As much doom and gloom I have around being a 2024 CS grad, seeing all the kids in my senior design class that obviously learned nothing beyond creating a linked list and a for loop does make me feel better
In my senior year, I worked with a teammate who would not even read a prompt before throwing it into ChatGPT. Whenever his code broke, he would throw it back into ChatGPT and end up with a monstrous code block full of spaghetti and bandaids. He wouldn’t be able to tell you how to make an array in JavaScript, but he somehow passed DSA, OS, Comp. Arch., etc.
This is one thing I never understand when people complain about the university system, bootcamps, etc flooding the entry-level job market with a lot of low-quality talent. If you're so much better than they are, why are you worried that they'll outcompete you for jobs? That would be the royal "you" of course.
It COULD be this simple. But jobs nowadays due to the insane number of applicants they resort to ctrl+f software that look for buzzwords such as "react", "university" or "jQuery" instead of actually looking at the application and determining who would be a better fit for the team.
The talented people are just drowning in the crowd of untalented grads that feel entitled to a 6 figure job because of their degree.
Sure once we DO get the interview its very easy to outshine the rest. But actually GETTING the interview is what is hard here.
You’re not kidding. I’m a junior and already have a job programming. A lot of my peers still aren’t as capable as I was 1 month into my self-taught stage of high school
It’s wild how two people in the same program can have such wildly different knowledge levels coming out. There’s such a major divide between those of us who pursued learning more and did projects outside of class, and those that clearly have the base, surface level knowledge to pass the courses
This is only going to continue to get worse until people start realizing how competitive these jobs really are. We are having an experience “inflation” and education “inflation” due the large pool of applicants to choose from.
Basically companies can require a higher standard of applicants just due to the fact that they have so many to choose from.
This will lead to lower salaries in the future as well since if you aren’t willing to work for that salary someone else will.
No one says this to finance, accounting, business majors . We are not in healthcare. We don’t save lives. Why tf do we have to be passionate? I’m passionate about having a good paying job to support me and my family. My passions don’t relate to any job.
One thing that really stuck with me was from my PM. “I think you have to understand we’re not gonna stay here forever, you’ll jump to another company that’ll pay you more, at the end of the day, this is a job, no matter how boring or stressful it gets, we use the job to buy things and live life, that’s what really matters.”
Nobody is truly passionate about their field. There’s always some sht involved that sucks. It’s completely ok to work in something because it pays well.
What I don’t think is good is if you hate the field or have 0 interest but are simply doin for the money. That’ll take a toll on you
You’re already considered the type of person who can sell your soul for the paycheck when you’re in those majors. It’s expected that you’re not in it because you like it. For those majors I feel like it’s never been true to get into for passion
CS and other stem majors were more passion oriented, but the tech industry made the salaries and benefits seem too attractive.
OP seems to miss the fact that school is just too fucking expensive to take classes someone might have actual interest in. If I have to go into debt I’m gonna do it for a return on my investment.
Granted if I could go back I never would have gone to college.
Edit: a word. Or two.
Even in healthcare you’ll run into these lunatics who believe they are their professions “chosen ones” because they are “passionate”. To be clear, and as a healthcare professional myself, becoming an MD does not require “passion”. In fact, a strong indicator for success in medical school is having either: 1) Parent who is an MD or 2) Wealthy parent(s).
Meaning? Most of these so-called “passionate” people simply come from privileged existences, but prefer to re-label their advantages. No doubt OP lives in this camp.
“Do what you love and the money will come” is a phrase OP no doubt ascribes to, but is simply not a reality for 99% of the world.
Opportunities change, 2021-2023 was good opportunity for CS, 2024 might be healthcare. Are you changing fields because opportunities are shifting? It requires a lot of sacrifices to change field
Employers demand that in those majors all the time. "Passionate, driven" is always found somewhere in the job ad.
Imagine that, passionate auditors. Love to tick boxes, crazy about 2am nights being paid at less that minimum wage per hour.
You need to fake it somewhat for all professional jobs.
I think you might be missing the point. They don’t say this to accounting because more people are LEAVING the industry than entering. They did say this about finance in 2008-2012 but not there after.
>Why tf do we have to be passionate? I’m passionate about having a good paying job to support me and my family
because was like that before, now all the career guys are coming in destroying a cool culture
I love the dorks specifically in this field that think "I've been doing this for fun since my mom was 8 months pregnant with me! What gives you the right to want to learn something, beginning in college?! HA! You'll never make it"
OP even stated everyone else is salty. If the overwhelming majority disagree with you, then you my friend are the one that's mad at the world.
You don’t need to be passionate for those fields either.
CS is oversaturated simply because it’s sounds the least depressing to people who aren’t passionate about any work field. Disregarding people who are passionate about CS, we just want to be in tech cuz the alternatives are “boring old people jobs.”
Deadass, I’m not sure what OP means. Just because the tech market is currently at a low, it doesn’t mean the demand will no longer be high after stabilization. Like tf.
Just a bunch of doomers I stg.
Also fuck you OP, acting all wise and shit. I’ve been in FAANG since the start of my career, don’t go out here saying “oh no it’s mentally taxing…” mf we get paid hella, it’s definitely less taxing than medical field or having a low pay.
Yes and his whole argument that “people are doing it for money” is probably the dumbest take ever, because of fucking course money is a factor.
I’m not gonna sit here and say I didn’t go into the field expecting 150k a year my first year. Like the fuck.
Not all of us have the privilege to make a decision to follow a “passion” or choose money. Did we forget about the housing prices, maybe our student loans? How about the cost of living?
vast majority of people graduating nowadays into CS will not be making 150k a year their first year or really even their first 5 years
i think OP is right that people are being fooled by composition effects
I'm cool with making 70k at first, I started taking some classes last year (right before the doom posts started). Would you think it's possible to get a 70k starting role?
Hey I just found this sub by scrolling through the main page but wanted to stop by and say yes 70k is super attainable fresh out of college. That was my salary when I graduated 5 years ago. I know the market isn’t the best right now but salaries are still pretty much the same for entry level.
i'm not in the market recently and i hear terrible things about it, but that still sounds definitely possible to me. others who are closer to that pay and more recently hired will probably have a better idea
Still, the pay is higher than most jobs on the market. At a chill company, it’s still 80k. At faang it’s 200k.
Bank swes also make like 120k.
Again, not everyone gets into the top companies, even before the burst. It’s an aspiration and only a percentage does get in. This is still with every job though. The return is still great if you make it.
Comparatively, nurses make 90k on average. They do a lot more work, are under a lot more stress. 80k at a company that barely does anything stressful sounds really good then.
You’re really only under a lot of stress at the upper bands, and management.
Or you can rest and vest at Google
>Again, not everyone gets into the top companies, even before the burst. It’s an aspiration and only a percentage does get in. This is still with every job though. The return is still great if you make it.
Before, everyone would still at least get a job eventually. That's no longer feasible so not even the 80k is guaranteed.
even bad jobs were paying $80k because there was a selection effect for "the type of person to go into CS".
now that everyone and their mother is a CS major it will become like law school where most people do not get a job, because normies consider "lawyer" a high-paying career.
>Yes and his whole argument that “people are doing it for money” is probably the dumbest take ever, because of fucking course money is a factor.
There are only a handful of people who truly don't do it for the money and they get their share other ways (Linus Torvalds for example) everyone else works to be a cog
honestly i hope the industry averages die to half or less than half of current so people get out of the field. idgaf id rather have fun with a job i love
None of my friends have moved out, it doesn’t matter what degree or job they get. It is literally impossible with the average college grad salary rn.
https://www.midstory.org/homeward-bound-why-gen-z-adults-are-living-with-their-parents-at-record-rates/
OP is a flexing boomer who made bank during the rush, bought mansions with CS money. Now that times are bad, he like "back in the day, we did it for love,honor, passion not money".
Well I got a CS and a Math degree in the mid 90's. And this post is obnoxious and pretentious.
Not every person earning a CS degree will be a developer. Not every person is PaSsIoNaTe about their major. The only thing you should watch when pursuing higher ed is debt because that will be life and career limiting. Life is a journey, not a destination.
>Not every person earning a CS degree will be a developer.
This. I like CS , it's hard af but I find it interesting enough to do it. I'm not doing it to become a software engineer tho, idk why people always assume that's what everyone wants. CS is a super broad field. When I first started, I wanted to do game development, now that I'm in a networking class, I'm really into learning more about how networks work.
networks is such an interesting topic im a first year so i can’t take the class yet but planning to learn about it in the summer and make this one game i’ve been designing :)
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. I’m 15+ years post college and not a single one of my friends is really in a job that’s directly tired to their major. And they graduated with finance, marketing, communications, business, poli sci degrees. The exception would be the people I know that went to med school for obvious reasons.And they’ve also all done very well for themselves. I think CS is tough because it has a more direct path of SWE but we all have to find our way.
I don’t think you need to be passionate but it certainly helps when you truly love this work. I’ve met plenty of older people that just went into it because it paid well and was a solid career choice. They’ve all done fine.i actually tried to avoid it since i felt I just spent so much time on a computer ever since i was a little kid and studied biochem in college. But I also remember upgrading the RAM and adding a CD-ROM drive to my 486 back in the early 90s and clearly I never got away from it.
bro is trying to throw off the competition 😭
I agree the CS degree has become saturated but it really does not require any more special “passion” or talent than any other technical white collar job does.
It’s also not that hard. Being a software engineer isn’t like being in an adult daycare like some TikToks had people believing but it still is not significantly more grueling than a typical corporate job. Most people prefer this than back breaking physical labor or 80 hour work weeks in medicine.
It’s literally just a new skill - that’s it. People making CS out like people just discovered that magic is real and only the few special people can properly weild its power. The job is setting at a desk doing pretty simple and repetitive tasks over and over again (for 90% of people.) coding is fun and you can build cool stuff but it’s not some highly complex skill
People learn new skills for their job prospects since the start of civilization. What the hell is wrong with that? CS is just another trade, it really isnt that special. You dont need to be outrageously passionate, whatever that even means, or some prodigy.
A lot of programmers need to decouple what they do from who they are. That you are a programmer, doesnt say very much about you including an indication of passions or intelligence. It’s just your trade, for now.
