I honestly took a year off to just teach math to kids and work at the mall.

Same story, quant finance. Math background. Didn't go anywhere with that immediately.

Here's what I wish I'd done.

Take the minimum amount of steps it requires to go to grad school or line up a quantitative finance job. Even if you don't care about those possible paths, you have the privilege of applying whereas many do not. At least talk to some of those people and see what they have to say to you. It sounds like you're coming up with a catastrophic idea of your future without consulting the very people who are supposed to navigate these waters with you.

If you want a 'realistic' answer, it sounds like you just need a job. Any job. Give up the idea that the work will always be interesting. I guarantee you, once you abandon the pretense that you need to be working on interesting problems, you will see that others will bring interesting work to you anyways.

As math major to another, there are interesting problems everywhere and literally all people are interesting and full of problems.

Add me to that list as well. I originally started graduate school with dreams of moving to California and working for a FAANG company. Early in the program I got a graduate assistantship that basically partnered with a large company to be a half-time intern. I didn't really see myself working at long term.

Over the last five years, I've come to appreciate the fact that I'm not using my knowledge of statistics to keep people addicted to their phones or serve ads. I just took a full-time position there while I finish the tail end of my PhD.

Everyone has an interesting problem to solve. It's just not everyone is slamming down their "achievements" down your throat trying to recruit.

If you have trouble finding anything, consider taking a "backdoor" into it by learning enough SQL and Tableau/Qlikview/other business intelligence tool and use reporting/analysis to break into the field.

The most important advice I can offer on top of that is to strictly restrict your search to "profit centers" in companies - try really hard not to get pulled into "cost center" projects. The main difference is that the first matters to business bottom lines (how to make more money) and the second is necessary, but not particularly appreciated.

Good luck!

As for resources, http://theleanstartup.com is a great one. This method is all about getting something (valuable) into users' hands ASAP so that they can give you the only feedback that actually matters.

One possible entry point into this kind of work could be to find some consultancy that specialises in this kind of work that's willing to hire a grad with solid comp science & coding & mathematics foundations. You're certain to get worked hard and billed out to clients for a lot more than what you get paid, but it can be a great environment for learning rapidly and also getting real world exposure to seeing how general math & computer science & optimisation techniques can be combined and fruitfully applied to some particular industry or business niche. Early in your career it is a lot easier to do something for a year or two and decide it isn't for you, and try something else -- or decide that it's a good fit and that you want to keep pursuing it in industry or pursue further studies to go into more depth about an area you didn't realise you were excited about.

I've found the work most engaging in my career where there's a combination of learning about and understanding some particular industry and then combining that with software development and mathematical modelling/optimisation techniques and then seeing the real world industry-specific results --- but it's hard to know what opportunities in specific real world industries exist and if you would enjoy them without being immersed in it.

Everything else was I don't I don't I don't I don't.

You've got your answer right there. Go make it happen.

There is a lot of odd jobs that you can do as a CS major. As programmers often can solve inefficiency if they can study a process.

That sounds like a thread I would like to pull. What exactly do you enjoy building?

My point isn't to try to force you to be an engineer or something - I have no skin in this game. Just saying that you may be able to find what you're looking for before putting the software industry as a whole aside.

If you're not sure what else you want to do, working as a software engineer for a while is not a bad idea, and may be a very good idea depending on your financial situation - if you want to focus on solving problems instead of working on large software systems, maybe try a smaller company. If you're especially interested in entrepreneurship, this could also expose you to a lot of valuable knowledge.

I think quantitative finance would be perfect for you. I know I wouldn't be able to stand doing anything else. Pay is awesome, problems are incredibly interesting, and the work environment is exciting and fun.

You can't really get any real trading experience unless you work as an instiutional trader, so no, you don't need to have traded.

You also don't need to know anything about finance, though it helps. With a math+CS degree from a top school, I wouldn't imagine you have trouble getting a S&T offer at a bank (maybe not a specific bank like Goldman tho).

The other path you could take is to go straight to the buy-side: prop shop, hedge fund, etc. These jobs are significantly harder to get.

