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When I was choosing my university major, everybody was telling me don't choose computer science. The job market is saturated and everybody is a software enginee

by nasir 5y ago

When I was choosing my university major, everybody was telling me don't choose computer science. The job market is saturated and everybody is a software engineer, choose electronics. I chose CS. Fast-forward today, most of the people I know who were in electronic have switched to software.

simonbarker87 5y ago
I did electronics - haven’t ever been paid to use my electronics degree (well I was paid to do my PhD but I don’t think that counts) - I joe get paid to write software
jackallis 5y ago
Biggest mistake i ever made in thiknin and telling my dad "Oh, dad i don't want to major in CS because there will be no jobs, there are so many kids majoring in CS". This was in 2004, freshman year. I regret that still today.
trashface 5y ago
As an inverse anecdote, when I graduated with my CS degree in '97, I didn't expect to be unemployed 23 years later, as I am now. It's partly health related, and partly a result of my own bad decision making. But my impression after a ~20 year career is that continuous tech employment is quite fragile. Maybe different for those starting out now, and certainly different for those at FAANG.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  Graduated 2001, everyone I know who wants to still be in CS still is. It definitely takes some willful effort to keep up though, as things change so rapidly. I remember when I first started working is when everything started becoming a web application "so you didn't have to install anything". I remember thinking that seemed like a crazy tradeoff to accept. But then everyone did it. I still think it was crazy.
  - suvo 5y ago
    The only reason why I took up CS in my majors was 'because' it changes fast. Cuz then this was the only job role where nobody could ever condescend to me that 'ye're just a kid!' Unlike a classical engineering branch, say in Mechanical or Electrical where the last major development happened in 1845. Because everybody is a kid their whole lives in the CS world.
    - photojosh 5y ago
      > say in Mechanical or Electrical where the last major development happened in 1845 Uh, what? Apparently computer science gets the credit for, eg, the transistor? Nah.
jghn 5y ago
Anecdote from a mid-90s grad. I found that in the late 90s/early aughts my friends with the coolest jobs had degrees in something computational but not CS. Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Physics. They all had to learn to code in school and had background domain knowledge in some specialty. In contrast myself and my CS friends had, well, we had knowledge of Turing machines with infinite tapes. As the years played out it normalized between the two groups as each filled in their own weak spots with experience. But in those early days I was pretty jealous.
- coldpie 5y ago
  > In contrast myself and my CS friends had, well, we had knowledge of Turing machines with infinite tapes. Yeah. Going to school for Computer Science is probably the biggest regret in my life. I could have spent that time & money learning something useful/interesting instead, or better yet, not waste my time in University at all.
  - trashface 5y ago
    I completely agree. With a different degree, one can still do programming. I worked with several good programmers who had no CS degree. Some had no degree at all. For me, CS was largely a waste. Most of the real, required-for-job programming skills I learned were self-taught anyway. I just used CS as an on-ramp to industry. Maybe nowadays CS is required for "signalling" but it definitely wasn't in the 90s. Wish I had done physics or hell even math. Now I'm middle-aged and the only things I "know" relate to this stupid pile of silicon on my desk.
    - jghn 5y ago
      Over time I found the CS degree worked out. I was able to pick up the necessary domain knowledge for my own specialty. And having the deeper understanding of how/why things work at a theoretical level enabled me to transition to new technologies faster than people I know who just "learned to code". But yes. As a junior developer where my programming skills were roughly the same as my friends who had non-coding skills as well, there was some second guessing on my part
k__ 5y ago
In high school (2003) my class mates said, I shouldn't become a dev. Everything is already created. They would download movies, music, and games with BitTorrent and chat with ICQ and IRC. What else is there to create? I should go into administration, because that's where the big money is.
- tasogare 5y ago
  In a way they were right. Movie and music have better definition, games better graphics but on a functional level everything we do today (web browsing, text messaging, video call, email, online shopping) already existed 15 years ago. There is more bloat (JS and Electron), more confusing UI design, more privacy invasive software now and but for the end user nothing really changed.
  - analyte123 5y ago
    Not true, now you can also do those same things on a cell phone! Seriously though, some things are new but disappointingly few. Voice recognition and machine translation actually work now. VR has gotten pretty good but not many use it. Virtualization has improved a lot. More-or-less functional cryptocurrencies exist. Things like lane keeping and adaptive cruise control are almost standard on new cars. What else am I missing? I agree that for a tech-savvy consumer end-user, not that much has changed. But endless porting and migrations aside, there are still plenty of businesses and industries that need new software for new ideas. For example most every new concept in medicine or finance needs software.
an_opabinia 5y ago
> who were in electronic have switched to software. No educated person in the late 90s could have anticipated how Foxconn would obviate "electronics."
acwan93 5y ago
I graduated in the early 2010s and was told the same thing. Either “everyone” is a software engineer or it was all going to be outsourced to India, causing a race to the bottom in salaries. The field to look at was cognitive science or neurology, which in fairness makes some sense given where machine learning is today. Today, people are trying to get into tech companies, and those who take one boot camp course call themselves “software engineers.”
csours 5y ago
2001 High School Graduate - People told me everything would be outsourced to India and it wasn't worth getting started in programming.
- zffr 5y ago
  I got told this as a 2010 high school graduate too! Didn’t listen since I loved programming and computers and it worked out well for me.
- 1-more 5y ago
  I thought this when picking majors to graduate college in 2010, but I was able to switch in time. People look at me crazy when I say that!
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > People told me everything would be outsourced to India I'm not sure that this ever amounted to more than a urban legend. When you actually looked into the supposed outsourcing "trend", all you heard about was TheDailyWTF-grade horror stories.
  - embeddTrway690 5y ago
    Now In India, students starting CS are often told "CS has no longer demand" in recent years. The problem was too many people entering engineering degrees after a temporary 'IT boom' decades ago, seeing that as a way towards upwards social mobility.
  - mikestew 5y ago
    I'm not sure that this ever amounted to more than a urban legend. Urban legend? Entire books were written on the subject, by respected authors, too: https://www.amazon.com/Decline-American-Programmer-Edward-Yourdon/dp/013191958X https://www.amazon.com/Decline-American-Programmer-Edward-Yo... The book is not only pushing 30 years old, it was crap when I bought it in hardcover in '93, and whoo boy, did that one not age well.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
ja27 5y ago
In the mid-1980s my dad (PhD EE) talked me out of majoring in Computer Science initially because "you'd be a glorified typist". Glad I eventually switched to CS. In the early 1990s, it sure felt like there was a limited market for robotics, machine learning, AI, etc. It was mostly industrial robotics and assembly line inspection cameras.
- kingkongjaffa 5y ago
  what else is there in robotics? You are either building killer robots like Boston Dynamics (morally reprehensible) and drone striking the middle east, or helping people make things with production line robots.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  Several of the comments here echo your father's sentiment to some extent. How did a CS degree pay dividends for you in the 90's as opposed to majoring in math, a hard science, or engineering and learning to program on your own?

