I'm a little over half done my CS degree. I love programming, Linux, etc. I am considering getting CompTIA A+ and Linux+ this summer with pirated Udemy courses. I do coding projects too, like I am almost done my homebrew NDS game, threw together a Tkinter pomodoro app last week, and in the past I made a command line program that computes a readability score on a body of text. Finally, I am participating in 100 days of leetcode problems together with my CS club. So I've done a lot to move towards coding professionally.
The question is what kind of career should I go for to suite my goals in life. I would like to be able to own a place to live in Quebec (don't live there yet) whether it is in MTL or a rural area, not sure what I want yet. So software dev. gets a point for higher income, I think, plus it's what I've studied for, mostly. But it's important to me too that I have free time outside of work and so can participate in social movements. Would working in helpdesk allow a better or worse WLB? Would it be more likely to be unionized and thus a better place from which to participate in tech labour struggle? I'd really like to achieve fluency in French and Chinese (currently a beginner and intermediate learner respectively) eventually, and maybe the IT world would have me talk to people more. Is it easier to break into than software, like, so much easier that it would be worth changing course, or just doing IT as a stepping stone for my first co-op (internship program in Canada) or two?
Interested in others thoughts on how to proceed here.
For the meantime I think I'll start the A+ course because it can't hurt, and keep working on my DS game, cuz it's almost done.
I don't even know if I want to do either of those professions, I could see myself teaching English too, to Francophones and Chinese especially as I want to learn those languages...
one thing to consider, I've not found it too difficult to transition from dev -> devops -> SRE. The opposite direction seems more tricky (as development skills/experience is harder to pick up on the job for one in IT than vice versa). This is just a personal anecdote tho
In the end, I'd choose the one that appeals to you more. But I do think that development is the more valuable (strictly in the market sense) career track and gives you more options to transition later down the road. So if you're doing well right now and aren't really anxious to transition, I'd stick with it until you have a few years of experience
I'm some years past college now tho so I can't speak on what the relative prospects are for new grads, esp in Canada
Thanks for your viewpoint and I think I'll do that and keep working towards my first dev co-op etc. Nice to have the flexibility to transition down the line.