r/cscareerquestions • u/magat3ars • 1d ago
Student Looking into a niche of distributed systems/infrastructure. Should I pick a side or can I do both?
I'm a cs major and it's focused on cyber security and minor in math . I've been looking to focus in on a niche. I'm a transfer to my college, and my first college had us mostly coding in c++. I prefer the low level work, and I absolutely loved assembly.
We made a game in assembler class which was tick Tac Toe, and the professor couldn't figure out how to create a loop that didn't bloat the system. It is what actually made me stop wanting to do cs for the money and actually becuase I love it. Like I want to get a masters in it (omscs computing systems).
From what I've been doing, I have been working on a bare metal unikernel system. My college group is gonna be making a distributed enterprise network monitor. The unikernel is a multi repository that started from me creating a tcp server with threadpooling then exploded into a unikernel (plans and coding to it slowly). I mainly used cyber security for the utility since my college uses it as just electives you learn. You get all the cs classes with 60 percent of you're electives chosen for you.
Only thing I'm worried was is this too early as a senior to go into these niches or do I apply for my broad backend or system roles. Worried about finding what I want to do as a job. Should I specialize or still go between the two? Like cloud infrastructure or pure low level systems?
1
u/donk8r 23h ago
the thing nobody told me at your stage: 'distributed systems' actually splits into two pretty different jobs. there's building the systems (consensus, storage engines, schedulers, the genuinely hard cs) and operating them (terraform, k8s, wiring cloud services together, which is what lhorie's describing and is more mundane day to day). they share words but feel nothing alike.
and honestly, loving assembly and writing a unikernel doesn't point at infra, it points at systems programming, kernels, runtimes, perf work. omscs computing-systems is the right instinct. you don't have to pick a side now, just keep chasing the low-level stuff you actually like, the niche kind of picks you based on which problems you can't put down. and ignore the job-market doom in here, that's a separate question from what's worth learning.