by nasir 5y ago

simonbarker87 5y ago

I did electronics - haven’t ever been paid to use my electronics degree (well I was paid to do my PhD but I don’t think that counts) - I joe get paid to write software

jackallis 5y ago

Biggest mistake i ever made in thiknin and telling my dad "Oh, dad i don't want to major in CS because there will be no jobs, there are so many kids majoring in CS". This was in 2004, freshman year. I regret that still today.

trashface 5y ago

As an inverse anecdote, when I graduated with my CS degree in '97, I didn't expect to be unemployed 23 years later, as I am now. It's partly health related, and partly a result of my own bad decision making. But my impression after a ~20 year career is that continuous tech employment is quite fragile. Maybe different for those starting out now, and certainly different for those at FAANG.

gameswithgo 5y ago
Graduated 2001, everyone I know who wants to still be in CS still is. It definitely takes some willful effort to keep up though, as things change so rapidly. I remember when I first started working is when everything started becoming a web application "so you didn't have to install anything". I remember thinking that seemed like a crazy tradeoff to accept. But then everyone did it. I still think it was crazy.
- suvo 5y ago
  The only reason why I took up CS in my majors was 'because' it changes fast. Cuz then this was the only job role where nobody could ever condescend to me that 'ye're just a kid!' Unlike a classical engineering branch, say in Mechanical or Electrical where the last major development happened in 1845. Because everybody is a kid their whole lives in the CS world.
  - photojosh 5y ago
    > say in Mechanical or Electrical where the last major development happened in 1845 Uh, what? Apparently computer science gets the credit for, eg, the transistor? Nah.

jghn 5y ago

Anecdote from a mid-90s grad. I found that in the late 90s/early aughts my friends with the coolest jobs had degrees in something computational but not CS. Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Physics. They all had to learn to code in school and had background domain knowledge in some specialty. In contrast myself and my CS friends had, well, we had knowledge of Turing machines with infinite tapes. As the years played out it normalized between the two groups as each filled in their own weak spots with experience. But in those early days I was pretty jealous.

