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What career to go into?

When I went to college computers were in their infancy. We actually had to program on punch cards and submit the program via a card reader.

I�ve had a decent life as a computer programmer. The job pays well, the work is fun and the job security is decent.

There are many other jobs besides programmer in the technology field:

Business Analyst � they meet with users and identify requirements to the software
Documentation � They document the software
QA � Quality Assurance and testing
Project Manager � The person in charge
DBA � Database Administrator
Production Support � deal with issues when system doesn�t work
Help desk � solve problems
Sales � Sell the software to other firms
Business User � The person who actually uses the software
Release Management � They plan and put together all the changes into a release. This is updating the software to a new version.
Data Quality � They verify the quality of the data in the system
Data Analyst � They study data and try to make business decisions based on it
Scrum master � Runs the project in Agile methodology
Web developer � Develops web based part of software
Auditor � Make sure all procedures are followed and nothing illegal is going on
Security � Makes sure all systems are secure
Architect � They design the workings of the entire system

There are many well-paying jobs in computers vs. other fields, though this could change in the future. Computer security is a field I would look into if I was going to college now . Do some research to see what kinds of jobs you can get with the degree you�ll graduate with? BA in Egyptian Mythology and you might be wasting your money.

Money isn�t everything in a job. It�s important to enjoy what you do. I wish I could have my own business (MYOB), but I don�t know what stresses it would cause. Business is very difficult as most businesses fail. There is also a survivor bias as it looks easy when you look at existing businesses.

Whatever career you go into strive to be the best at it.

A field in finance that pays well is called a Quant, short for Quantitative Analyst. This is a highly paid math geek involved in financial engineering. Financial engineering is usually based on calculating the price of a traded product using complex math. Though the government is highly regulating trading for fear it could bring down the whole economy.

I believe that healthcare, robotics, 3D printing and security will have big opportunities in the future. There will be new technologies that I can�t even imagine right now that will be the jobs of the future. In 1994 someone at Instinet showed me the World Wide Web on a browser, who would have thought in 2015 while writing this you wouldn�t want to live without the internet, not have a smart phone and all the other tech gadgets we currently use.

Use your creativity to solve problems whether business or societal.

Hedge Funds � you can make lots of money but the job security can be weak. They are Mutual Funds on steroids. They take relative bets so you make money independent of what the stock market does. In stocks there are two ways to bet, Long � you believe stock will appreciate in price or short � you believe stocks will depreciate in price. One strategy is a Long-Short where you bet one stock to go up and another to go down, like Toyota vs. GM or Google vs. Microsoft and you make or lose the difference.