Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?

#31

Post by tashoecraft » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

martinesko36 wrote: post #20

toast0 wrote: post #14

People who are in CS for the money are probably not going to stay in CS long term. There's plenty of ways out for people who don't enjoy the work (management of people or products, technical writing, possibly design). Certainly some people come for the money and stay for the experience. My best advice for internship applications is try to have some interesting project on your resume --- preferably one of the things y…

I'm almost certain I'd never do an internship. It's not a way to optimize for learning and personal growth. And definitely not a whiteboard generic software engineering. Lots of things about internships in the tech field put me off. If it is a startup, I have had a startup, high chance it's a shitshow. FAANG, don't think so. Also what meaningful work can you really get done in 3 months? I feel like internships are a…

It’s partly about working in a professional environment. You can get a 4 year degree and never use git, never work on a single codebase that has existed long before you came and will exist long after you leave. There is so much experience from just working in a professional setting that can greatly boost your resume. We take caution hiring people without this experience as it can be impossible to teach this to someone when teaching them tech skills is easier.

Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?

#32

Post by rb808 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

Its one reason I avoid doing too much front end work. There are so many bootcamp people now and most are good enough if they're motivated. I don't see how these high salaries can last.

Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?

#33

Post by anon9001 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

It entirely depends what you're trying to do. If you want to make a bunch of money, it's unfortunately more about politics and luck than merit.

If you're trying to maximize income, you should focus on understanding finance/business and building soft skills. You're probably over the threshold of how much you need to know about computers. Maybe get some training on how to work better with others, or how to negotiate effectively. In other words, soft skills are going to be the value you have over your peers that have been cramming CS for the last 4 years.

> I've been coding for half my life, out of pure interest for the building things and never got into it for the money.

The reality of working in tech is probably similar to what you've already experienced: Lots of people working with computers, but most know less about what's going on than you do. I was kind of shocked by this when I started working, but now I realize it's because most people don't need to care about how their tools work to do their job.

Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?

#34

Post by ladybro » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

I went into CS without ever having programmed before and consider it the best decision I've ever made.

As others have said, CS gives you a framework for analysis and problem solving. That framework can be applied to almost any other problem in life.

Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?

#35

Post by meritt » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

> I've been coding for half my life

If you already know programming and you're confident in your ability to continue self-teaching, I'd suggest you actually do a different route. MBA, Finance, Accounting, Medicine, Chemistry, Physics, etc. e.g. A good programmer who has a strong understanding of finance will do significantly better in FinTech than the programmer who has spent 4 years practicing CS theory.

If you want to make a real difference, learn a specific field and then use your technical skills to help them solve problems in ways they never imagined possible.

Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?

#36

Post by cmauniada » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

omarhaneef wrote: post #10

CS isn't a career. CS is part of all careers. I imagine when cuneiform was first invented, there was a group of people who were the first writers and they probably worried that it would get saturated. How can we all be writers? There are only so many things to write down: recipes, shopping lists, the kings desires, and heroic tales. What are the rest of us going to do? But of course writing is just a way of expressin…

Thats very beautifully put. I am definitely going to be using this analogy the next time this topic comes up. Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?

#37

Post by ben_jones » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

A CS degree gives you a strong ability to automate work using software. If applied correctly it will be be a very lucrative career for a very long time.

Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?

#38

Post by throwawaysea » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

Personally I think that this entire sector is due for a reduction. Companies like Facebook or Amazon or Google or just soaking up employees to work on things that don’t really matter. Once they figure that out and manage more efficiently, there will be layoffs followed by the inevitable commodification of CS talent. This field isn’t special, it’s like any other field that went through a boom phase and a later regression to an equilibrium point.

Soon everyone in every role/industry will have rudimentary programming skills and use them on top of safe platforms that don’t needtremendous specialization. It’ll stop being a differentiator and it’ll be more like a basic qualification.

Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?

#39

Post by closeparen » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC

For an assembly line worker who can serviceably crank out features from JIRA tickets in $framework_of_the_month, maybe not. But that's not what CS education is for.

For someone who's genuinely, deeply good at it, who can think and debug and design from the network consensus protocol to the CPU cache line, there will always be work. Even within hot companies populated from elite schools, these people are few and far between.

Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?

#40

Post by jlangemeier » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

DoctorPenguin wrote: post #15

agentultra wrote: post #5

I've heard of people going from a bootcamp course straight into Google and optimizing 100% for the career path. They make embarrassingly more than I do, have been programming for a scant few years, and I couldn't care less. I've been programming for most of my life. I've poured hours into learning 6502, BASIC, 8086, C, C++, Perl, Python, Javascript, Common Lisp, Haskell... to say nothing of physics, linear algebra, g…

How can you not care for people working in the top tech while probably not even knowing half of what you have learned? Would you say the same thing when you would be another field of work; like medicine maybe?

I mean - honestly - most people that work in computers don't work for FAANG, or even a FAANG adjacent corporation. I like job stability (and with my health issues, job stability and good health benefits are always at the top of my priority list), so most of FAANG (and many start-ups) are lower on my priority list; I know I could almost double my income moving out of higher ed. but that comes with different costs and benefits.

You're treating this like monetary value is the only motivator for people. Let's pick on medicine; a general practitioner consistently makes less money, but they tend to have greater, more regular contact with their patients, which may be a strong motivator for them over becoming a surgeon for more money. And to boot, the surgeon is more specialized, so they have simultaneously learned less than the Gen Practitioner, but more specificity within their selected specialization. This is similar to boot camps, that provide a very narrow skillset that give someone the best chance of getting hired into that very narrow position type; where as, someone like the OP and I are happy with our broader knowledge that gives us different benefits.

And probably most importantly, what do I care that someone else has optimized their job path for monetary gain. I could assign 5 minute increments to worrying about each person and still not make it through all the idiots that are employed in the tech industry in my lifetime.