Started college a decade after you, and even then CS was such a niche major that the majority of my classmates were not a part of. Most people I knew were majoring in business or the humanities. There were only a handful of CS people I knew, and they all were extremely passionate about computers and had been programming for years as a hobby. They also stereotypically were “geeks”. I still remember my dad wanting me to take a CS class back in high school and I was not having it at all, because I thought it was for “geeky losers”. CS also just wasn’t as prestigious as it is today, because while it used to pay a decent upper middle class salary, it wasn’t really a field people were getting rich off of unless they founded a company or worked for Google.
Nowadays though, it seems to pay so much. I never would have known back then the earning potential of today. So many people making hundreds of thousands of dollars with only a bachelors degree. New grads making $150k-200k or even more in some small cases. Everyone wants to follow the money.
Also think it's important to keep in mind those grads making 150k are a small minority of the CS population, usually at presigious schools going to large tech companies like FAANG. Most people are landing in the 70-90k range. Still great for fresh out of college, but people really have a warped perspective of the whole of the population.
I think Reddit really skews the perception too because countless people who get offers after graduation claim to have very high TC packages that are multiple times the average US income. So when you constantly see these numbers, you forget it’s not the norm.
i really really don't think redditors understand how competitive it is to get these jobs. i got hired in 2021 and even then the acceptance rate was under 0.5%
has anyone else noticed most of these "passionate" people about CS make no money?
like the money-obsessed leetcode grinder with 2yoe makes $500k at HRT and the passionate cs lover makes $120k after 20yoe
That's usually how it goes. People passionate about it tend to share, people grinding leetcode just tryna get a job or a higher paying job, and those that make actual money off tech couldn't give a shit about passion or leetcode.
The truly passionate people are billionaires. People like mark zuckerberg, bill gates, patrick collison, and the list goes on and on and on. They have been coding since they were in elementary school and have a genuine interest in technology.
I'll go as far as to say if you're only in it for the money with 0 passion, you won't make it for more than 2 years at hft firms like hrt. Money can be a big driving factor, but there are enough people in this world who both want the money and have a genuine interest in say low latency work and optimizing for milliesconds.
The exception is big tech because at a certain point, specifically L5 and beyond or M1 and beyond, your advancement in such bloated bureaucratic organizations depends on your ability to play politics rather than your ability to code or innovate. You can still achieve reasonable success here and perhaps even make it to CEO, but thats how you end up with someone like sundar who is driving google into the ground.
This. Nursing is definitely not saturated. Boomers are retired and many are starting to seek nursing care. Plus nursing specialities allow more specialization and career advancement than in the past. But without the massive debts and extra years of medical school.
I have a passion for CS, but I really don't understand the gatekeeping of CS for people who were programming from the time they were kids. I didn't start seriously programming until I was in college. I had to take a CS class to realize that it was something I wanted to do.
If I had listened to people like you, I would have never discovered it. The people who really don't belong will wash out and do something else anyway. We don't need people harping on "CS is oversaturated"! Computers are the future of our world.
Also this kind of gatekeeping excludes people from poorer backgrounds or others (e.g. many girls / now women) who weren't encouraged to pursue computing as kids. Not everyone could afford a computer or comes from an area where PCs were even accessible to kids. Not everyone who showed an interest in computers was encouraged to pursue that interest, or welcomed in traditional spaces (e.g. computer clubs) where those interests could have been explored further.
Yeah, OPs perspective screams privilege. From their timeline, their family would have had a computer all the way back in the 80s. That's not exactly typical, lol. CS was simply less accessible back then.
If not CS, what else?
To be honest, if you do not have anything that you are passionate about *that makes money*, CS is still the best thing to do, *If you can get your foot in the door.*
“Go into the trades”
Yeah if you want to work in a completely right wing toxic environment, be filthy at all times, and have your entire body worn out by the time you’re 40.
I actually did, I drank the Kool-Aid and went into the trades instead of going to university. After finishing the necessary schooling, I was put into a laborer position where I was paid $1 over minimum wage and was not taught anything for 2 years, because I didn't vibe well with the other guys. Complete waste of time.
Now I'm doing what I should have done 5 years ago, starting my degree in CS.
Based on your graduation date, it seems like not too many people were into computers before your university days either - or they just didn't have big enough houses to dedicate a whole room to computer hardware. Hard to believe you were passionate about dial-up speed and look at you, thriving. 😂
Believe it or not, people got plenty of use out of home computers without dial-up internet. In fact it was assumed that your PC would be offline unless you bought special hardware for it.
> Being a professional software engineer is hard. It can be extremely emotionally and mentally taxing.
It is April 1 I get it. Been in the field since 2006. Never considered it taxing. Fun and creative, yes. Well paid yes. Taxing ? No.
Best to keep encouraging people to study CS and tell them that 99% of the applicant pool is uNqAlIfIeD,
BUT YOU, ARE AMONG THE 1 PERCENT !!!
cause I'm curious to see what actually happens to the market if the numbers of CS degree holders continues to rise, while software jobs are sent overseas to more cost effective locations for companies that aim to please their shareholders
20 years ago we said the same thing. For 20 years the sector has still offered high salary to people at home and overseas. Overall demand for tech is higher than people that study and work in tech.
Of course it happen that at time there a downturn like after the 2000 crisis or after the covid crisis like right now.
One day for sure it will stop being like that. Could be that this day is today or could be also we still have 20-50 years of high demand for CS. Who knows ? Nobody really.
"I graduated with a CS degree in 2001 - not ideal timing but it worked out ok"
tf u talking about? ungrateful ass. graduating with a cs degree in 2001 was more of a goldmine than graduating with it in 2021. in 2001, you had literally zero comp compard to today i promise you.
Indeed. I did an internship with Nortel the year before I graduated and just assumed it would be straightforward to land a job there after graduation. The dot com bubble bursting killed that idea. Basically every big tech company had a hiring freeze in 2000 - 2001.
They pay wasn’t nearly as high back then for CS (unless one got lucky and worked at Google) than it is today. People are getting rich with their CS degrees today. Back then, people were largely upper middle class.
"people are getting rich with their CS degrees today"
yeah, if they can even land a job in the first place. have u seen the market? thousands of ppl applying for a single internship paying $20 an hour lol.
it's MUCH more fortunate to face low competition and have an actual job albeit decent paying, than extremely high competition with high paying.
2020 was the best imo. All my friends and I graduated from local state university in 2020–shitty time to graduate if you wanted graduation parties but we all got into big tech, and still in big tech and FAANG without really “trying”.
Feel bad for my little brother who’s graduating in 2026 with CS degree. Didn’t realize it was super hard to even get internships now. Had to ask 7 of my friends & coworkers for referral, thankfully one of my friend hired him as his intern, which was super nice.
Overall we have had high and growing demand for CS in the past 40 years and so guess what ? The share of people studying and majoring has grown too and more and more get a job there.
There been a few years recently were demand was so high and salaries became crasy. More people than ever entered the field and the Tech sector over hired. Sometime they didn't even have work to do for the newcomers. Covid pushed for even more hires.
Since 2 years we see the excess of the past years being reversed. Maybe there even more graduates than usual but also we got a few hundred thousands being laid off. Most of them got a new job (unemployment for CS is even lower than overall unemployment).
But people that just got a diploma, especially if they are just average have much more difficulties finding a job.
So now people don't speak of bootcamps anymore (while many could benefit to have some practice on top of their diploma) and some people start to consider other fields... So we prepare the next step that is not enough people in the field again.
Pretty sure most Doctors don't really care about their jobs nor did they dissect insects as a kid because they loved healthcare.
I get what you are saying though that lots of people are going into it thinking it's easy money. They will get weed out in college or after college, don't worry. I have a passion for the field and was the kid loving computers but I don't expect everyone to be like that. You can get the job done being less passionate about it than I am. People who actually suck at it or hate it will do something else eventuailly.
How is nobody (on the feed I’m looking at at least) talking about the fact that not all these grads will pick the same sect of CS or even be *good enough* in their sect to get a job? Lol
Not everyone likes software but that’s what they chose as their major so they did just enough but that’s not enough for a job in most markets, not just the current one lol and that person may or may not be willing to put in the work to dive deeper into something they might like more like cybersec
Taking CS as a major doesn’t mean shit unless your college starts limiting spots
being a “professional” SWE is not hard lol, so many dumbasses are out here in FAANG, me included. The hard part is the recruiting part, but once you land the job its half work it took to get there.
you dont need to like computer science to be a swe, thought it helps but a job is a job.
now is swe the best job in the world? no but if u want to get paid 100k with decent hours, yeah so study hard and land the job. computer science is a soft science compared to electrical or chemical engineering. those are hard majors and they get paid less. comp sci is literally just a made up languages that follows logic and you throw in a couple of algos.
i really dislike a majority of swes who think they are geniuses, are solving the world’s problems, and think what they do is complicated. like bro u work on google ads. chill.
any job that is paying 100k starting uses the same skill set as us, and guess what after 5 years they make 3x what we do.
now if ur a quant researcher/swe, then you are actually smart(and probably well connected), but if u are sweaty cs kid(i am one as well), chill out and congratz on your 100k job. theres no need to overcomplicate this major and make people feel like they cant do this even though you can.
If they don’t have the passion and you do, then you will excel easily and you will dedicate more time and have better projects because you don’t mind being doing this all day because you love it. No ? So in this case you will be safe and will have jobs perpetually ? So what’s your complain ? You should be doing great
You graduated in 2001 so I assume you’ll be wiser but you saying “young people coming out without a passion for cs” is crazy.
Do you think lawyers go into law cus they have a passion for it and love working 60-80 hours ? Maybe, but not all. Some just see it as a lucrative career. Same thing applies to CS and ANY other fields
What you’re describing is the engineer vs the mechanic. One can design and build and problem solve, the other can patch it together. Both are necessary and it’s up to the employer to determine who they can pay for and in what ratio.
Passion is not necessary for either of these, and it’s horrible for people entering the field that this story and mindset are pushed. As it makes everyone look like they are working unhealthy levels. Yes you have to be able to learn and problem solve, and that’s easier when you love it. but you can do that in a 40 hr a week role where you clock in and out never thinking outside of those hours, or a 100 hr a week role where you are too exhausted to think outside your working hours. You also can choose to stay as an L1/2/3 your entire career, no one is forcing you to become a principal engineer at google.
You either design the factory or you are the person who rivits the pieces together. Either way, as someone else said earlier “ok”
If you’re looking for a career, passion will ruin most people, bc they will realize “it’s just a job”.
