What now, BS in Computer Science?

What else can I do for work, CS related? Job experience is more important than a degree for getting a job, but job experience + a degree is much better than job experience alone. If you have problems getting a 'real' CS job, just take anything you can get in IT to get your resume started, from data entry to desktop support to working night shift at a data center. IT is really fluid, and the ability learn new technologies quickly, to program and just understanding fundamentally how computers work will give you a fast track to advancement over everybody you're working with without that degree.

I was not a good programmer when I started my professional career. I could code my way out of a paper bag, but only just. It was tough going at first, but you'd be surprised how quickly your skills improve when you have to do nothing but write code and talk about code all day Monday-Friday. Practice apparently does make - well, not perfect, but better. The funny thing was that I thought I was about as good as I was going to get and was massively dispirited that I was going to enter this career where I was going to feel marginally competent for all time. Oh lol lol what a fool I was. It took me about 3 years working full time to get to a point where I felt like I actually knew what the heck I was doing. At this point I think about how much trouble I had with simple things when I first started working out of school and it's shocking that I even have the same brain. Seriously. Take the most challenging job you can talk your way into and just plug away and do your best to rise to every challenge. Fake it until you make it. It'll happen, man. I'm surprised the job market is looking so tepid. I don't even work in Silicon Valley and I'm still beating recruiters off with a stick. I get the impression that you can't throw a rock in Palo Alto without hitting a dude who just graduated from business school and is looking for a technical cofounder. Are you trying to stay in NJ? Have you applied further afield at all? I have spoken with several K-12 CS teachers and I would say it's not a great place to be right now. Very few states have formal computer science standards for K-12 and in this budget environment, teachers whose subjects aren't included in standards are living in real fear in many states. If you really want to teach, see if you can't get into math or physics teaching over CS, for sure. Memail me if you need more peptalk goodness or want to send me your resume.

It can feel overwelming but trust me many of us were feeling that way as we approached graduation. Truth be told there is many things that you can do with a computer science degree all with or without programming. The key to remember is that any reputable employer knows that you will need to be groomed and molded to work in a profession setting. All of us needed that. Most of us were taught the theory but needed to learn the practical aspects of the work while on the job. Even if you eventually find yourself in a non-programming job don't discount that skillset. It is useful to have in your back pocket. Being able to write little ad hoc programs to analyze datasets is a powerful thing to know. For example Slate magazine recently listed a job notice for a journalist with programming skills. Good luck.

I don't mean this to sound harsh, but if you're about to finish a 4-year Computer Science degree and don't really know how to program, you may have some serious catching up to do. That said, I think a lot of CS graduates find themselves in a similar position. Most people I know in the field acquired their real working skills on the job, whether they have a degree or not. There are lots of jobs where you can bootstrap yourself a career, given certain aptitudes and some real interest/imagination. You might have to grind through a couple of shitty ones first, but that too is useful experience. As to programming classes, the answers to http://ask.metafilter.com/199729/How-do-I-most-effectively-learn-how-to-program might be worth reading through.

