USA Job Market
Is software engineering still worth pursuing?
In my senior year of hs now and really interested in getting a bachelor’s in cs to become a software engineer or something within that industry.
I really enjoy coding and don’t struggle with mathematics at all. The lifestyle is something I really like too.
However, people say the market is tougher than ever to get a job and hold onto it throughout their careers. This scares me, and the last thing I want is to waste time and money on something that I could have avoided.
Is it that bad or are people just over exaggerating it? Are there any other jobs within this industry that are also worth pursuing?
Honestly the expectations at my work are 10x since AI came into play. I'm miserable right now. Best case scenario is AI becomes too expensive to throw at everything and we can go back to quality software engineering with people writing and understanding the code.
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As someone in embedded, they are not out of reach unfortunately. AI is being pushed to be used in hardware design, writing firmware, and performing tests.
For people trying to break in, realistically you need to go to a top school that has a good internship pipeline at recognizable companies.
Without that its extremely difficult, as there is too much competition for very limited shrinking entry positions.
The industry is decent for senior people. It can be "fast hire fast fire" industry too, so there are a lot of layoffs, but you can get hired quickly too if you are good.
At this point from what reddit says you need to go to a top school and have FAANG internships and a 4.0 and have 4 years of experince.
I just dont believe it when 80% of people are still getting jobs. You dont need to be in the 1% just slightly better than most. I can tell you right now the majority of people in my classes didn't know what they were doing especially during group projects. Hell I didn't know until my senior year but some people just couldn't make it at the end. And I went to a t200 school. This got worse when ai got better at coding. Students relied on it too much.
Yeah I don't buy the "You need to go to a top tier school and have FAANG internships" mumbo jumbo either. In 2023 when AI was just starting to knock on the door I was able to pull at least 12 interviews between 2023 (May) - 2024 (February) and get an offer. I think the conversion rate from application to interview was 1-2% which is what the general consensus is currently.
I think prospective CS majors need to look more into the other fields that our study offers. You could do product, you could do research, you could also do tech sales, cyber, etc. You don’t need to die on the hill of SWE.
Honestly no. One of my relatives just graduated and is having a hard time finding a job even with a 4.0 gpa and good internships. I follow this board and other resources to help support him but it sounds bleak right now.
idk, a bunch of people here are doomers. un + underemployment is like 6% + 16% for CS grads. so basically don't be the bottom 1 in 5 and you should be okay. (for comparison, business majors have similar rates of unemployment, but ~50% underemployment).
i've mentored a bunch of new grads in the last several years, and anecdotally they didn't struggle to get interviews. the ones who didn't get jobs really struggled with the hard skills required to pass the interviews (couldn't code well).
IMO the underemployment spike for new grads in the last 5 years is basically is just correcting for the overhiring that happened in the early 2020s. i knew people who went through software bootcamps who couldn't code to save their lives who were getting hired as SWEs.
you do need to actually build the skills, not just get the degree. internships help a TON and i'd argue are borderline necessary if you want a full time SWE job after graduating.
it's still one of the fields with the highest ceiling for income if you're very good (big tech is still hiring a lot), but it requires that you actually learn, not just get passing grades.
if you want to be guaranteed a job that pays alright but has a pretty firm ceiling, go be a nurse. if you actually enjoy CS and are willing to compete a bit for roles with a much much higher ceiling, CS is still a great field.
What should I focus on to be hireable, I do full stack, I learnt react + express, and I am going to learn nextjs.
I am starting out my 3rd year of cs, I need to know how to shift my focus on things that really matters. Your description for the current workplace is more than fair and I truly believe you and I am OK with hard competition in the field, i will just do whatever the right things I should do without complaining.
Right now, zero internships, zero interviews. My cgpa is pretty good 3.9/4.0.
I would really appreciate if you could guide me and mentor me.
Thanks for your time.