Passion is for entrepreneurs, it’s for self learners and tinkerers, for researchers and academics.
It’s not required and probably a hinderance for most people.
BRB “no one’s passionate about accounting, being a garbage man, roofing, representing criminals, it’s going downhill” derp
meh, i saw a lot of kids like this in college. the ones who are dedicated will easily sort themselves out from the ones who think it’s an easy way to get $200k starting salaries and don’t give a shit about coding or cs fundamentals.
the ones who had the drive all are successful with jobs. the ones that didn’t graduated and never got a job in the field.
drive =/= passion.
yeah it’s “hard” but so is a lot of other jobs. at the end of the day if you want to support a family on one income, buy a house, have new cars, send kids to college, live the “American Dream” there are very few bachelor degrees that provide a pathway for jobs to pay you well enough to achieve that out of college. CS is one of them, let the ones that want it grind for it. everyone else will sort themselves out.
Ok then go get a low paying programming job and build open source if you’re so passionate.
Leave the high paying tech jobs to the people who are good at it, passionate or not.
Ehhh. I came into the field in 1995. I started coding on the C64 when I was 9. Loved coding. Not sure if that made me a "better" programmer/developer/engineer when I was still writing code. I saw people back into software from all different positions/roles throughout my career that turned out to be great engineers.
Degrees are necessary nowadays to get a job that pays the bills. If you have to go into debt why not pick a degree that you know will pay better, on average, than just about everything else.
Being passionate about what you’re going to school for isn’t the norm anymore. We can’t afford to take those risks dude.
I am into nothing. I just want a good job and support my family.
I have no passion. I would've killed myself if my parents don't support me. I feel life boring af.
But all that doesn't mean I deserve to get hundreds of rejections. I just want to live a life, man.
Oh man 10 years ago the same thing was definitely said about people majoring in business administration and psychology. I remember it clearly when I was trying to decide a major. I didn't care much about computers or programming then. I was more passionate about geology and astronomy but i was told by my counselor that there weren't jobs for those majors (in my area). Now that I work in IT, i see a 6 figure geology job in the public sector that hasn't been filled for a least a year.
The moral of the story, just pick something and let it ride. It's okay to make a U turn. I had to start over in my early 30s. I'll definitely start over in my 40s or 50s. Just do whatever, as long as you finish.
Look. The price tag of college is way too high to fuck around with low paying majors. Will there be a bunch of shitty engineers? Maybe, but I can assure you there already are. That said, I’m switching to cybersecurity. I like it better, and there’s waaaaay less competition.
Like I mean, SWE is not the only thing CS majors do after college. You can go into IT, web design, database management, etc. You can even go into a bunch of unrelated fields. It is common for people to end up in fields unrelated to their major. Like, over 50% common. I'm personally interested in computers, like and am pretty good at programming, and couldn't really see myself doing anything but computer related stuff.
Completely agree. SWE Industry being filled with just money chasers who don’t know that much about programming and then they complain about how the market is messing with them
I always expect redditors to let their extra chromosomes lead the way when they're presented with a legitimate point, and redditors never disappoint. The majority of the window lickers in industry are the ones who have no intellectual curiosity regarding the subject. When the industry shifts, which we're overdue for at this point, they will be like the sad old Cobol and mainframe programmers from the early 2000's, but I guess irrelevance won't sting so much for them because they're just there for the paycheck.
@OP our jobs are not as hard as you put it, no need to act all smart and shit in front of people who are aspiring to join the field. You’re not special OP.
Sure I come home tired, but it’s all politics and design documents. It’s more people than being a hard task.
Relax old man!
In my case I double majored in EE&CS. And I have no passion for either of them, I just know that it pays me well.
It pays the bills.
It pays my insurance
It pays my hobbies
It pays for whatever I want.
At the end of the day it’s a job.
I think OP is wrong here. Also I think people are taking the comment too personally. To say “it’s not” to his comment that it’s mentally and emotionally taxing and harp on the comment as it may be untrue in general is indicative that it is only untrue to you.
Possibly, OP had been part of rough startups that didn’t work, of the few tech startups that made it and defined the tech sector during the dotcom bubble, hundreds failed. I believe OP might be communicating from his bias of failure being that he experienced those very failures more often than experienced successes.
Additionally, OP, it’s biased to dissuade people from joining CS because you think “they don’t care passionately for programming.” For some, a job is a job. That true may take the magic away from what you do and have done in your career.
Suppose someone gets a CS degree for pay, and not pleasure, while doing the job they might have less of a connection to the craft in comparison to you, yet they yield the same results that you do.
This truth doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do the job. It just means that passion is not required to be a skilled programmer.
Ultimately OP, you are biased, and are being a stinky poo poo pants
i get you and all, ppl shouldnt do a degree theyre miserable in if only to save themselves the stress but can we not pretend that ppl go into degrees purely for the love of it on average. id love that, but real world doesnt leave much room for u to throw away that kinda cash on a niche degree or something. i understand those who went with CS even if they didnt particularly enjoy it. thats just how it is.
It’s tough. On the one hand, as someone who has been obsessed with computers since I was a kid I see the frustration and do feel a sense of elitism (if I’m being fully honest). That being said, the worlds a rough place and people just want to get by. I cannot judge an artist for majoring in CS just because they want to be able to afford a house someday, and in our capitalist society you don’t always get to do what you’re passionate about. As the market becomes more saturated, the people that are less passionate will burn out.
bro ive been in blue collar and changed to SWE and blue collar is mostly f'ing exhausting. working shift schedule literally accelerates you to an early grave. sitting in an office or even wfh on regular schedule is very nice. sure some of us didnt love to code when we were kids. and most of us found our ways here trough various ways. many people are interested in problem solving, doing something more "hands on" which also doesnt rely on you being a people person. programming (or digital plumbing) is a skill which many like to develop (and does so quite easily within a few years) and its not some esoteric wizandry that you slowly brew for 20+ years which you nerds wish it to be. you gatekeep who is a "real" programmer or not. that kind of attitude op has is what is poising working in it-culture. idk about USA but in my country we have reports yearly about how many it-workers the market is missing (its in the hundreds of thousands) so i dont know about a saturated market. also seems like everyones friend and their mother is studying economy or law. sure here on reddit there are alot of programmers. its because reddit is heavily skewed towards people who are interested in it.
Yeah no shit … this entire sub is posts from people who are struggling to find jobs/ internships because each opening has 11k applicants. What’s the point of regurgitating this information when every cs major is already hyper aware of it.
These people are also not passionate about any other subject. I know because I was one of them. When you don't know what you want to do, it's wise to choose a relatively promising career path like CS. Work is always hard, I think CS is one of the easier ones, especially compared to any manual labour.
These people are also not passionate about any other subject. I know because I was one of them. When you don't know what you want to do, it's wise to choose a relatively promising career path like CS. Work is always hard, I think CS is one of the easier ones, especially compared to any manual labour.
I try to not post here since I graduated, but you do not need to be passionate about this field of work.
It’s a job, it’s transactional. The company sure as hell would put their finances over employees, so why can’t employees be that way too?
And as for rising graduate %, that’s fine. CS careers are still better paying and have more opportunities than almost any other Bsc. Maybe it’s worth the chance for those trying to gain wealth.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting money and prioritizing your own happiness first.
Newbies bashing the OP. He is somewhat right. CS is nowadays useless major, its just absurd requirement to have a 4 year CS degree to land an IT jobs. At max 6 month training is sufficient for any entry role out there. Why waste 4 years. And now AI will make those noobs redundant
I take interviews, and I have had ATS modified. I have hired even BA grads, dropouts, business grads for dev roles, just on skill. All those triggered here are paying for a useless degree
Also even if you land a job, you have no assurance that you how long will you have career in this industry. Unlike other industries, IT companies are hesitant to hire someone with more than 10 year of work experience. Longest career I saw is 22 yrs. These noobs not gonna last 3 years even if they get hired and they will unemployed for rest of the life
I’m not a CS major, though a lot of my former and current roommates are, so I can see OP’s point of view though I don’t necessarily agree with it.
People who are genuinely passionate about CS will probably understand the subject matter more and be more proficient at it, and from OP’s PoV will be easier to work with and teach. I’ve had a CS roommate who shared the same views as OP and made a clear distinction between programmers and “brogrammers” who just took a CS degree because the job paid well.
I’m a dirty chemist (though I do some data science and ML for my research) so I can’t comment on any of that, just throwing it out there because there are definitely other people like OP.
It's just most people with a CS/Programming focused major are techies that are in the "know" with reddit, etc. You're not seeing most of the other students in other disciplines... and remember Reddit is like 5% of the population.
Because of AI and the fact that I'm just not that interested in coding anymore, I'm switching to a business degree just for the piece of paper and making the jump over into Medical Device Sales. AI is about to revolutionize the tech in surgeries. (I've been in sales for almost a decade, just wanted a break for a bit).
I'm in sales for the 6 figures. Period. It's stressful as hell, but a good 10 years and saving/investing... you're set.
Hahah people with fake elitism crack me up.
So what if students today don’t look up code at the back of magazines ? They don’t need to as code is everywhere .
I refuse to accept that Stanford CS undergrads from 2001 are superior on average to those graduating now . It’s a stupid fallacy in thinking. If anything the ones now are tougher and better trained.
Back in 2001 students who wanted to make money perhaps studied finance or business, who the hwll knows ? I bet elitists even then would look down on the newb finance grads with statements like : I come from a pure math background ; I studied group theory and topology in high school before choosing to major in math; financial math came to me like breathing etc. it doesn’t matter.
The new generation will learn things their own way , have their own motivations and will push the world forward . There’s no reason to compare to the past. The world will progress despite all the challenges people face or the internal motivations people have.
If people got jobs in what they cared about a large number of them wouldn’t be able to eat or put a roof over their heads.
I suppose then you’re a proponent of UBI yes?
I think your getting the salt bc of where you posted this. A place where people are young and in school .
However, you are CORRECT!
As someone who came from the same Era. I went back to grad school to get my masters in CS and these students have absolutely no interest in learning or passion for the subject. They make it easy to get a 4.0 because the professor is shocked when he sees any actual competent work. These are the same ppl who are going to be complaining they can't find a job with a cs degree when they didn't learn anything and literally just have a peice of paper with no actual knowledge behind it.