I pity the recent MBA who hooks up with a "technical co-founder" who can't be bothered to do any personal coding projects beyond the absolute minimum required for his degree. Oh, so do I, but that's beside the point. The point is there's total irrational exuberance right now and I'm surprised to hear anyone who's about to finish a CS degree is really this worried about prospects. It isn't easy to find good people, but it is often worse to have someone who can't cut it on the team than an open seat. Quoted for truth. But there are plenty of teams on which someone who made A's in a challenging program while holding down a part-time job would be fine, I think. (I have no idea if the OP's program was challenging or what sort of job is discussed in the question, but I'm saying you don't have to be the top student in your class with internships at Awesome Inc to be of worth on a team.) I didn't do any personal coding projects when I was a student. I knew I was supposed to, because of threads like this (including one initiated by me, in fact, using a sockpuppet), but I didn't have the coding skills to get anything nontrivial done and found the whole exercise frustrating. My homework was hard enough and by the time I finished it the last thing I wanted to do was write more code. This idea that every future software engineer MUST be hacking on Linux kernels in his spare time is part of what scares people out of software. Arashi, it definitely helps to do your own projects outside of school. It helps a ton, as do internships, part-time jobs, research jobs, and basically anything else you do where you write code for any reason. Any practice you can get improves your skills and your confidence. But just because you don't have your own projects doesn't mean you can't be a successful software engineer. It might take you a bit longer, and you'll have to work hard at the outset, but it's possible. There was a reason you chose CS as your major and stuck it out. Keep sticking it out. This is clearly kind of a sore point for me. I think a lot of minorities in computing leave to do things like, oh, teach K-12 CS because of this mindset and I think our industry is worse off as a result. You don't have to live and breathe CS to be good at writing software. You sure have to like it or you'll find yourself really hating your job, but it doesn't have to be your life. As a corollary, you'd better like CS as much or more if you plan to teach it, because I guarantee teaching CS in a high school will be way more difficult, way more frustrating, and way less lucrative than any coding job out there.

Doing database work will pigeonhole you into doing only database work in the future. If you were an A student, SQL may limit you to jobs less-good than those you should be pursuing, although I may be miscalibrated terribly. What level of academic rigor was your undergrad? Do you know one programming language well? Do you know big-O notation? If I said "implement a self-balanced binary tree" in Java, C, C++, or Python, could you? Where do you live? An urban area, or somewhere less urban? Most CS jobs are focused on the cities. If you're an A student with a moderately rigorous bachelors in CS, and you know the basics of programming, you should be making $50-60k/y out of school. I'm not sure how you can have several semesters of not-programming in a CS degree track, though.

I have a cousin who has a CS/EE bachelor's, he graduated almost 20 years ago, and he is occasionally cold-called (or emailed) by undergrads at his alma mater. He says he always tries to help anyone who contacts him. So, try and work some alumni connections. Research whoever you reach out to so you are familiar with their work and areas of interest.

Your program must have had electives in databases, right? What I mean is, what classes did you pick up for your electives? Those should reflect what you're interested in, right? There's nothing wrong with going in a different direction now, but there's probably work in whatever you did choose to learn about instead of databases. I don't know about the OP's specific experience but the relatively well respected CS program I was in during undergrad had basically no choices as part of the normal CS sequence that involved learning about SQL or relational databases in general. I did take one course that taught SQL basics and normalizing database structures and whatnot, but it was from the Business college and would not have counted for my general CS major requirements. At any rate it's very common for CS programs to focus almost entirely on subjects that are not directly applicable to the vast majority of programming jobs that are out there, such as graph theory or other topics that aren't used in business applications. Which is why having outside of class projects is so important, that's the main way that students learn the actual technical skills that would be required in the real world. A lot of employers hiring CS grads realize that they won't be completely prepared though, and count on the fact that smart people who did well in school will probably be able learn the skills needed to do an entry level job after they are hired.

The internships that were read to me were about IT, some had a lot of skills I didn't have, and some were areas I don't really want to go into. I would go ahead and not worry about the skills you don't have if there's an internship that interests you. I mean, there's a reason it's an internship; they're going to expect you to learn on the job. If there's another candidate applying that has those skills that you don't, sure, they'll have a better shot than you, but the opportunity cost of applying is negligible. What has your experience been if you got your BS in CS? I didn't work on any toy projects while studying, but I did take part in my school's coop program where they place you with a company for a few months. Students in the program usually get an offer to work full time at the company where they're placed if they're not totally awful, but I ended up going elsewhere. If nothing else, the program guarantees that you'll have a few months working at a real software company to put on your resume by the time you graduate. My best bet is an internship where I would be trained (one was training in SQL for database... which sounds interesting). Your program must have had electives in databases, right? What I mean is, what classes did you pick up for your electives? Those should reflect what you're interested in, right? There's nothing wrong with going in a different direction now, but there's probably work in whatever you did choose to learn about instead of databases.