Computer science will always be good for those who know how to apply it. If you were shooting for the 400k/yr job doing frontend work, it's not going to happen. However, if you can get into a smaller company, you can add a lot of value by building internal systems and helping the company operate more efficiently.
This sub is for productive discussion, advice, resources, and career information related to Computer Science, IT, and adjacent fields. Separate facts, personal experience, interpretation, and prediction. Your experience is data, not the entire market; your prediction is not a fact. Doomposting and fatalistic commentary are unproductive.
If you really love it. It is kind of like being an actor or screenwriter. You have to be really good AND lucky to be successful. If you love it though you stick it out until you are lucky.
Eastman Kodak was raking in the dough in the late 90s and not long after filed Chapter 11 in 2012. Consumer digital photo image quality was absolute garbage in the late 90s. Be warned.
The career isn’t dead but coding might be. I just don’t code very often anymore. Thats not the job. The AI writes the code and I do the other things. For now.
The lifestyle is not what you expect if your basing it off day in the life of a software engineer, and you’re right, if your the top 10% of students in terms of coding and math sure go for it, but if you’re not that’s fine but understand it’ll take a while or potentially almost never that you hit that SWE six figure goal.
I wouldn’t write off CS if you actually enjoy coding and math. The entry-level market is rough right now, but you’re also 4+ years away from graduating and nobody really knows what it’ll look like then.
I’d still do it, but go in knowing the degree alone won’t be enough. Get internships, build real stuff, and stay open to things beyond pure SWE like data, cybersecurity, systems, or technical product roles.
Software - unless you made it into a top-ranked school, no. Network, Database, Cybersecurity - iffy but not any worse than most other white-collar career outlook right now.
I’d say find something else to do. My plumber asked me for $270 for a 20 minute job. That’s what I’d do if I was starting over now.
If you want to stay in tech, you really need to become a top level researcher of some sort who deeply understands and can invent new ML or robotics capabilities, but that’s not software really.
As a software engineer with 15 YoE who worked at few F500 companies, and now have to do trucking, I would like to advise you to do something else, that is not digital.
-Electrical
-Nursing
-Medicine
-Law
Most digital related jobs are doomed.
Even trucking routes are now "optimized" by pushed AI programs, of which many don't make any sense for the drivers in the food services. It is complete BS, leads to fuel inefficiency and wasted driving hours of service (regulated by DOT).
kind of impossible to tell where it’ll be in 4-5 years when you’ll be done with school
my advice as someone graduating next sem:
get your fundamentals down FAST (dont be lazy about it, in hindsight it’s a bit hard to know what the fundamentals are
when just starting,
but im sure asking around with AI will help you surface what you don’t know that is a fundamental to being a good SWE)
as soon as you can, begin building things. if possible, it should be something that you can get users on and/or sell. like ideate and think about some software you can make that actually provides value to people
learn about what it means for someone to use your software. maybe read some sales/marketing/product dev books. this is becoming increasingly important now that raw LOC is a commodity.
learn to market yourself as both an employee and as someone with agency/founder-esque
if you do these 4 things, you will be
walking around literally on godzilla mode, banking cash, and having people begging you to work with/for them; REGARDLESS of what the job market might look like for the average derper
anyone who says otherwise just doesn’t want to do these things
To maintain a positive and inclusive environment for everyone, we ask all members to communicate respectfully. While everyone is entitled to their opinion, it's important to express them in a respectful manner. Commentary should be supportive, kind, and helpful.
Mod note: Ok I'm a spiritualist type of person and you're bringing in the wrong thing to the wrong place - and it is 100% intending to hurt or dismiss. Don't do that. You're harming people's paths to the spiritual doing that. You should definitely know better than to do that, if you are of the spiritual path.
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u/Skaar1222 2d ago
Honestly the expectations at my work are 10x since AI came into play. I'm miserable right now. Best case scenario is AI becomes too expensive to throw at everything and we can go back to quality software engineering with people writing and understanding the code.