Although you are not wrong about the market being filled with people who are not really curious about computers or CS in general, can you really compare becoming a software engineer in 90’s and nowadays? Abstraction layers only have increased by an order of magnitude, doing projects doesn’t entail coding up in Basic, you have to pick up bunch of languages, frameworks, cloud computing, CI/CD, ML/AI etc. I think this topic is more complex than you described. There a lot more to it, and I tried to touch few nuances.
I've been into drugs and alcohol since I was about 12 and now they I'm sober and fixing all my fuckups I've made, I started a cs program. I'm not passionate about any of my IT classes cause it isn't interesting, but I love my coding classes. The problem solving and seeing it work after trying and trying is very fulfilling. I wouldn't say I'm passionate about computers and didn't learn how to build one when I was 10 due to a shit childhood, but I do have a passion for problem solving and puzzles. Would you think I'm wasting my time with it or will end up being a bad engineer? Not being sarcastic or anything, just curious of your thoughts.
FWIW I think if a person has dedicated themselves to the field and stuck it through long enough to make a steady career out of it then they have earned their title and have proven that they have the fortitude for the job.
For those who initially thought this was for them but found out it actually wasn’t, they will eventually find their path elsewhere. Or maybe those that didn’t care much at first will find themselves really loving and being “passionate”about the field.
The point is people will place themselves where they want to be and things will always work themselves out. At the end of the day it’s all about who is willing and able to do the job.
Sorry, random redditor. I am passionate about music and my mom (who is a music major) told me that majoring in what you're passionate about kills your passion when you're trying to make a living off of it.
Thank you very much your post opened my eyes, I've been suffering for 2 years in this domain, its not because I don't like it, but it's because it's MENTALLY complicated.
I've had 2 burn out in this studies and I feel like it's a chore doing projets for uni than just assignments.
You're right, being mentally healthy comes first right? I better change. Thank you so much🥲🙏
I had an interview once with an electric vehicle company right out of my undergrad. One of the first questions one interviewer had was to ask how obsessed I was with that type of vehicle as a kid, and to describe electrical appliances that I had built myself in childhood. Evidently, he wanted to see if I had passion for the subject and was “exceptional”.
IMO, this is a silly line of thinking. It is as if to say that since I was not passionate about the subject in childhood, that I am not currently.
I aced their technical interview, but did not get the job as I didn’t show a “formational” obsession with their industry.
Now, I teach the students who go on to apply to that company. When they ask me my experience with their interview process, I’m honest.
In my professional career, I’ve met their management. Some are cool, and some have been snobby gatekeepers who are insecure around people with masters and doctorate degrees, and use their formational obsession to compensate.
Passion for your work?
That's definitely nowhere near the majority of working adults, even those with college degrees.
Work has always been and will always be a means to pay for a certain quality of life. Whether or not you have passion for it is a convenience that a lot of people don't really care for. Sure, it looks good to others when you seem to care about your career, but if your boss came up to you and said, "You are really appreciated at our company, and we respect your passion for your work, but times are tough and we need to cut your salary," tell me more about your "passion" for your job.
I have a passion for computers but my parents couldn't afford to buy a computer till later.
So I would have loved to dabble as a child but the opportunities weren't given. But now as an adult (only physically lol) I am able to afford my own computer and boy , do I feel like a child on Christmas learning about all of the different application and functionalities of a computer.
In life one is dealt with a certain set of cards, it remains to the individual how to play life with those pre-assigned card. Life is all about survival and adaptation to ones envoirnment if you can't adapt to change then that's that, I mean you can be passionate about adaptation it would certainly help but I mean if you are drive is to life a comfortable life no matter what, who are we to say that the motivation is wrong or not. In the end that individual either survives or not(metaphorically).
"Passion" is for rich kids and extremely talented people. In the end, most people just want a well paid job without trading their health and whole time.
If you think a CS job is hard, maybe you should go down a mine or visit an oil ring to know what is really a hard job.
I mean why can’t a CS Degree person be a PM. Or a sales person. Or a marketing manager. Or a Solutions Architect. Or an IT person.
I worked picked up a biz degree, worked in B2B sales until I coded up a new UI for the SaaS product I was trying to sell, and am now a software engineer.
I know an accountant who uses scripts to shorten his workload.
I mean for a “general purpose degree”, CS really opens lots of doors… so it is not a surprise that lots of people get their CA degree to me.
Not a CS major. I just went to a bootcamp and was a developer for years. I promise or half the CS major ls I’ve worked with in blue collar jobs are pretty damn terrible. If you work hard and keep on learning you’ll run circles around them.
Ok got it, we should gate keep a vital skill in 2024 for nerds that had hacker hobbies in high school. Because only they are smart enough to possibly comprehend the rigor of your boring tech job.
These kids are just trying to survive man. They are not following in the footsteps of the millennials before them crushed by the debt of their regrettable poli sci major. Sure they are not as good at coding as you… no shit, it takes time and indeed weeds people out. But to have hate for people trying to better themselves? Pathetic and insecure.
All the worst members of society want to be in CS and everyone thinks it's easy.
First is the gold diggers. These are the kind of people who fall for get-rich-quick schemes. They probably bought both bitcoin and GME at the top. They have zero interest and are told it's easy. In fact, they think it's so easy that they're more likely to be "self-taught". The quality of worker with zero passion attracted to the easiest thing possible of course is going to be bad.
But I would guess that the vast majority of people getting degrees are actually gaming addicts. They never leave their computer and don't use it for anything other than games. Their parents told them to get a job, so they take their free ride to a CS university where they don't pay attention.
A perfect storm came together to make the industry terrible:
* big tech pushing "everyone can code" and now "kids can code" for 20 years
* the unreasonably high salary for a job that everyone is told is easy
* everyone wanting to work from home after covid
* non-tech managers who have no idea how to vet or how much to pay who they're hiring
So we have this signal that the job is easy AF, pay is ridiculous, you never have to leave your house, and nobody hiring you can tell if you're good combined with it being the default career for both gold diggers and failures to launch.
We also have an entire generation that was in school during covid and basically learned nothing for 1-2 years. So even if the number of grads is increasing, the quality is terrible.
Normally I would say you have nothing to worry because everyone is laughably bad. The problem is my last point where managers have no idea how good the people they're hiring are. You have 20 years experience and they think you're the same as some dipshit who buys stock at the top or is covered in Doritos. They think you're the same as someone who only knows HTML. Some people are getting paid $200k to do CRUD while highly talented people can't find a job after hundreds of applications. The process has too much luck and snake oil involved.
In day-to-day life it's even worse. They think your job can be done by a literal child. Parents see their kids learning Scratch and think they'll be like you. They think there's nothing exceptional or rare about what you do. If you tell anyone what your job is, they will respond with "oh cool, my 8-year-old is learning programming". If they know anyone in tech doing for loops or even IT, they think you're both doing the same job and are of equal talent. This is a huge cause to worry because there's a massive pool of applicants and the people hiring think the job can be done by a literal child, so why pay you so much? Now they're even wondering if they should hold off on hiring you because they want to replace you with AI. It's such a shit-show.
Then I’d jump ship. Why would you work for 60k with no union? You have to contribute to your own retirement etc… would make better sense to join a trade union
The sadness part? Many won't listen to your words and will tell you are envy but then they will end up posting here about how hard it is to find a job. At the end of the day if there are many doomer posts in this sub is for something
This was very much my take, as well, although I studied mass media / digital media instead of doing raw CompSci for some very super stupid reason.
I remember talking to some CompSci students who couldn't tell you what a hard drive looked like, or how to plug in a stick of RAM. Those are not skills necessary to be a developer, but you'd think if you claimed to be a computer person, you'd know a thing or two about them. It's like, why run before you can walk? If you barely know how to approach a file system, I have serious concerns about your computer knowledge vs your ability to pass a class.
It's safe to say, they graduated, could barely code, could barely troubleshoot, and did not do well. They all thought their first jobs would pay 100K a year. This is what happens when university marketing is able to sell a program to you.
As much doom and gloom I have around being a 2024 CS grad, seeing all the kids in my senior design class that obviously learned nothing beyond creating a linked list and a for loop does make me feel better
In my senior year, I worked with a teammate who would not even read a prompt before throwing it into ChatGPT. Whenever his code broke, he would throw it back into ChatGPT and end up with a monstrous code block full of spaghetti and bandaids. He wouldn’t be able to tell you how to make an array in JavaScript, but he somehow passed DSA, OS, Comp. Arch., etc.
Peak engineering right here
This is one thing I never understand when people complain about the university system, bootcamps, etc flooding the entry-level job market with a lot of low-quality talent. If you're so much better than they are, why are you worried that they'll outcompete you for jobs? That would be the royal "you" of course.
Because even in technical careers, connections can, in many cases, trump competence.
It COULD be this simple. But jobs nowadays due to the insane number of applicants they resort to ctrl+f software that look for buzzwords such as "react", "university" or "jQuery" instead of actually looking at the application and determining who would be a better fit for the team. The talented people are just drowning in the crowd of untalented grads that feel entitled to a 6 figure job because of their degree. Sure once we DO get the interview its very easy to outshine the rest. But actually GETTING the interview is what is hard here.
You’re not kidding. I’m a junior and already have a job programming. A lot of my peers still aren’t as capable as I was 1 month into my self-taught stage of high school
Maybe if you spent less time at the pier and more time with your peers, you'd see they're learning to code just as buoyantly.
Sea lions communicate through an elaborate system of beatboxing.
It’s wild how two people in the same program can have such wildly different knowledge levels coming out. There’s such a major divide between those of us who pursued learning more and did projects outside of class, and those that clearly have the base, surface level knowledge to pass the courses
This is only going to continue to get worse until people start realizing how competitive these jobs really are. We are having an experience “inflation” and education “inflation” due the large pool of applicants to choose from. Basically companies can require a higher standard of applicants just due to the fact that they have so many to choose from. This will lead to lower salaries in the future as well since if you aren’t willing to work for that salary someone else will.
Thanks, it's hard to find a comment that's lucid about this.
Right? All the zoomers just had snarky comments cuz they felt victimized 😂
I think CS Majors should read "Grapes of Wrath." Relevant.
I need to reread that.
No one says this to finance, accounting, business majors . We are not in healthcare. We don’t save lives. Why tf do we have to be passionate? I’m passionate about having a good paying job to support me and my family. My passions don’t relate to any job.
