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

#1

Post by martinesko36 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

I am currently in an undergraduate university considered "elite" in US. CS is the most popular major. My friends have switched from finance & medicine to CS majors - for the money and because it's obviously a good idea to do so right now. All the worries my classmates have is how to get an internship at FAANG. Again not that they'll do interesting work (which is rarely the case), but for the resume item...

I've been coding for half my life, out of pure interest for the building things and never got into it for the money. CS career being obviously a good choice and every smart kid I know majoring in it, mostly for the cash, honestly makes me worried about the future of the field in terms of whether it'll still be a good career in the future. I think smart people will do good work, just for the wrong reasons ($) and this might impact the field negatively. In 5 years maybe things will still be okay, but if the trend continues for 10 years? Will CS become unsustainable hours like working in the quantitive funds or unsustainable competition and workload like in medicine, or both?

PG has said something along the lines of "if everyone thinks something is a good idea, it's probably a bad idea" and Peter Thiel's competition theory where profits get competed away if everyone's doing the same thing are two ideas I think most about.

What does HN think?

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

#2

Post by navd » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:34 PM UTC

It's still a great idea, and the fact that you have more experience and a real passion for it means that you'll most likely out compete your peers.

The best piece of advice I can give is that at the end of the day, do what you feel is best for you personally and don't pay attention to what your peers are doing. The programming landscape is LARGE.

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

#3

Post by landon32 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:38 PM UTC

Working for FAANG might be lame, but you can find some interesting company to work at without a doubt. I just graduated, and my friends from CS are doing everything from engineering at exciting biotech companies, Product management, building their own startups, and of course many at FAANG :)

It's a skillset that opens you up to a lot of possibilities

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

#4

Post by tomklein » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:38 PM UTC

That's something I thought about too, but the fact that most people that I know who are studying it, are producing really bad work like software development, for example, is something you have to have lots of practical experience to get good at it. Well, that's the situation in Germany however and people like me, who really enjoy developing software and bring innovative ideas are wanted much more than anyone completing their course.

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

#5

Post by agentultra » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:44 PM UTC

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, geometry, graphics, logic, type theory, abstract algebra, category theory, information theory, databases, networking, compilers, operating systems, interactive theorem provers, distributed systems, etc. I've never even been to university or college and I've been doing this for nearly twenty years professionally.

Do it because you like it, because it means something to you. Keep being you and doing what you think is important and useful.

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

#6

Post by lordnacho » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

There may be loads of people signing up, but I bet you've also seen a lot of people dropping out. Once you graduate, you'll see a lot of kids unable to find anything. Maybe not so many from your elite school, but for sure many people study CS without "getting it". Or liking it.

Ultimately, you are gaining skills that will benefit you whatever you get up to next. Just the simple fact that you know a bit about how computers work will put you ahead in just about any white collar job, since pretty much all those jobs have people staring at a computer all day. This is a lot more than can be said for most majors.

If you do decide to be a coder, there's lots of stuff to do. There's no walk of life that's far away from software these days.

If you're there for sheer joy, my guess is you'll find something you like and where someone values your contribution. I wouldn't worry so much about FAANG internships, the exagerrated focus on that seems to be something that's bled from finance internships, where it is indeed important.

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

#7

Post by martinesko36 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

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…

That is some amazing experience you have that no bootcamp can ever hope to teach. Thanks!

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

#8

Post by oaiey » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

Computer Science teaches you to think on abstract stuff. That enables you to do so many other thing (e.g. business process planning, organization planning, etc.). You see things differently (and most likely you already do). In that way it is similar to an MBA degree.

And if you wonder whether you make the big paycheck? Do not do that to yourself. Move somewhere where that is not important (and find the right partner for it).

Maybe fellow posters have even better examples than me.

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

#9

Post by mind-blight » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

The supply of jobs is still way above the available workers. A lot of people conflate coding jobs with valley, FAANG, or startup jobs. The reality is that every industry, institution, and every company is in the process of migrating their business practices and operations to be digital. I think coding is going to become more common place in every business, including the small ones. Software development may eventually be seen as the new factory work - a blue collar job that pays the bills and helps you support a family.

For example, most government forms require you to fill out physical paper and send it in. There are thousands of agencies across the US, each with hundreds of forms for different processes. Just upgrading those to be more accessible and less error prone is going to take over a decade and thousands of hours of developer time. It's not glamorous work, but it will help a lot of people

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

#10

Post by omarhaneef » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

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 expressing and recording. Writing becomes an essential skill for law (and law itself is hundreds of professions), or science, or "business" (which is a catch all).

Even within CS, I don't consider "machine learning", for instance, to be a single field. Whether you are using machine learning to apply astrology to the financial markets, or using it to diagnose diseases, makes a huge difference to your career.

CS is a skill, but your career will involve other things: a specific set of problems, a specific set of attempted solutions, a network of people who might help you, brands you will want to be associated with, and half a dozen other things.