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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?

#231
post #120
post #91

Unpopular opinion: it's not a good career unless you are the best of the best. IMO blue collar work is a better option because it's easier work and more stable, and lets you have a life outside work. In software the hours are increasing to no real benefit, and free time is burnt just keeping with the times. The evolution of tools, best practices and high availability of quality knowledge has made it trivial to spin u…

> IMO blue collar work is a better option because it's easier work and more stable Did you ever do blue collar work as well as software engineering? Because I have no idea in which version of this world physical labor is preferable over a chill 9-5 desk job that typically comes with a higher salary. Unless free medical issues is your thing, then physical labor is absolutely the way to go. I did hear some horror stori…

A job does not become 'chill' just because you get to sit on your arse in a chair. There is plenty of stress in 'office jobs', enough to lead people to suicide, drugs, and dying of exhaustion - in UK that happened to an unpaid intern in banking.

Your mind is a thing in itself and the social environment matters much more than whether you get to sit.

I am quite happily to do weeks of home repairs, soldering. Electronics assembly, etc. Ofcourse thats not hard physical labour, but neither is most blue collar work.

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

#233
I don't care about any degree of my employees as the projects they did in the past (commercial or private) are much more important

When you want to target big and unsexy companies, just to have a nice resume, a degree is the right way to go. If you plan to be an entrepreneur, founding a business or freelance, it's mostly useless and I don't believe it will change in the next 5-10y as it was that way the last 20y.

Todays trends are to work less with better money and better work life balance, not the opposite. If you encounter the difference, run as fast as you can :).

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

#234
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty much always been that way though. Death March was written 20 years ago: https://www.amazon.com/Death-March-Developers-Surviving-Impo... I'd say the demand for programmers is higher than ever and pay is definitely higher overall. 20 years ago $150k was a good salary for a programmer, now it's more like $350k.

(350/150)^(1/20)=1.04. Slightly better than inflation.

Can't upvote this enough. People on HN keep talking about importance of statistics and differential equations, yet can't take account of inflation when talking about salaries from the previous millennium.

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

#235

The prediction that everyone should learn to code is basically happening more and more now. I work at a bank and the business guys are finally coding. They’re using VS Code, Python, Jupyter Notebooks, React, and JS. I doubt they’ll get into Hadoop Spark or Java. Their depth of knowledge will never be as deep as a CS major, but it’s a good pause to think of a field to specialize in where you will be utilizing CS to so…

I'd like to know why business guys are writing React (or even JS). I can imagine why they might write Python and use Jupyter Notebooks, but React seems a little further out there, maybe they are prototyping some in-house applications or writing their own little apps for some small use case?

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

#236
I think that people who think money is a wrong reason to do something end up spending more time and effort getting money because they don't bother to come up with a system for making it efficiently. Which is a bit ironic. If you really don't want to care about money, make it efficiently so you can spend less time on it.

If I were to do it all again, I'd do something that produces more passive income. You can make a lot of money working for FAANG, but you are going to be working hard and for long hours. It's not an easy job, and it's fairly pointless to have money if you work away all your best years. Programming is a service industry, and real money comes from owning things, not from doing things, because things you own make you money even when you're not doing anything. Sure, you can go off and create an app that creates some passive income but it's a crapshoot whether you'll actually be profitable.

They aren't making more land, and everybody needs somewhere to live. Real estate requires little education, the legwork is mostly looking at places with people. It's not a glamorous job but it gives you the time to do what you want with your life.

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

#237
post #168

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…

> As a software developer by day, farmer by night, I'm not sure there is much overlap Depends what you need it for https://tractorhacking.github.io/

Once you get into level of assets that require tractor like this your main job is financial planning.

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

#239
Knowing how to tell computers how to do things is essential, and there will be more and more computers that need to be told what to do. the question is "can we teach everyone to do this job?" if the answer is yes, then of course, it will get cheap. If the answer is no, then we're going to be wealthy for the rest of our days.

Nobody knows the answer to this question. In the '80s and '90s, programming tools got better and better and we all thought that we'd have some rational case tool type deal that managers would voice activate and make software without programmers, or, if programmers were still needed, they'd be regular joes making regular joe money. And that looked realistic. as a teen in the mid '90s, home computers were super common and a bunch of people at my (not very good) high school did basic programming. None of us thought this was the road to dentist money. (but then, most of us would have been pretty happy with manufacturing money. Expectations were low.)

In the aughts, this idea fell away, and now in the teens, it's nigh unthinkable; big companies throw a lot of money at the best computer people they can find, and these people then code in editors that look primitive compared to the IDEs of the late '90s. I strongly suspect we'll see some swing back towards more reliance on tools and less reliance on genius in the coming decades, just 'cause I expect things to cycle that way. I personally think there's something to genius? but... I also think that things won't always be as good for us as they are now. Perhaps it is because I started my first programming job in '97, but I expect business cycle swings to be extreme and temporary. The business cycle goes up and the business cycle goes down.

If you had my opportunities (i.e. no college) I'd say that CS was almost certainly your best bet; go deep, go hard, ignore everything else and get yourself a job while the getting was good. learn breadth later. But if you are the sort who got into an elite school, well, you have a lot more opportunities, most of which I probably don't entirely understand (and that I'm certainly not qualified to evaluate)

I would bet all the money I can borrow on the continued importance of computers... but my personal bet? my personal bet is that in the future it will be more like literacy. Sure, sure you need to be able to tell computers what to do. but you also need to know a thing so you know what to tell them to do. Tools will continue to evolve. There will be lots of spaces for people who can understand both what we are trying to get the computer to do (be that business, medicine, whatever) and how to tell the computer how to do it.

My own advice to you is to get some breadth. I mean, if you can, get that FAANG internship; working at a top-tier company has huge differences in pay and prestige from working at a second or third tier company. Do that now while it's hot, if you can. (this is general advice I'd give to young me: don't be so afraid of super hot trends, they are fun, and super remunerative!)

It took me two decades (more if you count the IT work I did in high school) to get to a top-tier company, and it is a huge difference. If you can do that out of college? you will have a huge leg up financially. (and in terms of choices as to what you can do next)

All that said, you have a lot more opportunities than I did. You'll be fine. Enjoy it. Learn stuff. meet interesting people. Leave college with a full rolodex (or linkedin or whatever) and call (or email or however you kids communicate) every now and then. friends are great on a bunch of levels.

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

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, courses such as "category theory" and abstract algebra are not required to be a good engineer.

100% agree. Category theory is simply practical and something I came across through a combination of Haskell and Group theory. I'm not trying to shame bootcamp grads or make any judgements about their skills if that's what you're implying. I think the free market is free to decide what they're willing to pay and we should treat it as such and not be upset if someone with a few months of experience with programming la…

Would you be open to having a video chat about these things? I have a distant appreciation but not a full grasp of many things you mentioned and would love some insights.
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