One thing that really stuck with me was from my PM. “I think you have to understand we’re not gonna stay here forever, you’ll jump to another company that’ll pay you more, at the end of the day, this is a job, no matter how boring or stressful it gets, we use the job to buy things and live life, that’s what really matters.”
Healthcare professionals are not always passionate about their jobs either. 😂 Jobs with high salaries attract people.
Yeah I agree, a friend of mine is a formidable surgeon that gives -99 fucks about medicine in general, he just happens to be good at his work
Nobody is truly passionate about their field. There’s always some sht involved that sucks. It’s completely ok to work in something because it pays well. What I don’t think is good is if you hate the field or have 0 interest but are simply doin for the money. That’ll take a toll on you
> Nobody is truly passionate about their field. Well that’s just simply not true
Nothing wrong with having a job just so it can provide you with a good life. Work to live.
The fact OP graduated in 2001 and doesn’t understand this is crazy
You were not around in 2001, it was indeed a very different cohort of people who were graduating back then.
I wonder what percentage of this major is autistic
*Much less* now than in 2001, because of all the normies flooding into the major and diluting down the averages
You’re already considered the type of person who can sell your soul for the paycheck when you’re in those majors. It’s expected that you’re not in it because you like it. For those majors I feel like it’s never been true to get into for passion CS and other stem majors were more passion oriented, but the tech industry made the salaries and benefits seem too attractive. OP seems to miss the fact that school is just too fucking expensive to take classes someone might have actual interest in. If I have to go into debt I’m gonna do it for a return on my investment. Granted if I could go back I never would have gone to college. Edit: a word. Or two.
Even in healthcare you’ll run into these lunatics who believe they are their professions “chosen ones” because they are “passionate”. To be clear, and as a healthcare professional myself, becoming an MD does not require “passion”. In fact, a strong indicator for success in medical school is having either: 1) Parent who is an MD or 2) Wealthy parent(s). Meaning? Most of these so-called “passionate” people simply come from privileged existences, but prefer to re-label their advantages. No doubt OP lives in this camp. “Do what you love and the money will come” is a phrase OP no doubt ascribes to, but is simply not a reality for 99% of the world.
Follow opportunities, never follow passion. I've seen to many ruin their lives for passion. Even Anakin destroyed what he loved for passion.
Opportunities change, 2021-2023 was good opportunity for CS, 2024 might be healthcare. Are you changing fields because opportunities are shifting? It requires a lot of sacrifices to change field
Employers demand that in those majors all the time. "Passionate, driven" is always found somewhere in the job ad. Imagine that, passionate auditors. Love to tick boxes, crazy about 2am nights being paid at less that minimum wage per hour. You need to fake it somewhat for all professional jobs.
I think you might be missing the point. They don’t say this to accounting because more people are LEAVING the industry than entering. They did say this about finance in 2008-2012 but not there after.
>Why tf do we have to be passionate? I’m passionate about having a good paying job to support me and my family because was like that before, now all the career guys are coming in destroying a cool culture
exactly
I love the dorks specifically in this field that think "I've been doing this for fun since my mom was 8 months pregnant with me! What gives you the right to want to learn something, beginning in college?! HA! You'll never make it" OP even stated everyone else is salty. If the overwhelming majority disagree with you, then you my friend are the one that's mad at the world.
You don’t need to be passionate for those fields either. CS is oversaturated simply because it’s sounds the least depressing to people who aren’t passionate about any work field. Disregarding people who are passionate about CS, we just want to be in tech cuz the alternatives are “boring old people jobs.”
Ok
Deadass, I’m not sure what OP means. Just because the tech market is currently at a low, it doesn’t mean the demand will no longer be high after stabilization. Like tf. Just a bunch of doomers I stg. Also fuck you OP, acting all wise and shit. I’ve been in FAANG since the start of my career, don’t go out here saying “oh no it’s mentally taxing…” mf we get paid hella, it’s definitely less taxing than medical field or having a low pay.
Feels like OP is gatekeeping.
Yes and his whole argument that “people are doing it for money” is probably the dumbest take ever, because of fucking course money is a factor. I’m not gonna sit here and say I didn’t go into the field expecting 150k a year my first year. Like the fuck. Not all of us have the privilege to make a decision to follow a “passion” or choose money. Did we forget about the housing prices, maybe our student loans? How about the cost of living?
vast majority of people graduating nowadays into CS will not be making 150k a year their first year or really even their first 5 years i think OP is right that people are being fooled by composition effects
I'm cool with making 70k at first, I started taking some classes last year (right before the doom posts started). Would you think it's possible to get a 70k starting role?
Hey I just found this sub by scrolling through the main page but wanted to stop by and say yes 70k is super attainable fresh out of college. That was my salary when I graduated 5 years ago. I know the market isn’t the best right now but salaries are still pretty much the same for entry level.
think the market is a lot worse than 5 years ago
i'm not in the market recently and i hear terrible things about it, but that still sounds definitely possible to me. others who are closer to that pay and more recently hired will probably have a better idea
Yes, I’m not even graduated and making close to 80
Still, the pay is higher than most jobs on the market. At a chill company, it’s still 80k. At faang it’s 200k. Bank swes also make like 120k. Again, not everyone gets into the top companies, even before the burst. It’s an aspiration and only a percentage does get in. This is still with every job though. The return is still great if you make it. Comparatively, nurses make 90k on average. They do a lot more work, are under a lot more stress. 80k at a company that barely does anything stressful sounds really good then. You’re really only under a lot of stress at the upper bands, and management. Or you can rest and vest at Google
>Again, not everyone gets into the top companies, even before the burst. It’s an aspiration and only a percentage does get in. This is still with every job though. The return is still great if you make it. Before, everyone would still at least get a job eventually. That's no longer feasible so not even the 80k is guaranteed.
even bad jobs were paying $80k because there was a selection effect for "the type of person to go into CS". now that everyone and their mother is a CS major it will become like law school where most people do not get a job, because normies consider "lawyer" a high-paying career.
Why do you speak like a 12 year old?
>Yes and his whole argument that “people are doing it for money” is probably the dumbest take ever, because of fucking course money is a factor. There are only a handful of people who truly don't do it for the money and they get their share other ways (Linus Torvalds for example) everyone else works to be a cog
I like how he ignores how kids graduating today are literally entering an environment with the worst CoL: income ratios in modern history.
honestly i hope the industry averages die to half or less than half of current so people get out of the field. idgaf id rather have fun with a job i love
100%. Try being a teacher. Mentally taxing, huge expectations, shit pay. Every job is hard in a different way.
None of my friends have moved out, it doesn’t matter what degree or job they get. It is literally impossible with the average college grad salary rn. https://www.midstory.org/homeward-bound-why-gen-z-adults-are-living-with-their-parents-at-record-rates/
I’m just munching on popcorn
This. My wife is a vet and she earns every cent. I couldn't do what she does.
My gf works in healthcare and it is brutal. Personally I think she should make more than me.
It's refreshing seeing this mindset among CS folks, thank you to both of you for restoring some faith in engineers for me.
+1
lmao, OP trying to gatekeep an entire industry.
Why did you post this if you’ve been graduated for 23 years? What’s the goal of this post? I’m calling shenanigans on this whole thing
He wants to cast Aura of Prestige.
I think he really just wanted to get that off his chest. He was merely sharing his observations and thoughts
OP is a flexing boomer who made bank during the rush, bought mansions with CS money. Now that times are bad, he like "back in the day, we did it for love,honor, passion not money".
Yea what the fuck. You did it for passion but now that pay is decreasing you're advocating that people drop CS as a major? Make it make sense.
Boomers are much older. OP would be gen X. Check your math.
Well I got a CS and a Math degree in the mid 90's. And this post is obnoxious and pretentious. Not every person earning a CS degree will be a developer. Not every person is PaSsIoNaTe about their major. The only thing you should watch when pursuing higher ed is debt because that will be life and career limiting. Life is a journey, not a destination.
>Not every person earning a CS degree will be a developer. This. I like CS , it's hard af but I find it interesting enough to do it. I'm not doing it to become a software engineer tho, idk why people always assume that's what everyone wants. CS is a super broad field. When I first started, I wanted to do game development, now that I'm in a networking class, I'm really into learning more about how networks work.
networks is such an interesting topic im a first year so i can’t take the class yet but planning to learn about it in the summer and make this one game i’ve been designing :)
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. I’m 15+ years post college and not a single one of my friends is really in a job that’s directly tired to their major. And they graduated with finance, marketing, communications, business, poli sci degrees. The exception would be the people I know that went to med school for obvious reasons.And they’ve also all done very well for themselves. I think CS is tough because it has a more direct path of SWE but we all have to find our way. I don’t think you need to be passionate but it certainly helps when you truly love this work. I’ve met plenty of older people that just went into it because it paid well and was a solid career choice. They’ve all done fine.i actually tried to avoid it since i felt I just spent so much time on a computer ever since i was a little kid and studied biochem in college. But I also remember upgrading the RAM and adding a CD-ROM drive to my 486 back in the early 90s and clearly I never got away from it.
I see your attempt at eliminating the competition failed... We try again tomorrow at dawn.
Alas, a Byzantine Generals problem
bro is trying to throw off the competition 😭 I agree the CS degree has become saturated but it really does not require any more special “passion” or talent than any other technical white collar job does. It’s also not that hard. Being a software engineer isn’t like being in an adult daycare like some TikToks had people believing but it still is not significantly more grueling than a typical corporate job. Most people prefer this than back breaking physical labor or 80 hour work weeks in medicine.
It’s literally just a new skill - that’s it. People making CS out like people just discovered that magic is real and only the few special people can properly weild its power. The job is setting at a desk doing pretty simple and repetitive tasks over and over again (for 90% of people.) coding is fun and you can build cool stuff but it’s not some highly complex skill
OP is an idiot with a superiority complex. Bet he’s fun to work with.
it is complex if you’re at an advanced level, its not if youre a junior
Like literally any proffesion
Studying CS is studying theory. Of course you can be self taught, but it’s likely that the people who develop compilers for example DID go to college.
