I’m a little over half done my CS degree. I love programming, Linux, etc. I am considering getting CompTIA A+ and Linux+ this summer with pirated Udemy courses. I do coding projects too, like I am almost done my homebrew NDS game, threw together a Tkinter pomodoro app last week, and in the past I made a command line program that computes a readability score on a body of text. Finally, I am participating in 100 days of leetcode problems together with my CS club. So I’ve done a lot to move towards coding professionally.

The question is what kind of career should I go for to suite my goals in life. I would like to be able to own a place to live in Quebec (don’t live there yet) whether it is in MTL or a rural area, not sure what I want yet. So software dev. gets a point for higher income, I think, plus it’s what I’ve studied for, mostly. But it’s important to me too that I have free time outside of work and so can participate in social movements. Would working in helpdesk allow a better or worse WLB? Would it be more likely to be unionized and thus a better place from which to participate in tech labour struggle? I’d really like to achieve fluency in French and Chinese (currently a beginner and intermediate learner respectively) eventually, and maybe the IT world would have me talk to people more. Is it easier to break into than software, like, so much easier that it would be worth changing course, or just doing IT as a stepping stone for my first co-op (internship program in Canada) or two?

Interested in others thoughts on how to proceed here.

For the meantime I think I’ll start the A+ course because it can’t hurt, and keep working on my DS game, cuz it’s almost done.

I don’t even know if I want to do either of those professions, I could see myself teaching English too, to Francophones and Chinese especially as I want to learn those languages…

  • some_guy
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’ve worked in IT and as a non-coding software engineer (QA). It depends on the company and the projects. For example, if your project releases annual updates, you can find yourself working late during crunch time as a coder. Similarly, in IT you can end up on-call. The biggest issue is defining your boundaries and finding a job that meets those constraints, which is not always easy.

    I accepted an IT position where I am on-call to a VIP because I was uniquely positioned to do the job well. The trade off is that during my work day, there’s very little demand from the rest of the org and I read books in between calls or watch YouTube videos. It’s the easiest job I’ve ever had except when it’s high stakes and that’s not terribly frequent (except when it is).

    Either field can be a dream or a nightmare. Good luck choosing. I hope you land somewhere that you find fulfilling.