I wish i knew how to combat this as it makes me feel really stupid and drives my creativity and motivation to the ground. Exposure can mean lots of things. Why this computer scientist thinks reality might be a video game. Even if it pays less, it feels better, at least for me. I found Developer Support Engineering to be the perfect blend of a job. What are you working on? You aren't required to. But it's too frustrating. Dropping out of university: It's not the disaster you think it is. Same here. They seemed so unreal. At my new job my boss will wander over and talk about his kid's sports team with me for an hour. I think they do less coding but requires you to understand a lot of CS stuff as well. I'm sure that I'm good enough to be able to make a living continuing as I am … but I don't want to. I am a developer who hates developing. Or perhaps you're just wearing golden handcuffs. I’m not sure why, but I’m not really interested in computers anymore. I come to work every day with no passion I just do it to pay the bills. So without rambling too long, here's my advice to all those people who PM'ed me or stumble on this post: find an IT job in a non-tech company. Lee also mentioned that he has run across computer science students in the workforce who couldn’t code, which shocked him. There are all sorts of reasons why people drop out of their courses. If you don’t actually know what you are doing, you will fail miserably. Basically I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I've learned how to program. Don't be afraid of it, you won't get anywhere unless you try. You have a piece of some dirty code and you have to change its logic. It's great. I get to help build the tools that external developers use to talk to with us and help improve our work flows both internally and externally. You want to make adding new code a little easier? Probably someone else who actually is in devops can give a better picture of what they do; from my understanding they make sure everything is running smoothly and automate things like deployment. A very generic problem. Consider if the environment and peers may be the problem. Environment plays a big part in any job, no matter how intrinsically amazing that job might be. Most recently this: I finished a computer science … There are quite a few jobs out there that don't involve straight development and programming but require a CS degree. I don't like computer hardware or anything mechanical, and my job doesn't pay well, so I'm not particularly happy with my path. The same problem happens with Turing machines. Put unit tests before changing logic. I took programming in high school and I just feel inadequate to my classmates who actually knew what they were doing. My worry is that I don't have enough knowledge/experience at my age to be a valuable technical recruiter.. And do businesses hire full time recruiters? I know I can't say engineering/computer science is the most depressing major because some people actually like it and some dont... but I'm thinking about switching my major to business major (my second choice) and maybe minor in computer science, so I can have more time. If you've been programming for a few years and haven't developed a taste for it by now, it seems doubtful to me that anyone would suddenly develop one overnight. ", so I'm guessing this post is showing up in some google search results or something. I do like computers and I do like working with people, programming just isn't for me. That's what libraries are for. Jeff is a total jerkface. 3. Co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse. We receive release notices from development for each new version of our product, and I'll look through the changelog and wonder if making those in depth changes would be a good time, or mind-numbing. In the past six years I have maybe done 50 hours of real work. I am similar to you. Overshoot and you get either "Too Broad" or "Too Localized". The product I support has many languages and technologies involved, and the job requires an understanding of each of those languages and technologies and how to use them, but the job does not involve in-depth development. Surely programmer career questions are a fit on a site that's explicitly about career related topics? I lost interest in the job/career. I have both my Computer Science degree and seven certifications. It's a huge drain on confidence and motivation. But I'm starting to dread going to work because I find coding to be boring, difficult, and unsatisfying. Give the variables and functions methods a more meaningful names? There are a reasonable number of such jobs available worldwide. How should I go about changing to this field? My previous company sold computer tech and attracted a lot of very smart people who were very interested in computer science. Or other times I go into work the next morning and continue banging my head against the wall. Don’t be the person who “never quite understood” something like recursion. Find somewhere that allows you to work your 40 hours in a place you don't hate and find fulfillment outside your job. I don't think I want to be a CS major anymore. I am looking at business analysis as a career path, as I am great at talking to people and understanding requirements, but also understand how to translate that into technical. I've sat in on interviews before and enjoyed it. Even if I try side projects that are not work related during my personal time for fun and to improve my skills, I find that I just get bored and the projects are abandoned at 25% completion. Context: I went to a school which was (and is) consistently rated among the top in the world at computer science education. If this is how future computer science class are going to be, I would rather