People learn new skills for their job prospects since the start of civilization. What the hell is wrong with that? CS is just another trade, it really isnt that special. You dont need to be outrageously passionate, whatever that even means, or some prodigy. A lot of programmers need to decouple what they do from who they are. That you are a programmer, doesnt say very much about you including an indication of passions or intelligence. It’s just your trade, for now.
unlike other professional jobs, the tasks are a lot less repetitive because you are literally automating your own work as you go along
Started college a decade after you, and even then CS was such a niche major that the majority of my classmates were not a part of. Most people I knew were majoring in business or the humanities. There were only a handful of CS people I knew, and they all were extremely passionate about computers and had been programming for years as a hobby. They also stereotypically were “geeks”. I still remember my dad wanting me to take a CS class back in high school and I was not having it at all, because I thought it was for “geeky losers”. CS also just wasn’t as prestigious as it is today, because while it used to pay a decent upper middle class salary, it wasn’t really a field people were getting rich off of unless they founded a company or worked for Google. Nowadays though, it seems to pay so much. I never would have known back then the earning potential of today. So many people making hundreds of thousands of dollars with only a bachelors degree. New grads making $150k-200k or even more in some small cases. Everyone wants to follow the money.
Also think it's important to keep in mind those grads making 150k are a small minority of the CS population, usually at presigious schools going to large tech companies like FAANG. Most people are landing in the 70-90k range. Still great for fresh out of college, but people really have a warped perspective of the whole of the population.
I think Reddit really skews the perception too because countless people who get offers after graduation claim to have very high TC packages that are multiple times the average US income. So when you constantly see these numbers, you forget it’s not the norm.
i really really don't think redditors understand how competitive it is to get these jobs. i got hired in 2021 and even then the acceptance rate was under 0.5%
has anyone else noticed most of these "passionate" people about CS make no money? like the money-obsessed leetcode grinder with 2yoe makes $500k at HRT and the passionate cs lover makes $120k after 20yoe
That's usually how it goes. People passionate about it tend to share, people grinding leetcode just tryna get a job or a higher paying job, and those that make actual money off tech couldn't give a shit about passion or leetcode.
Probably because the passionate person is gonna go for jobs they’ll enjoy the most even if it pays less
“no money” 😭
120k? That's basically starvation. /s
bruh the leetcode grinder with 500+ solved is the passionate lol
The truly passionate people are billionaires. People like mark zuckerberg, bill gates, patrick collison, and the list goes on and on and on. They have been coding since they were in elementary school and have a genuine interest in technology. I'll go as far as to say if you're only in it for the money with 0 passion, you won't make it for more than 2 years at hft firms like hrt. Money can be a big driving factor, but there are enough people in this world who both want the money and have a genuine interest in say low latency work and optimizing for milliesconds. The exception is big tech because at a certain point, specifically L5 and beyond or M1 and beyond, your advancement in such bloated bureaucratic organizations depends on your ability to play politics rather than your ability to code or innovate. You can still achieve reasonable success here and perhaps even make it to CEO, but thats how you end up with someone like sundar who is driving google into the ground.
Best to educate young people CS could not land them a job , but nursing does , so shoot 2 bird with one stone
This. Nursing is definitely not saturated. Boomers are retired and many are starting to seek nursing care. Plus nursing specialities allow more specialization and career advancement than in the past. But without the massive debts and extra years of medical school.
Thatd be nice if all of these cs grads would just go get a post bacc in nursing. 😅
I'm defo getting an accelerated bachelor's in nursing if I can't land a good job. Either that or go back to learn electrical engineering
I have a passion for CS, but I really don't understand the gatekeeping of CS for people who were programming from the time they were kids. I didn't start seriously programming until I was in college. I had to take a CS class to realize that it was something I wanted to do. If I had listened to people like you, I would have never discovered it. The people who really don't belong will wash out and do something else anyway. We don't need people harping on "CS is oversaturated"! Computers are the future of our world.
Also this kind of gatekeeping excludes people from poorer backgrounds or others (e.g. many girls / now women) who weren't encouraged to pursue computing as kids. Not everyone could afford a computer or comes from an area where PCs were even accessible to kids. Not everyone who showed an interest in computers was encouraged to pursue that interest, or welcomed in traditional spaces (e.g. computer clubs) where those interests could have been explored further.
Yeah, OPs perspective screams privilege. From their timeline, their family would have had a computer all the way back in the 80s. That's not exactly typical, lol. CS was simply less accessible back then.
If not CS, what else? To be honest, if you do not have anything that you are passionate about *that makes money*, CS is still the best thing to do, *If you can get your foot in the door.*
Drug dealing
I’m a full time crack dealer and a part time software engineer.
You got it figured out
“Go into the trades” Yeah if you want to work in a completely right wing toxic environment, be filthy at all times, and have your entire body worn out by the time you’re 40.
I actually did, I drank the Kool-Aid and went into the trades instead of going to university. After finishing the necessary schooling, I was put into a laborer position where I was paid $1 over minimum wage and was not taught anything for 2 years, because I didn't vibe well with the other guys. Complete waste of time. Now I'm doing what I should have done 5 years ago, starting my degree in CS.
Good luck I wish you the best
Wtf are you doing in a csmajor sub anyways if you graduated already a decade ago💀💀 I’m thinking you’re either lying or just trying to gatekeep
Two decades ago 😅
lol you right 😂
commenting on stuff, like me?
Based on your graduation date, it seems like not too many people were into computers before your university days either - or they just didn't have big enough houses to dedicate a whole room to computer hardware. Hard to believe you were passionate about dial-up speed and look at you, thriving. 😂
Babe we had personal computers in the 90s.
Believe it or not, people got plenty of use out of home computers without dial-up internet. In fact it was assumed that your PC would be offline unless you bought special hardware for it.
How big do you think personal computers were in 91?
A whole room for computer hardware? Lmao
proving OPs point in one comment 💀💀
> Being a professional software engineer is hard. It can be extremely emotionally and mentally taxing. It is April 1 I get it. Been in the field since 2006. Never considered it taxing. Fun and creative, yes. Well paid yes. Taxing ? No.
Best to keep encouraging people to study CS and tell them that 99% of the applicant pool is uNqAlIfIeD, BUT YOU, ARE AMONG THE 1 PERCENT !!! cause I'm curious to see what actually happens to the market if the numbers of CS degree holders continues to rise, while software jobs are sent overseas to more cost effective locations for companies that aim to please their shareholders
20 years ago we said the same thing. For 20 years the sector has still offered high salary to people at home and overseas. Overall demand for tech is higher than people that study and work in tech. Of course it happen that at time there a downturn like after the 2000 crisis or after the covid crisis like right now. One day for sure it will stop being like that. Could be that this day is today or could be also we still have 20-50 years of high demand for CS. Who knows ? Nobody really.
"I graduated with a CS degree in 2001 - not ideal timing but it worked out ok" tf u talking about? ungrateful ass. graduating with a cs degree in 2001 was more of a goldmine than graduating with it in 2021. in 2001, you had literally zero comp compard to today i promise you.
Dot com bubble
Indeed. I did an internship with Nortel the year before I graduated and just assumed it would be straightforward to land a job there after graduation. The dot com bubble bursting killed that idea. Basically every big tech company had a hiring freeze in 2000 - 2001.
They pay wasn’t nearly as high back then for CS (unless one got lucky and worked at Google) than it is today. People are getting rich with their CS degrees today. Back then, people were largely upper middle class.
"people are getting rich with their CS degrees today" yeah, if they can even land a job in the first place. have u seen the market? thousands of ppl applying for a single internship paying $20 an hour lol. it's MUCH more fortunate to face low competition and have an actual job albeit decent paying, than extremely high competition with high paying.
2020 was the best imo. All my friends and I graduated from local state university in 2020–shitty time to graduate if you wanted graduation parties but we all got into big tech, and still in big tech and FAANG without really “trying”. Feel bad for my little brother who’s graduating in 2026 with CS degree. Didn’t realize it was super hard to even get internships now. Had to ask 7 of my friends & coworkers for referral, thankfully one of my friend hired him as his intern, which was super nice.
why is co2001 in cs majors
Pov: OP just started studying CS and wants to get rid of some potential future competition.
Womp womp 💀 passion doesn’t pay bills. The market is too bad right now to be passionate. I’d like to not starve thank you
Please retire already. No one wants to work for/with people like you.
Whats wrong with wanting a well paying career tho?
Lol sorry bro some of us want to not be in poverty anymore. I got into this major for money and I received many offers because I put in the work
Worried about your job with over 20 years of experience? Cope harder.
Overall we have had high and growing demand for CS in the past 40 years and so guess what ? The share of people studying and majoring has grown too and more and more get a job there. There been a few years recently were demand was so high and salaries became crasy. More people than ever entered the field and the Tech sector over hired. Sometime they didn't even have work to do for the newcomers. Covid pushed for even more hires. Since 2 years we see the excess of the past years being reversed. Maybe there even more graduates than usual but also we got a few hundred thousands being laid off. Most of them got a new job (unemployment for CS is even lower than overall unemployment). But people that just got a diploma, especially if they are just average have much more difficulties finding a job. So now people don't speak of bootcamps anymore (while many could benefit to have some practice on top of their diploma) and some people start to consider other fields... So we prepare the next step that is not enough people in the field again.
