2. If you don't like coding at all, during your college, you need to master these subject areas: Systems analysis and design, Software Engineering and Agile practices, Cloud Computing Project Management, DBMS, and Management Information systems. Additionally study Basics of Management, Organization Theory, Business Communications and People Management. You should focus on roles like Business Analyst, Scrum Master, Software Auditor, PMO, Project manager, Digital Creator. Additionally, if you have good mathematical (Linear Algebra, Calculus) and statistical background, then consider Business Analytics and Data Science. You need to master at least MS Excel and its statistical formulas to progress. If choose this track then you need to improve your coding skills. R programming is simple, whereas Python with its data-science packages will take much longer to learn.
3. If you like coding, then master at least two object oriented programming languages, say Java and Python, or C#.net and Python. Also, learn JavaScript and Groovy. The rational behind is, full-stack developer roles needs good programming skills. Practice, practice and practice writing code using different IDEs, example Eclipse, Intellij, Visual Studio Code, Atom etc. Always refer best coding practices, and do self review of your code against those standards. In your local developers machine, use SonarQube or similar tools to check your code. Don't skip writing unit tests and master test driven development. This process also demands learning git, maven, Gradle, Jenkins and Docker containers, knowledge on Jfrog Artifactory and similar tools that helps to mange binary versions among releases. And these days we can't think of doing development without including build and CI tools. If development is your passion then you must sweat a lot in writing the right code, unit testing it well with all possible scenarios, meeting timelines and quality checks. Solve programming puzzles available online in sites like Topcoder, Coderanch, Hackerrank
4. If you like testing, then don't just do selective reading of articles from the internet. You must read the lovely books which reflects the research and thoughts went into establishing testing and quality assurance as an important branch of software engineering. These initial books written on test automation still motivates a lot of QA professionals in finding better ways to organize and optimize their testing efforts and automation strategies. Your entire computer science study comes to life when you join as a QA professional to a project and experiences the e2e SDLC or Agile life-cyles. You need at least following skills to succeed, irrespective of what career level you are in:
- Analytical ability and problem solving
- Comprehension and proofreading
- Inspection and review
- Ability to quickly absorb functional domain knowledge
- Ability to identify and quantify risks
- Identifying and deriving test scenarios
- Constructive debate and negotiation skills (part of overall communication skills)
- Identifying test data requirements and finding/suggesting ways to acquire it in adequate quantities before test execution phase (in simple words should have good knowledge on TDM (Test data management process)
- Test infrastructure identification, setup and management
- Test driven development and automation first approach in agile
- Defect logging best practices and defect lifestyle management using tools like Jira, ALM
- Optimizing test design at per quality expectations and delivery time
- Optimizing test execution using techniques like prioritizing test based on risk, coverage, functionality, cross-cutting dependency etc. Leveraging automated test execution (parallel test execution preferred) through continuous integration platform
- Error and exception log analysis skills to narrow down to potential root cause. Example CI/CD logs (i.e. Jenkins), batch/shell job execution logs, DB logs etc.
- Good communication and presentation skills
- Self-management (i.e. self-organizing, stress management, time management etc.)
5. Identity Management, System Admin (including Cloud), DevSecOPS, Cyber Security: If you are a computer science student and are interested in these roles, you should focus on subjects like Digital Electronics, Computer Hardware and Networking, Unix Operating Systems, Cloud computing, Unix Administration, Windows Administration, Computer Security, Cyber Security, Ethical Hacking, Containerization and orchestration (including networking, ingress, administration), Virtual desktops administration and management (i.e. VMWare, Microsoft Remote Desktop Environment, Citrix etc.). But never undermine the mathematics lectures which equips you with important concepts of calculations. Besides, you must learn how to do Shell scripting in Unix, windows scripting in Powershell, Groovy or GoLang scripting.
If you are a professional in these areas, then stay relevant with latest technologies and skills. Do self-retrospective to identify areas you must focus on, put up a plan and stick to it until your goal is achieved.
