5 ms·
Best major for good money while also having a social life MIS or CS?
Making money is important to me, but I don't need 200K/year. I do however want a safe job with good work life balance and decent pay. I want to be able to spend a decent amount of my life making friendships and spending time with friends.
Please help me decide Management Information Systems vs Computer Science, I'm losing my mind lol.
Computer Science (CS)
Pros:
- More likely to make a lot amount of money.
- Probably more work from home jobs.
- If AI starts stealing everyone's job 15 years from now, CS might be a good place to be if I can get into machine learning and help run the AI.
- Problem solving can be cool
- Maybe way worse work life balance than MIS in college, but way better work life balance than MIS like 2 years out of college??
Cons:
- Courses are much harder than MIS, thus less time to spend building friendships.
- To be competitive for internships and jobs you also need to spend a significant amount of time outside of classes learning actual skills. So even less time free time as if the classes don't demand enough time.
- Supposedly there is huge saturation, at the very least there is in the entry level. This is maybe one of the biggest cons. The big issues from my understanding that causes this and why it is a real issue and not just short term like the recession/tech layoffs are as follows:
1. The huge rise of social media selling the idea that everyone can make 100K if they come into the industry. Now seems like everyone is doing boot camps.
2. Even without the self-learning and boot camp craze, the computer science graduates per year have doubled from 50K ten years ago to now over 100K new CS grads per year.
3. Global outsourcing.
4. ChatGPT/AI will advance exponentially, and will allow for workers to be more efficient leading to less workers needed, if any at all eventually.
Management Information Systems (MIS)
Pros:
- Supposedly it's pretty common for people to make 80K starting from Temple University with MIS, I can easily go to this school.
- MIS is mix of CS and business stuff, so I'd imagine I'd have way more jobs I can get into with this degree for way better job safety. AND if I want to, I can always self-learn most CS skills if I wanted to get CS jobs. And I could get masters in CS if I wanted to.
- Probably was less competition and saturation than CS field.
- MIS is known to be an easier degree, plus I don't need to learn a hole bunch of stuff on top of the courses just to get hired, so more time for friends.
Cons:
- Maybe easier job to replace with AI?? If AI takes over every job, it will be harder to get into the AI/ML stuff with MIS
- Probably slightly lower average pay and lower ceiling for pay??
- People call it the CS drop out degree
- Maybe not as many work from home jobs, although honestly it's probably comparable??
- Maybe initially work life balance is better than CS, but not long term??
No matter which degree I choose, I am still a dedicated student and will work hard to be competitive for internships and jobs, I just really value work life balance so I can spend time with friends.
Which path do you think makes sense if I want to make decent money, but also be able to have plenty of time to touch grass and hang with friends?
TLDR: MIS will maybe give me more free time than CS with only a bit less money???
- verdverm 4y agoMake sure your work is something you can enjoy. Any career can offer the balance you seek, that is more about finding the right company to be at.
- themodelplumber 4y agoThe degree question is interesting but in retrospect it really leads to all these false dichotomies and imagined careers. It really barely matters for a lot of people past their first job. Of course if you talk to people who love their own camp, they may want to argue. Work-life balance will always be more about your personal ability to set boundaries with other people, and find the boundaries you need. The needed boundaries will usually differ somewhat per job, per team, per project, etc. In general, you can have an amazing work-life balance with any degree and just about any career field, if you are planning to be intentional about this aspect, which you clearly are. However this does mean being able to say "no" to people in various ways and in various situations. It may be downright awkward sometimes. Others may try to make you feel awkward about it, especially if they suck at setting boundaries. If you are like me, you'll probably have to quit some jobs so you can preserve your boundaries. It's hard to say what can happen at work when you don't have all the info going into the job (you never do), or when there's a leadership change, and so on. There are so many different approaches when it's time to act directly, too. The informational "I won't be doing that," the relational "I hear you but...," the logical "If X and Y are true, then it doesn't make sense for me to..." and the equity-seeking "since I did everything you asked of me..." It all ends with you pushing back, ideally gently but definitely persistently. Some of it will not be received well even if worded perfectly. I had a lot of friends move from CS to MIS back in the day, and they were mostly just sick of plodding linear progress and deep puzzles (I believe we had a unique department staffing situation in that way, psychologically) and ready to keep it breezy and cheesy. They wanted more of a survey that highlighted the parts they liked best. They wanted to be excited about computer stuff in general, wrap some fun team projects, learn a bunch of PM and accounting overlap skills which might come in handy, know the latest apps and dev tools for this or that, and so on. They all said they loved their new lives away from CS. But other CS friends did just fine in their own ways. To me the question also surfaces your willingness to trust in your future self to have the energy and strength to solve such problems as they arise. Strong contingency planners in these cases can end up trying to out-plan themselves sometimes. Contingency planning can't bear the burden of developing your life into what you want or don't want, all by itself. So, please be sure to leave a note for future self: "Here's what I'm going for, based on limited information about what it means for you in the future. I trust you, and your problem-solving skills, with the rest." And boom, execute and move on. This exercise may help you on the job as well, when faced with similar dichotomies. Planning and execution will mean vastly different things to some teams, but the latter is by far the most important in most jobs. For better or worse. Good luck with whatever you decide.