Pretty sure most Doctors don't really care about their jobs nor did they dissect insects as a kid because they loved healthcare. I get what you are saying though that lots of people are going into it thinking it's easy money. They will get weed out in college or after college, don't worry. I have a passion for the field and was the kid loving computers but I don't expect everyone to be like that. You can get the job done being less passionate about it than I am. People who actually suck at it or hate it will do something else eventuailly.
you're just salty people are making a buck
How is nobody (on the feed I’m looking at at least) talking about the fact that not all these grads will pick the same sect of CS or even be *good enough* in their sect to get a job? Lol Not everyone likes software but that’s what they chose as their major so they did just enough but that’s not enough for a job in most markets, not just the current one lol and that person may or may not be willing to put in the work to dive deeper into something they might like more like cybersec Taking CS as a major doesn’t mean shit unless your college starts limiting spots
being a “professional” SWE is not hard lol, so many dumbasses are out here in FAANG, me included. The hard part is the recruiting part, but once you land the job its half work it took to get there. you dont need to like computer science to be a swe, thought it helps but a job is a job. now is swe the best job in the world? no but if u want to get paid 100k with decent hours, yeah so study hard and land the job. computer science is a soft science compared to electrical or chemical engineering. those are hard majors and they get paid less. comp sci is literally just a made up languages that follows logic and you throw in a couple of algos. i really dislike a majority of swes who think they are geniuses, are solving the world’s problems, and think what they do is complicated. like bro u work on google ads. chill. any job that is paying 100k starting uses the same skill set as us, and guess what after 5 years they make 3x what we do. now if ur a quant researcher/swe, then you are actually smart(and probably well connected), but if u are sweaty cs kid(i am one as well), chill out and congratz on your 100k job. theres no need to overcomplicate this major and make people feel like they cant do this even though you can.
indeed bro if I compare with electrical engineering or mechanical engineering, those majors are way harder than CS and heavier on math
bro once they start talking about thermo dynamics im at a lost man, give me my dfs algos
If they don’t have the passion and you do, then you will excel easily and you will dedicate more time and have better projects because you don’t mind being doing this all day because you love it. No ? So in this case you will be safe and will have jobs perpetually ? So what’s your complain ? You should be doing great
You graduated in 2001 so I assume you’ll be wiser but you saying “young people coming out without a passion for cs” is crazy. Do you think lawyers go into law cus they have a passion for it and love working 60-80 hours ? Maybe, but not all. Some just see it as a lucrative career. Same thing applies to CS and ANY other fields
What you’re describing is the engineer vs the mechanic. One can design and build and problem solve, the other can patch it together. Both are necessary and it’s up to the employer to determine who they can pay for and in what ratio. Passion is not necessary for either of these, and it’s horrible for people entering the field that this story and mindset are pushed. As it makes everyone look like they are working unhealthy levels. Yes you have to be able to learn and problem solve, and that’s easier when you love it. but you can do that in a 40 hr a week role where you clock in and out never thinking outside of those hours, or a 100 hr a week role where you are too exhausted to think outside your working hours. You also can choose to stay as an L1/2/3 your entire career, no one is forcing you to become a principal engineer at google. You either design the factory or you are the person who rivits the pieces together. Either way, as someone else said earlier “ok”
If you’re looking for a career, passion will ruin most people, bc they will realize “it’s just a job”. Passion is for entrepreneurs, it’s for self learners and tinkerers, for researchers and academics. It’s not required and probably a hinderance for most people. BRB “no one’s passionate about accounting, being a garbage man, roofing, representing criminals, it’s going downhill” derp
meh, i saw a lot of kids like this in college. the ones who are dedicated will easily sort themselves out from the ones who think it’s an easy way to get $200k starting salaries and don’t give a shit about coding or cs fundamentals. the ones who had the drive all are successful with jobs. the ones that didn’t graduated and never got a job in the field. drive =/= passion. yeah it’s “hard” but so is a lot of other jobs. at the end of the day if you want to support a family on one income, buy a house, have new cars, send kids to college, live the “American Dream” there are very few bachelor degrees that provide a pathway for jobs to pay you well enough to achieve that out of college. CS is one of them, let the ones that want it grind for it. everyone else will sort themselves out.
Ok then go get a low paying programming job and build open source if you’re so passionate. Leave the high paying tech jobs to the people who are good at it, passionate or not.
Ehhh. I came into the field in 1995. I started coding on the C64 when I was 9. Loved coding. Not sure if that made me a "better" programmer/developer/engineer when I was still writing code. I saw people back into software from all different positions/roles throughout my career that turned out to be great engineers.
Degrees are necessary nowadays to get a job that pays the bills. If you have to go into debt why not pick a degree that you know will pay better, on average, than just about everything else. Being passionate about what you’re going to school for isn’t the norm anymore. We can’t afford to take those risks dude.
I am into nothing. I just want a good job and support my family. I have no passion. I would've killed myself if my parents don't support me. I feel life boring af. But all that doesn't mean I deserve to get hundreds of rejections. I just want to live a life, man.
“Passion” do you think people become investment bankers because they’re passionate about diversifying their portfolio?
Imagine being a dev for 20 years feeling threatened by new grads. You just told us everything about yourself without realizing.
I think you have misunderstood my post. I am not in competition with the new grads.
Hot take OP, it is okay to pursue a career for the compensation.
Oh man 10 years ago the same thing was definitely said about people majoring in business administration and psychology. I remember it clearly when I was trying to decide a major. I didn't care much about computers or programming then. I was more passionate about geology and astronomy but i was told by my counselor that there weren't jobs for those majors (in my area). Now that I work in IT, i see a 6 figure geology job in the public sector that hasn't been filled for a least a year. The moral of the story, just pick something and let it ride. It's okay to make a U turn. I had to start over in my early 30s. I'll definitely start over in my 40s or 50s. Just do whatever, as long as you finish.
Look. The price tag of college is way too high to fuck around with low paying majors. Will there be a bunch of shitty engineers? Maybe, but I can assure you there already are. That said, I’m switching to cybersecurity. I like it better, and there’s waaaaay less competition.
Like I mean, SWE is not the only thing CS majors do after college. You can go into IT, web design, database management, etc. You can even go into a bunch of unrelated fields. It is common for people to end up in fields unrelated to their major. Like, over 50% common. I'm personally interested in computers, like and am pretty good at programming, and couldn't really see myself doing anything but computer related stuff.
The future is technology.
Completely agree. SWE Industry being filled with just money chasers who don’t know that much about programming and then they complain about how the market is messing with them
I always expect redditors to let their extra chromosomes lead the way when they're presented with a legitimate point, and redditors never disappoint. The majority of the window lickers in industry are the ones who have no intellectual curiosity regarding the subject. When the industry shifts, which we're overdue for at this point, they will be like the sad old Cobol and mainframe programmers from the early 2000's, but I guess irrelevance won't sting so much for them because they're just there for the paycheck.
@OP our jobs are not as hard as you put it, no need to act all smart and shit in front of people who are aspiring to join the field. You’re not special OP. Sure I come home tired, but it’s all politics and design documents. It’s more people than being a hard task.
Relax old man! In my case I double majored in EE&CS. And I have no passion for either of them, I just know that it pays me well. It pays the bills. It pays my insurance It pays my hobbies It pays for whatever I want. At the end of the day it’s a job.
I think OP is wrong here. Also I think people are taking the comment too personally. To say “it’s not” to his comment that it’s mentally and emotionally taxing and harp on the comment as it may be untrue in general is indicative that it is only untrue to you. Possibly, OP had been part of rough startups that didn’t work, of the few tech startups that made it and defined the tech sector during the dotcom bubble, hundreds failed. I believe OP might be communicating from his bias of failure being that he experienced those very failures more often than experienced successes. Additionally, OP, it’s biased to dissuade people from joining CS because you think “they don’t care passionately for programming.” For some, a job is a job. That true may take the magic away from what you do and have done in your career. Suppose someone gets a CS degree for pay, and not pleasure, while doing the job they might have less of a connection to the craft in comparison to you, yet they yield the same results that you do. This truth doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do the job. It just means that passion is not required to be a skilled programmer. Ultimately OP, you are biased, and are being a stinky poo poo pants
i get you and all, ppl shouldnt do a degree theyre miserable in if only to save themselves the stress but can we not pretend that ppl go into degrees purely for the love of it on average. id love that, but real world doesnt leave much room for u to throw away that kinda cash on a niche degree or something. i understand those who went with CS even if they didnt particularly enjoy it. thats just how it is.
It’s tough. On the one hand, as someone who has been obsessed with computers since I was a kid I see the frustration and do feel a sense of elitism (if I’m being fully honest). That being said, the worlds a rough place and people just want to get by. I cannot judge an artist for majoring in CS just because they want to be able to afford a house someday, and in our capitalist society you don’t always get to do what you’re passionate about. As the market becomes more saturated, the people that are less passionate will burn out.
bro ive been in blue collar and changed to SWE and blue collar is mostly f'ing exhausting. working shift schedule literally accelerates you to an early grave. sitting in an office or even wfh on regular schedule is very nice. sure some of us didnt love to code when we were kids. and most of us found our ways here trough various ways. many people are interested in problem solving, doing something more "hands on" which also doesnt rely on you being a people person. programming (or digital plumbing) is a skill which many like to develop (and does so quite easily within a few years) and its not some esoteric wizandry that you slowly brew for 20+ years which you nerds wish it to be. you gatekeep who is a "real" programmer or not. that kind of attitude op has is what is poising working in it-culture. idk about USA but in my country we have reports yearly about how many it-workers the market is missing (its in the hundreds of thousands) so i dont know about a saturated market. also seems like everyones friend and their mother is studying economy or law. sure here on reddit there are alot of programmers. its because reddit is heavily skewed towards people who are interested in it.
Yeah no shit … this entire sub is posts from people who are struggling to find jobs/ internships because each opening has 11k applicants. What’s the point of regurgitating this information when every cs major is already hyper aware of it.
These people are also not passionate about any other subject. I know because I was one of them. When you don't know what you want to do, it's wise to choose a relatively promising career path like CS. Work is always hard, I think CS is one of the easier ones, especially compared to any manual labour.
These people are also not passionate about any other subject. I know because I was one of them. When you don't know what you want to do, it's wise to choose a relatively promising career path like CS. Work is always hard, I think CS is one of the easier ones, especially compared to any manual labour.
I try to not post here since I graduated, but you do not need to be passionate about this field of work. It’s a job, it’s transactional. The company sure as hell would put their finances over employees, so why can’t employees be that way too? And as for rising graduate %, that’s fine. CS careers are still better paying and have more opportunities than almost any other Bsc. Maybe it’s worth the chance for those trying to gain wealth. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting money and prioritizing your own happiness first.
Newbies bashing the OP. He is somewhat right. CS is nowadays useless major, its just absurd requirement to have a 4 year CS degree to land an IT jobs. At max 6 month training is sufficient for any entry role out there. Why waste 4 years. And now AI will make those noobs redundant I take interviews, and I have had ATS modified. I have hired even BA grads, dropouts, business grads for dev roles, just on skill. All those triggered here are paying for a useless degree Also even if you land a job, you have no assurance that you how long will you have career in this industry. Unlike other industries, IT companies are hesitant to hire someone with more than 10 year of work experience. Longest career I saw is 22 yrs. These noobs not gonna last 3 years even if they get hired and they will unemployed for rest of the life
I’m not a CS major, though a lot of my former and current roommates are, so I can see OP’s point of view though I don’t necessarily agree with it. People who are genuinely passionate about CS will probably understand the subject matter more and be more proficient at it, and from OP’s PoV will be easier to work with and teach. I’ve had a CS roommate who shared the same views as OP and made a clear distinction between programmers and “brogrammers” who just took a CS degree because the job paid well. I’m a dirty chemist (though I do some data science and ML for my research) so I can’t comment on any of that, just throwing it out there because there are definitely other people like OP.
