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

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

#131

Post by JimboOmega »

jmccorm wrote: post #111
Dowwie wrote: post #94

I think you have no idea how privileged you are for having the opportunity to enter the market with your background and a computer science degree in three years. I interned during summers during university starting around 2000. The dot com bubble had burst before I even graduated. The party was over. Managerialism was in full force. IT Managers at what was then a Fortune-10 financial powerhouse were going on an on ab…

It's always nice to find a reply on HN that captures so much of what you wanted to say. I came to that same perspective from a non-financial Fortune 50. After Y2K was when a very good chunk of those who got CS degrees for all the wrong reasons (didn't have the raw talent or personal interest) got weeded out. I've seen the same thing happen in other industries with a bust/boom, such as petroleum. Anyhow, OP doesn't so…

I was basically born into CS; there was no question even from Kindergarten that I would ever go into another field. Got my first real full time job at 25, and it was mediocre, it was definitely not a FAANG paradise, and I remember we worried a lot about getting off-shored in those days. I'm really glad the thing I was naturally interested in turned out to pay so well.

Though I do wonder what do I (as an SF dev) offer that an offshore contractor making 1/5th as much doesn't? Or heck never mind offshore, somebody outside one of the big tech centers (like where I first worked after graduating). The future of engineering always seems to be remote, but here we still are.

But you're right, the .com crash totally washed out a lot of the "HTML Programmers" and their ilk, people who couldn't pass FizzBuzz but got hired because they knew buzzwords and the hiring teams didn't know any better and were desperate. I like to think today's FAANG interviews are good enough to at least not repeat those mistakes.

Besides, I'll probably always worry I'm not worth my salary on some level (impostor syndrome, yay) - it's hard to come to an objective conclusion on this, anyway.

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

#132

Post by metanoia »

torgian wrote: post #112
metanoia wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modified for myself: I was a kid programmer and my parents thought it sounded crazy to spend college learning to code. I studied pre-med but didn't go to med school. This was in 1998 for me, and at that age I didn't know how to push back on my parents. Good 'ol Asian parents didn't know anything out of the big 3 (Doctor, Lawyer, [Licensed] Engineer). Still going to therapy for that. I am now in a software engineering…

Similar boat here; not Asian, but I was in the military, and got into CS when I was 30; got a remote gig at 36. I get paid far, far less than others, but I also happen to live in a low cost of living country, so it (kinda?) evens out. I would like to get paid more money, and I think I could look for higher paying work at this point. However,I actually do like the company I work for, and it's fairly low stress. I also…

Like other feedback in this thread has already covered, the upside is that coding is applicable anywhere, and in fact, I think that outside of our little tech-bubble, it has greater impact as fewer people have those skills. Even a small amount of tech applied to the right place can have huge value.

It's just that the Asian kid in me is thinking I need FAANG on my resume even for a short time to get some street cred. Like you, I do like my job, the comp is OK, but eventually all things come to a end.

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

#133

Post by gord1anknot »

It depends on how you see your career evolving. If you pick computing you will have to shift gears, eventually - which isn't to say you will switch OUT of computing, but rather you will eventually need to ADD to it.

Right now, computing behaves both like a trade and like a profession depending on the lens you use. You just so happen to be able to get a job based on tech stack at the moment (like a trade), I believe the trade aspects of it will go away as tooling becomes more sophisticated (10+ years), leaving the profession bit.

I believe this is already happening; the distribution of compensation has become far more bimodal in the US since I started in 2009. I often meet tech professionals not living in sf/ba that don't even believe me when I say a 200k/yr+ comp package for a non-executive is possible.

Either way, in computing at the moment, there's no licensing or regulatory body, and the obligatory cartel that manages it, so it's hard to predict the specifics around what the profession piece will look like in 10 years. I'll attempt it, if you excuse the conceit.

I suspect as tooling matures, the industry will decompose into larger numbers of smaller firms, in which a smaller number of people will be needed to create and maintain more and more specialized applications. The differentiating factor in comp and career growth will be business domain knowledge, as opposed to deep knowledge of particular technologies. It's already the case, for example, that firms don't have to field an ops team of 5+ just to get a good deploy process going.

The idea that I can get handed a fairly comprehensible spec and just write code all day may go away but computing as a career won't.

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

#134

Post by tropo »

napsterbr wrote: post #85
enraged_camel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Do what you love - as cliche as that. >> The best career is the one that gives you joy and fulfillment. What? No. This is actively harmful advice.

Genuine curiosity: why is it considered bad/harmful advice?

Usually it leads to unemployment. People want to do the same things as each other, but we can't all be football stars. We can't even all teach kindergarten or nursery school, and the low pay of such jobs is the natural result of many people wanting those jobs. People enjoy getting BA degrees in psychology, then discover that they do not enjoy paying the student loans while working as unskilled labor.

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

#135

Post by unnouinceput »

Let them do CS, let them become coders for the love of money, and even support them. Meanwhile you keep coding and become good at it. Then when their employer(s) will hit hard times, present yourself using the network you developed through your friends. And do contractor jobs, for real money. They will get paid good money, you'll get paid real money. They will sell their souls for money, you'll rack in the dough. Welcome to the freelancers club, best there is.

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

#136

Post by sub7 »

Programming is a commodity. You learn to program in Ruby and the next platform makes you irrelevant.

CS is a foundation. When you understand how the languages themselves are built you can figure out any of them. The fundamentals don't change often.

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

#137

Post by StavrosK »

jacobolus wrote: post #51
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…

> 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. When cuneiform was invented the things to be written down were tax records, business transactions, beer recipes, legal codes, poe…

No complaints about how spoilt the younger generation was, with their fancy tablets everywhere?

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

#138

Post by microtherion »

bdcravens wrote: post #87

My take: in the late 90s/early 2000s, we saw a lot of the same. The good times: the passionate rose above the income-chasers because there was a lot of mediocrity The bad times: So many people washed out and probably haven't come back. The passionate had less competition. The anti-fragility of it all: When the economy turns bad, companies look to software to optimize costs. (not exactly the same thing, but I was hire…

> in the late 90s/early 2000s, we saw a lot of the same.

And I saw a lot of the same in the mid 80s, when I started in college. I remember talking to one of my classmates, who originally wanted to be a Phys. Ed. teacher, contracted a back injury, and decided that there was good money in CS.

If you're passionate about CS and dedicated to acquiring and maintaining skills, I think there will be a good career in it for a long time.

Out of curiosity, what would have been your plan B? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any profession that would obviously guarantee more long term stability.

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

#139

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by [deleted] »

thfuran wrote: post #96
randomdata wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even farmers, it might not be necessary, but it can make a huge difference. As a software developer by day, farmer by night, I'm not sure there is much overlap. Some of the problem solving skills I learned on the farm have made me a better programmer, I expect, but I don't see much advantage in building software for my farm. Anything you can dream of is available commercially at a fraction of the cost it would take…

I'm not sure that's a saying outside of agriculture.

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