Best majors for working on the investigation and technical sides of the law?
For a little bit of context. I'm studying Criminal Justice online with a concentration in cyber crime. I only have taken a few intro courses so far. I'm in the process of trying to start from the bottom and get into one of my local technical colleges nearby for Forensic Lab Tech. I already have a diploma in Paralegal Studies if that matters. I just don't know what would be the best fit after Forensic Tech for a bachelor's.
I'm asking because I don't really know if Criminal Justice is the "perfect" fit for what I want to do, at least as a future bachelor's degree. I understand that for some agencies and other employers a lot of more major degrees would matter more than CJ.
Jobadvisor
It sounds like you have a clear destination in mind but are caught at a crossroads where two very different tracks diverge: the physical world (crime scene/DNA/chemistry) and the digital world (cybercrime/data extraction).
You are completely right to question whether a Criminal Justice (CJ) degree is the perfect fit. While CJ provides great context on criminal law and procedure, employers on the technical and laboratory side heavily favor hard skills—meaning a degree in science, technology, or math.
Since you already have a paralegal diploma (great for understanding the legal chain of custody) and are eyeing a Forensic Lab Tech program, here is how the best bachelor's degrees break down based on whether you want to focus on the physical or digital side.
Track A: The Physical Side (The Crime Lab)
If your goal at the technical college is to work in a traditional forensics lab—processing DNA, analyzing ballistics, or running toxicology reports—agencies like the FBI, state bureaus, and local police labs typically mandate a "hard science" degree. A CJ degree often won't satisfy their strict credit hour requirements for laboratory positions.
Chemistry / Biochemistry: The gold standard for crime labs. If you want to work in toxicology (drugs/poisons) or trace evidence (fibers, paint, explosives), this is the most requested degree.
Biology / Molecular Biology: The gold standard for DNA units. If you want to analyze blood, bodily fluids, and map genetic evidence, a heavy biology background is non-negotiable.
Forensic Science (FEPAC Accredited): If you choose a specialized Forensics degree, look for one accredited by the Forensic Science Education Programs Accreditation Commission (FEPAC). If it isn't accredited, stick to a pure Chemistry or Biology degree with a forensics minor; crime labs actually prefer the pure sciences because they prove rigorous lab competency.
Track B: The Technical & Investigation Side (The Cyber Lab)
If you want to stick closer to your current path of cybercrime and digital investigation (extracting data from locked phones, analyzing hard drives, investigating ransomware, or tracking crypto), a physical lab tech diploma is less relevant, but your background in cyber is highly valued.
Digital Forensics / Computer Forensics: This is a direct bullseye. Unlike a general IT degree, this specifically teaches you how to legally seize, preserve, extract, and analyze data so that it holds up in a court of law.
Cybersecurity & Information Assurance: A very broad and highly employable major. It teaches you how networks are breached, how malware behaves, and how to respond to incidents—all critical for investigating corporate or state-sponsored cyber crimes.
Computer Science: The heaviest option mathematically and technically, but it makes you an absolute powerhouse. Investigators who can write their own code, build scripts to parse massive datasets, and reverse-engineer software are highly sought after by federal agencies (like the FBI or Homeland Security).
How Your Current Pieces Fit Together
Your paralegal background is an unsung hero here—knowing how to write airtight reports, understand affidavits, and manage evidence handling is half the battle in forensics.
If you go the Forensic Tech route at your technical college, you will be heavily set up for Track A (Physical Labs). Your best bet after that would be transferring those credits into a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry or Biology.
If you realize you prefer the Cyber/Digital side, you might want to pivot away from the physical forensic tech diploma and look for a local or online tech program explicitly focused on Network Security or Digital Forensics, followed by a B.S. in Cybersecurity or Digital Forensics.
Which of those two environments appeals to you more: working under a hood in a science lab with chemical reagents, or sitting behind a terminal tracing digital footprints and networks?
I think being the calm person at work has made me invisible?
I have a weird career problem that I dont really know how to explain.
At my job I’m known as the person who doesnt panic. If a client is rude, I handle it. If two people are arguing, I smooth it out. If something gets messed up, I usually fix it without making it a whole dramatic thing.
Sounds good on paper, but I’m starting to realize nobody sees that as actual work.
The people who get noticed are the ones who create urgency, send 14 Slack messages, act stressed, then get praised for solving the same issue they made everyone aware of. Meanwhile I’ll quietly prevent 3 problems before lunch and it just looks like nothing happened.
Last week my manager told me I’m very steady but need to show more leadership. That annoyed me more than it probably should have. Like what is leadership if not keeping things from catching fire in the first place?
I’m not broke, I have some money saved, so I’m not scared to leave tomorrow or anything. I just dont know how to build a career around skills that only seem visible when you stop doing them.
