Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years? • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by humanrebar » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 10:47 PM UTC

gniv wrote: post #70

I’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.

And software skills will still be handy in the next career if worse comes to worse. There is great job security in being able to spreadsheet, for instance.

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

#72

Post by timothycrosley » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 10:47 PM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #65

I 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 .

It's funny you say this. I've always had a suspicision that every budding programmer I encounter studies forward looking things, and if a young person did study something ancient like COBOL, they'd probably have great job security and stand out for the few companies that need that kind of developer.

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

#73

Post by dasil003 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 10:50 PM UTC

It's definitely the case that the social climbers, lifelong hoop-jumpers, and paint-by-numbers careerists are flooding into tech. Who can blame them? And these type of people definitely dilute the engineering talent pool. As annoying as this may be to those of us who came from more traditional hackerish backgrounds, this will likely self-correct at the next major recession.

In the meantime don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The bottom line is technical knowledge is power in today's world. You can take CS and pivot into any career you want, and if all you want to do is build cool stuff, well, it's never been easier!

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

#74

Post by mesozoic » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 10:50 PM UTC

Don't do it for the money.

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

#75

Post by TallGuyShort » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

I'm worse-than-average on predicting future trends, but for what it's worth I had the exact same thoughts 17 or 18 years ago and here I am, using a computer science education for things that I think are positive for the world and that pay me very well.

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

#76

Post by antoniuschan99 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

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 solve things.

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

#77

Post by mike128 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 10:55 PM UTC

Do what you love - as cliche as that.

The best career is the one that gives you joy and fulfillment. If CS is what floats your boat then it’s the right choice for you.

Go for career that pays much more but you must drag yourself from bed to go to the office every morning and you are set up for a life of misery - no matter how much money you make.

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

#78

Post by nfRfqX5n » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 10:55 PM UTC

hiring good talent is still extremely tough. i haven't seen the skill level in new hires get much better over the past 3-5 years. we get recruitment companies asking for $60/hr salary on people who can't even write a simple function in an interview

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

#79

Post by enraged_camel » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 10:58 PM UTC

mike128 wrote: post #77

Do what you love - as cliche as that. The best career is the one that gives you joy and fulfillment. If CS is what floats your boat then it’s the right choice for you. Go for career that pays much more but you must drag yourself from bed to go to the office every morning and you are set up for a life of misery - no matter how much money you make.

>> 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.

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

#80

Post by commandlinefan » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 10:59 PM UTC

I’ve been thinking about that a lot myself for a few years now, since my 16-year-old son is talking about majoring in CS when he gets into college in a couple of years - he’s even optimizing his high school courses to maximize his chances of getting into a good program in a good school. Having worked as a programmer now for nearly 30 years, I see programming devolving as a career more and more every year: now we have open offices, scrum (i.e. micromanaging project managers), unpaid overtime, constant downward pressure from foreign competition and of course, nothing resembling job security: the older/more experienced you are, the _harder_ it is to find a job, which is apparently unique to programming. On the other hand, I don’t know what else to tell him to do - it doesn’t seem like there’s much else out there.