coldpie 5y ago
> In contrast myself and my CS friends had, well, we had knowledge of Turing machines with infinite tapes. Yeah. Going to school for Computer Science is probably the biggest regret in my life. I could have spent that time & money learning something useful/interesting instead, or better yet, not waste my time in University at all.
- trashface 5y ago
  I completely agree. With a different degree, one can still do programming. I worked with several good programmers who had no CS degree. Some had no degree at all. For me, CS was largely a waste. Most of the real, required-for-job programming skills I learned were self-taught anyway. I just used CS as an on-ramp to industry. Maybe nowadays CS is required for "signalling" but it definitely wasn't in the 90s. Wish I had done physics or hell even math. Now I'm middle-aged and the only things I "know" relate to this stupid pile of silicon on my desk.
  - jghn 5y ago
    Over time I found the CS degree worked out. I was able to pick up the necessary domain knowledge for my own specialty. And having the deeper understanding of how/why things work at a theoretical level enabled me to transition to new technologies faster than people I know who just "learned to code". But yes. As a junior developer where my programming skills were roughly the same as my friends who had non-coding skills as well, there was some second guessing on my part

k__ 5y ago

In high school (2003) my class mates said, I shouldn't become a dev. Everything is already created. They would download movies, music, and games with BitTorrent and chat with ICQ and IRC. What else is there to create? I should go into administration, because that's where the big money is.

tasogare 5y ago
In a way they were right. Movie and music have better definition, games better graphics but on a functional level everything we do today (web browsing, text messaging, video call, email, online shopping) already existed 15 years ago. There is more bloat (JS and Electron), more confusing UI design, more privacy invasive software now and but for the end user nothing really changed.
- analyte123 5y ago
  Not true, now you can also do those same things on a cell phone! Seriously though, some things are new but disappointingly few. Voice recognition and machine translation actually work now. VR has gotten pretty good but not many use it. Virtualization has improved a lot. More-or-less functional cryptocurrencies exist. Things like lane keeping and adaptive cruise control are almost standard on new cars. What else am I missing? I agree that for a tech-savvy consumer end-user, not that much has changed. But endless porting and migrations aside, there are still plenty of businesses and industries that need new software for new ideas. For example most every new concept in medicine or finance needs software.

an_opabinia 5y ago

> who were in electronic have switched to software. No educated person in the late 90s could have anticipated how Foxconn would obviate "electronics."

acwan93 5y ago

I graduated in the early 2010s and was told the same thing. Either “everyone” is a software engineer or it was all going to be outsourced to India, causing a race to the bottom in salaries. The field to look at was cognitive science or neurology, which in fairness makes some sense given where machine learning is today. Today, people are trying to get into tech companies, and those who take one boot camp course call themselves “software engineers.”

csours 5y ago

2001 High School Graduate - People told me everything would be outsourced to India and it wasn't worth getting started in programming.

zffr 5y ago
I got told this as a 2010 high school graduate too! Didn’t listen since I loved programming and computers and it worked out well for me.
1-more 5y ago
I thought this when picking majors to graduate college in 2010, but I was able to switch in time. People look at me crazy when I say that!
zozbot234 5y ago
> People told me everything would be outsourced to India I'm not sure that this ever amounted to more than a urban legend. When you actually looked into the supposed outsourcing "trend", all you heard about was TheDailyWTF-grade horror stories.
- embeddTrway690 5y ago
  Now In India, students starting CS are often told "CS has no longer demand" in recent years. The problem was too many people entering engineering degrees after a temporary 'IT boom' decades ago, seeing that as a way towards upwards social mobility.
- mikestew 5y ago
  I'm not sure that this ever amounted to more than a urban legend. Urban legend? Entire books were written on the subject, by respected authors, too: https://www.amazon.com/Decline-American-Programmer-Edward-Yourdon/dp/013191958X https://www.amazon.com/Decline-American-Programmer-Edward-Yo... The book is not only pushing 30 years old, it was crap when I bought it in hardcover in '93, and whoo boy, did that one not age well.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago

ja27 5y ago

In the mid-1980s my dad (PhD EE) talked me out of majoring in Computer Science initially because "you'd be a glorified typist". Glad I eventually switched to CS. In the early 1990s, it sure felt like there was a limited market for robotics, machine learning, AI, etc. It was mostly industrial robotics and assembly line inspection cameras.

kingkongjaffa 5y ago
what else is there in robotics? You are either building killer robots like Boston Dynamics (morally reprehensible) and drone striking the middle east, or helping people make things with production line robots.
Dracophoenix 5y ago
Several of the comments here echo your father's sentiment to some extent. How did a CS degree pay dividends for you in the 90's as opposed to majoring in math, a hard science, or engineering and learning to program on your own?