What non-software jobs exist for a newly graduated CS major?
Hey all,
I'm a computer science major, and I'm about to graduate at the end of April. My general life situation is a bit messy, so unless I can find a job this month, I am going to have to look into some less-than-savory options for housing and feeding myself.
I've applied for ~280 entry-level software engineering positions thus far and have had a few calls back, but once the company realizes that my graduation date is a month out, I never hear from them again (I follow up anyway, just in case.) I also have been working an internship through school for about two years, and expected to get a return offer, but that recently fell through. I can continue to work there past graduation, but I'd still be an intern for the foreseeable future, and that will not be enough to cover rent.
I haven't given up, exactly -- I'm still networking rather aggressively, and, even though it makes me feel bad, I'm milking every connection I have to try to find something. I just don't feel like the chances are good that I land a software job in the timeframe that I've got left, so I want to start looking at what else I can do with just "a degree" as opposed to "a computer science degree." Obviously the job market is horrible for everyone right now, but wider nets catch more fish and all...
So, any suggestions?
Don't think lightly of this. (Imagine not having a job for 18 months, and regretting quitting.) Stay in that intern job for as long as you can (unless you find proper full-time work, of course). You'll gain resume-worthy experience while many others won't have anything at all for N months after graduating.
I'd recommend staying current with "coding + AI" (whatever that happens to mean in any given quarter). Only you can make the final judgement based on your personal situation, but, in my opinion, the entry-level paid tier of Claude (Code) is worth it. Don't think "oh no, everyone's replacing juniors with AI". Think "I'm starting my journey to becoming a senior by trying to do what seniors do with AI".
I have every intention of sticking with my current position until I can find a proper full-time role. The job has been great and, despite the situation, my manager has been nothing but good to me. I'm just worried that
A) I will be working a 40-hour week at that point and still potentially having to crack into savings
B) Employers will write off my years of experience because I am working an internship instead of a "real job"
Point A is concerning because, if this is going to be my situation, I will likely find myself looking for early/late shift part-time employment as a store clerk or some such in order to stabilize financially, and the extra hours will definitely hurt the quality of my work in both roles.
Point B is mostly a reaction to some of the job posts that I've seen explicitly telling me not to count internship experience towards YoE. Which, incidentally, is incredibly frustrating. I work with a very small IT department to serve the technological needs of ~250 people. I am expected to self-direct every project I'm handed, write the requirement doc, write the tests, write the code, handle the database mess, sort out the CI/CD, and ship it on my lonesome. If some sort of new hosting is needed, I'm expected to handle the Azure facet of things too. Not to mention all of the Sharepoint/Powerapps slag I'm asked to maintain as well. Maybe I can request a change in title without a change in pay or something. Even if it doesn't make a real difference, I guess it'd soothe my worries.
Sorry, ranting.
RE; AI, I think your advice is solid, and I appreciate it. I've had a somewhat hard time integrating it into my workflow just because fiddling with Emacs to make everything gel is one of my many personal hells, and a lot of our code has pretty high correctness-standards, but I've been happy to have it take some of the pain out of writing almost-but-not-quite-boilerplate code on a probational basis.
I mean, you don't have to call it an internship on your resume. The only reasons companies tell you to not count it as experience are reasons not relevant to you.
You clearly have the responsibilities of a real job. Being paid or not should not be relevant.
On that note, OP should ask their supervisor to adjust their position title to avoid the stigma of internships.
If possible, having a new title to mark the end of your studies (on your resume, of course) will present well in the long run
If they're calling these responsibilities an internship only because they're not paying you, or paying you crazy little, consider negotiating with them into calling it a non-internship role even if the pay stays. Honestly, maybe even volunteering sounds better than internship for companies specifically not counting them.
I would call it slavery, but I'm a cynical man from a different part of the world.
Sorry OP for not being helpful, wish you all the best in your situation anyway. Try not to get frustrated and learn how to sell your experience.
I think your best bet is to turn up the heat at this internship. Do what you need to do to make people feel like pieces of shit for not helping you out. They want to be comfortable with letting you handle real work for an intern salary; don’t let them have that. I’m not saying be an asshole or make enemies, just that it literally pays to be manipulative.
