Some Career Questions for a Computer Science major who is interested?

[Begottenlawn]

Hello, I'm currently a computer science major at San Jose State university in the bay area. I don't know much about this field, but my mom is a biotech lab technician, and she told me to look into it. I'm already very proficient at c++, I taught myself in high school. But using coding to solve problems in biology? It sounds much better.

Also, I am Indian, although I really love coding, I don't want to follow the "software engineer" stereotype

There is a track in bioinformatics at my school, and since I can't link anything until 5 posts, please google "sjsu bioinformatics track," it should come up. There are two basic bioinformatics classes, one molecular biology class, an advanced perl class, and a "statistics for bioinformatics" class.


I was wondering if these classes were enough to land me a job in the field? I would also like to know, for people working in the bay area, what is the salary like? I heard software engineers get paid more, which I don't mind, but that it was the other way around in the bay area?

Thank you for answering my questions! I'm sorry if this thread is more salary based, I like learning about the economics of a field before going into it. Thank you!