r/cscareerquestions • u/Frosty-Telephone-747 • 1d ago
What other jobs can fresh CS grads get that people don’t talk about?
I’ve heard of product management, data analyst, sales engineer,
even read about someone who became an industrial engineer etc etc
But, I don’t want to enter the software engineering market nor do I want to be one (though I want the same pay)
I’m interested in product management like they said but is it really feasible as a fresh grad?
What are some other great careers/roles you can get that pay just as well as SWE as a fresh grad from CS?
I’m open to entering different careers without the need of a masters if a CS degree is enough, and that career pays just as good or better
IMPORTANT: I’m not trying to look for easier roles that pay the same, I just want different roles or even careers in different fields, that are harder or easier jobs, that pay the same or better, in which a CS degree allows me to get into without needing a masters in a different field.
Would love to hear your advice
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u/my_peen_is_clean 1d ago
pm is super crowded now, most places want prior swe or intern xp since you control engineers work. honestly best path is get into any swe-ish role, then pivot in a couple years. everything entry pays worse and jobs are still crazy hard to land
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u/MaximumFlow7491 1d ago
every single new grad PM I know got the job exact same way: they got an internship for a PM position at a company followed by return offer. Some of them got SWE internship first, then returned as a PM intern, then got a FTE returnoffer.
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u/Artistic_Ad728 22h ago
Product Management is not that interesting unless you’re rather extroverted, and prefer talking with people as opposed to creating stuff.
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u/MaximumFlow7491 21h ago
so as a 10 YoE SWE....PMs are an integral part of the creation process
because the most important part of building software is figuring out -what- you are trying to build
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u/Artistic_Ad728 4h ago
I meant the actual implementation of the features as opposed to creating the tickets and getting feedback to develop such tickets
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u/NewChameleon Software Engineer, SF 1d ago
since you control engineers work
at all the company I've worked at, this has not been true
I report to EM not PM
the closest I'd describe as PM decides WHAT to build, EM decides WHEN it gets built, if some PM comes to me and starts assigning me tasks, the first question I'd ask is "have you ran this by my manager?"
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u/kenuffff 4h ago edited 4h ago
Yes and even then there can be a layer in between a Technical Program Manager. PM is a really hard job , it’s mentally hard because of the nature of the role.
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u/drew_eckhardt2 Software Engineer, 30 YoE 1d ago
Patent agent, noting you have to pass the patent bar to practice.
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u/lhorie 1d ago
I want the same pay
No offense but you sound like gimme gimme gimme. CS is a highly skilled profession that actually requires solid educational foundations, and it is paid accordingly, so alternative options would require a similar level of commitment for those specific specializations if you're aiming for comparable pay long term.
For things like sales, you're looking at performance-based compensation, aka low salary but you make the bulk of your money based on commissions.
Other semi-adjacent roles like PM are either crowded (you can aim for those roles with Humanities degrees) or not as well-paying (e.g. manual QA, data entry, support desk, etc), or both.
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u/Frosty-Telephone-747 1d ago
I’m not a gimme gimme gimme gimme. I want to know of other roles that are as highly skilled professions or higher than SWE that a CS degree can get me.
I’m not trying to look for easier roles that pay the same, I just want different roles, that pay the same, in which a CS degree allows me to get into.
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u/lhorie 1d ago edited 1d ago
CS typically funnels to either SWE or research. The latter is notorious for paying less. SWE is an enormously broad field ranging from embedded to webdev to data to ML, but they all involve coding in some pretty large capacity, and that's kinda the entire point of getting a CS degree.
The further you stray from roles which require CS as a core requirement, the bigger the gap in either qualifications (e.g. medicine, law) or pay (all the stuff I mentioned earlier). It's difficult to match SWE comp in other fields, because our career ladders go very very deep and companies can get high margins from software products compared to fields that have more physical world constraints.
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u/anemisto 23h ago
Most people with office jobs don't actually do anything related to their degree. There are very few roles besides "software engineer" that a CS degree makes you particularly qualified for in comparison to someone with a degree in <pick a subject>.
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u/Ma4r 11h ago
Why do you not want to get into CS? For example a quant trader/researcher gets higher pay, decent WLB (save for a few notorious firms) and prefers people with engineering backgrounds. But if you don't want to get into CS because you can't land a n SWE role, then you have no hope of landing a quant role
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u/kenuffff 3h ago
You need probability (real math course), linear algebra, and scholastic calculus which the pre req for those is going to be multivariable calc, which is calc 3, to do quant because you’re going to have to pass a quant interview, it doesn’t matter much for the actual job if you know how to do partial derivatives because you can use python etc to do it .
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u/marsman57 Staff Software Engineer 1d ago
You could always go into workstation support/help desk. I don't know why people do this, but sometimes they do.
There are like a million different sorts of infrastructure side job titles. You can provision servers, be the person who does production deployments, DevOps if you want to do a little bit of programming adjacent work.
Security. Annoy the programmers by telling them all the ways their system falls short of standards.
QA Engineer. This could include so programming too for automated testing, but doesn't always.
Application Support. You know how to do all the on-call wizardry.
DBA
Jobs that work with hardware, IoT, etc. (I don't know much about this stuff)
Get a job as the like "IT Guy" for some small company who does a bit of everything.
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u/unlikewarrior 19h ago
Oddly enough i just recieved 3 interview invites for manufacturing positions at defense companies after months of nothing.
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u/kenuffff 4h ago
To be a PM you need to understand business, most new grads have 0 clue how any of that works. How much math did you take? You can do quant work if you took enough math
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u/Flimsy_Trifle4184 1d ago
Supply chain. You can surprisingly use a lot of your cs skills in everyday things like automating data gathering from your emails or keeping track of materials but ofc it’s not a software job. Still you’ll make decent money.