not take part in such a program. I get a surprising number of emails from career programmers who have spent some time in the profession and eventually decided it just isn't for them. I am a career programmer and an average one at best. A subreddit for those with questions about working in the tech industry or in a computer-science-related job. Since I couldn't pass technical interviews, I took a job as a sysadmin that also involves programming. Reddit is one of the most popular social news aggregators, online community forums and discussion-rating websites. I started a new job four months ago after having a lot of success at my last job. That's fine. And I don't enjoy programming as a hobby. I think my personal and communication skills are a lot stronger than my development skills, so I hope I can use that to find one of the niches you suggest. I just didn’t believe in aliens anymore. Programming skills and a deep technical background are typically in the hiring requirements. So let's think. Great reply, thanks for your encouragement. Replying to client emails, receiving phone calls, and collaborating with your team and other teams to solve a problem quickly. I'm going to answer this from a purely practical perspective. But how? I think I realized I don't want to program because I landed at a company where people are quite good. We use cookies on our websites for a number of purposes, including analytics and performance, functionality and advertising. Saturday, October 13, 2018 To all the computer science students who don’t really like computer science I was always interested in the potential of building something from nothing, and I like reading about programming, but I find the process of programming to be difficult and not all that satisfying. I thought "great, maybe this will be nice to write code some of the time, but not all of the time!" But I also get to code half the time but it's not all the time. I found a job with the title "System Analyst" and it was suggested to me that I'd be doing about 30% programming, 70% SA/BA type work. How about our sister site at programmers.stackexchange which is less about programming problems with source code and more about whiteboard style conceptual programming questions? Austin. You might enjoy what I do if you like computers. So don't waste your time on books you don't enjoy. I did end up quitting that job and moving to a smaller city. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs: Brian Harvey’s Berkeley CS 61A: Computer Architecture: If you don’t have a solid mental model of how a computer actually works, all of your higher-level abstractions will be brittle. I am sympathetic to this quandary because career questions, by their very nature, tend to be so narrow and opinionated that they are frequently only useful to the person who asked – which is completely counter to the goal of Stack Exchange. You might enjoy what I do if you like computers. Here's where I really wished I could have asked this on Stack Exchange, because I'd much rather crowdsource data to support the above three points, but the best I could come up with on my own is: In many of these roles, people that truly know the nuts and bolts of programming are quite rare. These are all things you could get into with a little at home study and probably do well at. That's unfortunate, because a deep technical background lets you actually understand and explain what is going on, to customers, to business stakeholders, to peers on related teams. I can code decently enough, not as well as most of my colleagues but enough that my managers are satisfied with my performance. But don't beat yourself up if you don't find anything you like. I'm gonna start studying computer science in January. Probably. In that time I've slowly realized I don't enjoy coding. Both jobs have had really friendly people that I've liked, but it's just a bit different. Example. If you become a programmer, you’ll be doing it for 40 hours a week. That's the goal at Stack Exchange. And don't worry about finding algorithms difficult - you'll almost certainly never have to implement a quicksort, linked list, or whatever during your career. Dutiful CS students learn nihilistic results like Rice’s Theorem, which shows that we really can’t analyze computer algorithms at all. It was always our hope that concrete, substantive programming career questions could be asked on Stack Overflow, and some early ad-hoc polling indicated that career questions might be accepted by the community, but if you look at later poll results, it's clear that the career questions came out juuuust under the cutoff point as determined by the Stack Overflow community. Find me here: http://twitter.com/codinghorror, Coding Horror has been continuously published since 2004, how intrinsically amazing that job might be, [advertisement] How are you showing off your awesome? Product manager or technical program manager sound like they could be a good fit. There is a lot of stuff that goes on around programming that is not heads down code writing, where your programming skills are a competitive advantage. So if you're someone who's contemplating computer science, or someone who's afraid: stop, and just do it. Maybe the problem is there is a one big function and its hard to dig into it? I freaking love databases and SQL -- it's so different from "regular" programming. Tldr; look into Developer Support Engineer jobs. Throughout middle school and high school, I was never exposed to CS, which I believe is a big reason as to why I never developed an interest in the subject. And you mentioned you like working with people. It's a mid-sized office working on a mid-sized project of a large corporation. But it seems like you're experiencing some distress over