Thread: Is my career idea good?

>>Go to ADFA (The Australian Defence Force Academy) and do computer science<<

First of all - G'day fellow Aussie!

This would be an excellent thing to do - not only would the Army pay your way through university, you will also start off as an officer, not just a grunt (not that there's anything wrong with that, but face it you'd wait years to get anywhere!).

Either way, really have a good think about it, and get in contact with ADFA to find out more.

At 14 I didn't even dare to think beyond the end of school. Even when I finished at age 17, I still had no idea what to do really. I was going to just go direct entry into the Army, but then I decided to do a 3-year Information Systems degree at uni instead. I'm glad I did, because there is no way I would have been ready for the pressures of ADFA. Having said that, if this is something you really want, I think you should go for it - just make sure you know all of your options before making any decisions just yet

Best of luck mate!

[stealth]

I don't know about Australia, but in general, if you join the military, as opposed to being employed by them, you'll do what they tell you. You may get programming training, or not, and you may actually work at programming, or not.
You stand a good chance of getting what you want, seeing as it's computers, but you never know. Some in the US joined under promises of certain training/jobs, but instead got posted as a radar operator in the Aleutian Islands. They sued & lost.
You also have to be willing to kill and die. Hopefully wouldn't come to that, but it's always possible.

Every career idea is good; I remember when they told me that my idea of getting through college by becoming a male stripper was ludicrous. Well, they were right.


Seriously, though, my old man was in the airforce and coded some of the OS for guided missiles.

You sure about that, Scourfish? Aren't you down near Wright-Patterson AFB, where they took the Roswell evidence? Maybe your dad was deciphering an OS! Hmmm...

Originally posted by salvelinus
I don't know about Australia, but in general, if you join the military, as opposed to being employed by them, you'll do what they tell you. You may get programming training, or not, and you may actually work at programming, or not.
You stand a good chance of getting what you want, seeing as it's computers, but you never know. Some in the US joined under promises of certain training/jobs, but instead got posted as a radar operator in the Aleutian Islands. They sued & lost.
You also have to be willing to kill and die. Hopefully wouldn't come to that, but it's always possible.

The Australian Army is still desperate for people with IT skills. Yes, first and foremost you are a soldier and there is always the chance of having to go into combat. However, I would argue that the chances of you doing so as an IT professional working in the Army would be slim - they'd need you to be doing the tech stuff because that is your primary area of training.

Second of all, no programming job is ever going to have you just coding for 100% of the time, all the time. In the Army, you won't always be doing IT related work all of the time. But that is like in any IT job - you'll often have to do tasks, which aren't necessarily related to your job description, but you have to do them anyway.

Third, eventually you'll want to be just more than a programmer, and want to move up a senior programmers position, and so on - working your way into mid-management, from there, who knows? It's getting the experience that counts initially, and the Army would provide an excellent opportunity to do this.

Probably right, but you never know.
Just a point .
14 is pretty young to commit to a path. Of course, so is 18. Or 21.

Don't worry about it now. Hell, I went through @ 10 - 12 majors in college alone.

>>14 is pretty young to commit to a path. Of course, so is 18. Or 21.<<

Yeah 14 is young. 18...well try telling that to your family, friends, society at large! I finished school at 17 and it was like "you must decide your future now before its too late!". Argh...well at least I'll be 20 and already have a degree and be I can choose to do what I to do.

>>Don't worry about it now. Hell, I went through @ 10 - 12 majors in college alone.<<

And I thought I had a hard time making up my mind!

>>> Why not? Explain?

As I said, I think it is unethical. I would not like my skills used towards an end which involved killing or maiming people. One can always argue the "defence" line, but military is military to me - and that means no.

Ok, lets see here...I'm 14 and live in Australia (Sydney). I love programming in C++ and the Win32API and I really want to become a job using it (or at least coding). My plan is this:

Finish high school and do my HSC with the highest software development marks I can

Go to ADFA (The Australian Defence Force Academy) and do computer science

Get a job in The Australian Defence force programming in C++.


Is this a good plan or not? I'd like to be in the army anyway. Is there something I'm overlooking in my plan?

Hi,

I also live in Australia, i've lived in Nowra, Canberra, Sydney and now Brisbane. Before leaving school i also had the idea of going to ADFA to do computer science, but after actually looking into the courses and subjects on offer, i realised that ADFA just doesn't cut it as far as computing science is concerned.

if you want to do a good degree to get you into a fun programming job, then my advice is to do B. Computing Science and the Uni of Technology, Sydney. It's one of the best courses around.

There's no way you'll get a good programming job in any of the forces. Most of the work that the forces have in IT is now outsourced (how do i know?? coz i'm one of the guys who they are outsourcing to . I write mission planning software for the RAAF).

Hope that helps!
U.

Outsourcing is a bucket term meaning delegating a job to an external contractor.

eg. once upon a time, the local council employed people to empty the rubbish bins, now it is competitively tendered and outsourced to the tenderer who has best slushed the politicians involved in making the decision.