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

The main issues at Google doesn't seem to include the size of salaries.

That said I wish we had a dedicated code monkey union in my town. The existing choices either wouldn't cover everyone in the field or is covering way to many other fields. With the end result of doing a really crappy job at some parts (no, we don't need or want companywide agreements saying everyone get an extra 2.5%).

It's not about take-home for the individual, it's about the fact that the per-hour price point at the point of sale, even for highly-competitive services, bottoms out in the $80-100/hr range. You just can't really sustain a legitimate business on less.

Lots of freelancers set their price with their salary in mind instead of considering the several moving parts involved in running a business. It's useful to consider that all the local small businesses around you, the type of places that have already been competed down to the price floor, still need to be making around $100/hr to stay afloat.

While I really enjoy how you framed that, I want to add that I still do strongly believe that things are going to look much different in 2025. Reports predicting it as the year more than 50% of normal workplace jobs being taken by AI, I believe the goalposts are going to morph into something we do not have the capacity to imagine yet.

I'm a student too similar to op with 1.5 years left to graduate, yesterday I got shivers waiting for my appointment with my advisor. Phone call within seconds of phone call, the receptionist was getting calls about students wanting to change majors into cs.

Smart people have been doing good work for the wrong reasons for decades. Really, for a lot longer than that. There's nothing new there.

The quality of life you have as a junior programmer depends hugely, hugely, on the company you work for. So does the amount of money you are likely to pull in. The two are not necessarily inversely proportional. Interview wisely.

Fresh graduates typically have a disadvantage in having little concept of what it takes to get things out the door in a supportable manner, and they will heroically throw themselves into projects they have hilariously underestimated. If you end up working unsustainable hours, there's a good chance you backed yourself into it. Find people and places that can help you avoid those traps early on.

CS as it is taught bears little resemblance to most of the technical work done in Silicon Valley. It also probably has little resemblance to the passion projects you did as a kid. It is not necessary to be a CS major to become a software engineer, no matter what the recruiters think. But, for the most part, it doesn't hurt, and you probably start out with a broader foundation than a non-CS major typically will.

As a programmer, your job is to reify thought-stuff. This gives you an extraordinary flexibility to push your career in a direction you want. Heck, you might find yourself practically switching careers every few years, or you might decide to stick in one area and specialize. Either way, there's plenty of places to turn in CS if you wish to avoid following the herd.

You will hear folks wring their hands about whether their jobs might be automated away in a few years, or whether the economy will hold, or whether the demand for CS jobs is really a myth perpetrated by FAANG to pay below-market wages to suckers, etc. etc. etc. The world has a thousand ways to make you question your worth, and you will probably hear most of them at one point or another.

When I entered the industry a little book had recently come out called "The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer." It predicted that "the American programmer is about to share the fate of the dodo bird." Yet here we are, decades on, just as likely to bang through projects like bucking broncos as ever, but managing to turn out some fine work along the way.

Don't believe everything you read.

The point is that in a high wage country it is actually more difficult to outsource, or h-1b a "blue collar" job than a software job. Therefore it will always have significantly less competition and downward pressure on income.

I personally switched out of software not too long ago and could not agree more about how much time I enjoy not thinking about work or my career and instead spending it on my personal projects and my family and friends.

Obviously I make a lot less money and I have the luxury of not having a family to support, but I certainly would say that the day-to-day life of my blue collar job is significantly better, for me, than my previous software job.