Seeking clues on interesting job titles and career fields

BER · Post by **BER** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 4:20 am

I am looking for clues on job titles and career fields that would interest me the most. (Examples of job titles include accountant and reporter, and examples of career fields include television and medicine.) First, consider my three most favorite skills (with my most favorite as #1):

Playing rationally
Problem solving methodically
Analyzing deliberately

What job title or jobs do these skills suggest to you? Suggest as much as you can.

Now, consider my three top interests (with my most favorite as #1):

Arcade Shooting Games ("Shmups")
Quality Control
Arcades

What career fields do these suggest to you? Again, suggest as much as you can. (EDIT: Please use this list: http://www.unt.edu/pais/vwbk/careerfields.htm.)

(By the way, this is another exercise in the book What Color Is Your Parachute?)

LoneSage · Post by **LoneSage** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 4:23 am

Forensics?

personally I'd like to enter DARPA as a career choice.

black mariah · Post by **black mariah** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 4:29 am

Rational? Methodical? Deliberate? Sounds like it's time to get an engineering degree and brush up on your blueprint work.

LoneSage · Post by **LoneSage** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 4:33 am

Personally, I'd say follow you heart (man that sounded lame). It doesn't matter how good you are at something, but choose a job that you know you'd like for the rest of your life, something you enjoy.

landshark · Post by **landshark** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 4:40 am

Kinda sounds like software engineering in the proper field. Possibly research.

BER · Post by **BER** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 4:58 am

LoneSage wrote:Personally, I'd say follow you heart (man that sounded lame). It doesn't matter how good you are at something, but choose a job that you know you'd like for the rest of your life, something you enjoy.

Indeed, I'm following my passions (my "heart", I guess). But I need clues about the names of these job titles and career fields that might interest me. Names will help me research the jobs that I might enjoy the most.

By the way, do you know of any job titles that utilize my three favorite skills?

TalkingOctopus · Post by **TalkingOctopus** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 6:09 am

BER wrote:
LoneSage wrote:Personally, I'd say follow you heart (man that sounded lame). It doesn't matter how good you are at something, but choose a job that you know you'd like for the rest of your life, something you enjoy.
Indeed, I'm following my passions (my "heart", I guess). But I need clues about the names of these job titles and career fields that might interest me. Names will help me research the jobs that I might enjoy the most.

By the way, do you know of any job titles that utilize my three favorite skills?

Software design engineer. I think you pretty much described engineering or computer science. I have to say I am partial to computer science b/c that's my area. Logic, analysis, methodical problem solving, and quality control all play very important roles in software. Software is also interesting because it is very flexible -- there are very few rules. Whatever design you can think up is likely possible.

Vexorg · Post by **Vexorg** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 6:35 am

If you're especially interested in quality assurance, you should also give serious consideration to going into software testing, which is what I do for a living. It's just as much a part of the software development cycle as the coding itself is, and in some places testers can be even more in demand than the programmers themselves. And even though you're primarily a tester, there's also plenty of opportunity to do programming for test automation, which is a very significant part of the field these days. The main drawback to the field is that sometimes you'll find yourself bogged down in 500 manual test cases, and in some case you may have to run those cases on multiple platforms. Thus you see the incentive to automate as much of this as you possibly can.

BER · Post by **BER** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:05 pm

landshark wrote:Kinda sounds like software engineering in the proper field. Possibly research.

It's hard for me to imagine research as its own field. Can you think of any special kind of research that fits my top interests?

BER · Post by **BER** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:08 pm

Vexorg, can you also think of any fields that might fit my top interests? Software testing sounds more like a job title than a career field. (I appreciate your comments about it, though.)

Vexorg · Post by **Vexorg** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:59 pm

Software testing can be a career path in itself really. At least around here, they look for people who might be looking to make a career out of it. Most people here get their start in testing as contract software test engineers. Currently that's about where I am, as a level 3 Software Test Engineer with a little under two and a half years worth of test experience. Eventually, testers with programming skills may become SDETs (Software Design Engineers in Test) which I described in my previous post. They focus primarily on test automation and building test tools. Experienced testers may also be transitioned into test lead positions. The test leads are the ones that manage test teams, and deal with things like bug triage and coordination with the dev and project management. They also write a lot of the test plans. Being a test lead does require a lot of experience in the field, it's certainly not a PHB job.

Back when I first got my start in testing about five years ago, it used to be that you could get a job doing testing just by having basic computing knowledge and being able to follow directions. I'm not so sure this is the case anymore, as around here they're really looking for people who really know what they're doing. Even the low level testers these days need to be able to build their own test cases, and be able to write a test plan for a particular functional area or feature. A very common scenario that someone will come across in an interview for a test position is that they will be given a common everyday item (a toaster seems to be a very common example.) They will then be asked to explain to the interviewer how they would test that product. Someone who would make a good tester will generally be able to put together a fairly decent and well organized list of test cases they would use to verify that the item functions as expected, and find out how it handles unexpected scenarios as well.

