computer science degree?

[TallBill]

Screw IT, programmers are in high demand. My buddy had a bundle of job offers upon completion of his masters. (school paid for it after his bs, so he stayed)

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: TallBill
Screw IT, programmers are in high demand. My buddy had a bundle of job offers upon completion of his masters. (school paid for it after his bs, so he stayed)

I'll venture a guess that he is not your typical student Obviously the top 5% never have problem finding jobs. Unfortunately most of people (about 95% ) are not in that 5%

 

[Xavier434]

Don't worry about the job market when it comes to a CS degree right now. Not only are all job markets subject to change a lot by the time you graduate, but the economy in its entirety is not doing well in practically every market right now. It will recover and it is not like the US will not need IT people, programmers, and engineers when that happens. Just start by choosing a major that seems to interest you the most. Considering the 3 that you are looking at currently, I can tell you that all of them will end up sharing a lot of the same necessary credits to graduate which means you will have a lot of time to change your mind and research more when you are actually in school which is a lot easier.

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: alkemyst

Originally posted by: sdifox
Lol, now there is a glut since a lot of people enrolled just before the internet bubble burst.

according to all trends the IS/IT sector is in need of QUALIFIED individuals. Problem is too many think that because they can install Vista or overclock their GPU, they are now experts.

on the flip side there are a lot of people with a buttload of certs but simply lack the people skills to make a good teammate.

There are plenty of lower tier jobs still for both of the above.

There are still tons of people hurting from the bust. I know a few people from my class (92) that are still in mid level positions and they are better than me at this shit.

It could be I am just luckier.

I see the "bust" as a good thing. It thinned out the industry to leave those that are actually proficient. In recent years, we've seen another resurgence of unqualified candidates, but it's nothing like it was.

If someone can't get beyond a mid-level position in almost 10 years, then they're the problem... not the industry.

 

[Saint Nick]

Why are you worried about the job market? Just go to school for something you like doing, then figure out a job later. Work on getting an internship your junior and senior years and call it good.

 

[Saint Nick]

Originally posted by: apac
I got 4 very good job offers when I graduated in January 07. Unless the market has tanked since then, you'll be fine. 2 tips to succeed once you're out of school:

1) develop a passion for the work, it makes all the difference in how much you learn
2) be proactive in getting internships while in school, starting freshman year. The ones that don't get good jobs out of school are the people who take summer jobs at Target or go home and party.

You only live once, might as well party while you're young. I'm personally not too excited about working in a glass box the rest of my life -- so I'm going to do something about it.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Skilled positions that require math and logic are always going to be in demand. You may have to work for sub-average wages until you get experience though.

I suggest if you do CS, make sure you line up some serious internships while you're in your sophomore or junior years... I've known a lot of guys that got hired on a sophomore in college and actually worked through college making entry-level programming salaries ($45k/year). Funny thing they never tell you about jobs is that to get the ones you really want, a degree is only a fraction of what they're looking for.

You also need to have a good personality, be dependable (work schedule and not showing up to work drunk/hungover, etc), and you need enough experience that they can read your resume and feel comfortable that they're not going to entrust a project to you and have it fail or be set back 3 months or longer.

Just start coding and maybe get a job doing maintenece programming since it's the easiest. If there are any other majors you're considering, you'll know by the second year of core classes whether or not you might want to change majors....that's always an option if you don't like programming as much as you think you might.

 

[Deeko]

Originally posted by: NightDarker

Originally posted by: apac
I got 4 very good job offers when I graduated in January 07. Unless the market has tanked since then, you'll be fine. 2 tips to succeed once you're out of school:

1) develop a passion for the work, it makes all the difference in how much you learn
2) be proactive in getting internships while in school, starting freshman year. The ones that don't get good jobs out of school are the people who take summer jobs at Target or go home and party.

You only live once, might as well party while you're young. I'm personally not too excited about working in a glass box the rest of my life -- so I'm going to do something about it.

Agreed. While I did work hard in college, and I did have good internships (co-op was required at my school), I did NOT live for school, my GPA was NOT that great, etc. College is also time to grow as a person socially, and yea, part of that is going out with friends. I've done very well post-college so far, so don't listen to people that claim you must do nothing but work in college in order to succeed.

 

[narreth]

deeko did you go to waterloo by chance?

 

[Deeko]

Originally posted by: narreth
deeko did you go to waterloo by chance?

No, I went to Drexel.

 

[narreth]

ok, i was thinking waterloo because you mentioned co-op

 

[Deeko]

Yea there's a few co-op-heavy schools like that. Northeastern is another one.

 

[brikis98]

The market is just fine. A lot of companies in this area are desperate for quality software engineers and just can't find enough. Of course, anything could happen in 4 years when you graduate, but the computer and software industries are only going to keep growing, which means the need for software engineers in general will be higher.

 

[zephyrprime]

I know a lot about this. I graduate in 2003 when the market was HORRIBLE! I cannot tell you how bad it was.

Anyway, the market is fine now although not as strong as it was last year. Yeah, it's a little weak but no more than the general economy due to the housing bust.

Weak exchange rates are putting a crimp on outsourcing.

 

[KentState]

I know as someone that was trying to hire entry level programmers, the market was very competitive even when offering $60k+ year in south west Ohio. I have about 10 years experience now and had two really good offers just recently. I'm actually moving to Atlanta because the offer was really good.

 

[kedlav]

As the 30-odd posters above me said, get internships. Certs are good as well, but its better not to look like a paper tiger. Experience is the most important thing to almost every employer.