I suspect what such advice means is not to count it if you have other experience after that. If it's all you've got, then I'd think it would be fair game to include it. And, as others have said, no need to reveal that it's internship work until and unless asked. And, honestly, the interns I've worked with in the past were treated more or less as new juniors. I never thought of them as engineers that I could only give trivial work to.
Frankly, if I were hiring, your description of what you do as "just" a student would impress me. It tells me you've got some of the skill set, and you can get things done autonomously. I would agree that a change in title upon graduating is worth asking for. What really matters to them is likely how much you'll cost them, rather than the title. It would be worth negotiating on compensation after graduating, too, though. Prep well for that conversation. Do homework on market rates; prepare a list of accomplishments and value brought to the company; leverage any knowledge or skill silo you have ("it's only/mostly me that can..."); use an AI chatbot to help with wording, approach, and maybe even roleplay the conversation a few times, so you can practice.
AI: I use Claude Code almost exclusively in its CLI, which is standalone and separate from your IDE/editor. Of course, lots of people use IDE integration, but you don't have to.
The thing it excels at is the sort of code where you can verify it's correct by just running it and looking at what it does. (This is also why people like using TDD with it; it turns lots of problems that don't fit that description into "verify it's correct by running [the tests] and looking at [whether they fail]".)
That is, if you're going to do AI code, have you tried having it fiddle with emacs for you? (In a separate file that you load from init.el, perhaps, if you don't want it messing with your init.el directly.)
(Saying this makes me wonder if I can get it to beat emacs into working well for me. I love the idea of it but hate the implementation.)
Now that's some meta-level thinking! I'll give it a go next time I get a couple of free minutes and report back. I'm sure that the available tooling itself has also come a long way since I last tried, so maybe it'll be an easy win.
I highly recommend DOOM Emacs as an entry point. I was told early on that I should start with vanilla to learn everything, but if I were to give my past self advice, it'd be to skip straight out to DOOM. I needed tools that just worked at the time, so while the learning process was valuable, it was also keeping me from getting more high priority work done.
Don't have much experience in SWE job hunting, but I've heard from a few people in science-adjacent fields (ie. Bioinformatics) that they could benefit from more pure CS employees instead of everyone being a bio grad with some coding knowledge. Have you tried applying to those fields?
Another option could be trying to get a job at your university's IT department. Probably won't be a very exciting job, but some unis are happy to hire recent graduates, so depending on your university, this may be a good way to gain experience.
Funny you should ask! I recently attended a networking event focused specifically on the field of biology. It's something I'd love to do, but whether I could realistically get into such a company is a bit iffy. The discussions I had with the people there made it seem like a lot of the companies in the space are start-ups or otherwise operating on thin margins. I'm fine with that, but it seems to make it unlikely that such a company would choose to pay a full-time salary to a new grad. It also seemed to be the case that most of the people I spoke with would've wanted me to have a Master's -- mentioning that I'm an undergrad student typically got me a light ribbing. Doesn't prevent me from applying to other companies in the field though, and I'd be very happy to land somewhere in there.
RE: working at my university, it's not something I've really thought of. I think it's probably got the best shot of working though, so I'll look around and see if they've got any positions open. Maybe one of my professors can help me out, if I'm lucky.
If you're open to working at your (or any) university, what about being a TA? From what I remember, they tend to favour current post-grads and seniors for hiring.
Just try. If you're going to speculate, speculate positively. "seems unlikely that" --> "there's a chance that"
It's not something I've considered, but now that you mention it, it'd definitely be a good thing to look into as well. I'll see what my options are, thank you for the suggestion.
Fair enough!
Consider the public sector. Some branch of your local government is probably hiring, and they're usually more willing to take a chance on a youngster with no real experience than a private sector employer would be. If you're in the US, look for your state's job board (they all have one as far as I know) and see if they have anything you feel you might be qualified for even if it's a bit of a stretch on experience. If there's nothing there, check your county and your city for job postings, as most of them have them listed as well. Consider positions that aren't tech directly, but will get your foot in the door of employment in the government. Consider positions at government-run schools and universities as well. They're also not usually using AI to filter out applicants, so the odds that you'll get a human response is higher than in the private sector. Also, a piece of advice: don't be afraid to reach for a job you're not quite perfectly qualified for. A job listing is a wish-list.