The money won't be as good at the sellside, but it's a lot less risky. Also having a big bank on your resume never hurts. Probably the most common career path is:

summer bank internship -> 2 year analyst stint -> mba/mfe/PhD -> associate role at bank or buy-side fund

-Either an entrepreneur and build something of your own and then build a company around it. Or among the first 5 coders of a startup (Shel Kaphan, Javed Karim sorts). You get in build something and get out to find the next intellectual stimulation.

A lot of companies work on tools to solve problems. My suggestion is to join a company try it for a couple of years and experience it first hand. This would give you enough experience to start your own company and work on your ideas.

A job in which you don't code will pay less. (Not because coders are inherently smarter, but because actually training someone to code is costly.) And many of them have quite a lot of boring bits, just as coding does. However, quite a lot of them will teach invaluable business skills. Like picking up the phone and talking to people; like writing RFPs; like seeing what real-world clients value and what they don't; like soaking up domain expertise.

The last one is a killer, really. Teaching coding to someone who can't code may be expensive, but it's doable (see coding camps all over). Teaching domain expertise to a newcomer is also expensive, but can't be done unless they actually live the domain. So domain expertise in the long run ends up being more valuable. Again, money wise really very little compares to FAANG salaries, but in terms of career options - as many as you want, and then some.

It's also where the most interesting problems lie. Not just interesting, but frankly, quite low-hanging fruit as well.

As for starting a business, or being self-employed, if we're honest here, you've not worked in business, you don't know what problems there are to solve, and up until now, throughout your life you've been optimized to clear benchmarks (get good grades, get into good school, get good grades again). I'm not saying you can't do it, but of all the options, it's the one least lending itself to growth.

I come from a very similar educational background, and my first job as SWE was my worst working experience. Maybe if it wasn't so bad I would have stuck it out, but then again, I wouldn't have chosen differently if I had to do it all over again. Point being, after that experience, I torched one path and was only left with another. I made less money overall, but I learned a domain, traveled the world for business, got comfortable networking and building relationships, got ever-more flexible working arrangements, and eventually carved out a niche. Twenty years on, many of my former SWE colleagues are either in academia, or tech leads/ICs in a software company.

Almost any white-collar job will have "a Bachelors degree" as a minimum requirement. Check! You're already halfway there.

As for jobs and career paths, the truth of the matter is that 95% (or more!) of what you need to know on the job is something that you will learn on the job. In other words, if you have the capacity to learn and grow, you can and will excel in any field that you put effort into. Thinking about going into bioinformatics? Well, your computer knowledge will contribute and your math background will help, but most of the day-to-day work you can and will learn on the job. What about actuarial work? Once again your math and computer knowledge can come into play. In fact, your CS degree will help you with automating any digital aspect of any job. What about a salesperson? You're good with numbers, you're good with logic, and if you can learn a new programming language, you can learn anything. You'll be fine.

You get the point.

Me? My degree is in Theatre, and I'm a Director of Engineering for a pretty large company. I've been working professionally in the tech industry for 15 years.

The critical thing to do is to look at your degree and ask yourself: What qualities do I have and what skills have I learned that are broadly transferable to any industry?

For example, in Theater, I was an actor and a director. What are actors required to do?

- Show up on time

- Work independently

- Work as a group!

- Take constructive criticism and direction

- Memorize vast amounts of material in a short period of time

- Be comfortable speaking in public

- Be a good communicator

- Be empathetic and able to put oneself into someone else's shoes

- Be able to meet deadlines -- the show must go on!

- Be adaptive and able to tackle a wide range of problems, from flaking paint on a set to a broken costume to disruptions in the audience to poor ticket sales

- Be comfortable doing the same thing over and over for a long period of time (shows don't run just once!)

I could go on... but consider this: any employer in any industry would wet their pants if a candidate walked in and could demonstrate those qualities right off the bat, right?

How many people are geniuses at C++ but can't work with a group or take criticism or give a presentation on their work? Fat lotta good that C++ is doing when management is spending all their time putting out fires that this problem employee creates because they can't follow rules!

That whole day-to-day thing? You'll learn that on the job. We all do that, anyway. I've been working professionally in tech for 15 years, and I've never yet had a job where I didn't spend the first month trying to figure out the company's tech stack, administrative processes, people dynamics, and more. It's just how the world works.

So don't think of your degree as a finalized career option. Think of it as a ticket to an interview, as physical proof that you CAN learn and you CAN complete a project and you ARE someone that can do the job -- any job.

Good luck.