I'm not sure exactly how it is I got into testing, but the pay is very good here, and I have adapted to it quite well. I'm not sure if I'll ever have the patience to be a full-fledged developer, but I can see that testing is the kind of thing I would be able to make a career out of. As far as a career field goes, testing is just as much a part of software engineering as the development itself is.

landshark · Post by **landshark** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 3:37 am

Not to knock anybody's job here, but I FEAR software testing. It is the most boring, dry, unrewarding thing related to software. Seriously, ugh.

We have to follow the entire software process and then some, where I work. Testing is by FAR the most dreaded part of the entire process.

*HOWEVER*, it IS methodical. But there is not very much analysis to be done on the testing side. The analysis comes on the "find the bug" side (the developer/engineer who has to fix it). I would quite possibly quit my job of 6 years if they forced me into a full-time tester position.

On the flip side, depending on where you go; you can make the same pay as a software engineer or manager - I can throw some figures out if you want.

It's hard for me to imagine research as its own field. Can you think of any special kind of research that fits my top interests?

Research is not an easy field to get into. You could get into it as a professor; but that requires years of study to attain the PhD. You can also get into a position at a research lab for a major company, but those are highly sought after positions and it is VERY difficult to walk in as a new hire and attain those positions (if not impossible - usually have to work your way around the company and they fall into your lap).

One field of study that would fit your criteria would be cryptoanalysis; heh, possibly with the military, though that is just a guess.

Randorama · Post by **Randorama** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 10:57 am

One possibility is to work in logistics field as a manager.
I would say that, given your academic background, your passions and your hobbies, a stimulating job should involve a good amount of heuristic analysis, and this can be provided by any work that involves optimization of resources. I don't think that, unless you learn Japanese and move to Japan (and where to? Some of the few small companies still doing shmups?), you can be involved directly in game-making. However, any work involving optimization processes should be close enough to your approach and passions. I'm sorry i can't provide a clearer description, as i don't know the job market in your country.
One thing i may suggest you: avoid big companies with well-defined strategies, small companies need to be more dynamical and thus be more careful and creative in their strategies, that's where you can play a good part.

BER · Post by **BER** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 4:58 pm

LoneSage wrote:Forensics?

personally I'd like to enter DARPA as a career choice.

I thought that forensics was a career field of its own, but when I tried searching for it on this list:

http://www.unt.edu/pais/vwbk/careerfields.htm

I couldn't find it. Considering my top interests, what career fields from that list might I use forensics?

Also, what job titles (that might best utilize my favorite skills) do you associate with DARPA? And career fields? I think I can do many things in DARPA, but I don't know what will job best fit me there.

BER · Post by **BER** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 5:10 pm

Vexorg, thanks for telling me more about software testing and a few possible career paths from being a tester. However, I still don't know what career fields might best fit me. For example, I could be a software tester in the field of philosophy (I don't know how that'll work, though!).

So could you please choose these fields (that best fit my top interests) from this list:

http://www.unt.edu/pais/vwbk/careerfields.htm

BER · Post by **BER** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 5:20 pm

landshark, thanks for telling me the difficulty of getting a research job. I was playing around with the idea of working in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. However, I still feel that I can do research in any of these fields:

http://www.unt.edu/pais/vwbk/careerfields.htm

Which of those on that list might best fit my top interests?

landshark wrote:One field of study that would fit your criteria would be cryptoanalysis; heh, possibly with the military, though that is just a guess.

So do you think that cryptanalyst is a possible job title for me? Or applied mathematician or just plain mathematician?

landshark · Post by **landshark** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 4:36 am

I'm not sure which of those would fit you. Ever think about stock market work? That is analytical, involving mathematical models.

What about law?

I know two people at work with math degrees (one with a masters in math, one with a bachelors). They don't use them. You'd need to get into the right field to utilize those skills.

I don't know much about crypto as a career, but I know people DO do it. So you may want to investigate further.

Melf · Post by **Melf** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 6:48 am

LoneSage wrote:personally I'd like to enter DARPA as a career choice.

Won't that be hard, since the DARPA chief is dead?

Post by **Ghegs** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 6:52 am

Melf wrote:
LoneSage wrote:personally I'd like to enter DARPA as a career choice.
Won't that be hard, since the DARPA chief is dead?

That just means there's a job opening.

BER · Post by **BER** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 6:41 pm

Everyone, thanks for responding. However, I don't have enough responses to complete this exercise. What other forums might not mind having me post this as my first two posts?