this and would like to like fiction. You only see Tank hacking on his computer console for probably 10 minutes total throughout all three Matrix movies. I think there may be some things you could explore. There is a documented record of ex-programmers moving into these positions and being successful. Those are just a few things off the top of my head that could benefit from your familiarity with programming. I love computers and I would think I possess a fair amount more knowledge of utilizing one more than the average person. At the very least nobody can dazzle you with technical BS, because you're equipped to call their bluff. Everyone I work with is very friendly, but I just don't connect to the same developer culture that they all share. Starting a career in computer science isn’t as easy as graduating and showing up to a job interview. It feels like the people in my IT department are real people with lives outside of computers. But the problem with that is that hobby coding isn’t at all like coding for work. I know I would not going to have these opportunities anymore. The very same question was asked on workplace.stackexchange: I'm graduating soon with a Bachelor's in Software Engineering, however during the course of getting my degree I decided I do not want to be a programmer. It's not a "big tech" shop, it's a big retailer for a non-tech product, which I think makes a big difference in company "culture". Is there a field for someone with a Software Engineering degree who wants to get into business management instead of programming? Biology degrees are "tricky" - in that most people who get them (at least at my school, CMU) either go to grad school or medical school. I wasn't completely sure I wanted to do straight development, but loved working with systems with some reliance on programming, scripting, and databases. "* I can understand deciding to outlaw the entire class of career questions because they're frequently soft, opinion-y, and highly specific to the person asking. I enjoy the technical aspect of my role but find it draining to develop 8 hours a day 5 days a week. i want to be able to enjoy and do other things in my life. Networking, security, administration. I overhear my coworkers talking about the latest development tools and products with excitement, and I usually just quietly listen, unable to find the same level of appreciation. I know I won't be happy with a programming career for the rest of my life. Programming is indeed a field that does require some passion. Apparently, career questions are not welcome there either. I get a surprising number of emails from career programmers who have spent some time in the profession and eventually decided it just isn't for them. You don't know if doing this could damage existing logic? We try our best to teach you to ask questions that hit this sweet spot: answers that get you the information you so desperately need, yes, but also help your peers along the way without devolving into meaningless opinion honeypots. But wait! Code. Data Analyst: Tech companies have plenty of data related to their businesses and somebody has to gather it, extract it, analyze it and also manage it.This role requires mainly knowledge of SQL or hive or pig (any querying language), Microsoft Excel, and even Google analytics to organize a large set of data. and grumble when it's explained to them why it's important. I feel there is a way to answer this question that would be helpful to many other programmers, that is supported by facts and data and science. The tests are randomly generated by a computer from a database with over 100,000 questions; no two tests are the same. but i only want it to be one part. When I first got into college, I thought I'd give this programming/CS thing a try. I minored in Business Management and really enjoyed that, particularly the management side of psychology and the basics of the processes involved with restructuring a business, but don't really want to throw away my programming degree either. I have done some good projects but I am not at all into it. Press J to jump to the feed. However, you need to realize the real world isn’t like what you see on TV. The pros of this is that people in the company don't expect much from the IT department. Commentary. * Yes, you should quit. Here are some insight to the trend. I don't code for fun -- I don't even call it coding, and I am not a "coder". (Don't) sit next to me please (i.imgur.com) 79.7k points 79.7k points 79.7k points submitted 5 hours ago by agabcharif to r/memes 96 69 71 2 67 & 306 more Share It's easier to throw out the whole category rather than do the painful work of sifting through them all to reveal those few rare workable gems. But sometimes you just need to give your brain a break for it to start working properly again. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Write once, read many. It’s OK to quit your Ph.D. By Katie Langin Jun. I will now reprint my favorite diagram, ever, which attempts to explain this: The colored part in this target that says "All Programmers"? Image The computer science complex opened in 2013 at U.T. I can't tell you how many times I've felt like this at the end of the day only to leave work, go home, do something else for a while, and then the solution just comes to me. We’ve also met students at our coding bootcamps who tell us the same things: “I’m a computer science student, but I feel like I don’t know how to code even after 4 years of studying.” It's just not my thing. I am currently full time development but I don't like it either. Split it to smaller, atomic parts. I enjoy programming i just have this nasty habit of dragging myself down every time i don't understand something, it's horrible. This new job is the exact opposite, I feel like I'm a rockstar because I know how to change the text on a button, or query a database to run a simple report for someone. