

Ask HN: Choices upon graduation for a college student? (Warning: LONG post) - theleboxers7

I&#x27;m a senior graduating from a top 10 university with a major in Computer Science, and I think I&#x27;ve shot myself in the foot  in preparing to enter the CS industry. My GPA is not spectacular, I have few external projects, and I only have a small amount of industry experience. I imagine worst-case scenario I could find menial work as a software engineer in some company, but that&#x27;s not what I want to do.<p>I want to make a disclaimer before I go on that I wasn’t always an underachiever – it’s my misalignment between my expectations and reality that’s causing me the most stress. I grew up in the slums of Boston, joined a gang as a young teen, and saw my best friend arrested for dealing drugs before I turned 15. However, I’ve always been relatively smart, and soon enough, I found myself with a full scholarship to a top 10 university even though I never thought I’d have the funds to go. With that in mind, I always felt like I had something special going for me, and I’ve always tried to do my best since coming to college.<p>However, “doing my best” never entailed doing things to bolster my paper stats – something that has come to bite me in the ass as I search for jobs. Instead, I’ve discovered here that I had a knack for creating “things,” whether it was a technical software project or intangible things like the organizations on campus that I founded, which is why I REALLY want to be a product manager since that seems to align well with my interests. However, it seems like only large companies like Google and Facebook have these positions open, and often they are so selective that I imagine I have no chances of getting in or require 5+ years of prior experience.<p>So the question is: What choices do I have besides being a product manager at a large company, but which would still allow me to use my abilities in innovating and delivering quality products rather than being a code-monkey? I’d really prefer to not be unemployed come this spring. Thanks in advance.
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sharemywin
At small companies the job is mixed with other jobs. So, you might need to
actually code your grand vision. Also, usually a product manager knows the
business side of the product to a another level all together. Consulting is a
very good thing for someone to do directly out of college. You get to see all
types of business and projects, meet alot of new contacts, etc. I would try
for your dream job get feedback about where your coming up short. Also try
networking with people that have that job already.

