Maximum PC

Hello,

I'm currently in a 2 year school pursing an Associates in Applied Science degree (Computer Science major), and I haven't been able to decide what I'm going to able able to do.

I originally planned to attend a four year school to get a Bachelor's in Computer Science and get into game development. I had to go to the school I'm in now due to financial and academic constraints, and I'm not sure what to do now. I haven't been programming games since I moved out of my hometown, and I live in a tech industry dead zone where the need for computer and I.T. professionals are at a minimum. I have been building and tweaking my PCs out of my own leisure though.

Finish your degree, move to a more IT friendly city, get some experience, go back to school for your BS if you want, but I'll tell you this, once you start to get real world experience behind your belt with proper industry certifications, that BS degree won't really matter too much. It would only help you open up more doors than an AS degree, but in some area's, IT fields are booming. Specially if you know linux and sys admin. Starting salary is somewhere in the 81-86k last I saw.

Knowing people in the tech industry will go a long way to your career path, so mingle around and go do industry specific meetings near your area (state wide usually), tradeshows or job fairs.

Thanks!

And even if you think your area is an IT deadzone, it just means you have an opportunity to showcase your skill in your area where many people may not think that they would actually need you.

I always get random tech side jobs in random places to help setup small business networks, develop a website, setup a few PC's or build them custom computers for certain applications; or whatever tech consulting I would do. Lots of people just aren't tech knowledgeable and I know plenty of people who feel overwhelmed with all of this "PC stuff" who aren't tech savvy like us, specially when they go look for stuff online. People like that still get frustrated and go to a brick and mortar store and pay the premium.

And its a huge market full of people like that; its almost frightening meeting home/small business owners who don't understand IT needs at all. They think its simple as adding a 2nd or 3rd computer, but completely miss the ball on backups. Even my last big job at a small corporate medical company, they were severely limiting it's growth because of an insignificant IT budget. One of the big reasons why IT is a huge (quiet) boom for the last year or two is because businesses put a freeze on IT jobs.

You could always pursue a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college online so you can work and study at the same time. In fact, I read a review of Stevens Henager College not very long ago (interested in computer science)that said that the college offers both on-campus as well as online programs in computer science, healthcare, graphic design and business. I’d advise you to always be thorough with your research when applying to colleges.

The important thing to do is finish your current degree studies. And as was suggested move to an area where there are better job prospects, like Southern California, Texas, or Canada (Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal). Giving up or changing will leave you without an education, and lower your employment prospects. Plus finishing your degree shows employers that you can commit and finish what you start.

With that said, don't expect to get into game development right away. Lots of shop hire, and do his junior developers, but they're few and far between. Most want experience. Yada, yada...same for any industry. But the game development industry requires it because game development is not normal main stream code slaving - you're not working on financial systems, or developing web applications. You're dealing with complex mathematical models, different types of languages and API's, and while the rewards working for these companies can be phenomenal, the demands are immense as well. There's a reason why the Blizzard's, Google's, Facebook's of the world have day cares, gourmet food in their cafeteria's, doctor's offices, even dormitories...etc...it's because if they can get 18 of 24 hours out of you or more, they will.

I'm a senior technical support engineer for a company that provides centralized software version management and control for some of the largest tech, gaming, and software companies in the world and I've been to or heard of the campus' of google, facebook, nvidia, pixar, blizzard, sony...etc...and they are pretty much all awesome sauce. But you got a lot of competition.

A general computer sciences degree with an applied associates degree is very good cushion to have. Mix it with some programming certifications, and you'll be very quickly employable. And if you're smart (you don't have to be intelligent) you will learn about good and proper coding habits and strategies, and will eventually gain the experience you need to basically call your shots anywhere in the industry.