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast, More posts from the cscareerquestions community. and a bunch of other non-coding things. Stupidly complex stuff (that people consider "standard" even if it's extremely complicated! Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about. The list of the best learning and educational subreddits. Due to personal reasons, I'll be relocating to a different city early next year and I think that will be a great time to switch jobs and try to find a better fit. The beauty of a support role is every day has new problems to solve, and it's fast moving and exciting. New stuff which is supposed to be incredibly easy, and it's just one more framework. They're the kind of ownership who make millions of dollars, but struggle to open a PDF file. “I don’t want to tell a student already at Mines, ‘You can’t major in computer science,’” Professor Camp said. What jobs exist where …. Right now, I work as a devops person doing minimal scripting (scripting is not so bad!) The problems come at you quickly and you have to solve them quickly, and you rely greatly on your CS education. In total with my internship, I've worked here for almost 3 years. Beyond that, there are lots of related fields where programming skills are advantageous, without having "sit down and write code all day" as part of the job description. So You Don't Want to be a Programmer After All. Still, I don’t think it’s controversial to state that computer science has something to do with computers, or that education helps one to become better at one’s field of endeavor. Stack Exchange wants questions that are as useful to as many people as possible, and actively closes (sorry, "puts on hold") the ones that are not. I don't enjoy coding 100% of the time but I still enjoy using what I learned in CS. You always start with splitting one big problem into smaller tasks that are easier to solve. I think we can all agree that this is a career you can't half-ass your way through. Since the first year of studying programming at university I have known in my heart that computer programming is not meant for me, but I was afraid to do anything about it and here I am now 12 years later programming with no passion. as a med student, i know science and medicine will always be a part of my life. Well, maybe "all bicyclists", or "all cooks", but you get the general idea. But back to the topic: what career options are available to programmers who no longer want to program? Learn more about Reddit’s use of cookies. Most recently this: I enjoy programming itself. I have a lot of respect and envy for those of you who do, it takes a great mind to be able to be passionate about it. Code.org reports that there more than 475,000 open computing jobs nationwide (as of January 2019), and less than 50,000 computer science students graduated into the workforce last year. Take your co-worker and rubber-duck-debug with him/her (or just take a rubber duck if you work alone). I've taken a huge confidence hit because everything I'm working with is completely new to me (technology, languages, platform, etc) and I feel like a know next to nothing. You just want to understand a harder part? I just started my first job supporting a large financial technology product that requires the knowledge a CS degree provides. At my office it's a task that mostly just gets passed around to various developers a few times a year. 25, 2019 , 2:30 PM. I think both jobs would benefit from someone with a technical background and they are both people-centric versus computer-centric. Since I couldn't pass technical interviews, I took a job as a sysadmin that also involves programming. You have no idea what is going on? instead, try to find a balance somewhere. While I still don't love to write code, it's much nicer when the standards are lower. There’s something retro about aliens, I thought, a vestigial remnant of the 20th century, like DeLoreans. Normally when i program i am happy, however on occasions where i get completely stumped and cannot come up with a fix for the problem within a few minutes i get really hard on myself and just feel dumb. You should get into other areas of IT work. However, if you were able to stick with doing something you're not very enthusiastic about for a period of years, maybe there's still a kernel of something there to work with. I can usually code a solution once I understand the problem and requirements but I'm constantly having to ask for help getting over that initial hump of simply not having a clue about where to even start before I can get there. Have you considered b2b sales for a technology company or becoming a recruiter for technical talent? I don't like computer hardware or anything mechanical, and my job doesn't pay well, so I'm not particularly happy with my path. My $400 laptop works well enough and I, like most regular people, don’t really care about the next snazzy upgrade. Finally, maybe you just don't enjoy fiction. That doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be codified into the curriculum. If you major in Computer Science, are motivated, do some side projects on github during your senior year to show you care about this stuff, and are willing to go work in a big city like New York, San Francisco, Boston, LA (or even a smaller city like Austin, TX), … Is this possible without going back to school? I've seen less "adept" programmers self-select into related roles at previous jobs and do very well, both financially and professionally. I don’t know. I don't love writing code, but I'm glad I did computer science, because it helped me learn all