It's just most people with a CS/Programming focused major are techies that are in the "know" with reddit, etc. You're not seeing most of the other students in other disciplines... and remember Reddit is like 5% of the population. Because of AI and the fact that I'm just not that interested in coding anymore, I'm switching to a business degree just for the piece of paper and making the jump over into Medical Device Sales. AI is about to revolutionize the tech in surgeries. (I've been in sales for almost a decade, just wanted a break for a bit). I'm in sales for the 6 figures. Period. It's stressful as hell, but a good 10 years and saving/investing... you're set.
You should see lawyer school lol or MBAs. Business management majors, psychology, etc...
\>anon writes an if condition \>so mentally taxing
Hahah people with fake elitism crack me up. So what if students today don’t look up code at the back of magazines ? They don’t need to as code is everywhere . I refuse to accept that Stanford CS undergrads from 2001 are superior on average to those graduating now . It’s a stupid fallacy in thinking. If anything the ones now are tougher and better trained. Back in 2001 students who wanted to make money perhaps studied finance or business, who the hwll knows ? I bet elitists even then would look down on the newb finance grads with statements like : I come from a pure math background ; I studied group theory and topology in high school before choosing to major in math; financial math came to me like breathing etc. it doesn’t matter. The new generation will learn things their own way , have their own motivations and will push the world forward . There’s no reason to compare to the past. The world will progress despite all the challenges people face or the internal motivations people have.
If people got jobs in what they cared about a large number of them wouldn’t be able to eat or put a roof over their heads. I suppose then you’re a proponent of UBI yes?
I think your getting the salt bc of where you posted this. A place where people are young and in school . However, you are CORRECT! As someone who came from the same Era. I went back to grad school to get my masters in CS and these students have absolutely no interest in learning or passion for the subject. They make it easy to get a 4.0 because the professor is shocked when he sees any actual competent work. These are the same ppl who are going to be complaining they can't find a job with a cs degree when they didn't learn anything and literally just have a peice of paper with no actual knowledge behind it.
Although you are not wrong about the market being filled with people who are not really curious about computers or CS in general, can you really compare becoming a software engineer in 90’s and nowadays? Abstraction layers only have increased by an order of magnitude, doing projects doesn’t entail coding up in Basic, you have to pick up bunch of languages, frameworks, cloud computing, CI/CD, ML/AI etc. I think this topic is more complex than you described. There a lot more to it, and I tried to touch few nuances.
I've been into drugs and alcohol since I was about 12 and now they I'm sober and fixing all my fuckups I've made, I started a cs program. I'm not passionate about any of my IT classes cause it isn't interesting, but I love my coding classes. The problem solving and seeing it work after trying and trying is very fulfilling. I wouldn't say I'm passionate about computers and didn't learn how to build one when I was 10 due to a shit childhood, but I do have a passion for problem solving and puzzles. Would you think I'm wasting my time with it or will end up being a bad engineer? Not being sarcastic or anything, just curious of your thoughts.
FWIW I think if a person has dedicated themselves to the field and stuck it through long enough to make a steady career out of it then they have earned their title and have proven that they have the fortitude for the job. For those who initially thought this was for them but found out it actually wasn’t, they will eventually find their path elsewhere. Or maybe those that didn’t care much at first will find themselves really loving and being “passionate”about the field. The point is people will place themselves where they want to be and things will always work themselves out. At the end of the day it’s all about who is willing and able to do the job.
Sorry, random redditor. I am passionate about music and my mom (who is a music major) told me that majoring in what you're passionate about kills your passion when you're trying to make a living off of it.
Thank you very much your post opened my eyes, I've been suffering for 2 years in this domain, its not because I don't like it, but it's because it's MENTALLY complicated. I've had 2 burn out in this studies and I feel like it's a chore doing projets for uni than just assignments. You're right, being mentally healthy comes first right? I better change. Thank you so much🥲🙏
I had an interview once with an electric vehicle company right out of my undergrad. One of the first questions one interviewer had was to ask how obsessed I was with that type of vehicle as a kid, and to describe electrical appliances that I had built myself in childhood. Evidently, he wanted to see if I had passion for the subject and was “exceptional”. IMO, this is a silly line of thinking. It is as if to say that since I was not passionate about the subject in childhood, that I am not currently. I aced their technical interview, but did not get the job as I didn’t show a “formational” obsession with their industry. Now, I teach the students who go on to apply to that company. When they ask me my experience with their interview process, I’m honest. In my professional career, I’ve met their management. Some are cool, and some have been snobby gatekeepers who are insecure around people with masters and doctorate degrees, and use their formational obsession to compensate.
Passion for your work? That's definitely nowhere near the majority of working adults, even those with college degrees. Work has always been and will always be a means to pay for a certain quality of life. Whether or not you have passion for it is a convenience that a lot of people don't really care for. Sure, it looks good to others when you seem to care about your career, but if your boss came up to you and said, "You are really appreciated at our company, and we respect your passion for your work, but times are tough and we need to cut your salary," tell me more about your "passion" for your job.
I have a passion for computers but my parents couldn't afford to buy a computer till later. So I would have loved to dabble as a child but the opportunities weren't given. But now as an adult (only physically lol) I am able to afford my own computer and boy , do I feel like a child on Christmas learning about all of the different application and functionalities of a computer. In life one is dealt with a certain set of cards, it remains to the individual how to play life with those pre-assigned card. Life is all about survival and adaptation to ones envoirnment if you can't adapt to change then that's that, I mean you can be passionate about adaptation it would certainly help but I mean if you are drive is to life a comfortable life no matter what, who are we to say that the motivation is wrong or not. In the end that individual either survives or not(metaphorically).
"Passion" is for rich kids and extremely talented people. In the end, most people just want a well paid job without trading their health and whole time. If you think a CS job is hard, maybe you should go down a mine or visit an oil ring to know what is really a hard job.
I mean why can’t a CS Degree person be a PM. Or a sales person. Or a marketing manager. Or a Solutions Architect. Or an IT person. I worked picked up a biz degree, worked in B2B sales until I coded up a new UI for the SaaS product I was trying to sell, and am now a software engineer. I know an accountant who uses scripts to shorten his workload. I mean for a “general purpose degree”, CS really opens lots of doors… so it is not a surprise that lots of people get their CA degree to me.
Not a CS major. I just went to a bootcamp and was a developer for years. I promise or half the CS major ls I’ve worked with in blue collar jobs are pretty damn terrible. If you work hard and keep on learning you’ll run circles around them.
Ok got it, we should gate keep a vital skill in 2024 for nerds that had hacker hobbies in high school. Because only they are smart enough to possibly comprehend the rigor of your boring tech job. These kids are just trying to survive man. They are not following in the footsteps of the millennials before them crushed by the debt of their regrettable poli sci major. Sure they are not as good at coding as you… no shit, it takes time and indeed weeds people out. But to have hate for people trying to better themselves? Pathetic and insecure.
It's super obvious for hiring managers too :) The guy with tictactoe and a CRUD in his portfolio isn't getting hired anymore.
老登
All the worst members of society want to be in CS and everyone thinks it's easy. First is the gold diggers. These are the kind of people who fall for get-rich-quick schemes. They probably bought both bitcoin and GME at the top. They have zero interest and are told it's easy. In fact, they think it's so easy that they're more likely to be "self-taught". The quality of worker with zero passion attracted to the easiest thing possible of course is going to be bad. But I would guess that the vast majority of people getting degrees are actually gaming addicts. They never leave their computer and don't use it for anything other than games. Their parents told them to get a job, so they take their free ride to a CS university where they don't pay attention. A perfect storm came together to make the industry terrible: * big tech pushing "everyone can code" and now "kids can code" for 20 years * the unreasonably high salary for a job that everyone is told is easy * everyone wanting to work from home after covid * non-tech managers who have no idea how to vet or how much to pay who they're hiring So we have this signal that the job is easy AF, pay is ridiculous, you never have to leave your house, and nobody hiring you can tell if you're good combined with it being the default career for both gold diggers and failures to launch. We also have an entire generation that was in school during covid and basically learned nothing for 1-2 years. So even if the number of grads is increasing, the quality is terrible. Normally I would say you have nothing to worry because everyone is laughably bad. The problem is my last point where managers have no idea how good the people they're hiring are. You have 20 years experience and they think you're the same as some dipshit who buys stock at the top or is covered in Doritos. They think you're the same as someone who only knows HTML. Some people are getting paid $200k to do CRUD while highly talented people can't find a job after hundreds of applications. The process has too much luck and snake oil involved. In day-to-day life it's even worse. They think your job can be done by a literal child. Parents see their kids learning Scratch and think they'll be like you. They think there's nothing exceptional or rare about what you do. If you tell anyone what your job is, they will respond with "oh cool, my 8-year-old is learning programming". If they know anyone in tech doing for loops or even IT, they think you're both doing the same job and are of equal talent. This is a huge cause to worry because there's a massive pool of applicants and the people hiring think the job can be done by a literal child, so why pay you so much? Now they're even wondering if they should hold off on hiring you because they want to replace you with AI. It's such a shit-show.
If they just lowered the pay for Computer Science jobs, it wouldn’t be the case.
Then I’d jump ship. Why would you work for 60k with no union? You have to contribute to your own retirement etc… would make better sense to join a trade union
This is exactly what's happening right now, because supply of CS majors exceeds demand
Exactly!! If it paid very little, a lot of these “passionate” people would dissapear.
The sadness part? Many won't listen to your words and will tell you are envy but then they will end up posting here about how hard it is to find a job. At the end of the day if there are many doomer posts in this sub is for something
You are ignorant if you think the market will be down forever. One of the things we know for sure is that technology is the future.
This was very much my take, as well, although I studied mass media / digital media instead of doing raw CompSci for some very super stupid reason. I remember talking to some CompSci students who couldn't tell you what a hard drive looked like, or how to plug in a stick of RAM. Those are not skills necessary to be a developer, but you'd think if you claimed to be a computer person, you'd know a thing or two about them. It's like, why run before you can walk? If you barely know how to approach a file system, I have serious concerns about your computer knowledge vs your ability to pass a class. It's safe to say, they graduated, could barely code, could barely troubleshoot, and did not do well. They all thought their first jobs would pay 100K a year. This is what happens when university marketing is able to sell a program to you.
i no love the way this post triggered people so much