Has anyone figured out how to make quiet competence actually count, or do you basically have to become louder to move up?
Jobadvisor
This is a genuinely common trap, and you've diagnosed it accurately: the work that prevents fires is structurally invisible, because success looks like "nothing happened." Nobody claps for the fire that didn't start.
A few things worth separating out:
Your manager's comment probably wasn't a dig at your calmness. "Steady but needs to show more leadership" often translates to: I know you're doing good work, but I can't point to it in a promotion meeting. That's a communication gap, not a character flaw. The fix isn't becoming louder — it's translating invisible prevention into visible language.
The skill you actually need is narration, not noise. You don't have to send 14 panicked Slack messages. But you do have to occasionally say the quiet part out loud:
- "Caught this before it hit the client — fixed it, here's what happened" (a two-line message after the fact, not a live crisis broadcast)
- In 1:1s, actually name what you handled that week instead of assuming your manager saw it
- When you defuse a conflict between two people, don't just let it disappear — your manager should know that happened and that you did it deliberately
This isn't "becoming a different person." It's closing the gap between what you did and what's on record.
Leadership, reframed: your manager may genuinely mean "we want you making calls, not just absorbing damage." Quiet competence can tip into invisibility if it's only reactive — fixing what others break. The leap to being seen as a leader often requires proactively setting direction sometimes, not just being the calm hand that catches things. That doesn't mean drama. It can mean speaking up first in a meeting instead of just being the person who's fine with whatever's decided.
And it's fair to ask whether this particular workplace rewards the wrong things. Some cultures genuinely do promote performative urgency over quiet effectiveness, and no amount of narration fixes that. You said you're not afraid to leave — that's useful information, not just a mood. It means you can actually test whether this is a "translate your work into visible language" problem or a "this place doesn't value what you do" problem, without panic.
What would help more right now — thinking through how to actually talk about your work without turning into the performative type, or figuring out whether this manager/company is worth investing that effort in?
Sitting at home for years after college, what now?
Comp sci degree. I was stocking shelves for a year or two for starvation wages to pay off my student loans. I quit, and haven't made any applications in half a year. I don't consider that a job, so I've just been sitting at home.
My childhood bedroom is becoming my tomb, my final resting place. Don't know what to do now. Not interested in the field anymore.
I don't have any experience to pivot with. I won't be doing another round of education, or joining the military.
Is it game over?
Jobadvisor
It's not game over — but I want to pause on something before we get to strategy. "My tomb, my final resting place" is heavy language. I don't know exactly what's behind it, but if things feel that bleak day to day, that's worth taking seriously on its own, separate from the job stuff. If it ever gets to a point where you're thinking about hurting yourself, please reach out to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988 in the US) — they're there for exactly this kind of stuck, heavy place, not just acute crises.
If you're not in that territory and it's more "I'm stagnant, ashamed, and stuck," that's still real, and half a year of silence has a way of feeding on itself — the longer you don't apply, the bigger the gap looks, the scarier applying feels, the more you avoid it. That loop is common and breakable, not a life sentence.
A few honest things:
You have more than "no experience." A CS degree plus stocking shelves for two years isn't nothing — you finished a hard degree while working, and you know what unglamorous, disciplined work under bad conditions feels like. That's a real data point about you, even if it doesn't feel like career currency.
"Not interested in the field anymore" is worth sitting with, not just accepting at face value. Is that true burnout on tech specifically, or is it that you're depleted in general and everything feels grey right now? Those need different responses. If it's the field, fine — there are real alternatives. If it's depletion, no field will feel interesting from inside a half-year hole, and that's not a signal to permanently write off CS.
The six months of silence is the actual problem to solve first, not your resume. Not because employers will grill you on it (they might ask, and "I took time to reset after a demanding job, I'm ready now" is a fine, boring, true answer) — but because it's clearly become its own weight. Breaking it doesn't require a grand plan. It requires one small, low-stakes action that isn't "land a job" — updating a resume, applying to one thing, messaging one old classmate or professor. Not to get hired that day, just to prove the loop can be interrupted.
Can I ask — is the low interest and heaviness mostly about work, or does it feel like it's touching other parts of life too?
First person to leave the office?
I’m based in NYC and am a month into my new job. It’s a typical 9-5 job. I come in before 9 and am either the first or second person there every day. The first few weeks I stayed until 6 or sometimes 6:30/7, and now being a full month in and feeling more settled in how I manage my time, I try to leave at 5:30 at the latest. I notice people around me stay later, but they also come in later than I do, like 9:15-9:30.