this. so in essence, i don't think it's necessary to eat, ****, or sleep medicine. In the past, I've been a database developer. More importantly, life is not a snapshot. Sometimes I cant finish my program because I don't know how to put in the necessary methods or concept for my program to work efficiently even after spending hours trying to find the answer to this problem. While new grads can expect a friendly job market, a candidate’s competitive edge comes from specific expertise in a particular branch of computer science. That is a large part of what a support role entails. My new company is run by a bunch of old-school, grouchy, blue-collar folk who are like "why do we bother paying for IT?" Well, what about the rest of the Stack Exchange network? I was in the same boat as you when I finished my degree this past year. In retrospect, it was the beginning of the end. So my question is: is there anyone here who also doesn't like programming but enjoys computers and found a great career with minimal programming and a CS degree? Create a. Who do you work with? I'm 25 years old, finished my CS degree a year ago and got immediately rehired by the company I interned with as a student. However, a major like this sounds like it takes a lot of math to work with. The paycheck was the only thing that motivated me to go to work. I've been programming since the days of "bit-slice microprocessors" (which is to say, ancient times) and a couple thoughts immediately come to mind for me. This didn't turn out to be very true, I'm finding that I'm doing about 80% coding and 20% IT support/system maintenance, but I don't hate it as much this time around. University life isn't for everyone. Have you tried changing those up, first, before conclusively deciding you need to leave the field forever? So I'm pretty bad at math (Currently taking Algebra 2 as a Senior in High School), but Computer Science has been the most interesting sounding major to me. Look for job openings that describe the role as "support analyst" or "technical analyst". I don’t even play video games anymore. You know, endless permutations of things like "My boss Jeff is a total jerk, he constantly changes my code without asking and overrides me all the time with his BS arbitrary decisions, should I quit? It's funny how much your views of a job can change when the expectations of you change. This new company is very different than my last company. I figured I'd post an update here. For 40 hours each week I go to work, play League of Legends in my office, browse Reddit, and do whatever I feel like. Maybe the problem is the code is poorly describing what is happening. I like the sound of interviewing/recruiting. Hitting that target with our questions – or at least making a best faith effort to attempt to, anyway – is how we maximize the results of our collective efforts. At my last job I definitely felt like a small fish in a huge pond because I wasn't working on personal projects or experimenting around with things like Docker in my spare time. Indoor enthusiast. You don’t have to know every tool, but you should go deep on the basic tools you use daily. A 2018 study, which looked at the factors that influence students to pursue CS degrees in higher education found that, “School education appeared to have limited influence on students’ decision to study CS, though exposure to problem solving, program… At my old job people would come talk to me about their projects they were excited about. For years, Reddit was one of my main sources for different life hacks and articles on the subjects I’m interested in.Today, I don’t use it regularly anymore. Makes me wonder how many commenters failed all of their certification exams. Industry Landscape. Forget the boys who tell you that you can't do it, forget all the haters who are jealous of your zeal. I often became unmotivated in school during some of my long-term assignments when there was a lot of fine-tuned programming and debugging. Nearly half of the 26,086 developers didn't have a computer science degree according to Stack Overflow. There's no planning out use cases, or requirements, or any long-term design. There's also system administration, network administration, or DevOps. I'd like to combine my knowledge of making software with some kind of business process oriented work. ), fighting against the computer, dumb errors, configuration, and stuff that people even worse than me implemented and I have to take care of. Every few months I get a PM from someone asking "what did you end up doing? Have you looked into something like database development or functional languages, which can be very different from a normal development experience? I just don’t want to be a software developer anymore. But if you're a programmer who no longer likes to program, your technical background can at least open the door to a number of related professions. I help handle bug reports as they come in from developers, help developers with their implementation problems if I see them in their code samples or help find the repro for the bug they submit and pass it along to our engineering teams to resolve the issue. Career questions are tough, because ultimately only you can decide what's right for you. And I honestly think I won't achieve that level, ever. What kind of environment do you program in: The "programming" in each of these situations, and the other peer programmers you'll be working with, will be radically different. I'm a few years after graduating and working as a coder and I still deal with this a lot. Sales is something I hadn't considered. You aren’t going to be a movie character. Put some unit tests before refactoring to keep an eye on regressions. I'm not doing it that badly, I even do it better than some people.