Ask HN: Is this a bad time to start college as a computer science major?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39207164

by blakesterz • 2 years ago

2 9 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

My son is planning on starting college this fall and will be a computer science major. For the first time in my tech career I am concerned about the short term and long term job market in the computer/technology area.

Would you recommend someone just starting college go with computers or maybe focus on something else?

randomdata2• 2 years ago

There has never been a good time for college if observed from a job market perspective. But that's not the reason why one goes to college.

Deep down, is your actual concern that your son is seeking to prioritize a hobby over jumping into becoming a productive member of society?

blakesterz3• 2 years ago

I guess my actual concern is more just with job market in the profession. I think he has what it takes to be a decent "computer guy", I'm more worried there just won't be the jobs out there in 5 or even 10 years.

randomdata2• 2 years ago

What we do know is that one needs to seize the opportunity when it presents itself. You can't wait. If he/you do not see the opportunity to work in this profession today then it is almost certain that he is not going to find the opportunity to work in it 5-10 years from now. Whether the market strengthens or weakens, your son is still going to be the same person – a person this particular opportunity seemingly is not matched with, else he'd be doing it already.

If college is the opportunity he has in front of him and wants to explore, great, but then one has to forget about the job market. There isn't enough time in the day to focus on both. When he has had enough of that and is ready to move on to new things in life, then he can figure out what opportunities exist at that time. Trying to predict that in advance is futile.

Not only futile, but apt to turn into something counterproductive. If you have your mind set on finding a particular opportunity in the future, you are bound to miss the opportunities that actually show up.

hotpotamus• 2 years ago

I'd say it's a really bad time to be graduating as a computer science major. As far as a few years from now, I always think of the words of Yogi Berra - "It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future". No one knows really. Honestly, if I had things to do over, I'd look harder at medicine, likely a PA type career track; who knows, maybe I still will.

MattGaiser• 2 years ago

Given that the lag time is 4-5 years, I am not sure that this can be accurately answered. When I went to university, everyone was pushing me towards oil and gas as that was the hot thing when I went. By the time I graduated, that job market had collapsed. In 2006, finance and banking was a no brainer career choice.

linguae• 2 years ago

Four years, which is the typical length of a bachelor's degree program in the United States, is long enough to where economic conditions could change substantially. When I was a freshman at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 2005, the advice I heard around me was that majoring in computer science was a mistake since the dot com bust decimated Silicon Valley and all software jobs were going to be sent to India. I majored in computer science anyway, partly because I was more interested in pursuing a research career instead of a software engineering career anyway, but also because computers were (and still are) my passion and I felt that I'd rather take my chances in a tough job market than to do something I wasn't passionate about. In my situation, the software industry recovered in ways many of us couldn't imagine. The rise of cloud computing, mobile computing, social media, and big data in the late 2000s helped spark a long-running tech boom, especially after 2011 when the economy started recovering from the 2008 housing bust. I ended up going to graduate school in a failed attempt to earn a PhD, but my classmates, who also majored in computer science out of passion, largely went to industry after completing their bachelor's degrees (or after sticking around an extra year as part of the university's 4+1 BS+MS program) and ended up having highly successful careers, working for major companies like Google and Microsoft during the long tech boom of the 2010s. Some of them did well enough to purchase homes in Silicon Valley in their late 20s and early 30s, which is no small feat given the extraordinarily high real estate prices here.

To make a long story short; we don't know what the economy is going to look like in 2028 when your son graduates. Four years is a long time.

In addition, a university education is not job training. I could expound on this in great detail, but to keep things relatively short, a university education is not sufficient for a job in any field. Even during the boom years, a computer science degree alone is no guarantee of a job, because what employers want is different from what many computer science programs teach. CS programs train students in computer science, but employers want to hire software engineers, site reliability engineers, data scientists, system administrators, etc., but they don't typically hire computer scientists unless they are hiring researchers with graduate-level degrees. Yes, knowledge of computer science is essential for the aforementioned careers, but often doing well in those roles require knowledge that is typically not gained in most computer science courses. One of the best ways of filling this gap is doing internships, where companies are willing to give college students the opportunity to learn how to work in industry. Also, in the tech industry internships not only pay, but they pay very well, enough to help reduce dependence on student loans. At Cal Poly, my peers who did summer internships or co-ops (these were longer internships with opportunities to earn college credit) were more likely to receive job offers from top companies than those who didn't do internships. Other ways of gaining such experience include part-time work in the industry (which is rare, but sometimes exists) and contributing to open source projects.

So, to sum it up, if your son is passionate about computing, he should major in computer science. However, he should also take deliberate steps to prepare for a career after completing college, and he should keep in mind that he may need to pivot his career throughout his working life, whether it's due to economics, life circumstances, or changes in interest. I wish him well with his time in college this fall!

blakesterz3• 2 years ago

Thanks for your detailed and thoughtful answer!

ogarten• 2 years ago

A good college should teach students how to solve problems and how to think. The major is only a part of that. Computers will likely be around a long time. Computer Science programs also teach AI and all that fancy new stuff.

What else would you focus on? Picking a major should also be about your interests as as student and not about what the parents think. I know this isn't easy, especially if you pay a shit ton of money but you gotta let go as a parent.

I feel this is crazily prevalent in the US that parents cannot let go. Your kids' opinions are often overlooked until they are 18 and then, when they can legally make their own decisions they are not trusted to do so. It's so mind-boggling coming form a European country.

Ask HN: Is this a bad time to start college as a computer science major?

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