Ask HN: Recent college graduate (math) in need of tech career advice

[yluplfca]

Hey, HN.

5-year lurker here.

I just finished college and am trying to get a decent job as quickly as I can. My degree is in math, from a top 20 school, with a low (2.9ish) GPA. I have a few years of entry-level IT support experience, a few years of college math tutoring experience, a research project in applied math, and some basic programming and CS skills.

I’m willing to do…

* any kind of work,

* in any field,

* anywhere in the country with a reasonable cost of living,

that…

* pays at least a $50k salary and benefits,

* doesn’t require significant travel,

* has a consistent, 40-hour schedule,

* doesn’t require me to bring work home,

* isn’t a call center, and

* that I can start immediately with my existing qualifications.

Based on my background and goals, I’ve narrowed it down to programming, software QA/testing, business analyst, and IT support (in that order of preference). Which of these, if any, would you recommend that I focus on? Or is there another field I should be considering instead? Any insights on this would be massively appreciated.

[rt2016]

You may be in a little bit of a tough spot trying to get into the big tech companies with that GPA but I still think there are plenty of options when you start to look at smaller companies in areas of the country that are not Silicon Valley. I'll give you my opinion as a semi-recent grad working in tech.

- Depending on what you mean by "basic programming and CS skills", it may be hard to find a programming job other than an internship. Unless you are in an environment that makes heavy use of math-based languages like MATLAB, R, or Mathematica where you can rely on your math background, most employers will want to see more experience before hiring you as a programmer.

- Software Q/A testing or IT support may be your best bet given your prior experience in IT support and some familiarity with programming. Software Q/A testing can actually be quite interesting and will definitely pay around (or more) than what you're looking for. I would try to look with smaller tech companies that do niche enterprise software, they're quite flexible and open. The best thing about software QA/testing is that you have a very predictable work schedule and won't have to take work home or be called in at odd hours.

- Business analyst is also a good option, but again you may have to settle for smaller or lower-tier companies in the short term as GPA is of unexpectedly large importance for that position.

[yluplfca]

Noted. Thank you so much. In that case, it sounds like software Q/A testing or business analyst are my best bets.

If it matters, my programming experience is a couple of Java classes in HS, an intro to algorithms and data structures (in Java) in college, the research project I mentioned (which was in Matlab), and many small Python scripts for various math/physics classes.

I'm pretty confident I could self-teach and/or learn on the job whatever programming I need to get up to speed as a professional developer, and I've heard of people who got programming jobs right out of college with an unrelated technical degree. So I guess I'm just wondering whether they are outliers or if this is actually a feasible thing to try (and if so, how I would go about doing it).

Also, as far as getting into larger or higher-tier companies, I could really care less about the size or prestige of a company as long as it meets all my other goals (esp. salary). And I actually would rather not live in Silicon Valley (or California in general) due to the high taxes and cost of living.

[rt2016]

No worries, just hope some of it helped.

Regarding teaching yourself programming, that's always a good idea. There are enough people who get programming jobs out of college with unrelated degrees so it's definitely not just outliers, but still not close to the norm either. I just wasn't sure what you meant by basic knowledge, but from what you describe you could easily teach yourself, though I would expect it to take some time.

If you can wait anywhere from 1-6 months and are willing to study programming like it's your job for that time I'd wager you could learn enough to get a job as a programmer. In 1 month you can target the skills toward a particular type of position (ex. Ruby on Rails, Node.js, iOS, Android, etc.) and given longer time you could study more core computer science concepts (system design, security, more advanced algorithm analysis, etc.)

If time is in short supply, then you should try to look into companies where software QA/testing can be a transition to a programmer. In this case you could work in QA for 6 months while building stronger coding skills and then transition pretty smoothly.

However, given that programming interviews are so variable and usually stick to fundamental data structures or puzzles, there's a good chance you could find a programming job with your background. In that case, go for it, the pay will be better for sure. Expect to work quite hard the first year as you catch up.

TL;DR anything is possible, don't let my limited experience steer you too much

[yluplfca]

Thank you. That is very helpful.

As time unfortunately is in short supply, it seems like it will probably make the most sense for me to just jump right into QA/testing and go from there.