen to be ranked on what I now currently think is most suitable to me (except for sales engineer, just added it recently). I do think I still need to inject a little dose of realism into my thinking, but I hope it helps. Also, options are definitely out (e.g. blackhat hacker) but evaluating them may show what you find important.<p>== JOB TITLES ==<p>1. Playable post writer<p>2. Bar&#x2F;Hotel in Thailand (project already underway)<p>3. Writer<p>4. Music Producer<p>5. Gamification expert<p>6. Negotiation coach<p>7. Writing children&#x27;s books<p>8. Buyer and seller (ebay)<p>9. Caring for kids (husband)<p>10. Freelance HW<p>11. Tech Freelancer<p>12. Hacker (blackhat)<p>13. Dating Coach<p>14. Bootcamp Instructor<p>15. Work for a green tea company<p>16. PhD Student (psychology or computer science)<p>17. Pentester<p>18. Virtual Assistant<p>19. Trader (stocks)<p>20. Trying to be like Casanova &#x2F; James Bond (seducing people while influencing government officials)<p>21. Deadbeat<p>22. Real Estate Agent<p>23. Workshop Instructor<p>24. Serious game designer<p>25. Behavioral Informatics Dev<p>26. Entrepreneur (laadpalen)<p>27. Something with finance<p>28. Front-end Web Dev<p>29. Teacher (as employee)<p>30. Computers &amp; old people<p>31. Entrepreneur<p>32. Full-stack Web Dev<p>33. Data Scientist<p>34. Marketing<p>35. SEO Specialist<p>36. UX Designer<p>37. Sales<p>38. Consultant (tech)<p>39. Tutor<p>40. Growth Hacker<p>41. Machinist (employee)<p>42. Bartender (employee)<p>43. Cleaner (employee)<p>44. Bus driver (employee)<p>The following 2 are not rated<p>45. Rhetoric (blogging)<p>46. Sales engineering<p>== FACTORS I FIND IMPORTANT ==
Flexibility - time (e.g. 4 days per week)<p>Flexibility - amount of work (e.g. not everything planned has to be done on the same day per se)<p>Flexibility (travel&#x2F;remote)<p>High Autonomy (freedom in what you do)<p>Pay<p>Meaningfulness (e.g. meaningful for yourself or society)<p>Ability to learn new Skills<p>Quality of training<p>Sleep (I have insomnia issues, so I need to know how bad sleep issues will be)<p>Perceived fun<p>Social capital (connections are everything)<p>Amazing colleagues<p>Cognitively Challenging<p>Emotionally Challenging (this is a negative for me)<p>Shapes you into an interesting personality (doing sales would make me more chatty, if I only program I become a humorless person who only cares about scientific-truth, not so fun at cocktail parties)<p>Risk (high-risk, high reward)<p>== FUTURE STEPS ==<p>My goal is to find out more about income opportunities of the more risky things I have. Most if not all of my future steps involve talking to people.<p>(1) I think I should have a conversation with Nicky Case how I could leverage playable posts into a career. At the very least I could work with him on something. (2) I think I should email Bart Hufen about becoming a gamification expert. And also ask him how to deal with associated risk. (3) I should find out if negotiation coach is actually a thing and do more research on it. (4) I should find a pentester and invite him&#x2F;her for coffee. I suppose Guillaume is a good person to ask! (5) I need to find a couple of people who are able to tell me about the pro&#x27;s and cons of freelancing and to what extent a normal job will help. (6) Look more into becoming a virtual assistant. (7) I think I should research more into becoming a serious game designer&#x2F;developer. (8) I should look for role models &#x2F; people who I feel are like me. (9) I want to know more about growth hacking. (10 optional) Find out if your love&#x2F;hate for CS is justified by talking to people like me.<p>== THINGS I WANT IN MY FUTURE JOB ==<p>1. Thinking in steps or in processes, sans the frustration<p>2. Immersive-like experiences (e.g. storytelling)<p>3. Highly challenging and seeminlgy improbable to even impossible projects<p>4. A small bit of applied math&#x2F;arithmetic (e.g. what I experience with professional poker)<p>5. A touch of playfulness<p>6. A sense of altruism