 

[Cheesetogo]

Originally posted by: narreth
im not sure what i want to do yet. im in the processes of choosing careers. the stuff im interested in right now are

materials engineering (i like the nanotech part)
computer/electrical engineering (designing CPUs!)
comp sci ( programming)

it's very hard to choose :S

Computer Science and Computer Engineering will probably be very similar for the first year to two years, giving you plenty of time to decide. On the other hand, Materials Engineering is not going to be much like the first two options at all, as it's unlikely that you'll be taking any programming courses at all - I would imagine it's going to be very physics and chemistry heavy.

 

[Martin]

They are lying to you. If you go to a good school like Waterloo and do coop/internships, you will have a very wide choice of jobs that pay well and offer great working places.

I went to UofT Comp Eng since I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do, but as it turned out I really liked writing software, so now I do that and I am not at all sorry about not going to CS. Over the 4 years, I took about as much CS courses as a CS major, the only difference is that while CS majors get to take lots of other courses (humanities, general science, etc), whereas I did EE courses.

 

[theawddone]

Materials Science is getting pretty big, if you dig chemistry I'd say it's worth looking into. Pretty much every science major can be complemented with programming nowadays because of all the analysis that's done, so you could easily still get a CSC minor and utilize both in the future.

 

[FP]

The job market from my perspective is really great for software engineers right now. I have had 3 unsolicited job offers in the last 2 months with significant bonus/stock option offers included. I also sit on our hiring board and can tell you that good engineers are very hard to find. If you really enjoy your work you will have no problem finding a job.

 

[Deeko]

Originally posted by: Cheesetogo

Originally posted by: narreth
im not sure what i want to do yet. im in the processes of choosing careers. the stuff im interested in right now are

materials engineering (i like the nanotech part)
computer/electrical engineering (designing CPUs!)
comp sci ( programming)

it's very hard to choose :S

Computer Science and Computer Engineering will probably be very similar for the first year to two years, giving you plenty of time to decide. On the other hand, Materials Engineering is not going to be much like the first two options at all, as it's unlikely that you'll be taking any programming courses at all - I would imagine it's going to be very physics and chemistry heavy.

At my school, all engineering majors have essentially the exact same curriculum for the first two years. And CS was in the college of engineering. So it would be in there too.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: kedlav
As the 30-odd posters above me said, get internships. Certs are good as well, but its better not to look like a paper tiger. Experience is the most important thing to almost every employer.

But paper tigers earn more paper

 

[Saint Nick]

Originally posted by: Deeko

Originally posted by: NightDarker

Originally posted by: apac
I got 4 very good job offers when I graduated in January 07. Unless the market has tanked since then, you'll be fine. 2 tips to succeed once you're out of school:

1) develop a passion for the work, it makes all the difference in how much you learn
2) be proactive in getting internships while in school, starting freshman year. The ones that don't get good jobs out of school are the people who take summer jobs at Target or go home and party.

You only live once, might as well party while you're young. I'm personally not too excited about working in a glass box the rest of my life -- so I'm going to do something about it.

Agreed. While I did work hard in college, and I did have good internships (co-op was required at my school), I did NOT live for school, my GPA was NOT that great, etc. College is also time to grow as a person socially, and yea, part of that is going out with friends. I've done very well post-college so far, so don't listen to people that claim you must do nothing but work in college in order to succeed.

Thats what I'm talking about right here. I work hard, and have a good internship. But, my GPA isn't amazing. And, really, I was talking to some hiring people here. They said they'd rather have someone who is socially capable than someone who isn't. You know?

 

[Asparagus]

Come to Huntsville, AL and you will have no problem finding a job here. America's third largest research park is here along with the Redstone Arsenal. This is an engineering and computer science paradise. I graduated with my CS degree in 2005 (I took 7 years to finish my degree because I worked in the industry while I was going to school). Every person that I knew in college is employed and making pretty good money. Fresh out of school, you can expect to earn around $55K/yr. There is no shortage of programming jobs in this town...

 

[Martin]

Originally posted by: NightDarker

Originally posted by: Deeko

Originally posted by: NightDarker

Originally posted by: apac
I got 4 very good job offers when I graduated in January 07. Unless the market has tanked since then, you'll be fine. 2 tips to succeed once you're out of school:

1) develop a passion for the work, it makes all the difference in how much you learn
2) be proactive in getting internships while in school, starting freshman year. The ones that don't get good jobs out of school are the people who take summer jobs at Target or go home and party.

You only live once, might as well party while you're young. I'm personally not too excited about working in a glass box the rest of my life -- so I'm going to do something about it.

Agreed. While I did work hard in college, and I did have good internships (co-op was required at my school), I did NOT live for school, my GPA was NOT that great, etc. College is also time to grow as a person socially, and yea, part of that is going out with friends. I've done very well post-college so far, so don't listen to people that claim you must do nothing but work in college in order to succeed.

Thats what I'm talking about right here. I work hard, and have a good internship. But, my GPA isn't amazing. And, really, I was talking to some hiring people here. They said they'd rather have someone who is socially capable than someone who isn't. You know?

My M.O. during school was finding that sweet spot that gets you the most marks for the least amount of work. For me that, meant settling for low 70s average (2.8-3.0 GPA), but enjoying a fair amount of free time.

But, since I like what I do (and I think I'm fairly good at it), finding good jobs has been fairly easy. I've had 3 FT jobs and haven't ever been asked for a transcript, so having at least some passion and a bit of experience means you don't have to worry about high GPA.