> Will CS become unsustainable hours like working in the quantitive funds
Mmh no, people in quantitative funds do not work long hours. Much less than SV tech
Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?
61–70 of 311 posts
Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?
#62It 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 ef…
> 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. Thi…
> It'll usually get you the medium bucks, though, before topping out, which ain't the worst.
Can confirm. I make medium bucks. The way the economics work, it made more sense for me to make medium bucks remotely in a cheap CoL area than it did to try and get big bucks in a major city.
Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?
#63I started playing with computers in middle school as a hobby and it basically morphed into a career. I've been in the industry since the 90s, well before everyone realized what a lucrative career it can be. And I saw the same thing - the field became flooded with people who were only chasing the money. My advice to you: don't worry about it. Do not underestimate the competitive advantage you have if you are passionat…
What I see is a subset of people who chase the money who are actually very smart and willing to work hard for it in the long run - think those high schoolers who had to be type A students to get into Ivy League with 4.0 GPA and SAT scores so perfect they still put it on their resume.
Type As don't tend to get into engineering, and even if they do, they'll quickly realize it doesn't bring them as much status, influence or whatever they're seeking as they thought.
Very few companies are engineering driven, some are product driven, some a finance driven, some are sales driven, and the respective department will have more clout than engineering.
Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?
#64Personally 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 regress…
"Soon everyone in every role/industry will have rudimentary programming skills"
I'm completely baffled as to where all of today's workers in their 20's, 30's and 40's, almost none of whom have any programming skills whatsoever, are going to learn programming skills in this "soon" timeframe.
Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?
#65I think it'll be pretty good career until some kind of tipping point is hit.
My suggestion is to become excellent at CS, get an internship, then specialize in a fascinating area of forward-looking work (don't study COBOL. :) ).
also if you love coding, keep on keeping on. if you wind up making average income, that's ok.
Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?
#66There's definitely been a huge influx of people jumping on the CS train for the money recently. But the thing is, from what I've heard, there's still a huge gap between how may programmers are needed and how many there are. Now, this state of affairs won't last forever. Eventually the market will level out. But I would guess we have at least another 5-10 years until that happens, and when it does happen, it won't mea…
If that were really the case people would care about wether you can program or not rather than if you have a degree which is the primary thing that most companies filter candidates on.
Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?
#67I'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?
It's not a competition. If you can do what you enjoy then that can be very rewarding in and of itself.
Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 someon…
agree for exactly the reasons above. the internship i did helped me understand so many things, from version control and unit testing to larger / longer-lived codebases, to the interpersonal dynamics of corporate settings... To this day I feel like I went through a relatively strong CS undergrad based on what I learned there vs. what my coworkers report having learned, but I also learned just as much via internships as I did in school.
Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?
#69It 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 ef…
"it's unfortunately more about politics and luck than merit"
To reiterate, software is not all about writing software. There's usually an immense amount of buy-in you'll need from other people, not limited to other software engineers.
All while simultaneously trying to navigate budgets and legacy systems. Even if you're pretty heads down, you'll still see the outward effects of these things.
All these things are necessary though, as the system within which the software operates becomes increasingly complex over time, it becomes necessary to engage with many different people in a multitude of roles and capacities.
Re: Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?
#70I’ve been thinking about this for a while. My view is that the software-is-eating-the-world theory is essentially correct and so demand will exceed supply indefinitely.
That of course doesn’t mean the jobs will be as well paying as they are now, but I am not worried about lack of opportunities, barring a major recession.