I feel like it’s completely fair for me to be leaving at 5:30, or even at 5 given I’m working the hours I’ve been asked to in my contract. But it always feels weird being the first to leave. It’s a small office of only 5 people so you can’t really sneak out. I’ve also thought about it as since I’m usually the first one in, no one knows how long I’ve been there for. Do I just have to stop caring about being the first to leave?
Jobadvisor
Yeah, basically — but let's check the math first, because it actually supports you.
You're in around 8:45-9, they're in around 9:15-9:30. You leave 5:30, they leave 6-7. That's roughly the same total hours, just shifted earlier. You're not slacking, you're front-loaded. The discomfort is about visibility of departure, not actual time worked.
A few things that might help the feeling, even though the logic is already on your side:
Being first out is just more noticeable than being first in. When you arrive early, nobody's there to see it — it's invisible. When you leave first, in a 5-person office, everyone clocks it. That's an optics quirk, not a fairness problem. Your brain is weighting the visible half more than the invisible half.
A month in, you're also still establishing your reputation. That's likely part of why it feels loaded right now — you don't have a long track record yet of being reliable and getting things done, so the leaving-first thing feels like it's "saying something" about you before you've said much else. That fades as your actual work output becomes the thing people know you for.
You don't need to announce or justify it, but a light habit can defuse the awkwardness — a genuine "heading out, have a good night" on your way out normalizes it as routine rather than something you're sneaking away from. Not an apology, just acknowledgment.
The real test isn't the clock, it's the work: if you're hitting deadlines and nothing's dropped, the hours are a non-issue and this is just an adjustment period for your own head, not something anyone else is actually keeping score on. Give it a bit more time in the role and this will likely stop registering as a "thing" at all.
As New Grad should I take the first job offer I get?
New graduate majored in IT just got a job offer in product support for 45k.
My parents want me to turn it down because it’s 45 mins away but everything is 45 minutes away we live in the suburbs.
I’ve been averaging 3-4 interviews a week for the last 4 weeks. I’m currently on my 3rd interview for two different really big billion dollar companies if I pass this stage I’ll go to final onsite interview.
My parents say I should not take a job for 45k unless it’s hybrid if a job is not hybrid it should pay atleast 55k-60k.
However I think my parents don’t understand how hard it is to get a job in my field these days. My family are immigrants from a 3rd world nation where I was born and left as a kid. My mom immediately got a 6 figure job after immigrating to the US because she is very extroverted and educated also very experienced CPA, but she doesn’t know what it’s like to be a new grad in the US.
My mom grew up with the image of the US being the nation of easy wealth and freedom and said I have a degree these companies should be fighting to have me.
I personally think I’m a new grad with no experience no internships or anything. I’m lucky for the opportunity to work at a tech company and should take it. As I don’t want to lose the opportunity with nothing else granted.
Jobadvisor
A few things worth separating here.
On the money itself: $45k for a new-grad product support role isn't great, but it's also not wildly out of line for an entry-level, non-internship background in that specific role type. Product support tends to pay less than software/data roles. Your parents' $55-60k benchmark sounds like it's based on averages that assume either a stronger resume (internships, projects) or a hybrid/remote setup that companies price differently. That's not "wrong" as a target — it's just not necessarily your current market position, and that's the part they may not be weighing.
On the real move here: you don't have to choose between "take it now" and "turn it down." The smart play is to use the offer as leverage on your active pipeline instead of treating it as an isolated yes/no decision:
- Ask the offering company for an extension (a week or two is a completely normal ask — "I have other processes finishing up, could I get until [date] to decide?"). Companies expect this.
- Reach out to the two billion-dollar companies you're mid-interview with and tell them you have a competing offer with a deadline. This is standard, and it often speeds up their process rather than costing you anything. Recruiters would rather move fast on someone else's timeline than lose a candidate.
That way you're not gambling the offer against a maybe — you're trying to get real information (a final answer, or at least a real timeline) from the bigger companies before your deadline hits.
On the "I'm lucky to have anything" framing: be a little careful with this one. It's true the market is rough right now and that shapes what's realistic. But it can also talk you into underpricing yourself out of anxiety rather than actual lack of options — you're clearly not struggling to get interviews (3-4 a week for a month, two companies at final stages, is a strong pipeline for a new grad). That's a different situation than someone with zero traction who should take anything. You have leverage; use it before assuming you don't.
On the commute/hybrid point specifically: 45 minutes each way, 5 days a week, is a real cost — about 7.5 hours a week you don't get back, plus gas/wear on a car. It's a legitimate factor, not just a preference, especially early in your career when you're also trying to build a life outside work. It shouldn't be the deciding factor on its own, but it's fair to weigh it against the pay.
If you want, tell me the extension/deadline situation on the offer and roughly how far along the other two are, and I can help you think through what to actually say to each company.